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Priscilla     You're kicked out of the Residential Area, *and* you lose your vital necktie. A punishment more severe couldn't possibly be dreamed of; or so appears to be the general attitude towards you on the unhurried way out of a bunch of shitty pink blocks and plastic streams. Even with the area purified, it seems the bunker doors aren't opening again, their inhabitants hiding until . . . well, whenever they feel safe again is. The obstructive cubes might have had the decency to give off a slight emotional sting when they pop up behind you again, if they could make the noise to the effect of a door slamming, but that kind of noise is too frightening, and so even that feels toothless and lame.

    Leaving along the western-headed east street, you spot one single Elsen standing in a corner, who voices aloud possibly the only understandable take on anything you've heard in this whole Zone, despite its singular subject matter.

    "It . . . seems that the Residential Area has been attacked by spectres . . . I . . . I don't dare go there ever again . . ."

    Fair enough.

    In that way that strange talking cats do things, the Judge is already gone pretty much the moment anyone looks away, having already sauntered off to the corner in cutscene time and then disappearing around it in the way that nobody with any narrative sense expects they're going to still see if they just hurry really fast. Arriving at the Library at the center of Bismark once again, the ceiling of dark, angry, smoke clouds that had gathered around it before seems to have done the opposite spread, instead becoming a dense, impenetrably opaque, tower over a tower that engulfs the entire upper half of the impossibly tall building.

    Valerie, the Judge's brother, the cat gone mad who believes himself the creator of the world and also a Royal Guardian who left forever ago, apparently sat himself up there. Even the Judge didn't really sound like he believed it to be a coincidence.

    The librarian is still at his front desk. This could be taken as weird, or perfectly normal, entirely given to whether one believes they've been here a few hours or at least a whole day objectively. When the Batter struts up and asks (no, alerts him that he's going) to go to the roof, the sickly white collar looks fearfully out his cancer patient button eyes and says "You . . . You guys are gonna go up to the roof? That's . . . dangerous, isn't it?"

    "Well, don't be too loud, please."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison is just slightly silent at the Elsen's attempt at a door slam. Then again, yesterday he watched a group of idiots build three robots...he's becoming more and more jaded to the absurd as time goes on with his exposure to the multiverse.  The Elsen outside now afraid of going in instead of wanting to go in to be safe.  

Truly, this place was hell.  Instead of it being other people, it was just...well...nevermind.

With the declaration from The Batter they were going to the roof, Edison was thinking.  If the Cat was the brother of the judge, he could not be the creator of this place.  What could be going on?  Was he just insane?  Possessed?  I mean, spectres DO exist...and they DO...well that was a terrifying thought.  

With a sigh, Edison speaks up.  "I think it might be a possibility that the Judge's brother is somehow being possessed or corrupted by the Spectres or by the former guardian himself.  I wonder if it's possible to find out how it is happening, and the try and fix it?" Edison says, but not really having any ideas himself.

"Though I guess sitting and talking about it isn't going to solve the issue," He says, with a tired sounding voice.  
August Kohler Renewed that the Elsen are actually people, just probably extremely sick people to the point of losing their peopleness, August leaves the Residential District without regrets, pushing towards the Library after they talk to the Judge. Dietrich is still out, August riding on his back, because they're charging into a dark miasma tower.

When they reach the Librarian, August is slightly less flippant, now having some actual sympathy for him. "We'll be as quiet as possible." Technical truths are best truths, as Dietrich clanks a little loudly, though August can't help it, turning to the Batter. "Let's get to work, Batter. We're going to have to take out Japhet, Valerie, whatever he's going by once and for all. He's gone too far."

And then, August turns to the rest. He's not taking a leadership position, but with the renewal, wants to give words of encouragement. "With that cloud, I bet there'll be more spectres than we've seen before, and they were pretty tough last time. Let's give it our all and kick some ass."

following that, the redheaded terrorist moves to start heading up stairs, presumably by the Batter's side. He can trust the Batter. There's something comforting about his zeal and dedication to monster-slaying.
Aoko Aozaki     When they enter the library, Aoko whistles in the way someone trying to be overly inconspicuous might to appear natural and nonchalant.

    She, after all, has nothing to do with the explosion that occured during the Residential kerfuffle, and certainly nothing to do with any energy-gathering fields left in the library and which may or may not have discharged a laser at the expense of the contents of the room.

    The mere thought of it is absurd.

    She does this despite requests not to be too loud.

    She only stops to briefly muse at Edison: "Who knows! Too bad the King isn't here, I bet he had ideas on how to solve the whole angry Guardian ungrateful people problem."

    Back to whistling. You can't stop her.
Thomas Alva Edison     "You mean trying to shove swords into it's mouth until it gets a terrible case of iron poisoning?" Edison says, with perhaps a touch of a sardonic tone.
Tina Natsumi     "Can't blame him. The place is puh-re-tty shitty, if ya ask me."

Tina laughs to herself as she saunters along with the rest of the crew, trying to keep the mental image of the Elsen being executed and pleading for its 'life' as far out of her head as possible. She's not doing too well with that despite the knowledge that their humanity is rather suspect to begin with, but she does do a pretty good job hiding it with a broad grin and sunny disposition!

    As their path takes them to that familiar Library that had proven to be annoying with all its RULES and NOT BEING LOUD, Tina furrows her brow. It's not like she pays all that much attention to such dumb rules, anyway, but she humors the Librarian with a quick nod and tap against the brim of her hat. "We know it's dangerous. Handlin' stuff like that's our job, see."

    And then Edison expresses a theory she doesn't quite get. "What makes ya say that? I mean, anythin' probably goes out here after last time-" Dammit. She wanted to do anything but remember that! "-but it can't hurt to try if we can figure out a way. 'til then..." She nods towards August next, taking a position on the other side flanking the Batter.

    "I got the big guns, so leave the lil' ones to me. And if it gets real bad, Uncle Sam can take a good beating. Classic tank 'n' spank!" Tina laughs confidently despite herself, pausing briefly to glance at the Librarian and offer an apologetic smile before turning back around. She's trying not to snicker at Aoko's complete disregard for noise reduction, though, and soon breaks into laughter against a whole five seconds after.
Janine Liberi     Janine is still mad about what went down at the Residental District. Not the Elsens throwing them out, the other things. So she stays at the back of the pack, and keeps her sword out at all times. When the librarian asks them to be quiet, she just rolls her eyes and ignores him otherwise.

    In response to August, she says, "Yeah I think it's clear at this point that we're all really good at killing things and feeling good about ourselves for it. Some of us probably have degrees in that shit." As Aoko bemoans the current lack of Gilgamesh, she sneers. "Yeah I'm sure you're really missing the head of your clique, same as everyone else here."

    Yeah, she's still mad.
Starbound Flotilla     George is with the Batter. They seem like two peas in a pod these days. Well, George does, at least; the Batter isn't necessarily particularly close to him, but George seems to often be where he is. He has... an uncharacteristically silent nature, and he's slow-burning his awful cigarette. Whatever's in it, one has to assume it's not addictive; in moments like these, he seems put off by it, like he hates the taste and smell of the stuff.

    "Big J up there is gonna be a toughie. He's got a little more oomph than little J." George says. "But yeah, rest assured, you're lookin' for corruption? You're gonna find it. But there's only one kind of purification around here, and it's..." He glances to the Batter. "Well, it's kind'a a solved problem, you know?" He stares up the stairs, tapping a finger on his chin. He stares straight at Janine, and for a moment, his eyes gleam in an uncanny way, and for just her, the look might look like it's boring into her, if she's the sort that's inclined to feel that way.

    "Good skill to have. Gonna need it, kid, get some practice."
Doctor Strange      "Yo."

     The Sorcerer Supreme's head pops out of a fracture in reality, as if he had forced his face through an up-till-now invisible plate glass window. It hovers, disembodied, near Edison, until he steps fully through the breach, which closes up behind him. "Heard you guys got kicked out of the, uh... residential district." He frowns archly. "Tough break," adds the sorcerer facetiously. He takes a moment to brush off his sleeve.

     Looking up the length of the smoke pillar, he nods his agreement with the musclebound Caster--namely, his assertion that Valerie might be influenced by spectres. He doesn't see any reason to believe why that's not the case. This pillar of smoke doesn't really look like it belongs here, anyway.

     "How about we get up there," he says to Aoko, George and Janine with a pointing, trembling finger, "And we... find out who his insurance provider is... and I write him a referral for a psychiatrist?"
Zero Kiryu Zero reclaims his /own/ tie from Yuuki as they are 'ejected' from the Residential Area. He doesn't even pretend to entertain having it confiscated if such an action is even attempted, though he doubts that it's of any particular interest. It's too colorful, for a certainty, to really pass for the sort of thing that the locals would wear. Which isn't to say /much/. It isn't all that colorful for him, either.

Afterwards, his eyes turn towards the colossus of a library-- and the clouds that extend upwards from it. He supposes that such heights /would/ be alarming to the beings who live in this place. But still... if it's a torture world, what does this mean to the inhabitants?

Surely it's not just the height.

The Batter speaks to the librarian. He wonders what distinguishes that man from the people here-- what makes him try to fix it, instead of deteriorating like everything else. Or maybe he /is/ deteriorated.

"Do you know what it is? The corruption." He asks George, who has offered the /idea/ at least that he Knows Stuff.
Starbound Flotilla     "Impurity's kind of the theme of the day, ain't it?" George answers Zero's question with his own, slipping the cigarette between two fingers and gesturing with it. "So, what's gonna be the worst impurity that someone like that could get? What were they pure of before, and what are they impure about now?" He slips the cigarette back in, but seems reluctant to take in any more of what's within it besides some kind of minimum dose. "Impurity means there was pure something before. What was pure here before it suddenly got impure? And, what's the usual way you get some impurity in you? Try to chew on that one."
Yuuki Kuran Thanks to CATS operating on the BATMAN QUANTUM DISAPPEARANCE, Yuuki Kuran does not get to 'you're a kitty! yaaaaaay' with flowery print page-layering sparkle-eyes as she once did, and instead is VICIOUSLY MUGGED for her tie. It's hers! She stole it, and that makes it hers.

You are only allowed to commit violence to defend your property, or while in hot pursuit! Not if you're finding it after! That's the rule!!!

Heading back to the library fills Yuuki's senses with the soft, sweet scent of plastic books which are extra safe, and strange neurotic people still worrying about everything including the SCARY SOUND of pages turning.

"You know, George, it occurs to me. It's not even about safety, is it?" She muses, pulling a book off the shelf and silently leafing through the plastic tome. "It's like their entire senses are limited. No sights, no sounds, and even no offensive smells. Just plastic and monochromes."

"It seems so... dreary, boring... Like they can't even live. But I guess you said that was their flaw."

"They can't even be human."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison listens to George talk with Zero.  Edison's brain starts to work on the problem.  What was this place supposed to be?  Safe?  A safe place to live for the people?  

Ok, work backward...with the cat claiming to be the bird, the bird claiming it was his greatest achievement, but not getting recognition for it.  Something can only be pure when compared to something else.  Hm...

"Going out on a limb, but the land was created for the Elsen because they wanted somewhere safe to live.  However, J wanted not just a place for them to be safe, but to build something that would make him beloved or recognized."

"The Elsen fell into the trap of caring only for their safety.  Losing what it meant to be a person, and forgetting who made it because they focused only on that part.  The bird lost sight of what he was supposed to do and fell into only wanting attention and recognition and is driven by the simple desire."

Edison looks up, "At least, this is a theory."
Tina Natsumi      "Psychiatry? Eh, ain't a bad plan considerin' the weirdo stuff we've been runnin' into here. Who knows? Maybe it'll actually help." Tina laughs again at Strange's suggestion, flinching just a bit at Janine's responses in turn. She adjusts her pace to match with Janine, lingering closer to her before leaning in to lower her voice.

    "Hey, Jan. If it makes ya feel any better? I still can't get it outta my head." Tina gives her a playful pat on the back, then speeds back up to get back inline with the Batter and August at the front.
Priscilla     It's probably a good thing that the fight in the Residential Area required Aoko's laser firing. It's not a good thing she set one up at all in here, but probably one that was inevitable, so right now people would otherwise have to contend with the nightmare laser corridor one of these doors would open up to and Aoko would (badly) pretend it isn't her fault.

    "Please don't raise your voice so much." the librarian whinges at Janine for sounding mad. He fidgets slightly on the counter, saying to Tina "I heard spanking is very dangerous . . . You mustn't do it." Oddly, he doesn't seem nearly as alarmed by Strange leaning out of the mirror dimension with a metaphorical 'eyyyyyy'. It's not very loud. The Batter seems to find something about Janine worth responding to. He turns in her direction, silently looking to his left, with that same vaguely paternally patient look as always, and then makes a noise sort of like half of the first part of a chuckle. "There are a lot of people missing heads. You'll have to be specific."

    Christ was that a *dad joke*?

    Going past, the stairs begin. The second floor is the same as before. The third floor is the same as before. The fourth floor is the same as before. From there on, the floors become less and less like 'floors', and more like a single, back and forth winding, never ever ending staircase, at first only leading to more cramped rooms, then borderline closets of bookshelves, and then simply just narrow hallways rambling back and forth in squiggly patterns to fill up floorspace and cram in as many shelves at their corners as possible, forcing you to pass through in single file to get to the next staircase. The higher you go, the less spacious and the more poorly planned the library gets, as you pass window after window after window, soon staring into nothing but the acrid grey fog outside.

    A surprising number of the bookshelves appear to not be plastic, as if banished to the furthest reaches where nobody would noisily turn their pages. It's hardly the time to be reading any of them, admittedly, but even the Batter actually stops at one, when there is one with one of those socles beneath it, like on the second and third floors, denoting a shelf that had a real book on it. Compelled by whatever form his instructions/inspirations take, he pulls a book from the shelf, and flips it open to its only two useable pages, where size 72 Times New Roman font has been stamped onto it in a way that clips somewhat off the pages.
Starbound Flotilla     "Not about safety...? Yeah, suppose that's about right. It's more about purity. Or, you'd think it would be. The thing it's most about it playing out the role." The group makes their way to the next level. George, in his way up the stairs. It doesn't take long before Old Man Knee and his smoking habit(?) catches up with him, and he's out of breath at one of the flights. "Ugh, shit." He mutters. "Mind if I take a break? I'll be with ya folks in a bit." He's gonna take a break at the top of one of the flights of stairs, leaning against the wall nearby and getting another smoke to replace the one he's long since discarded. He'll rejoin them once they get back to the roof, of course.
Priscilla     '14: Drawing from his waning forces, he created the Library, more beautiful than -- ever before. Its height pierced the smokey clouds and there he stood--'

    The next floor produces another such book, which he meticulously presses the interact button on as well, holding the procession up to read the useless two pages.

    '29: Much like a guardian angel, he had done every-thing for them. He had -- brought them peace, security, and entertainment. Such was his generosity.--'

    It keeps going like this.

    '39: For a while, that was all good and well for all, they enjoyed the new land -- with the inno-cence of a child. They were running down the streets, enjoying--'
    '47: But the dynamics of the world soon drove the people mad. They forgot about -- their joys, and eventually succumbed to their neurosis of fear and worries. They weren't--'
    '51: Meanwhile, the Flaming Winged Sovereign weeped upon his throne, their jobs -- saddened to have been for-gotten by Man. He had no more time for their worries.--'

    The 'books' eventually get unreasonably current. Ink on pages barely dried. Type offset. Rushed, as if filled out just ahead of them. Speculative fiction.
    '66: And so the Flaming Bird turned into a cat, and the cat into a Ruler. Driven insane by his anger -- and sadness, he summoned forth a storm of evil spirits upon his subjects. His madness had--'
    '74: While the spectres were destroying the world he had created, he sought -- helter at the summit of his most wonder-ful creation, the Great Library.--'
    '80: There was nothing else to be done but wait for the man who would rise forth to destroy him. For deep inside his soul, there was no doubt that what he did was Evil. The End.'

    The never ending staircase of increasingly shitty, brand new books suddenly breaks out onto a balcony, of sorts. It's basically just a walkway around the square perimeter of the building, wide enough to maybe walk two abreast, with a big safe railing around the edge. It stares out over an almost psychedelic vista of dark smoke, none of it quite approaching the tower, mottled shades of pink and black in an almost checkerboard pattern from the inside. A floating yellow cube graces one corner, and a tall ladder the other, soaring up another twenty storeys at least, parallel to long streaks of fresh, pale pink paint, still dripping slowly down the huge walls, like neon blood or tears leaking from the building's summit.

    There is also Zacharie. Staring silently out over the surreal smokescape, he ruffles his black hair, then turns to look at you with his slightly ridiculous mask. "Nice view from up here, don't you think?" he offers, in an absurdly nonchalant 'ignoring the question of why the mysterious merchant is right before the final boss' tone.

    "It almost makes me forget that this is all just a matter of perspective."
Starbound Flotilla     He is, of course, correct. It truly is a matter of perspective. Namely, those with more of it than others. Those such as me. Please,        , take a moment to yourself and your Batter. The nature of these pages suits my narrative far more.

    Wait, what? Shit! For those with any form of battle instinct, there's a moment, indistinct but sharp as a knife, where any of your battle instincts sounds the alarm. A flicker of light, a gleam, a soft sound of a blade unsheathing milliseconds before the moment, but when the moment arrives, it is resoundingly demanding to the mind and the view, it forces all perception onto it. There is a man standing in front of the ladder. His blade is drawn only enough to see its gleam. Christ, where did Moonfin come from?!

    "Do not approach the furthest heights. The Ruler is not to be disturbed." He declares. "And you are to be halted. Understand that I respect and hold dear the wisdom of pacifism, but you have allied yourself with a cause incapable of seeing such wisdom." He narrows his eyes at the Batter, with the full emotional force of a man with three eyes instead of two.
Zero Kiryu Zero makes a thoughtful noise in reply to George's counter-question. The attitude of the people is extremely stress-averse, even in the context of ordinary people. They explode violently in response to... not mundane threats, but threats that most people could handle. If this place was previously a positive thing for the inhabitants, and has only since become impure...

A very gentle place, perhaps. But the people themselves are infected with something. The imperfection -- impurity -- centers on reaction to stress. A violent one, accompanied soon after by an attempt to gain sympathy in the wake of their rage and subsequent demise.

It's not entirely unfamiliar. But this place doesn't have an abundance of things to inflict an 'infection'.

"Ordinarily," he replies after a while, "it would simply be 'some sort of accident'. But it could be 'infection' by another, or deliberate on the part of the 'impure'."

"When it comes to this place... I couldn't say what caused it. I don't really understand enough of it."

He nods towards George as his physical problems catch up to him, and he decides to take a break.

Once Single File Hell ends he splits back 'round to Yuuki's side, glancing towards the floating yellow cube-- but of course, things come to a screeching halt when Moonfin appears.

Zero feels him long before he sees him. But it's not a matter of battle instincts. That's simply how his radar works. It wasn't what he was expecting, either way.
ut he doesn't react directly. He just glances towards Yuuki, in his usual how-do-you-want-to-handle-this way.
Doctor Strange      "I'm serious," Strange says to Tina. The single-file section draws Strange's ever-present neutral frown into a slightly annoyed shape. He makes a point of letting Aoko go first so he can keep an eye on her. And so she doesn't step on or try to steal the Cloak of Levitation. The Cloak does make the staircase more bearable. As the books grow more and more shitty, and it becomes more obvious that the author might have been hurriedly writing them as everyone was ascending the staircase, he feels more vindicated in his opinion. "See? Neurosis."

     "Hey, Batter... batter, batter." He can't stop himself from saying it the extra two times. Just rolls off the tongue. "What happened to the regular joes when you killed the last big bad guy? They gonna be okay, or are we just, uh... throwing them out of the nest and hoping they learn to fly?" He wasn't here for that one, so he doesn't know. It's a big assumption that this guy--the guy at the top of the pillar--is actually in charge of anything and not just a dangerous lunatic with a panic button, but he'd rather ask and be proven wrong than stay quiet and be right. Just barely. He... hates being wrong. But this is important.

     But not as immediately important as Moonfin appearing to monologue. Strange balls his hands into fists and flicks each one outward, summoning two rings of orange glyphs that hover before each. For the moment, he is seemingly at ease, though his eyes follow the Hylotl warily. "Why are we 'to be halted' exactly? What, uh... purpose does the... giant pillar of smoke serve? What good does it do the community?" Pause. "I'm not being a douche. I'm legitimately asking."
August Kohler As they go further forward, August as close to the Batter as he can get to read, he considers the meaning of the books. Especially the ending, where Japhet seems to...accept what's coming next? That's interesting. Not going to change what August thinks, but August was already a little sympathetic for 'mentally ill cat'.

As they exit out to the balcony, August speaks to Zacharie. "Zacharie...what are you doing here?" He's about to say something else, ask if he's selling wares, where there's the sense of August's instincts being tripped, and his perception changes entirely to focus on Moonfin. Dietrich's sword is sweeped up and into a battle position almost immediately, but August doesn't attack yet. He wants to make sure everyone is ready...and with George again disappearing in a 'timely fashion', August has to ask a question now. Especially now that they know more of the Elsen.

"Tell me, Moonfin. What's the merit of keeping the spectres around? Are you really going to say that purifying them is somehow the wrong cause, the unwise one? Perhaps you can give us some of your wisdom, then. Or are you going to be cryptic like George?"
Thomas Alva Edison Edison thinks about the words from George.  It was like a very elaborate puzzle, but he's not sure how to approach it.  He felt as if he was on the right trail, but missing just one thing that would make everything finally fall into place.  Thinking about this wasn't going to resolve this.

Of course, George hangs back.  Edison is able to detect patterns.  

Of course, what is more, disturbing than anything are the books as they go up.  Edison shakes his head, a chill filling him at the very last one.  "Who is writing these?  The world?  The cat?  Someone else..?  No...these are written in such a way as to confirm our biases...something is wrong."

Edison continues on, but now he is on guard.  Of course, when Moonfin comes down and states his ultimatum, Edison sucks in a breath and calmly steps forward, but not into personal space.  "I too, in life, was not a violent man.  I take no pleasure in taking lives, and only want to save them and make them better."

"However, what is going on here is not living.  Neither for those people or for the ruler.  Worse, it has drawn an innocent into the conflict, in the course of the Judge's brother.  More than that, we seemed to be spiraled forward towards inevitable violence.  I feel you may be being manipulated in a similar way."

"I ask you, politely as one lover of peace to another.  Work with us to solve the issue.  It does not have to end in tragedy as it did for Dedan.  I implore you."
Tina Natsumi The Librarian's comment on spanking hits Tina juuust right that she bursts into uproarious laughter yet again. The mirth only lasts so long, though, before the staircase just starts going on for what feels like an eternity. Tina takes them two steps at a time, but soon slows to just one once her initial burst of stamina fades.

    "What kinda... Cockamamie... Dingus built a place this big without an elevator?!"

    At least there's more weird shit to read. Some of it even answers some questions about said dingus. Also, the identity of Japhet, the reason behind the madness, and a whole lot of context to just why this place is so messed up to begin with.

    And then Moonfin arrives. Unlike Zero, Tina's caught completely off guard, and she jerks back with one hand reaching for the pistol at her side before she stops herself.

    "... You know, this place /is/ pretty messed up. Maybe it deserves it, after everything we've seen of these people. Still, though, they're..." Tuna pauses, looking troubled as she turns to the rest of the group. It's clear that the revelation they've just seen is taking its toll on her. "I mean, they're too dumb to know better, and I don't like leavin' 'em to just... Get eaten or whatever. But what's the worst that'll happen if we leave it alone?"
Starbound Flotilla     Strange gets his answer. August does too. "The nature of this world is pain. Sickness. The fever comes as a symptom, not a cause. Its heat purifies as much as any other. Were you not told that Smoke is the first of four elements? The spectres of the Queen are an effort to finally bring health to this world. Collateral damage is..." He narrows his eyes. "An expected part of both of our paths. The Batter cannot be allowed to continue his path of purification, lest the fever fail to sear away the world's sickness."
Aoko Aozaki     The books paint a pretty clear picture compared to what they knew so far. Whether they were accurate and trustable was another matter, but admittedly nothing in this library had given them reason to doubt so far.

    Reaching the top, crossed by Moonfin after George's convenient escape, Aoko... withdraws off to the side, to stand by Zacharie and look at the view he has.

    "Well, isn't everything? It's just too bad we haven't been given a whole lot of the other side's perspective so far. Might change things quite a bit! Might not."

    Her hands go into the safety of her pockets.

    "Don't mind me! I'm just here to meddle, you guys have your awesome dramatic deathbattle and I'm gonna gossip with the merchant, maybe take in the view."

    She doesn't really expect the merchant to have any particularily juicy gossip, truth be told.

    She's just not in-it enough to fight over it. As far as she's concerned, kicking that bird-cat-Guardian's ass might not be the solution here, but everyone's dead set on this Purification schtick.

    And the whole 'restarting the world to fix it' deal people are throwing around. Or even just 'ending it', under the supposition this is the final version and there won't be one after. Neither of those things are sitting right with her.

    Certainly not enough to risk injury to defend the group.

    And what Moonfin is saying isn't helping matters at all.
Janine Liberi     Janine sneers once again at George. "I'll die before I learn that." There's double meaning to that because, you know. Sick and all. And if she carries on like this, someone is absolutely gonna put a knife in her. But right now, pride and outrage drowns out all reason.

    Strange arrives, and she rolls her eyes. "Dunno if this lot would let you, Garish Man. These guys aren't people, after all, so it's okay to not care about them." She's riled now, and starts to come out with it. "Because they don't risk their lives and go on stupid bullshit adventures, they're not human? Fuck off. Staying home safe sounds more human that what we're doing. And even if we're 'more human' so the fuck what? Do you hate everyone who doesn't do that? Get your head out of your asses thinking we're better than everyone else, Jesus."

    But then, the Batter makes a joke. It's bad. Painful even. But it wraps around to being funny, then bad again, then funny all over. She lets out a laugh, a single bark. "God, that's awful." She seems mollified, if only a little.

    She continues the ascent with everyone, peeking around Batter to look at the book. "Really sick of the random themes sprinkled throughout here. We're biblical now, but before... god, blurf. Whatever." Out onto the balcony where Zacherie is waiting. "Sweet, time to stock up. I don't trust that cat to not be just a ca-" And now she is cut off by some weird fish guy! "God Jesus can't things ever be normal around here?! What the hell do you want?!" Oh he wants to throw down. Because this whole lot is clued in but won't say anything straight. "You're committed to pacifism then? Then fucking TALK TO US! Not Batter or the blank name bitch. Give us INFORMATION because appealing to morality doesn't work on us apparently! These guys only take the optimal path, so give them the information you so clearly have!"
Starbound Flotilla     Moonfin's stance spreads gently. He thinks he knows the nature of men who espouse pacifism while acting in violence. He does, in fact. Nevertheless, despite Edison's positive intentions, Moonfin looks on him with scrutinizing criticism. "What goes on where you see is not living." He agrees. "The shadow of Elsen, the footprint of what befalls those who try to simply /be/ in this world, it is not living. But do not mistake that for the impossibility of a life worth living, for those worthy of it."

    His stance widens a little, but his blade doesn't exit the sheath any more. After all, he knows that Edison will take a certain path when the time comes. He can see it clearly, each step that will one day lead Edison deep into conflict with what he knows. But he doesn't say it. The asshole. "What you see are the throes of recovery. This is the way and the path to at least a life, as you might know it, whether it be worth living. A cycle moving ever forward, with the Queen finally at its helm to correct its path. If you wish this be solved, strike down the Batter."
Yuuki Kuran "Nothing comes from gentle places that are perfectly safe. You can't learn. You can't improve. You can't grow. You just wallow in the illusion of safety. In how warm and comfortable your bed is."

"You don't build any muscles laying in bed. You don't gain in experience. It's warm and nice, but you don't grow at all. In fact, it's the opposite. You stagnate. Change becomes terrifying."

"It's about living. Living means getting up out of bed, even though it's warm and tempting, and making the choice to expose yourself to..."

Yuuki pauses, but her words return to her as Zero takes her side. "...Painful things, because life can be painful, and coming out the other end better and stronger is the reward."

Zacharie is met, musing quietly on matters of perspective, which Yuuki doesn't really understand at all, But That's OK. Instead, she gives Zacharie a big thumbs-up. "Hey! We went on your roller coaster. It was really nice. Here, since you didn't..." Yuuki produces the PHOTO (YOU) AREN'T FEATURED IN, and passes it to Zacharie. "But your statue rode with us. So I guess, perspective wise, you were there all along!"

It is not surprising when Moonfin shows up, speaking of perspective and how Moonfin has much more than the party. "I'm sorry, Moonfin. But I'm here with the Batter. And, more than that, I'm here for George. I'm sure you can understand that. You're free to step aside as well, Moonfin. Otherwise..."

Yuuki shrugs. "I know saying 'I'll go easy on you' is empty and I do not expect you to go easy on me, so..." Her eyes fall. "I guess we're fighting. This is my least favorite part of this adventure."
August Kohler Janine gets a reply. "That's not what people were saying, and you know it." August replies to her on the way, but doesn't say much else. He seems a little frustrated, but he doesn't really want to harm their friendship over this if he can avoid it. But when it comes to Moonfin...

August doesn't strike, immediately. Instead, he follows up. "So, you'd use monsters instead? Are you using the fever to kill the patient, or something else? What happens next?" He's extremely curious, but at the same time, he's sold on the Batter. His mission is prufication, isn't it? Fighting monsters and saving the day?

Before August moves to dedicate himself to fighting Moonfin, though, he waits for one thing: to see if anyone else is swayed and attacks the Batter.
Thomas Alva Edison "You know more than what you are letting on, and yet you are using the veil of ignorance to keep people in the dark about the actual intentions," Edison says, with a sigh.  No, he must not give up so easily...no great action was done with ease.  

"No, it is not.  However, can you call being turned into a burnt living?  The spectres are causing this.  Or are you trying to say that the burnt are what they should be?"

Edison stands fast, "We saw the possibility of becoming a person in them.  However, violent action only seems to spiral them into becoming a burnt.  The Guardians are corrupted, and if what you say is true about the Queen and the Spectres, what about Dedan and fighting them?  This one controls them, the last one fights them.  It makes no sense."  
Starbound Flotilla     Moonfin's response to Yuuki is strange. Uncharacteristically kind, for someone as often pointlessly awful to people as Moonfin. Kind in the way he should be to her, and the way she deserves, of course. "George, then. I see. Our agreement is not one that can be debated, it is philosophical. It is fundamental. It is one of learning. I shall defeat you, Yuuki Kuran. But... if I should fail instead, you shall perhaps learn something that even someone such as yourself will find new. When you meet the root of all this."

    He's going to take action soon though. Though not before his contempt-look at Janine's demands produces at least a /little/ information they can work with.
Starbound Flotilla     "Hmph. Information? I doubt you'd be any wiser no matter how much you knew." Moonfin says, getting back to his usual excessive contempt. "It is the same reason you relieve a fever as it purges your sickness. Because when Dedan entered this world, he was a defender. Because when Elsen entered this world, he needed defense. The balance must be maintained. The cycle must function. Your so-called purification is against the true will of the Queen, who sees and understands what he and         might bring about upon this world, when they work together. Who knows that specters represent more than just the death of Elsen, but the possibility of an un-terminated cycle guided by hands less cruel at last. You say it makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense. You are simply insolent in your defiance of the clear rules of this world, insisting on a failed perspective that brings no success."

    He draws his blade. Durasteel samurai-like armor forms about him in a shimmer of light, the combination of feudal japanese aesthetics and some kind of diving hardsuit. He will strike them down or send them back, surely, and end this. Or perhaps they will rise to his ultimatum and act with true courage when he says, "Enough questions. Turn back or be cut down." He takes a defensive stance, keeping at the ladder, but seems like he might strike soon, if they don't head back downstairs. Mostly, though, he is wary... Of the one of them most likely to strike first.

    The Batter, after all, is the one most likely to strike at him with purifying intent.
Tina Natsumi      "There's somethin' majorly broke in there, that's for certain. But... Let's say we don't do this purification thing." Tina glances towards the Batter to gauge his reactions to the potential shift in plans, then towards Moonfin.

     "Then what? The Queen has her spectres clear it all out with her... Uh. Big ghost fever, and then what? Who's left? What's left after all that?" She pauses, looking from Moonfin to Yuuki next before rubbing her head and starting to pace about. "Shit, this is makin' things awkward, ain't it? It all sounds screwed up no matter which way ya go about it, and... Dang it, both of these things sound like they could work out. How's a girl supposed to choose?"

     She stops beside Moonfin, turns on her heels, then whips out her pistol and aims it at the Batter while laughing excitedly. "... So I won't. I know I don't feel great gangin' up on one person all on their lonesome, though." She pulls out her phone, takes a selfie, and the red-white-and-blue robot appears behind herself and Moonfin. "So let's make things interesting, eh? Show us your resolve, and let's see who's correct with our fists!"

     This is going to suck in the morning.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison sighs deeply, this appears to be going nowhere.  He doesn't understand the rules of the world?  That's certainly not UNTRUE, he's trying but he can't get a good perspective.  Tina, however, stands with Moonfin.  This makes his choices very...hard.  

Edison moves forward, standing BETWEEN Moonfin and The Batter.  

"No.  There are more than two choices here.  Just because you can't or won't see outside of these choices does not mean I will allow this to come down to who is mightier.  If I have to I will stand here and prevent anyone from striking the other."

"NOT UNTIL YOU ALL STOP, TAKE A BREATH, AND ACTUALLY TALK TO EACH OTHER." Edison bellows.  
Priscilla     Zacharie chuckles when August asks him why he's here. "Why, to make credits of course." he says. To Aoko though, he just turns to look out across the balcony again. "Of course, I'm talking about your own perspectives. As far as perspective goes, there isn't any other side. Just the things you think, and the way everything looks to you." The way he laughs for Yuuki isn't the 'bemused in the way that people think it means slightly amused' way, but in a way that is a bit of both. "It looks like you enjoyed yourselves. I wonder what you would have seen if you showed that to some of my employees?" He seems to have no concern for the incredible amount of violent tension in the air. The words BUY and SELL appear over his head in a way that is clear that he's doing it, both greyed out.

    The The Batter is less helpful and less jovial about answering Strange. "There are no regular joes. Not here." he says, stepping to the fore where Moonfin puts on his armour. "I'm supposed to not kill you." he directs at him, with the monotone someone gets when revelations from God are constant in their head. "This is the problem with perspective. Without faith, there can be no certainty. You can't see things the way they are, and in the end you don't do anything. Trusting only the things you can put into words is the first step on the path to sin."

    His pair of 'halos' floats out from behind him. He takes the batting stance. Then Bat Bat Crack Crack both of them are sent at Moonfin straight like home runs out of the park.
Yuuki Kuran Moonfin's speech - his diligence and his meaning both, flavored with his deferential respect - causes Yuuki to pause in her movements, holding there for long moments. Zacharie's casual suggestion to explode the heads of various 'employees' gets a quiet snort-laugh from Yuuki, as if she could easily process 'hey play with lives, that'd be funny' as a naturally amusing thing rather than anything else. It's a little much.

"Moonfin..." Yuuki sighs, but things rattle precipitously.

Stephen Strange and Thomas Edison both adjust their course, based on what Zero and the Batter say.
August breaks off to scuffle with Tina over matters of philosophy.

Moonfin stands resolute against Janine and the Batter.

"Fine. If this is the point at which people decide to betray the very reason we came into being in this place, then let it be this and no other. At least all will be decided before Japhelt. Perhaps the dream will end right here."

Yuuki just starts walking up the stairs, as if daring Zero to follow her, and for Stephen Strange to stop her. Moonfin, of course, has more important things to stop: Like the Batter, though they may get help from Edison.
Aoko Aozaki     It's like Aoko takes five minutes to chat with a merchant and enjoy the view and suddenly everything's awful and people are trying to kill each other.

    That sure takes her back. It's like home.

    She's especially surprised to see Strange switch sides. Surprised, but not disappointed. She'd had the mind to do the same thing, but just couldn't decide. It was unusual for her to have any kind of choice paralysis. Though not unusual for her to be useless in a corner.

    "Well! Guess I'm letting you decide where I fall, huh? You got any take on this, Zacharie? Any opinions? No, wait, wait!" She backpedals on her wording. "What's YOUR perspective on all this?"
Doctor Strange      "We don't know how the Batter's plan is gonna effect the people living here," says Strange. "He won't or can't tell us, and we can't go back and see what the effect is." He floats over and positions himself beside Moonfin. "According to Zero, it's a reset button. The Queen's way works within the cosmology of this world, which is something you need to appreciate. Death is a part of life, no matter how ugly it may seem to you--it serves a purpose. And decay..."

     Strange gestures with a heavily scarred hand, towards the pillar of smoke. "Is a part of death." The glyphs warble faintly as his hand moves. "A little germs here and there is good for you--you try and 'purify' your own body and you risk killing bacteria that help you stay alive. So... let's do what the samurai says," reasons the sorcerer. He presses his palms together, fingers steepling in preparation for a spell. "Just this once. If we don't like what we see, we can take it up with him--because today," says the sorcerer, pulling his hands apart and weaving strands of luminous white energy. Strange looks Yuuki in the eye. "He's not going anywhere."

     The energy explodes outwards towards Yuuki and Zero, barring their path with scorching-hot pinpricks of light which hum harmoniously as they fly. It's sort of like the opposite of the flies the wraiths make.
Janine Liberi     A lot of words are said. Janine is shaking with anger and frustration.

    "Fuck you so much," she says, pointing her own sword at Moonfin. "Don't come here saying you know anything and then refuse to share, you pretensions fuck. I'm am so fucking sick and tired of you and yours orbiting us and being vague and ominous. So, you know what? Even if this whole thing is fucked and I get the feeling you actually know something important? If the outcome is just different flavours of fucked either way, I'm gonna take you down anyway. Just so you can learn if you act like an ass, you get kicked like one. Same goes to all of you swapping sides! Fuck all of you! When some weird fish asshole says pretty words, you can change your mind fast enough, but when /Janine/ disagrees oh no she's being unreasonable!"

    She brings out Biancabella and boosts into the air, going out beyond the balcony before blasting back towards Edison, aiming to slash him across the back!
Tina Natsumi      It's a little awkward, thinking about how to attack someone you know. Granted, Tina hasn't really talked with August /that/ extensively, but he's still someone she knows far more than everyone else!

    "No hard feelings, eh?" She winks at him once, then hops on Uncle Sam's outstretched hand before drawing out... A tommygun! It looks like one, anyway, but it's made of that strange Persona mind-magic, so it's not illegal!

     Probably. With that, she starts firing on August, although it's pretty obvious she's aiming a little low on purpose.
Thomas Alva Edison The Batter utters the words faith, and the man who was standing in the middle of the fight turns against The Batter.  

"Faith!?  You use that term, but it is nothing but a disease on the world.  Blind faith is not but ignorance, a reason to confuse and mislead man.  I will not tolerate those who use ignorance as a weapon.  If you wish to use faith as your weapon, then break yourself on the shield of SCIENCE!"

"You know that it is not what it is about, you know the stakes are different and potential civilians are not at risk.  You simply have not the wisdom nor the foresight to be entrusted with your power.  The Watch continues to prove nothing but a disappointment to me," Edison says, firm.

The slash goes across his chest, slicing through him.  However, the strong lion proves to be a lot tougher than he appears.  It does not dig anywhere near as far as it should, though he could feel the sapping energies of the attack.  

Frowning, he charges forward towards Janine, aiming a left hook followed by a right one.  Each attack sparking with electrical power as he aims to pummel her body with the large hands of AMERICA.
Starbound Flotilla     Moonfin is left alone with the Batter. Alone, for a given value of alone. He is finally in the perfect opportunity to strike the holy man down and end the mission before it could thwart his Queen. Before that, though, he suffers the impacts of the Add-Ons dead-on. Of course, it was calculated, all to ensure he could approach before the Batter could get distance or use his Wide Angle. "Second Sea Hylotl Style: Icebreaker Ship!"

    He crashes through the light attack, flickering like the gleam on the edge of a pretentious katana, letting the pain dent his armor to let him get a clean, heavy strike against the man himself. He intends to pass by dramatically, taking a massive swing with his katana that risks bisecting the man if he's not careful. A cautious maneuver could certainly dodge or block, but it's a strike with a tremendously lethal intent, not to mention the significant speed.
August Kohler People pick their sides. August is a little frustrated that Edison and Strange flipped, but it's Tina who absolutely bewilders him. Picking a side because they're outnumbered? Who does that? Dietrich changes focus to her, as August just sighs, and looks at her.

"No hard feelings, but I'm going to send you back in a cast. If you can't make up your mind, stay out of the fight."

The tommy gun starts firing into Dietrich's waist, piercing through armor and causing bits to smoulder. It's definitely doing damage - and then Dietrich begins to repair that damage, though not the energy healing actually costs, so it's still an effective hit, just one that makes it so it's not likely to kill August easy. "Don't go easy on me, because I sure as hell won't go easy on you. Let me show you the power I earned."

Dietrich suddenly surges forward with superhuman speed, sword moving sideways to slice into Uncle Sam. Partway through, the blade ignites, moving to try and slice into Uncle Sam's waist and burn into it. This would normally be a painful, but normal strike.

If Dietrich didn't hit like a train, that was. The sheer force of the blow ripples the air behind it, as August clearly isn't holding back. He wants to end this fight quickly, and while he's not underestimating Tina (he'd never underestimate a Persona user), he's clearly going to throw everything he has at her.
Yuuki Kuran "Doctor, please don't use those words. Zero doesn't know what's going on any more than you. Relying on his musings is less useful than relying on Thomas'."

Yuuki's eyes chill and narrow, her chin rising such that her gaze falls down the contour of her nose at the Sorcerer Supreme. Her very aura darkens, a sinister mein of cold and predatory feeling draping over her like a cloak.

"You speak about 'people' here, but I've only seen two the whole time - the Batter, and Zacharie. Perhaps the Judge counts."

"You speak about living here, but I can tell you - there is none. Even the blood is tepid and thin, completely devoid of life."

"We came into being in this place, and were given a quest by a figure who needed our help, and were beset upon by Spectres and Burnt. I don't really believe you're trying to safe anything of worth here, and you certainly are supporting a ruler, a leader who sends monsters and pain down through their lieutenants who, so far, all ignore all reason and lay upon us with vicious attacks. Only the Flotilla's members attempt to speak at all, and they ask us to take it on faith. All except George. George says to me - 'Director. I'm sure about this. You are on the right path.'."

Yuuki shakes her head, as the luminous white energy from Doctor Strange blasts out, a burning cloud of light that consumes her form and burns a hundred pinpoints of pain into her.

But the attack ends, and Yuuki still stands there, her body smoking and scorched like she got an instant tan - the color slowly fading off of her skin as the damage recovers. "There's no 'just this once'; I despise what I see. Dedan was utterly contemptable, and Japhelt more inept and useless than anything else. These are the hands of a leader! Of a Queen!"

"There's nothing of worth here, Stephen Strange, but our group, the batter, and removing the stains upon this place. And since you matter... Zero. Make sure he lives. But..."

The nearby patio's railing tears itself from the area, making it RATHER UNSAFE, as Yuuki gestures the metal fence towards Strange, attempting to wrap him up and crush out his ability to cast spells. It'd be cheap, but if it worked... She could carry on.

If not, it wouldn't be the first time anyone's attempt to end the fight before it started failed.
Janine Liberi     "Watch?! This has nothing to do with them! You go on and on about 'being reasonable' but hey, this apparently keeps happening to you. You're the common denominator! Maybe the problem is that you're the unreasonable one!"

    One-two. Janine eats both electrically-charged fists and goes down, convulsing slightly. But a Persona user is made of sterner stuff than most humans, and she hops back up and hawks a loogie over the side of the building. "Hah, is that all? I bet alternating current would have put me down for good!" Biancabella arises again, but it's not Janine that rises into the air this time. A small rose-scented cyclone arises under Edison, aiming to launch his impressive bulk into the air, before Janine hurls herself up to join him, her blade flashing to open as many shallow cuts as she can!
Zero Kiryu "That is... merely my speculation. But I am operating on that assumption for the moment." Zero cedes to Doctor Strange, indifferently. He doesn't see fit to explain it to anybody, but even though the whole thing makes him uneasy, he's not certain that 'reset' is actually a negative fate. He's not sure it's a positive one, either. But the lack of murdering people along the way, even though the Elsen themselves are certainly tainted -- if not overtly so until provoked -- suggests to him that there is some reason to spare them.

That is a favorable outlook. It could be the opposite. That they are insignificant, and can simply be swept away with everything else.

Zero strides forward into the pinpricks of light scattered into their path by Dr. Strange. They burn into him, searing holes through his shirt -- regrettably, his tie -- and scorching the surface of flesh underneath. He does not draw Bloody Rose.

This is not an opponent he wishes to 'kill absolutely' for, and neither is it a /cause/ he wishes to kill absolutely for.

The edges of the burns begin to draw in on themselves as his natural healing processes kick in rapidly.

He waits until Yuuki makes her move to make one of his own. As the fence is cast towards Doctor Strange, Zero raises a hand and jabs it towards the sorcerer's stomach, his fingernails briefly elongating into absurdly lengthy talons to lance through gaps in the fence.

He's careful about how deep a strike he's making, while still delivering as much force as he dares-- a lack of desire for landing a deathblow is evident.
Tina Natsumi     With the fight underway, Tina can finally see August's combat skills firsthand instead of just fighting near him. "Big talk, but can you back that-"

     August is much faster than Tina expected. Before she finishes with her quip, Dietrich is already in front of her, and it takes both of her Persona's arms moving to intercept just to avoid having Uncle Sam cleaved in half by that sudden swing of the flaming blade. Steel warps and melts around the blade, and the robot buckles slightly from the sheer force impacting against it.

    "Bringin' out the big guns already... Dang, you really /do/ move fast! But it wouldn't be a proper fight if I didn't return the favor!" Uncle Sam's shoulder's open up as a cannon extends out of it, looking more like a giant barrel than a proper gun as it takes aim at Dietrich in front of it. It charges briefly, then fires a massive sonic blast forward, threatening to rattle the armored Persona apart as well as launch it away to give her some much needed breathing room!
Priscilla     "Faith has guided my steps so far, and I have walked true. Refusing to accept what you know without needing to see it; that's just being contrarian. The faith that's blind is the faith you put in the idea that it isn't real." asserts the Batter.

    "Whatever your science was, it doesn't mean anything now. Get out of bed. Doing things the hard way builds character."

    That's as vocal as he'll be, even for a big dramatic confrontation on a big dramatic tower roof/balcony. Moonfin is already coming straight at him, and combat is the part at which the Puppeteer's touch is at its lightest; the art of Purification is where the Batter couldn't possibly make the *wrong* decision. BATTLE TIME it goes, and where the Batter and his circling back Add-Ons take their stance, Moonfin lunges right for the kill, and his blade . . .

    Whiffs. There's a 'whish' of telegraphed air blowing, and his sword just seems to pass right through, or more like *over* the Batter, as if he'd tried to strike a projected image. Something 'without a physical order'. The Batter then Takes His Turn and slugs Moonfin in return with the big heavy wooden bat, normally sort of a joke to Durasteel plate, yet transmitting its force effortlessly into the person beneath. Simple inert metal is without sin, but no flesh and blood person is. The purifying energy finds its way.
Thomas Alva Edison The words of The Batter cause him to turn his head slightly towards him.  "Faith is a tool that has caused more harm to the world than good, it has never /EVER/ caused anything good.  It has caused wars, caused policy that has destroyed more lives than it has saved.  It is a broken thing of the past...and the fact that you walk it only proves to me that the choices I have made until now were not correct."

However, Janine steals his attention again, as he is knocked into the air.  Heavy arms move to shield his body from the cut, but with the force of the slash, he is sent back down.  On his feet, the ground beneath him breaks as he lets his arms down, a bit of blood trickling down his arms.  Though her words cause a bit of a flash in his eye.  

Calm down Edison...she is not Tesla.  

"Does it not?  You ally yourself with them, and all the Watch has done is instigate riots and do more harm to the world than any potential good it has done.  I have attempted to speak to you and yours with respect, with open dialogue.  Instead, you have come at me with recriminations and slapped my hands.  This happens even in situations I am not apart of."

"The common denominator is just as likely to be yourself and your leader.  You throw around your judgments and act like a bunch of spoiled brats.  You take no time to think about your words or plan out your ideas.  Even your attempt to goad me into anger is without thought."

"Of course if I hit you with AC power it would have put you down.  The whole reason I fought against it was because of the DANGER it possessed.  Perhaps you need to go back to school.  Well for you, I will make a personal tutoring session in the class of hard knocks!"

With that, Edison floats back, releasing a barrage of electrical bursts at her.  Aiming to try and slowly weedle her body, before dropping down at her and attempting to headbutt her with an electric burst of IQ!
Starbound Flotilla     And yet, sometimes, the purifying energy does not find its way. The bat swings with precision, a guaranteed strike. No matter how he maneuvers, the bat will find purchase. But the samurai is more than just inhumanly fast. With a flicker, and a gleam of expended hyperglass, his blink-teleporter leaves him absent from the space. He skids, unsteady, away back to the ladder, his small hyperglass pylons now depleted and ejecting. They steam and sizzle where they hit the ground. His teleportation technology was far too perfected to allow such a strike.

    "Your speed and prowess may be considerable, but mine is the peak. I am the height to which all aspire. And while you have the influence of        , what I have received from the Queen is greater still." He reaches to his side, and holds what looks like a book wrought in only plastic. An artifact that is useless, certainly, for reading or otherwise. But, clasping his hands around it, the Grand Finale paired with him surges its energies into his body, and he moves with renewed purpose, and a sense that all the world has been leading to this terminal moment.

    He breaks into a dash, and instead of sweeping one large strike, now he takes the Batter on with a flurry of blows, keeping him on edge and constantly moving. Not only are each of them perfection in motion, but they carry the weight of a legend told about this, one where the Batter must be felled. They are tremendously difficult to avoid, and impart strange energies to make them even more so.
August Kohler That's a sonic shoulder cannon. Okay, Uncle Sam is /awesome/, but August has to keep in mind that it's also currently the enemy. The sonic blast rattles armor, and forces August to cover his hears, stopping a quick follow up attack as the Persona is knocked back, but it's not knocked back far enough, even though some of the armor is cracked from that and August is hurting. He's too strong, dragging his feet across the floor.

"I've fought for almost half a decade now. I was 15 when I started. Now I'm an adult, and I've decided, I'll always pick a side. I'll go with my heart, even if I'll try and reason things too. Because my heart won't let me down."

Dietrich's sword suddenly starts whirring, and becomes a chainsaw whip. It flies forward, moving to grind into Uncle Sam, saws whirring and trying to slice through it. The whip grapples, also pinning the Persona if it can't break free, allowing damage to continue over and over again.

"You've gotten involved in a world you don't understand. I bet you're listening to your heart too...but you're refusing to actually pick a side when you use reasons like that!"
Janine Liberi     "And there it is, you old fart. That's EXACTLY why no one listens to you. That goddamn arrogance, that you start from the position that /you're right./ Dialogue is supposed to be an exhange of ideas. You just preach the superiority of your own ideas. I sure as shit learned that, maybe you're the one who needs to go back to school. Oh, but wait. You would probably just cheat and copy your classmates. That's how you got to be 'King of Inventors' right?"

    Janine stays off the ground as Edison hurls lightning at her. She is at least smart enough to know that that shit sucks worse when you're grounded. But that headbutt puts her back down, but at least she managed to get her sword between he and her this time to blunt it a little. But based on those rattling coughs she lets out, that wasn't worth much.

    "That's what you want right? Me dead? Go on, use AC, wouldn't be the first time you cribbed Tesla, right?" She pushes herself back up, the air thick with the faded rose petals Biancabella gives out. "God, you're such a prick. Going on and on about being so 'above it all.' But in the end, you changed sides because you're a shitty, fedora tipping atheist. Not because you wanted to believe in the fish guy, not because you have your doubts, but because 'HURRR RELIGION BAD BELIEF BAD!' Would you have even done it if no one else had? Or do you just follow favourable winds?"

    A gust of wind hits him in the back, blasting him forward towards Janine. She brings her sword up and just steps in, using the force of the blast and Edison's own bulk to impale him on her saber.
Priscilla     "My perspective?" Zacharie hmmmhmms at Aoko. A little cursor is toggling between BUY and SELL like a gamer who'd forgotten what exactly they needed from the store and is pressing buttons mindlessly to help him think. "My perspective is that if some of you like seeing what you want to see, and if you keep seeing only what you want to see, then very soon, it'll start looking very different. Ehahaha."

    The Batter glances to the plastic book. "Is that . . ." he actually asks, and this time it's clear he's saying it, even rhetorically, to Moonfin, and not his personal, unpronouncable deity. The renewed flurry of blows then immediately puts him on the back foot, the bat certainly sturdy enough to halt even Moonfin's ridiculous blade without a scratch, like an idea or an icon more than a thing made of wood, but baseball bats are clumsy and top-heavy things, made for hitting hard, not swordplay. Little splatters of cartoon bright red flick from his shoulders and arms, without the requisite tiny anime cuts in his clothes or skin.

    He remains acting defensively, pressured under Moonfin's assault, not winding back for a big counter this time. This is because Alpha and Gamma have slipped out and circled behind Moonfin. His visual centers suddenly process everything at a warped, photographically overdone lens perspective, the world streaking away from him in front and past him to the sides. A math equation fills his vision and his head, crunching itself like a rapid game of tetris.

    It's not an illusion or a hallucination, but something that actually physically pulls and tears at him in the warp, and blasts him when the chain resolves; it's seeing the inside of what happens when the halos 'zap' things.
Tina Natsumi      "... You've been doin' this for that long? Shit. That makes me the underdog here, doesn't it?" Although Tina's laughing on the outside, it's the sort of laugh that's basically a blaring warning sign of 'oh shit' on the inside. How the hell is she supposed to compete with that kind of experience?!

    Well, she's made her bed. Time to sleep in it. "I ain't got anywhere as much experience as that, but I still gotta go with what my gut says. It's probably all kindsa stupid, but it's the only reason I got to work with."

    Against all good sense, Uncle Sam moves in to block that chainsaw whip with its hands, the ear-grating noise of metal grinding echoing between the two Personas. Tina buckles atop her own Persona's shoulder, the pain reflecting on her and drawing spurts of blood from her own hands despite the toughness of the whole thing. It can't quite dislodge the whip, either, as that chainsaw digs into the rest of its body and forces the streamer to take a knee.

    "This fight here, though...? You see everyone else pickin' their sides, too. Maybe they know, maybe they don't. This fight here's so I know which side is the right one 'cause the heroes are supposed to win!" Following the trend of shoulder-based weaponry, the sonic cannon reshapes itself as more mechanical bits erupt from the side of Uncle Sam's head and other shoulder. They link together into a longer shape, growing and growing until the entire Persona looks like a misshapen sawn-off shotgun, firing a big fat spray of Tina-sized bullets at Dietrich to engage in a battle of hit-trading!

     It's not like she can really dodge what's coming next, anyway. Might as well try different things and see what works.
Doctor Strange      Strange narrows his eyes as his warning shot was unheeded. Yuuki not only remains standing, but advances. "Yeah, well, isn't it convenient that 'the right path' doesn't let us see what we've actually accomplished after the fact." He furrows his brow as a thought strikes him. The metal railing advances on him, catching him by surprise--fighting new adversaries often does, at first.

     Strange, however, is a quick learner. Or at least, someone who knows how to look in the back of the book for answers. Before it can totally constrict him, another Strange appears from the future with a spell prepared, his index and middle fingers cutting a line through the air. A red-hot laser burns from the center of the sorcerer's glyph-ring on the right hand, cutting through the railing and freeing his past self. It also cuts through him, if the cut visible on the left arm of both Stranges is any indication. The sleeve of his robe reveals dark bruises in the shape of the railings.

     Present!Strange has his hands free to deal with the advancing bodyguard. He sidesteps the blow with un-wizardly grace, placing a foot in Zero's path and grabbing his arm. Strange twists, shoulder-checks Zero, and shoves him away. A small portal opens before him, blasting a gale of freezing wind towards Zero, conjured from some icy wasteland planet.

     His future counterpart offers a rebuttal to Yuuki. "Doing what someone says, over and over, without seeing what effect it has is like pulling a lever on a slot machine. Any jackass in a casino can do that! We should at least see if this way is any different, because God knows /these/ guys--" Future!Strange gestures to Moonfin, the Batter, and even George, who Yuuki apparently feels has been forthcoming. "Aren't gonna give us the whole story. We owe it to ourselves to find out." He rises into the air, hands weaving like a martial artist deflecting blows. As he assumes a combative stance, arms spread wide, a spear of lightning appears, ready to be hurled at Yuuki. He throws it--but his attention is elsewhere. On the portal his past self conjured, namely.

     "In fact... let's do that right now and see what happens."

     Future!Strange holds the Sling Ring forward, tracing a large circle with his middle and ring fingers. In the air above the combatants, visible to one and all, a ring of golden sparks begins to form.

     It's a portal to Zone 1.
August Kohler The whip holds a grapple tight, but this is followed up by a battle of both words and also person-sized bullets which rip into Dietrich, flaying armor apart and pushing it back slightly, but still not enough. August takes the hits head-on, causing him to spit up blood, but there's an insane defiance in his eyes. The defiance of someone with pure confidence in themselves, as he wipes the blood off his face and grins.

"The heroes are supposed to win? Hah, you're right. But they don't always. Even if I lose, it doesn't make the villain, no matter what history writes. I know in my heart that the Batter is right. This is the right cause. I'd say you could give up now and join me..."

"But that'd be betraying both of us, wouldn't it be? So get bent!"

The whip suddenly flares with a dark energy that surges into Uncle Sam, sapping away energy and burning into the enemy Persona with pure darkness. But that's not the big attack.

The big attack happens when Dietrich grabs onto the sword whip with both hands, and pulls. And it starts to spin. Putting all of its strength behind it, it /lifts/ Uncle Sam off the ground, starts spinning it into the air, and moves to, with great effort, slam the Persona straight down into the ground of the balcony, hard. The darkness never stops flowing through the whip, making the entire experience devastatingly painful.
Thomas Alva Edison "And is that the best you can do?" Edison says as the strike pierces his right shoulder as he moves to try and focus his way through her attacks, once more trying to weather her assaults so that he can focus on trying to take her down.  Though his words are ambigious, did he mean her attack or her words?

"If you think nobody listens to me, that I am desperate to be right, then you should speak to a member of my faction when I placed my trust in Priscilla and the Concord.  I am not afraid to be wrong, but neither am I afraid to hold onto a position and defend it.  Maybe my bias against religion tempered my decision today.."

"Maybe.  However, I have been wavering on supporting the Batter for a while, and I desperately tried to stop Dedan without it coming to blows.   I defended myself, but to no avail when the time came.  The only thing I did wrong was not stopping the fighting harder.  I will live with that regret for the rest of my life."

"You, however, regret nothing.  You do not think, you only act.  You trust feelings you barely understand, or whatever has pissed you off today.  You didn't think back in the city, you aren't thinking now.  It is always acting without thinking.  Tesla?  You dare bring that man's name up!?"

He growls with electrical field before he calms down, "The man I tried to hard to support?!  The man who stole from me!  The man who made a crusade to take from me my livelihood?  My success?!  The man who put the safety of OTHERS BEFORE HIS OWN DESIRE TO BE MY EQUAL?!"

He takes in a breath, "Yes, you remind me of him.  Arrogant, unthinking and desperate for attention.  You, like him, are an uncouth child with delusions of grandeur.  If you think I stole from my fellow man, you do not know who science and technology evolve.  I worked with these men, to perfect their ideas.  I elevated them, but I can not control the press or the masses.  Then the resentment that followed after my death."

The man rises up, as power flows through his body.  Once more he swings for her, electrical energy pops, as he refuses to use AC.  Aiming to grab her and bring her close to his face.  "I will never.  EVER.  Use that man's power.  At the end of the day, I do not want your blood on my hands.  You, attacked ME, after all.  While you are a child, while you are insufferable.  While you remind me of that man...I will not fall to his level.  I will not give you what you want."

"Because we have to be BETTER than that.  We have to be BETTER than what we were before.  We have to strive to the future at all costs." he says, and then attempts to TOSS her into the nearest wall with AC POWER!
Starbound Flotilla     Moonfin is subjected to the warp. It is impossible to dodge from so many angles, and in so many esoteric spaces. Mental influence floods his mind to assault him even further. But perfection cannot be so abused. A strike on not just Moonfin but the space he occupies is impossible to parry. And yet, despite that, he has other tricks up his sleeve. "It is, Batter. Your finale, and my Grand Finale." Moonfin says, taking a moment to brag as the strange plastic tome flicks open. This is undoubtedly the root of the problem, and the core of his trickery, but he's arrogant, revealing his hand.

    The Batter should know now to strike for the book. Any observer should know it. And yet, the Batter won't live to do it. Moonfin's pulse of raw exo-narrative overrides the strange space he's been put in, the sort of thing that Doctor Strange might suddenly get very upset about if he wasn't busy opening the portal to Zone 1. Wait, Doctor Strange is doing WHAT?! That got your attention, didn't it? NO! HE HAS TO BE STOPPED!! YOU HAVE TO "STOP HIM!" Moonfin shouts, remembering to speak with his words and not with his artifacts. He tries for a short, quick thrusting strike, something meant to shove the Batter back if it doesn't run him through the chest, but he's going to break into a run towards Doctor Strange. He will surely make it in time if he's not interfered with.

    But that leaves his back exposed to the Batter, the perfect source of interference. The arrogant samurai starts to leap toward strange, but the Add-Ons will surely interfere in time for the proper course of events to reassert itself, or at least, perhaps, to strike the Grand Finale from his hand, if they're so precise.
Janine Liberi     "Saying 'we have to be better' when you JUST ADMITTED you fucked up and got mad about religion just now just shifts the blame, you fucking furry. YOU fucked up. And saying 'oh but we have to be better uwu'" (yes she actually pronounces 'uwu') "means nothing when you keep making the same mistakes. You think I don't know I'm stupid, angry, and shitty? Hell yeah I do, but at least I'm HONEST about it! I make it clear as day that I will never change, and never improve. You promise that you will 'someday' but not today!"

    She goes flying, and crashes into the wall. No, wait. A barrier of wind managed to slow her impact, making it less bone-rattling than it could have been. She's laughing too. "If you're gonna be better, how about you start with that obvious grudge, huh? Stop being mean to the poor broke Serb, you big-industry, big-government man!" She's up again, her infuriatingly slim frame still standing up to the mighty blows of the lion man.

    Binacabella slipped behind him as he was monologuing, and suddenly grabs him from behind. Her bloodied stumps come up to his mouth and he gets a faceful of those rose petals, their scent sapping as much strength as they can! Right before Janine walks up and begins swiping at his chest again, aiming to open as many wounds as she can to tire him out.
Tina Natsumi      "Wha...? Well... Yeah, if'n you wanna put it that way, I guess. But like we said earlier, remember?" Tina grits her teeth in a half-grin, half-grimace as she takes a defensive stance atop Uncle Sam, the Persona mirroring her stance to ground itself and stand firm even as it's bound in that whip's threatening glow. "No hard feelings. We fight and we fight, and we figure out who's gonna lead the rest that way!"

     She's almost starting to believe it herself. Her Persona starts to radiate with a blindingly RGB glow opposite the ominous energy surrounding that whip, and already fading somewhat as its energy starts being sapped away. Tina herself has to wedge herself into the excessively American robot's collar as it's brought skywards, howling in both excitement and pants-shitting fear when Dietrich starts swinging them around. Although she never hits the ground herself, she can feel that impact in her bones even with her Persona's durability taking the worst of it all, entire sections of its limbs popping off and joints cracking like an action figure thrown off a ten story building.

     For a good half-minute, it looks like Tina is done. Uncle Sam's (still) gun-shaped upper body is smoldering, the Persona user is wedged into a small gap between its neck and head, and there's not a whole lot of moving or quipping going on. Indeed, the quipping doesn't even come back as the mech just rattles and rumbles, turning over once, then faces Dietrich.

     "... Last shot. Let's make it count!" Tina shouts out as Uncle Sam fires one more massive at Dietrich's armored face, the length of the thing easily longer than the barrel that made up Uncle Sam's upper body. It's more like a ballista bolt than a bullet at that point, and it's the best that Tina's got left at this point!

     Since she's still sort of wedged in there at an odd angle. There's really no good way out of there, but at least nobody can say she didn't go down fighting.
Thomas Alva Edison "I see, there is just no reasoning with you," Edison says, as he is grabbed.  The rose petals cutting at his features, but the real attack is draining his strength.  More slashes aim for his chest, but that terrible might of the man holds out, managing to not die when he is expected to be taken down.  Grunting with pain, he throws them back with a massive wave of DC powered pressure!

"I admitted to my biases, but I am not stopping because I have decided that this is my path.  Instead, you bemoan me and attack at me without even trying to understand.  You are just happy with being angry and shitty.  Admitting to it does not mean you are changing it...it just means you are revealing in it."

He says this, even though weakened, pushing himself to his feet.  His body blazes again, something stirs in his body.  "This world has no need for gods, false or otherwise.  Behold the power of my will!  BEHOLD THE POWER OF PROGRESS!  THE POWER THAT PUSHED THE DARKNESS OF THE WORLD BACK!"

The amount of magic pouring off of him is staggering.  Then the room goes dark.

There is a giant spotlight, hovering over Janine and her Persona.  Edison is nowhere to be seen.  Until...

                        EDI
                    SON
            20th Century SUCK IT TESLA!

Edison is on top of the golden letters, as the entire area is subsumed with the spotlight.  It aims to purge all magic, bring all gods into full view, and to reveal all false narratives.  Meaning, it is actively trying to tear at the bond of Persona and Master, and just generally HURTING.  With a giant roar a massive shockwave tears over the battlefield, aiming to shear what is left of the persona user away.

"WORLD FAITH DOMINATION!"
Yuuki Kuran "Doctor. I told you what I was doing. I told you why I value what I am doing, and what George asked me to help him with. I told you why the people here don't feel like people, don't smell like people, and don't act like people." Yuuki sighs, hand coming up to perch along the side of her face, thumb against her cheekbone and fingers lightly spread across her temple and forehead. "I know what I chose. The evidence before me is clear. If you think I don't spend time considering everything in front of me, just ask Zero."

"I've agonized over so many things for so many nights. But there's a reason I don't care what's in Zone 1. Why it never mattered:"

Yuuki shakes her head slowly, a gentle whisking of her hair as her thoughtfully perched hand falls away, to be raised with its opposite in a grand, almost theatric shrug. "Because it doesn't change the bottom line, for me. It--"

Yuuki isn't paying real attention to Doctor Strange's lightning javelin, and it shows - she takes the blast dead center and it burns through her skin, visibly lighting up her skeleton and burning orange christmas tree burns down her neck as the bolt grounds down.

The lightly pale european-asian girl lolls her head as she once more smokes and shudders, the visible electric burn on her neck reversing as if the Time Stone itself was pointed at her wounds, undoing itself from the tips of the scarring inward towards the roots.

"You're powerful, Stephen Strange. Why don't you rule? Lead, with your words? You can contain the King of Heroes and all the others, and you so clearly can see what to do. You have the same vision as Priscilla does. That keen eye that sees past things right to the heart of things. That demands answers, even from the highest powers."

Moonfin breaks off from his fighting with the batter -- from his FIGHTING WITH THE BATTER -- to stop Strange from opening his portal to Zone 1. An 'Answer' so terrible even an agent of the Queen would turn from the Batter?

"Apparently, even when the answers are terribly dangerous! Stephen, stop!"

Lacking a better method of stopping things than her absolutely most least-used and delicate of sledgehammers, Yuuki repeats herself, with all the supernatural backing of an Absolute Command. "Stephen! Stop!" She orders, as her eyes flash a lambent crimson.
Zero Kiryu Zero Kiryu remains silent. The 'why' and 'how' doesn't make much difference to him. This place seems as doomed as they come, and if not for the fact that Yuuki has taken her own stand on it he wouldn't see the point of actually raising arms about it at all. His claws retract abruptly as he realizes that he isn't going to make contact, bringing his arm back in to a more defensible state.

In fact, Doctor Strange /isn't/ able to achieve firm leverage over him strictly physically. There is a sharp difference between their training, but it's sort of like fighting against Steve Rogers-- it's not that Zero is a skilled martial artist, he is just /very/ disciplined at wielding his body, yielding ground and preventing Strange from gaining maximum control over him. No, it's the subsequent conjured portal and the blast of ice washing over him that really hurts him.

The inhumanly cold environment bites into him like fire. Frostbite begins to develop all over his body in short order, and no part of the portal-ice planet shenanigans is truly mitigated.

As the portal closes and Zero becomes visible at the outside edge of the icy gale, he retreats a little ways farther because there are parts of his body that are legitimately just ruined by cold.

He raises a hand and, systemically, tears them off so that they'll just regrow. Which they begin to do in fairly short order, though not with utmost perfection.

He regards the /double-Strange/ situation with a measure of agitation. That's a lot harder to fight against without Bloody Rose.

Even as Doctor Strange draws the ire of Moonfin, Zero puts the pieces together and changes his target. He dips low to the ground, scooping icy bits of discarded flesh up and hurling them like stones towards the Future Doctor Strange.
August Kohler August just steels himself. For a moment, it looks like Tina's down...but she takes one last shot. The ballista bolt embeds itself in Dietrich's stomach, where the armor is cracked, and for a moment, the knight topples over, August still spilling blood as he clutches his stomach. For a minute, they look down.

But Dietrich stands back up. It's clear that August could do one last hit. He could probably knock Tina out if he wanted to. But he doesn't. The redhead leaps onto Dietrich's shoulders, slowly due to the pain, and then leaps onto Uncle Sam into a roll. His jacket contains a knife and a pistol, but he doesn't draw them. He moves over to Tina, jammed inside the machine, and moves to grab her and pull her out with both arms.

He's stronger than a human has any right to be.

August pulls Tina out of the Persona, lifting her up by her arms and grabbing her by her shoulders at the end. Once she's out of the gears of the Persona, he...

Throws her off of it, in an angle where she won't crack her neck. It's a hard push. He's trying to hurt her, but he laughs while he does it. It's not mean. It's good-natured.

"You're right. I got ahead of myself. No hard feelings."
Priscilla     "That's the Grand Finale." the Batter concurs, flatly. "I'm not done. Neither are you.         has seen how it goes." he says, and takes a high swing at Moonfin in passing, but it doesn't connect. Even the Batter glances back when Strange rips open his portal, straight through the Nothingness, his constantly smugly assured stare opening to the point of mild attentiveness. Is it because he still remembers what happened the first, and last, time everyone accessed the Nothingness without the right key card?

    He takes that one to the chest, scraping off the bat and plunging into something that feels 'enough like' a body, but without any of the unique variances of every strike --without any of the nuances of tactile feedback from slightly different angles, the presence of bones in soft tissues, the tension of muscles catching the blade here and there or the expanding or shrinking of breathing. There's blood, but still not so much as a rip in his clothes. It's stabbing allegorical meat.

    The Add-Ons swoop in all the same though, fighting as tertiary party members two and three. Neither of those things, if they have any kind of intelligence, seem concerned with the portal, and so immediately set on Moonfin with their white hot, paper sharp edges, attempting to cut the book --the first false book-- from him.

    It's too late for Moonfin to stop. The sparks fly, the air splits open like the lid of an opened can, and pale light shines down from the gap and onto the balcony; a little spotlight of wan and washed out sun, cast on the dark of a surreal metal tower in a pink and black checkered smoke storm. The smells associated with Zone 1, of the plastic rain, broken rock, billowing smoke, slaughtered cows, raw iron and raw meat, don't drift out with it; there is only a faint waft of cool, pure air.

    Glancing through at the awkward angle, you has to squint up at enough mist for the sky to appear stark white from the ground, but you can see the dark shapes of cumulonimbus clouds moving slowly, sedately, quietly, across the sky, drifting east to west --splotches of black against the brightness. What you can see of the 'sea' now is just 'dark'. That dull, unreflective grey-black of water on an overcast, rainy day, though it seems the rain has finally stopped --rain that was luminous white plastic before.

    Then something feels Wrong. The whole area, portal, balcony, and all, very briefly flashes a blinding white and a deep sense of profound vertigo somehow afflicts all five senses, making the world subjectively turn inside out for a moment. The borders of the portal fizzle and crack, sparks going out like candle flames in the cold, and the rip to the barest glimpse of a Pure world on the other side collapses before it was even barely useful to see through.

    It collapses, because something a little too big has pushed its way through it, blocking out the white light, and somehow causing the portal rim to tear with the sound of ripping paper, until it completely blocks the view on the way through, and that view never reappears once it emerges fully into this world.
Priscilla     It is . . . big. Bigger than a person. Big enough to not be able to stand on the balcony, but instead float like an evangelical statue thrust from a gothic gable, looking about as heavy and as posed. Rather than a beautiful stone angel descending to earth, arms outstretched, what drifts down is something like a massive, poorly sculpted rendition of a baby or toddler, crude and mismatched on each side, as if drawn by Strange's hand in pencil for all the sketchiness and inconsistency of its constantly shifting silhouette. It's so brilliant white to look at, but it darkens the world around it such that it *feels* like it has a bold, black, artist's outline, yet everything within its frame is so many shades of old, grainy, photographic monochrome that it's hard to even assign human features to it, baby or not. The face on its oversized head is a mass of shifting, writhing grey nonsense, almost like a pixel filter or static printed like an optical illusion and transferred to skin.

    The Puppeteer says                                               .

    The thing drifts infantile and statuesque down to the chunk of broken railing, where it can almost touch down, though certainly its poorly rendered legs couldn't support its fetal posture and huge weight. There is suddenly a *loud*, brain-piercing screech, so low quality and compressed that it sounds like corrupted footage of a person screaming played sound-only through the lowest quality and highest pitch speaker possible. It doesn't so much come from the thing as it just *happens*.

    The entire balcony is quickly disrupted by a linear volley of rays that aren't such much light as they are colour draining from the world, slashing up and down the walkways in a perfectly sequenced, cryptographic rate and pattern. Being hit by a ray is not only excruciatingly painful, as well as physically devastating, like being smacked with a small tank penetrator, it deadens and sucks the life out of the flesh around it, slowly creeping into the rest of the body as an infectious monochrome, and oddly mutes anything the afflicted tries to say, leaving them mouthing words into the void.

    You've been attacked with a NATURAL LOGARITHM.
Starbound Flotilla     The purified being has arrived. IT RETURNS FROM WHENCE IT CAME. IT RETURNS. RIGHT NOW. IT GOES BACK TO ZONE ONE AND IT NEVER RETURNS. But no matter how much Moonfin screams into the narrative with his Grand Finale, it does not change the fact of the matter. THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THAT THE ENTITY IS GONE. THE ENTITY GOES AWAY. EVERYONE AGREES TO RETURN TO THE LIBRARY INTERIOR, TO RETHINK THINGS AND DISCUSS THINGS PEACEFULLY IN THE CURRENT PEACE. THEY-- HRK!

    Moonfin is struck dead-on in the chest by the natural logarithm.

    He is blasted to the back of the walkway, screaming in disoriented pain. IT GOES BACK. IT GOES BACK. IT GOES BACK. Moonfin struggles to stay awake through the pain, and can barely get to his feet. Someone really should take that book from him, he's getting terribly loud and disoriented in his pain. The fact that the impurity of what he's doing is likely to enrage the horrific purity-infant should be obvious to anyone with a basic sense of narrative.
Janine Liberi     "Damn straight I revel in it! Why live being nice when you're gonna die soon? May as well go ape shit on morons like you!" She's bouncing around now, hopping from left to right on gusts of wind, a tired but smug smirk on her face. "Oh, you're calling me God now? Sorry, but I'm a Roman Catholic, and don't feel like adding 'being on the receiving end of idolatry' to my list of sins." Yes Edison, Janine was the religion all along!

    A massive spotlight bathes the area, the full force of Edison's magic and will. On someone as self-denying as Janine, it would have undoubtedly been devastating, ripping away every lie she tells herself and others. But in that initial flash, she was already gone. Pushing her speed and backed by the wind, she leapt to the wall of the building and ran up it, getting above Edison and his Noble Phantasm before speeding back down, travelling faster than the eye can track.

    The ring of steel echos out as she begins slashing at the structure. Cutting the wires leading into the spotlight, before slashing at the mounts for the letters, cutting them away strategically until they spell

                                      EDI                                      
                                      SON                                      
                                    SUCK S !                                    

    And then she's flying at Edison. No shallow cuts this time, she's aiming to give his mane the closest shave its ever had. But the portal opens, and something comes out, distracting her enough that she goes wide, and falls to the ground.

    "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" she cries out, overirding the sounds of battle as she points her sword at the malformed infant-like thing. Light springs out as it screams(?), sapping the color from the land, and the life from her skin. She screams, her words muted, and Biancabella throws her clear with wind.

    She boosts around the area in a panic, trying to avoid the complex patten of rays, before she can get the thing between herself and the portal. From there, she conjures wind. The strongest wind she can manage, hoping that it can even interact with this Wrong Thing, trying to shove it back through the portal.

    "Push it back! Get ready to close the portal after it!"
Aoko Aozaki     Aoko, who has totally been pondering Zacharie's answer this entire time and wasn't at all drooling in a corner doing nothing, squints when something hijacks Strange's portal and comes through.

    "Oh good! Look what you guys did fighting, you made some awful scribble of God just materialize and--"

    And attack! Crap!

    Aoko has the benefit of not being exhausted and wrecked by infighting, but even diving aside, the slightest graze of those ANTI-LASERS is one of the most painful things she's ever experienced, and she tumbles down amidst the infighting.

    But since Moonfin is busy SCREAMING, don't mind if she swipes that book in her expert and totally planned dodgeroll, which wasn't at all tripping and crashing because that beam hit her leg.

    It was a planned dodgeroll to steal Moonfin's lore book.

    All things go as planned, always.

    "HEY DO WE HAVE A PLAN ABOUT GETTING RID OF THAT THING, MAYBE, THAT'D BE COOL AND AWESOME!" She is shouting at Strange, very specifically.
Tina Natsumi      Tina braces herself when she sees that Dietrich is still up, and August is still moving. She's not in a great spot, being wedged between Uncle Sam's head and shoulder like that, and there's not a whole lot she can do aside from just weather whatever's coming next.

    But instead of an attack, she feels August's hand grabbing her arm. He pulls her out like it's nothing. She makes eye contact.

     For a moment, it feels like her face is starting to burn.

     THEN THE MOTHERFUCKER THROWS HER. It's not super hard or anything, but he caught her at a bad time! Instead of laughing along with him, she frowns intensely and looks off to the side. "Jerk."

     It only lasts a moment, and then she laughs. She winces from the pain of laughing, then she laughs again. "None. Still, would it kill ya to read the... Mood?" Her laughter dies out as Strange's portal to Zone 1 appears, and everything just starts feeling majorly off. Confusingly off. Broken.

     "The heck is all this shit...?" She stares at the massive baby thing, having no clue how to proceed on how to even handle or... What are they supposed to even DO about this thing? She covers her ears as it starts screeching, staggering onto her feet as it starts firing off those monochrome rays. Seeing what it's doing to Moonfin and Aoko, the streamer hauls ass to get herself and Uncle Sam into something resembling position.

    "Like the... Fish guy said! We push it back! We got this, guh.. Guys!" It's easier said than done, what with Tina being wobbly on her feet and all and not quite in a good spot to fight it herself. She's still trying, of course, and she staggers forward just enough to see one coming for both herself and August.

     "Ah, dangit... Head down, Kohler!" The blonde shoulder checks the redhead, and then she starts screaming bloody murder when a ray tears right through her side. Uncle Sam dissipates, and Tina goes limp while scrunching up in an agony-filled fetal position.

     Bad day.
August Kohler The way Tina reacts is not the way August reacts, and when she mentions read the mood, he's actually a little clueless for a second. When it finally makes sense to him, when he could emotionally react, is the time a portal opens and a horrible infant comes out to shoot rays at everyone. When Tina moves to take cover, staggering forward, August moves with her, but then a ray's coming right at them.

And Tina intercepts it, shoulder-checking her, getting mutated, and going limp. "Shit! /Tina/!" Desummoning his Persona for energy, August scoops down to pick her up and shoulder carry her after the shot misses him, and instead of fighting, makes a decision.

He's booking it for the library. "Everyone who's injured and isn't portal-closing critical, get inside! We've got unconscious and wounded!" Hopefully, the baby won't follow them in.
Thomas Alva Edison Edison hits the floor.  He can't lose...he refuses to lose!  Groaning as his Noble Phantasm fails to take effect, he pushes himself to his feet, ready to meet this battle head-on with whatever strength he could muster.  However, Janine and he stop when the scream goes through the both of them.  

Without much steam left in the tank, he turns towards the awful monstrous thing.  It stands over them, as the Zone is revealed to them.  This was what they did..?  

Edison gathers up whatever strength he has left.  He pushes everything into this...and he turns towards the monster.  His body is ragged and bleeding.  His reserves of mana are nearly gone.  He breathes deeply, and he rushes the beast, attempting to grab the massive thing and PUSH IT BACK.  

It doesn't matter if it's not effective.  It doesn't matter if he fails.  It does not belong here.  It can not be allowed to exist here and destroy this place, even if it is damaged.  He can't let this happen to another zone.  Desperation and guilt power him now.  He will push this thing through, even if he has to go with it.
Starbound Flotilla     Aoko goes for Moonfin's book, snatching it up before he has a chance to react. N-no! No! He has a chance to react, but--! She has it in her hands. It wasn't bestowed upon her the way it was on him, so she can't access its narative influences. But thankfully, the narrative has its own interests. No! That belongs to me! Only I am worthy of it, "Only my perspective can grant its blessings!" Moonfin shouts, grasping at air where the Grand Finale once was.

    Now that Moonfin is no longer controlling the narrative, and suppressing the narration of relevant points, it's likely that some will become aware of relevant points that could go un-narrated before. For example, the fact that Moonfin's emphasis on knowledge was an effort to /goad/ the Batter into speaking on Faith. That his discussion of fever denied the human element of the suffering Japhet is planning, and how, regardless of one's opinion on purification itself, any morality demands his plans be thwarted. All sorts of things that can only be ignored by someone being a giant shitty arrogant social bully and controlling the narrative to artificially divide people and create infighting that's advantageous to his interests.

    But perhaps the most crucial narration that was suppressed is that of those here finding reality much more in their camp now. Almost as if the snap-back of a significant reality warp is trying to wrench this timeline -- or perhaps storyline? -- back towards one where the portal-opening was never necessary, and its consequences unwelcome. By reclaiming the book, Aoko has swung the pendulum back against this intrusion, in metaphysical and inarticulable narative-bias ways.

    She's also acquired the GRAND FINALE, which compliments the GRAND DIAGONAL.
Doctor Strange      Yuuki's attempt to reason with the Sorcerer Supreme is not successful. At least, it doesn't appear to be, and in the middle of a fight, sometimes appearances are all one can go by. The mental command, therefore, will seem utterly necessary.

     Future!Strange's hands tremble. Even more so than usual. Yuuki's command crashes between the walls of his mind like a mallet against a bell. STOP is present at every point. Every mental exercise, every calculation disguised as a parable, every safeguard disguised as a koan, bears that word, that command, refusing to yield. Beads of sweat trickle down his face. A dark red trail slowly creeps from his nostrils, clotting in the bristly hair of his goatee. His teeth clamp shut like a vice. His tracing of the portal slows to a crawl.

     "I... know... what... I'm... doing." The portal remains unopened--as of yet. Strange's hands have stopped. But there are precious few inches remaining to go. It remains unopened, until the line of sparks slowly creeps forward. Present!Strange has run out of time. He vanishes, traveling into the past to assist himself and to begin opening the portal. That just leaves the one. The one that Moonfin is charging towards, and the one that is currently being pelted with rock-hard bits of Zero.

     Irregularly sized pieces strike his back, with enough force to shatter. One hits his ankle directly at the bone, drawing a pained, stifled grunt. But one strikes true, giving a moment of hope for Moonfin, Zero, and Yuuki. The frozen remains of a fist strike his temple hard enough to draw blood. The portal falters, the sparks briefly dimming, the line still broken. Ordinarily, he'd have some quip or joke, but not now. Someone doesn't want him to reveal this--which makes it all the more clear why he /must./

     As the trickle of blood reaches his upper lip, Strange closes the circle, finally banishing the mental onslaught from his mind and pushing through the litany of welts and cuts caused by Zero's frozen fusillade.

     His breath is ragged from the exertion, but he speaks as the white light washes through the portal. "Everyone, shut the hell up and look." He lowers down to the ground... just in time for everything to go awry. The portal shatters, torn asunder like tissue paper from the strain of bearing such an immense presence. He lifts his glyph-rings in a defensive posture, backing away from the purity-infant. He backs right up into one of those purity beams. it catches his hand.

     He opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. The color drains from his hand, creeping up his body like water in reverse. It drains from the glyphs, changing them from orange to brilliant white. Next from the sleeve of his robe, from navy blue to dull grey. His mouth forms words for which there are no sounds, in between tooth-gritted grimaces of excruciating pain. He falls to his knees, hands desperately working to make the sign of the Eye. It opens.

     Green light washes out from the artifact as the Sorcerer Supreme struggles to get to his feet. Time begins to turn back, the monochrome effect retreating. Un-purifying him, perhaps. He regains his voice in short order, but has no words. This was a mistake. But it's one he can fix. He begins opening another portal, but this one doesn't lead to Zone 1. He doesn't want to risk letting another one in. No...

     The Mirror Dimension has long been used to contain threats. This thing? Totally containable. He hopes. Strange thrusts his palms outwards and reality shatters before the force of his blow. He turns and makes a low strike with both fists, aimed upwards. An expanding portal of broken-glass-reality flies through the air towards the purity infant, aiming to force it into the local mirror dimension. In classic sorcerous trickery, it splits open on its way towards the being, reforming behind it to deceive it. That will... hopefully allow his allies to push it through.
Zero Kiryu Zero is distracted from his own battle when the thing Future Strange is doing results in a giant malformed baby coming through and screaming a bunch of special effects at them like a shitty chinese NES game using an actual jpeg of a deformed baby. It doesn't have that sort of clarity or resolution exactly, but it's still about as bizarre and undesirable.

The ray that lances into his left leg is not the most excruciating thing he has experienced, although it probably rates the top ten. Memories of being forcibly subdued by That Woman flicker through his mind, but no. It was the final throes of his existence as 'anything but a Level E', ultimately terminated by his own brother, that swims to the surface of his consciousness. An infection begins to spread.

Shakily he draws Bloody Rose, sagging to a kneel as his left leg gives. Zero grits his teeth and angles the gun into the impact site, firing straight through it and purging the infected area, because he is a shojo deuteragonist and he needs his color to be needlessly sexy even when he's bleeding out in a ditch. Vines snake out from the handgun and coil around the wound, grotesquely applying pressure while simultaneously acting as makeshift stitching.

The hunter forces himself back against the wall with his still-good leg and assesses his options. Really, they all boil down to 'shoot it, shoot it right in the noggin.'

At last, something to say comes to mind.

"Good point." He remarks towards Doctor Strange, dryly.

Then, finally, Zero raises the gun he had with-held through /their/ fight. Its muzzle flashes as streamers of energy arc out and split, spiderwebbing through the air to distribute themselves across the front of the murderous superbaby's body.
Yuuki Kuran The awful creature of god-knows-what that pierces through the portal, the Sorcerer Supreme struggling through even an 'absolute' command because He Knows What He Is Doing. He is absolutely certain in his path. It takes Yuuki aback, the sheer resistance of the act. Her eyes remain glowing red, as he pushes through and, beyond Moonfin, beyond Zero, beyond all that would deny him, and does exactly what he sets out to do.

This turns out to unleash awful, color-draining muder babies of misshapen nature into the world that Moonfin starts completely losing it and trying to force back on raw Narrative Power.

Without anything to specifically do, the blasts of colo-draining beams at first are 'exactly what is to be expected', and begin easy to weave around - but the tight confines of the area and the general jumble of perspective and problem both lead to even the anime-zippy Yuuki being blasted, scorched along one side that goes colorless and dead, the very light in her 'damaged' eye going out as she takes a telling hit. It is not, however, on the way to punching the white baby, nor is it just away: it is towards Moonfin. "Moonfin! Are you alright?" Are Yuuki's first words after the calamitous entry of the thing from purified Zone 1, the half-monochrome (and mostly stroked out and limp) side of her trailing behind her concerned other half. "Moonfin. Next time... I'll want the whole narrative. Only letting half the words be said can cause deep, deep wounds."

She raises up, the color only slowly returning to her stroked-out monochrome side, though most of her strength is left in her from the brief fight with Strange. "Zero! Clean up this mess!" She orders, before moving in a straight, purposeful beeline for Stephen Strange. A hand comes out, as he summons the banishment of the Mirror Dimension. She knows resisting her command caused him pain. Too much stress, fighting against the sledgehammer she hit his mind with.

Her hand rests on Stephen Strange's shoulder, whisper-light, as she leans into his ear, her breath carrying a single word with a cathartic, Blare-The-Themesong, rays-from-god feeling of exultation. An entirely different use of the red-eyed power of domination.

"Win, Stephen Strange." Yuuki murmurs.
Priscilla     With the dramatic balcony duel rapidly turning to a containment operation for the SCP that just took advantage of Dr. Strange, the Grand Finale goes bouncing away and the commensurate, Queen-granted hold over cause and effect go with it. Moonfin no longer has the power to rewrite the story, as the Great Library did. As Japhet did. As the people of Zone 2 did. As Valerie did.

    Even so, of all people to suddenly turn on the deformed, baby-like intruder, floating like an obscene parody of a sculpted angel without even having the decency to curl up in a symbolic fetal position and have a spooky umbilical cord instead of waving maligned pudgy arms at people and *screaming* Logical Values at them, the Batter himself shoulders past Moonfin and up to the front, moving along with Janine's wind, getting behind Edison, aligning with Strange's gap to the mirror dimension.

    Flashing, tesselating florals wash over the creature, as The Batter uses Wide Angle!

Secretary x1
Demonical humanoid spirit.

    The Secretary screeches and screeches with its horrid, grainy, low quality sound-bite, pounding the Library tower with crossing barrages of linearly expressed Logical Values, bleaching, silencing, and killing what they hit. Even so, it slides backwards with Thomas' efforts, making a sound like grinding stone across the floor, as if he were pushing a massive granite monolith. The wind that breaks on it from Biancabella doesn't so much howl or moan as it breaks into an infinite number of whispers, all overlapping in the hushed way, even telling itself to "Shhhh", as the Nothingness does. This time however, some can be made out.

    "I've been abandoned . . ."
    "I'm scared . . ."
    "Why have you done this? . . ."

    The sound of something banging on a metal door can be heard echoing back from it.

    The glass effect of the mirror dimension begins folding around it where the horrible thing starts sliding into it, but it begins to struggle against the inertia levied against it, wobbling and flailing in slow motion, as if jerking around underwater, or very slowly throwing and slapping things off of its high chair in a fit of picky dislike. It fights back, and slight nudges of its fatfingered pseudo-arms are like blows to the head with a hundred pound dumbbell. It resists with increasing agitation, up until Zero blasts it across its entire body with the killing power of Bloody Rose. The gore that erupts from its punctured holes, as opposed to the Elsens, is heady and potent; it is thick and floral and slightly rotten, somehow anaemic and rank with medicinal chemicals, diseased in some unspecific, cancerous way, but hot and vital and gushing, even if streaks of it are tainted black.

    "This is what is born from the faithless." the Batter says. "You wouldn't believe it unless you saw it with your own eyes, and so the impure took advantage of you. The sin found its way in, and you've given it calamitous form. Repent, for your weakness." he directs at Strange. This time, he doesn't have anything to say about using Hunter weapons on the target. For whatever reason this thing Doesn't Count. As the horrible, misformed, aberrant 'Secretary' screeches its life-sapping logarithms and values and orders into existence, pushed flailing and bleeding into the mirror void, the Batter gathers both of his halos around the length of his bat, glowing white in their wake, and strikes the creature as hard as he can, lighting up the balcony with the explosion of countless, pure white stars. That last bit is enough to tip it over the edge, and send the thing flailing and clawing and weeping into the infinite reflective void.

For a few seconds after it vanishes, the sound of a fist banging on a door continues to echo out. Even after Strange closes the gap seamlessly, you can still hear "I've been abandoned . . ." "I'm scared . . . " Why have you done this? . . ." over and over, taking a full minute to slowly fade out.
Aoko Aozaki     It's... good that this is finally handled.
    Even if the manner in which it is, and the sounds the creature makes, and the voices, aren't any comfort.

    Aoko, crawling back up and in defiance of Moonfin's refusal to let her have the cool book, decides it's time to earn some Strange Points, and heads over to him, to support him if he plans to fall after his stunt, or just to check up on him.

    And then she hands him the Book, and the GRAND FINALE, because as curious as she is to see how they work, she's got greater personal gains at play here.

    "You alright? Here, I think you'll want to contain these until we figure out what to do with them, mister My Mansion Is Full Of Artifacts."

    She glances at her leg, to see if the awful monochrome is gone yet. It still stings. "Also please never do that again, ahah."
Thomas Alva Edison Edison, upon the creature falling into the other dimension collapses.  He's utterly pushed himself beyond what was safe, and he eats shit for it.  Breathing heavily, he barely manages to push himself up against a bookshelf or wall.  

When there was enough time to stop breathing in, he stares at where the creature and zone one portal had been.  The Batter, however, says something that gets him on a fundamental level.  Looking at him he speaks hoarsely, "Oh yes, we should take things on blind faith.  If we did, we would not have known what happened to Zone One."

He just looks away.  He's angry, and he needs time to process this.
Starbound Flotilla     Moonfin is in a moderately bad way. How armor might resist the effects of an entity like that is an exercise I leave to the viewer, but at the very least it has blunted it into some non-lethality. He seems to have eaten some damage through it, but it's very likely he'll be okay. He's in urgent need of several seconds to collect himself and re-compose his awareness. But, he manages to speak. "I shall live and recover." He says. "I need only time, and our facilities."

    Her somewhat... hurt words actually manage, in their own unique way, to pierce the arrogance. He grits his teeth, then presses his lips together and shuts his eyes. "You will yet find the full narrative, Yuuki Kuran. And I worry that when you do, you shall find yourself as taken in George's world as all others. Take care. His world may be clearer, but it is so much more harsh."

    After that, he makes an effort to egress. Specifically, his wounded body flickers a few times, the subtle but clear indication that he's targeting an escape beacon. He certainly doesn't have the strength to try to fight Aoko to recover his artifact. Unless someone /really/ wants to do more violence at him, he's going to go ahead and take the L on this one; the chaos of the battle got to him, and he has effectively eaten shit, much as Albert once did. Like Albert before him, he has left behind his Grand Artifact, though he seems to take a hateful look at Aoko for what she did, alongside one for the Batter.
Doctor Strange      Yuuki's psychic reinforcement is exactly what Strange needs. He cuts the portal and rises to his feet once the purity infant is pushed through, and the Batter finishes his attack. He then levels a withering glare at the Batter.

     "After you, dickhead." It is exactly what he needs to stand his ground against the Batter. "How about /you/ repent for lying your ass off? Huh?" His eyes narrow, his head angled with biting inquisition. "'Took advantage of me.' Give me a break--don't try to spin this. I felt the energy from that thing. It was pure, sure. In the sense that it was /sterile./ Devoid of warmth or life or color. It came from /Zone 1,/ not from this place. Your bat worked on it, sure, so maybe some of it's my fault. Guess there had to have been /some/ impurity in it." Strange shrugs, looking momentarily away.

     He looks at the Batter out of the corner of his eyes, dusting off a bit of Zero from his sleeve with a disdainful frown. "But... you sure weren't in a hurry to tell us how dead and lifeless your 'purity' makes everything. Were you? Were we supposed to take that on faith, too?" One single, dry chuckle, and shake of the head. "I didn't smell any food, I didn't hear any people--unless you count the ghostly voices bemoaning their fate. Asking why you did this." He laughs sardonically, pointing in mock friendliness towards the Batter. "Gotta say, don't know about the rest of these guys, that makes me feel really good about helping you. Oh! Unless that's my fault, too."

     Strange smiles affably. "Ah... y'know--" He wags a trembling finger, squinting amusedly. "I... bet... you're... gonna say it is! That I made them suffer because I ate the old apple from the tree. Eh? Eh?" He nudges his elbow towards the Batter with each 'eh,' but respects his personal space enough not to physically nudge him. He then shrugs, and makes a dismissive gesture with both hands. "Doesn't matter. You know what real weakness is?"

     "Real weakness is knowing you're a puppet and never even looking for the strings. You're just upset because I looked up and saw you pulling them."

     He holds out his hand expectantly as Aoko approaches. "Thanks," he says to her, nodding meaningfully and without snark. He doesn't offer a reply to her request that he never do that again, but he does respond on the matter of figuring out what to do with the artifacts. "If anyone wants to have that discussion, Sanctum's open for guests anytime. Literally, it's... outside time and space. Anyway." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder. "Got some... wizard business to do." With a flick of his wrists the artifacts are sent through space, vanishing from his arms, and freeing up his hands to create a portal to... some sort of desert world.

     "Same time next week? Assuming I'm not banned from the book club for original sin." He steps through. It closes behind him.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki is suitably impressed when Strange uses his surge of power to collapse the Mirror Dimension around the Monster From Zone One.

She is suitably pensively ashamed as Strange rolls down the hill she put him on, building up a whole head of steam to execute his most fierce EX Command.

}}STRANGE > End A Whole Man's Career

Yuuki really wants to break in there, but it's at the Batter, and she's very worried until Moonfin finishes escape beaconing out. So instead she just mouths 'S O R R Y !' to the Batter while Strange unleashes the Hot Fires of Sicktake'a'tcha.

"Thomas, will you be alright?"
Priscilla     "Don't pierce the Nothingness again." the Batter says, brushing off so much dressing down as if mashing B through the text boxes. "Faithless, and unscientific. The type who reject what they haven't seen, but will only see what they already want to; those are the ones most at danger in that place." He glances to Edison, if only just "You still don't know. And you won't, until you unburden yourself of arrogance." He shakes his head just the slightest bit. "Afraid of being made the puppet of a puppet." he says, in that tone that implies it's a very sad thing to think about, and completely, unabashedly, unashamedly putting the unseen Puppeteer's role in its literal context.

    Zacharie coughs, in his corner, in that not really a cough way. He claps his hands together, and says "Right. That's all good, but am I going to see any credits today?"

    The >BUY SELL display blinks over his head insistently.
Zero Kiryu Zero retracts most of Bloody Rose's mass back into itself, except the bits holding his leg together. He still holsters the gun bit of it, leaning back into the wall and shutting his eyes. He'll have to wait out the dampening of his regeneration that shooting himself in the leg with that caused. He outwardly zones out through most of the conversations that follow, but...

After things quiet down just a little, he opens his eyes again.

"It wasn't 'life', but... how is that different from what exists here and now? There is an outer layer of familiarity, but the residents die to the mildest stress. If 'this' isn't life, and 'that' isn't life... and the Queen's solution likewise isn't life..."

He doesn't bother to complete the thought.
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki snaps to attention.

"Oh! Zacharie! I've got credits, what's for sale?"