Scene #6480: The Worst Racetrack

Owner	Pose
Homura Akemi	Mitakihara has a racetrack. Of course it does. Like every other major landmark in the city, it's something straight up taken from another place. In this case, it's a rather faithful reproduction of the Circuit de Monaco, a proud landmark of the principality of Monaco. Except it's just called the Mitakihara Circuit here. An elaborate racetrack that goes through a nice, rural residential part of the city, it isn't in use today, which means there's only a skeleton crew of maintenance workers around it (and lots of bystanders and tourists), and the occasional civilian car that wanted to give it a try. But we're in Japan, so nobody's speeding. Even on the racetrack designed for it. Gotta respect people who live near it. Following am ambush from the mysterious WINGS OF MAGIUS, Homura had promised the Paladins she'd alert them when she found a Witch, so that the rescued magical girl, MIURA HASE, could be saved from her own incoming self-destruction. But of course, when the inexperienced magical girl put the call out, she didn't lock it to Paladins. Rather, the usual SOS goes out to everyone who's receptive to them, but you might have wandered in on bad luck too. Mitakihara is great for bad luck. The actual signal is coming from a tunnel the track passes through, not especially large but containing a number of tourist attractions. It is currently empty, owing to the fact it's raining quite harshly and nobody in Mitakihara wants to deal with that after a certain event.
Homura Akemi	But you don't get the luxury of settling in. Whenever anyone arrives, the world starts changing. It might be hard to notice at first - as your own voice in your head tells you how worthless you are, validates your fears, drives a knife in your worst of failures and your deepest regrets, and tries to con you into Giving Up. But you're all stronger than that. By the time you notice though, by the time you firmly tell your inner voice none of that is true, or by the time it's so jarringly unlike you that you wake up, nothing is the same anymore. The world has shifted, like you've landed in an oversized elementary school art project. Buildings and walls of cardboard, a racetrack made of giant pasta noodles holding onto an unseen ground in massive pools of white, smelly glue, which make movement challenging off the path. A sky of angry red and orange crayon strokes on a white sheet. The cheering of an invisible crowd, which sounds less like cheering and more like an offensive german speech calling for blood and executions. The Witch's Familiars are everywhere; men of shifting, unstable cardboard in crew uniforms wielding crude caricatures of tools they might use to fix cars, but sharpened into deadly weapons or needlessly spiked. Floating cameras made of scrap metal, signal lights that look like they were cut out of magazines and just float in the sky. And the moment you told the voice in your head you would not yield, or snapped out of it, they saw you, and became hostile. The signal lights shoot colorful energy beams, always red or yellow; the crewmen attack with their tools like they're blades, or fire nails and bolts at you. The cameras don't do anything. If that's the crew, where'd the racers, though?
Android 17	"You know he died because of you," Says Seventeen's own voice. For some reason, the world just seemed to fade away the moment they crossed into the track. Blinking, Seventeen tried looking around but wasn't sure what was going on. Wait, it had to be the witch, right? Something about a labyrinth. Just moments before he was walking into the area with other people, they had to find this witch, quickly dispatch it and get the Grief seed back to the Magical Girl they had to deal with who was about to become a Witch herself. A lot of things happened all at once, and Seventeen was just barely keeping up. Now, he was hearing himself, "He died because you weren't strong enough to get away from Cell. Because you listened to him instead of doing what you knew was right in your heart. You just wanted to take revenge on the world that allowed Gero to make you, and you let him die..." There is a moment of regret. The fact he never got to say goodbye to Sixteen, the nightmares of what happened to him in Cell. What Cell did to the world at large...but there was one thing that bothered him more than that. "He didn't die because of me, he died because he chose to put others before his own life. He didn't die to save me...he died to save the world!" He turns to punch at the voice...which is now gone. Blinking, and with a breakout of sweat along his brow and cheeks, he isn't sure what just happened, but right now... "Definitely a Labyrinth," he says, with a sigh, "Not going to sleep tonight it seems.." Trying to keep his voice calm. However, the Familars see him...and that's allright. Seventeen turns towards them, rolling up his sleeves as he approaches. He had some /shit/ to work through. lasers blast towards him, but his green barrier appeared at the last second, allowing them to break around him like a boulder in a stream. With a blink of the eye, he was gone, appearing behind the closet one and aiming to punch straight through the back of the creature, before smacking the beams from the next away. Seventeen was bad at emoting it, but he was bad. Despite the emoting...it was very obvious.
Link	On the road, following the distress call, is a traffic violation moving through the tunnel in the rain. It's a reddish-brown horse, ridden by a young blonde man in a green tunic and matching green cap, sword and bow on his back, with a large bag on the side of the horse. They ride through the tunnel, and then, everything geos wrong. Link is worthless. He knew that. He couldn't do anything. He couldn't even save his mentor from monsters. How could he be the prophesied hero? Maybe it'd be easiest if he just took his sword and - No. No, a voice rung through Link's head. It was a memory of his mentor. Telling him how strong he was. Telling him that he was the prophesied hero. If he died here, he couldn't live up to that. He needed to be the hero. He needed to /prove/ it. Link is entirely shaken, though, as he snaps out of it and the world reveals itself to be changed. This means the familiars get the first strike, as a nail pierces through his tunic into his side, which also helps him get a grip, despite now bleeding everywhere. Link looks up in the rain, and then draws his sword and shield. "Epona, charge!" The horse gallops across the track, moving to slash through the familiar that shot him in a drive-by swording, but Link's goal isn't to fight the familiars. It's to find the source of whatever screamed in his head, and prove he was a hero. And despite not knowing much at all about race tracks, he has a hunch - he needs to get on the track. And so, he does. Hopefully, Link won't be hit by a crazy car made out of paper machete.
Riku	Riku heard some things about the situation here in Mitakihara. It was something definitely In His Wheelhouse, so there would be no surprise to anyone who knows him well that he'd be here. If only there was anyone like that... As Riku passes through the tunnel, his expression shifts, his cool demeanor getting more grim, more irritable. "Shut up." He says to the air, apropos of nothing. His eyes close for a moment as he mutters... And then they open again, a moment of rage in his voice as he yells, "I SAID SHUT UP!" But then the world has changed around him, and he blinks, rage melting into confusion. "Wait. What the..." He looks around, taking in the situation. The highly lethal situation. He mutters again, more audibly this time. "Well, time to play some mind games, I guess." He says. Darkness rolls over his body, covering him before it dissipates, replacing his casual clothing with a tight suit of purple. He slashes a hand out, and a long blade erupts from the blackness into his hand... "Let's clean things up!" He yells, immediately diving into the fray. If the target won't make itself know immediately, maybe killing off some Familiars will handle it. He rushes across the arts-and-crafts track, his shadow lashing out as it grips onto a Familar, and he pulls himself towards it at high speed like a whip, lashing out to stab into it in a rush attack. He kickflips off of it, turning as a pair of beams scorch past him, and he hurls a sphere of darkness at a traffic light while he descends onto a second. He works to continue chaning dextrous high-speed attacks across the glue-splattered hellhole, almost literally playing The Floor Is Lava in the process.
Eryl Fairfax	The call has gone out, and Eryl is the first respondent. How rare that he actually gets to follow up an incident. He follows Homura's call, wandering along the racetrack that looks straight lifted from Monaco, and approaches the tunnel. Upon stepping aside, there are thoughts in his head. "Civilisations fall. One man can't make the difference." "A world for normal people means a world that isn't for you." "They'll cast you out. They've done it before." However, Eryl has another voice in his head that helps him handle all that. WARNING: FOREIGN INFLUENCE ON COGNITIVE FUNCTION DETECTED. DISREGARD ALL ABNORMAL THOUGHTS. So while those thoughts still sting to hear, Eryl is able to keep himself centred as the world changes around him. His face is still far more pale than normal, and colour only returns when the familiars attack. Monsters, much easier to deal with. He bull rushes into the crowd, tackling one and using them as cover from the oncoming lasers, discarding them once they're burned up. Small bullets accelerated to penetrating speeds erupt from his finger, each one finding a familiars head. Those that gets too close are met by high-frequency blades that spring from Eryl's arms to lop off offending limbs before going straight for the neck.
Corona Arclite	Bad luck? Yeah, that would pretty much cover it. Hardly a new experience, but an accurate one. Because it's a fairly famous racetrack (even if no one is actually allowed the go racing speed on it). And if involves vehicles in some capacity it's no surprise it would be on Corona's list of 'places to visit on a day off'. Alas, just being a tourist for a change doesn't go very well, and definately doesn't last long this time when her analyzer picks up of the emergency call thanks to the accidentally unlocked transmission. Let's face it, poking her curious nose into an anomolous activity she has no right to poke at it is just as much a day off as any other, if just because she was hired to do so. It's kind of her thing. Poking at things that she probably shouldn't of been poking at. Comes with being an inventor of questionable mental stability (but not an evil one, that's entirely different!). The real bad luck doesn't come until just as she's arrived, only for the world to twist worse than going plaid, and voices start gnawing at the paranoias she typically keeps buried away. However, when you're the one constantly listening to those paranoias every day, you tend to take them as a warning more than actual fear and self-loathing. Mistakes and defeats are not failures, they are how you learn what to improve. Or something witty like that, if she was feeling actually witty. It mostly kicks the rest of her wariness into overdrive, and the vixen jukes out of the way of a charging crewman as much on reflex 'paranoid something worse was coming' than anything else. "Oh ya gotta be kiddin' me." The ground is sticky and these guys are just an annoyance, she'd rather not be here. Instead she slings one of her grappling lines to grab one of the cameras and hoists herself off the ground. She lands on said camera, only to hop off, parkouring from camera and light bar to the next like they were weird stepping stones, circumnavigating the hazardous terrain and much like Link more interested in finding the important source of this phenomenon than deal with the trash mob adds.
Touta Konoe	Even if it was only by mistake, upon receiving the signal from Mitakihara Touta was coming one way or another. Was he obligated to come at all? Probably not. But after everything he had experienced in this place he felt like he should. After all, the young man considered Homura a friend and even more than that after his expeiriences with Witches the last time he knew that at the very least he could help Homura with purifying them after the fact. There was also the matter of wanting to learn more about if there was a way he might be able to help these Mahou Shoujo. He wasn't a magic expert or a super genius but even still if there were things he could do he wanted to try at least. 'You know you can't save them.' 'It's gonna be too late.' 'If it was 'him', he could find a way to save these girls but me...' Its those thoughts and more that start polluting his mind and for a bit he honestly thinks they might just be his own worries. But he recalls a very similar situation back when he was taking Lilian's test. A littering of the mind. Though he only can confirm this once he realizes he's been pulled into the labrynth. "Alright, guess I'm in the right place. So that just means we gotta lure out the witch and if that's the case then the best way to do it is..." The boy pulls out a hoop and lets it expand out quickly before letting it spin around his waist. Beams fire from the stop lights and so in return Touta does the same, releasing a white beam of light in an attempt to consume the beams of yellow and red. His plan was simple enough. Garner enough attention with his Magic Cancel to force the Witch to come out of hiding and then from there...Well...He'd figure out what he'd need to do from there.
Staren	Staren's in his armor as usual, riding a magic broom from the warpgate to the track. He flies down into the tunnel and turns on lights in his armor. Just how many people did Wireless kill because you didn't stop him earlier? Can you really save more lives than that? Maybe you could have, if you'd studied the workings of the world mimic. For all you know, your doppelganger's plan might actually work. You could make it so noone need die ever again. Instead of researching that, you massacre mobsters. You say you saved lives, but what would you say to their children? It's just one mistake after another. Any other hero could do the good things you've done. And they do, across the multiverse. Across an infinite cosmos, more people are suffering than you can EVER save. Your life is meaningless. You may as well just... ...No. First of all, if his life is meaningless then there's nothing to make dying better than living, and second, Staren has set himself so against death that the idea of killing himself (at least, in the traditional manner -- something like wishing to save the Multiverse at the cost of becoming a Witch, or creating a million copies of himself to work miracles across the multiverse is a different matter, but the witch's aura probably isn't that smart.) He snaps out of it and takes in the new surroundings -- and promptly has to fly up to avoid a pit worker charging onto the track with a spiky wrench. Traffic lights (on a racetrack...?) are more problematic -- he puts up his shield and moves erratically, watches for their cooldown, and shoots them with his beams, before switching from broom to wings so that Belldandy's gift doesn't get damaged. Seeing other heroes here, he tries to keep them in sight as he moves along. He's not sure where the witch is, but hopefully if they keep moving they'll find it.
Rean Schwarzer	Rean enters the tunnel, following the distress call. Almost immedately, his thoughts seemed to drift towards how much trouble he'd given his parents, or how he'd probably end up holding back Class VII or whatever group in the Multiverse he finds himself with one day. How he was someone who brought nothing but misfortune just by existing. He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind. He had a job to do, didn't he? Feeling sorry for himself wouldn't help whoever sent that distress call. He looks up, and it's like he'd walked into some kid's Sunday School project. "What in the world?" Rean says. The cardboard...people? nearby notice him, and start firing at him. Apparently everything is hostile now. Rean dashes forward, one hand on his sword's hilt. He then uickly un sheaths it, slicing through a few of the familiars as he passes by. Now, where was the person who needed help?
Homura Akemi	Labyrinth. Maze. Barrier. They're all the same word! 17 is the first to find out that they don't just look like men of animated cardboard, they basically are. His hand goes through the Familiar with so little effort he might offbalance himself forwards a bit, and it's at that point the Familiar crumples together like a sheet of paper being thrown away. Around 17's arm. The previously harmless cardboard body suddenly seems to have the strength to crush his arm, if he doesn't shake it off fast enough! Corona parkours on flying Familiars, which isn't too difficult. The cameras follow her aggressively, but still do nothing. The signal lights, though, stop firing red beams. Now they're all yellow! It doesn't change much, but Corona finds herself in a swarm of them, a 360 degree mess of yellow beams. Link hops onto the track, but there's still no racers. The crewman he slashed vanished (slain, presumably) in a mess of cardboard, but the track itself is no safer. Crewmen form from the pasta instead, like men made of macaroni art instead of cardboard. Their tools look no less dangerous for it, and they seem smart enough to target his horse's legs! Riku starts murdering signal lights and cameras; it'd be a lot more satisfying if they dropped any kind of loot, one imagines. Erasing the awful things from the air only seems so helpful, as more keep cycling in to replace them, yellow beams doubling their efforts to strike down Riku while cameras... film? Yeah they're just. Watching. Eryl uses a cardboard man as cover, which turns out to be especially useless. The cardboard is cardboard; it offers no protection, beams, nails and bolts piercing the Familiar with little effort. And to make things worse, the ones shredded by his blade crumple up into balls of angry cardboard that try to wrap around his arms to crush them, just like 17! Touta's Magic Cancel is as effective as last time; it negates the magical beams while ripping through Familiars's very existences. But there's no anger, this time, from the Barrier or the Witch. This one is actively preying on you already. It's already coming. It doesn't stop the crewmen from focusing on him. They seem to have gotten smart enough to avoid melee with Touta, focusing on those nailguns and boltguns. Staren exchanges blasts with the signal lights, taking several of them down. As their lights change from excusively yellow to yellow and green simultaneously, the cooldown of their firing changes abruptly, essentially halved, and more beams come for him! Rean's blade cuts a few of the cardboard men in half, but he finds the same trouble as Eryl and 17 had! The damaged crewmen crumple up into messy balls of cardboard, trying to wrap around his blade and his arm to apply incredible and sudden strength! AS THE SIGNAL LIGHTS BECOME MORE URGENTLY GREEN THAN YELLOW, THE SOUND OF A POWERFUL ENGINE ROARS FROM ONE END OF THE RACETRACK, GETTING IMMINENTLY CLOSER BY THE SECOND.
Android 17	The punch goes right through the cardboard. Huh...that was easier than he thought it'd be. Then, of course, the thing starts trying to WRAP around his leg with crushing force. Seventeen isn't quick enough on the take as the creature starts crashing down on his arm. With a wince, he tries to pull the arm out and then... Seventeen just starts pumping balls of energy into the creature, trying to blast it open from the inside out. He blasts and blasts until it lets go before he flips back and takes to the sky. Alright, that hurt...he thinks to himself, gripping his arm a little, before bringing a hand up and then down again. Blasts of energy start rushing in rapid succession, and unlike other blasts, they track his targets. He's gotta help clean up as many of these things as he can before the light goes green. Which they assume is when the witch is going to be here. That and Eryl is going to be reckless, which he has gotta see.
Link	Link gets onto the track, but is surrounded by macaroni men trying to slash his poor horse. He's a skilled enough equestrian to lead Epona away, making their otherwise-crippling strikes only grazing strikes on the poor horse, but any that get behind Epona soon regret it, as she bucks back, kicking them and shattering them into nothing. Link uses his sword at first to help clear them up, before leading Epona to speed up and away from them, sheathing his sword and drawing his bow. Nocking an arrow, Link begins firing them at macaroni men, before he hears the sound of the engine. Fantastic. There's his target. He's going to prove he's a hero. Get a grief seed, right? He can do that. He needs to do that, because otherwise he's worthless. It told him as much. Ignoring Eryl's request to wait at the track for him to do something reckless, Link starts making Epona sprint, and heads in the direction of the racer. He nocks another arrow. It's a bomb arrow. As soon as he can get a good look at the racer, he's going to light it and fire, attempting to blow them aside.
Corona Arclite	As she's parkouring across the way Corona quickly cycles through her weaponry and draws her handcannon weapon. At the same time she's probably one of the first to hear the roaring engine as her acute hearing is trained for such mechanical noises. Or mechanical sounding noises at least, who knows what it really is here. That's just nitpicking. Of course she's also got a surrounding mob of light lasers closing in on her. With no where else to go she lands a step on one of the floating Familiars, twists around as she kippups off, and aims her oversized gun down. She's taking aim just as the pursuing lights are reorienting towards her trajectory, a yellow beam zinging across her shoulder. At the same time she pulls the trigger while biting back a wince, and the weapon roars in retort to unload a scatterblast into the swarm that tried to surround her. Corona also switched off the recoil compensators, so the kickback of the shot launchs her towards the racetrack and the roaring engine sounds approaching.
Eryl Fairfax	The Familiar shield crumbles instantly, and the ones he slashes attempt to entangle his limbs and crush them. Eryl is quietly thankful they didn't go for his neck, which could have done some real damage. His limbs are machinery, so while the clumps of cardboard slow him down, those parts of him are far more durable. But he can't afford to slow down, so in a flash, he's ripping off the sleeves and lower half of his pants to get the cardboard off him. Now rocking some kind of boardwalk-style suit, he listens to the engines revving up. Things begin falling into place. This is a racetrack, as childishly rendered as it is. The Familiars are crewmen. So what does that make the Witch? Why, the racer of course. Logic lines up, plans fall into place, and he begins giving orders on the radio; orders that everyone overwatch the track and prepare to attack. Now, he hops the railings and stands on the track, facing the sound of the revving engines. He plants his feet, widens his stance, and raises his arms, his palms facing out in anticipation. Is he... going to try and stop whatever racecar monstrosity that's about to come speeding along?
Staren	There are too many lights! Staren's forcefield is optimized against energy attacks, but that doesn't mean it can tank them forever! And every time he drops it to shoot, he risks hits to his armor... Even if that engine is the main fight, how will he have time to fight it? Staren tries a couple of experiments: 1. shooting some of the cameras, in case the other familiars need them to coordinate. If that doesn't help, he lays down a smokescreen and hides in it to see if THAT works.
Touta Konoe	There's no complaints from Touta if this things are deciding to avoid melee with him. On one hand, besides his magic cancel he really doesn't have much in the way of long-range attacks. On the other hand, if they decided to dog pile on him all at once to stop the hoop. Though that woul require them to realize that's the case. So when nailguns start shooting at first Touta isn't too bothered by them. He's swatting as much as he can with his blade, and there are some that probably get a few lucky shots in, but they don't seem to deter the boy. The problem comes when one ends up hitting the hoop and it wobbles for a moment. He finds the time to restabilize it but...Man he really needs to learn to do this without the hoop! It's at this point as everyone starts blowing stop lights and carboard men apart he realizes something as he hears the engines in the distance. As the others discuss the next plan of action. The signals as they get attacked swapped from red to yellow to green...It was...A sign? "I'll try to help stopping it, just watch where you guys end up aiming!" Regardless, the sounds of the engine get louder and louder, and instead of running from them or preparing some form of blockade type of ambush Touta is speeding in the direction of the sound of the engine. In fact he's going fast enough that he was a blur in contribution to using his flash step technique, Shundo. Once he was finally able to see the Witch he'd try to help in Eryl's plan of putting it to a halt. He'd hop ontop of the slam his sword into the witch. Actually, it didn't really matter if he pierced the witch or not, as long as he was able to get onto it all he'd need to do is turn up the weight on his blade till it was too for the Witch too handle. If that somehow worked out he'd be able to go into gear for the next part of his plan. But that's if this ended up working. After all, he's not an expert on how strong Witches are...
Rean Schwarzer	The remains of the cardboard men turned into balls, and started to grab hold of his arm and weapon. It's like being pulled on by an actual person, and it honestly kind of sucks! "Get off me!" Rean shouts, and ignites his sword, hopefully knocking the cardboard balls off of it. As for the others...a blue ring of spell-circley light surrounds him and changes into a small fireball...which fires at the ball on his arm. Is it reckless? Heck yes, but he needs to /move./ There's a roaring sound in the distance. Is that an engine? This place did look like a race track, so of course there was a car somewhere! Once he's free to move again (and maybe not get shot at by lasers) He's headed for the track.
Riku	Riku isn't worried so much about loot. He's harvesting samples from things for a specific reason, not just adventurer packratting. But that's neither here nor there. He carves and jabs at things, just watching them get replaced with more and more. The lasers blast at him, continually keeping up an anti-aerial assault in order to try to bog down Riku and slow him to the point where he'd likely get overwhelmed by the Familiars. The violent, murderous response of the cardboard men are telling, making Riku immediately agree with Eryl's summation. He changes tactics as the beams scorch him a few times, dropping him to the macaroni track once again. "Gggh. What's with this place?" He mutters. He hears the oncoming engine ,but he's not sure what's causing it... Or where he'll have to be. Instead, he takes a different approach. The shadow beneath him rises, the blackened, twisted form of his Eidolon rising up and moving to buffet some of the enemies away from him, buying him time to turn... Towards the cameras. How innocuous... But also potentially much more. "TAKE THIS!" He says, raising a hand and charging it with energy before hurling balls of black flame at the cameras, working to knock them out. Perhaps that will help blind the Witch.
Homura Akemi	17 has ENERGY FISTS. Yeah, that'll do it. Cardboard is not energy-proof in the slightest, and the creature's crumpled up body is pretty much obliterated into fine particles. It's not flammable if there's nothing left to BE flammable! Link navigates the crowd of macaroni Familiars with ease, finding his sword to shatter them without reprisal, as can his horse's legs. Arrows are fine, too! And Link then pursues the engine noises. In the distance, he sees the approaching car! Corono scattershots right into the mob of Familiars, breaking countless of the signal lights! They seem to stop coming, after that. Eryl dispatches the Familiars who tried to crush his limbs, hopping onto the track. He can see the car in the distance, approaching Link! Staren taking the cameras seems to actively disable the aim of the other Familiars. His hunch was right. That makes the signal lights MUCH easier to deal with! Touta gets ready to attack the Witch... Rean sets cardboard men on fire! They basically disintegrate into ash, because cardboard isn't known for burning strong or long. It's convenient his fireball isn't your common match fire, either! Riku strikes down the last of the cameras, which completely halts the signal lights. In fact, the signal lights begin slamming into one another, unable to see where they're flying! AND THE ENGINE ROARS IN DEFIANCE. Link sees it first. The Witch is a massive formula one car, a patchwork of magasine cutouts of cars thrown together to frankenstein a much larger car. The cutouts are constantly shifting, making the entire thing look more like a swarm of paper shapes than a coherent car. Homura is on it, and one of her braids seems to be stuck between two of parts of the Witch. She's holding on for her dear life. And it's going fast. Impossibly fast. And as Link gets in the way, it... giggles? It's a childish giggle, mixed in with the engine's roar. It splits. Every single cutout becomes a horribly distorted car of its own, distinct only by colors and various nonsensical logos and images on them. There's five in all, the usual blue, red, yellow, black and green split one might expect. They all rush past Link, spewing awful flames and oil in their way. This split also ejects Homura, who flies straight for Link while screaming about not knowing how to deal with this. As remaining signal lights turn full green, the five cars that make up the Witch reach the main party. Eryl manages to stop the green car with a thunderous crash, and Touta's blade pierces it, causing that part of the Witch to reconfigure into a car crusher around the two of them! The other four cars race past the group, spewing oil and flames from their exhausts. They're going to keep going around the track! You'll have to wait until they loop again to do anything if you don't stop them all! And of course, the usual runes appear over your eyes, like awful subtitles forcing themselves over your filter of reality.
Homura Akemi	### ### #### #### ######## ######### ######### ######### ############# ## ##### ############ ## ##### ######## ## ############ ######## ############### ######## ######## # ############ ##### ############### ##### ##### ############# ####### ################# ####### ####### ############## ######## ################## ######## ######## ############### ######## ################### ######## ######## ############## ####### ################### ######## ######## ############## ###### ######## ######## ###### ###### ############# ##### ####### ########### ##### ##### ####### ###### ######## ####### ########### ######## ######## ###### ##### ######## ###### ############ ######## ######### ###### ##### ######## ###### ########## ######## ######## ###### ##### ### ####### ###### ###### ### ####### ### ####### #### ##### ### ###### ############### ### ###### ## ###### ###### ####### ########## ############# ######### ######### ########### ######### #### ### ######### ######### ##### LELLA THE RACING WITCH
Staren	Wow, that actually worked! Staren smiles and flashes Riku and Corona a thumbs-up before landing off the track. He turns towards the noise... ...but by the time he's finished thinking of a plan (immolate or explode the track in front of the car) the Witch is already zooming past! Hmm. Staren scatters a couple dozen plasma grenades over the nearby section of track and sets them to proximity detonation, then watches and waits.
Android 17	Seventeen makes a thoughtful noise, multiform technique? Well, that's unexpected...and unfortunate for Eryl's plan. With the cars splitting up and having limited time in which to deal with them...Seventeen decides to do things the only way he knows how. He has to go fast. Seventeen rushes from his position, flipping over the walls to the track and then flies at full speed towards one of the cars. Failing that, with a burst of speed he seems to disappear. Then, appearing on one of the cars if he can get there in time. With the wind kicking his hair back in a dramatic fashion, he points his hands back. Let's do this like Mario cart then. He throws balls of energy onto the track, trying to make hazards for the various cars. Trying to either blast the cars or blow up parts of the track to make it far too dangerous for them. Course, this means he probably gets a lungful of witch smoke. "Ugh, secondhand smoke that actually takes years off your life."
Link	Link rushes into battle, bomb arrow still being readied. The race car comes out. It's horrifying. It...giggles, which is even more horrifying, and then it splits, and several cars roar past Link and Epona, fire spreading to his tunic and burning along his arms and side. But that's not the worst of it. Homura comes flying at Link. Stopping his bow, he reflexively reaches his arms out to stop her fall, pushing him back and almost causing Epona to skid into the oil. Once he's broken her fall, he moves to make sure Homura can get on the back of the horse. He doesn't know who this girl is but he has to protect her, now... But he also has to stop that Witch. After what it told him? He needs to prove to it that he can handle himself. He'd probably be a dashing knight as he speaks, if he wasn't partially on fire. "Are you okay? We need to hunt down the monster. Hold on tight." Epona is kicked once at the side, and then suddenly, sprints forward towards the cars. As a knowledgable young man, he knows which one is the leader. The green one! Heroes wear green, after all. Nocking a new bomb arrow, he moves to launch it at the green one as he tries to race Epona towards it, leaping over spills and pushing the poor girl as far as she'll go, while also making sure Homura doesn't fall off the horse. He is probably not the best protector with how gung-ho about this Witch he is.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite had aimed her shotgun-jump trajectory intending to intercept the incoming car... except it happens to split up while she's midflight. So instead of landing gracefully on a giant car the foxy engineer sails right past and hits the ground tumbling. Fortunately out of the way of getting run down in the process, but it takes a moment for her to roll to a stop. "That.. ain't quite how Ah planned that," she mutters as she pushes herself to her knees and gets up, dusting herself off. Then the runes appear, and she smacks the side of her head with the heel of her palm, at first thinking it's a glitch in the display of her goggles.... Before remembering she wasn't wearing her goggles yet. Cue a string of cussing that is luckly drowned out by the roaring car and racetrack noises. Properly puts her goggles on, and then considers. She doesn't have time to call for one of her actual vehicles, how can she... Oh. Duh. It looked like she was wearing some kind of mechanical backpack, until she shrugs it off and it reconfigures itself into her robotic jackalope sidekick. "Hold still a moment, Hopalong." Corona grabs him with one hand, slaps her matter manipulator with the other, and luckily has a few vehicle spare parts stashed in her storage. Or close enough, as she grabs some spare offroad wheels in two different sizes, affixing them to the automaton's legs with the large ones in the back, and jury rigging a few extra exhaust pipes into his power core for the proper appearance as they angle out the back. Corona grabs her handcannon and hops on his back, straddling the now wheeled jackalope like an ATV and grabbing one of his antlers with the other hand. "Giddy up!" Cue peeling out noises and a upchuck of whatever passes for dirt in this crapsack reject art project as she roars onto the track in pursuit of the remaining racers! As soon as she gets close enough she starts taking potshots at the Witch(s?) with her oversized firearm.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl stands steady as the hulking monstrosity bears down on him at high speed. He notes Homurta caught in a join and blinks. Well... more relieving than anything honestly. He was wondering where she got to, and she seemed to sort to cave to nasty thoughts in her head. Luckily, she is thrown free as the car... splits into five cars? Damn, there goes that idea. But he and Touta can pin down one at least. The car slams into Eryl, his feet digging grooves into the spaghetti and glue track, his arms pushing back against the chassis, his back straining to try and lift the front wheels from the road to better arrest it. But it begins to reconfigure, becoming a car press, with he and Touta as the car. "Well, we stopped it," he comments, stretching his body really quick to get over the aches caused by stopping a race car. But as the plates begin pressing in, out comes the armblades. Both begin to vibrate until they start glowing red from air friction, and then Eryl slams both against the plates, aiming to bore right through to damage the pistons, before twisting them to make a molten hole in the metal. He then follows that up by putting his elbow into the hole and firing shotgun slugs into the internals of the things, hoping that some ball bearings bouncing around inside will put it down.
Rean Schwarzer	The car splits up into a bunch of smaller cars, continuing to speed around the track. Rean climbs up onto the side of the track and with a running start, basically copies Touta. He jumps onto the back of one of the cars, and once there tries to find a weak point on the car somewhere. Maybe an exposed engine or something that he can wedge a sword in.
Touta Konoe	Upon running in the direction of the engine Touta ends up probably being maybe the second to see the person that was captured by the race car, though he was still probably the first to recognize her at least as he tried to jump upon the Witch. "Homur-aaaah! The hell is this?!" He watches as he jumps on that she gets ejected off, his first thought was to try and catch her if he could but the reality of the situation didn't alow for that as the car cutouts that had created the Witch decided to divide and conquer. At the very least he and the other guy find themselves able to stop the green one, and Touta even gives the other guy a smile and nod when they get it done. The moment is short lived though as the green car somehow reforms itself like a paper origami or whatever it's called into some sort of car crusher! Now while Touta could probably survive such an ordeal he doesn't want to become a cube! Plus he doesn't know how durable this other guy was either. "...I don't see it on here so..." So he'll be a bit reckless. As the car crusher tries to devour them whole within its parts, Touta comes to a decision... "SHOW ME..." He shouts at the top of his lungs as if hoping that it might actually make a difference. If the crusher was going to try and swallow them, he would try to do the same and devour it using Magia Erebea! Truth be told he's never tried to using his magic on something this large before, but given this thing was original form was sort of a magical paper cut-out, he was banking on it'd begin to crumple as he tried to take it in. If he failed this was gonna hurt, but at the same time he thought this may be the only opportunity to take in magic directly from the Witch itself, the only opportunity to see the person that this had been before. Lela hadn't appeared to be the same type of Witch that Karin had been using projectiles so this fragment was the best chance he had. "...WHO YOU ARE!!!!"
Riku	Aha, the cameras WERE the eyes. As the lasers die down, Riku nods in response to Staren. Without the signal lights, things get much easier to deal with. the problem is, that's when the Witch shows up. The name runes flash across his sight, and he grimaces. "What the hell was that?" He asks no one in particular. The cars bolt off at insane speed, but Riku has a solution for that. "OH NO, you're not getting away!" He yells through the tornado of oil and flame. With a hand outstretched, he opens a dark portal nearby... The other side opening right in front of the blue car. If his plan works, the car will end up flashing through the portals, just in time to meet Riku's Eidolon, which hammers with with a murderous punch intended to BREAK CAR.
Homura Akemi	Staren lays traps! He'll have to wait for that payoff. 17 rushes over to the speeding cars, landing atop the yellow one, in the back of the formation. As he starts firing blasts to dent the pasta racetrack, the cars start swerving expertly around the holes, in ways that would be impossible for any normal car or person to pull off - the cars literally shift and reconfigure themselves, the wheels changing places to avoid the holes when one can't change course fast enough. And one, even, does a complete 180 flip after a hop, continuing to race but on reverse, so that it's 'facing' 17 and the yellow car. There's no driver, of course. Instead, from the driver's seat emerge countless car parts, as if ejected from the black car. Chunks of its motor, pipes, a wheel. All soaked in oil and fuel, which ignite once launched. Homura safely lands on the horse behind Link, which does absolutely nothing to help her calm down. She's never ridden a horse, either! Why is it so bumpy?! How is she supposed to hold on? Link is on fire!!! Homura produces a fire extinguisher and sprays Link. "L-Let me help!" she tries. It'll help with the fire. Probably not visibility. Luckily, the green car (crusher) is stationary, so aiming bomb arrows at it is a breeze. Chunks of it are blasted off and it breaks, probably to Eryl and Touta's relief! Corona chases after 17 and the four cars, taking potshots at the red one. The heavy caliber weapon blows a wheel and a piece of the car's tail off, spewing awful, pitch black fumes in its wake. The red car spins out of control, and seems to be intentionally going straight for Corona like a deadly top. And it explodes, if it connects! Eryl uses his blades to carve through the green car (crusher) and end any threat it may still have had. It sputters helplessly, and then Touta uses his Magia Erebea on it. What Touta sees... is probably not what he expected. In Touta's mind, he is an awful, cardboard crewman now. The cardboard crewman only has a single feeling. 'Fix the Witch'. That's its purpose. That's why it exists. A few civilians wander into the Barrier. The crewman raises his wrench and beats them into a pulp. Selfishly, he consumes them rather than let the Witch feed. The crewman grows, and grows, and develops darker, deeper thoughts. The Familiar becomes a Witch. Touta's vision ends when the green car breaks down into a pile of scrap, dead. There are no human emotions in this Witch. It was always a monster. On the bright side Touta can now summon strangely powerful pit crew tools to attack with. When the cars finally loop the entire circuit again, which isn't that long, they come upon Staren's traps. The mines blow the black car apart in an instant, freeing 17 up from that obligation. And Riku cheats, bending space to strike the blue car. It's broken as quickly as the black car, scattering scrap, flames and fuel everywhere! Including on Riku. Which leaves the yellow car, 17 sitting on it. Rean leaps atop it, driving his blade deep into the Witch's hood and through its engine. It lets off a garbled cry, muffled into the death throes of its engine, as it starts spinning out of control. It crashes into a wall (whether 17 and Rean got off in time is another matter), but the Witch doesn't end with that. The black fumes that escape the wreck seem to take form, like a cloud of oil and fuel in which various car parts float. It shifts wildly, as if convulsing, before streams and geysers of oil and fuel launch at the entire racetrack, causing a flood of noxious, smelly, slightly corrosive and HIGHLY FLAMMABLE liquid. Looks like this one has a second form!
Corona Arclite	Direct hit! ...Except instead of spinning off the track as intended the Red Racer manages to turn it's wild careening back towards them. This could be bad! Or it was, until Hopalong, still being a mechanical jackalope under the additional race kart attatchments, drops his back legs and kicks the ground hard enough to jump over the whirling dervish of a disabled racer. True to space cowboy form Corona grabs her hat and whips it in the air with one hand and fires another shot skyward from her weapon. "Yeeehah!" Then the jacka-kart bumpily bounces back on the ground, drifting as he does so and opening his mouth to unleash a blast of steam to blow the racer off the track and hopefully out the race. "So much for red ones go fastah!" Corona snarks.
Android 17	Seventeen watches the car turn around and start...throwing itself at him. Piece by piece. On fire. "I was not ready for today," he says to himself. The green barrier comes on, trying to protect himself from the debris, but the heat is another thing altogether. He can't protect himself from the environment itself. The heat is starting to get to him, even with the wind running over them from going fast. KABOOM. Oh hey, that car is kill. He gives Staren a thumbs up, but then the other car goes down too. Ok then he just has to deal with the ca-Nope, that one is stabbed right through the head. Oh, wait. he's on it. With another burst of speed, he moves straight into the air, flying above the arena and watching the explosion...but noting the lack of disappearing barrier. Also no seed. The rising smoke and oil and fire is a huge problem now, as Seventeen is deciding to just stay in the air. Though the air is becoming a problem for him. Coughing a lot, he grabs his band off of his shoulder and fashions it over his mouth to prevent breathing in so much of the noxious fumes. Though it's going to be a matter of time if they can't kill this witch.
Staren	FWOOM! Staren pumps a fist as one of the cars goes down, and then takes to the sky, planning to try and shoot down at the cars... But then they're already finished. Was... was that it? The smoke coalesces and the battlefield changes, and it turns out it's really lucky he took flight just then! Others aren't so lucky, however. Like Link, the guy's on a horse, what the hell is he gonna do? Staren flies down to him and readies his matter manipulator. Faint arcs of energy zap between the manipulator and the track as concrete and dirt appear, Staren shaping a wall around Link and then filling the inside with more concrete and dirt, though slowly enough that Epona can climb up rather than be trapped. Afterwards, Link is left with his own little island in the burning flood to fight from! Y-yay? 'Island in a burning flood' isn't the best situation, but it's better than just 'burning flood', right? Edit: Once the wall is up, Staren flies off to pick up anyone who can't fly (except Eryl since he can handle it himself) and bring them back to the wall (or also wall-encircle them if they're too heavy) before converting the walls to islands.
Link	Homura is saved! She sprays Link with a fire extinguisher, blocking his visibility and startling him, but also putting out the fire. Afterwards, he...thanks her. "Thank you. I'm Link." He would have waited for her to hold on, when the burning oil sprayssprays out, giving Link an island. That's interesting. Link considers what to do. And then Staren shapes a wall around him and Epona, Epona climbing up to the top of the little island he's building. There's oil everywhere, and it's hard to breathe. Wait, oil... "COME AND GET ME!" Link shouts at the Witch, waving an arm. He's trying to lure it at his island in the middle of the track. And then, grabbing a regular arrow, he takes it... Lights it on fire... And fires it at the witch. The witch made of oil. The witch floating above a track of oil. Everything's going to catch on fire. This is either the best or worst idea ever.
Rean Schwarzer	Rean goes flying as the car spirals out of control, screaming as he flies through the air. He lands on his back, hitting the pasta track hard. /Ouch./ His sword's lying in the wreckage, which is now a giant cloud of smoke. A giant cloud of /living/ smoke. And now everything is covered in oil, including his clothes. He takes of his oil-soaked blazer and covers his nose and mouth with his shirt sleeve. Staren pickes him up and places him on a patch of ground that's not coated in oil and hands him a gun. "Thanks." Rean says.
Eryl Fairfax	Eryl climbs out of the ruined crusher and dusts himself off, looking on as the other cars are brought low. He nods in satisfaction, but looks to Touta as he reacts to whatever he did. "A Witch borne of a Familiar?" he asks himself, allowing the piece of information to slot in place in his brain. Ultimately, it doesn't change very much. It's still a hazard, and needs to be stopped. But what if that means it doesn't drop a Grief Seed? That would be problematic. Only one way to find out, it seems. The last remaining car, in its throes, begins throwing oil all about. No doubt intending to set the place ablaze and try to burn them all. Smoke chokes the air, but Eryl is built to survive a wasteland. What's a little smoke. He begins running on the oil, using the frictionless substance to boost his speed, practically skating along the oil to speed towards the Witch. On the way, he calls out to Homura upon Link's horse. "Throw me the fire extinguisher!" he shouts. Should the girl comply, Eryl snatches it from the air and homes in on the wreck. Immediately, he begins dousing the area around it with the foam, creating a pre-emptive barrier between the oil about the Witch, and the oil about the track. Essentially, trying to ensure that when things get hot thanks to the fire being thrown, everyone stands a chance to escape.
Riku	Riku doesn't consider it cheating. They have their powers, he has his. Unfortunately, his powers do NOTHING to stop him from getting set on fire. The burning fuel splashes onto him, and he yells, rolling about to try to extinguish things. "Ugh... Fire!" He mutters... And then it goes from bad to worse. "Seriously?" He looks up, smouldering, and grimaces as the waves of flammable glop begins to spew towards them. "What am I supposed to even attack!?" He grates... Before he dives into another of those portals. This time, he launches out near the coalesced mess, striking out with Soul Eater as he lashes past. "COME ON!" He yells at the horrifying thing as he begins sequentially chain-launching himself through portals at the creature. Hopefully he doesn't explode when Link decides to set the thing on fire.
Touta Konoe	Touta's attempts to get more insight into the witch proves successful. The insight however was definitely not what Touta was expecting to see. Instead of the memories of a hopeful girl trying her best to save people he sees...Something. It's less a person and more of an entity similar to the cardboard people that they saw as they came into this place. It was unsettling to watch from a first person perspective as this thing over time had evolved from whatever it was into a watch. To watch it devour people and slowly become what it was now... "Tch..This thing..." This Witch never had a soul to begin with. It was a sad thought to think of now that he experienced it first hand. It seems he doesn't have to worry much about this Witch though as the others begin to dismantle it piece by piece and car by car. That should have been the case till it goes into a surprising second form. Staren takes the initative to make sure that anyone who would have an issue with the blackfumes that were being expelled now have a chance to get to safety. Touta doesn't though choosing to simply just hold his breath, he just figures he'll hold it as long as he can, not like he'll suffocate to death right? Actually he's never even done this before so maybe he'll learn something new today. Regardless, even if he doesn't have to worry about the fumes he does still pay attention to try and avoid the streams and geysers of oil and fuels. It seems everyone already has an idea of how they can finish off this Witch...The tried and true 'Burn the Witch' method. That said it was possible with so much oil there was going to be quite the explosion. Likely more than just foam alone will be able to handle. "Here, get back!" He shouts back to Eryl. It's at this time he decides to extinguish the abilities that absorbing the Witch's car provided him. After all, instead of flinging tools at the witch he was gonna have to get ready to absorb any excess fire and explosions inorder to buffer the escape route for the others when they were going to try and leave, and by the looks of how much oil there was, he was gonna be absorbing a lot of it.
Homura Akemi	Homura throws the fire extinguisher to Eryl without complaint, and turns back to Link. "T-Thank you! Sorry you had to bail me out, I thought... I thought I had this handled and then I... didn't." That's about how that goes, yes. Eryl foams the car the Witch is emerging from. No more fumes come from the car. To put it simply, Eryl just turned off its potential regeneration factor, if it could just keep coming and coming from the wreck. Riku strikes with his Keyblade, and it cleaves the Witch in half. Seems to be working fine enough! In half, and in half, several times. The awful cloud of oil and fuel vaguely tries to reform itself, slowed by Eryl's expert use of a fire extinguisher. Then Link, aided by Staren, shoots a fire arrow at the Witch. It, uh... it explodes. The entire Barrier is flooded with deadly flames and oil-- but mercifully, just as it might threaten to reach anyone, Touta dampens the flames long enough for the Barrier to break, the inner world of the Witch fading away, rippling out of existence like a mirage in the desert heat. A Grief Seed falls to the ground and rolls towards Eryl's foot, to alleviate his concerns. Homura lets out a deep, satisfied sigh. "T-Thank you... I-I hope it's not too late to save that girl, G-Grandmaster," she says towards Eryl, before she tries, and fails, to get off Link's horse, ending up hitting the ground next to it. Riding horses is clearly not for her. Much like most physical activities, clearly.
Corona Arclite	"... Whelp. That was a thing that happened." That's just the easiest way Corona has to sum up this sort of crazy shenanigans when it comes to Witches and what not. These sort of things are easier to not think too deeply into, weirdness just does what weirdness does.
Android 17	As the innerworld fades away, and the seed drops to Eyrl's feet... Well, the job is done. Seventeen slowly drops to the ground, nodding once at the result of the situation. Couldn't ask for a better ending, though that thing at the beginning was something. Shaking the thoughts away, he moves towards Homura to offer a hand up. "Probably should wait for the rest of us next time. Though alls well that ends well," he says, slightly carefree. "Anyway, rest is in your hands, Grandmaster. Hope you won't be stingy with the information she has when she's not about to become a witch." With that Seventeen starts heading out, the job is done and he's got to be alone for a while after what happened today.
Link	The insane no-good fire plan...worked. And thanks to everyone else mitigating it, people didn't burn to death. The inner world fades away, and Link looks around, before turning to the others. "Good luck." And then, they ride off to find a nice place for medical attention! He's too quiet, but they seemed nice. Link will certainly work with them again in the future.
Touta Konoe	"Homura you oka- Wait Grandmaster...? You mean like the Grandmaster of the Paladins, that Grandmaster?" Touta had run up to check that Homura was alright after all this mess but when she says 'Grandmaster' he has to stop for a moment. He has met plenty of Paladin members, some he really considers good friends. But he's never really actually met the Grandmaster before. At least, not to his knowledge he hasn't. It's at this time he contemplates trying to make a greeting or something of the sort till he recalls the rest of Homura's statement which makes him turn back towards her way. "That's right. The SOS did say something about the Grief Seed being for another Magical Girl right? Homura, you mind filling me in a bit more?"
Eryl Fairfax	The fumes stop pouring from the car, and the Witch is cut down. Eryl breathes a sigh of relief as the false reality crumbles, and the real one returns. And a Grief Seed even pops out, thank goodness! Eryl scoops it up quickly and carefully puts it away. He's going to rush that to Miura Hase right after this so she can stop being a time bomb. But first, congratulations are in order. "Thank you everyone," he says to the group who fought the Witch. "Should you need any recompense for injury or losses accrued during this fight, please report a Paladin's outreach centre, or call this number at your earliest convenience." Pamphlets are produced and handed out. Somehow, they escaped all the oil, smoke, and fire that was going about in there. "Compensation should be paid out within three working days." 17 addresses him, and Eryl responds. "Should we get any useful information, it will be disseminated, yes." That's not at all a promise, but Eryl isn't in the habit of making promises he can't keep. Touta expresses surprise, and Eryl bows his head. "Yes, that's me. Eryl Fairfax, Grandmaster of the Paladins. Thank you for your assistance." He stops at Homura, and bends down a little to look her in the eye. "Thank you for putting out the call. I'm sorry to be taking the Grief Seed, but I'm sure you understand. Next time though, I would suggest giving everyone notice before you go in. There's no shame in asking for help." And with that, he strides off. In spite of the nice words, he still looks really stupid in that suit with the sleeves and pant legs torn off.
Staren	Burning the witch works. Huh! Staren would have expected a Witch that throws around burning fuel not to be vulnerable to that, but... oil's well that ends well, as they say. Staren collects the gun (unless Raen insists on keeping it for some reason,) gets on his broom, and flies off. This situation is pretty much taken care of.
Riku	Riku slashes over and over with his Heartbrand, slashing through the Witch until it loses cohesion and everything vanishes. Moments before he finally loses the strength to keep up, droipping to the ground to impact heavily, breathing in the aftermath of the world vanishing. "Gggh. What a fight. Why is it always /Japan/?" He turns, and slowly walks over to the others while dismissing his battle gear. "So. That's a Grief Seed, huh?" He observes... And then asks his question over the radio.
Rean Schwarzer	And with that the Witch is dead, and everyone is deposited back in the tunnel, with some metal object lying on the ground near Eryl's feet. Rean's sword is lying near it, covered in engine oil and who knows what else. He picks it up and sheaths it, the walks over to Staren. "Here's this back. Sorry I didn't use it after all." he says handing the gun back to Staren. Meanwhile, the boy with the hoop identified the man with the metal arms as the Grandmaster of the Paladins. He actually had some questions for him regarding the organization...but thinking back to that voice from earlier, there was a slight chance they wouldn't accept him. The guy is walking away, though so it'll have to wait for another time.
Homura Akemi	"I-I'm fine!" Homura insists to the myried people asking her if she's fine, taking 17's hand to get back up gladly. Before Eryl leaves, she nods, a bit stiff due to his position and rank. "Y-Yes sir, I'm sorry..." To Rean, she finally repeats: "T-They're used to purify our Soul Gems. They um... they darken when we use magic, and if they're all black, we..." She stops herself, shuffles around with words in her head, and completes her sentence with: "Die." Right, it's not false.
Rean Schwarzer	Uh, wow. That's dark, no pun intended. "So you have to keep fighting these things just to stay alive? That's horrible..." Though, if it was that easy to just wander into one of these things' spaces, they must've been dangerous to normal people. "Are you ok, at least?" She seemed nervous, after all.
Homura Akemi	"Y-Yeah," Homura stutters in response, without going over the whole 'but I got a wish out of it' angle that technically made it worth it. Kind of. Sure doesn't feel that way most of the time. "I'm... I'm going to go, sorry." Her shield clicks, opens up to reveal something underneath its outer cover, but she's gone a split second later, without any cue or effect.