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N'Raha     The path out of Mor Dhona leads through the remains of... a lot of wreckage, towering masses of corrupted crystals, and a small ramshackle research hub of the Sons of Saint Coinach. And further down the path? There's a large gathering of... well. Stuff. Someone has cracked open their goody store of Steampunk-ish loooking equipment, there's several Magitek Armors and what appears to have been a large series of barriers that have been smashed to bits by a large energy weapon bolted to the ground. Ahead of that, a great door floats and waits for access.

    Standing near the controls of The Device are a Man Clad In Red and Sunglasses who's probably Nero tol Scaeva, judging by the Smug Aura that floats off of him. He appears to be waiting for an audience.

    Off to the side, are a pair of Catboys. People will recognize one of them as N'raha, his helmet off and his red armor glinting with the light of the crystals. A sullen looking cat fellow is lingering around as well, his red ears twitching a bit at the commotion that's going on.
Ishirou A small white-haired boy with a blindfold-esc visor over his eyes arrives with the group of adventurers.  His outfit is similarly black, being a small coat and short pants.  Boots made for walking and probably some sort of advanced leather-like material protect his feet, and a pair of finger-less gloves cover his hands.  Hovering near him is a small black box with arms, seemingly facing things once in a while as if looking at them.  

Though right now, it was easy to see what the boy was looking at.  He was staring up at the Crystal tower itself.  It was...well amazing.  It was beautiful, breathtaking to be right under it like this.  The damaged barriers get his attention after a few moments of awe, using the black floating box to start scanning various pieces of the barrier to start collecting data.

"Hello, I'm I4 representing the Paladins," He offers a hand to anyone willing to take it, and awkwardly stands there if nobody does until he coughs and puts it away.  "So uh...ancient wonder needing to be cleared out and studied?  That's pretty cool!"
Tomoe Tomoe has had enough experience around this world to find her way to Mor Dhona easily enough. She'll come flying in for a landing near N'Raha it seems Nero's invitation and caught her attention. If the main had ditched the Empire she wasn't about to go head-hunting the man and if he was offering a lead this juicy how could she say no to it? She would pull her wings into her back and banishes them in a flash of light as she makes for the catboy she knows that being N'Raha.

"Hey N'Raha good to see you so you excited about a lead like this? I sure the heck am."

Even if she considers her own magic to bd fake actual honest to go magi-tech had her attention.

The towering woman has a big grin on her face and seems in good spirits even with the possibility of others poking about this place aside from N'Raha and anyone else. She did take note of I4 as he was here just a bit before her.

"Can't leave something like this alone, can we? Some old weapon systems might fire up and rampage about if we don't right?"

She seemed glad to see I4 here given his actions back on her world he's worked his way into her good partying with list.
Seifer Almasy      There are these times when it's not really Seifer Almasy at the wheel.

     Metaphorically. Seifer always makes all the decisions in his own body. But *OCCASIONALLY*, there are these times when a certain pink-and-yellow-polkadot voice gets so loud and so obnoxious about something that he just can't ignore it. And he tries. Oh, lord, does he try. He will sit there at his Concord desk or fight Moon Cell programs or just stare at his dinner or his wife for *hours* trying to block out the noise. Tamamo has probably more than once found Seifer sitting, staring at a wall, with a look of unbelievable irritation on his face.

     But in the end, Seifer inevitably throws up his hands, grabs Hyperion, and gives in, because his headmate can be more annoying than he can put up with.

     This is one of those times.

     The Fox Knight, the Hand of the Concord, the King of the Moon, the Kind-Of-A-Big-Deal, is here not for his own interests, but for those of GilgameshGreg, the Guardian Force that rides side-saddle, eats his memories, and gives him superpowers. He's going along with it because the Guardian Force is *absolutely convinced* that there's something worth getting in this Crystal Tower, that there's SOMETHING that the Guardian Force can add to its collection of weaponry worth having. For his part, Seifer's just figuring that a place called Crystal Tower might have some nice magic stuff for Tamamo.

     Seifer is a gruff-looking guy. He's handsome, in that square-jawed knightly way; he's got cropped blonde hair and a scar down his face that makes him look twice as scary as he is, and right now, he's got a sharp and irritated frown. He's a big guy, with a weird-looking gun-sword hybrid slung over his shoulder, long and thin and sabresque.

     As people introduce themselves, he just looks annoyed. He introduces himself anyway.

     "Seifer Almasy, Fox Knight, Hand of the Concord, King of the Moon, Kind of a Big Deal."

     He doesn't say much more than that. He does, however, look like he's got a headache he's biting back and he's real pissed-off about it.
Majima Goro     Majima is wearing his Adventurer Equipment.
That is to say, he's come in a white, shiny suit, wearing a headband with feathers sticking out of it. He's still got his eyepatch, and he looks exceedingly garish. How else does one fit in with the crazy adventurers of Eorzea?

.. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. You see? That's the kind of planning that Majima does. He's swaggering, because of course he is, an entirely too enthusiastic grin on his face. He's headed right up to Nero. N'raha's boring, y'know. "..Eh? Ya look like the kinda guy who was talkin' on the radio earlier, eh? Majima Goro. President of Majima Construction."

Nero receives one of his business cards. Made out of steel, and weirdly sharp edges.

He pauses, turning to Seifer and tapping his chin a moment. "...How come ya don't have business cards, anyway?"
Lezard Valeth     "Well now. You have gained my attention."

    A circle of light draws itself nearby the assembling group, the silhouette of Lezard Valeth resolving into existence before he gains definition. If Nero is the Defining Smug in the area, Lezard probably registers somewhere on the Defining Evil Wizard axis.

    As the teleportation circle vanishes, the Sorceror of Midgard casually steps forward, taking a look at the device, the ruins, the Door, the Tower. "Mmm.... Quite the imposing edifice, is it not?" He asks rhetorically. "It seems that you will be wanting my expertise after all. One must separate the wheat from the dross, after all. I am Lezard Valeth, Sorceror of Midgard." He shrugs, smiling at that. "So... Nero tol Scaeva, is it? What must we do to proceed?"
Seifer Almasy      "'cause if you need business cards for people to remember your name, you ain't there yet," Seifer says to Majima, his brows furrowed deep.
Ritsuka Fujimaru The notion of untold riches isn't what draws Jeanne to the research hub today, even if it does help make the decision easier. It's not the promise of unearthing powerful discoveries long forgotten, although that certainly helps as well.

It's the traps. Namely, the idea that there could be traps that may very well end up with several people being maimed terribly. That and boredom have the Dragon Witch approaching the trio in red, decked out in her own blackened armor and shouldering an overly large banner that flaps incessantly behind her.

"I'll be disappointed if these traps prove to be duds." She adjusts her helm to get some of that practically white hair out of her face, then raises an eyebrow as more familiar voices start to make themselves heard. "But... I'm sure we'll find something worthwhile to fight sooner or later. Now when are we going in?"
Guzma The first thing people will probably notice as Team Skull approaches, is the giant spider leading the pack. Ariados is scouting ahead, red-and-black body, yellow-and-purple legs and spinnerets, one single white horn like a unicorn on its head. Behind it trails Guzma, white-haired, golden shades, golden chain and bracelets and watch, black jacket, purple tattoos on his arms. He looks exhausted, a little worn out and fatigued.

Following that is Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp. Tupp is blue-haired wit ha skull cap and bandana, slim. Rapp is a purple-haired girl with a bandana and skull cap, while Zipp is a bit stocky, short brown hair, bandana, and cap.

They approach the Man In Red, Nero tol Scaeva, and flash gang signs. Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp begin doing a hip-hop dance behind Guzma, hyping him up, while Guzma speaks. "Big bad Guzma in the house. Concord represent!" Seifer's annoyance is Noticed, and he gives the boss man some space, letting his image be added to Guzma's mental collection.

All three of the trio, additionally, are wearing big backpacks, the type you store loot in. They're black, like they're school backpacks. The Ariados also has a big bag strapped to it.

"So, there's gonna be loot in here, is that right? Magiwhassitechnology. Sounds great, call dibs."

Guzma smiles, teeth pearly white, and then tilts his head at Tomoe. "Who the heck cares about that? Treasure's way more exciting than that, give me a break, 'hero'."
Ishirou "You can't call dibs on stuff that might be usable in there like this.  There is (probably) a method for evenly distributing loot that is fair based on the work you put into it," I4 responds to Guzma, with a hand on his hip.  "I think it's something about rolling a d100 dice to figure out who gets it."
Athela Valemore     Despite all the dangers facing it Eorzea is still one of the worlds that Athela feels the most comfortable in. Both from the many quests assisting N'Raha, and having some likeness (both good and bad) to her own. Bayern has less conquering empires and more cultists, but there's more coincidental similarities than she can count on one hand. That's not what we're here for though, we're here because a cocky man is proclaiming the discovering of ancient sources, and these things in her experience tend to have considerable dangers accompanying them. A call to action if ever she heard one.

The young knight marches up to the science camp.. Only to take pause at seeing something familiar skitter by. ".. Huh." Her Vaporeon stops at her side, also watching the Ariados pass. "Did not expect to see more Pokemon here." The bizarre gestures of the goons behind their boss is lost to her though.

That's a big crowd to contend with, so she remains off the side, wandering closer to where N'Raha and the other catman linger, giving a familiar nod to the former. "Seems like your... aquaintence," head bob at Nero's general vicinity, "has drawn quite the attention."

Vaporeon sits next to her, the merefox still watching the odd skull-themed people and their spider-mon. Hopefully they're not another cult, don't need more of those.
Melisandre Lebeau Melisandre Lebeau is happy to go visit other worlds and stop incoming apocalypses, in-potentia apocolypses, and in a couple of odd cases, already occured ones. She's also just down to, you know, kind of explore other worlds. It doesn't take her a lot to get out of Kingsmouth, after all.

She just kind of casually follows Majima and Seifer (fellow Concord-mates), nods to them, and then keeps strolling off to go examine the two catboys, with the sort of fascination that comes from being in a group with Staren. However, something catches her attention, and her eyes slide over to 14. There's a pause.

Then, barely audibly for G'raha and N'raha - "Goddesses, that's not fair at all."

She circles them, then goes wandering off again to look at the shiny pile of equipment. Yeah, no, she's not getting into the dibs argument. She's just here to ... ex...plore?
Ritsuka Fujimaru Jeanne laughs derisively when I4 brings up fair distribution. "Or whoever grabs it first takes it. If you want to get more, then you should hurry up." It's certainly not a ploy to get people to charge to their deaths, right?
Majima Goro Majima Goro idly has a bento lunch. He ...didn't before, but now he does. He's casually just snacking on it, taking the time inbetween bites of food to drink from the bottle of beer he also didn't have before, but now does.
"...It ain't about them rememberin ya name," He says to Seifer. "Business cards are just, ya know, part of life."
N'Raha     There's more than a little hubub from the small crowd as people start to trickle in. Raha turns in place to wave to Tomoe and then I4. "Oh. good people who aren't uh... here to tip it over and just suck out the insides, that's... that's great." He pushes a hand through his hair, and holds out his hand to some of the others. Jeanne and Athela, for instance. He recognizes Athela from many many exploits in the past, but Jeanne is a new one on him. He smiles at her and bows a bit. "N'raha, Warrior of Light. Nice to see new and pretty faces out here." but for the most part the crowd seems to be gravitating towards Nero. And that's just fine with him. Raha's here for... other Reasons. Though Lezard gets an especially withering look. Who the hells let him in here. The bastard.

    Nero glances at all the people introducing themselves to him. He won't remember any of their names. It's clear from the look on his face that he simply can't be bothered; people are going to have to prove themselves to him, and that's probably a hill that's not worth climbing. Guzma's gang signs are the first thing he actually acknowledges, slowly lowering his glasses to give him an unimpressed stare. He has bright eyes.

     "In any case," Nero says, boredly, "These are the Rahas. Miqote run out of names every couple years, but don't worry. You won't need to tell them apart. They're both equally-"

    The hackles raise on both the Warrior of Light and the other kid, and Nero cuts himself off before he says anything else. Controls are much more interesting. The redhead catboy speaks up. "I'm G'raha. I'm here to keep an EYE on Nero and also let the rest of you in." A hand reaches up to push at his hair, and it's clear that the young man has mismatched eyes. "It's a very long story, but I'm the key to the whole place."
Seifer Almasy      "Aight," Seifer says, because he absolutely won't remember any names after this is over, "Then open the door, guy. Wastin' time."
Majima Goro Majima Goro gave Nero a business card for a reason. You see? Genius.
He's still eating his food as Nero talks, nodding a bit. "...Yeah, I see the family resemblance, I get it, yeah." Whether or not he actually knows what the deal is is up for debate. As it should be.

"...I mean, I'm still eatin' if the guy wants ta give us his life stor--ah, whatever." He can walk and eat. Why not.
Ishirou I4 just puts a hand across his head while people already getting ready to just sack the place mercilessly and drag everything out.  Worse, he is sure people are going to get angry about stuff and light everything on fire.  A glance is made to Jeane, remembering the last time she got serious.  His skin remembers the burns.  

"The Key to this place?" He asks G'raha, curious about what that means.  "How are you the key to this place?  I thought nobody has been inside it before?" actual genuine curiosity.  Rather than just trying to get passed the backstory bit.  

He gives a glance towards Nero, pretty much figuring the man out.  Well, as far as not wanting to climb the mountain for his respect.  A wave is given to Tomoe, who has been a rather good ally before.
Tomoe Tomoe looks at Guzma for a moment then ignores him and looks over to Seifer whom she's very well aware of how much power in the concord. She's about to say something to Seifer when it seemed to be sorted out over the comm she does glance at Guzma but says nothing.

She doesn't seem startled by the pokemon she seems to know of them but maybe not the types that Team Skull has with them. Majima is also noted that man seems like he'd be in trouble here but she knows what he could do. IF anything Majima will od something to make he go what the heck before the end of this crawl.

She does look to Guzma for a moment.

"You're all trainers I presume? You with a Gym I haven't heard of?"

She gets an interesting impression of Nero he reminds her of a pre-SAO raid guild leader she knew of. This was going to be an interesting day she grins at N'Raha for a moment until G'raha speaks up and she takes a look at him nodding for a moment.

"Some sort of lock is set on it to you? Interesting."

This could get messy but she's going to try to keep to good spirits about things, right? She'll get moving and keep pace with everyone pushing to get upfront as she said she would.
Guzma Guzma is set on taking as much as he can. He wants it. He needs it. The unimpressed stare is registered, and Guzma immediately decides that Nero isn't worth his time and is just a poser, because that soothes his ego. So, he walks near the rest of the Concord as they approach, and says pretty clearly to the others. "Alright. So, Ariados has really strong webs. Really tensile. He can climb on walls, too. We need to cross any weird gaps or anything, I've got that handled."

Guzma seems pretty confident. How bad could this be?
Melisandre Lebeau Hearing what she does, Melisandre loops back around, peering at G'raha. Then N'raha. Then G'raha.

"You have very similar names, but are not exactly siblings, yes? This is my first time visiting your world. Do the prefixes have to do with some sort of rank within your ... clan? Group? Tribe?" She asks, walking backwards so she can watch the two catboys while still moving.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer, as they walk, pulls a wallet out of his coat and flashes it at Majima. It is a very nice wallet. It is leather. It has a fox-head keychain on the end, a stylized triangle with two more triangles on top, the same as his third necklace. It is some sort of very fancy leather.

     "Oughta be friggin' over my moon," He says to Majima, "Card ends up in this wallet and you *know* I care enough to remember your name."
Majima Goro Majima Goro has been busy conversing with Seifer over incredibly important matters. As Seifer flashes the wallet, he covers his face with splayed hand, shaking it slowly. "Arright, arright, still kinda weird, but if /ya insist/, I'll put it down ta cultural differences," He dismissively waves his hand, looking back up to the tower. "...Least I'm feelin' fired up for this crap, now, y'know?"

He's still finishing off his beer, at least, looking around. "...Ehhh. Arright. Ya think they're gonna crack it open this year?"
Athela Valemore Same name but different tribes, if Athela recalls correctly how the Mi'quote name technique goes. She gives N'Raha's offered hand a brief shake of familiarity, then turns her attention to G'Raha as he reveals his unusual eyes and mentions being a key. At this point Nero and the crowd about him is put aside for a moment, this is much more interesting and possibly useful later.

She makes a short bowing gesture to the mismatched mi'quote. "Athela Valemore, Knight-Errant of Keldeo.. Not that it would mean much to you." The introduction is just a force of habit. "We have assisted N'Raha several times, that is enough." Instead she jestures at her Pokemon, that could almost be mistaken for a carbunkle with fins. "And this is my partner, Sprite." Sprite wags a forepaw and chrrs, sounding like a light brook babbling.

Then she does finally turn her attention to the rest of the gathering. "Sounds as if others are eager to get to work." Her gaze does fall on Nero again briefly. But she's trying to not let the 'former engineer of Garlean Empire' comment color her opinion. People -can- change, after all.
Ritsuka Fujimaru As Jeanne gets a better look at everyone that's arrived, she finds herself feeling both intrigues and bored by people in equal measure. I4's caution draws a dull satre from the Avenger despite the practicality in it. Tomoe recognizing N'raha gets another poker face, although it might be more from the latter complimenting her more than anything else. N'raha himself, though, gets an odd sort of smile in turn.

It's definitely not a pleasant smile, but it's... A smile of sorts. "Jeanne d'Arc, Dragon Witch of France. I look forward to seeing how you fare in there." Her tone suggests she's not hoping for that to go well. Guzma, meanwhile, gets an amused chuckle at that gung-ho attitude, and she looks towards Seifer and Majima as they go about some strange business with cards and wallets.

"Is that really so important? I thought you were knights and... Construction workers, not petty businessmen." She just doesn't seem to understand.

Melisandre... She's not sure what to make of that one yet. Athela, though, doesn't get even a slightly masked look of annoyance. "Oh. You're here, too." Jeanne spits off to the side, then grins as Lezard comes into view. "Ah, the one that wanted to kill the gods or some such. Don't disappoint me."

And with that Jeanne starts heading towards the tower! She slows down when G'raha introduces himself and talks about his importance to the tower, but quickly speeds up once it sounds like he's going to... TALK.

Naturally, she's going to start kicking at the door.
Lezard Valeth     Lezard looks directly back to N'raha, a smile on his face as the Warrior of Light provides him with that withering look. He puts a hand to his chest and gives a florid bow in response, absolutely putting the boot in on the Fighting Catman and wordlessly declaring his intention to Be Right Here, Thank You Very Much.

    Nero's haughty attitude doesn't even seem to dampen Lezard's spirits as he turns to swivel his gaze over to the other catboy. He squints at the mismatched eyes, frowning for a moment contemplatively. Instead, however, he simply gestures, indicating what Seifer said. "Then be about it, and quickly. This is not a social gathering, the scent of angry cat is far too prevalent for my tastes."

    He is not getting anywhere near the business card discussion.
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga is not late. A witch arrives precisely when she means to, etc. etc. Whatever, she is here suddenly, leaning on her walking stick as she makes her way over to join the surprisingly large crowd. Her eyebrows rise at the sight. Clearly she hadn't expected so many to come. She looks to N'Raha as she moves to his side, smiling to those others she knows in greeting. "Big crowd," she murmurs to him. That's probably good? Could make for lighter work, or complicate things.

Inga looks between N'Raha and G'Raha. That's not going to be confusing at all, nope.
N'Raha     Frankly, G'raha looks VERY RELIEVED at Seifer and Majima, and happily starts to head for the gates of the Tower, N'raha keeping up beside him. Tails are swishing, ears are flicking. The pair of Miqo'te are pretty excited and or agitated about this. G'raha speaks up as he traverses over the remains of what was a Magitek Gate that lay unmolested for eons. "The Allagans date back to over 5000 years ago, and THIS is their capital, or one of them anyways. They ruled for millenia and then perished in flames at the end of the Fourth Calamity. But in that time, they... pretty much created, perfected and then lost the pinnacle of magitechnology." He waves a hand to Nero's contraption behind the group. "Which the Garleans are ever so pleased to pick apart and use for themselves."

    "As frustrating as it is to be dealing with two of the same airheaded cat," Nero says, not looking up from the console, "We require at least G'raha Tia's aid to access the systems of the Crystal Tower. He carries the Eye of Allag, a unique signifier that allows him to interact with and activate its magitek. Probably."
    Nero holds up his finger. "Rather, it allows him to interact and activate most Allagan Magitek, and since the Crystal Tower is Allagan in origin, it stands to reason."

    N'raha pointedly ignores Nero and then looks to Melsi, honestly surprised by the question. His ears sort of flatten out and then he taps at his chest. "I'm with the N' tribe, and he's with the G' tribe and... uh. Raha is a somewhat common first name among the Miqo'te." It's like if they'd both been named Frank or Jim, I guess. He pats at his armor, and then dons his helmet as Jeanne takes off and charges at the main gates. He pulls the rather Large Ax he's got from his back and trots after her. Time to pick up the pace, apparently.

    Jeanne's the first one there, kicking at the doors, and despite her rather Servant Like Strength, they do not budge.
    G'raha's presence, however, starts to have an effect, the large doors starting to shiver and rumble in anticipation. The redhead catman huffs, and then peels back the hair covering that rather striking Eye of his and steps forward to start pushing at the doors, trying to get them open. "I would have had some method of doing this earlier but with the gates in the way I-"

    The doors do not open, but rather vanish altogether, and an elaborate energy pathway opens up in their place, projecting a coherent light bridge up and into the facility. The moment Jeane tries to kick again, and crosses the threshold? She vanishes in a wash of light, that's matched at the far side of the bridge. Nero, having ghosted the group, immediately lets out a happy breath, and charges in after the Servant.
Seifer Almasy      The door opens as G'raha starts talking. It's a long speech about Allagan technology. Seifer, bless him, actually does try and follow it; he won't REMEMBER any of it, but he tries to follow it. He nods at the right times; he says the right things to show interest; he really, honestly is interested. But...well. It's basically a coinflip. He'll find out later if it manages to stick.

     "Fourth calamity, huh," Seifer says. "Sounds rough. You guys had a lot of those, I'm guessin'."

     And then the door opens.

     Well that's cool.

     Jeanne vanishes. Nero goes running in. Seifer walks in right behind. He's generally up front. He's a confident guy, and a meleer besides.

     He does, however, take the time to flash his wallet at Majima again, with a look of *seriously* on his face, because he's not letting that go.
Majima Goro Majima Goro taps his forehead, listening as Nero and the two cats bicker. And explain cat history. Which, y'know, that's two more topics of history than he signed up for, he figured this was just gonna be some rad--
...It occurs to him, briefly, what he could absolutely do, under the right circumstances. Yes. He's going to have to keep his eye open for the right opportunity...yes.

He looks up to see Jeanne kick a door and vanish. And then the sunglasses guy run after her. Looks like things are finally starting. Good. He picks up his pace, legs and arms moving rhythmically. He is, absolutely, without question.

As Seifer flashes his wallet, Majima is ready this time.
He is holding up a stainless steel business card holder. It's engraved with 'Maji' on the front. It glints in the light. Seifer gets a shrug of surprising insistence and meaning, before he follows along into the--oh, right, tower of ancient magitechnology full of who knows what.
He lost track, what with the other thing.
Guzma As the door open and things are explained, Guzma just kinda listens over. As Jeanne disappears, Nero runs after him, and Seifer walks in behind, the Team Skull Trio looks between each other, as Guzma shouts out. "Team Skull, let's go!"

And then, the whole group walks into the light, Ariados at the front to intercept any dangers.
Ishirou "The eye of Allag?  Huh...well, Mr. G'raha, if you don't mind I'd like to run some scans on you.  They're not invasive, I just need my POD here to scan your eyes so I can run the data through my systems to double check the data."

The door opens, well rather /vanishes/ completely.  Once the Servant goes in, she vanishes, which causes I4 to tilt his head slightly.  I4, without hesitation, runs right in after her because the last thing he wants is her anywhere near ancient secrets to burn.

Because she burns things.
Athela Valemore "Impressive," is all Athela has to say of the door opening sequence. Let's keep this on the move before some horrific trap springs to life around them. Though not be hasty about it, that's just as dangerous.

"Be on your guard." Athela draws her sword-glaive, Resolute Blade gleaming a bit as she does, and moves to follow but protectively in front of G'Raha as the group proceeds. "We know not what waits ahead."

If he's the key to this, so to speak, he's important enough to protected, and as a knight it is her duty to do so.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer gives the card holder a long, long look as they walk in.

     He sighs, and pushes his wallet back into his inner coat pocket. OK. He hasn't admitted defeat. He's just chosen to agree that that's pretty impressive.
Ritsuka Fujimaru Despite going for the door, Jeanne does slow down in her kicking as G'raha speaks. She doesn't stop entirely, and she probably didn't catch all of it, but there are a few choice tidbits to take away from that.

One: G'raha's useful, at least for getting through this place. Two: That's about it. She keeps kicking even as the door fades, stomping down on the ground in front of her to catch herself at the sudde displacement.

"... Hm. Impressive, if they really made this place so long ago. But it'll take more than a teleportation spell to kill anyone!" She shouts in challenge at nobody in particular, then starts advancing once more while her banner continues flapping behind her.

"They know a thing about presentation. This place could make for a good arena..." She comments, glancing back as everyone starts filing in while continuing to move ahead steadily. "So. They have the technology for weaponry and movement, but what of their food?"

Priorities.
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga sighs softly as N'Raha takes off after some of the others. She'll be in the back, per usual, attempting to keep them all alive. So she looks to G'Raha, listening as he explains. "And how is it that you came into possession of this artifact?" she asks. The heterochromia is noteworthy as well. She's spent a lot of time in this world, and she's not seen red eyes such as that.

When her gaze moves to take in the others, she feels a familiar tug, her eyes drawn to Melisandre. A small smile. "Ah, another," she remarks.

...And so the rushing in continues, and Inga grumbles. Well, if they move too fast for her, they just won't get healing. Hmph.
Melisandre Lebeau "Awesome." Melsi breathes as she watches G'raha do his thing.

However, she lags a bit behind. "Ah, so it's like a surname, but it's ... prefixed. Okay. That's pretty cool, and good to know. I wouldn't want to insult anyone, anyways. Wait, four calamities? Want me to go stop the third?" A pause, then she puts on some speed and bounces into the light after everyone else.
Tomoe Tomoe is making mental notes about what G'Raha has to say about the Allagans this sounds pretty serious. So is this where the Garleans magitech came from? Either reverse engineered Allgan or them finding out a lost bit of understanding of how it worked so they could make their own creations? This certainly sounded pretty serious and honestly interesting given she did enjoy history back when she went to a normal school. She also catches sight of Inga as she's popped in as well.

She looks to Jeanne kicking on the door and getting nothing she'll stop as G'Raha gets there and the doors just full-on vanish leaving the way in clear. With this being the state of things Tomoe can get a good look and lets out a low whistle.

"Impressive."

As people keep going in? She's going to do the same right after Jeanne and anyone
Melisandre Lebeau There's a bit of a moment, and-- Melsi swings around, here and there, pausing as her senses settle.

"Hi!" She greets Inga. "Funny finding someone else here."
Lezard Valeth     "It is quite impressive, at least from out here. Perhaps what lies within will be even more interesting." Lezard smiles. "Still, why leave the mysteries of the Allagan to the Garleans when much superior hands are right here to take advantage of them?"

    Lezard glances over to Nero at the explanation. "The Eye of Allag? So the otherwise unremarkable cat-man happens to also possess the secrets of accessing this place." He sighs. "How curious fate must be."

    He turns to watch the doors indeed respond to the gifted Miq, and he arches an eyebrow at the energy path. "Fascinating." He says to himself. "Such a display of power strikes one as almost excessive, does it not? A physical bridge would be far more efficient."

    Lezard kneels next to the lightbridge, and examines it for several seconds, pursing his lips. "Mmmm...." His expression inscrutable for the moment, he stands and takes the bridge after them.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve swoops between the various crystals, the chain gauntlets hooking onto each as she approaches the Tower. It got more and more impressive the closer she got, and it was honestly kinda pretty.

Once she gets to the tower, she unhooks from the wall, landing in a three-piint crouch, hoping everyone could see her awesome maneuver...Aaaaaand everyone's gone inside already.

Well, there goes that plan.

"W-Wait for me!" She shouts, armor clinking a bit as she gets out of her dramatic pose and slips in behind everyone else. She takes the bridge across, too, taking a moment to really admire it.

Of course, now there's a short, purple armored doll-person standing in the middle of the bridge behind them that wasn't there before.
Inga Freyjasdottir "Indeed, it has been some time since I've met another. I'm Inga Freyjasdottir," she introduces, looking her over once more. "I sense you use blood magic as well. Excellent. We will have our work cut out for us, I'm sure," she adds with a roll of her eyes, then does her best to keep up with the group.
N'Raha                                  FULL PARTY                                

                       --LABYRINTH OF THE ANCIENTS--                        

    The party is rather comfortably deposited, upright and on foot in the main entrance of what is... a very ornate and elaborate and... frankly massive foyer. Is this an actual castle? A capital? Some place where people live? No. No this is not. This is in fact someplace wholly unwelcoming and awesome. Grand sweeping architecture towers over the party, and astride either side of the massive walkway they enter in on, there's a seething, roiling sea of blindingly bright amber liquid that washes up against the foundations and pillars of this place. Gouts of the aetheric liquid spray high into the air and wash down from fountains in the wall. It would appear that you all have found the... sewers or power plant or something. This clearly isn't the main entrance.

    G'raha and Nero are already pulling out their own separate devices to take readings and measurements, pointedly ignoring EVERYONE ELSE. Questions later, right now they're figuring out where the hell this is and what the hell is going on here.

    N'raha, for his part, sighs and hefts his ax a few times. Ahead of the group is a series of stairs and a vast crossroads that leads in many directions. "...A maze. A Maze that's literally floating on a sea of magic. Great." A glance across the crowd and... yeah, no this is going to interest FAR TOO MANY people here. He clicks his teeth and sidles closer to Inga, his tail flicking and puffing up.

    ((THEME SONG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gkz0YYrIrc ))
Ishirou "Wow," I4 says, in awe.  This place was amazing if this was their sewer he can't imagine what the other levels looked like.  Of course, this could have been a power plant as well.  Taking it all in, he coughs and then finally looks around to try and get a good feel of this place.  

"POD, Wide-area scan, and start IDing irregularities and curiosities," he says, as he brings up a holographic screen and starts typing on a holographic keyboard.  

He starts trying to map the area, trying to ID anomalies and where to best start searching first.  "Uh-huh, you can do whatever you want," he says absent-minded towards Seifer.  This was FAR too interesting for him to not give most of his full attention.
Seifer Almasy      G'raha and Nero go off on their own. Seifer apparently could not give less of a damn. He says over the radio, "Aight, so, since there's like seven Concord here, an' the rest of you are freelancin', I'm makin' the executive decision - we're goin' left, 'cause goin' right seems like somethin' you shouldn't do. Y'all can go right if you want to but the Concord's goin' left, so, good luck on your own."

     And then, like a proper Gunbreaker, he just starts walking up the leftmost staircase. He's main tanking, what more do you want?
Ritsuka Fujimaru Now things are getting significantly more impressive. Jeanne can practically taste the potential for maiming in the air, and she finds herself grinning while she draws her blade from its sheath.

"This is more like it... Maybe I shouldn't be getting my hopes up, but if everything works as well as those fountains, then there should plenty of ... Something or another to fight." Chuckling to herself, she raises an eyebrow as Seifer takes the lead to head towards the left.

"Hm. Lead the way, then, oh brave knight." Still smirking, she pauses briefly to watch where I4's going as well as G'raha and Nero, but... Well. Jeanne's not exactly the investigative sort, and the only slight bit of testing she does is tossing a fireball into a fountain to see what happens before continuing onwards.
Athela Valemore Athela Valemore lets out a soft and slightly exasperated sigh as both Nero and G'Raha are distracted by doing their science/magic research things, and everyone else is either in awe of the architecture or too eager to rush ahead. Then looks down at her Vaporeon. "Stay with those two, keep an eye on them." Keep them out of trouble and/or killing each other for whatever reason.

Then peers up the stairs. A lot of this doesn't sit right with her... but sometimes the only way to deal with a potential trap is to spring it, before someone more at risk does. So, with weapon in hand, she marches after the rest of the group, not really caring what way they go, since there's no way to know which way is what without exploring some.

She's on high alert though, constantly watching for something to leap out and attack them, or spring a trap, or the dozen other things that exist just to grind adventurers into dust.
Majima Goro Majima Goro is, in fact, going left. That said, this is clearly a dangerous locale. A dangerous locale filled with weird tides of obvious magical energy. This is also very clearly not the proper front door where you greet guests. And so, he prepares more properly.
There is a click and a hiss, as he pops a can open. The word 'Tau---er' is visible around his hand, as he flares up with a pink fire. "..Arright," He declares, following right behind the 'main tank' as he finishes chugging the energy drink.
"..That's how this crap works, right? Seifer, ya keep 'em turned away from me, and I'm gonna have a lot of fun and get crazy."
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga smiles to N'Raha, placing a hand on his arm for a moment. "This does not seem the place to indulge in the Odin-rage. Keep your head," she advises, then draws her knife from her belt, slices into her inner arm, then flicks a ward of N'Raha, followed by the others that look likely to charge into melee.

Inga takes a moment to look around the room, shaking her head. It makes her feel very small. Not that she isn't used to that. "Left seems as good a direction as any," she sighs. Stairs. Always with the stairs. Time for backpack healer.
Tomoe Tomoe jaw hangs open for a moment Tomoe has seen a lot in her time in the multiverse. The strange amber liquid which could be lava it could be not? She's not sure but either way, this isn't the main way in they found what could be a service way in and if this is the service way in? What would the main part of the tower look like? She would find out soon enough she thought and she looked to N'Raha for a moment and says.

"It's up there with the floating castle from back home and then some. Come on let's get to it. I suspect there's likely something now awake and not happy we're here."

She breaks into a run. As this happens? She'll ready her shield and draw her sword as she moves.

Given how many Concord are here she figured it would be a freelancing job as Seifer starts raid calling. It doesn't honestly bother her much at all. She'll head to the left as everyone moves out and she'll keep an eye on her comrade or for signs of other trouble that might be here.
Guzma Guzma considers having the team split up, as they enter. But Seifer has already told them which direction to go in. And he's not going to disagree with the boss, especially when he wants to impress him, as fatigued as he is from a previous fight and the five-mile run he tried to take today and almost died from. As the liquid sprays, Ariados moves away, and the group starts heading up front. Rapp also grabs a Pokeball, releasing a purple blind bat from it.

Ariados starts spraying light webs as far down and around a corridor as it can, feelinbg them to see if anything touches or interacts, trying to map the place. Zubat screeches, sending echolocation to bounce off walls and figure out what's ahead. Between the webs and the echolocation...

They should be able to get a good idea of where to go.
Lezard Valeth     Lezard resolves within the Tower. He is quite familiar with the sensation of teleportation... But the sight that greets him causes him to pause regardless. He looks around, staring at the manifest aetherfluid for several moments, his gaze then turning to the massive device hanging above them, then to the architecture. His eyes widen for a moment, a flash of... /something/ there, before it settles back into his typically wizardly gaze. "Impressive." He says simply. "Come, everyone. Let us cling together for the moment and deal with the inevitable guardians of this place. "The amount of raw power flowing through this edifice is phenomenal. The technique to harness this without degradation through the time it has undoubtedly been here would be masterful."

    He glances over at Nero and G'raha, who both run off to do their thing, and he shrugs, sighing. "It seems our benefactors have found their own distraction. Let us do the same."

    Lezard concurs with Seifer, letting him take the lead while he Black Mages in the back.
Mauve Gauntlet Oh hey, a familiar voice, kinda. Mauve follows the guy with the  sword up the staircase, because the tank always leads, and she's just melee DPS! Though...

"Um...I might be able to scout ahead if we need extra eyes." Mauve says, holding up one of her gauntlets.
Melisandre Lebeau "Melisandre Lebeau. You with any of the three, in or out of our world?"

Seifer declares which way they're going, and, well, he's the tank, it feels like, so Healers Adjust, and she trots after him. Admittedly, half of her gaze is on G'raha and N'raha, thoughtfully.
N'Raha     I4 - You, along with G'raha and Nero are getting the same sorts of readings: This place is full of dangerous bullshit. Falling off the platforms will probably liquify you in that sea of magic. There's dark aspected critters all along the main floors of this place. The path that Siefer is main taking the party is particularly aspected towards toxins and Dead Things.
    G'raha huffs a bit, pulling a pair of overly elaborate goggles from his face. "Why are there so many voidkin here? What... there isn't any reason for them to be in here."
    "There isn't any reason for us to be in here, either," Nero says offhandedly, "Perhaps you aren't as special as you think you are. Maybe the Voidkin have the Eye of Allag, too. Or, far more likely, the Allagans were involved with this sort of science as well. It shouldn't take a genius to figure that out, but I suppose if you have one present, you may as well use all the resources at your disposal." G'raha rolls his eyes.

    EVERYONE ELSE - N'raha, being a gentleman, hikes Inga up onto his shoulders and gives her a piggyback ride up and over the stairs.
    The pathway to the left curves up and over the pool of Deadly Magic and into a lower level, that's merely hazardous looking, if not for a motley crew of voidkin that floats and wanders around on top of platforms. Floating eye monsters and skeletons and little demon imps all crowd around and seem like they're just waiting to fuck some shit up.

    Unfortunately, that seems to be a crowd of heavily armed pile of offworlder adventurers. There's a general screeching of noise and rage from the trash, and they charge in at anyone they can reach.
Ritsuka Fujimaru And there's the first sign of combat. Although Jeanne had wanted to see people get maimed earlier and still wants to now, she's getting a little stir crazy already. Plus, there's things to let loose on that won't have people on her ass, and it's not every day she can just do that freely.

"Stay out of my way if you don't want to die!" Jeanne bellows as she charges right into the fray, sword and spear-banner in hand as she thrusts, stabs, and immolates everything and anything she can get her weapon on. She's not going all out just yet, but it certainly looks like it as she gets that warmup in for whatever else the group may face relatively soon. Once the others start moving in, she'll dial it back just a bit to not burn herself out too early.
Ishirou The POD raises an antenna from its black box.  -Scan Initiated.- It chimes in, as the screen slowly shuts down and I4 starts trying to catch up with the group.  He can scan a lot from here, sure, but scanning it from up close would be probably more valuable in data.  

He can dump all of the readings later, and go through them to try and find more stuff out.  This place seemed like a treasure trove of energy.
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga, from upon N'Raha's back, shakes her head at Melisandre's question. "No, I am not affiliated with any of those groups," she informs her. "Not that I was not approached...aggressively. But no."

Once she's set down by N'Raha it seems combat is incoming. "Go on," she motions to the catman, and gets ready to cast. Fire seems appropriate, as there are a number of them. She tries to aim her blast so that it catches as many of the creatures as possible in it's radius.
Majima Goro Majima doesn't do 'dungeon crawls'. This one's a bit of a trip. His eye raises as what stands before them is not, say, a variety of angry men in suits, maybe one large man holding a couch over his head imperiously blocking a door way. This is skeletons and weird flappy babies. And eyes with wings, which, y'know, kinda poignant.

Still, he is not Kazuma Kiryu. While he loves to rush into stuff like this, it seems like the bad time to do it. Jeanne rushes in right past him. He wasn't expecting that. He shrugs, and starts moving more rhythmically, arms crossing and uncrossing.

And then there's a single skeleton that isn't paying attention to him. That's the one he goes for. He grabs onto its arm, leaping into the air. He kicks an Ahriman, using it to propel him forward, reaching around to grab onto the Skeleton's other arm as he kicks into an imp. And then he swings around, kicking into another skeleton--he's not -technically- pole dancing on the skeleton, but it makes an incredibly small level of difference.

<<Mad Dog>>
Majima Goro
Level 50 Dancer (Synced)
Tomoe The party is making good time she'll have to trust in I4, G'raha and Nero for intel update which they deliver on. Voidsent and dead things? Oh that's concerning and soon she sees why. There are also environmental hazards that they were warned about as well as the poison and magic pools.

"Undead too okay then."

She'll chant a quick spell with golden runes dancing about her body. Tomoe then moves in taking care to avoid the hazards she was warned about and off will go her taunting abilities and she calls out.

"Over here you want some of this come get it!"

She'll then let loose an barrage of light rays to pull as many as she can on to her and she'll start trying to hold their attention once she's done that using her sword and shield to let the rest of the crew here be able to cut them down far more easily.

"You want my spicey brains come get it!"
Guzma The webs are triggered by the monsters, as is the echolocation. Both Pokemon make noises, and Guzma nods. Rapp has Zubat fly high above, while Guzma coordinates with her briefly in whispers before they move to attack.

"Ariados. Toxic Thread!" "Zubat, Toxic!"

Toxic threads spray of mouth and rear of the Ariados, weaving in between the giant mass of enemies and slowing them down, making it harder for them to move. They poison anything that touches them, debilitating and weakening with intense force. Acid, meanwhile, sprays out of Zubat's mouth, venom moving to coat all of the delightful monsters in as much poison as humanly possible.
Athela Valemore Athela Valemore scowls briefly as Voidkin are brought up. "Are not these this world's equivilent to hellspawn?" she asks mainly of the catmen, though she's not going to be surprised if Nero pipes in simply because he believes he it smarter than the entire room. "Mayhaps they have something to do with the Allagans disappearance...."

Sure enough, the rooms are full of them, whatever you want to call them. "It would appear the only way to proceed is through them." Though for a moment she regards the platforms, and the seething magics churning around them. A direct route through would be difficult, especially with needing to keep their Exposition Guests alive as well.

That is not an issue the young knight needs to deal with right now, though. Those with the right senses (or scanning devices) would detect the brief swell of elemental energy around her, and then released in a burst of water to launch herself into the air. The angle catapults her up, and then down, at the same time as she thrusts her weapon out and ice crystallizes around the blade, aimed to plunge into the eye of one of the Ahrimans! If the lunging lance doesn't cripple it, hopefully the freezing cold that erupts on impact will.
Seifer Almasy      Voidkin, huh.

     Man these things are weird. They look like Heartless mixed with Shadows. Creepy things with too many mouths and too-big eyes and wings and all kinds of darkity dark dark about them. Skeletons, too. Skeletons are weird when they're not in a body.

     Alright, well.

     Jeanne goes charging in. Seifer's right beside her. He's not shouting, he's just *going* - him and Jeanne in the frontlines. Ariados's toxic webs fire out around them; Seifer moves as if he knows exactly where they are without looking, ducking and weaving through the webs, using them as cover, even getting in the way once to distract a Voidkin and then darting to the left to let the web take it. His own blade dances, just as Majima's doing - it whirls, it spins, and it moves at impossible angles, performing impossible stunts of impossible skill. More than once Seifer kills the momentum in the middle of a move to strike from the other side, or stabs and then stops stabbing midway through to turn it into a hilt-butt. Much of what he's doing isn't just hard, it's *literally* impossible.

     He ducks around a blast of ice as Majima and Tomoe let loose their barrage, bringing his blade up into one of the skeletons' jawbones. Another skeleton gets Seifer's fingers inside its mouth, where he snaps.

     The one with the blade in it is shaken apart as Seifer pulls the trigger. The skeleton with his fingers inside its mouth tries to clamp down a moment too late, as the Soul Power Gunpowder Blast rips apart its head from the inside.

     Seifer takes charge at once.

     "You," he points at Athela, "Go back up him," he points at Majima, "And get all over the battlefield! You're on lockdown!"

     "You," he says to Guzma, "You get with her," he says to Tomoe, "An' protect her! Target loose problems that get past them!"

     "You," he says to and Jeanne, "You're up here with me."

     "An' the rest of you sorceresses-" and lezard- "stay back an' keep everybody up or shoot down anything gettin' too close to the Ranged Team!"
Melisandre Lebeau "Well, alright then." Melsi says comfortably.

However, there is combat, and why can't she get away from the undead? What is going on with this world? With all of these worlds? Why can't the dead just stay dead?! She just has this annoyed, tired look on her face. Why, world(s).... why.

However, things can't be helped, and after deciding on her favorite cat, she sinks her teeth into her thumb, drawing blood with such a casual motion she must do it a lot. Note to self, withdraw talisman later. That done, she turns her hand, blood at her fingertips, and flicks it towards the crowd of enemies. As the droplets take to the air, they solidify in a matter of moments, turning into literal blood darts.

"So was this expected, or not?"
N'Raha     Laser beams. Breakdancing. Swords. Shields. Spears. Acid Breath. It's all a full barrage on this flock of nasties and... Let's be honest, there's not a lot that this group of mooks is going to do to stop the full force of most of an alliance.
    That said, I4, Inga and Melsi, alongside Raha will get the barest warning before- poison gas, noxious and cloying and scouring, starts to rush into the chamber, roiling and pooling at the deepest points, hampering people's movements, penning them in unless they want to start suffering the consequences.

    And that's when the second wave of voidkin rush in, more frantic than the first. Something is driving them into the crowds.
    There's a pack of skeletons that specifically try and flank the group, rushing the back line, heading for Guzma and Ina and Melsi, wading through the mist.
    Jeanne and Seifer and Majima get rushed by a pack of flying Ahriman, wings flapping and eye beams lazering and curses spewing. There's something down this hallway that they're protecting, that's for sure.
    Mauve and I4, taking up the trailing pack, get cut off by a squad of swooping Succubi.

    Raha, because he doesn't care for his personal safety, charges up and through the fog next to Inga and Melsi, and grins a bit under his helmet, cracking a floating eye in the mouth with the flat of his ax. "This seems familiar, somehow."
Lezard Valeth     Lezard advances through the paths before him like he was walking through his own home. Mainly because this is basically like his own home with the dials cranked to 11 as far as he's concerned.

    The creatures that bar his way look deadly enough, but there is an entire squad of elites, and Seifer is leading the way. Lezard simply walks through the battle and finds an appropriate position to place himself, before he begins bombarding the enemy groups with fire, lightning, and ice, laying waste to them with increasingly overkill blasts of magic. If the poison begins gathering where he is, or some of the minions attempt to drive him off, he simply teleports to another location and resumes his work. At least he is doing the favor of prioritizing targets based on who's not on Seifer.
Ishirou I4 finally catches up, someone is shouting orders, but his priorities are focused on getting data for the rest of the group.  He's about to start running scans again when Voidkin started coming out from everywhere.  Including a pair of succubi that drop down at him.  

With a sudden appearance of weaponry, a small long sword comes to his hand as he dashes up towards the Succubus, and attempts to counter her ambush with an assault of his own.  With hand movements, the sword moves at his command, aiming to slash at the voidkin, and attempts to knock her down to the ground.  

This is followed up with a blast of explosive fire, aiming to detonate the creature, before landing.  With a bit of huffing, I4 shakes his head.  "Guess I'll have to defend myself in here.."
Majima Goro Majima Goro has four real 'styles' of combat, meaningfully speaking. Luckily for everyone in this room that is not a voidsent, this one is the area of effect one. "EEEEEhehe-hahaha!" He's spinning with his back on the ground through the monsters, in continual little circles, swinging his legs around like a tornado.

He gets up for just a moment, as two Ahriman--Ahrimans? Ahrimen?

Regardless, there's one in front of him, and one behind, both of them powering up their eye lasers. And that's when his eye flashes.

Heat Action: Essence of Friendly Fire
He ducks under the first Ahriman, elbowing it in the back of its..bulbous body just in time for its ally to shoot directly into its eye. Now behind the two voidsent, Majima swings his fist around, punching one of the eye demons and sparking it to fire directly into its ally who just hit it, before he's already around, delivering another elbow to the back of the second one.

Oh, hey, poison gas. He should probably do something about that.

He cracks his neck, hopping up to a taller platform. Well. This cramps his style. He'll have to figure something else out if it's gonna stay like this.
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga nods at Seifer's directions. It is sound tactics, as far as she can tell. "I will do just that," she responds, and keeps the fire coming until it looks like someone needs to be healed. She has her staff to help her channel the elemental magic in one hand and her knife for blood magic in the other.

She lets out a small laugh as N'Raha passes. "It almost as though we fight monsters often, isn't it?" she quips. Or is it an Echo?

The poison gas is troublesome, but she is fairly sure her and Melisandre can withstand that unpleasantness if necessary. An incling of the Sight leads her to look over her shoulder and spot the incoming skeletons, "Skeletons at our back," she says, then turns to face them. The air around her drops many degrees, ice crystalizing on the floor beneath her, the runes along her staff lighting up a cold, white-blue light as she casts an ice spell, her breath misting as she speaks the incantation.

That should slow them down, at the very least.

To Melisandre, she shoots an appreciative glance for her blood magic. "Nice," she compliments.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve isn't a metal type avatar, so poison is /bad/ for her. She fires one of her fists at the oncoming succubus, hopefully pulling herself onto its face and out of the poison. She'll then punch it in the face with her other hand a few times.
Tomoe The first wave of voidkin is like a wave on the shore that is the alliance. The monster break upon the power of the alliance and a second wave comes, on top of that there's poison rushing in and Tomoe is moving to get to higher ground as she was warned. As much as she'd like to fly in this situation. She needs to save her limited flight time in a situation like this for emergencies. She'll keep hacking and slashing he way thorough the monster as she gets to higher making for one of the inbound Succubi which she moves to slash and knock the flying voidkin out of the skies.

The sounds of battle are all around her and the creatures keep coming, just how many were down here? It wasn't in her matter of mind if they would win, but /how long/ it would take to get to something that was a true threat. She was certainly far worse things would be sleeping in the depths of the tower, this was only the first encounter of likely many.
Ritsuka Fujimaru There's something oddly nostalgic about all of this. Not necessarily about fighting strange monsters and weird flying midgets, but fighting in a semi-coordinated group. Granted, those memories might not really belong, but...

It keeps her a little more grounded for once. When Seifer starts throwing out strategy, Jeanne gets to work carving and stabbing everything in sight. When those Ahriman start harassing them, she goes right for those big dumb eyes and those goofy little limbs. Instead of just charging ahead blindly, though, she actually does her part in keeping the beefy knight's and the one-eyed construction worker's backs covered.

When that poison gets called out, Jeanne even tries to do a bit of cleanup in the form of spreading fire. Lots of fire. Specifically, she leaves some burning patches of dark flames on the ground, partially to try slowing it down and partially to see what happens when magical fire interacts with... Whatever that purple ooze is.
Athela Valemore Athela Valemore withdraws her weapon from the victim of her previous strikes, just in time for more mobs to descend towards them. She heard Seifer's shouts, there's just no time to give sort of response save a vage grunt of acknowledgement. Just act.

Her jumping assault already has her on a platform, its the incoming assault that causes her divine intuition to flare. She whirls around, coming to face the skeletons trying to outflank the group from another direction. Lockdown and get all over the battlefield?

She can do that.

The hydrophilic knight springs into action, almost literally sliding across the platform towards the army of bones. As she closes in on them she slings out her weapon to hold it at full length, plants one foot and pushes off with the other. This throws her into a spin, the divine weapon unleashing a surging arc of water in it's wake, cutting through whatever the blade does not like a vicious riptide.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer's not all that worried about the poison gas.

     Yeah, he's not exactly immune to poison, but what he is is really good at dealing with stuff that gets up in your lungs or your eyes or on your skin.

     As soon as it starts coming his white coat is off. Strong arms bare to the shoulder bind it around his face. The coat's hanging parts are bound around his arms, while his pants are pulled up slightly and his gloves are trusted to do their work. In effect he's sealed himself off from the environment. And from seeing.

     Aaaaand this doesn't stop him at all. In fact, if anything, he's fighting *more* precisely, *more* perfectly. A blade that had already surpassed common sense and physics is now moving with beyond-human capacity. Each slice hits twice. Each cut hits twice. His gunblade practically sings as it tastes Voidkin flesh; every pull of the trigger is a new drumbeat in a rhythm only Seifer can hear.

     And evidently he can see just fine, too. That makes no sense, but he's clearly parrying attacks, even attacks that are coming from behind him in mid-swing at an impossible angle. He's dodging attacks he shouldn't be able to see, even if he had his eyes uncovered.

     It's kind of weird to watch.

     Seifer just *goes* into the mist. The crowd of Ahriman are cut down around him, unhesitating and unceasing. He's The Hero, after all. Nothing Super Bad is going to happen to him. He's also unwilling to let his mobility to be compromised - whatever, bring it on, poison mist, he'll just cut his way through.
Guzma As the skeletons come and the poison fog rolls in, Guzma shouts out, as he starts moving towards a higher platform, quickly climbing as best as he can. "Ariados, Pin Missile." "Zubat, Venoshock!"

The grunts move with Guzma, as Ariados suddenly /leaps/ out of the poison, firing several green-energize needles at the skeletons to rip through them and pin them to the ground and force them into its threads. Zubat, meanwhile, fires at anything that tries to move past him and Tomoe, the giant blast of purple poison this time doing /direct damage/, attempting to melt through any of the voidborn in its way.

Guzma, clearly, does not fight himself. But he's /in sync/ with his Pokemon, as is Rapp. They know how to command them.
Melisandre Lebeau "You know, I was thinking the same thing. Surrounded by various undead and/or mythological creatures and/or supernatural creatures in essence with a bunch of my friends and very little else to run on? No, yeah, this is absolutely normal for like half of us, I'm sure." Melsi says, shaking her hand as she drags out a delicate talisman - a glass dagger with simple charms tied to it, that she uses to slice open the palms on both hands.

"Hold still, please?" She requests of the tank, drawing a complex circle on any patch of bare skin she can reach, before she steps back, closes her eyes, and wills the charm to life, forming a nearly invisible red honeycomb around him. "Shielded. Use it well."

With that, she dives into the poison, seemingly not to care about it as she goes to smack some skellies.
N'Raha     Between astute Party Leadership from Seifer, Magical Artillery from the mages, Top Notch Information from I4, and... well. The nonsense from the DPS squad, the rest of this trash is quite literally swept away, each of the monsters fading into wisps of dark aether as they pass away.
    The critters gone, the barricades drop and let the gas evaporate off into the aethers and....

    MORE STAIRS. Raha huffs and once again puts Inga on his shoulders, as the party hikes up and over the tall barricade and into a Very Obvious Combat Arena.
    In the middle of this arena is a giant pile of bones and skin, the remains of a long dead dragon, the flesh long ago dessicated. A barrier erected around the octagonal room indicates that this is a cage of some sort, but for who or what? That answer is much more obvious the moment anyone dares to approach the center of the chamber, as alarms blare and more of that gas starts to spool up in the room. Get to the high ground, people!

    Because the skeleton starts to reassemble itself, wobbling up and into a vague sort of thing that once upon a time was a dragon. Only now it is....

                                BONE DRAGON                                

    Which then proceeds to breath toxic bullshit across everyone in the room.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSSPqzuT_rI - A Fine Death
Seifer Almasy      Alright, well, that's a problem.

% It's a problem Seifer can deal with, though. As the Bone Dragon rears back to breathe, Seifer surges forward, blade flashing through the air. He cleaves into the mist as it comes out, pushing it around himself - mostly. It's a pinpoint act, cutting the air, but it's an impressive one - the vacuum around the cut drags mist in and roils it about before casting it away. Only a little bit of it manages to reach him, a small bit of biting poison grinding away at his flesh.

     Fortunately, Seifer's the type to really get up in front of it and piss it off, so he'll probably be able to point that stuff away from everybody.

     Seifer's blade slashes for the dragon's eye as he goes up and over it, onto its back. He runs, grinding Hyperion against the back, until he slides down the tail. On the other side, he snaps his fingers, and a grey ghost with six arms, wrapped in a cloak and cowl, appears behind him.

     Blue light streams out of the Bone Dragon. It pours into the grey ghost's hands. Those hands compact it into a small blue sphere, which Seifer snaps up into his own hand and twirls like a basketball.

     "Let's see what I get from you, huh?"

     The blue ball is smashed into Hyperion, where it disappates and breaks apart.
Ritsuka Fujimaru It's a dragon. Rather, it's the remains of a dragon, and it actually has Jeanne frowning when she sees it. "Hmph. How pathetic. /This/ is what remains of this grand civilization?" Jeanne does't break her stride as the gas starts seeping into the room, hopping once to get onto higher ground in order to get a better view of her target.

"Let's put it out of its misery, then. The sooner we finish it, the sooner we can find whoever thought this would be enough to stop the Dragon Witch!" Growing increasingly agitated, Jeanne pushes right through that wave of vile gas as flames burn ominously around her banner. It doesn't even slow her down despite the discomfort and mild searing from within.

She's a little too angry to let something like burning stop her, after all. Jeanne twirls her banner once before leaping into the air, a multitude of flaming spears appearing behind the Avenger as she dives down towards the Bone Dragon.

All at once, everything starts catching on yet more fire. Her sword that she's aiming right at the dragon's head? On fire. Her banner that she's stabbing at the dragon's wings? Fire. The spears following her diving attack?

So much fire.
Majima Goro Giant bone dragon. Sure, why not.

Majima rolls his shoulders, as the dragon roars. He's already calculating, but...there are some serious problems here. It's kinda missing soft squishy bits, making it sub-par for him to stab it with his knife. It's only /one/ thing, making it pretty worthless to bother dancing at it, and he's not gonna punch a solid bone dragon, on account of that's stupid.

Therefore, he does the only rational thing, drawing out a wooden bat and flaring with a bright yellow flame.

<<Mad Dog>>
Majima Goro
Level 50 Samurai (Synced)


And then, of course, it starts breathing toxic gas. He doesn't really have a brilliant response to that, other than to just stand there holding his breath. It is /remarkably/ more effective than he expects. And so, he gives Seifer a moment--he's not gonna be able to hit that dragon anywhere /useful/ if it's staring at him, The bat is drawn, and then he just starts wailing at its..back right knee? Yeah. That sounds like a good use of time. Back right knee.
Inga Freyjasdottir "Yes, entirely familiar," she agrees. "You must come to tea soon," she then informs Melisandre.

Soon enough the small hoard is swept away by their combined effort and Inga is once again piggy-backed up the stairs and into the obvious Boss Room. It once seemed strange to her, how it was so predictable, but she's since gotten used to it.

Since Melisandre renewed the blood ward on N'Raha, Inga turns her attention to the other combatants as she draws a line of blood down her forarm from her bone-handled seax. The mist of her blood rushes to Seifer, surrounding him in a shimmering red-gold ward.

Of course, she also needs to ward herself. She has something of a resistance to toxic things, but the ward sure does help against the sudden noxious breath attack.

She retaliates with a spray of her own blood, which just so happens to be acid now. It may or may not be the most effective on a bone-dragon, but she supposes she'll find out.
Ishirou I4 attempts to get out of the way of the dragon cone, thankful that he did not get a nose full of that head-on.  Though choking a bit because he was only somewhat hit.  Shaking his head he turns towards the creature, thinking about how to best deal with it.  Right now?  Ok, let's just go for an offensive strike!

"Huh, normally this is S6's job...well I guess I gotta rely upon myself today.." And then the defensive barrier from Tomoe gets a smile.  Taking a breath, he brandishes the short sword again, blade in hand as he dashes right towards the BONER DAGON.  

Once he gets near it, he swings a few times, the blade even leaving his hand as he slashes with the weapon, before flipping back as the sword spins through the air back into his hand.  He releases a magical spell right towards the dragon.

A blast of light-aspected magic blasts right underneath the Bone Dragon.  
Tomoe The voidkin are cut down, Tomoe keeps moving she keeps fighting along with the rest of the party. Seifer has been doing a damn good job of leading and doing the callouts for this battle so far. When the last of the attacking horde is dead she will pick up speed and be moving down the stairs. Tomoe keeping pace with Raha for the moment as she vaults over a barricade and soon finds the massive spanning room with the corpse of a long-dead dragon.

Tomoe takes a moment to look about like she's expecting a trap as she nears the body there could be something going on.

"Poison!"

She calls out a warning as she makes for the high ground even as the barrier comes up and now she understands the place is a cage, for the dragon which even in death is now starting to form itself back up and attack them.

She keeps tabs on I4 whom she'll one cast a quick protection spell on him. She will make sure to do what she can to protect him in this fray.

The Bone Dragon is not going to wait for them. The gas comes it's pretty nasty. Thankfully Tomoe purges it before it can linger and do even more damage it's clear it wasn't too enjoyable for the towering woman.

"I4, I'll try to cover you give us all the data and support you can about this and keep an eye out for any more traps."

With that she's leaping for the boss as she does so he'll throw her shiel like a boomerang at the boss nad catch it before she close to melee and when she does she'll break into a powerful rapid flurry of sword strike and a shield bash upon the dragon as she tries to pull it back to one of the farther corners of the high ground to give her allies more room to manoeuvre if that can be managed.
Guzma The group pushes forward, into a combat arena. There is...a dragon corpse.

A dragon corpse that animates and immediately roars at them, as gas starts to spool, as Team Skull moves to high ground, as the dragon turns towards them and...

Toxic breath.

Guzma isn't afraid of a little poison. He, Tupp, Rapp, and Zipp synchronize their movements, dashing out of the way towards high ground, an exhilarating rush surging through them. Zubat flies high above the poison, as Guzma rolls and shouts out to Ariados.

"Dodge it, and use Fell Stinger!"

Ariados leaps again, landing on a wall right above the toxic breath. It then leaps back at the dragon, taking its stinger and moving to ram it into the bone dragon. Zubat acts on its own accord, spraying another acid blast to colalaborate with the fell stinger and poison the bone dragon.
Athela Valemore Looks like we've found our first dungeon miniboss! Or whatever it would be called in this scenerio.

"Let not it's foul aura deter you! Onward for glory and discovery!" With the rallying cry Athela charges forward, hissing and coughing a little but heeding her own words in not letting the gaseous stench stall her. She takes a jump to get over the acid flow and land on the same platform as the Bone Dragon, to the side of the rotten wretched beast. As soon as she plants her feet she turns and kicks off again, this time straight into the air as she slashes up with her weapon against the dragon's side.

Then brings it back down as she drops, hitting with all the force of the pounding flow of a waterfall's cascade.
Mauve Gauntlet Now that the trash mobs are done, it's time for the miniboss...probably.
It's a Skelton dragon! A skeleton dragon that leaks poison.

Mauve chokes on the gas, despite not having a mouth anywhere on her. Still, she hooks her way onto the dragon's back, punching it in the head a few times.
Lezard Valeth     There was no chance that they would be stymied simply by the minions present. The group is coordinated and deadly under the leadership of Seifer and the overwhelming firepower and dedicated support present. It thankfully keeps Lezard basically unharmed through the conflicts and that's what counts, right?

    Still, there is the matter of greater opposition. The large room is a hint, the obviously undead dragon resting in the center a tell. The Necromancer certainly does not look surprised when the dragon reassembles itself. "A Zombie Dragon? Here of all places?" Lezard breaks into a laugh. The more things change, the more they remain the same. "How appropriate."

    As one might expect, the place begins to fill up with poison, and Lezard quickly positions himself on the high ground so he is not unduly affected... Not that it stops the dragon from breathing on him. A glittering barrier rises, diverting much of the breath, but it still begins to enervate him, the signs of toxic buildup growing across his skin. He quickly works to halt the spread with a muttering of magic under his breath, and turns his attention to the creature itself. "Know your place, foul creature. BOW DOWN! FIRE STORM!"

    Several explosions of intense fire begin bursting up beneath the dragon, crashing into it and attempting to simply blow the thing apart!
N'Raha     Well whatever Seifer just did, the Boner Dagon didn't like that. The magical energy is withdrawn from the aether of the critter and it doesn't feel at all good, but that's probably par for the course for Seifer.
    Jeanne's stabbing gets more of a reaction as well, the fire a good idea from the Lancer, and that sets bits of the beast alight, flesh crackling and crisping. Both of them, for their troubles, get bites of the Dragon's jaws.
    Majima and Guzma get the right idea though, getting to the flanks and trying to swat and poke at it from there. More of the monster crumples away, showing off the gooey insides of the monster. Very nasty. Poison and goop and things that are imitating the vital bits of a living creature.

    Mauve and Athela and Tomoe join in on the close quarters thwacking and chopping and kicking and assault, and now hunks of the monster are falling away, leaving detritus on the floor of the arena.
    For their trouble? The creature rears back and tries to swipe claws at all of them, raking with ancient, gross, grody, rotten, awful gross and also gross claws.

    Acid blood and magical fire and more fire and all sorts of artillery from the Ranged Squad, that very wisely are standing out of the direct reach of the critter's nasty Bitey Bits.
    Unfortunately, they are standing in the areas that will be quickly filling up with Shitty Poison Gas. There sure is a lot of that in this wing.
Melisandre Lebeau Melisandre isn't too put out by toxic breath, although a particularly smoggy one sends her coughing, wheezing slightly as she staggers back away from the dragon. However, this puts her further into already there bad, and, well, for being as superbeeman as she is, she's still only got a resistance, not an immunity to this crap.

The combination of incoming bad and already there bad sends the Concordian woman frantically backwards, until, quite inadvertently, she ends up backing right out of the octagonal room. Once she's done oughing hoarsely, she realizes that she's standing at the top of the stairs - staring directly at a purple barrier between her and the fight raging on inside. There's a long pause, and she touches the purple barrier. Mm, nope. Nothin'.

"Oh."

She'll be out here, then.
Majima Goro Majima is used to, at the very least, getting to knock his enemies around. this whole 'stand here and crack at a thing that only breaks apart like a solid wall' thing isn't sitting pretty with him. At the very least, the dragon seems to have eventually noticed him, kicking out with a bony leg.

Of course, the poison gas being /literally everywhere/, that limits his dodging potential. And so, Majima goes with it, grabbing onto the leg and letting it fling him into the air. Sure, that hurts, and sure, he doesn't land on the dragon cleanly, which also hurts, but whatever. It's time to get back to work.

The bat's out again, and he's sort of taking a cyclical motion to this. Slam the bat on a rib, flip over it, kick something, and then flip over to slam the bat back down the other way. He may not last up here long, but he'd best take advantage while he can of this unique damage-per-swing (DPsW for short) opportunity.
Ishirou Who was standing in the bad?  Not I4.  

In fact, he had run on top of a platform at the last second, having been paying attention.  Unlike some Broo-I mean Dragoons.  However, upon landing and avoiding the attack, both POD and I4 retaliated by using a ball of energy fired from the POD in an attempt to damage the Bone Dragon to get something else off.

Flooding into the wound should he hit, an attempt to biohack the dragon is made.  Attempting to twist the aether in the dragon in such an away that it'll try and tear through the outer layers of the dragon, and attempt to hit all of the skeletons running for it.  

He attempts to detonate them all.
Guzma A claw swipes out. Ariados and Zubat go flying back, slamming into Guzma (ouch) and Rapp (it's a small bat) respectively. Guzma slides backwards, still fatigued, and is a bit slow to react. But then...

He grabs another pokeball. "Ariados, build us web platforms." It makes a chittering noise, before climbing up a wall, while Guzma releases the ball. A weird yellow and dark blue beetle with massive mandibles shaped kind of like a cannon, flying, roiling with electricity lifts up. As Guzma tries to regain his energy, he shouts out to Vikavolt.

Zap Cannon."

The mandibles start charging up with electricity, surging, before it fires it off like a laser beam, straight at the dragon, trying to surge through the poison and the bones to damage the beast.

Meanwhile, Ariados starts spraying strong web everywhere, building up platforms and paths to walk on, navigate over the dragon, jump down from, and avoid the poison and climb around. It should be useful as it builds to give everyone a bit of a navigational edge...though the dragon could just tear it up, which would be a problem.
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga's blood-wards prove enough to stand up against the poison gas thus far, thankfully, as getting to higher ground would prove difficult for her without assistance.

Wounds are beginning to be taken, so Inga starts throwing out the heals, which come in the form of throwing her blood around, chanting ominously, and somehow making everyone feel better.

Once that is handled, she thinks its time to take it up a notch. Drawing more blood from her wound she starts to form a wicked spear as the blood solidifies before her. She thrusts her knife toward the bone dragon, sending the blood-spear rocketing toward it.
Seifer Almasy      Seifer mutters something irritably as he jams the blue sphere into Hyperion's hilt, like he's loading the pistol with a clip. "Best you could do, huh, you purple polka prick,"

     He's probably not talking to anybody here. Indeed it's kind of remarkable hearing him carry on a conversation with himself as he deflects poison breath and claws like he's barely paying attention. "Yeah?!" He says angrily as he twirls under a claw-swipe and cuts into the thing's arm, "Maybe you'd like to do this, and I'll do your job, huh?! How would you like that, you-"

     He's cut-off as he leaps over a swinging arm and lands on it, standing there with precarious balance. "Fine, whatever! I'll get up on the dragon's back or whatever. We're having a talk after this."

     "Yeah of course I can use it-"

     "I'm complaining because it's useless! -no, I-"

     Seifer groans and jams his blade into the dragon's shoulder, swinging off it as he pulls the trigger to land on the ground and do a *lot* of damage on the way out. "You know, you only ever get this way when I'm doin' stuff YOU wanna do, you noticed that? I'm doin' you a FAVOR here, least I can expect is some reciprocation."

     A pause as he carves up the dragon's palm. "Yeah, that's right. You better apologize. You'll try harder next time alright."
Ritsuka Fujimaru Jeanne digs her weapons in as deeply as she can into the bone dragon, a sadistic grin slowly creeping across her face. When it snaps at her and Seifer with that decaying jaw, she leaps back to try evading the attack, but it still clips her leg and sends her into an almost uncontrolled flip. Luckily, the Avenger lands on her feet, and she holds that for a moment while brushing her shoulder off like she actually planned that.

"It still has some strength, I guess. Still, it won't be enough!" Brandishing her banner and sword once more, she takes a moment to glance over at the Ariados' improvised web platforms. Seeing a potential opportunity, she puts the flames out from her banner and jumps from path to path, maneuvering to dive at the dragon's flank this time for some rapid slashes.

"Come on. You're supposed to be a dragon, not a overgrown punching bag. Do you not have any pride?!" It seems as though she's try to force its attention in multiple directions and wear down its defenses further.
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve jumps off the dragon to make way for the others, landing on the platform in front of it with a thud. This turns out to be a /really/ bad idea, though. The dragon rakes it's gross ass claws across Mauve's torso, leaving a rusty looking gash leaking silver voxels. She screams, doubling over for a second. She turns the doubling over into a roll, though and gets under the dragon, punching upwards at...well its a skeleton, it doesn't have a belly. So where the belly would be.
Athela Valemore While not immune to poison Athela has dealt many times with such creatures as the swamps back home are filled with many of the poisonous bug, grass and water types. The noxious ichor of the bone dragon on its own is not going to be enough to make her faulter.

People are attacking from different directions and with different methods, melee and ranged alike. That's good, keep it's attention from focusing on one direct assault.

She takes a step back, swiping up with her weapon to intercept the putrid claws lashing out. It's partially successful, filt splattering off as claw collides with blade, but the impact is still forceful enough to make her skid backwards, perilously close to the edge of the platform and the acid bubbling around them. A precarious position indeed.

Or it would be, if it wasn't for Guzma's quick thinking with the webbing, and thanks to Airidos she only stumbles upon the threads instead of tilting over.

Some Pokemon tagteam work sounds like a good idea. "Sprite!" The Vaporeon perks up from the perimeter of the fight. "Aurora Beam!"

Ear-fins flare, the temperature around the amphibious creature dropping briefly, and then a beam erupts from her mouth, giving a faint shimmering effect from light refracting through the air misting around it. The blast is cold in it's own right, as well as causing some frostburn when it connects with bone and decaying muscle. The flakes of ice crystals threaten to cake over joints or whatever is moving this thing to lessen it's ability to move and strike out.
Tomoe Seifer seems to be doing a very good job as pissing off the dragon. The overall team is doing a lot of damage but it's not enough she makes sure that I4 is still up, She sees Inga as well in the mix so there's at least still one healer standing. She keeps up on the flank now, but then it comes the horrible claws. The sort of claws that if you got cut on you'd need to worry about the wound going ceptic. This is not a good situation even as she's cut up leaving glowing red jagged lines where the claws raked her body.

"So you want some of this?!"

She'll ready as sword art her blade glows and she'll launch several rapid strikes as her blade glows with a green aura.

"SNAKEBITE!"

Tomoe's aim with her attack is to try and sever or at least damage one of the Bone Dragon's forelimbs.
Lezard Valeth The endemic poison in the area is proving to be a significant annoyance. Whatever this toxin is, it is quite potent, enough to cause Lezard's own homunculus body to begin to succumb to it. Already, some portions of his flesh are showing black streaks on the veins, the flesh darkening from unholy, painful deterioration. But even so, the Sorceror of Midgard pushes on, focusing through the pain.

    Guzma provides an alternative. The web platforms above are quickly teleported to, Lezard taking shelter on one of them out of the range of the toxins... At least those not spewed by the dragon. "I have had enough of you!" Lezard proclaims. "ICICLE EDGE!"

    The air stirs, a storm of ice and hail gathering as a series of sharp-edge icicles rain down on the Bone Dragon. "You will not stop us, beast!"
N'Raha     You have to put it to any party of adventurers. Given a challenge, they will find frankly irresponsible methods to handle the situation or Boss Encounter.
    This... all of this is just too much for the Bone Dragon! Slashes and punches and kicks and fire and ice and more fire and hand stabbings and beams and Frankly Unethical Biohacking and-
    Eventually the attacks just start going right through the creature, as it crumples to the ground, lifeless and unmoving once again, like it all never even happened, piece of the Bone Dragon scattered across the arena.

    YOU DID IT! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lz8S0HQzrpU

    Wait no, why's the boss music still going? That's because there's suddenly a.... well. A wave of that poison gas rolls up and out of the vents in the floors and walls, blanketing the entire area, and masking the sudden summoning of a horde of skeletons that rush the party and the Bone Dragon. The gas seeks to cut off the party, drive them into clumps, separate them from friends and assistance, even as the bits of the dragon start to slide towards the center of the room, magically drawn back together.
    And every time one of those awful skeletons dies or one of them reaches the dragon? There's a horrible ripple of toxic energy that pulses through the room, that tears at the party, and puts the bone dragon back on its feet.

    And with a ROAR of challenging noise, it once again lumbers to charge at Siefer, the Main Tank.
Majima Goro Majima is left atop a collapsing dragon, feeling..actually a little disappointed as he stands within the wreckage. "..Eh? That all? What's the point of that crap?"

And then the oncoming horde of skeletons. He's not in a position to care about those. That's the Ranged's job. If it gets to him, he's already having a bad day, right? Right. So he'll just endure that, which..

Which turns out to be a tremendous problem, because the bone dragon just reformed. He's still standing there, and so..

Whoops. He's inside the horrible fleshy goop dragon. This would normally be disastrous, for a normal adventurer, but Majima is anything but normal. He lacks even the slightest hint of normalcy.

For you see, now that he's in the goopy, vitals bit of the dragon, it's no longer time for the bat. No. Now is time for the tanto, the blade coming out and stabbing in all sorts of would-be organs, in an internal, unstoppable maelstrom.
Seifer Almasy      This, also, is fine.

     The skeleton explosions, the roaring poison, the dragon charging at him? This is all fine. This is right where Seifer Almasy is at his best. This is the middle of the chaos, the eye of the storm, the place where he can show his stuff and show it loud. He doesn't shy away from the dragon. He charges it back, his own loud, challenging shout filling the arena. Seifer isn't a man who shies away from things like this - the skeleton explosions and their dark magic eating away at him just makes him angrier. The skeleton eruptions just make him more determined. The dragon? The dragon is a big stupid target right in front of him. Seifer *excels* at destroying big stupid targets. He's had a lot of practice on Zell.

     That's mostly a joke.

     The slashing claws come in, and Seifer turns them not just aside but back on the dragon. The fangs come down, and the gunblade, impossibly, turns them around. Somehow, the dragon winds up biting itself; somehow, the dragon winds up clawing itself. Each strike rebounds, each attack returns. Each time the dragon gets close, Seifer somehow reverses it, bringing the beast's biology to bear as a weapon against the monster itself.

     He's also still yelling at the air.

     "*SHUT UP*, jeez! I don't care if it's weak in the eye, I got my rhythm, I'm not gonna break it! You just watch! You just see what I got comin', huh?"

     Seifer, briefly, shouts at the rest of the party, "Pin it down! Time to finish this off!"
Inga Freyjasdottir Inga's protective ward game is strong tonight. The ripples of toxic energy slam into her wards, but they do not penetrate them. Her aura glows shimmering gold, driving back the miasma.

Inga slams the end of her staff to the hard floor, a crack resounding as lightning starts to arc, one bolt after another lights up the poison gas like lasers through smoke at a rock concert, zapping the skeletons that try to rush them.
Guzma The evil is defeated. Guzma's pumping his fist in the air, when...

Poison roils from the walls, catching in his lungs and causing him to cough up small bits of blood. "Crud..."

But as the dragon gets back up to attack, Seifer inspires. Guzma grins, despite the blood in his mouth, as Ariados moves back down.

"Ariados, Spider Web."

Ariados starts spraying its web again, as hard as it can, to hit the bone dragon. The goal is not directly to damage, though it'll hurt. The goal is to trap the Bone Dragon long enough for the others to do as much damage as possible. Webbing wraps around arms, legs, mouth, and chestbones, trying to keep it pinned to the ground with sheer tensile strength. "Let's do this, boys! CONCORD REPRESENT!" Team Skull hollers, Zubat having been returned to its ball, as has Vikavolt.
Ritsuka Fujimaru That didn't quite work as well as that dive. It's a little disappointing, certainly, but it's not a particularly large problem as the dragon goes down anyway. Jeanne lets out a quiet sigh, not even flinching much when the skeletons rise to replace their fallen... Whatever the dragon was to them. A pet? A comrade? A beast of convenience?

Jeanne scoffs. It not like she cares or anything. There's something off about all those skeletons, though, and it's not clear until they start clearing out the skeletons that something starts making sense: The skeletons are powering the dragon up! Maybe. Or... Whatever.

"... This doesn't make any sense at all. Whatk ind of idiots were these Allagans?!" Not understanding what's going on between the skeletons and the dragons only seems to enrage Jeanne further, and she gets to work bashing and slashing apart the waves of bonemen. Her banner alights, but she's keeping her movements somewhat controlled as she bides her time to strike at the dragon once more. Someone needs to keep the field clear for finishing off the dragon once and for all!
Athela Valemore And the monster is down.... No wait, it isn't! And a swarm of skeletons invades the fight, trying to buy the creature time to reconstitute itself.

Instinctively Athela turns around and swings, smashing the flat-side of her sword-glaive into one of the skeletons. Which proves to be a miscalculation and it explodes, blasting her with the unnatural retchedness. "Gaah!" she coughs, biting back a gag reflex. "Almost as hideous as a Muk!" No amount of experience with toxic creatures prepared her for that.

As disguisted as the knight is she forces herself to focus back on the reformed monster. Sprite is already scampering across the spider-webs to get back to her side to deal with it shortly, so she keeps her attention on the monster. She focuses her aquamancy through herself and into her weapon, swirls of the elemental energy forming around the blade. It builds to a point that when she digs her feet in and thrusts forward, it doesn't matter that she doesn't physically strike the monster, as a huge churning torret of water erupts from the weapon, pressurized stream rocketing towards the bone dragon like a huge laser cannon. Of water.
Ishirou The wave of toxic energy tears through I4 and nearly sends him face-first on the ground.  He releases a sound of pain, as his HUD goes fuzzy from the shock of the attack.  Fortunately, it quickly corrects itself.  Double fortunately that Tomoe was there to support and protect him.  Back onto his feet, his eyes narrow as he looks for weakness.  

He does not attempt to hack the dragon this time, instead, he sends a beam of energy out towards the mechanical systems of the area, specifically the poison control.  He attempts to back stuff some of the pipes, in an attempt to make it all come out near the dragon.

"POD, Vacuum shot directly on the Dragon," he says, and with a beep of acknowledgment, a vortex attempts to draw the gas in...and attempts to full the dragon with it.  Literally, attempt to infuse the dragon's ether with direct poison.  
Mauve Gauntlet The dragon goes down! Mauve hops out from under the dragon, joining the others on the web platforms and dusting her hands off. And then no, It wasn't down because then a horde of person skeletons get it back up again, exploding into EVEN MORE POISON. "Ugh. Unfair." She mumbles.

Someone wanted a lockdown on the dragon? Well that she could handle. She gets down on one of the stone platforms- she'd need something more sturdy than web for this. Hooks shoot out from Mauve's hips, piercing the ground beneath her. She then fires both hands at the dragon's legs, gripping them and trying to literally pull it off its feet!
Lezard Valeth     The dragon collapses, and Lezard allows himself to smirk as the ice cleaves the dragon apart.

    But he knows better. He's absolutely not going to believe it is down for the count because /his do the same thing/. Now the trick with the skeletons? That's new. He can appreciate that. There's a certain artistry to it, if you happen to be a necromancer with sadistic tendencies. But the appreciation only goes so far as the necrotic energy crashes into Lezard. He's not immune to it. In fact, he's not immune to most things, really. You'd think he would invest in defenses, but no. There just too much to defend against, honestly. The energy crashes into him, sapping his life energy and causing him to grunt in pain, but he is not driven down yet, even as black blood begins to run down his arms from wounds that open across his body from his enervated flesh.

    "I will not accept defeat at the hands of a lesser creature!" He yells, energy roaring around him as he continues to draw it in, building up to a cataclysmic force. "LIGHTNING BOLT!"

    As one might expect, blasts of lightning crash down upon the reconstituted dragon, attempting to sizzle and blow it apart once more!
Tomoe The Bone Dragon drops, Tomoe does a fist pump in celebration, well with that over they should be getting out of here. Wait what the heck? There's a horde of other undead coming for the entire party. Worse the amount of poison gas in the arena gets even more concentrated as more of it finds it's way into the arena. Worse whenever a skeleton is cut down there's a blast toxic energy across the entire party.

Then she doesn't feel very good, heck she turns a bit green and a poisoned status appears on her HUD.

She mutters a spell of some sort purging the toxin before it can do further harm.

Seeing I4's action even unaware of his entire plan she's going to pile in on the dragon which has pulled itself together. As it lunges for Seifer Tomoe will leap at it, raising her blade and bring it down trying to catch the thing's neck and do as much damage as she can to such a key part of the dragon. Hopefully even in the worst case it will distract the dragon from both Seifer and I4's actions.

"JUST STAY DOWN DAMN IT!"
N'Raha     Honestly, all of this is very frustrating for Mr. Boner Dagon. If Frustrating is a concept an animated skeleton could have, if its programming by the Allagans afforded for it, and if it had any concept of self preservation. It does not, in fact, have any of those.

    What it does have, though, is a Majima inside of it, and it can't really... do anything about that. It'll keep getting beat on in there and like... something jabs weakly at Majima, while the goop that makes up its 'body' does its thing.
    Mauve and I4 and Guzma all have very good ideas though. The dragon realyl doesn't have... much going for it, and even shaking it off its base is enough to let the other heavy hitters do their thing, Inga and Tomoe and Lezard getting int their licks on the dragon. More bits of it start falling off again, and it just starts to crumple to the floor. Is it about to fall apart again?

    The toxic attacks start up again, lingering skelemans starting to wobble up from the floor again to attack the party, toxic claws from the dragon lashing out at the DPS that remain in close
N'Raha     Jeanne and Seifer though... really ought to pay more attention to what they're doing. Jeanne has an excuse, she can't help herself while she's battle raging. But Seifer's internal conversation misses something that he could have prevented. The Dragon Rears up, and... rather than the awful toxic color that it's been bubbling for a while, something awkwardly white starts to billow up and out of the dragon. It ROARS....

    And a massive, awful, arcing white beam of energy flashes out across the arena, and smites the pair for their foolish ways for challenging the dragon head on.
Majima Goro It is hard, really, to avoid.

Majima is inside a giant dragon, it's got 'goop', and he's going to get nailed by the weird toxic crap. That's fine. What he's got is a remaining beautiful, prime opportunity to do something tremendous, and also incredibly stupid.

He draws out his firecrackers. Yes, his--his bundles of firecrackers. He keeps these around for lighting and shoving in the mouths of people who oppose him, and while he's in no position to hit the dragon's mouth, he can generally hit important squishy bits of the dragon. He lights it with a spark off his knife and the bone, and jams it into ..somewhere goopy on the dragon.

Then he lights another bundle. And a third. All in all, five bundles of firecrackers are set to go off inside the body of the bone dragon, and hopefully that will buy everyone else some time to finish the job. It isn't pleasant in here!
Guzma The bone dragon continues to fight. Even as he's wrapped up in web, he swings out more toxic claws, and barely grazes Ariados, knocking it back into Guzma and winding him again. "Agh!" It's time to finish this. So, Guzma has Ariados do so. "Climb on the webs. Then, finish it!"

Ariados leaps up the webs, running along those still surviving, and energizes its two front-most legs. It leaps into the air with a superhuman burst, briefly, before landing those claws in an X shape, and moving to just rip through the Bone Dragon and make it difficult to be precise or hit hard in the process.

"Let's do this Guzma style, yo!"
Ritsuka Fujimaru Battle rage is one of the few things that keeps Jeanne going. It keeps her motivated. It gives her a sense of purpose. And in this battle against a dragon that shouldn't even be moving, against a mastermind that might not even know of what's happening...

If they're watching, the Avenger wants to make sure they know what they're dealing with. When that bone dragon starts blasting that obliterating beam, Jeanne barely attempts to avoid it. Instead, she starts shouting as mana gathers in front of her, churning in a mass of flames of her own to challenge the dragon's directly. The flames and energy beam clash, and the beam washes over the Dragon Witch entirely.

Armor cracks and burns, fabric frays and turns to dust, and even her pale white skin is burnt and bleeding all over at Jeanne's questionable gambit. Somehow, though, the Servant continues smiling madly.

"... Is that all you have? Master of the tower, this is what it means to truly wield the power of dragons!"

And then Jeanne gets to work. She's not going to let herself get shown up by everyone else, after all! The darkness in the air intensifies around the Avenger as the flames surrounding her and her evil blade burn even brighter, massive amounts of mana being expended even to a casual observer. "This... Is the howl of a soul filled with hatred!" She swings her sword in front of her, pointing it towards the bone dragon while the ground trembles beneath her.

"La Grondement Du Haine!"

The flames surrounding Jeanne expand rapidly, surging towards the undead beast in a growing wave. As the flames reach the dragon, geysers of flame erupt from beneath it all at once along with numerous spears aiming to impale the monster from below. The spears keep rising, forcing themselves out from the ground below and grow in number until it all culminates in an explosion centered on the bone dragon!
Ishirou The attack smacks the Android back, rolling along the ground.  Skidding to a stop, he looks up.  Ok, it's weak, time to put the finishing blows on it.  The blade comes out again.

"POD, trajectory.  Give me a path in." -Path selected.-

Suddenly the Android dives in, dashing halfway across the arena as his magic enhanced blade slashes, thrusts, and dances around the dragon in a circle of steel.  He flips back, aiming to disengage from the dragon and lands.  Another blast of light aether explodes under the dragon.

Then it is followed up with an explosion of fire energy, attempting to rupture inside of the bone dragon and destroy it.  
Inga Freyjasdottir Nothing left to do but make sure no one falls down except the enemies. And right now, even Lezard is an ally. She sees that he is hurting, and without too much hesitation slings a little healing blood-magic his way before healing Seifer and Mauve as well. "Stay in this! It isn't over yet!" she calls.

Then, her attention is back on skeletons, as one barrels into her and basically flails at her painfully. She blasts with another bolt of lightning to get some breathing room, then focuses in on the dragon.

Now, the air grows suddenly uncomfortably warm, the runes on her staff glowing flame-red. She gathers her anima, drawing deep on her connection to Gaia and all she's learned about the cleansing power of fire. She whispers one, steaming word, and lets an explosion of fire loose on the Bone Dragon.
Athela Valemore Athela Valemore tries to keep her distance from the dragon and on the defense while dealing with that nastiness from before. She stomps a foot to the ground and a surge of water rises up in front of her only to freeze and form a barrier. At least that was the idea.

Bone Dragon lashes out in it's rage before she can completely solidfy her defense, the claws smashing through while it is more slush than ice yet, sending the remains splattering about the limb slams into Athela as well. It's a hefty blow knocking her backwards and hard to the ground.

Ick. This is not a good floor to get up close and personal with. The residue of the battle is bad enough, don't even WANT to know what OTHER filth has built up on it over the years.

With a disgusted groan Athela heaves herself back off the floor and resteels her composure. Sprite starts to do something, but she shakes her head. She can heal later "Don't worry about that for now.... Give me a Helping Hand!" With a burble of agreement the Vaporeon hops about a few times, stomping her paws and slapping her fluked tail to the ground ethusiastically, rallying her partner's fighting spirit once more.

With renewed determination surging through her Athela grips her weapon tight and the blade sheens so strongly there's an audible twang to the shimmer. Her brow narrows, teeth grit, muscles tense. Then release, hurtling herself towards the Bone Dragon once more abrim with supernatural might. "No matter how many times ye rise again, we shall strike ye down til standing no more!"

The stride ends in a mighty leap, twisting mid-air to put even more momentum into her swing and bring all her boosted might crashing down on the monster behind the force the divine glaive. "THE WAVE OF JUSTICE SMITE YE DOWN!"
Mauve Gauntlet Mauve gets scratched again, leaking more voxels and looking more rusted. She looks up into the corner of her vision, where a low health gauge, a full super meter and a rusted sign with her name on it hung. Ok. She could do this. "A-alright you!" Mauve shouts, summoning up some more bravado. "You asked for it!"

More hooks fire out, anchoring her to the ground further. Mauve then aims a fist at the dragon as a quartet of small rockets shoot out from its sides, launching the fist straight at the dragon's head.
Tomoe The Dragon has yet to go down form the fury of the entire party. Which says something about how dangerous it is. It can endure a lot. Worse there's more of the skeletons coming in she knows how this is going to go. They are going to make for another go after them and do that horrible poison effect again. The Dragon has to be taken down and made to be taken down. Jeanne and Seifer endure the attacks levelled against them. Then comes the counter-attack with all the power and fury she expects from two of the more dangerous people in the multiverse.

Normally she's get in there with the melee but given all furious magical and ranged attacks being thrown in there she'll back off just a bit. Then she will end up chanting again.

It's Norse if one is paying attention and something to do with lighting too. She's chanting up a fairly bit spell this keeps going on for a moment before she finally lowers her sword arm and the spell come a massive lighting blot falls from the heavens right for the Bone Dragon and Tomoe shouts. 5R
"TAHTS ENOUGH OF YOU BACK TO YOUR GRAVE!"
Lezard Valeth     Even on the spider webs, F.O.E! Lezard cannot escape the encroaching attacks of the Platinals as they clamber up and strike at him with their toxic phalanges. Lezard's body conitnues to degrade, the brutal wounds not helping matters as he cries out, staggering for a moment as he goes dizzy from the toxin buildup.

    But enough of that. Lezard has reached the limits of his patience with this entire situation, and he has a solution for it. With a sudden explosion of Force, Lezard sends the skeletons flying away as he draws out a book without title from a warp in space, the pages flipping before him as he funnels the energies through it. The power splays outwards, a magical circle growing larger and larger around him, increasing in complexity.

    "As the harmoniums of Asgard sound,"
        "Their very melodies stir the ancient lightnings to wake!"

    The air splits, a black hole yawning open as a seething entity of blue-white energy begins spilling out of it. A gaping skull yawns wide, a draconic maw glistening with crackling sparks of energy... And it launches forward, trailing a long, deadly body of thunderbolts that surge and blast the Bone Dragon as the thing surges downwards, crashing straight through it!

                               "DRAGON BOLT!"                              
Seifer Almasy      Toxic claws hit hard.

     Seifer doesn't wear armor. Seifer doesn't wear any kind of armor. He doesn't use a shield. He doesn't really use any form of self-defense other than his tremendous sword skills. Frequently, that's enough - he's stupendously good at blocking and parrying things he has no right to do. But he can't do it to everything at once.

     Oh, he tries, alright. His blade seems to be in multiple places at once as he parries claws both toxic and normal, turns aside fangs, and pushes away toxins. But there's just too much, even for him, and in short order he's overwhelmed. Claws rake into his back. Poison gets firmly into his system.

     Then comes the beam. The colossal, blazing beam of light. The beam that hits him dead-on - or, would've. It's damn close. It's almost a dead shot, thanks to the claws. But at the last minute the blade twists around, pointing directly into the beam to part it as best he can.

     It's not great. Not now. Maybe if he was at full capacity, but not like this, not with poison in his blood. If he had full strength he could probably knock it aside, or split up through it, or some other flashy, nonsensical trick. Maybe he could even bounce it back.

     Right now, he's sliding. Sliding backwards, sliding backwards against the ground. All it's going to take is one slip, one trip, and he's taking that full thing dead, clean in the face, and then he is himself probably dead.

     No.

     No, he won't let that happen.

     "Tch."

     His teeth are clenched tight from pain. He presses his legs down, hard, into the ground. "You think," he struggles to say as he goes further down, "I'm gonna..."

     "Lose..."

     "To some no-name nobody like you?"

     The beam ends. The poison in his blood and his lungs, he can deal with later. Right now?

     Right now Seifer Almasy is Really Really Mad.

     That blue orb appears in his hand. He slaps it against the hilt of the gunblade again. This time, rather than simply disappearing, the gunblade cocks itself. Bones creep along the back of it, up Seifer's arm like a gauntlet.

     "Aight. I'm done lettin' you push me around."

     "Let's see what this can do."

                        LIMIT BREAK - CRISIS LEVEL 3                        

                            REANIMATED REGIMENT                            

     From all around Seifer, skeletons start rising. They don't look like the skeletons bombing the dragon - no, they look like soldiers, dressed in body armor and breaking uniforms, carrying long rifles and pistols. More and more start showing up around Seifer, lining up in identical rows.

     Like a cavalry officer, Seifer raises his blade.

     And like a cavalry officer, the moment it falls, the skeletons open up. Most of them fire bullets. Some of them fire bolts of flame. Some of them fire bone-shard corpse bits that stick into flesh and dig in and explode. Some of them fire hands that latch on and squeeze until they burst the flesh and themselves. They empty all of their ammo.

     Seifer raises Hyperion again.

     "Fix bayonets."

     As one, there is a storm of clicking noises. The skeletons affix old-style bayonets to their rifles. Their eyes flicker with spectral blue flame as they lock the weapons in.

     The blade falls. "Charge."

     The skeletons roar forward, a wail of howling undead, a wall of spike and bone. They surge forward with no regard for their own lives, driving their weapons as deep in as they can go, as deep as they can get, and then deeper still. The skeletons themselves collapse; the bayonets break off; but they *dig*, and *dig*, and *dig*, and push, and push, and keep on pushing, until they have nothing left.

     The bone-gauntlet on Seifer's arm crumbles to dust.

     "OK," he says to the air, "You win. That was cool."
N'Raha     Explosions from the inside. Explosions from the outside. Bugs with murder claws. Ver-fires from a Ver-Robot. Someone who apparently ALSO has a knock off Akh Morn. Viking Murder Lightning. Someone's fucking Noble Phantasm. Viking Explosions. ROBOT KILLER PUNCHES. Someone who's suddenly got the Boner Dagon gimmick only way cooler and also with Fake SOLDIERS or something.

    None of these are standard Limit Breaks. None of these are things that ought to be happening to a Bone Dragon, a regular Dragon, or any respectable midboss. But it's happening anyways.
    The Dragon attempts to try that Play Dead gimmick it tried before, but that only gets it as far as Majima's fire crackers. Every other horrible befoulment of the creature's body drives the chances of that gimmick working farther and farther away, until the only thing that works is a feeble little cough of gas and awful odors and then... there is no more Bone Dragon.

    There's also no fanfare this time. Just a quiet lessening of the oppressive nature of the Labyrinth, and the crackling noise of... Nero's voice. "Oh! Good, you got rid of it. The airheads and I have figured out how to activate the tower's internal teleportation systems!" The noise booms out over... whatever the Allagans built into here to broadcast voice and whatever.

    In the middle of the arena, a swirling area of energy billows up from the ground, which will take people back to the entrance of the ruins.
Majima Goro Majima's okay.
In case you were wondering.

He's just kind of sitting where the dragon -was-. He's covered in things he's not fond of. And so, he just...sits there, pulling out a bottle of beer. There's a crack.

He just...sits there, beer tilted upwards, chugging it.
Lezard Valeth     The offensive enemy has been utterly destroyed. Lezard nods to himself, turning his energies towards undoing the damage to his physical form. Slowly, the horrific, near-septic wounds begin to close and clear. When he is satisfied for the moment, he steps down from the webs andover to the energy. "At least we have a more efficient mode of travel now. This should allow us to reach the more critical areas more quickly."

    He looks over the group, and then simply turns and takes his leave, stepping into the teleporter with a swirl of his cloak.

    He will return... later.
Ritsuka Fujimaru Jeanne's panting heavily as the battle comes to an end, although she forces herself to stop doing that and stand up straight once Nero's voice comes back on. She still has to look like she's done this all effortlessly, after all, even though her armor's a bit of a mess at the moment.

"Of course we did. What did you take us for, amateurs?" She snaps at the wherever Nero's voice is coming out of, scoffing after a moment and looking towards the rest of her...

Companions of the day. "It could have gone worse." That's the closest thing anyone's going to get to a compliment from her.
Tomoe Tomoe sees the dragon go down and stay down. Soon everything in the room is not trying to kill everyone. She'll move to sheath her sword and put her shield back into her inventory and she looks around to make sure everyone's still breathing. With that confirmed she'll take Inga up on her offer of healing she will check around for any interesting loot though she doesn't intend to run off with anything she'll check with Seifer.

The Salamander takes a moment to take a deep breath that could have gone a lot worse, after all.