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Gilgamesh	This is not the Ending you craved.      This is not how the world is saved.      What this is is madness incarnate. This is a half-complete monster, a thing that kills gods floating through the landscape of the world and tearing it to shreds with its presence. It's an incomplete nightmare of a thing that isn't supposed to be loosed into the world, a thing that broke through a crack caused by the strain of the world being twisted and edited and rewritten again and again and again until it could take no more. It is a creature, it is a machine, it is unfinished, and it is awake. The wings of blue fire that peel off it flap lazily through the air. Two floating disconnected claws dangle from its sides. It has six eyes, all open, glowing a deep and terrible blue. It is a thing meant to kill gods, and the mere radiant waves of its presence echo with that force - that force, that presence, that power. Miles around the landscape is twisted. It's already passed through Pradia, and what's left can be seen in the distance, a twisted, glitched-out hellhole constantly falling through the sky and ground. NPCs in the very distance can be seen trying to walk and failing to do so, disappearing and reappearing and twitching at odd and upside-down angles. Buildings fall infinitely into the ground and from the sky. Random encounters brought to life walk sideways or are covered in static.      The passing of this thing is itself an illness.      It is an illness called Ayudha Raksha. It is heading towards Finaria. It is heading towards the Yellow Shrine to destroy Evil God Discordia. If it reaches that Shrine, that battle will tear the world asunder.      You are here to stop it.      Because the alternative is the death of an innocent place that has yet to be awakened to its true nature.      So begins the End.
Arkae Zellar	Arkae feels a bit unprepared. Typically, going up against something... divine like this? It's typically at the very tail end of an adventurer's career. You go with your squad of two to five other friends, loaded up on equipment and consumables and blessings and your well-honed skills, and then that's it. You go found a wizard tower or become a demigod yourself or find the ur-spell and become part of the fabric or something, because there's nothing else left to challenge you once you've beaten down a god. That's how it usually goes, anyway. Arkae's facing down this thing and she's pretty certain she's nowhere near that kind of feat. Arkae Zellar grips her Red Bird Relic in her offhand and her sword in her right, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feat as she observes the... thing approaching. Causing the landscape to... warp. Glitch. Until a few months ago Arkae didn't know what a video game was, and now she has a front row seat to one in its death throes. "Let's do this," she says, her voice showing confidence she doesn't possess.
Kupot	There are places where Kupot must fight. He must struggle to take down people supporting systems that must fall. He must use tools that are not easily available. He must restrain. "I see, kupo." He states to no one. "Why people like to simply fight. Why they want to stand for something without thinking about it." Kupot isn't wearing his disguise. Or his black jacket. He is down to his pants alone, so that nothing stands in the way. His pom glows a bright red. "It doesn't require thought. It doesn't require pain. Just devotion. It has to be freeing, kupo." He has the Blue Dragon Relic tucked in his belt, his hands carefully over his side. His insectile eyes focus on the semi-divinty, trying to identify means of attack, weak points, as it comes forward.
Tomoe	This was not the Ending she craved, no it's not. Things have got crazy here a world that has yet to awaken and is in danger of being stillborn if they fail here. Reality seems to be breaking down here an Tomoe is feeling a level of weight on her shoulders she has not felt in a very long time. Old memories a4re pushed aside there is a task she has set to do. She's long considered her life for the most part in the Multiverse had been time she'd been given on a day she should shave died years ago. She's clad in the best armour she has, she had the Yellow Relic equipped and Caliburn in hand she know what they had to do. The Ayudha Raksha has to be delayed or stopped long enough for Discordia to fall if they could not kill it. So that's what she's going to have to do. The End has stars now, a world which just has struck a certain chord with Tomoe is the stakes and she spread her red wings wide like some kind of firey Angel as she moves to intercept. She looks the horror over for a moment and then will decend towards it as she gets ready to engage it.
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael Cousteau has the blessing of metal. It makes him the reasonable choice to hold it for this battle.      Which is, probably, the only reason why anyone would bring the alcoholic, insane cop to this fight. He eyes the White Tiger Relic in his hand. INLAND EMPIRE: It does not seem as talkative as the other ones. He stands next to the others, first looking over at the moogle. "I think we've all thought about this enough, don't you?" He says, grinning. In a sad, charming way. But when does he not? "I'm going to say, as a one-man council on the matter, we're pretty much set on the violence part now." Ayudha Raksha is, no doubt, terrifying. But he has backing. He has a *squad*. Both external, and internal. HALF-LIGHT: This is stupid. Get out of here. This is the most idiotic thing you've ever done.)] LOGIC: Actually, I-- HALF-LIGHT: No. VOLITION: Everyone stop. Stop. This isn't helping. Raphael rubs his head. "Alright, I can't fly, and internal consensus is me not rushing in first...." With that, he has a variety of supra-natural instincts. What, at least right now, is the weakness of Ayudha Raksha?
Amelris Belthrone	Amelris is used to fight 'Gods'. It is debatable whenever Primals are actually 'godlings' or just something weirders, but it is close enough for bureaucratic work to call them 'gods'.      Fighting a thing that /kills/ gods feels almost like fighting some kind of twisted co-worker. At least, that was the impression Amelris had before he actually saw the whole damn thing rampaging around like it is. Like... a disease.      "Twelves." Amelris calls out, sucking in a breath as he approaches into a dashing run, rapier in one hand, the BLACK TURTLE RELIC in the other, floating in tandem with his casting gem. "This thing is... bleeding huge."      He makes mental notes of where the weapons Arthur made for him. Good, still comfortably in the pouch. They'll be useful as backups, just in case.      Will they be alright? Who knows. One way to find out.
Ishirou	I4 was here, taking a place farther back as people start settling in with their relics.  There wasn't much he could do physically against the beast, not that it'd stop him.  The POD unit, a black box with arms, floats beside him, already deploying its radar unit.  Right now, the best way to go forward was to try and read the boss's moves and react accordingly.   More than that, he's trying to read the very area around them, to try and understand just how this thing was damaging the land that it moved through.  Maybe it'll be another way to hinder it because, in the end, the reality of the situation is that they weren't going to win.  However, if they could delay it. That might be enough to save this world, this might be enough to give him some hope for his own.  While outwardly sarcastic, as I4 tends to deal with stress like this, inwardly he was trying to do everything to not admit to the reality of the situation. That this was hopeless.  Pointless.  That no matter what he did, it wouldn't change a thing.  Doubt weighed down on him like an anchor, but despite this, he wouldn't just stop.  Not yet, not when some sliver of hope remained.  Knowing full well the more logical part of himself screamed to just leave.
Staren	It's a big fight. They'll handle it. They always do. ...Is what's running through Staren's mind until he actually sees the trail of... not even devastation, but broken reality in Ayuda Raksha's wake. What in a game becomes a video you laugh at is horrifying when it starts happening in reality. This thing doesn't play by any other world's rules. The superfactions can give food to the displaced, and new housing, but if this goes to wrong the people they're saving will never exist in the first place. And Staren doesn't know if they can FIX a world that turns into a glitchy mess.     Let alone what will happen to any PEOPLE that get caught up in that effect.     Okay. Okay. So he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen, but there is a PLAN. This thing seemed like it would respond to the relics, so he's got to support the relic bearers. Stick to the plan, and when something unexpected happens... deal with it.     And Staren is prepared for a plan that involves fighting. The Star Hawk, over 40 feet of shiny war machine, stands at the head of an army of constructs that are setting up artillery.     In the cockpit, the catman action researcher takes a deep breath and stretches his fingers before re-gripping the controls. "Let's do this."
Rean Schwarzer	Rean is here. Before him is...a nightmare. Something that looks like it'd come out of the deeper levels of the old schoolhouse, but bigger, twisted, and based on the damage it's doing just /existing/ a million times worse. But, he's ready to fight for The End. Which end they got was all on them...as long as they beat this thing, and the other team beat Discordia. It's not what they wanted, not at all,but there was no time for looking at what could've been if they'd made better choices, or if there even were. "Let's give this an ending worth seeing." Rean says, drawing his sword. He then lets out a loud kiai, his appearance shifting in a burst of miasma. They needed every advantage, even the tricky ones. ...Maybe it would've been a good idea to consider the possibility he was part god or something before doing that, but too late now.
Gilgamesh	The thing looms. It is a titan, a nightmare, looming over everything. Arkae is right - this is a feat that normally would be done by great heroes at the end of their career, a nightmare on the same scale as the darkest of legends. This is a machine for murdering gods. It is un-divinity in the shape of a semi-organic horror, birthed by the dreams of people who were never able to finish them before the lights had to close, by the dreams of a studio that never finished its wonder. This was a dream meant to please and delight and inspire.      And this thing is indeed awe-inspiring.      Kupot and Raphael get it. It's in TREE form. The leaking of its un-divinity is indeed visibly tree-based, twisted vines dangling off the bottom of its form. Its maw twitches with spiked vines, too, and its sub-claws have a green and purple poisonous tint to them. As I4's gaze falls upon it he can see the twisting of the world, the warping and unweaving. This is a thing meant to impose ORDER. What it is doing is imposing an order that isn't supposed to exist. It's cut content, after all. It's doing what little it was programmed to do. What little it was meant to do. It's supposed to exude some kind of debuff, force the player into lock-step or something, make the player consider the sequence of their attacks.      What it's doing is imposing that half-finished existence on the world, and so unmaking and warping it into a glitch.      Horrifying.      The forty feet of shiny war machine is still small compared to the unleashed form of Ayudha Raksha. But it is big enough to draw the nightmare's attention.      At least, until Rean activates.      The eyes focus in on Rean. Part-god, part-devil, part-demon, it doesn't matter what he may be - the release of a power close to the divine, or even partially divine, or *legendary*, or *mythic*, is enough to draw the nightmare's gaze.      It comes to a stop.      It opens its maw.      The roar is...horrifying. It's a glitched-out sound effect, come to life, a scream that shakes the world in wrong ways. The scream itself is like suffering through one of those old TVs going sideways, or a monitor flickering. The whole world seems to come apart and roll down, a broken film reel starting up a TEST sequence.      And that's just the opening line.
Raphael Cousteau	There is no means by which Raphael is properly prepared for this. ESPRIT D'CORPS: None of the Paladins expect you to be ready for this. HAND-EYE COORDINATION: Listen. Uh. Your gun. I feel like... INTERFACING: Yeah. The gun should be fine. You can't possibly miss it, but I think you should...the relic? Somehow? The police officer unholsters his gun, holding it in one hand, and the relic in the other. SUNRISE PARABELLUM glistens. It's an ordinary pistol. Most of the time. Here and now, when the world needs him, perhaps it is not. HALF-LIGHT: ENDURE. PAIN TOLERANCE: Oh, baby, hold on, sweetheart, this is going to be a triiiiip!)] The monster roars. It disapproves of Rean Schwarzer, apparently. Everyone is paying the price. It's radio static. It's trying to change the world, in ways it wasn't meant to bend. Things are breaking. Tearing. PAIN TOLERANCE: It's nothing. Not yet. It's a taste. It's a reminder that you need to step up, right now. Enjoy it. Raphael points the gun upward. Center of mass--he's no sharpshooter. INLAND EMPIRE: The relic. I feel like...yes. Fire the gun, and imagine a white tiger. The bullet is shot, and then the metal shreds in the air. Recombines. Shreds again, somehow larger than before. The squares shatter, becoming polygons, shattering, becoming voxels, shattering, becoming something more--until a furious metallic tiger is launched through the air, intending to strike and possibly weaken the god-devouring monster. He's not prepared for this. But he'll have to wing it.
Arkae Zellar	Arkae is expecting something other than... that. Whatever she was expecting, it's not... a scream that rends reality. She puts both hands on her earholes. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. Nothing is going to help but take it down. Once the screaming stops, Arkae moves. She's... she's scared. She isn't sure she wants to get close to this thing, with how reality is being poisoned around itself. So she goes for a less risky option, reaching into her bag and pulling out several vials, lobbing them all at once towards the thing's mouth, while putting some distance between it and herself. Does thins thing have a digestive system? Nervous system? Does it really matter, with how... abstract all of this is getting?
Amelris Belthrone	No, actually, this is far more familiar than Amelris first thought, now. Facing the monstruosity up close, the sight of it's pseudo-organic mechanical state. For a moment, Amelris falls back into the fateful battle against the Ultima Weapon. It's about the same height. The same purpose, in some way. Allegedly made by crazy ancients.      Amelris' thoughts are interrupted by the reality-rending shriek of the God-Killer, the Miqo'te's ears flattening straight up against the side of his head, cluching his ears for a brief, pitching, hissing moment.      Amelris feels his heart beating, the only sound he can hear, feel in them at the moment. This is it. This is going to be... this is something different than the Ultima Weapon.      He slowly stands, gritting his teeth as he charges forward against the thing, drawing his rapier to dive down straight against it to stab... shit, a knee. A knee seems a pretty good spot to stab, by leaping and trying to wedge it into any sort of articulation. A Blade is Metal, right? Right.
Ishirou	The opening attack was like nails on a chalkboard for those able to hear it's opening cacophony.  It was all he could do to try and cover his ears, and try and avoid a direct hit to his internals from that soundbite.  Panting, because despite all of that the damage seems to be harder to avoid, but thankfully he was somewhat better equipped than others.   Order, it was trying to impose broken order around itself.  They're trying to fight a boss with mechanics only halfway formed...but is that in itself the key to beating it?  Ok, so this was going to get dangerous, but he had an idea. "POD, hacking mode up.  We're going to try something dangerous," he says, as the pod makes a sound of disappointment, 'Unit I4, this is considered exceedingly dangerous for a unit like yourself, and to endanger yourself for a world that is not administered by PHANTOM.' "Yeah, but we need to leave a good impression if we want help with our own problems.  Anyway, let's do this... let's impose our own order!" he says, before a beam of light fires from his hand, trying to fill up a meter only he can see.  Attempting to force itself into its data scape, rather that is biological in nature or not.   I4 looks for things that look like they are incomplete and attempting to figure out what they're about.  Attempting to fix anything that causes problems with the intended boss fight itself.
Tomoe	It was to be an optional boss once that boss that people would talk about years after the game was over. It certainly brings that sense of awe but also terror. There are a few things that have instilled this level of fear in Tomoe's soul. This Ayudha Raksha is one of those things, can they defeat it? She doe snot know what she does know is they have some serious heavy hitters here, she has hope they can delay it long enough for what the other team do what they need to do. She's fast even then the scream still rattles her it is suffering, it's painful it still harms her its worse than the old nails on a chalkboard. She' harmed but she's still in good shape to fight. So that's what she's going to do she arms her tanking abilities pops and charges flying at it blitzing this horror made to kill gods, she hacks and slashes as she buzzes about it trying to keep some of its attention on her. "I'm right here!" She also makes a note if the Relics have to be used in order she'll have to keep a close watch on this horror to know when to make use of her own.
Kupot	Again. Formless thought. The tao of battle. Violence without thought. Without worry. The scream bursts out and Kupot's sword comes out in a flash, cutting through the shockwave before it strikes him, rippling around him in a wave. Still, even without the full force, it blows him back a step. I4 brings up acting in order. Acting in step, acting within the strange world that the demon is creating. The fire in Kupot's mind rages about the strange worlds he finds himself in, worlds that demand so much. He gives it a second before he breathes. In, hold. Out. Hold. Kupot brings the sword up, using it as a point of order within his mind. The steel flickers in the strange colors and becomes a plinth for Kupot to focus on. This is what he vowed, after all. For all those deaths. For all those murders he did. To give himself. To sacrifice everything to give people what they need. He waits for everyone else to stop attacking, for a moment when no one else is striking, to move forward in a surging blow, charging past in a single strike that drives his sword out in a sweep.
Staren	As Ayuda Raksha turns to face it, the Star Hawk widens its stance and raises its left arm, a beam shield projecting into place.     And then Rean changes.     What the /hell/. "Rean, what are you doing?! What ARE you?!"     It's tearing apart reality. The Star Hawk rattles, some inner components loosening. Reflexively, Staren makes his machine crouch to lower the area of exposure and tries to shield his army, but many of the constructs just break anyway -- possibly falling into 'glitched' behavior rather than just falling apart.     Metal. Metal cuts trees. Well, that's straightforward enough. The Star Hawk stands and aims with its right arm, the gatling railgun attached to it spinning up and spewing forth metal slugs at ridiculous speeds!
Rean Schwarzer	The god-killing machine looks straight at /him/ for a moment, and Rean shifts his position, waiting to counter whatever it throws at him. It then screeches, its sound tearing into him like a swarm of angry metal bees, or a projector having a metal spike driven though it instead of a quartz slide. He wasn't sure if non-relic metal would hurt it more in this form, but he did have a sword, though. Rean rushes in like a flash, darting back and forth at it from as many angles as he can, before making one wide swing at the beast.
Gilgamesh	A vial goes into Ayudha Raksha's mouth.      It doesn't need a nervous system to be poisoned. It's an unfinished boss - boss rules don't apply to it, thankfully. It can, apparently, be inflicted with status effects. Unlike the damage numbers the status effects pop up above its head like little flags, hovering in the air. Arkae's dead-on shot's BLND, FEEB, and NRVT'd it - whatever the hell those mean, or those little symbols (is that a floating closed eye? Two blue-down-pointing-arrows? What does that even mean? This shit is arcane). That's helpful. The developers probably figured it was impossible to win if you couldn't see THAT much.      Everything is broken, I4. Everything. It's not finished. It's unfinished on so many levels that it's hard to understand. But it's also something that rails against being changed. It asserts Order to kill a god of Chaos. This is something that struggles with being changed, and there's so many pieces I4 can barely figure out where to start. Here, with the health bar?      That's a good place.      A little tweak, and the numbers start popping up all around it. That's good. It's a visible sense that it's being damaged, above and beyond the impact. It gives a sense of how much HP is left. How much of this weird abstractness it has left of life.      Tomoe charges in with Amelris. Tomoe goes in from the front; Amelris stabs in from the underside. The Metal blades carve through one of the vines, and the eyes change color in response. Staren opens up gattling fire to draw its attention, railgun shots punching into it. It's unpleasantly resistant - the damage numbers aren't very big. Sure, the attacks are definitely landing - railgun shots sticking out of its flesh, carved-in scars, the HP bar, the status effects - but it's not.../doing/ much. It has tons of HP.      Rean and Kupot have the same idea. The two of them dance through it at the same time, last in line, almost simultaneous in skill. They slash and carve and smash and cut, leaving long trails of damage across the thing, cutting into flesh and sheering off bits.      It is at this point that I4 notices that there is no 'victory' state in the code.      The HP bar is literally infinite.      Even if it hits zero, there's no rules on what happens if it dies.      That's what Arthur meant. There's no way to 'kill' Ayudha Raksha. But holding it off is holding off the end of the world.      Raphael fires his twisting, shredding, massive bullet into a tiger. It's absurd, in the logic of this world. It punches into the god-devouring horror and blows out the other side. Bits of the nightmare sparkle behind it as the tiger passes through and disintegrates.      It shifts.      The flames around it turn red. The claws turn to white-and-blue fire. The body catches on fire, a colossal blaze that the heat burns off of, scorching the landscape. Its mere transition is enough to blast those in melee range. When its opens its maw, the heat is even worse.      It doesn't breathe fire.      What comes out is some kind of horrid, glitchy mess. It's pure, rarified nonsense. It's pixels spat out in a mess of nonsense in the vague colors of a flame. It's not smooth or finished, it's just...it's just weird.      No less *painful*. No less *world-shaking*. No less *horrid*. Worse, it just sort of sticks in the air, as if the air itself is glitched-out by its passing, pixels hanging in the sky, unmoving contaminants imposed upon existence.
Arkae Zellar	There's... ... stuff. It's like... Arkae stares at what's happening, forgetting to defend properly. "It's like... an illness, on the world." "Can I cure it? Can I-" Arkae gets an idea. She has no idea on if it'll work or not. She has no idea if the logic and reasoning behind it is sound. She grabs the Red Bird Relic in one hand. And she grabs her most powerful curative potion in the other hand. And she channels the energy of the Red Bird Relic into the cure-all potion to enchant it, and then throws the Fire Relic Enchanted Cure-All Potion at the boss. In theory, this should do negative fire damage against a boss that presumably absorbs red bird energy and so it'll... ... absorb the negative fire damage, thus doing extra fire damage like two negative numbers multiplied together... ... Right?
Raphael Cousteau	It blows through him. The tiger blew directly through the massive monster. +1 MORALE "Hah! Haha! Direct hit! That was *great!* ACES HIGH!" And then, immediately after, he notices. This has meant nothing. It's screaming, it's angry, but that didn't kill it. It just turned into fire instead. That bar isn't moving. INLAND EMPIRE: The bar can move forever. This race has no finish line. -1 MORALE > Okay, so what the fuck now? ELECTROCHEMISTRY: I say we ditch this and get very, very drunk. > Fuck off, Electrochemistry. VOLITION: Trust in everyone else. Just do something. Anything. Your relic is useless here, and so's your gun. But maybe you can...Logic? You got anything? LOGIC: No. I don't think I'd have this on a good day. I think just maybe if yo-- And then it attacks again, with flames made of...incorrect. Flames made of wrong. Everything is wrong. Everything is... PAIN TOLERANCE: It's a purifying flame, casting out your sins. Nothing more. You can deal with this. Think of it like a stamp on your 'glitched misery' card, now get up.)] He's not sure when he hit the ground, but he's up again. Something. He needs something he can do to help. For now, he just empties his gun of 'real' bullets. They won't do much, and he's not about to expend more of the Relic's power against its elemental superior, but he's not suited for this part. He'll just have to accept that.
Ishirou	Inside the creature's data: The creature's code is just a MESS.  I4 can barely make heads or tails of it, and the fact that it is even moving and acting NOW is a miracle.  One that nobody asked for.  Taking a breath, he at least can get the most basic information out of the way first.   Outside: <Warning, flame attack incoming.  Suggesting defensive protocol.> Drones the POD, to which I4 produces a barrier shifted to the element of water.  The two collide, causing the steam to wash over him and overheating his systems, and searing exposed skin.  Hurt, but it could have been a LOT worse.   Looking up at it, I4 narrows his eyes.  How can this thing be beaten... Then it dawns on him, it was already written that it caused a debuff, forcing the players to act in step.  What if that step was the elements, that could cause the aura to go away?  I4 goes right back inside... Inside: I4 looks for code, but if he can't find any, he breaks down logic in the creature to build it in other places, attempting to create triggers based on its elemental form.  Attempting to enforce the rule of 'If hit with the correct element in the right state, gain a status effect.  If all status effects of elements are gained, disable aura.' This likely will cause damage as he attempts to insert his own reality.
Kupot	Kupot understands this creature. The concept is fleeting, but he grasps that it is a program. Or part of a program. It needs to be changed, in some way. He turns slightly to I4, who is doing something. And for once, for this point, Kupot decides that perhaps simply waiting for an opening that looks like a plug is the fool hardy choice. He reaches up behind his ear, pulling something out from his skull plating. A small cable with a small needle at the end. His fingers spin the blade in a circle, slamming the katana down into the scabbard to draw the wakazasi. Dual wielding spike and wakazaki, he flings himself, legs giving a pistoning push to send him up INTO the breath. The small blade strikes out, whipping back and forth to create an air barrier that only some of the heat burns through, blasting black both skin and fur. He grabs whatever he can, and jabs the needle in with the other. In an Enter The Dungeon fashion, Kupot is in a smaller 8-Bit Battle with the creature in a static field, in his own mind, simply trying to break down whatever security it has to open the way for I4.
Staren	Okay, it's definitely in FIRE mode now. Fire pixels spray over Staren's mech, softening armor.     Water. How do you attack with water? Okay, that's a dumb question. Really, it's more like why would you bring a water gun to a fight... unless you /expected/ to need it, and then of course you would. One of the mech's shoulder packs opens up. Normally it would unfold into the sniper railgun, but today... today it grabs a massive hose. Well, wide -- it's just long enough to aim at the massive titan before them. And then it sprays water at *ridiculous* pressures. A direct hit would kill a person or punch right through a house. Staren's not expecting much against Ayuda Raksha, but hopefully it'll at least do respectable damage.     Just for good measure, he's built modified essence magitech into the weapon to make it 'water' magically as well as literally, in case that does anything.
Tomoe	No one is really holding back at this point hearing their foe does not know death. It doesn't contain the concept of it? That's about as much as she expected but I4 confirmes it she makes a suggestion to him about it. She will have to trust in I4 and she focuses on the fight at hand with the warnings and the tels about the god killers form she knows it's on fire so it's in fire mode. The heat also is a good dell too she's able to just barely avoid being turned to a cinder, yet even being caught in the wake is a painful experience. Tomoe is burned fairly badly there is the wireframe injuries from the heat. She keeps going she does not attempt to use her weapons, she chants a spell this time since she does not have water-related magic? She's darn well going to fire several lightning bolts at the god killer and pray it doesn't backfire. For it's the closest thing related to water she has.
Amelris Belthrone	All of this is strange. It's attacks are... unconventional. Amelris lacks the knowledge to properlly describle them other than 'odd mess of angles, wriggling lights and squares'.      He get struck, despite his best attempt at flipping right out of the path. It's everywhere. He can't dodge something that is everywhere, not this way. His body get bruised, flung against the ground as he slides through the odd grass of the world.      Amelris looks up, eyes wide. Not the time to be in awe oor trying to comprehend something that is clearly not meant to have been finished, not at this point. He's got to act. It's covered in fire. It's probably in a 'Fire' stance.      That means he's up.      The Red Mage gathers himself up, pooling both gem and rapier into one whole then slapping the BLACK TURTLE relic on top of it all. He focuses into it, pooling aether from his body until the relic and casting implement, his free hand with gathering bubbles, water and torrents on his free hand.      VERWATER TURTLE!      The blast of weapon shoots out of his palm, spreading out and condensing out into the shape of a gigantic, aetherial black shelled TURTLE, using it's body to plow against the Ancient Weapon like a tsunami.
Rean Schwarzer	Ayuda Raksha shifts again, this time catching on still-glitchy fire, and emitting heat just as corrosive as before. It then fired a giant burst directly at him, He jumps back, clearing the shot completely. ...Maybe he /should/ reevaluate the possibility that this power thing was a result of godly/demonic interference/lineage. But it was focusing on him, wasn't it? He looks around, trying to see if there was a direction for him to peel off into to drag the thing further away from Discordia's general direction. A direction that hopefully wasn't too glitchy that he wouldn't fall through reality or something. He quickly sheaths his sword as he looks, and then unsheaths it, shooting an arc shaped wave at the god killing machine.
Gilgamesh	Raphael fires, and he's right - it's not very effective. The fire consumes the bullets rapidly. It's only a tiny little bit of damage. Still, it's damage. It matters, right? It means something. It's a little cry of defiance against a thing that can't be defied.      I4 digs into the code again. It's so complicated. It's a living thing, a program, a machine, and more besides. It's literally un-divinity. He gets the sense that he's only touching a little piece of the whole of it, a little tiny shard of its full swell. That it's like an iceberg. That this is just a piece. That the aura might even be part of its body.      Fortunately, I4's got some help. Kupot dives in, a little 8-bit thing swimming in un-divinity. This is not what Kupot imagined. This is not a computer, this is not a program - it's born of one, yes, but it's an un-god, an anti-divinity, an existence that rejects the existence of other things on such a fundamental level that it can be called an un-thing. It is a neverborn, a thing unversed in existing, a thing that undoes what is gods. It's an annulment of apotheosis. A destroyer of divinity. A metastasized cancer of anti-mythology. Swimming around inside its body is jumping off weird mandalas of code and weird symbols that barely make any sense. I4's there, represented by a little pod. I4 can see Kupot. The two of them together....they're digging in as best as they can, exploring as fast as possible as the POD-I4 inserts code and Kupot fends off the weird twisting insides (there doesn't appear to be security. It just exists, and its nature is hostile, as it was never meant to be touched and hurts just to be around). The status effect, as far as I4 can tell off his slapdash rapid-fire coding (it has to be slapdash - he has no time to learn this insane language holding together an un-god), sticks - but will it stick hard enough?      Staren, Tomoe, and Amelris bring magical water roaring into the battlefield. Amelris's mystic turtle assault amplifies the assaults of the other two. What would've been merely one blast in the shape of a turtle is three blasts that come together and hammer through the thing just like the steel tiger, punching out the other side.      It starts to shift.           Arkae hits it with reverse flame.      The negative damage overflows. Ayudha Raksha lets out a reality=piercing scream as something that was Never Meant To Happen, Happens. The damage goes in *reverse*. The god-slaying nightmare machine un-burns.      Vines fall out of its mouth.      The flames go out as leaves emerge from its skin.      Purple buds appear on the end.      And then it glitches out, and twitches around the battlefield like it's teleporting at a rapid pace.      When it un-twitches, it's floating there, dripping water off its body. A waterfall pours off both sides from nowhere, flooding the battlefield. It got stuck in the middle of a transition and defaulted to Water.      It hangs there for a moment, as if confused. Then it turns to face Rean as his shockwave crashes across its face, leaving a long scar. It rises and starts floating after him. In its wake, the world twists, and it's just the *aftermath* that hits the party - the weird glitch-state that sends the world spiralling and spinning and twitching up and down through the sky, sends them falling infinitely or blipping back and forth of half-stuck in terrain. It's...not a great time.      It's really not a great time.
Arkae Zellar	The world glitches. And Arkae Zellar, who is used to walking up and down walls, across the underside of the surface of the ocean, navigating through planes of chaos and order and the weird third answer inbetween two binary choices... ... rolls with it. It's like watching someone dodge between raindrops and emerge entirely dry despite walking through a thunderstorm. When the world attemts to glitch her into the terrain, she's already brought her feet up. When gravity reverses, she twists herself around the right way. When there's an invisible wall, she smoothly runs up/down/around/across/through/behind it without missing a beat. And perhaps most importantly, it gives her confidence. She's not afraid of this thing anymore. (Well, no, that's a lie. She's still terrified, but at least she's running *towards* it now.) She twists herself around through an opening in the glitchiness, and gets within striking distance. Her blade glistens - absolutely covered, dripping, with *something*. She brings it down. Or up. Or across, or inside-out, or all-around, or all six ways at once.
Staren	Okay, there's the water turtle. That was cool! So was the metal tiger. Now, the next phase is...     Tree again? What?     Staren's caught by surprise. He fires a burst of railgun fire again just as it goes water (the water cannon retracts back into its pack).     Oh no. He can't protect the constructs from this. He was hoping missiles would count as FIRE against METAL, but it's use-it-or-lose-it time! The artillery fires, missiles going crazy as they try to track their target amongst the chaos -- a fair number of them hit glitches or terrain that's suddenly where it shouldn't be. Meanwhile, Staren has to focus on piloting through this mess to minimize damage to the Star Hawk! It's STILL getting banged up, dents and cracks starting to form in its armor, shards of metal broken loose raining down from it.
Raphael Cousteau	VOLITION: Okay, that did literally nothing, but at least now it-- The writhing anti-deity begins to...er. He's not exactly sure. His grin remains, but there's something off in his eyes. INLAND EMPIRE: What of the sun's rays, when they return to their father? > Hey, you know what would be great right now? Some incredibly useful vision of some kind of glaring weakness, or its past, or.. INLAND EMPIRE: Do not. There is nothing beneath this shell. There is no deeper meaning to be found. This is the end. This is the void. There is nothing more to learn. Only to struggle against. SHIVERS: There is nothing to see beyond. Go forth, Son of Lung, and do as you can. Raphael strides forward. Water, at least, isn't that bad to be near. And so he strides forwards, against a beast many times its size. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Okay, so, real talk here--uh. You aren't a big-- VOLITION: Now is not the time. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: No, shut up, I want to help. And it involves throwing away drugs and alcohol, so you know I'm serious. VOLITION: ...Go on. Raphael continues onwards. This is undoubtedly going to be a terrible plan, but it's all he's got. ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Okay, I want you to open up all the pills you got, and pour them into that one bottle of Commodore Red I had you buy this morning. All of 'em. The anti-rads, the amphetamines, everything. And then...get your Relic... The plan is explained, and Raphael does as he's ordered. He brings out the White Tiger Relic, and his hand is suddenly covered by a needle. A needle with a sizable reservoir, into which is poured wine, then anti-radiation medicine, and then amphetamines. Painkillers. This is a disgusting, toxic slurry of medication, the exact reason you're told not to flush down expired medications. And then he jams it directly into a leg. It's not the traditional elemental weakness, but he's not your traditional kind of cop, either.
Kupot	Pain. Paaaaain. Kupot is trying to hack something that wasn't meant to be hacked with something that wasn't meant to hack something like this. The system in Kupot's skull is supposed to only hack security systems and data centers. It exists to open doors and retrieve files. Really, that is what Kupot is doing here. Opening a figurative door. Right? It may work, in theory. In reality, the moogle exits the creature, the data spike melted. Electricity jutters around Kupot's head, making him spasm on the floor in pain as he gets feedback from the attempt. Muscles strain and the electricity finally exits with an explosion from his eye. The black optic on the front explodes out, leaving one pale glacier blue eye to the air once more. Slowly, Kupot sways up to his feet, wakizashi at his side. His entire right side of his head is burned down to the bone and steel. Cords trail around his right eye. He lifts the sword again, moving his footing apart. "You are created to defeat the wrong thing, kupo. The common are what you should fear." Kupot goes in slow again. Waiting for a moment when no one is attack to, instead, attack each bit. Each pixel that flies out, one by one.
Amelris Belthrone	Oh, hey! That did something! Amelris pants, spreading out his arms with rapier in one hand with the relic and the casting gem separating away, floating above his free hand. There is that brief moment of satisfaction that the combined spell went off without a hitch.      If you can call the thing screaming in mid-reality rendering as-close-as-possible to agony equivalent it's capable of feeling 'without a hitch'. As well as just kind of... exploding into plants and then water. This thing can't make up it's mind. That's likely Arkae's doing. Then the world... attacks. It's like being drunk, if the world was also drunk with you as well with everyone else, if the EARTH was drunk and if the AIR was drunk, too, trying tou out-drunk one another.      His body do not like it.      The Miqo'te groans out, staggering -- the word is an understatement -- on his feet and holding his head.      For the moment, he focuses to cast some simple spells: Unleashing a few blast of non-elemental energy aimed at the various part of the Giant's body, trying to throw it off in some manuvers the best he can while he reccuperate.
Ishirou	<Warning!> The POD blares out, and I4 snaps back to reality to leap away from the aftermath of the world being split apart.  He would sweat if he were capable of it, aiming to kick off of weird geography.  He grabs onto the pod which helps him jump over a chasm, before sliding to a halt right as the edge of the blast stops.   Getting a brief sigh of relief, he looks back to the creature.  Having been inside it, it was sad.  This creature, malformed but built with a purpose, and now it's purpose was opposed by all of creation itself.  Was it the fault of this creature for its problems, the fault of the creators?  Curious, when it comes to bad things, that they want to blame something.   Deeper. I4 does something very unwise, it attempts to dig DEEPER into the creature.  Not physically, but with its hacking connection.  Attempting to find something...the core bit of data that would hold the decision making for this creature.  The kernel of information that was vital to it.  It might be misshaped, but... Maybe if something missing was placed inside of it, maybe it could be stopped in a different way.  Now that he knows one way is there, and he can monitor that.
Tomoe	Tomoe could have walked away from this life long ago, she had an out. She had enough money she'd have been able to live an okay life. She didn't she kept going, she's not sure how to function as a 'normal' person from her world anymore. It seems Kupot and I4 work some kind of miracle hacking into the god killer. She's thankful for that the surprise that hits her when the attacks combine and hammer the enemy even harder is quite a welcome thing. Some very crazy things happen she's also on the ball she's fairly fast agile she knows how to work those wings too this saves her this time. Even with all her skill and ability, it's a near thing but she escapes harm and she sees the element shift it's now her time to strike with it. She will make use of the Yellow Relic. she focuses on it and her magic abilities she channels its power and works on a spell. "Chains of Midgard." chains seemingly formed out of the living earth appear briefly and attempt to assail the weapon maybe even try to hinder it for a moment to aid Tomoe's allies.
Rean Schwarzer	Well, looks like he's being the bait whether he wants to or not. Rean jumps back some distance and...clips through the floor and starts falling in a loop. Just a red and white blur falling and reappearing above the ground over and over again for a good minute before finally just getting dropped unceremoniously on the ground. He lets out a grunt, and staggers back onto his feet dazed. /Aidios,/ this thing was annoying. He rushes forward again, this time vaulting his way up whatever terrain there was, slashing his way across the the beast's top half.
Gilgamesh	Arkae makes it through the nonsense and shoves a poisoned blade into it. A pop-up appears above it as it twitches and thrashes. I4, still inside it, can see the code twitch in response, the symbols and images and reverse flowers (they were always flowers???) (??????) of numbers (??????????) thrash. Kupot, on his way out, gets to see the same - the poison take root. Thank God, something works. The medicine mingles with Raphael's hyper-drugs, and the whole of the creature shakes furiously. It's huge, and bio-mechanical, but it turns out that stabbing it with ELEMENTAL POISON and then ELEMENTAL POISON...well, it's having an EFFECT, that's for sure. I4 probably doesn't want to be in here anymore - the flowers (?????) are starting to twitch like wriggling jellyfish.      Kupot recovers, slashing at the thing's arms. That's probably the right call - the arms are moving in now, ready to strike, but Kupot's blade slashes across them, knocking them aside and knocking bits off it with every hit. Amelris joins in while Kupot has the large arms distracted and fires at the dangling main body. Shot after shot rains down on it. It hangs there in the air as if trying to process, to not shake itself.      I4 can't find anything vital inside it. It's...      It doesn't HAVE anything vital. It's an un-thing. Unfinished. Nonexistant according to the rules of the world. The rules aren't finished. The rules it's meant to operate on don't exist. Looking for a core in a jumbled mess of nonsense is...pointless. At best, he can insert things into the flowers (????) and pluck petals of code at the moment.      And doing so is horribly unwise, indeed, because eyes open on the inside, and it opens fire, beams of number and flower petals swirling down to tear him to shreds mentally.      Rean jumps up the glitched terrain onto the back of Ayudha Raksha and drags his blade along it as Tomoe brings her chains down around it. They drag it to the ground, where it hits, hard. It sits there for a moment before it starts to writhe and twist, the water falling away into rock. Its eyes turn to gemstones. Its claws do the same. Its wings turn to magma, molten rock.      It flaps.      Glitchy magma splatters out, pixel magma that flies through the air and leaves a trail in its wake. It brings its hands down, and the world shakes around it, a reality quake that threatens to tear asunder everything around it. It's *mad*, now, is what it is. Good work there.      Only two more stages to go through. TREE again, and METAL, which was skipped - and requires bringing it back to TREE.      And then maybe I4's debuff will stick...
Kupot	The wakizashi struggles to snap outward. It reaps out into the air, trying to cut down stone. Pixels get cut down, only to flicker through his flesh and into the armor. He swings up, cutting a flash of magma from his face, only to get more of the liquid stone on his flesh. Pain shoots through his limbs as the hacking module continues to send out electric jolts. He slides his wakizashi away as the creature turns to stone and magma. Instead, he grasps the hilt of his katana within its scabbard. "Heroes of old, kupo. Grant me the greatest strength." The orange Legenia glows and ripples with energy. SUPLEX > Audya Rasha > Wooden Ram It is the most simple attack. Kupot explodes from the ground like a rocket, head tucked down. Wooden energy from the relic combines with the orange light of the Legenia to form great wooden goat horns. The momentum comes from nothing. Mass has no point. One moment, Kupot is channeling energy. One moment, he shoots like a ballistic missile at the Godslayer.
Staren	Freaking magma now. Staren dodges most of it, but a couple of globs stick to the Star Hawk, melting armor, seeping into armor cracks and inhibiting its transformation systems.     EARTH. It's EARTH now, which means it's time for a TREE-element attack. Now, how is Staren going to manage that? Perhaps he traveled to some far-off world and picked up exotic magitech that shoots life energy?     On Staren's world, vampires are A Problem. Primarily around what used to be Texas and south of the border, but you can never be too careful. They are such a problem that weapons manufacturers mass-produce weapons specifically to fight them -- one such weapon was the base for the water cannon Staren just deployed. (If you move water fast enough it counts as running water, yes that's how it works) But you know what else is good against vampires? Wooden stakes. Preferably delivered from a distance with high velocity.     So it is that there are 'wooden' railgun rounds. They're not actually entirely wood, obviously -- there's a metal core to give them weight, from which extends contacts for the rails -- but they're wooden enough for vampires.     Are they wooden enough for AYUDA RAKSHA? Let's find out!     Machinery inside the railgun's feed systems whirrs and clunks ominously, and then Staren sprays forth a hail of hypersonic TREE at the monstrosity before them! The accuracy at long range leaves something to be desired, but this close it shouldn't be a problem.
Arkae Zellar	Arkae's left hand clenches around her relic. Not yet... ... And she has a plan in mind. The plan is going to suck. But not yet. The target needs to be METAL ELEMENTAL first. People were very clear on that, and the last couple of times she's tried to be clever with her elements have... cause some issues. She just needs to hit it once, very hard, with her relic. Her relic that she's been practicing with, learning its ins and outs. How to channel her innate magic through it to get it to do things. Fireballs. Fire-aspected sword strikes. Stupid tricks with literally burning poisons. It's almost always been a one way flow, Arkae -> Red Bird Relic. One day, out of boredom, she tried channeling it the other way, and the result caused her to burn through her entire stock of healing potions, pun not intended. Here, though... It's what's needed. Arkae waits, playing defense, waiting for the boss to cycle, waiting for the right moment... ... And then she channels. Backwards. Red Bird Relic -> Arkae.                               She catches on fire.                               She screams. It's loud, it's intimidating, it comes from some deep birdy place within her soul. She's also screaming because she's on fire, of course. The RED BIRD runs full out at Audya Rasha, ramming at him with everything she's got!
Raphael Cousteau	ELECTROCHEMISTRY: It could bring a tear to your eye. Sniffle. It worked. The horrible, godawful poisons combined did something useful. Raphael doesn't stick close, mind you--he's not some kind of hotblooded anime hero. PAIN TOLERANCE: I respect your dutiful sacrifice, but it might actually be worthwhile to note that the painkillers might be useful in a moment. Pattern recognition, and all. After all, the water's gone. And now it's rock. Now it's molten rock, which is somehow not fire. LOGIC: Fuck, why am I even here for this? Luckily, the RCM patrol jacket is enough that he isn't utterly brutalized. Magma pours over him, but--it's 'pixelly'. It's 'glitchy'. It doesn't know how to physics enough to do more than just burn through him and be gone, because otherwise, he'd probably be lost underneath a pile of cooling rock. Instead, he rises, wobbily, to his feet. He instinctively reaches for the small container of Nosphamed in his pocket, and... PAIN TOLERANCE: We just had this discussion, fuckhat. -1 HEALTH ENDURANCE: Calm down. Grit your teeth. It's just molten magma, which is almost never lethal. LOGIC: That is -absolutely- untrue. It passes, at least, and he's still standing. Standing is good. The kid gloves came off this fight, and that's starting to sink in for the cop. No change to the facial expression, though. Not that lucky. He's still got the shiteating grin. PAIN TOLERANCE: Hey, so, been thinking about this, and... [:::][:.:] PAIN TOLERANCE: Heat cauterizes, therefore this...doesn't hurt. That's reasonable. Yeah. That's absolutely logic, and if anyone says a word-- LOGIC: Oh, look, I'm suddenly busy remembering a sudoku puzzle from today's newspaper. INLAND EMPIRE: This creature cannot die. It does not know how to die. We can only hope to stem its tide. Prepare yourself, and strike. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Listen. You have a metal relic that can create anything you want, right? Right. So, we need to talk about what you're going to do with this. VOLITION: Don't fucking say it. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: Don't need to. You know it in your heart. Wait for it. First, the moogle. The moogle uses his relic, and earth will succumb to tree. The moment it does, he's ready to make a decision. Raphael has to make a choice. > Don't prybar. > Motherfucking PRYBAR. Liquid metal pours along Raphael's arm, coating it in a long, crow-bar like device, that he immediately slams into the hopefully treebark-esque leg. And then he begins to *pry*. To tear. To rend the flesh of the void in twain, backed by the world's desire to live.
Ishirou	Diving deeper does not end up as he expected.  The creature was just completely malformed.  No inner code, no core structure.  There was nothing like rhyme or reason, and if it did enforce its laws on the world...the very horror that could bring was enormous.  This wasn't a creature, so much as it was a dangerous force of nature. For once, I4 was sad about this.  If it had something of a core, then he could work with that...but it was just something else.  Of course, this awakens defenses in the beast, as eyes repeatedly shoot him with lasers.  His codebase starts to degrade, as the results cause his physical body to spark and then explode.   Hitting the ground, he can barely bring himself up to his feet.  The POD gives another warning but struggling to his feet his eyes focus on the creature.  It wasn't human, or a creature, it was like a nullborn. Ok that's fine, then he just needed to make sure that his code worked, and that it couldn't fight Discordia.   He focuses, once more attempting to reconstruct himself in the creature.  Those eyes are a vector though, he attempts to burst through them with his POD form in the creature, attempting to release a storm of code to try and scramble the creature's defenses, and once more attempt to make it work in the rules he wants. No holding back, no sympathy.  He decides to do what he was made to do...and learns that it's not so bad to rely on such things when it's necessary.
Tomoe	This world harkens back to when Tomoe was very young and her dad sat her down at one of his old game consoles and let her play some of his old game including this one little JRPG it was the one that had put her on the path to where she was today. It was an old game a simple game but it was a fun game of adventure, swords and spells. Shyra's, Jude's, Pazkar's and Linehart's world had hit that part of her. There was more in common. It was pulled into an existence like she was long ago in Sword Art Online. She had known what were NPCs to break free of that hat controlled them some had become friends after having been foes. The god slayer is still going it's changing elements again, still, they are making progress they are holding it off hopefully they can buy enough time to do so. "This world deserves a chance to be born a chance to live, to escape this purgatory most of its people have been trapped in for their entire existence." Can this thing understand? She doesn't know but it was something that had to be said. Tomoe swoops around at the massive horror as it's element changes once more. "I4?!" She's going to have to support those relic holders to make their moves. She chants again in Norse golden runes dance about her as she pulls up a massive not holy blade but an array of massive light laser beams. Normally she doesn't go this big with it, but today the arrows of lights are getting dang serious as she assails the Audya Rasha. "Odin's Gaze!"
Amelris Belthrone	Amelris knew that Magma hurts. It does! It pretty much kills you dead if you're not careful, not to mention the fumes. What is LESS known is that ... whatever this is, this kind of magma, /actually hurts as much as it is perplexing/. The Miqo'te stare up at the biomechanica monster as it unleashes it, attempting to flip back, leaping in the air to avoid the flood of molten earth. There is... partial success, landing only partially in magma, stepping back and roughly making large, long steps as most of his body fumes.      It is mostly his quick thinking of using the BLACK TURLTE relic in mid air to blast into the magma below him, with his boots, his pants and his tail's end actually being half-way on fire, his feets burning and his body blackened by burns and heat that he lands on a small island of relative saftey.      Amelris follows what he can. At this point, this deep into this fight, they have to just give it their all and hope for the best. The thing is /noticably/ angry... if it's capable of such an emotion.      There's not a lot of words to be said, here. He's been here from the begining of the investigations. The unrly problems, the abilities that seems familiar, the creepiness that followed when he and Alruna explored the towns, talked to the 'NPCS', as they called them. He knows the dream that most of the ones that awoke had. Helping this world become... 'something', something that it didn't manage, not quite right at the start. There's been mistakes. There's been misteps. There's been struggles.      Amelris opens his eyes, holding his canerapier in one hand as aether gathers around him. The magma bubbles about his tine cooled island of obsidian as he pull out his gathered energy during the fight -- and a little more.      This is for the people in becoming, that this will work out. Maybe it wont. But that hope, at least, that creed of helping some people awake from this 'stasis'. He wants that to happen. To leave a place in a better state than it was when he arrived. This is what he believes in, as a Crimson Duelist.      "BE MADE WHOLE!" Amelris screams out, his burning fur and billowing, scorched clothing stretching out while the magma next to him is blasted out as a torrent of Aether is unleashed out of his body, aimed onward at the GodKiller. Circles draws out around it's massive base, purple red energy pooling up like motes of dropping blood, much like a red rose's petal. It shudders, it SHRIEKS, adding it's power to the cacophony around them.      Then, it explodes upward, two titanic pillars of destructive energy reaching upwad to the heavens.
Rean Schwarzer	Rean gets caught in the magma flap, rocks and fire streaming towards him as Raksha continues to flail angrily. Magma impacts him, burning through his uniform and into his skin, and he lets out a roar. It was impossible to finish this thing off but /Aidios,/ couldn't it just GO AWAY?! Rean takes a deep breath, trying to re center himself. He promised Shyra he'd help her restore her world. That's why he's here. He wanted to see this world become more than just someone's failed dream. The people here become able to do more than just be stuck in the same loop for all eternity. To move forward, past The End. He ignites his sword, and rams into Raksha, blue flames bursting around him on impact. He then slashes at it with the still burning sword, dashing and jumping annd trying to slice it up as much as possible.
Gilgamesh	Railgun anti-vampire stakes smash into the monster. They punch into its earthen form, sinking deep inside. It lets out another scream that shakes the world, another glitch in reality that shakes and sputters everything around it.      It is not happy.      I4 tries to force it into the rules. Once again, it doesn't work - the thing is too inherently in lock-step with its own nonsense - but it does work *briefly*, briefly enough to put the defenses down. It's just a moment, where it's not vulnerable, that Arkae takes full advantage of, smashing into it with all the fire in the world. The red bird hits it and goes out the other side and it's a beautiful explosion of fire pouring out of every...well, its mouth? It doesn't have much else. The holes carved into it, too. It's a beautiful eruption. It also stumbles the thing long enough for Kupot to punch in behind her, a little moogle-shaped rocket of murderous wooden ram horns. The little moogle goes into its stomach and finds-      -emptiness.      There's nothing inside it.      Or, rather, there IS, but it's so nonsensical that it can't be called a biology or a living creature. On the way through it Kupot sees biomechanical organs, metallic circuits, and all manner of weird upside-down flowers. He also gets a glimpse of I4's disintegration on the way through - apparently it's a physical manifestation of the code inside? Or maybe it's just that the code inside bears resemblance to the body. Who knows? All that Kupot knows is that it's reverting back to TREE form, vines spilling out of its mouth and everything.      Rean delivers a devastating sword strike. Blue flames burst around him. They burn at the vines as the blade digs in to its flesh, leaving long trails of fire across it, leaving the burning blue hanging in the air around it as Tomoe brings laser beams down upon it from every angle. She pours holy beams of smite down onto the monster as it transforms, taking advantage of the rules of turn-based combat to hit it while it's engaging in its transformation move. From below, Amelris's beam of destruction joins in, punching into the heavens with a glorious pillar of destruction - and then a second, pinning Ayudhra Raksha in place along with Tomoe's holy flame. It gives Raphael his opportunity - his chance to surge forward and hammer his prybar straight into the thing's face.      Ayudha Raksha stalls as the metal bits grow around it. As the metal parts fall onto it. As the blades grow from its wings and its fingers, as the scales grow along its body, as the plates grow from its back. It just sort of...stalls.      It hangs there in the air before it sinks to the ground.                       ISHVARA PROTOCOLS DISENGAGED...                            And then the world cracks, and goes white...