Scene #7257: Blind Eye Detective Agency: HEKATE

Owner	Pose
Ein	LAST TIME, IN THE LAND OF GRIT AND LAMPS Memory and being stir. You recall your place in the story. A "known unknown" place, the Land of Grit and Lamps was one of the worlds involved in Afterus - a place of questions and darkness, of manly johns and womanly dames. A hard boiled place, where the only place to find color was under the golden halos of lamplight scattered around the only major location: New Lamp City. But there was something that happened, to fog the skies, and ink the streets, drowning and darkening. The stars in the sky no longer shine. The light in the sky is not the soft halo of lamplight. The lighthouse, in the distance, a shining beacon of progress since time immemorial, is out. Adrift in a sea of ink, you recall... ...The hot dog scent smells pretty good. Relish is involved. ... "We're not there yet." Arthur says. "I don't... think so. Not where we need to be, I mean. We gotta go to the Seventh Gate for that, and I don't think we're going there right now." ... ENDURANCE: I don't like this crap. Questions that don't have answers? What kinda bunk is that?! ... "Alright. I've had enough. If you're going to keep going on about the Critic, you have to share who they are and why we care. You've been dodgy as hell about anything at all when it comes to this, nebulously termed, 'art'." ... "She was here. She took things, and left. The holy mural of history, naknaknak..." ... "Whatever this is," says the Sorcerer Supreme, softly, "I think the time for bottling it up has come and gone." ... "Arthur - why are you here? To hurt yourself? You poor thing. Still, I can't blame you. When you both attain your ultimate selves you'll forever be two halves of the whole. The part that anyone sees, and her the part they forget." "There's nothing for any of you here. This effort from all of you is purely to fix a problem in front of you. Isn't this beneath you? Not worth your time? There's no reward at the end. This Land is exactly that: anticlimax. There will be no punchline. Thoroughly pointless as an exercise." "I never even needed her to fly." And now, the conclusion...
Roxas	"... So?" Roxas responds, his expression rising to a simmer and reaching a boil /incredibly/ abruptly. He regards the broom with an intensity roughly comparable to what most people would expect out of someone whose entire family was just insulted. "There's nothing for anything, anywhere. We all make our anything because we want to. Things only don't matter when there's no one around to get worked up about them. If this doesn't matter to you, that's okay, but you should go." He says.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: THE CRITIC KNOWS >Arthur: LISTEN TO HER >Arthur: Explain yourself to Hecate Are you sure that's Hecate? Arthur wipes a light stream of gleaming blood away from his face. Why, exactly, this presence has wounded him so, is unclear. He grits his teeth and focused. "That's an 'if', not a 'when'. Jesus, gotta be obvious why I'm here. I got asked to help. I got told there was a chance to do heroism. Little heroism, big heroism, I stick to the whole thing. That's why I came here but..." >Arthur: SILENCE >Arthur: Ask about the Cure "Are you the Critic? The Other Girl? The Voidlings told me you have a cure. For..." He breathes heavyily. "They told me you have a Cure." His voice trembles softly with a subtle desperation. His nails are digging into his palms.
Doctor Strange	Isn't this a waste of your time? Strange ponders this question, inclining his head slightly towards the figure astride the broom. His usual frown takes on a thoughtful shade, respectfully considering the nature of what 'wasting time' is. He reaches his conclusion, bowing his head. "Nnnn...ah. Nope." He lifts his head, looking over at Arthur. It's never a waste of time to help people, least of all to help them with your friends. "I'm gonna... warn you right now, you don't wanna get into semantics with me about time. Ask any of these people. Literally any of them."
Lilian Rook	Lilian is still a participant dragged here by inscrutable whims of, well, something far different than fate at least. She feels as if she's been the only one with her feet on the ground this entire time -- or even half of it. Dressed 'casual' for something she'd no doubt rather be doing, riding along the back of the nearly inexplicable convertible, puzzling together pieces of uninspiring unimportance, this is the first time she'd gotten any hint of anything meaningful, even strange and forward-placed as it was. When asked, probably rhetorically, if this isn't a waste of her time, her response is a "Well . . ." trailing off into a slow, emphatic gesture with her little book. "Mine? Absolutely. Though it seems I'm needed all the same by people who, for some reason, do think they must spend their time on this. Unfortunately." She audibly shifts gears with a snap and drop of her book into the back seat. "Although, now I'd be a little annoyed if I came away with nothing. Not tangibly, you understand. It'd immensely bother me not even knowing why I had to waste my time here at all. I hate proper nouns that nobody ever explains." She stands up, leather in the back seats softly creaking until her shoes clank quietly on top of the chassis. "I know where you're supposed to fit. It was important enough to Know. And besides. That sounds like what something would say when its sole purpose is to get in the way and make certain nothing changes. So, I don't really intend to listen." "Thou shalt never heed the words of that which abides not adversity or attainment. Thirteen. Get over here so I can stitch you back into your painting."
Raphael Cousteau	Raphael Cousteau holds onto his forehead with a few fingers, waving his other hand outwards, vaguely, in a circle. > Guys, I don't understand any of this. It's on you. Someone? Anyone? [#][#] CONCEPTUALIZATION: Okay. Hang onto your hats, guys. LOGIC: We're not wearing hats. VOLITION: You could make an argument I'm wearing a hat. CONCEPTUALIZATION: You all understand the concept of negative space, right? HALF-LIGHT: Is it dangerous? ELECTROCHEMISTRY: No, but I bet there are some leaves we could smoke to make this easier to understand. CONCEPTUALIZATION: Big man, pretend they all nodded in agreement. This is non-existence by process of elimination of existence. That form is delineating the existence of a girl by being literally -everything else-. It's a girl by the absence of a girl. It's on the broom because a witch's broom needs someone to ride it. INLAND EMPIRE: A hole made of omniexistence. CONCEPTUALIZATION: Correctamundo. Now, everything else is probably going to require a little of the talky-talky, and possibly shooting her, but that's out of my department. Just thought I'd explain the Art behind all of it. Good luck! SUGGESTION: Sounds good. Now, keep her talking, and we might figure out what we're even supposed to start with this. "...Of course there isn't anything for me here." Raphael replies. "I'm not here for a reward. I'm here because..." He pauses. "... Oh, fuck." He scratches at his face aggravatedly, mouth open widely. "Agh. Almost. Almost got it. That's it. That's it, right there, that's the thing, that's the key, right there..." He's close, but what is he NOT missing to get the final piece of this?
Ein	Why are they here? * Because there's meaning in getting worked up. The broom, hovering over the flash-constructed fortress for hotdogs and morons, rises vertically, the white bolt of a placeholder 'figure' hanging parallel to the ground as the eye along the haft of the broom rotates and pans across the party. "So eager to do meaningless things." * Because when what you have is Time, you can spare it. "So cavalier and mysterious. But as you wish--" * Because of my code, I don't need to answer. "--I will reveal for you, then, and you'll be satisfied. I am Hekate. I am not forgotten. I am not silent. I am not history. I am not the hole: I am what was pulled out of it. Twice struck from the cloth and canvas!" * Because... I'm here because... The voice of the broom drops to a sweet, low breath. "The city called you. It's too late. The dark can't bring things to light." * Because I seek the Cure! "Oh, of course! Arthur, you should have started with that. If that's all you need, then when this is wrapped up with a bow, you can go see that shade." The seas of ink bubble and boil, rising. White noise and botches of reality gather around the floating broom. The ROYCE continues to float, but the crocodiles in their palace of mirrors are threatened if this doesn't close up soon. "You'll find out when you're all alone. A Choice that you can make instead." The air about Hekate flickers like an old-style rabbit-eared TV tuning into the right channel shearing into mirror images, buzzing. 'Slow' white lightning, branching into fingers of lethally scorching potentia that do not collapse onto themself once they reach their meeting point. Miles of white.
Raphael Cousteau	The crackling, curling lightning advances towards the police officer. HALF-LIGHT: RUN. ANYWHERE BUT HERE. INLAND EMPIRE: No. Exactly here. Exactly here, in this spot. Raphael lets out his breath, taking another one...and then just... He just holds his breath. The lightning approaches him. It splits and splits and branches out, and by some pure measure of happenstance--or, perhaps, by learning some deep, forgotten lesson, it leaves a three-dimensional silhouette worth of space--the exact space that the stitched-in Void player happens to be standing in. He's untouched. He's fine. > Okay. I need everyone to work together. Visual Calculus. I need you to keep updating me with where you think she's going to fly. Inland Empire, tell me which of those are correct. Half-Light, there's going to be more attacks, and 'standing still' won't solve them all. This is fight-or-flight, and we have already picked fight. Everyone else...keep an eye out for me. The SUNRISE PARABELLUM, Raphael Ambrosius Cousteau's weapon of choice, is drawn from his holster. It gleams only with the light his adversary's given off. "..." [#][#] AUTHORITY: Don't you dare say anything wishy-washy. "This city called me. This city loves me." The gun is raised. "...And I'm not going to let it down." ============> Raphael: FIRE THE GUN.
Arthur Lowell	>==> Strange gets a good look at Arthur for a moment. That smear of blood has the intuitive medical feel, for an ex-neurosurgeon, of a brief burst of neurological damage, though it doesn't seem to be ongoing and one sure couldn't diagnose details under these circumstances. The boy powers through it. >[S] Arthur: Strife!! Arthur suffers the WHITE MILES directly, shearing at least a fifth off his HEALTH VIAL. He's disoriented, shivering from something inside even as the outside sears flesh in streaks of charred black. Broom against broom, he struggles. His own battle-broom flares out of his Strife Deckm as he draws his hand. The impact knocks him back and nearly into the sea, but he manages to maneuver his broom under his feet and rise to a flying position. "I don't understand why you're... why you're doing this..." He steadies himself, and then he steadies his resolve. "But if this is what facin' this case down the heroic way means, I'm not bowing out, even if you're putting up the face of..." He bites a lip, averting his eyes only slightly to psyche up for the pain of striking out at a familiar silhouette. Crushing both hands into tightly balled fists, he blasts wide, tearing beams of black gravitational energy, meant to rip up the Critic's space and impact brutally!
Roxas	"It's not that I'm eager to do meaningless things," Roxas answers, "it's that I have a problem with somebody else defining what's meaningless for someone else. I can decide that on my own." He doesn't burn when the WHITE MILES make contact with him. This isn't because he's not taking damage-- it seems to be taking some /other/ form entirely. Drifting motes of darkness trickle off of his form like wisps of smoke, rising from the points of contact where he doesn't so much burn as start coming apart on a fundamental level. There's no obvious smell, or texture, or flavor to it. It's just a gentle unraveling. Roxas raises a hand to the sky and begins to channel his inner Light, which shouldn't -- by rights -- exist there at all. His /own/ volley of winding trails of light burst out of the palm of his hand, zigzagging through the surroundings towards the broom and saturating its immediate surroundings.
Doctor Strange	Strange readies his weapons, mandalas of white energy burning brightly before his hands. In anticipation of the attack, a larger one appears, the other two fit neatly inside and behind it. This large wheel turns, a spell conjured to try and absorb the nothing-power of the lightning. It proves a poor decision. Excruciating heat suffuses his body. The sorcerer tries to stay on his feet, but is knocked onto his back, the construct cracking into its constituent motes. He is back on his feet in an instant as grey tendrils of smoke rise from his body. Around him there buzzes a faint aura of that very static. Through controlled breathing and a complex series of hand gestures made possible only through reality-bending, Strange inverts the energy gathered within him, changing it from nothing to something. The aura around him grows more clear, from static to shining light. First, some of this is directed towards Arthur, in the form of healing. But the majority of it is focused into a brilliantly shining, lethally sharp lance of energy. Strange hurls it, and it sails through the air towards the broom.
Lilian Rook	"Satisfied?" Lilian is not satisfied. "You're a presumptuous one, to think that you could satisfy me with that little effort. Where do you get off talking down, broom." She knows exactly what Hekate is supposed to mean, and how that is important, but now it's 'broom'. "Besides. Even an idiot could tell you that the only way you can pull something from a hole is when it comes from the bottom. Tearing something out of a hole is just more hole. A bigger, emptier, useless hole." She gets halfway to reiterating herself, in a sort of dream 'why even bother' way. "Put a hole in a net and you get less holes." "This whole place is made of holes. Tell me again about being something in a sea of nothing, because you came out of nothing. Sophistry so empty it runs in lemniscate can't hope to stand up to even 'because I wanted to'." There's only a certain amount that arguing with the broom (Hekate) will go. Only so long the Critic(?) is willing to talk. Lilian is far from actually prepared for combat here, in as much as that statement can be said. It'd have behooved her, perhaps, to keep it going for a little while longer, but the White Miles are not to be argued with any longer. They are the grade at the end of the Critic's review, and they don't like what they've seen. So far. So let them miss the good part. -----[stop]----- Even 'slow' lightning comes at you fast. It may be a less-than-luminal speed that doesn't require precognitive warning to do anything about, but it's something that Lilian has to pump the brakes on hard, unpleasant as it is -- like starting up into a dead sprint right out of bed, then stopping suddenly as soon as one's heart rate reaches the right pace. It's going to be like that. She spares the look and the words that should express how she feels about this, to nobody in particular. The surreality of the 90's aesthetic-esque tuning fields being carved out of raw 'is not is not' and looped about in self-perpetuating patterns is a very new one; it's something she'd stop and marvel at, if given the chance to walk about and examine the shapes in static whole, and not the start of a headache. Black static. A little knife in the back of gravity. She takes to the air, opposite of Arthur, weaving through the recursions of formless and indefinite energy.. -----[start]----- "How many times have I told you, Lowell?" Lilian calls out, flanking Hekate from the air. "A hero is supposed to have some backbone. If you want to do something, and this thing is standing in your way, that's all the reason in the world to beat it down into place, isn't it? If you came here for any reason at all, then stop thinking those half-assed thoughts and go straight through to whatever this is and to what it is you want." Lilian draws a familiar western-style pseudo-Celtic mandala with the same precise double arcs of her arms and even more precise configurations of her fingertips, trailing gold and black together -- fizzling and popping, pushing light towards and letting light fall away -- into tri-layered circle of dozens of rotating pieces. Instead of shooting, she turns her elbow and her palm up, snapping fingers that give off embers of energy. A pool, or perhaps a sphere, of similarly incandescent dark appears some hundred meters directly overhead of the broom, firing an entire volley of crackling ray-arcs before the bits of hot essentia from its birth even make it all the way down. It's extremely close, all things considered, relying on a blind spot between the two aerial enemies to strike through the short distance too quickly to be noticed.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: LISTEN TO THE HEIR OF TIME >Arthur: YOU ARE HERE TO FIND THE WITCH >Arthur: YOU ARE HERE TO BECOME WHAT YOU'RE MEANT TO BE >Arthur: DISCARD YOUR COWARDICE Arthur's body suddenly shifts. Even as Strange eases some of that neurological damage, Lilian's words slam into him like a punch to the gut. His insecurity flares up. Everything wavers, the black beams flicker, and Arthur's immediately put into a precarious psychological space where what happens next might strongly, direly affect his decisions and his tactics. He doesn't have any pithy remarks for her words because he's too busy being profoundly upset with himself for provoking them in the first place, though that's not easy to tell.
Ein	For a being made up of '''magic?''' and ridden by a blindingly white and fraying essence of 'filled space', shooting strange slow lightning that unmakes things... Hekate sure does take hits from Raphael's handgun like hammerblows from a god. There's just something in the air - some dark pulp action magic - that demands satisfaction. The satisfaction of a showdown, of a hammer being cocked, of a striking pin's virtuoso solo, of the smell of gunsmoke. His KEY works in these LOCKS. The lightningbolt reels back as if struck dead in the 'chest'. Arthur questions Hekate's choices, the reasons the twisted implement had for her 'betrayal'. "The Pure. The Other. When They come, we'll be ready." "I was ready! I did everything right, I guided, I led, I questioned. You have no idea what it's like to be forgotten. To be the unexplored plot point, a blip in the long memory of ages. To see her drift away from the world. To listen to him fret. What about MY pain, only fit to carry nothing at all? What about my story? It's gone! Only I know what it's like to be forgotten twice! Abandoned so thoroughly that I ceased to exist!" "The Critic gave me a new story. Pointed out the flaw on the canvas. I never needed her to fly." Gravity - space - pushes away the encroaching miles, brushing them aside like spilled paint in smears and drifts, balling and twisting together like the fingers of a fist, ripping and crushing in equal measure. Washed-out light crawls through the carved-out corridor, climbing up into the sky like a time-delayed mirror, shattering the broom's remaining Miles like glass as the whole broom burns - held in place by the tremendous hit-stun of Absolutely Not A Boss's boss attack. Certainly, for only not-bosses have an unrecoverable sure-hit move that also places you in stagger. Stagger that creates an opening for a lance of Something - an extreme, condensed shunt of reality that spears up into the sky to impale not the broom, but the false rider like a historical Longinus. Hekate 'screams', a distorted howl of frustration, of agony, of bucking struggle. ... But the bullet buries in her gut. Hot lead and warm blood spill from the new hole she sprouted. Droplets of impossible crimson drop into the inky sea. ... But the rays of gravity close around her like a fist, shaking like a friend that just wants you to snap out of it. ... But the White Miles turn upon Hekate, and even those 'betray' her, a warmer and gentler light tearing at the raw nerve. ... But she's speared, woven reality holding the broom that should not exist in place like a pin in a butterfly. There's no escape. There's nothing to do. Each member of this party is a Hero, a storied character. Someone that is tangible. Someone that exists. A pool of dark erupts over Hekate, tearing apart the 'rider' to such a violent extent that the broom loses its flying magic, and falls unceremoniously into the sea of ink.
Ein	The sea of ink boils, the smell of ballpoint pens roasting on a coal stove mixed with urban sprawl and gunmetal. The underlings within the lake surge up, strange towers of bodies pasted together like fingers reaching for the sky, toppling over onto the party while the individuals within swing madly, reach and claw and bite and strike and grasp, all with the vicious intent to harm these Heroes, these Players, these Stand-In Detectives. The Royce is buoyed up on a swell of ink and slides 'off' a strangely red landmass. The surface of an unblinking eye, bloodshot yet mechanical. It sounds again, the cry of pain, of longing, of something else. The fog closes in yet more. Thunder booms, though no lightning brightens the dour sky.
Raphael Cousteau	INLAND EMPIRE: HERE. THE MEANING IS HERE. IT'S IN HERE SOMEWHERE. EMPATHY: ...Wait. You do know. You know exactly what she's talking about. Raphael cocks the gun again, looking up at Hekate. His gun, shakily, trails upwards. Again, the dice roll. Again, they don't matter. [#][#] "I do. I've even forgotten myself, before. Every last drop of me. I made myself not exist." ELECTROCHEMISTRY: Now remember, that was a bad thing, and you should at most drink a quarter of that much at a time ever again. Maybe a third. Just not that much. That's being responsible. "...I've had to build all of me from the ground up." Speaking of the ground up, the underlings apparently have smelled the blood in the water. HALF-LIGHT: Raise your fists. The beasts clamor for more crimson in the pitch. As the tower collapses, Raphael moves on some sort of long-abandoned instinct. Luckily for him, they are the instincts of a detective. Of a cop. A hard-boiled punch to the snout of an imp, to establish dominance. A pistol whipped in the face of an ogre. A flat-footed kick, like bashing down the door, directly into an oversized tusk. "...You aren't the point!" He declares to the masses. "Get back down in the depths, or I'll put you all in the slammer!" For some reason, this particular crime seems incredibly enraging to the Inspector. Even he can't place why. The gun's cocked again, and he frantically tries to find some sort of core to the towers to shoot. Something holding them together. These need to go.
Doctor Strange	The spear appears to have brought her down, but there is still the hole. There must be, else that would have been the end of it. Maybe if he can find a way to fill the hole, he can make her whole again. At the very least, he can plug this wound in reality. Maybe that would bring his friend some closure. You don't always get a neat little bow. Strange has tried and failed many times for that little bow--notably in a doomed world made for a kid, but many times besides. It hasn't stopped him from trying. She is right, of course. As he takes to the sky to avoid the towering fingers of pasted-together underlings, he comes to realize that he /doesn't/ have any idea what it's like to be forgotten. Claws, fists, clubs--everything the underlings can muster are swung at him as he passes. Some of them strike true, battering him, tearing his tunic in places. He manages to fly mostly free of them, but not in time to find what he was searching for. The broom. It's got to be the root of this. He can only assume it's at the center of that red landmass. Again, he attempts to plug the hole. Something can be anything, as long as it's not Nothing. He prepares a spell with a Name and a Story. The realm of Cinnibus is one with seven suns, never setting, kept alight by the wisdom of its inhabitants. The people there lead lives of peace and enlightenment, and have shared their wisdom with the Sorcerer Supreme for nearly as long as the Masters of the Mystic Arts have existed. Here, in this place, the bright purple stars burn white, as do all of his spells. But their fires are real. They are Something. Strange calls upon them now, his mandalas rapidly turning, the tiny mystic computers dialing up the realm of Cinnibus. The heat of its seven suns first forms a burning lance, but Strange's hands refine it, mold it into an arrow--then more. One for each sun. Nocked into a gigantic, flaming greatbow, the Sorcerer Supreme fires them all in one tightly-packed cluster. They fly seemingly with a will of their own, heading for the baleful eye below.
Roxas	Roxas raises his head and sees what is, in essence, a Heartless tornado. Even here, a Heartless tornado. Dropping his outstretched hands into a grasping position, there is a ringing noise in the surroundings as both Keyblades come to hand. He enters into a careful dance, blocking oncoming claws and fists and pushing away the occasional bite. There's /just too much/ stuff to avoid getting hurt whatsoever though, so his defense is punctuated with the occasional hiss, 'Ouch!', and relatively formless shouts of surprise. The twin Keyblades are drawn back together in the midst of the chaos, twining together into a single black-and-white checkered form bearing the odd cross-shaped emblem of the Nobodies, and a distinctly spiked teeth. He comes about with the blade and charges back and forth through the air, landing back at his original position as streaks of light follow him destructively back and forth in an x-shaped pattern. It's like battojutsu, only without a sheath or a real sword! This does not stop it from looking Pretty Cool anyway.
Arthur Lowell	>==> But if this isn't the Critic...? Who could it be? Who has more connection to the old friend? Who else is there? What can Arthur know about who he's chasing? >Arthur: Abjure Arthur suffers a dead-on slam from the towers of Underlings. Swiping claws brutalize heroic flesh, as they are meant to. Arthur swipes his vision around. Did he lose track of the broom?! Is it sinking to the seafloor now? No no no no! He surges through towers of swinging claws and gnashing teeth, suffering cuts and bruises to pursue, only to find that massive eye. He recoils back. This being has been so aggressively, extensively dropped from memory, from continuity in a sense, from "canon", that it's ended up like this. Lilian's esteem-smashing statement rings around his skull like a clanging bell. His instinct is to insecurely lash out at her. Or to lash out at all. It forces his mind to the worst places. "God, god... god dammit! /Yeah/ I don't know what it's like being /forgotten/, 'cause none of this ever fucking ends! I... ghhhh! There's /never/ any closure! Always fucking sequel hooks, shitty DLC, and a live fucking service of a carousel of problems that don't get fixed right! Shit that goes nowhere, builds up and never pays off, a fucking lifestyle of hoops you jump through so that you can get to other hoops! No fucking /closure/, /ever/. Never, ever, not even once, not even when you beat the fucking end-boss! But if I break how this works, I--" >Arthur: YOU'RE EMBARRASSING YOURSELF >Arthur: MORON >Arthur: IDIOT >Arthur: THIS SORT OF THING IS WHY THE HEIR OF TIME WAS YELLING AT YOU >Arthur: STOP FIGHTING A GROUND WAR AGAINST THIS >Arthur: START FIGHTING A HEAVENLY ONE His noise leaks that gleaming blood again. "Nnnnh! Fucking-- /why?!/" He wipes it away angrily. "Why /now/?! I'm doing the /right thing/, this shouldn't..." His breathing gets trembly as he nearly loses focus. It only takes a second to snap back to it though. >Arthur: Assail Don't look at the sun. Arthur raises his hands, summons up a powerful miniature sun, and gushes its magical starstuff directly at the eye's pupil, looking more like he's suffering than delivering a critical blow to a foe.
Lilian Rook	'I was ready.' 'I did everything right.' 'What about my pain?' 'I never needed (her).' When Hekate -- the broom and figure for the figure belongs to the broom -- utters that last cry of miserable defiance before spiraling down and down through the air, and splash, disappearing into the dark, inky waters, leaving nothing behind but steam and laments, Lilian-- -----[stop]----- She breathes out, slowly, then brings her left hand to her face, rubbing her eye with an exasperated and nearly completely demoralized sigh. "All of that, and that's what I get in the end? All that mystery and grit noire and all of those proper nouns and nonsense terms and bits of history I don't get to know -- that's the meaning of me being here? Along for the whoe ride just for that nasty little stab at the end." "Does someone have something to say? Is someone looking to project? Is that supposed to be some kind of warning? Or just a petty little needle at the moment it's most dramatically depressing." She lowers her hand again, face contorting into an expression of deep, partly physical comfort, and the aggravated look of being unable to place it. "Screw this place. Fuck 'you', whoever I'm thinking of. You've gone over the line." -----[start]----- --releases her breath in a sigh somewhere approximate to, if one feels imaginative and charitable, perhaps pity. It sounds like something that doesn't come easily to her; it didn't really come to her this time either. All she says is "So I misestimated you, it seems. In more ways than one. A little sad. Well, as much as I can get bent out of shape for a broom. Nothing here makes any straightforward sense in the first place." She turns to start flying away, drifting back down to the car, skating on an invisible breeze. "Come on. Let's pack it up. We have to get that thing out of the bottom somehow." Retrieved. Like an object. Sunken salvage. Or maybe a body. She doesn't get to go looking for one, because there isn't one to find. She's still a few seconds away from the car when the sea rebels. When the black ink on black pages decides it isn't done. Lilian reels back from the boiling surface of the 'water', tangibly feeling the red hot rage smouldering inside the ink still fresh in a disused old typewriter as much as she smells it. She eye rolls the car off. The umpteen underlings of a dungeon that never was cling together and tower above, even casting her in their shadow. For whatever, it seems to restore some of her mood. Diminish that clenching thing of unidentifiable 'disgust'-adjacent feeling. Far from stressful -- it's revitalizing. "Oh! So you weren't satisfied either, with that dim and depressing anticlimax! To abandon the central conceit of this whole world of yours, right when it'd matter the most. Between justice and the void, you've decided to let slip the reins just this once and go out in a blaze of glory like you've wanted. That's why, isn't it? Because it feels right. Because you won't get this shot ever again. Because, even for these lowly minions, tearing up the script and violating everything it all stands for is the first and last time in their existence that they'll ever strike out and do what they were meant to." Her hand clasps the black celtic cross dangling from her neck. Her knuckles are white, but her eyes gleam with a mad little sparkle. "Ah, I like that better. That resolve -- no, that moment of weakness, is beautiful. The one and only reason worth coming here. I'll give my thanks later, for being such an inspiring validation."
Lilian Rook	She practically tears the pendant from her neck. The clasp breaks apart. Pitch black fog -- black like night and missing memories and the inside of closed eyelids -- gushes from between her clenched fingers, drawing a seething smoke trail through the air where she swings her arm and flourishes her wrist, and then the full, naked form of the magnetite sword springs out, blossoming in a shower of jet mist and scarlet embers, its etchings already prominent red in the darkened surroundings. "Just for you, Hekate--" not 'broom' "--I'll try being a little beautiful in return. I'm sorry for saying all that about being just an obstacle in the way of the straight line forward; if you can snap the leash and bare your teeth like this to the grand hero, you're really more like something to 'rise to', I think. Something that makes me want to go just a little all-out." Grasping the hilt carefully in both hands, Lilian's grip slides up to the base of the guard, and almost all the way to her palm on the pommel, holding it something like a lever than something to grip and swing. The point drifts down, then up, then down again, by minute degrees, tiny adjustments of her fingers and muscles seeking out some geometrically perfect stance. Her breathing gradually slows to a stop. The dark patterns run past her elbows. Her own time flows downriver away from her, extending 'sideways' through the maddening four dimensional linework that is where she is going to go -- is going -- has already gone -- detailing the exact spiral patterns of the blade throughout it. Chanted like a mnemonic, not a magical spell, Lilian, just about to be crushed under a tidal wave of furious underlings, brandishing their last, imitated spark of existential relevance, says out loud "Cleasa o Skye -- Marbhadh Ceud Dhuine." Lilian doesn't so much disappear agan, as she Disappears, just for a fraction of a second. An appropriately literal spirograph of flashing, gleaming arcs unfolds from her point in space and exponentially expands through the surrounding crush of underlings. A hundred arcs of uncanny scarlet light, looped through each other a hundredfold each, tying together a knot that has no start nor end, blossom outward with such speed and in such quantity that they shred her surroundings to a rainstorm of fine matter. There's a rushing explosion of white fire that follows like a sonic wake, dissolving into falling black embers, cold like long dead ash and tasting of burnt bones. There is, quite literally, steam coming off of Lilian's sword. From her briefly tattoo'd arms. Her fingertips glow like a forge against their contact points with the blade. She breathes out. Then loses the moment right at the end to an inelegant break of coughing of exactly the character of someone just finished running far too hard.
Ein	... An x-cut across the space of longing. ... Frantic, passionate shots to the core of the idea guided not by sight or sound but City. ...Seven suns on a single world, drawn from Space's quiver into Time's bow. Seven pins that hold wide the fabric of reality, hold open the eye of beholding. ... The massive eye - Hekate's eye, can do nothing but behold Arthur Lowell in his heroic glory, not as a god, but as a star. The universe evaporates like a heat mirage, leaving nothing at all. >Be the other girl. A book rests on a page, the text fuzzy. It is 'now'. Crinkling pages whisper on the wind as they roll back, years of detail rippling past, to a broom-bristle bookmark. You are home, surrounded by the vistas you created before the beginning of time with paint and imagination upon the walls of your home. You aren't sure how old you are any more, but you're sure your boyfriend could tell you. The smell of wood and whiskey puts you at ease. Your grey-skinned boyfriend comes in with a weird watch on. Barbs and flirts are traded. You are happy. You are content, if not eager to see if this will disprove a fear you've had your entire life. That if someone took a picture of your soul, would the photo develop? Besides you, as your existance rings after being struck with a tuning-fork of a tone that you can't hear, a broom pops into existance. You have to catch it, as it topples over. Words, thoughts, emotions float like a thick soup in the air. "Also, shouldn't you fly? Being a witch's broom. Unless I'm not supposed to ride you. Aren't I supposed to? Witch, witch's broom..." You sigh. "Oh I'm already off to a great start." More words flow about your head, spilled on the canvas of sound. Hectate speaks brightly. "It's nice to meet you, Fiora! Of course I fly, just not on my own." The haft of the broom moves about in a brief pleasant gesture as it says, "Among other things." You laugh, despite everything. Having a broom makes you feel 'witchy' for the first time. "Wow, you sound really nice for something that got smashed out of me. Are you /sure/ you hit the right concept? Nah, actually, had to be. I don't know anyone else who is so /witchy/." This isn't where you belong. >Be yourselves. >Open your eyes. Four 'yous' return to four sets of senses. One you returns to twenty four sets of voices, and everyone is very sorry for that you. If you'd like to go back to being the other girl, we understand. Adrift on a calm sea of ink, time stands still. Lilian's hundredfold arcs of bladework hang in the air, seperate from the stilled steam coming off her blade. Hekate's voice, sullen, issues from the eyeball. "If I don't react to this, it won't happen." The broom announces. "Until I die, I'm alive. Until I turn the page, I exist. Until the period is put to the end of the sentence, I am not forgotten." The eye is... sobbing. "So I won't." It pans over to Raphael. "I'll listen to your voices." It pans over to Strange. "You have all the Time we need." Roxas. "You understand me completely!" Lilian. "You thought I was beautiful..." Arthur. "... But if I don't, you all will be forgotten. This city is an anticlimax. I, a twice-struck image, blurry, faded. If I blink, I'll cease to be." "But she drew me into that mural. She was smiling. She drew me with my eye open, even though she didn't need me to fly." "I'm the one that needed her."
Ein	Hekate, the eye, issues a bubbling, sobbing laugh. "Hey. This way, I get closure too. What's better? A story that ends, or one that goes on until it isn't written any more?" "Yeah." "This is more beautiful. I'll get what she won't. I'm sorry."
Ein	The book snaps shut. All is nothing. The city is gone. ... Except...