Scene #7434: Extra Corpses

Owner	Pose
Evehime Gevurah	There is a comparison, and a contrast, to be drawn, to the night Edward had gotten himself into all of this. But it would be pointless to bother. It was night time then, and it could be now, but it'd be impossible to know for sure, for the once-in-a-century density of thundering black storm clouds overhead. It had been loud them, but for the million pilgrims in the street, not the howling wind and hissing rain that pounds at the ears and face the minute out of the warpgate, nor the rumble that descends from the forks of electricity crawling on the underside of the ceiling in the sky. It had been dark back then, though it had glowed on the horizon, for having been carved out of a city of lights. A night scar on a glittering landscape of towering steel and late shift lights, pulled out at the roots. Now it's because the remote place that he is lead to hasn't seen a building over three stories in the history of its existence. A green, rural backwater, by a storm-lapped lake, or ocean perhaps, damp and sodden and dark in the squall, save for the scattering of pyres that still somehow burn against the torrential downpour of water. The original shape of the town this probably was is nearly impossible to discern, in the blackened husks of furiously scorched buildings. The original shape of its inhabitants, intentionally less so. Everyone who lived here is dead. That much was already a promise. They've been killed carefully. A staggering number of them. A hundred times more than should be possible before anyone could get out to their car, or horse, or whatever was here. The exact number that Edward saved before, should he care to count. He may not, but he could, because right out from the given warpgate, barely big enough to fit through, and down a slick and muddy trail through old backwater growth, they've all been assembled for him. Over two thousand bodies, heaped together at the burning township's edge. No, that isn't entirely correct. A heap would imply that he could see them all at once; that the shock and trauma would strike suddenly and completely. Some considerable, prescient care has gone to dragging the bodies out of the flaming streets and into the rain, so that they can each be buried up to the neck in an individual rocky cairn, exposing only the head, and arranged in such a way that no more than a hundred are recognizable from any one view at any time, save from directly above in the air. He can presume how many there are. He could count, if he spent the time, but he is, it seems, intentionally denied a full view of the carnage. What he has a full view of instead is the vast, flattened plain of recently scorched earth, turned to fine, grey sand, between the trail and the town, somehow having settled into regular, almost raked patterns, undisturbed by the wind; and in the middle of them, the arrangement of dark riverbed boulders that have been geometrically piled together to form a single seat from which to look down from. Even in the dark, in the wind, in the rain, against the glare of the fire, the cold stinging his eyes, he can clearly make out everything down to the posture of the figure on top, only the scarf-shawl's fluttering in the wind and the glint of its gold in the firelight moving about her. She practically glows. She doesn't, but it feels as if she does. Robbed of a full sense of detail without stepping onto the sandy plain, from the distance and the dark, the eyes and brain process what they make out, simplified and compressed and lossy as it is, into a false halo impression. There's no way she won't see him, either.
Edward Blackwell	He's smoking, when he walks in. One hand cups the flame, cups the smoke away from his eyes. He cradles the cigarette as the water flows down his face. He can't let it get in front of him. If he does - if it gets in his eyes - he'll be able to see them. He'll see how all of them died. Every single one. He'll understand, not just intuitively, but immediately. He can't do that yet. Not till he's ready. Not till everything's ready. A sharp breath. A footstep into the rain. Ten minutes. Ten minutes to save as many people as he saved last time. Ten minutes to repeat something that took him days. That took him self-destructive days. Ten minutes to do everything he did already, but again, in the same way. "Fuck you," Edward says aloud, so she knows that he's there. And then he releases the smoke into his eyes. It's not one by one. No, no. It's all of them at once. Every corpse in sight. He's treated to the image of a massacre. To hands going through faces. To smashed-in cars and people impaled on metal. He's treated to the image of Evehime's massacre over and over and over again. Hundreds of Evehimes all at once. Every death. Every kill. Here, a body flung against a wall and impaled. There, a foot smashing through a head. Over, and over, and over, and over. He reels. He can't not. But it's something that'll speed him up. And right now he needs that more than ever. He needs something that'll speed him up, and something he can focus on, that isn't Evvie. Evvie is for other people to deal with. He brought other people for that reason. He goes to work. It's actually a sight to behold. Edward loaded up. He sat up all night, thinking, in his nice new suit - the suit currently getting soaked by the rain, protected only by his labcoat, the suit and tie that he bought specifically to do something he hated so he didn't have to think about something he liked. He sat up all night and stared at the wall and let the formulae and theories run wild through his mind. Efficient procedures. More efficient. More. More. Something he could do with the blink of an eye. Something he could do on the way. The answer was in fire. She'd answered it with rain. He'd answer it with breath. Edward flips the cigarette into his mouth and swallows it. The taste is rancid. It's awful. He gags as the lit cigarette makes its way down. He punches himself in the throat. It stops. The lit cigarette burns his skin. The smell of burning skin fills the area. Smoke starts pouring out of his mouth. It's agonizing. But it's breath. Edward starts walking. One hand in his pocket. He's choking, but not enough. He's made very sure that he can still breathe. If he can't still breathe, then he can't give them breath. God breathed into the nostrils of Adam, and it was good. Inspiration, there. Fire and air. Breath of life. Spark of life. So he walks, and he breathes outwards, and the smoke is caught in the waters of the open firmament, the flood of God, and pours down into the dead. The smoke kickstarts their bodies. The breath flows into their orifices and it drags them back to life on the thinnest of nonsensical medical pretenses, pretenses half-religious, half-scientific, based in nonsense theories about the elemental balance of the body and some tiny resemblance to starting the heart and lungs with body heat and lightning. Fastest way. And his eyes are locked on hers the whole time. Not the her on the mountain. The countless spectral shadows of her past few minutes. He won't look away.
Go Shijima	The Ride Macher. It's a white superbike, feet-forward configuration, red stripes down the middle. It's on, engine revving. The rider is already suited up: a sleek bodysuit of lightweight white armor with two red vertical stripes down the left side, complete with a blue-visored full motorcycle helmet that sports V-shaped antennae, and a waist-length shoulder cape also at the left side. It blows dramatically behind him as rain pelts the armor. On the right side of the chest, at shoulder level, there's a wheel with the hubcap facing outwards. Kamen Rider Mach can't stop thinking about a conversation with Ed. <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell shrugs, audibly. "Making the rules isn't my job. Enforcing the rules isn't my job. My job is fixing people. My job is triage and medevac and ER work. Sometimes my job is pretending to be a detective because it's fun." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell says, "Also I smoke a lot and that's like fifty percent of being a detective according to Raphael." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Go Shijima says, "Yeah, but... some lady on that other frequency said Earth was too much. Like it was just a fly she'd brush away. Like everyone on it, their dreams, and hopes, and smiles... like it was all just a bother to her, and she was glad it was gone. I can't imagine someone could be so callous." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell says, "OK." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell audibly lights a smoke. "I don't really have an easy answer for you." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell says, "Anyway, look. Judge, jury, executioner shit, that's you guys." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell shrugs. "First Do No Harm. That's the rule." <X-Paladins-Chatter> [4] Edward Blackwell says, "For me. Not for you." The sound of his voice is drowned out by the engine, but he speaks. If only so that one human voice might be heard here. "Ed..." The cairns pass by, illuminated in the rain by the soft but awfully clear glow of xenon headlights. The throttle is clutched hard enough that the rider can feel the gloves of his bodysuit creak. The bike is pulled into a drifting stop just shy of those riverbed boulders. Mach capitalizes on the momentum to throw himself from the bike. A frontflip sees him land on his feet in the middle of that sandy field. Killing all of these people... laying them out so that someone who's dedicated their life to saving others would see them... making a throne for herself... "YOU!" An accusing finger is pointed at Evehime. He's come to be the judge, the jury, and the executioner. "You did this to hurt him, didn't you? Because you knew he wouldn't raise a hand against you. Are people so worthless to you that you'd kill them for that?!"
Tamamo	Tamamo has not previously encountered the Gevurah, except by reputation and one conversation. This is, largely, intentional. She's not really keeping the reasons secret, but they're not the sort that are polite to bring up unbidden, either. She'd told Edward that it might not be a good idea for her to be here, but that she's coming, anyway. Maybe it won't matter. Maybe it will be purely helpful. She hopes for that, but mere worry of danger isn't going to slow her down. She has reasons for that, too. This is a formal occasion, of a sort, and inasmuch as any can be. There was no time spent on exploring appropriate fashions for a new land, researching nearby sightseeing, nor any of the numerous activities that drive many of her outings. She isn't here for the curiosity of it, but because of 'someone.' She shows respect to the situation by arriving in dark, flowing robes, accented in gold, an ornate artifact mirror by her side, her hands hidden by excessively long sleeves, with ears of wheat just visible below one, stems clutched between her unseen fingers. She's glowing, not figuratively, but literally, even if it's only faint. It's like muted cracks of light through an uneven screen. The screen is not thin, but that on the other side burns too fiercely. The effect is easier felt than it is visually analyzed. Trying to reason the light beneath the surface of the Sun is an exercise in madness. Rain soaks her raised arm, covering her face, but only for a moment. It is gone with a wave, and no more reaches her, not even making it as far as a warm mist. She doesn't look toward anyone but the dead and, necessarily, toward Edward, bringing them back. She doesn't say anything. Her face is devoid of even the emotion of a mask. She doesn't need to move, because the reason will come to her.
Shinnosuke Tomari	Edward Blackwell had been called out. Murders, of some sort, from someone Shinnosuke Tomari didn't know. He was an investigator, a cop, and a hero, so he decided he'd help out. If an ally was being baited into something, he'd give them a hand. The Tridoron doesn't fit through the warpgate, so it's parked in a world nearby. Tomari grumbles about this, dragging along the Handle Sword, but as he follows along Edward, he has way more to be upset about. Flaming streets. Black stormclouds. Ruined earth. Corpses, buried below. Heads sticking out. Gone. Lives snuffed out in a trap. Tomari's stare goes hollow. The belt on his waist, silver with a red faceplate sensor, gives a sharp frown. "This is...monstrous. This is..." "Shinnosuke..." Mr. Belt replies, before steeling himself. "Focus on the threat. We need to prevent more lives from being lost." "Right." The Handle Sword is taken with both hands, as Tomari begins walking towards the plain. Towards the 'throne' of boulders. A halo. An angel, like Gabriel? No... More like Lucifer. There's no words tossed in her direction. Just a straight walk, by someone who wasn't her target. He's not going to stop walking until he reaches her. And then, he'll stand besides Go, hand hovering over the slots of cars inside his jacket.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry Princess takes a deep breath as she arrives on the scene, and immediately regrets it. The smell of smoke, of blood, of rain and earth constricts her throat- that familiar tightening ache between collarbone and jaw, burning like a mouthful of saltwater. The sight of ruined buildings and half-buried bodies stings her eyes. A familiar, nauseating chill runs through her, and she tries to square her shoulders against it, but the squaring doesn't take. I am being 12 in London, watching my home destroyed. I am being 17 in Massachusetts, holding a fading friend. I am being 23-- Grasp the present. Hold onto it. Breathe in, breathe out, until the breaths stop hitching halfway through. Feel the rain pattering against your body; wipe it from your eyes. Feel the silver bracelet drag against your face as you do. That was then, and this is now. Find enough strength to offer some to other people. "I believe in you, Ed," Strawberry croaks softly as he swallows the cigarette. "You'll do your best. And I'll do mine. And it'll work out okay." Is that a lie? It feels dangerously close to one. The faces of the dead catch her peripheral vision, but she can't look at them now. She owes them her pain; she owes them some amount of reverence. It's dangerous not to feel bad when people die, so when hundreds or thousands of people die, you should feel even worse. But for Ed, she can cheat just a little. That pain can come due later. As she walks forwards onto the dark sand before Gevurah's throne, the fiery condemnations or invectives of a hero don't come to her. There's no anger, or even disgust. There's just the tightness in her throat and a dull feeling of sick; the feeling you get when you're hurt real bad but the pain hasn't gone through yet. What are they here for? To punish Eve? Hard to imagine anything appropriate. To stop her from hurting people? The people here are already dead. To make sure she can't hurt people again? The twisting queasiness only builds as she 'unsheathes' her wand, clutching it tight in one hand. Her expression struggles between a half-dozen emotions before settling into an open-mouthed grimace.
Evehime Gevurah	Though all that lies on the journey between the muddy trail and the makeshift watch tower is a garden of bleached sand and the shadow of quarter ton rocks, it takes only a few steps for it to become difficult. The dunes are little more the shallow, cosmetic ripples, blowing away in fine powder when disturbed. The wind is no worse here than it should be without the covering break of thrashing trees. But the border of the blasted land seems to clearly demarcate something in particular. Something that one can feel the moment they cross it, as a tingling pressure in the back of their eyes, growing heavier, brighter, the closer they get to the spire at its center. It's the person on top. The brief flickers of stark lightning, causing the earth to flash stunning white like snow, seem to catch in her presence. The light, somehow captured in her silhouette, fractured and pulled down. The regular roll of thunder causes the sand to ripple and settle again, like a great, slow heartbeat, the slight change in the texture of the scenery creating the impression of being dragged closer to the person at the center. Without a specific direction, it feels as if the wind itself is circling around this point. That the rain, out of either respect or fear, never quite lands at its top. A magic eye picture, where proximity makes everything else gradually less visible, and the thing at the top of the ocean stones 'more'. Edward's already seen it before, though he'd been completely insane at the time. That immensity of truth that is captured in human form and rendered into flesh. The way that a myriad subtle, invisible details, all come together. A forgotten language that prods and stirs at the primordial mind. The part that sees faces in random noise, and projects feelings on objects, spinning into overdrive, recognizing 'the more human than human'. The vertigo of such a fundamental, effortlessly thoughtless benchmark, suddenly vanishing down a steep, dark drop. The primitive brain waking up to its fullest, so it can flush every chemical it has to encourage nothing less than surrendering heart and soul to this trascendental example of tribal leadership. The fittest thing to ever live. Surely, all questions will be answered, all doubts will be quelled, all pains will be soothed, all meaning will be found, in this person's shadow. Without his brains currently scrambled by the Archetype, this time. Even a human consciousness rendered into a digital belt should get some impression of it. The only completely inhuman company he keeps right now, has her answer, and it couldn't feel any more different (yet somehow similar) to the position of a god. Authority without Divinity. An irresistible conception of 'absolute strength'. "Unusually pathetic." Evehime says to Edward. Just the sound of her voice is enough of an initial shock as to be disorienting, not the slightest less audible for the storm. "I've abandoned my expectations for you, now. What few I had left. For a moment, I considered that your childishness must stem from a kind of warped pride, but I see you have none of that either." It feels roughly implicit that she's talking about him bringing help here. "To think that you have so little faith in even your 'ultimate medicine'. It'd bring me to despair, if that was the point of bringing you here."
Evehime Gevurah	But he can certainly feel that. His sense for the brain is being hammered with waves of high enough energy to metaphorically crackle the wire. A glacial ocean of deep, abyssal, disappointment. Directionless. Aimless. Timeless. Black and bitter 'nothing', as far as the eye can see. It isn't like reading someone's thoughts so much as it is like being stranded in space. Tumbling weightlessly, powerlessly, into the endless void. Alone. Very, very, alone. Evehime cracks her heel down on one of the stones from her seated position, and the shock rolls through the ground, disturbing the nearest cairns. The earth jumps. The stones rattle. The heads --the heads roll off. The cairns are sealed. The tops are flat. The bodies are buried inside. The peak stones smeared in blood. So many rainwashed faces separated from their necks and set outside, just to greet him on arrival. Yet, just enough, spaced just so, that there wouldn't be enough to overload him like before. She'd taken note of his frenzy. That has to be it. It's all so perfectly placed. Decapitated to minimize the amount of 'dead body' he can sense while still seeing the faces of who he came to save. So he'd have to stay conscious for it. "You believe you're here to prove a point." she says. It couldn't possibly be mistaken for even so much as a prompt, never mind a question. "Believing you have a point to prove. That you have entered into a battle of wills, which you must win. That your will must be stronger, to prove the integrity of your worthless ideology, or else become beholden to me. That my will must be weaker, or else I will waste the rest of your life, locked in philosophical combat. You know that you must answer, because if you do not heed the call, you will forsake something you cannot afford to." Gradually, she stands from her seat, gaining an extra four feet to look down on him from, though only the unnatural blue points of her eyes stand out in the storm-dark. "Utter nonsense." Her arms lift from her sides, outstretched. Her fingers curl. Her muscles tense, then bulge, as if gripping something of immense physical weight. Foot by foot, she draws both fists together, knuckles subtly shuddering with intangible exertion --no, there it is. The ground is shifting underfoot. The shape of the clouds overhead contorts, pinched and dragged together. The wind and rain whirls tighter and tighter, squeezing into a central column of downpour. The view of the flames on the oceanside distorts. Bends. Gravity briefly increases, enough to sink heels into the wet sand. Eve slams her palms together with a bellowed kiai, and the sound is enough to render anyone temporarily deaf. It drowns out all the thunder in the sky. It even drowns out the explosion from beneath Edward. The ground glows, turns molten, and then erupts sky high. Globules of molten glass pierce the clouds. A wave of burning lava overflows onto the field, gushing toxic volcanic spume and basaltic ash from the fresh, lithospheric heat of its birth. A shimmering caldera of roasting heat, who knows how deep, cracks open beneath him, and surrounds him for a hundred meters on all sides, and the blasted field crumples at its edges like shock zones, rising up to form a volcanic lip, while the rest crumbles away into the liquid, flaming pit, shifting the landscape thirty meters down. No sooner, with an additional sound, she drives the clenched fist into the ground, and it obliterates the small mountain of boulders straight through the middle, carving deep into the newly revised tectonics, and causing dual peaks of jagged stone to launch upwards into the sky like capsizing ships, only to then fall down over the pit from above, either driving him to the edge to be crushed and pinned, or submerged completely in white hot magma.
Evehime Gevurah	Out of the settling ash of the pulverized spire, Evehime strides, one heavy, metal-shod footfall at a time, to the edge of the miniature volcano, unblinking at its scalding heat, so that she can look down over the side. "Briefly, I thought that I may have known what you were. There is no shortage of those who crack along the road to perfection. The ones who fracture under the strain, reaching their ceiling when their mind begins to split like glass. I could have allowed that. I could have allowed you to be imperfect. To be wrong." She kicks a chunk of stone into the lava. It's completely different than the native rock. "But you have no such excuse. I can permit imperfection. What I cannot permit is that arrogance. That crude entitlement. Your smug assurance that you are free to speak and act however you please, to me, in my presence. Perhaps because you believe you have achieved the pinnacle. Perhaps because the world you come from has rotted everything about you but your passable skills." "You pushed to such a height, you met your first limitation, you broke beyond it, and now you've squandered it on the gutless and hollow cynicism of 'modernity'. The conceited entitlement of soft men who get their way." She gestures back to the ranks and rows of decapitated corpses. People he can't even find in her mind. Drops in an ocean. "These things you obsess over; they've died not to prove any kind of point to you. The concept is laughable. There is no battle of wills here, because you cannot possibly fight me. I've broken the things you care for to punish you. For your arrogance. For spreading your arrogance to those who would listen to you. I won't test you to see if you can heal them, because they aren't yours to heal. They are examples. The first stage of your discipline." "And so, for now, I will ensure that you burn in this crater for as long as it takes for those bodies to rot away and turn to dust. You will watch the entire time. You will contemplate this, in fittingly continuous agony. And when you have achieved a state of repentance I find acceptable, I will permit you to rise, and I will begin training you anew." Only then, does she finally deign to pay attention to the others. Not out of a lack of care, but out of singular obsession. "He's risen his hand enough, in his own, weak way, to have earned it." she says, to Go, with absolute conviction. "They're worthless enough that he himself couldn't care if I killed them. Their deaths mean nothing to him, so long as he can heal them. On this we agree." But then she looks at Tamamo. "I like this one, though. It was good of you to bring her. I will allow her to tend to you as she serves me while you meditate." "Sincerely." says Evehime, taking a different tone to make exactly two words understood. "Fuck you."
Strawberry Princess	Evehime's mind-bending presence plays out in the expressions that struggle for dominance on Strawberry's face. Her sense of "self" provides an anchor in the raging psychic storm, but it's hard to remember- what were they there for? What's the point of fighting over a burned city and people who're already dead? In the struggle to hold onto core aspects, little things like that are eroded away. "An ally being in danger" dispels that in agonizing seconds. The identity of 'Strawberry Princess' demands that she intervene, cutting through the wash of foreign emotions. "I was just fixing him," she rasps softly as her wand powers on, talking more to herself than Evehime. "You're not- I can't let him get broken worse." She breaks into a sprint across the bizarre sand as control rods extend and steam hisses, and then leaps, her flight kicking in to carry her high into the air and between falling globules of white-hot glass. 04:59 Once straight above the morass of fire and lava, she aims downwards, pointing her wand at Edward's last position. He'd said he was immortal. Please, please be 'immortal enough' to take this. "Firing on low," she whispers hoarsely, running on pure habit. The wand's ringing whine builds, the crystal at its tip flickers- and a five-foot-wide lance of pink-white light burns through the liquid rock below with a hissing roar, reducing it to dust and vapor where it isn't inexplicably obliterated outright. As soon as Edward's exposed, she'll cease firing near-instantly and swathe him in a protective pink forcefield instead, swooping down to extricate him from the newly-formed volcano if needed!
Tamamo	As she predicted, reasons would come to her. Tamamo is addressed, if obliquely, and so, she speaks. "A long time ago..." With Edward inside a volcano, it might not be the time for a long story. But she knows he's still alive, and there's something in-between the two of them. Not only may the physician heal himself, but he must. He must, because otherwise, he couldn't heal the rest. He's said he will. He probably can't even stop himself from doing it. Consciously, Tamamo is aware of this. Aware enough that no trace of concern makes it as far as her features. She is present, and clear of her own identity, in a way she usually avoids. She's about to clarify further. "The divine will in the center of the heavens looked down on humanity, performed a separation of spirit, and sent herself to go and learn of them, mysterious and foolish beings that they appeared to be. Those fledgling feelings of interest, a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a yet smaller portion of the whole -- for what were humans, that they should attract any more attention than this? -- yet filled that divine spirit of the smaller vessel with what was more than infatuation, an 'interest' that approaches love, if not adoration. So do I feel for humans, and so shall I continue until there is nothing to retain that same 'interest' as began my tale." The next words are delivered with no more emotion than any of the previous. "And so, I trust, I have made clear why you hold no interest for me. Only a human can fulfill my wish."
Edward Blackwell	Edward doesn't say anything. He says nothing as her aura falls over him. His own brain scuffles around to fix the damage rapidly, piece by piece, running triage on the parts of his stupid monkey flesh she's attacking, the parts that would make him bow, the parts that would make him kneel. He doesn't say anything as the lava comes pouring over him, as the explosion comes up under him. There's nothing. Nothing but fire. He's coated in fire, coated in death, coated in flame and ash. But he doesn't burn. Or, rather, he doesn't burn, because he's forcing himself not to. His own cures are faster on his body than anything else. He knows his own body composition - knows the hellish thing that makes it up. Knows the brain that builds it. Knows the soul that makes it. Edward Blackwell knows nothing quite as well as his own body. Nothing quite as well as himself. So where it takes him time, takes him moments, takes him effort to repair others, it takes him none to repair himself. It's agonizing. It's excruciating. But it's not going to kill him. And if it's not going to kill him, then he can move. One foot. One foot in front of the other. One foot forward. One foot forward. One foot forward. One foot forward. He's strong. He's stronger than a normal human. He's tougher than a normal human. He's faster than a normal human. The pressure of the lava buckles him down to one knee for a brief instant. Then he pushes upwards. He pushes back. He walks forward again. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Light. The light blows away the volcano. It blows away the liquid rock. It blows enough away to reveal Edward Blackwell. He's a skeleton. He's literally a skeleton. Everything flesh has been melted off, and not by Strawberry. Now that the light has burned through the liquid rock to see his flesh rebuilding, the muscles trying to bind themselves back into existence. Now the light has burned through, and now that he has a few seconds, the top half of his body is regenerating much faster, reassembling itself. It's like watching the Vitruvian Man get painted in reverse. He emerges from the liquid rock, his legs still bone. They're regrowing rapidly, dripping with molten rock. He takes a deep, harsh breath as his lungs fill themselves in. "Fuck," he manages hoarsely, "That's why I don't buy clothes." He takes another, very sharp breath as the rest of his body recongeals. He stumbles forward as his legs become full and flesh. Another, sharper breath. He's struggling to breathe, but that's not surprising. His innards are still full of liquid rock. He falls to his knees, gasping for breath. The look in his eyes is cold and dark. He sucks in another rapid breath as he tries to stand. His hands dangle. "I..." "Don't..." "Answer..." "To..." "You." Each breath is agony. "I do what I want. Because I care. About people. Because I care. About everyone." "You have. No authority. Over me. There's no. Lesson." "For you. To teach." "You're not. My attending." "You're. My test." Edward's eyes meet hers, and she can see, in the depths of them, absolute certainty - true certainty, true knowledge, the same kind of truth she herself is. "I. Can kill you." "It's not. A point. I'm proving. To you." His fingers twitch. "A point." "I'm proving." "To me." "That I." "Still." "Care." "About." "You."
Go Shijima	This power... what is it?! It's difficult to focus on anything but Evehime. Difficult to fight that feeling that she somehow has all the answers. His fist clenches, as he struggles to keep his balance following the crack of her foot against that stone, the shockwave causing him to stumble briefly. He has to fight that feeling, because... Because Strawberry Princess doesn't know why she's here. Kamen Rider Mach does. He is here to punish. More than that, actually. He's already decided--someone who would treat human lives so callously, who would kill so wantonly, just to prove a point... Even if his mind is screaming that she's the most perfect human there's ever been, she exists... only to bring pain and suffering. Things like that should be removed by any means necessary, human or no. The kiai blows him backwards, his feet dragging trails in the powdery sand. The creation of spires, of lava, the violent disruption of the earth, knocks him from his feet. With a frustrated, determined growl, he beats a fist into the ground and gets back to his feet. "He took an oath to do no harm," says Mach, seethingly, repeating Edward's words as Strawberry frees him from Evehime's molten prison. "If he fought you, even to avenge them, or to keep you from killing more... he'd be going back on it!" He swipes his fist angrily. "But I..." Didn't. "Drive!! Get them to Ed!" His fist pounds the button on the Mach Driver four times. Into his free hand there appears a white pistol with a large wheel at the front. ZENRIN SHOOTER His finger pulls the trigger rapidly, sending a hail of blue lasers her way. He charges in, howling with anger, making a beeline for her. A leap into the air, a flip, a pirouette attempting to evade a counterattack. A spinning side kick delivered on the way down, and, coming back up from the landing, the wheel on the Zenrin Shooter spins up rapidly. He brings it in for a midsection strike. ZENRIN
Shinnosuke Tomari	Both Tomari and Mr. Belt, as they approach, start to slow. Tomari's eyes widen as how 'more human than human' she is, how perfect she is, while Mr. Belt sputters, briefly wondering if he's glitching. It's affecting Mr. Belt far more than it is affecting Tomari, though - he's got an iron-clad will, and it's set on hating her more than it is thinking she's superior. Even so, his steps slow, and become more hesitant. But once he reaches her...she says such awful things. To Edward, who she dumps in a volcano. About the victims, who she calls 'things' and 'worthless'. His stance straightens up. He doesn't know her. But he knows how he feels about her. "You're awful. What you think about people, just living their lives - that can't be accepted. Especially not when they only die to lure a man out, to prove a point, as a punishment." He's about to say something, livivdly angry, when Go calls out to him. He thinks, breathes, and nods. "I'm hopping mad!" He gestures in anger, face scrunching up. Passionate hatred flushes through him. The sword is placed to Tomari's side, as he grabs a black miniature dune buggy from his side, slaps it into the arm bracer, and shifts the back end of it, before scanning it over the sensor. "Henshin!" Circles of data and energy form around him, as a silver bodysuit is applied over him. A black breastplate, gauntlets, and greaves click over, as simultaneously does a helmet, with bug-like eyes. The chestplate resembles the front of a buggy. Through the warpgate, a black all-terrain tire comes flying forth, slapping onto the right shoulder. DRIVE! Type -- Wild! Instead of attacking Evehime like he originally intended, Tomari knows there's one last chance for these people, and it's him and Edward. He's racing desperately, moving to run back towards the pile of corpses and start smashing into the closed cairns with the sword, trying to break through them and free the heads. This is his strongest base form, physically, so hopefully it can make a dent. It's disgusting. It's horrifying. He's going to have bad dreams. But he has to do it. And it leaves him completely, totally open to being shot in the back. He's not even thinking about that.
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime turns away from Edward in the crater, satisfied that, for the moment, he is experiencing suitably, agonizingly miserable pain. She might not have even noticed Strawberry Princess taking off, though it'd take someone blind to miss it. For a moment, she's advancing slowly towards Tamamo. Even on those sandals, the woman towers over her. Every step is like a subaudible addition to the thunder. The silhouette of her body, outlined by the hellish glow of the bit, like the mountain of stones that had just ceased to exist. She comes close. Too close for comfort. A hand reaches out. A finger from there. To push her chin up, and look straight into her eyes. "That is a shame." she says, her voice sounding like it's coming from within Tamamo's own ears. "Now after hearing that, I'm a little interested in you myself. I don't mind gods that know their place. You can tell me more." At this point, however, she won't ignore the flash of light that streaks down from above and liberates Edward, searing, ashen explosion and all. The precursor to annoyance twitches one cheek below the eye, turning the corner of perfect lips downward. She turns her back on Tamamo and begins walking back, one heavy crunch at a time. She cranes her neck up to pick out Strawberry in the air. The innate danger sense of a skilled dogfighter picks it up like a missile lock warning. She should be practically invisible; there's no way; and yet . . . 'What do you think it is about people living their lives that cannot be accepted?' The woman touches a glowing hot chunk of basalt with the tip of her boot, then flicks it up into the air, catching it in her bare hand and puncturing the crate-sized semi-molten hunk with her fingers. She holds out one arm as if to test the wind, useless as it would be in the howling deluge, and cocks back the other, then hurls the ton of smouldering stone almost straight up. There's a visible ripple of vapour shock after it exceeds a certain distance from her, and then it blows up into thosands of superheated fragments from the stress, with Strawberry in the middle. Then she turns to Tomari, and meets his eyes. "I don't understand that question. Do you?"
Evehime Gevurah	Then Go takes a fucking run at her from left screen. Tomari has just the right time to transform and speed off, while his co-Rider's flashy maneuvers monopolize the woman's attention. The hail of laser bolts collide with her head on, each one causing the light to catch and spark in the air around her, repeatedly surrounding her with lightning-flickers of a luminous outline, shaped like a halo. The last one, she catches between her fingers, and somehow crushes it into smoke with a twist of her wrist. Edward's passive brain-scanning can tell that she doesn't seem to feel any threat reflex from this, which would work better to his advantage if he had something to fight with. A moment later, her thoughts become almost a psychic hammer blow to his senses, composed of the sheer weight of thousands upon thousands of combat reflexes, instincts, predictions, and estimated outcomes, that all spring to mind the moment Go delivers his first flip kick. Evehime doesn't go anywhere. She remains stanced up in place when Go launches himself on her. That aura sparks around her each time he delivers a strike, and each one feels like he's trying to kick over something that may as well be containing the entire ocean. She doesn't hit him back. Not at first. It takes until the glowing front wheel strike slashes across her abs, flaring up the halo just long enough to get a real glimpse of it, and sends her considerable weight sliding a few inches back in the dirt. He can see suitably scaled tire tracks glowing on her skin. "I don't care for whatever oaths which men like that may choose to believe they've taken. I understand more of dedication, more of virtue--" Now, suddenly, her whole stance rockets a foot forward, and a straight jab that sounds like a bomb going off is launched at his armoured chest. "--more of discipline and commitment and stricture and consequences than you ever will in your short, misguided life." Thankfully, it's not aimed to send him at Tomari. It seems like she might have literally declined to pay attention to him, while Go has her talking. The other Kamen Rider finds that the severed heads, gruesome as they are, are only balanced on top of each cairn, presenting no obstacle to being taken. A little worse is the sheer precision with which all of them have been taken off. A guillotine couldn't do a better job. None of them even wear an expression that gives him the idea that they immediately understood that they were in peril.
Evehime Gevurah	Finally, she spares a moment for Edward dragging himself out of the molten pit. Piecing his own body together, one fibre at a time, at insane speed. She kicks a second rock up into her hand --this one smaller, flatter, likely to fly much much faster-- but then declines to actually aim it at his exposed spine. "You shouldn't." she says, instead. "Your sympathy is so woefully misplaced, I cannot even decide where to begin. You may as well prostrate yourself before your god and beg permission to pity him. So allow me to tell you why I am Gevurah." "There are ten truths in this world, and all others. Ten sacred things which separate humans from all other beings. Ten reasons our species is destined to achieve the pinnacle of all existence. Ten ways in which we may perceive, conceptualize, and actualize the truths of the universe. Ten finite things in the formless infinite, that predate even The Creator. In learning them, contemplating them, internalizing them, embodying them, and then exceeding them, we achieve what even the gods cannot. There are ten Perfect Humans, and their role is to exemplify those virtues for all others beneath and after them to follow." "Gevurah is the Perfect Human in whom is embodied the Truth of Might. Of Discpline. Severity. The right hand across the left of charity and empathy. The necessity of withholding kindness. The fact that there is no growth without consequences. No triumph without trial. That even humankind must choose to follow Principle and Law and suffer commensurately for straying from their ideals, if it wishes to become greater than bestial, never mind greater than divine." "At the end of time, humans infinitely more Perfect than what you can conceive of, convened to finally test which of these Virtues held supreme. And I embody the fact that, in the infinite universe, what matters most is this. I have dedicated my life to becoming the Virtuous Fire that punishes even God. I have spent it proving this absolute truth. I have passed this judgement on to uncountable others." "I see your oaths, your strictures, the lines you have drawn for yourself, and they are worthless. They have already strangled your growth towards perfection in its cradle. You mistakenly believe you're all you will ever be. I will make you Better. I will cure you of that inane idea that you cannot be improved, or I will kill you in the attempt."
Shinnosuke Tomari	"I wasn't asking you a question! I was telling you a fact!" Drive roars, as he uses his enhanced strength to start stacking heads, scooping them up slowly and carefully, a knot in his stomach and revulsion in his throat. At least it was probably painless, to die from her. The Kamen Rider starts rushing the heads back across the plain. He moves them through the warpgate, to where Mr. Belt has called first responders on the other side to pick them up. If they haven't made it in time, he literally just piles them into Tridoron. Screw the seat leather - lives are being saved! When he eventually makes it back for the next batch of heads, Kamen Rider Drive levies a call to his fellow rider, having seen the barrier flicker against her. "That barrier - be careful, Mach!" Hopefully, Evehime doesn't decide to stop him from gathering even more corpses.
Edward Blackwell	"I." Edward sucks in a breath. "Don't." He sucks in another breath. "Care." He starts coughing. He falls forward. Liquid rock and blood spill up from his throat. It hits the ground. Blood steam rolls out. He grabs at his throat as his body rebuilds itself again. It's gonna be doing that a lot. Slowly, he stands. He wavers. "You're not." "A truth." "You're." "A person." He grabs at his throat. Smoke, burning flesh. A wheeze. "You aren't. Perfect." "You're." "Broken." Edward stumbles, his arms hanging uselessly in front of him. "People. Need. People. People. Want. People. When you. Give up. Others. When you stop. Caring. About anything. But an ideal." He stumbles forward. "You break." He meets her eyes. "I care. About everyone. I keep. Saying it. And you keep. Thinking. It's because. I have to. Because. I'm afraid. Because. I don't. Want to not." He straightens. Another cough. The last of the smoke spills out. Rock rolls down his lips, sizzling. He breathes in through his nose, still meeting her eyes. His fingers wipe away the last of it. The burned flesh is already knitting back together, but for a brief moment, his jaw can be seen. "It's not sympathy." "I have no sympathy for you. You're a broken thing that wants to break everything around you because you can't conceive of the idea that your standards can be wrong. You're someone who can't see anyone that exists as having worth except a gaping fucking void in the world that kills because it's an animal and only knows how to do that." A step forward. "You understand that, right? The thing you call perfect is an animal that doesn't know how to do anything but erase itself." "You're so desperate for someone else to call perfect, you'll accept a nothing as your equal." Edward stumbles forward. Then, his foot hits the ground. He's fast. He's not as fast as her, but he doesn't need to be - he can read her mind, read her thoughts, read her motions. He can read every part of her like an open book. He dodges the inevitable incoming attack. And then he hugs her. There's no attack. He just hugs her. It's nothing but a hug. It's a hug strong enough to push through her barrier, to make sure it can touch her skin - but nothing more. "You don't have to be alone." "And if you tell me I'm wrong and blow me apart right now," he says, "Then I'll come back and do it again. Over. And over. And over." "Because your oaths mean less to me than mine do to you when I see someone I think is in pain." "And even if you tell me you aren't, I refuse to believe you." "That's my conviction." "And it'll take more than you to break it." "Deal with it."
Strawberry Princess	Firing the Annihilator Beam with greater force would've left Strawberry blinded to Evehime's retaliation. As it is, she's still blinking away the flash when her instincts tell her something's very wrong- spike, spike, spike; you're tracked, Princess Actual. The rock glimmers in her peripheral vision, and she flares her wings and floors it into a harrowing dive that's intended to dodge by a healthy margin. It doesn't account for the impossible airburst cone, though. That comes only a fraction of a second before impact. Even so, the accumulated reflexes from thousands of sorties allow her a defense: twisting in mid-dive to face the airburst and minimize her aspect profile, she brings up her wand and fires off a thin shotgun-scatter of pink lines. Each of them pierces and ashes one of the incoming fragments, thinning them out considerably. Simultaneously, she layers over her Shimmer Aura with protective fields, pancaked on top of- Crack. At those speeds, you never see what hit you. Despite her best efforts, one of the shards did anyway, shattering the visor of her suit through the blunting Shimmer Aura and knocking her off-course. Her instincts yell at her to play it up, and she does, going into near-freefall and tweaking the trajectory just enough to disappear behind the volcano. Once safely out of sight, she flares her wings and hits the brakes, slowing her descent by a dizzying delta before finally landing in an ankle-straining three-point stance. Deep breaths wrack her body. A little trickle of blood runs down the side of her head, finding the groove left by the old scar. Despite everything, she finds the presence of mind to press a button on the side of the reactor. Weapons free.
Go Shijima	A strike with the force of a bomb. Go is an excellent martial artist. In fact, he has a deflection ready far faster than Evehime might have guessed, his body a blur as he attempts to turn her blow aside. But behind the expressionless facade of the Mach suit's helmet, his eyes are widened with fear. Her blow strikes his shoulder. Even glancing, it's enough to cause an explosive shower of sparks, lifting him into the air with a cry of pain. Such is the force of her blow that even midair, he corkscrews, before hitting the ground. Landing on his back, the wind has been knocked out of him. He's outmatched, and knows it. But he won't stay down. "Damn you..." He rolls onto his side, willing himself through the pain to shakily get back to his feet as the suit disappears. Good Work! Biofeedback from the suit has drawn blood across his cheek. He presses the Shift Bike back down and slams the button. Signal Bike! RIDER!! MACH! The armor reappears. One word stabs into him like a hot knife. Softly illuminated by the glow of warning lights, hidden behind that expressionless visor, Go's face twists into an enraged scowl. How can she talk about virtue, surrounded by the bodies of innocent people killed to punish a man trying to do good? No. How dare she? His mind is clouded now even more than it was by her presence. His every thought is hostile, furious. Even if she's stronger, faster, a thousand times more experienced... Drive's words just bounce off of him. He has to get rid of her. Letting her exist unopposed can only do harm. The sound of a superbike's engine revving. The fine sand behind him kicks up into a cloud of dust with the sound of displaced air cracking. His entire form loses its definition, becoming a red and white streak in the rain. Edward is giving her a hug. He doesn't care. Do No Harm is Edward's oath, not his. A pained, infuriated cry resounds from Mach as he comes in for another attack. Warning lights flash on his face more urgently than before. The suit's taking a toll on his body to render this kind of performance. He can't take much more. He doesn't care. A rapid flurry of grasshopper kicks, aimed at Evehime's head, delivered with all the strength Go can muster. Flipping back in a retreat, he slots in another Signal Bike. SIGNAL BIKE//Signal Change! STOP As his feet hit the ground, another spray of sand is kicked up. Behind the mask, sweat trickles down his face, his vision beginning to blur. But he puts himself through more, still, to pick up that incredible speed again. Someone was talking about killing her. Maybe it was Strawberry. Maybe he can't... but maybe she can. "Whatever you're going to do, do it now!" A flurry of red lasers from the Zenrin Shooter. Should one hit Evehime, a glaring red inverted triangle which reads STOP will appear, trapping her momentarily in intensely slowed time. Will it be enough?
Evehime Gevurah	Edward might have generally expected to pick up a certain amount of baffled vexation from the woman he tackles around the midsection just to hug. He certainly gets that in spades. What he also gets is, for just a moment, a fuzzy impression of names. He knows there are nine of them. He cannot make out any of their contours; just that they're names. Forgotten, suppressed, ignored, simply lost in the noise; it's too hard to tell. He then feels hands around one arm and one leg. "The idea that you believe you can heal this pain is arrogance even more insulting than before. Perhaps I was wrong to even give you the opportunity to save anyone. Such disrespect is beyond the pale. You aren't good enough. You aren't strong enough. You can't do anything. And you have no desire to reclaim that humanity that might have been yours. Never touch me again." Then she lifts, and pulls, and means to tear him in half, right down the middle, and discard both bloody halves by pivoting and hurling them into the storm-wracked ocean.
Edward Blackwell	Edward does not tear. Not this time. Not this time. His body is ready for that. He knew what her response would be. He knew she would try that. He knew she would react that way. So he does not let himself tear. She's enormously strong, and it's straining every inch of him to keep himself stable, but he's not going to break. Not this time. Not now. "Pot." "Fucking." "KETTLE!" His roar is enormous. He moves to bite down on her. It will destroy part of his face. But, for one, brief instant, he is going to inflict upon her the one thing he is now certain, certain, that she has never felt. And she is going to understand, come hell or high water, what it is he holds back. Why he forces himself to be kind. Why he's offering her that caring. Because he can impose upon anything that thinks Death, true Death, true, final Death. No matter what happens, he will see his teeth meet her neck. It will tear through his skin. His eyes will explode. His hair will incinerate. Again he will be nothing but a skull, but this time, he will be torn in half at the spine, his body scattered into the ocean- -but for that brief instant all of his willpower is bent onto this single moment. She will understand. He is Life. And he is Death. And it is because he is kind that he does not extinguish.
Strawberry Princess	<Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess says, "Evehime." <Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess says, "Can you die." <Q-Conversation> Evehime Gevurah pauses for a really, really long time, then says, "I don't know." <Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess audibly heaves, straining for breath. Her voice sounds choked. <Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess says, "Can I kill you." <Q-Conversation> Evehime Gevurah says, as if it answers the question, "I can't." <Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess coughs quietly. "... Okay." <Q-Conversation> Hoarse, Strawberry Princess says, "I'm sorry." The wand in Strawberry's hand is spooling up into a vertical asymptote, its control rods fully extending to totally disinhibit the fissile materials inside. An unearthly blue glow escapes from their narrow gaps. That familiar, comforting, hideous sensation fills her body as she kneels in the dirt: tingling like a sunburn, tasting like metal, sparking little actinic dots as it pricks her retinas. "Firing on medium," she says to absolutely nobody, still struggling for breath through the tightness in her throat. "Three." She doesn't have line-of-sight. She doesn't have any conceivable way to hit or even see Evehime from here. But it doesn't matter.
Strawberry Princess	Thousands of feet above the battlefield, an eerie creature hovers in silent flight, hidden from prying eyes by the opaque black thunderclouds. It's a creature of coherent pink magic, the same substance as Strawberry's shields, but molded into the form of a winged seventeen-year-old girl. Its head is gashed open. Its right arm is broken. It holds a wand in its left. "Two," Strawberry mutters softly. What's this ugly knot in her chest? Evehime'd said she wouldn't die. Even so, this feels... wrong, in a deep sense. Transgressive. Not just because what if she does anyway, but because the Annihilator Beam is for monsters, and that woman is a human being. (Edward doesn't think so. But Edward lies to himself, and Strawberry Princess doesn't tell lies.) Not doing it would feel even worse. That doesn't make this feel good. The pink eidolon far above tracks Evehime perfectly. A faint column of eerie blue light pierces through the clouds to illuminate the Last Warrior, barely perceptible to any eyes but hers. As a staggeringly grotesque amount of nuclear energy is pumped into the construct, the tip of its wand glows unbearably bright. For a moment it appears that the Sun is shining through the clouds- but it's not. Even the Sun isn't bright enough. This is something worse. "One-"
Strawberry Princess	The light of that beam erases every shadow, blanching every color to an intolerable white. Its flash burns the grass in an instant, burns the leaves off the trees, burns the hair and eyelashes off of the assorted severed heads. The clouds are torn apart to reveal the blue sky above. It shakes the ground like an earthquake. A fraction of a second later, the shockwave of sound hits- a noise like thunder, but drawn out into a continuous, deafening roar that resonates in the bones and lungs. It brings to mind Evehime's kiai from earlier, but voiceless and inhuman. The ground under Evehime's feet is instantly obliterated, creating a tunnel hundreds of feet deep. She is slammed down into the pit an instant later, siloed into a deepening hole that itself focuses the horrifying energy onto her like a bug under a magnifying glass. The torrent of energy doesn't stop for long, long seconds- not until the wand by Strawberry's side engages automatic safeties, slamming half of its control rods back in and cooling down from the brink. In the fractions of a second after the blast, the eidolon above winks out of existence before anyone can regain their eyesight, leaving no trace that it was ever there.
Evehime Gevurah	"You don't know a single thing that is fact." Evehime says that to Tomari. She's turned towards him now. His short reprieve to do as he likes is over. "Nothing you think you know is true at all. And the one thing you do know is true, you pretend you don't notice --that you cannot possibly defeat me." The amount of cairns Drive has to visit is well into the hundreds. It's purely the intense speed he has to work with that allows him to zip back and forth between the supercar that could conceivably let him pull this off. But the woman's eyes are tracking him. Following the blurr, back and forth, practically twin blue lines for their own rapid drift. "Why are you even here? What are these people to you? What is that creature to you?" "No, don't bother. I don't care. I'm tired of you all. Everything about this place tires me. It's all so exhausting. Nothing but hollow promises and empty people. Just disappear." Instead, she turns to Drive with that rock she was probably going to use for Edward. A massive boulder had blown to pieces in the air. Something flat and heavy and aerodynamic is more at risk of cutting him in half. She aims. She ignores Go's shooting. It can't hurt her, after all. She'd established that. But it's also not the point. One laser hits her and demands that she STOP. Then another. And another the whole volley splashes against her; she doesn't bother to move from it until the first one has already hit. Alarmingly, just one or two isn't enough either. The motions of her throwing arm slow incrementally. She begins turning her head to look at Go, and that slows too. He can see cracks ripping through the ground below one set of toes, worryingly looking as if she'd somehow broken out, but the motionless of her hanging hair and clothing betrays that the pressure she's exerting on the ground --probably to jump back-- is just so sudden that it looks like it's happening in normal time by comparison. Her body is still sluggish. Her muscles are bulging again. She's accelerating. In a literal sense, physically wrestling with the alteration of spacetime. Gradually overcoming it with raw force. Moving with an urgency for which there was no need previously. One of the stop signs shatters under the strain. Then another. And one more. It's too late now though. Tomari is quick at work. Edward is on his way to the ocean before she can even form more words now. Strawberry Princess is not nearly as splashed as would suit Evehime. There's just enough time for her to turn her gaze upwards to stare into the leading pillar of Cherenkov radiation. There's no way for Strawberry's Eidolon to see the specific thing that happens with her pupils. Evehime is struck directly with the Annihilator Beam's middle yield. There's no impossible deflection or dodge or supreme maneuver of martial skill to mitigate it; she is at ground zero, and there the only rules that matter are physics. She disappears inside the column of scorching light, without so much as a silhouette to show for it. The ground craters, sublimates, and then atomizes before it can even melt, the only evidence of heat being the leading edges of the piercing hole in the earth that glow and soften and drip away from the sustained exposure to energies that aren't supposed to exist outside of the planet's sun.
Evehime Gevurah	There's no real coming back from that. The hole goes a kilometer deep. Evehime couldn't have stopped it from disintegrating in any meaningful way. The edges of the pit fluoresce an eerie blue, captured in the steam formed from the column of heat that perpetually vapourizes the rain above it. It goes quiet for five seconds. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. A minute. Long enough to run away with armfuls of heads. Then there's a crunch. Another crunch. One. Two. One. Two. Sharp, swift, and rhythmic. Coming closer. Up from below. It stops short of the surface for another ten seconds, leaving just the sound of the sizzling rain and wind. The edges of the tunnel burst, cave in, crumble, and erupt into flame. The area around the opening blackens, and the air becomes a twisted mirage of heat. An immense circle of heat and light, coruscating with the smell of ozone and the taste of copper, rises from it, by way of a makeshift ramp that forms from the ground sloughing away in molten waves. Within its perimeter, the Last Warrior climbs shin deep through the radiant neo-lava. Much of her perfect skin is turned sunburn red, a sooty black shadow in her right palm where the rock had been. Her clothing has been pierced and burnt through to the point of being halfway useless. Her thumb goes to her mouth, wiping a trickle of blood from her lips, spat from her inner cheek. Screw vengeful. She looks nothing less than delighted. "At last! At last! I was beginning to lose hope with this so-called Multiverse --but here you were, in hiding! I see now! I see it clearly! The strong don't walk openly here because they would only face the same despair as I! There is --a code? A practice? Something amongst you! Here, the strong hide in plain sight, so that they may recognize one another when they see themselves, and their lessers dare not gainsay! I understand your question now, girl! While the weak animals bark and howl, that is the only thing you needed to ask; because you knew that I am strong, I would feel your conviction! Yes, it's been ages since I felt a blow at all!" More than the content of her words, it's the tone itself that Evehime uses now that is dangerous. Gone, in an instant, is that endless, inky ocean of pitch black solitude. Gone is the bottomless edge of bitter, icy blackness. Vanished like a shadow in the light of that beam. That tone --the voice that carries for miles without even the shred of a radio remaining-- is nothing less than relief bordering on joy. Infectious like laughter. Insidiously tempting to listen to. To leap towards her in intoxicated gladness for her approval. "Come, now! You are indeed worthy skirmish with me! I will answer your spirit with my own! Come out and do battle with my Raiyakaze!" She is, also, so completely and wholly transfixed on meeting Strawberry, that her previously inescapable kinetic vision has eyes for nothing else. "Tell me your name, so I may remember it this time!"
Tamamo	There had been a bit of conversation, but that's not terribly important. Something feels a bit... off, physically. She'll have to purify herself, later. Tamamo had made her own defenses, being already some distance away, and well-versed in protective magic. If anything, she's much better on a defense line than on offense. Still, she has this in common with Evehime. The first thing tonight to really surprise her was the sheer scale of Strawberry Princess's attack. It's a shame, then, about what happens afterward. "As expected. Or should I say, 'a little faster than expected'?" She shakes her head, and makes sure to speak into her radio, but then hesitates. "Strawberry-Princess. Without thinking on it, please answer me this. 'Did you try to kill her?'" The answer is not likely be a second surprise. That's quite enough. She's already leaving.
Shinnosuke Tomari	Drive is running heads back and forth. He notices, too late to react, that a boulder is about to be thrown at him. He's about to tell her his manifesto, but, honestly, she doesn't care and neither does he. It's only Go that saves him from getting crushed, with the Stop. Instead of thanking Go, he keeps moving shifting gears to be faster than Wild, changing out the black buggy for the red with white stripes sports car. DRIVE! Type -- Speed! As Strawberry's blast goes off, he can see it as he turns around. Even with his eyes close. But he ignores the pain, and moves to grab as many heads as he can. He has to save these people. Edward... Will live, right? Once he's either finished with that batch, or done as much as his power levels will allow him, Drive moves to grab Go. "We- need to go. Now! If she can survive that and keep fighting...!" Tomari, inside the suit, realizes that this is a grave threat, as soon as the adrenaline and hero rush wears off. "Come on! There's a bunch of them in the Tridoron, grab your bike and go!" If he has to leave some heads behind to save Go, he will, but hopefully he doesn't. He'll literaly force Go onto his motorcycle and to start driving.
Go Shijima	The Mach system is the newest version of Driver technology. On paper, Mach's base form should be able to outperform all of Drive's. Go--the person in the Mach suit--is 19. He'd under normal circumstances, be willing to believe that Tomari couldn't beat Evehime. He wouldn't be willing to believe that he couldn't, had he not seen her defying the Heaviness through sheer force of will. There's a moment of brief hope, following that crack rent into the earth. Where he follows Strawberry's advisory to get clear, racing away from Evehime. If he can't do it, maybe she can. That's how it should work. If you give it your all, you can pull through and stop people like her from running roughshod over innocent lives. But... there's a force, pulling him down, as he gets clear of the Beam. His back is to it. In the rain, the sleek lines of his white and red armor are illuminated in pink. Angry red imperatives flash across the inside of his visor. Extreme excess energy. Vent and deactivate now. He falls, skidding across the fine sand as his body gives out. He tumbles, eventually coming to a stop having pushed up a bank of sand. Steam begins to form from the water evaporating on the suit. The Beam fades. What's left is a hole in the ground. He didn't see the beam. But he sees the aftermath. When he sees Evehime climb back up, the glimmer of hope dies. And the smoldering ember of self-resentment in his chest is stoked into a bonfire. Tomari comes at exactly the wrong time. "DON'T UNDERESTIMATE ME!" An anguished, furious cry, as he swats Drive's assisting hand from him, quickly getting to his feet. He shoves the other Rider, makes a sloppy punch... and that's all the strength his body can muster. The armor vanishes. Go's tearful, sweaty, bloody face is only able to hold that grimace for a second more before his body gives out and he loses consciousness.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry Princess spends those precious moments hovering over the hole she'd buried Evehime in- there are more productive things she could be doing, but her teammates have the heads handled. She just needs to know that Evehime is still alive. She just needs to know that she didn't commit murder. Please, please. Because Strawberry Princess doesn't kill people, and if she's killed someone, she'll never be Strawberry Princess again, and- And when the Last Warrior reappears, wreathed in a halo of blinding flame and wading through the irradiated lava, it strikes a mixture of deep relief and shuddering fear into the magical girl's heart. 'Strong'? 'Worthy'? Those words sound terrifying coming from someone like Evehime. If she's willing to commit atrocities like these for people she dislikes, what will she do to people she admires? ... Even so, that voice compels her to approach- descending to a few hundred feet away, perhaps, now lit up by the daylight shining through the gaping wound in the clouds. She hovers in her full magical girl regalia, helmet shattered to show the scar of an old struggle and the fresh blood of this one, shining wings spread open. That demand wrings her name out of her: "My name is Strawberry Princess," she replies, her voice too soft and hoarse at that distance to register to any ears but Evehime's. She wants to do battle here. She wants to live up to that approving expectation. She lifts the wand, even; points it at Gevurah once more. ... But that isn't what 'Strawberry Princess' would do. Her hands shaking and teeth clenched, she manages to drop her aim, straining not to act on that desire. "I won't do battle with you here," she says with straining determination, forgetting her usual hesitance and awkwardness. "But thank you, Evehime. For surviving." And she leaves on near-supersonic wings, haplessly oblivious to how those words could be twisted.