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Gawain With the inquisitors now thinking he might be a saint and the soldiers holding back, Gawain his wrist and desummons his sun back to 'not in use' as it takes up mana to run. Instead, as he hears there's a commotion over at that house, he turns to BB. "BB! Let's make sure the others don't resort to violence. If you have anything else you want to do - like that lovely boosting you did to my announcement - please, feel free!"

Oh no.

And then, Gawain starts sprinting through the streets towards Janine and Lilian's location, sword resheathed. Once he gets there, he'll skid to a halt, announcing his presence and frowning at the threads...but letting Lilian get the first reaction.

<"Lilian, what's the next step of the plan?"> Gawain radios subtly, trying to see if she wanted him to be loud and annoying again, or change what he does.
BB BB looks blankly at Gawain, her phone lowering to her side.

"BBut that's so BBoring. I already do whatever I want. You're out?"

BB shakes her head, tapping her cheek with the corner of her glowingly Excessively Online smartphone-portal. "Anything I want to do... feel free."

"And it just has to 'make sure the others don't resort to violence'. Hmm... Mmm... Humm..."

BB performatively processes this, before snapping her fingers. A pink heart floats out from the sound before popping. "I've got it!"

Tossing her phone over her shoulder, BB snaps out a long telescopic baton, gesturing up at the Sakura Jumbotron in the Sky. Gawain's prettyboy mug blasts back into reality. On the jumbotron, he's holding up Galatine. Gawain on the ground, of course, stands around at rest, because nothing is going on.

"Greetings goodfolk! I am Knight Gawain, of the Knights of the Round Table, serving the rightful King of the Britons, Arthur Pendragon. My holy blade, Galatine, will destroy this city and all of its sin, unless fighting amongst goodfolk immmediately ceases. Strike only the filth of the undead! Join hands in harmony!"

Jumbotron Gawain smiles, a winning prettyboy smile. "Or face the light of the sun that shines upon my victory!"

BB drops her baton, the jumbotron ceasing to transmit across the city. She looks at Gawain, smiling ear to ear.

"Wish granted, sempai~!"
Lilian Rook     Inwardly relieved to be clear of that horrendous sight, Lilian counts herself fortunate for the moment, and doubly so for having dealt with demons as little as possible in the past. Sharing the room with the unblinking skin of genuine hellspawn had been enough of an experience on its own.


Or so she rationalizes, at least. Clearly it could have nothing to do with the perfect stranger she now drops unceremoniously on the ground, abruptly unwilling to hold them now that the danger has passed. That question --no, the way they'd looked at her, and the sound in their voice-- had taken her off guard, but that was it. It was simply strange for someone in that situation. Best not to over-analyze simple facts.

    She's incidentally swarmed by inquisitors, but that's not unexpected; she'd entered the basement when she had for the explicit purpose of getting there first, after all. "Dame Commander Lilian Isabelle Rook, of the Ring of Solstice and the Immune." she responds to the request for introduction, punctuating it by firmly slamming the sheathed end of that sword down on the road, though it scabbard cannot fully suppress that uncanny aura of eerily human hatred, having so freshly tasted the blood of the Outsider. "What happened is that you aren't needed. I've seen to the ritual myself. And so I'd very much like to ask why you think you have any right to be here at all. From the story I've heard told by the captain, you believe this town to be yours to waltz right into and do as you please."

    In this case, and all others, Lilian could scarcely affect the righteous indignation of the oppressed if she tried. It's more like a challenge, to paint the situation as anything but an act of aggression over a sovereign border. More likely to get results than asking nicely. Even if they lie. *Especially* if they lie.

    Oh. The others. That could be a problem.

    <"You're a plant I installed into their camp for the benefit of gathering intelligence."> Lilian signals Gawain via text. <"That's the story on the side of the Ceres forces. I don't know if they're actually from Ceres. Or if anyone here knows who you are, historically speaking. But either way, since they're looking at me now, there's no harm in playing along with the idea that you work for me. It's basically not even a lie. We're really coworkers, and I'm just taking the lead on this one.">

    <"Our bigger problem for the moment is *that* one. We can't have both sides here if she pisses off both of them. Take over for me."> Indicating that she'll have Gawain take statements and hear grievances (from the party that already likes him), Lilian suggests that whoever is the most important should follow her, and then excuses herself from the group to deal with Janine.

    Lilian taps Janine on the shoulder. There'd been no sign that she'd come up behind her. "I regretfully inform you that you can't resolve disputes of this nature like that. I then tiredly inform you that you can't seem to resolve disputes at all. Give it up you little psychopath. Nobody here wants a skirmish in town caused by your teen angst." That was a lot less professional than just a minute ago.
Tamamo     Janine makes the power play. There are a lot of targets, and a lot of things happen in response, all of them at once.

    The futuristic soldiers and their walking tanks only have one effective defense against this, that being the defense-in-depth doctrine. Every visible man and vehicle is tangled up at once, but their rear lines, preparing for something to overrun the front, stay in cover. Radio traffic is heavy and encrypted. Full face coverings make overhearing their planning a little more difficult than mere distance. From what can be seen, it doesn't look like they're of a mind to surrender, but there's no immediate, effective counter available, so their next move will be delayed.

    Not so with the few dozen knights and church agents, all of whom react with the swiftness and coordination that might be expected of top elites with extensive experience fighting magical calamities as a team. Emilian Darie is knocked into the air, armor and all, but a roaring shout and subtle rise in magical presence precedes him bursting through his bonds the moment they reach him. White-hot fire, more clearly magical in origin, encases his blade as he works to free his fellows, for those who don't have their own tricks available. Of the ones in full armor, it's a high defensive ability together with unnatural strength, but the others all appear to be one-off talents. Of note:

    Toward the back, a man in light armor practices a series of contortionist's twists, able to see the attack coming despite its small profile. He's likewise resistant to wind magic, though not immune.
    A woman wearing clerical robes over her armor shines with a steady light that unravels the strings around her. Rather, it 'unravels' any magic coming her way, as a reality-asserting effect of elemental Order.
    An older woman, moving spritely with a warhammer despite the wrinkles on her face, is neatly caught. Before she can be drained, her form collapses into a mass of water, all of which splashes on the ground, before rising up as the still-armed woman.

    The man with the crossbow who was aiming for the captured necromancer has to wait for the nearest knight to free him. There's no immediate danger of someone shooting a captive, but the reprieve isn't likely to last long. The upset here, and the biggest impediment to Lilian getting answers to her questions, is the refusal of any involved party to just let themselves be captured by some kind of wizard/witch (depending on which side is asked).

    This is not to say that there are no answers forthcoming, but it's only the pure power of gentlemanly politeness and noblesse oblige that allows Emilian of Darie to give any answer at all while freeing his fellows with his own holy light-encased sword. "Apologies, sir Gawain, but you may see our ambush for yourself!" And to the direct question of 'what right do you have to be here,' "The paladins of Valcea will not suffer Valceans be consumed by the cults of the Enemy, whether in land occupied by god-forsaking invaders from the stars, or no!"

    There is a high chance of imminent violence, despite Jumbotron Gawain's warning.
Janine Liberi     Janine pivots, and slaps Lilian's hand away, her face creased into a rictus of anger. "Who the fuck says I can't? You? Maybe you compromised your way to the top, but I refuse. The people here did nothing wrong. They don't deserve their homes being the stage for some international dick-measuring contest."

    And then, BB's jumbotron. Oh no. Janine's frown deepens more. "I fucking knew it. You all just want to glass the village, pat yourselves on the back and sulk about the tragedy of 'acceptable losses.' Well you can forget it. If that Asshole-In-A-Can wants to nuke this place, he has to go through me."

    While the guys in tanks are handled, with their back rows hunkering down, it seems the knights are a bit more capable in dealing with things. With a steely glare, Janine points to them. "That was your chance to walk away! Now you lose that privilege!" Cyclonic winds puck up the rubble of the necromancer's lair and launches them at the company. But Janine is a fencer, and she knows how to feint.

    As they brace for impact, Janine becomes a blur and appears among them, zipping from one to the next and slashing her sabre at their ankles and calves. The classical coup de Jarnac. She intends on leaving them unable to stand, and unable to defend themselves.
Gawain BB's Jumbotron Gawain puts the knight in a pickle. He can't deny it, for he told BB she could do whatever. He can't say it's a lie, for that destroys his image. And he can't reject it, for he's lying. Therefore...

With a heavy sigh, Gawain moves to embrace it. "If you call me a saint, I'll be your saint of harmony. And harmony means no needless fighting when we can all slay the undead and get along together! Any who try to fight will be knocked to the ground. Starting with..."

Oh no. Janine is angry. And she's attacking the knights with her blades, slashing at ankles. If they become unable to stand, falling, unable to defend themselves, she could just kill them. She seems the type. Gawain's reaction is to suddenly draw his Galatine, and dash forward at Janine. "You! You should have listened to the warning!"

He's much faster than he looks. And he's much, MUCH tougher than he looks. His strength is pretty accurate to his buster gorilla physique. The sword comes swinging down, moving for her preferred shoulder, forcing her to either dodge away - and therefore away from the knights - or take a blow that could make fencing much more difficult for her.
Lilian Rook     <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I, also, should have known better than to assume a Knight of the Round Table could keep that creature under control."

    Context is good. The Valceans aren't ignoring borders for the sake of inquisitorial privilege, but consider the territory theirs in the first place. It's been, what, recently annexed? Lilian's thoughts are briefly half-occupied by the geopolitics out of sheer habit, but out of necessity, they can wait. <"Gawain, I don't know where you've been keeping that thing all day, but *shut it up*.">

    "As if I would sulk about any choice I made willingly. 'When thou speak from authority absolute, so must be thy judgement. Thy word remains true even when the mind falters. None shall follow one who countermands their absolute judgement.' Project your inner turmoil elsewhere. Or better yet, give it up, go home, think about your life, and if you still think you want to help, take a proper course and apply for the Paladins entry exam. Not this ridiculous farce. Or would you prefer that I tell you to just trust that the adults have it all under control? Do you get angrier at being infantalized or told the truth?" Lilian can already sense Gawain, incoming. But Janine is already on the attack. There isn't time to--

                -----[stop]-----
                  There is always time.
                -----[start]-----

    Lilian is in front of Janine. The reflective steel of the sabre has clashed head on with the eerie black of the long sword. Janine had just blinked, and now she's in the way. "No, you should have listened to mine. Let me be clearer: You have a small amount of my gratitude for handling the other cultist, even as ineptly as you did, and it is currently *gravely* outweighed by my lack of patience for your shitty tween behaviour."

    She shifts her sword and throws a heavy expulsion into Janine's blade, then sweeps a leg and palm thrusts her back and away; not hard enough to consitute an attack, but easily enough to constitute a clean handoff to Gawain charging in from behind. "The fact that you have power doesn't make you a participant here, nor does it give you any right that's even close to --never mind greater than-- mine to call these shots."

    Barely a moment's pause "Though, if you feel like making me look good, we can still put on a production. Since you've managed to piss off everyone at once, I guess taking care of you would ingratiate me with both sides at the same time, no?"
BB BB, who has caused problems because she was asked to, leans back on the air and watches Gawain motor off. "I'm *helping*." BB smiles and nods to herself, before winking out of reality in a flutter of cherry blossoms and the distant thunder of BBass BBoosted kerthooms.

BB re-appears in a lawn chair -- born up by a bright magenta warp-pipe -- with a bubble tea sweating in the holder.

She lifts a set of wide-rimmed sunglasses with a finger to BBehold Gawain and Janine's scuffle.

"Okay, use the sword! She's asking for it! Yeah! Pow! Galatine! Do the thing where you stand--" BB dabs in her chair, then raises her bubble tea up like a sword before swinging it down.

Tea, ice, and tapioca balls slosh out and splashes on the ground before her.

"... Tapioca Gallon Dream? No, no. I'll work on it."

She cheers. "Let's fight-ing~!"
Tamamo     Even with the initial 'ambush' sprung, Janine retains several relevant advantages, speed no lesser to bladework, with which to slice into the inquisitors' ranks with crippling blows. Though the knights with their fancy helms are well armored even over what should otherwise by weak points, none here can quite keep up with her speed, and most of them have lesser defenses. Her challenges, then, are the number of targets, the precision her tactic requires, and the interception by both Gawain and Lilian.

    It's that last that saves the majority of them, with those first wounded struggling to remain standing. Their calls for "Healer! My legs!" are answered by those clerics who have been freed of Janine's strings. It's safe to assume that they have healing magic on hand, and if both Paladins (as opposed to paladins) are covering, it'll be difficult to keep them down without being able to focus targets.

    Rodica is among the latter group to be freed by the still-busy knights. She, herself, is busy with some form of divination magic. There's a sense that protecting her divination is a high priority, by their positioning. Grabbing the two necromancers is secondary to that, but several of the recently-freed are slipping off to do just that. With the CRC holding at a distance, and much less capable of getting most of their troops moving again in a reasonably short timeframe, this still leaves a few with the leeway to attack the wind witch (so they have concluded her to be) directly.

    It's that older woman with the hammer who gets the first chance to do so, using both the long shaft and striking head, coming up from the opposite side as Gawain. Her speed shouldn't be enough to let her keep up, nor to be there before anyone else, but her sense of judgment, positioning, and reaction are good enough that it would be simplest explained by her seeing things before they happen. Beneath her cloth cap, her expression just looks like a sternly disappointed granny. She even tut-tuts.

    No one bothers BB, though that might be because they were all already very busy when she appeared.

    No one, that is, except the necromancer that Lilian dumped nearby. The inquisitors haven't reached him yet. Now he's stumbling to his feet, and making his way toward her and her bubble tea. He's mumbling something about, "Dreams, dreams, they tries to take them, had to pay, haven't yet, it hasn't disappeared, it's going, not yet, there's still, I have a dream, a DREAM, it's mine, I... anything, anything!" He's gaining strength as he moves, eyes wide and seeing something that may or may not be there.
Janine Liberi     Lilian is there. How? Janine blinked, and there she was. Her fancy black sword presses against Janine's more mundane sabre, the Italian shifting her feet to better push back. "Under control?! You call this 'under control?!' Literally broadcasting your intent to kill everyone here on the loudspeakers! Is this how Paladins operate now?" The expulsion sends her stumbling back, and she sneers, preparing another comeback, only for Gawain to blindside her alongside the hammer-packing granny.

    She brings the sabre up to block, and several threads interlace between she and them to slow the incoming swings, but even then the jarring sound of metal on metal on metal is deafening. This combined attack does send her tumbling to the ground from the sheer force, winds swirling to catch her form and push her back up. She's laughing.

    "Now I get it," she says in between giggles. "You're just looking to play both sides so that you 'win' no matter what," she says, pointing to Lilian. "And you're just a thug who doesn't like thinking, so you leave it to conniving bitches like her," she adds, pointing at Gawain. "Once again, life is just like high-school. People who never grow up just play the same petty power struggles over and over. Never pick a side until one is overwhelmingly more popular than the other. Never take a stand for anything because that might get our ostracised."

    She's yelling now. She doesn't need a radio, the winds carry her words far and wide. "I'm sick of it! Sick of people getting stepped on over petty disputes. Borders aren't real, they're lines on a piece of paper! I don't care what beef the knights have with the solider, who kissed who behind the what, who ate with who at lunch! It's all pointless bullshit! But the people here, in their basements, cold and scared, they're REAL! They MATTER! They don't deserve to be statistics on a death count! They don't deserve to die so you can cozy up with people in charge, don't deserve to be hurt because some asshole with a sword lacks critical thinking skills!"

    The winds are whipping through the streets now, but Janine almost seems serene in the middle of it all, untouched and still. "I gave you all plenty of chances to step down now that the actual threat is gone. You didn't. So now you all die. I'm ripping this fishook out." Anemometers start giving ridiculous readings as the winds get stronger. Catherine writhes behind Janine as precision jetstreams howl through the streets, leaving buildings untouched by blowing knights and soliders down. Cyclones touch down in both camps outside the city, straining even concrete bunkers and sending tents flying into the sky.

    And they get stronger still.

    Janine slowly begins to ascend, wrapped in the eye of this storm. Anyone out in the streets who doesn't grab hold of something secure is flying up into the sky.
BB "Hmm. Hmm! You know, mister shady necromancer, I'm sort of helping out Knight Gawain right now. So, I've got to BBalance your needs, with my existing agreement!"

Dreams, dreams, not paid for yet, but soon.

Sliding off her chair, BB saunters up to the Necromancer, stepping across the stones that waver like the surface of water. Time is very funny around her. Really, only one person even has a turn right now that's *not* BB.

Snapping out her baton once more, she lifts the necromancer by the chin, flashing a pink pen-light into the deranged man's eyes.

"Your desperate stink isn't very sexy, but I think I can work with this. You want... Freedom. And power. It's a very selfless wish. The kind heroes are made out of! Desperate heroes."

BB luxuriates in it for a moment, before nodding.

"Right! This is why Humanity is so~ cute~!"

BB twirls her baton once before dapping it on both of the man's shoulders. "So let's see how far you go. I'll split the timeline - just for you! This way, everyone wins~!"

The city shudders. The ground quakes. An audible wriggle squirms at the edge of understanding.

In a radius around the Necromancer, the undead aren't undead, but terrible black bipedal horrors with no eyes, vertical-slit mouths, and tentacular limbs strong and horrid-sharp despite their slim and soft appearance.

Turns resume for other people (that aren't A Specific Someone).

The city around the necromancer is hazed in black and yellow and red, ghostlike tentacles wrapped around buildings, the street slithering.

BB laughs, bright and happy, as she flops back into her lawn chair and gestures at Gawain.

"There you go! Violence is still happening in the city! All that's left is to oBBliterate the evil god! But... Why would someone give up their whole soul to anyone with a slip of power? Oooh, it's a ~mystery~!"
Gawain As Janine blocks, Gawain skids back. As her storm starts to whip up and she gives her defiant speech, he grimaces. But in the end, he retaliates with his own words. "Maybe earlier, I would have cared what you think of me. But if your solution is to kill all of us, then you're no saint yourself. You're a terrorist, a vigilante! If you really wanted to protect these people, wouldn't you have evacuated them by now? No, you only care about showing that you're in the right! That you're the hero stopping the so-called tyrants of law and order!"

The wind sweeps into Gawain, knocking him off of his feet. BB gestures towards the evil god, and unfortunately, he gestures a 'not now', pointing up at the sky as the winds blast further through the streets. As he begins to get risen into the sky, he points his blade out, and is sent flying via thrusters on the hilt, launched towards the side of a wall, nestling his feet into it with mana.

"Your very storm is a sign of that you only understand anger and violence! So, enough! I'll end this now." The sword is thrown sky high, as Gawain struggles to keep to the wall. He just needs it long enough for the runes that start to shape around his feet to power up. The miniature sun reappears above the sword, as Galatine impacts with it.

EXCALIBUR GALATINE - Sword of Revolving Victory

What Gawain catches as he leaps off the wall to grab the blade is not a normal sword. It's a massive blade of sunlight and sunfire attached to the hilt, stretching as far as he deems it. He brings it overhead, and then moves to strike it straight down the center of Janine's eye of the storm, despite the fact this might sheer off the tops of buildings in the process. A beam of coruscating flames thrusting straight ahead. If Janine falls...

Well, then she shouldn't have been playing with fire.
Lilian Rook     There is an opportunity --possibly entirely fake and pointless to pursue at all, but an opportunity nonetheless-- for Lilian to tell Janine that there is no threat levied against the city. That an unrelated problem gremlin is stirring issues up on purpose. That she and Gawain have both sides (for there are only two) under her thumb already. It's here.

    But she doesn't take it. There is no forthcoming Use Of Her Words. The only words that she can be bothered to utter for a moment are, despite being delivered by her, certainly not her own. "Thou shalt treat with the laws of the land in good faith, and substitute not thy own. And thou shalt treat thy fellow man with dignity and with value, regardless of their station. Only when a man seeks to tear down the station of another is he then without value."

    Those that she seeks to form herself are only to punctuate the sentiment. "'Life is just like highschool', I suppose, explains a lot about you; especially why you seem to be incapable of navigating the real world. Unfortunately, I'm not here to be your school counsellor. The minute you began preaching to me about people's rights while gleefully threatening to butcher the ones wearing the uniform you didn't like, I lost my patience. So, put simply: You don't deserve to use the word 'deserve' with me. Crawl back into your hole."

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I strongly suggest, Captain, keeping your forces clear of the area for the moment. Exigent circumstances have arisen with a third party interloper."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "This is a problem imported from another world. Extremist terrorists. Our problem, not yours. But they'll attack your men as well as the Knight's."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Please allow us to clean up this mess."
<J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Neoklis Hondros says to Gawain, "Understanding? Sorry, not here to argue politics." To Lilian, after several moments, "Granted. CM's ordered to hold. We'll give you a window to sort this out."

<Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "Gawain, can I trust you to beat some sense into her without--"
<Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "No, actually, do as you will."
<Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "I don't know what damage that forest did to her, but I don't have the patience or the sympathy for someone in the process of attempting to dismember our prospective local contacts in the midst of an incursion crisis situation."
<Tac-Paladins> 3 Gawain says, "Escalating. Stay out of melee range!"
Lilian Rook     Without further words, Lilian tags out of her position with Gawain, again moving without being seen, though it seems extraordinarily unlikely that Janine would be closely visually tracking her anyways, in the middle of rising up into the sky and creating a citywide storm.

    She'd only moved back because he'd asked, picking up a rough estimate of where she needs to be away from Galatine, and unlimbering that assault rifle from earlier, not wasting time on checking the remaining ammo before settling into a kneeling stance, braced over a piece of wreckage, and sighting into the calm where Janine is starting to fly. She can feel the building wind pressure just fine, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out the fact that it'll be hell on the street in a few moments, so she fires immediately, putting a three round burst at elevation to hit the girl in the midsection. There's just enough time for that before Gawain closes in, and even those rounds are contending with too much wind to be reliable; further shots will just be lost in the storm.

    Then, the earth rumbles, and it takes even less of a genius to understand that this can only be separate and unrelated to Catherine. "Gawain! Handle this! I'm switching out to deal with the extra issue you left behind; I can get there faster!"

    This is, in truth, very much a fact, because she doesn't even wait for a verbal confirmation before, several streets down, the order of events is that a strobe of blue light flickers, five tungsten alloy flechettes collide BB-wards through the back of her chair, a short series of whining cracks follow late, a handful of casings clatter to the stones, and Lilian says "Get up and fix whatever you just did, or stay down and be dead. I don't have a preference." It is, again, an entirely different, thirdly unique tone and tack than she'd used a minute ago. Those shots had been at the back of a purple head, and those words had lacked the edge-covering of condescending disappointment for Beta Females.
Janine Liberi     Galatine is the sun, and everything associated. Light, warmth, but also a nuclear orb in space that annihilates anything that gets close. In spite of that, Janine doesn't seem too keen on moving. Perhaps this storm takes all her concentration to maintain. Either way, she just floats there as the flaming blade gets closer, closer...

    Something snags Gawain's arms.

    Those golden threads have ensnared his wrists, his biceps, his shoulders. Normally, this might not be a problem. He's certainly strong enough to pull free of anything that the strings are tied to. And now is no exception.

    But what they're tied to is people. Knights and soliders both, tied to the ground by their feet, and tied to Gawain by their throats. If he keeps swinging, he'll crush their necks. "What's it going to be?" Janine asks, even as the blade of Galatine cooks her, mere inches from her. "Is stopping me more important than the lives of fascists? Show me right now how you actually feel about them."

    Lilian fires at Janine. The bullets hit her, but wildly off-centre, the winds catching them mid-flight and diverting their patch. One catches her in the thigh, the others whiz by, opening cuts. Janine is beyond caring about injury.
Tamamo     A storm descends. Tanks are heavy, soldiers less so. The CRC soldiers thrown into the air will, though it really doesn't look like it, be fine. Their armor and gear is extremely well-suited to high-velocity impacts with terrain features, though that doesn't necessarily mean 'without injury,' and it'll use up the fuel on their microthrusters. If strong enough to lift the mecha, well, they have more fuel with which to save themselves, wherever they end up. The bunkers are another story, considering the extreme force required to tear things out of the ground designed in the first place to resist attacks from above, and that the people inside aren't all wearing armor with automatic air brakes. They have that much time to get suited up, not unlike rushing to prepare for being blown out into space.

    Things are, in the immediate sense, worse for the knights, even with less wind inside the town. Though enchanted to be effectively superhuman, none of them have effective flight. Flexing through a wind tunnel is not an easy feat. About the only ones fine are those who got to cover, again showing off those quick reflexes, and the woman who'd unraveled the threads around her, acting as a counterspell specialist. External magic, which includes Catherine for this explanation, fades in force in a small area approaching her, into which she gathers many of her fellows as they book it for a windbreak, picking up the injured on the way. 'Narrow and crooked' is the most common type of street, here.

    For those not so fortunate, they're thrown down the streets, or caught in threads, rendered helpless either way. The camp the knights had left outside is entirely destroyed, though only a few people were there to suffer for it. Those few were not combat personnel, and remarkably more fragile.
BB BB is shot! Terribly slain in her lawn chair which 'pfwump-fmp-fmp'-s with the impact of bullets on rubbery lawn plastic and soft skin. The spluts of bulletholes bloom on BB's chest, drooling ichorous black. She looks down, considering the state of her her upper collar, and sticks a finger into one of the holes consideringly.

"I could stop it, BBut I can't just BBreak a contract. You should be *thanking* me, really."

BB rolls her legs over to sit legs-crossed on the side of her chair, the wounds already closed, but that black blood running down the front of her chest.

"If I snap my fingers and save the city, Knight Gawain's help is null. If I wave my baton and take away that poor man's dream that I just gave him back, then no-one will *ever* deal with me again."

Causality grinds to a halt.

BB gets up, daubing a cocktail napkin across the glimmering-dark that threatens to stain her clothes more than they are already are. She approaches Lilian, smiling, arms wide. "So I've created an even BBetter situation. This timeline... isn't really real. Not yet. Only if this Singularity has a greater fundamental reality value than the old one will it stick. Certainly, anyone you save is saved, and anyone who dies, is dead. We can't just takesies-BBacksies! But..."

BB saunters over to caper aBBout Lilian, leaning in as she speaks. Striking her is... Effective, but she's persistent.

"If Gawain were to Galatine this city, as it is... Wouldn't all that got oBBliterated be monsters and tentacles and a dark necromancer who made a pact with a BBeast? It's fine! It's fine. Just do what you always do, and thoughtlessly slay the BBad Guy, and we all have fun and win!"

Time resumes.

BB is trying to drape over Lilian's shoulders with her hands and give her a neckrub. "Ev~er~y~one~ wins~!"
Gawain The golden threads wrap around Gawain's arm. He's about to break out of it, keep swinging, when he sees where they lead to - the others. He'll kill people if he continues. More than he had intended.

She dares him. He could easily do it. Slice her in half. But...is that right? He can fight her another day. He can't take back the lives he spends doing this. Buildings and cities may be repairable, mana may be recharged, and his image may be fixed from the strain that breaking his 'promise' BB created. But these people cannot be brought back from the dead so casually.

The miniature sun starts to fade. Gawain flicks a wrist, and the sword turns back to normal without snapping a neck. He moves to carefully remove the bindings without killing any of them. "Let them go. Alive. I will not let my chivalry die to put down one upstart teenager. I'm prepared to keep fighting you - but *you* also have the chance to leave here, alive. We didn't have to be enemies."

"Nobody else has to die by our hands. Not them, not the civilians. If you leave, I'll leave. That's a promise."
Lilian Rook     BB stands up. "I'm fairly certain I gave you two choices." says Lilian. "Since you seem disinclined to drop dead, this is your chance to make the other one. There isn't a third."

    Even saying it that way, there is a specific kind of incongruity to the situation. Lilian certainly had shown up here in the capacity of a Paladin. A peacekeeper. A Commonwealth interventionist. She'd clearly just been playing the political sides of the game. The parts called sovereignty and rule and rank. She has the bad guy (True) literally held at gunpoint. She is giving the orders.

    But even with the storm picking up, forcing her to spread her stance and stabilize her footing, pulling at her hair and tugging the projected parabola in the holosights, she won't raise her voice. Neither to assert her authority, to cow her enemy, nor even to be heard extra clearly. She lacks a certain tension. The presentation of human threat, bristled up and oozing aggression. It's like her pulse hasn't even gone up, bizarre in any confrontation with weapons involved, even for a professional much more veteran than she is.

    It's the kind of open guard, honest words, and naked intent that someone explains instructions in. How someone talks about their day. Relays the results of a test. It only changes when she gets a good look at her, glancing once, then twice, up and down, and even then, it's as much as a downward drift in focus.

    "I fail to see the problem with that one." she says, in regards to nobody dealing with BB again. "Or rather, that's your problem, and this is mine. I don't know what the hell you're going on about regarding singularities and reality values, but if you had any sense at all, you'd have noticed the obvious."

    "If that had been the point, I'd have already killed him when he made a pact with another beast five minutes ago. And since I did something fairly nasty to that beast when he made it, what do you think my opinion of beasts and pacts is? What do you think I'll do to you?" It's even weirder that BB can reach out and find almost no real muscle tension in Lilian's neck. "The tentacles. The monsters. The mist. It all has to go. So do you. Gawain isn't going to annihilate the whole town, because I know what he's like. Unfortunately for us both, he likely won't even annihilate Liberi."

    "So, this is your one chance to prove that 'ally of humanity' line, and not just be the same thing as what was in that basement. Even if you dress . . . like that, I'm not even slightly convinced that you aren't. So do us all a favour and give up on this contrived drama, because it'll save me a lot of energy to not do this the hard way."

    "Oh, and don't mistake my meaning. I can live with these consequences if it's the cost of getting rid of you and stopping them from happening again. I can even live with letting Liberi run free to bitch another day. So don't think about holding them as leverage. It only saves me a lot of energy if you pick option one over two."
BB "Okay!" BB decides.

"You didn't ~really~ listen to anything I said, so that's fine." She continues, lifting her fingers off Lilian's shoulders. "I understand. Really! I do. I don't need to pry off any fingernails or thoughts to completely understand this situation:"

BB shrugs, at a simple saunter instead of a cavorting jester-walk, as she collapses back into her lawn chair.

"'I fail to see the problem in the oath of a knight being BBroken'. That's what you're saying. 'I fail to see the problem in someone else BBending'. Now, you're screaming that."

Lilian didn't raise her voice. BB didn't stutter.

"And you can scream and shout and stamp your feet, like you're doing." Lilian still has done none of that.

"BBut~ it~ doesn't~ change~ anything~. The terms are very clear, and I won't listen to anyone who cherry~picks my words for their own BBenefit."

"If *you* want to kill the dreamer, go ahead. Strike him down. If Knight Gawain will level Galatine at this Singularity, then ex~actly as I said, little will stand against the holy BBlade."

BB conjures another boba and sucks alllllll the BBalls out of it, gesturing dismissively with her other hand. "You don't get to demand I lift your sword for you and do all the work. You have absolutely no Authority at all, and certainly none over me. You can't BBeat me in a straight fight, and if you do, nothing happens. You don't *win*. You either tie or lose."

"BBe real. I'm very real. The ally of that human--" She waves in Gawain's direction. The meaning is clear. "And that human--" The Dreamer-cromancer.

"And anyone else who will make a wish. BBut your posturing isn't cute, and it's not hot, and it's definitely not amusing. So: Nope~!"

BB sets her boba next to her chair and drops her sunglasses over her eyes. "That face you wear when you think you get to tell other people what to do for free is your most ugly, rotten, no-good face of all."

BB has never really met Lilian before.
Tamamo     Ugly masses of tentacles loop themselves around buildings, real in one timeline but not in another. That'll get sorted out eventually, without worries of paradox. Treating them as 'real' works, in the here and now. They serve as anchors against the wind, and safely shelter one man, the lines and patterns of blood washed off his body not long ago, who stares wide-eyed into the wind, unblinking through his tears.

    "Yes yes yes, not there, not them, here, there," he says, not just to himself, but to the partially-humanoid tentacle-things. "Out, out, out..." They know what he wants. Maybe no one else does (outside of BB), but there are enough clues that one might work it out, as these are more discerning in their targets than the undead had been. They don't go for the buildings at all. They don't spread through the town. They use the anchored tentacles to resist the wind, and they hunt to kill anyone wearing space-age armor, plus a few others, conditionally. Lilian, if she's still pointing her gun. Gawain, if he's still pointing his sword toward the town. Janine, if the storm is still raging.

    They're not limited to the town, but the winds make it difficult to get outside while staying on track. They don't have any apparent sense of self-preservation, but a certain amount of intelligence, even if it's only that of the man directing them. Most of the CRC, thanks to several prior events, are outside.
Janine Liberi     Janine is staring hard at Gawain, even as her skin blisters and reddens. He's not going to do it. With a snap of her fingers, the threads break. The people are freed. Still at the mercy of the howling winds, but at least they're not suffocating.

    "Promises are just words," she says icily. "And words mean nothing coming from you. You proclaim you're going to glass the city, and now you're saying no one will get hurt and I can go. I can't believe anything out of you. Not as long as you don't show some goddamn spine."

    Without breaking eye-contact, she digs her sabre into the bullet wound in her thigh and with the practised twist of someone who's often in a kitchen, digs something out of meat. That being the bullet Lilian put in her. "People like her, who throw around words like 'playing both sides' while ignoring one whole side entirely? They're not good people. If you're the fairy tale knight, the beacon of goodness and light, you can't be listening to her. She's the vizar, the poisonous influence behind the throne. Slap her shit and take charge. Then your 'promises' will be worth a damn."

    Suddenly, the storm stops. The winds die down. Everything and everyone who was launched into the air rains down around the city (very specifically around, nothing is allowed to land within its walls). Janine produces a radio, activates it, clears her throat and says, "Haaah... one minion dead, and the other one raving. This town was a wash. I'm torn between crushing it for its impudence, and killing this fool for his worthlessness... hmm... the latter, I think."

    She flies like a bullet, whirling in between the tentacles, the revived undead, flying towards the necromancer. With a single, hypersonic swing of her blade, she aims to cut through the tendril protecting him, and also him.
Gawain "You don't know anything about me. Disbelieve me all you like. I don't have anything to prove to you." Is all Gawain says, even as he listens. Even as...Janine's words, in a way, ring into doubts his brain had held deep about Lilian. But his lack of favor towards Janine means they don't dredge up.

As Janine moves to slay the necromancer and tentacles, though, Gawain goes to assist. With any horrors still left, he takes Galatine, and moves to slash through them, flames building up. And if Janine's attack on the necromancer isn't enough, he finishes it.

Galatine is lit back up, and moves, at a much smaller size due to lack of tornado, to slice straight through the necromancer and ensure his death. The miniature sun beacons above, as he and all the monsters are likely to explode violently from holy sunfire. Janine is given the barest of warnings it's coming.

A hand gesture, to move to the side. If she doesn't heed it, she might get burned.
Lilian Rook     "I don't think you heard me." Lilian says to BB. This would be unbelievably childish in almost any situation, were it delivered with any kind of fluster or meaningful irritation. "I'm not killing a human being because it's more convenient for you, and especially not a town full of them. That demand is absurd." Lilian engages the safety on the rifle. She drops it to the ground, waiting only for the loud clatter-clutter to subside.

    "However, if they die in the process of me killing you, then that just can't be helped. Tie or lose? As if I care. I win when you break. So, come to think of it, maybe you did hear me? Because I *do* expect you to bend for me."

    She picks up the scabbard instead, holding it loosely at her side, and casually approaching the lawn chair, barely twenty paces away. "I'm not wishing, I'm telling: Bend backwards or bend over."

    "Cleasa."

    Six paces and the seventh never arrives. Just pain.
    Without sight or sound or draft of air, Lilian is not only already on BB, but already has been, from the front rather than approaching from the back, sword drawn at least faster than the sound could betray, like the bullets before, and put straight where a human heart should be, with a dozen other identically sized blade punctures clock-faced all around the chair and surrounding road, encompassing all angles of evasion.

    And it's just about the most awful thing ever. BB is hardly any kind of faerie, but it doesn't take being one for the glassy-rough magnetite edge to hurt more than anything ordinarily conceivable. The blade is the bane of the Outsider. It embodies, tangibly, a rejection, a condemnantion, a singular burning hatred, of that which lurks outside the earthly sphere, beyond all measure of sense or sanity. For an entity of singularities and timelines, reality textures and imaginary space, 'reliving the phantom experience of being flensed body from soul and smelted screaming into the steel' is the minimum floor of sensation.

    Unlike the eldritch demon, however, BB is a being possessed of firmly human reason and footing, somewhere in her core. So it isn't just the exquisitely agonizing sensation of what the vibrating, thirsty black edge is doing, nor the many fascinatingly awful bits and pieces of micro-casual band-sawing she can feel by distant kinship with the mechanics, but beneath it, an ineffable, electric current of embodied human sentiment. Manifest rage. Scorn. Fury. A profound heresy writ in such contempt for all things other than its maker that it underflows into a kind of malevolent nirvana.

    Even more, the lingering will imparted on it, almost semi-sentient, seems to resonate, mingle, and cross-bleed with its current wielder, blurred together on the edges of past and present like-minds. Obviously, the object of this focus right now is BB, but . . .
Tamamo     The dreamer had a dream. He'd had a wish, but it hadn't been for immortality. His own survival was never a big part of the plan. He just had to make it happen -- and now he won't, because Janine and Gawain make sure he's ended. The monsters are much stronger than the undead had been, possibly proving that BB is better at being a troublemaker than the previous demon, but still not enough to serve as a real impediment to either of them. The necromancer barely notices their presence before he dies, and this particular trouble goes out along with him. The source of the Singularity is gone, so the tentacles all go with it.

    Things are more complex outside. It gets more complex the more 'outside' is considered. Somewhere, there are people scrambling to respond to distress calls at a slower speed than the multiversal respondants. Being long gone, or at least out of sight of the airspace, within the next few hours might be a good idea for some people. Others, once they know what happened here (though they do not, not yet) don't need things like 'light' or other forms of EM radiation to hunt down heretics. It will all get very complicated, sooner or later. There'll be plenty of blame, too much exaggeration, and some arguably justified lies.

    It might be difficult to reach, but there will also be one alderman, by name of Serban, trying to reach the one who introduced herself as Janine Liberi, to tell her that everyone he could reach is safe, and is it over, yet? He couldn't reach everyone. He can only hope, and join the search teams, once it's safe to look outside.
Janine Liberi     Janine makes herself scarce once the necromancer is dead. She understood it, his dream. He wished to expunge the soliders. No doubt they claimed this territory for themselves. Big people stepping on the little people. But the undead and the tentacles threatened the very thing he longed to protect. Even so, it gnaws at her. Maybe if she had spoken to him, instead of arguing with the Paladins...

    "I'll make it happen," she whispers to his charred corpse, before ducking into an alley. She's spent, but is using what's left in the tank to hover, so as to not aggravate her thigh. She floats towards the building with the antenna, and seeks its occupants or its cellar. A note is passed to anyone she finds, or through a gap in the door if no one is around. It's written in blood.

YOU DON'T KNOW ME
WE NEVER SPOKE
LET ME BE THE VILLAIN, SO YOUR TOWN IS SPARED.
SORRY FOR ANY DAMAGES
JANINE
BB "Honestly!" BB calls from her chair. "I don't even remember! I had to purge those memories from disgust! I can't even play back listening to you, it's--"

One-two-three-four--

The steps come.

Janine and Gawain end the Dreamer. With his end, reality hiccups, people vibrating in place for a moment as the tentacles - and the strange tentacular upgraded necromantic beings are just... cats and dogs again. The 'forked timeline' evaporates in a cloud of magic and logic. The layer over the city dissipates, leaving it... Okay. It's not any better than it was, but the *tentacles* are gone.

Five-six come the steps. A skipped-beat stroke.

And a dozen more.

The most deeply unsettling part, perhaps, for Lilian, is that BB is animate.

The whole time. Her time does not stop, per-se. She just sits there, on her chair, and is brutally synch-killed six and six times. Her corpse lights on cheery cherry-blossom flame, and turns to ash.

Another Warp-Pipe in magenta appears, (another) BB rising up and plucking crow feathers from her purple hair. "I'm sure that was deeply unpleasant because I don't remember getting out of that chair."

BB still never remembers 'bad' things. Why should she? They're bad! Not BB at all!

Dropping from the somehow-weight-bearing darkness of the warp pipe, BB settles back down on her R E S P A W N P I P E.

"I remember letting it happen, though. Ah well. Yet another Noble Phantasm with some awful, BB BBullying trait. Ho-hum. There's at least a dozen I can think of."

She starts counting. "And ***three*** of them are King Arthur's? Rude. I should delete King Arthur from the th--"

BB scans over to Knight Gawain, far in the distance. She still has an inkling where he is. "--maybe some other time. Wow! I definitely remember all this place being a Singularity, and now it's all BBetter? I guess someone who wasn't you did the thing you couldn't be BBothered to do."

The memory is unpleasant enough it was dumped presumptively. "Which side were you trying to support, again? Did they win? Hooray! Humanity wins! A-gain. Ho-hum, what a BBoring story. I sort of liked the lost dreamer, though. I think I'll remember him for a little while. That's like BBeing immortal!"

BB winks at Lilian. The gesture doesn't come with an explanation.