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Kale Hearthward Justice here is done in the open air.

... Or, at least, in courthouses without roofs. This is sort of an open-air coliseum arrangement, the sort of concave bowl that has the action in the center and the seating in raised rings surrounding it.

The action, in this case, is Harper Yevin, one of the former leaders of the Chamembert Resistance... and father to the young ferret who took his place. He's in chains - literal chains, binding his wrists and his legs, in the central witness stand, as the blase looking judge is reading out the crimes he's been charged with.

"... three counts of vandalism... and two counts of trespass," says the judge. "Mr. Yevin, how do you plead?"

The ferret's ears twitch. "Not guilty."

The judge nods. "Very well," she says. "The trial commences, the prosecution may make their case."

This is the best opportunity. Up till this point, Harper's been kept under fairly tight guard. Taking another opportunity would involve additional steps.

Unfortunately, taking this necessitates a loud approach... and there's a couple of armed soldiers in attendance. Expect to meet resistance from those resisting the resistance.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      If the resistance is going to come back, then the people of Camembert way must be shown that resistance is not only possible, it's necessary. Any effort to normalize the occupation, to plaster a layer of authority over theft and coercion, must be frustrated, by any means necessary.

    Bercilak, can, technically, just turn off the green. But why bother doing that here? A more human appearance doesn't make him stick out any less. He's still huge, besides.

    So he's here. In a red shirt bearing a rainbow gripped tightly by a clenched fist, overlooking a misty mountain range. The sleeves have been torn off, revealing a big green gun show; the hem is flush with his waist, as his bulk leaves little slack. Black jeans and heavy motorcycle boots complete the affair.

    It goes without saying that his arrival was as literally loud as it is visually loud. The open air nature of the court room makes it quite easy to crash from above--but the noise of a pulse detonation engine, the parking of a massive green hoverbike in a place simultaneously quite visible, and quite disruptive, to the ongoing proceedings.

    With a cheap pair of wraparounds on, Bercilak holds the brake with one hand, guns the accelerator with the other, revving the engine every time the prosecution attempts to make their case. It is a deliberate attempt to provoke the use of force. "Fuck this tial. Fuck thee, fuck thee," he bellows between the bike's chest-thumping controlled detonations, bright jets of white fire belching from the rear.

    "'Tis not thy lond, and hit shalt not be thy lond with one papere oth one thousand paperes." Force is the balled fist behind the pretty robe, and he's trying to get them to swing first.
Selene Is stealth an option? Perhaps in other circumstances or at another time, but it doesn't look like that's the case today as Selene watches the open-air proceeding from atop her Golbat, the easily-frightened beast surprisingly quiet for once. The trainer, meanwhile, has one hand in her fannypack while the other is busy keeping the bat calm.

<<"Niner niner, this is Muscle Chicken, I've got visual on our target. Ready for aerial entry into Your Dad. Tee minus fiften seconds until descent and begining operation Charlie Bravo Tango.">> She snickers a second later, then pats the Golbat once more as it starts to divebomb towards the trial area, both of them starting to scream the closer they get to the ground.

Selene's screaming because she's having fun with it, of course. The giant bat head with wings is just terrified.

Landing nearby Bercilak, the trainer hops off her still-howling creature in a rather unimpressive three-point landing. "Alright, buttwipes! Get your pants pulled up, because it's time for...!"

She pauses, looking around at the guards and the judge and everyone else in attendance. Do they even have pants on?
Kale Hearthward They do wear pants, yes.

Well, not the ones who are wearing dresses, but the rest are wearing pants.
Xion Xion ('Shion the Mouse Detective') in a normal situation would sit patiently in the stands, observe a bit more, get a better handle on things, and then wait for a good time to grab the accused. Like the lunch break! A quick in and out, and Xobb's you're uncle.

'Pronounced zobb'. Rhymes with Bob, who tragically fell in the battle with the Heartless.

Bercilak... Doesn't complicate that.
He simplifies it.

So, Xion drops out of a portal over Bercilak head and doormouse-stands on his shoulder, knee-length skirt fluttering, folding her arms and looking down her snout at the judge and jury.

"Do you think this is justice? Your homes are being vandalized and your community is being violated and you're acting like the one on trial should be him?"
Maricel Thorne      Maricel makes a minor scene wading down through the nosebleed seats- "'scuuuuse me, paaaardon, seen anyone selling hot dogs?"- with a distinct kind of hands-in-labcoat-pockets swagger. She's liable to make even more of a scene when she fizzles out of existence upon reaching the front row, re-materializing in a burst of neon-staticky energy next to the accused. The angle of her glasses is perfectly calculated to reflect the gleam of the sun as she gives Bercilak an acknowledging nod.

     "Ahhhh, parrrrdon me, Mr. Judge," she says with a cheery and innocent smile. "Before the trial begins, I'd quiiiite like to introduce some additional material to the record. You knowwww, as a friend of the court." She pulls a glowing green syringe out of her pocket, far too comically large to have ever reasonably been concealed, and casually jabs the needle into Harper's side before giving the plunger a little shove with her foot. A dozen ounces of horrifying super-medical juice immediately course through his system, granting him enough convulsive strength to shatter the chains and enough regenerative durability to survive a firing squad.

     "The defense... ah. The defennnnse... no, I don't actually know enough about court to carry this bit," she admits, giving a helpless hands-out shrug- an ominously glinting bone saw has materialized in her palm at some point. Her gaze drifts back to Mr. Yevin. "Loooook. Are you going to fuck them up now, or do I still have dibs on that? Just trying to establify our working relationship here."
Selene "... Time to get the pantsing of your lives!" Selene's loud, but even she doesn't sound particularly impressed by that one. All that rooster-paint on her face doesn't really hide the thoroughly unimpressed 'meh' face she's got on.
Liza Grier     Liza is exactly not the type to attempt to do things 'at the most easy and opportune time'. She is the type who can't get into it unless she can trigger the metaphorical Simon Viklund music thumping in the background. The fact that Yevin just happens to be right there, and she doesn't really feel like waiting for ages for potentially multiple trials to conclude to take him somewhere more exciting, is just incidentally in favour.

    But she's still not going to blend in, slip into the crowd, take out a couple of guards, grab Yevin, and abscond in a convenient escape vehicle. With the open air forum, it'd be dramatic to do it in a helicopter, or even extremely convenient to just beam back up into orbit, but Grier has other ideas: a megaphone.

    "Attention. Attention. All those assembled in the mock justice room. This is Liza Grier of the Syndicate Nuclear Ops Strike Force and in alliance with the Watch. You have, currently literally in chains, a mister Yevin of Camembert detained in your midst.

    You have two, I repeat, two, minutes to freely admit him from the courtroom, and surrender your absurd pretense at a right to pass verdict, until I do it for you. All Gale Empire forces and sympathizers still present will be killed without exception. All Camembert legal personnel, including bailifs and justices, will be assumed to be Gale Empire collaborators, and also summarily killed, unless they demonstrate otherwise by collaborating with Watch allies instead,.

    Your two minute countdown starts now. Run, fight, help the right side or the wrong side. I look forward to turning you sideways."
Hibiki Tachibana     Justice here is done in the open air.

    However, Hibiki Tachibana is someone who believes in her own justice, and grips onto it tightly.

    That is to say in overly fancy words she doesn't really approve of this at all, and has been waiting for this rescue operation since it came up before. She understands Derek's headstrong and 'get this done as fast as possible' attitude a lot better knowing that his father was taken away in the raid on the resistance HQ...in fact, she can't even blame him for it. She's almost sure she'd be the same way, and in his shoes, say screw it to everyone and everything else to rescue him as soon as possible if she knew. So in his place, because they're a lot better equipped for it, she's going to do her part to make sure Harper Yevin gets out of here in one piece.

    "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron..."

    There's a golden light from directly overhead the procession, courtesy of the girl making a powerful leap from the top rim of the structure towards the middle, and then transforming in mid-air. Clad in the undersuit and then the armor of her Symphogear, she comes down right in front of the central stand and rises back up to her feet, adjusting her scarf as she does so. It's about the most dramatic entrance she can pull off short of throwing the first punch herself.

    She'd really like to, but. "...Any trial you'd try to pull here would be far from a fair one," she speaks up in between LOUD HOVERBIKE REVS, while very obviously putting herself between him (and now Maricel!) and the nearest of the armed guards as a show of solidarity. And barely hidden intent to throw hands. "You should just be honest about it from the start. The Empire has the government here in their pocket...and they were never planning for him to walk out of here in the first place, were they?"
Kale Hearthward There is, predictably, surprise and shock at the surprise shock tactics.

"What is this - get out of my courtroom, before I have you all arrested for causing a disturbance!" the judge yells, getting up to her feet when Bercilak and Selene come in. Her bravado falters a bit when more and more people show up, and it becomes clear that this is not just some random set of people doing this as part of a demonstration but an actual armed force showing up in force with arms.

"Hmm?" says the ferret, who's even less sure what's going on, till it becomes clear that they're on his side... and he gets injected before he can *quite* make that realization.

"What's - ow, what-" He moves his arms, and the chains shatter apart, in a suitably dramatic fashion. "Oh, *yes*, I like this. I'm still not sure who you are, but if you'd like to mess up the Galers, by all means do not let me stand in your way."

Most in the crowd, and after a moment of thought most of the court personnel, go to leave, quickly, at Liza's pronouncement. Three of them, a hyena, a swan, and a mouse, remain where they are.

"Well," says the mouse. "Looks like *someone's* getting blitzed from above. What an unexpected development. I thought only 'weak nations without adequate preparations' get blitzed."

"Really do not need your sass right now, Hazelthistle," says the swan, getting up and glaring at him.

"Nah, nah, it was a good burn, point to him," drawls the hyena, also getting up. "You in?"

"I'm in," says the mouse, also getting up. "Not changed. Want me to go get the empy?"

"No need, I can handle this," says the swan, drawing the twin swords from her back. "The two of you focus on evac, then get the ninth mage squad in."

The open-air courtroom gradually clears out - a few of the audience joining the Watch's side, but most of everyone else opting to just get clear. The person not getting clear is the swan, who is striding towards the watch's position, with the clear posture of someone intending to make themselves A Problem.

"The two minutes will not be necessary. I will not ask you to surrender - because it seems clear that you will not."

She closes in. "Know that you face Corbina, of the Gale Empire, and face its might!" And with that, she wades in, both blades striking out fiercely!
Maricel Thorne      "That'll last for a few hours," Maricel informs the ferret cheerfully. "Donnnn't eat any grapefruit, don't donate blood this month, and cerrrtainly don't-"

     She is rudely interrupted by a sword embedding itself straight into her torso. Even though the impalement is longer than her body is deep, it doesn't come out the other side.

     Something beneath her skin seizes the blade in a visegrip, aiming to prevent it from being pulled out. Maricel-the-person, meanwhile, lets out an aggrieved sigh (causing her sucking chest wound to froth blood-pink bubbles around the steel) and adjusts her glasses in a distressingly bookish and matter-of-fact manner.

     "I would like to remiiiind you, Miss Corbina," she says as staticky portals open up behind her back and extrude meat-crimson tendrils larger than her body, "that doctor-patient confidentiality is sacred."

     The tendrils promptly attempt to seize the swan and hurl her across the courtroom-arena, with enough force to make a crater in the opposite wall.
Selene With Harper joining the Watch's numbers along with some other people Selene doesn't recognize one bit, things are looking up! Well, until a swan with swords comes at them. That's not quite so good, and Selene's Golbat grabs her with its feet before hurling her out of harm's way, but not without suffering a graze along one of its giant leathery wings. It's a shallow cut, thankfully, but still enough to have the thing screeching again.

"A soldier type, huh? That's perfect! Don't let us down now, because we're counting on you to make this look good and decisive!" She shouts in what might almost sound like cheering for Corbina, somehow getting all of that out before grunting and rolling along the ground from that toss. "But you know if you're gonna fight a whole bunch of the Watch at once, then you better be ready for a real beatdown!"

Her bat Pokemon, still bleeding from a wing, keeps flapping its wings as it actually shuts up for once while waiting for a command. "... Bite her face off! Just like in our boxing lessons!" And with that, the Golbat takes to the sky, flapping around and taking a few rapid dives to try and take a big chomp right out of the swan. Meanwhile, Selene is...

Posing. She's thrashing about as she gets back to her feet, pointing at those still hanging around for some reason, gesturing at them as if trying to hype them up or intimidate them with her displays of... Whatever it is she's doing.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants     One of those blades strikes true, just between his ribs, the red sleeveless shirt darkening at the spot. It is distressingly difficult to force the blade any further into him, as if his skin were actively resisting the blade past a certain point. But despite this, he has something nice to say. "Sprakli bladewerk," he says, clearly impressed. "I am Bercilak of the High Wasteland."

    His leg juts out with alarming speed to send a thick-soled boot crashing into her center of mass with all his might. The wraparounds are removed, revealing two blood-red eyes alight with gleeful, sanguine intent. Constructed in a flash of blue light, green armor appears over his body, and more importantly, a massive bearded battle axe. The armor and the axe alike both show signs of computer assisted design and machining; a very high tech take on the idea of a knight, right down to the t-visored, tusked bucket helm.

    "Al be that, thine is a dullish reson to die." If Xion is still up on his shoulder, now is the time to really remember the basics of gymnastics. Or hold on for dear life. Because he guns it, making several high-speed passes that send ionized wash rushing through the courtroom, strong enough to lift unsecured chairs and send court documents whirling chaotically about. The bike's speed and size mean that being hit by that cow-catcher-esque front set of armored motivators/brake panels could flatten the average goon--but this is no average goon. This Corbina is confident enough to fight severely outnumbered.

    So she gets the respect treatment. The weapon is mixed in. The cheek of the axe is weighty enough, is reach long enough, to be used as a deadly bludgeon. The eye wide enough to be a battering ram in its own right, The beard is spacious enough to catch human sized limbs--and each one of these vectors of attack is mixed in at random with death-defying inverted rolls, buzzes and fakes, all aimed at monopolizing a portion of her skill by forcing a measure of her attention to be on him at all times. "Lond," he cries. "Yeveth!" Derisively. "A waste of a craftuous pleiere of werre!"

    There's a boorish hand gesture thrown her way to try and throw her off her game, as he threads the needle expertly with that huge fucking bike between two of Maricel's tendril portals--he seems to anticipate those tendrils are the throwing sort--sweeping around to try and make a dirty one-two combo with a precise flick of the weapon's razor edge, aimed on pure intuition.
Hibiki Tachibana     "We're friends," Hibiki says back towards Harper without turning around, as Liza gets the greater majority of the courthouse to start hauling their butts. There's a silent exhale of relief that it won't come to blows with most of them. Gale Empire certainly doesn't have many real friends...despite how much of them showed up to this bum trial in the first place. "Derek's friends."

    When the rushing crowd begins clearing up somewhat, that leaves her eyes narrowing at the standout trio among the personnel that have remained behind. They don't have the bearing of civilians--not in the way they're getting up.

    Or how the swan brandishes her blades. "She's coming alone...?" If they can make an entrance this loud and she thinks can take on all of them, Hibiki is going to bet she has something to back that confidence up. Her shoulders square, and her fists come up to chest level.

    And she dives away from the stand and in to meet Corbina's flurry of strikes without hesitation, very intent on getting in her face and staying in it. The metal of her gauntlets meets one slash, and then another, with a resounding clang each time--and then the third one gets through her guard, tearing a bleeding gash into her shoulder and partly down the length of her torso. "Hngh...!"

    But she intends to use that to her advantage, stepping in while the blade is still pushed out to get inside Corbina's range and kick out with her heavily armored foot to try to bowl her off her feet. "That Empire of yours can't just walk in here and start upsetting people's lives...!"

    The follow up comes with a buckle of her knees, a hunker down and a floor-cracking stomp, and then throwing her full weight forward in a shoulder slam that'll definitely send her flying if it connects fully, possibly straight into another attack! "If anything, you should be trying to work with them, not stepping all over the people!"
Xion 'Blitzed from above'
Xion's schnozz twitches, a curious-intense look on her large protagonist mouse eyes. "The two minutes aren't for you, Corbina of the Gale Empire. And I don't face it's might -- I'm pretty sure I'm facing its *knight*!"

Xion leaps from Bercilak's shoulder as her keyblade -- capped with two round mouse-ears internally defined by a pair of stars over a dome for the tooth, rather than the normal cap of a single star for the tooth -- appears in her hand and drives down in a falling chop.

Her blade clashes with Corbina's, catching one blade vertically before a fierce cut drives her back.

Backflipping back onto Bercilak's freight train advance, the sure-footed mouse detective drafts momentum and leaps to disappear in a smear of darkness to reappear at Corbina's flank and dive down again, this time in a blade-stroke that trails a torrent of crashing water.

She does, in fact, keep swooping the Gale Empire fencer just to prove that point.
Liza Grier     "You know, it's actually pretty rare that they run off. Usually they have more machismo than that." Liza thinks out loud, sauntering into the courtroom with just the timing to be fastening her helmet with a little hiss-click as she clears the entry hall, quadruple green optics flashing on menacingly in the last few moments of riser shadow. Her voice resumes with a considerably more sinister electronic garble. "Boring. Maybe I'll just hunt down the rest anyways."

    She approaches Corbina at center stage. "And don't expect me to praise you for your courage or something. Standing up to protect evil just makes you unapologetically evil. Suggesting surrender is the last ditch effort of those who fear that they can't win. Considering the situation, that seems accurate. You think you're nobly sacrificing yourself or something?"


    She isn't visibly armed at the moment Corbina lunges. There's not really time for a tele-order either. What happens is that she snatches something from her hip hardpoint, there's a flash of bright scarlet light and a sizzling hiss, and a blade of pure red energy with a white core extends from a contoured black hilt just in the nick of time. Though ostensibly a kind of hard-edged beam sword, it has enough substance to deflect the dual blades along its flat, sliding harmlessly from the edge of Liza's personal shield.

    In response, she grabs Corbina's arm with her off-hand in a military hold, locking blades and driving the sword back towards her, attempting to turn the blade into a scalding hot soon-to-melt piece of steel in the swan's hand, and burn her arm, face, and chest with the searing radiant heat.
Kale Hearthward The swan tugs on the sword that gets embedded in Maricel. "Not to worry, it'll be corpse-patient confidentiality soon-"

The swan, still trying to get the blade clear, gets grabbed and hurled hard across the room, straight into the fangs of Selene's golbat. "Monsters?" Is all she says as she tries to get free.

By now, the courtroom is entirely clear of anyone not weighing in on the fight in one manner or another. Mostly those coming in from the crowd are just throwing rocks at the swan, but as she comes down from the bat's grasp Harper decks her.

"Not content to only get a few years, I see," she says, staggering back.

"Hey, with new friends like these, can you blame me?" he flippantly calls back.

Bercilak comes in swinging. "Justice is never a dullish reason to die," she snaps back, bringing up her own blade to defend herself - she's down to just one when she's used to having two, so she's driven back steadily - and then when Xion comes combo-ing in, she's forced into a full retreat, taking keyblade hits from her and then getting shoulder-slam blindsided by an incoming Hibiki.

Liza comes in with words and with burning grapes. Corbina jumps back, getting clear of the latter as she addresses the former. "You attacked a civilian courtroom," she says. "Don't act as though you are hitting a hardened military facility..."

She jumps back again, landing up on the raised seats along the edge of the courtroom and perching there. "And the designation of evil belongs to the victor - don't presume to be anywhere near that yet," she says, coldly. "Don't presume you'll be anything but *dust* in a few minutes."

Still, it's clear she's outmatched - her next tactic is defensive, staying where she is and switching from swordplay to casting - launching a rapid-fire barrage of simple air spells, from hands and from beak, aimed at keeping the Watch and its new allies pinned down!
Liza Grier     "What part of anything you've done is just?" Liza synthcrackles as Corbina jumps back out of her range. "And what's the difference between attacking you here and attacking you at an outpost? Am I supposed to feel something when you and yours all run away and then you tell me about how un-hardened the place is? If you have an objection to this kind of attack, have your cowardly crew of thugs stand up and fight.

    For someone who seems like they're always handling tacticool guns and traps all the time, Liza is actually pretty remarkably adept with that Syndicate e-blade. Air spells are split out of the air with the white hot edge and sinister red glow, dispersed simply by the immense heat each timely slash imparts into the air bullet, predictably destroying its cohesion.

    For the last of the salvo, she keys the other arm, and the bright blue shield-disc pops into existence on her left wrist, which she holds up against the incoming barrage and uses it to charge straight back into melee combat with Corbina, closing with a swift and deadly lunge, and then a flurry of encroaching blade strokes.

    The difference in swordsmanship is a matter of severe archetype mismatch. Her blade is completely weightless, and doesn't require much force or windup to cut extremely deep. Each parry means absorbing a lot of heat, which means having to carefully trade off which of the two swords can be used for defense. Dodging that many weightless and barely telegraphed swish-slashes is extremely difficult and tiresome, compared to a blade of steel.
Hibiki Tachibana     "The victor deciding good and evil isn't how it should be...!" Corbina retreating backwards away from them all gives her a moment to breathe in through her teeth to shrug off the pain from her wound and reaffirm her stance, shifting her footing as she calls back after her. "Is the justice you're trying to defend today - stamping out people trying to protect their home and lives - really what you believe in?"

    The assault of air magic streaks down, and Hibiki crosses her arms up to let the first few ones that'd hit her directly disperse their force along Gungnir's armor. Then the moment an opening is there, she digs a heel into the ground below and uses it to launch herself in a straight line up towards the swordswoman! Her very literally straightforward approach would make her an easy target if not for the skirt thrusters on the back of her outfit, which she fires in quick bursts to throw herself out of the way of otherwise direct hits and between gaps in the barrage.

    Near the top, she throws her body down and kicks off of a seat below for an extra burst of acceleration, piston in her right hand gauntlet slotting backwards. "Because it's /definitely/ not worth dying for!" Hibiki punches forward, directly into another shot.

    The force of the spell is canceled out with the inwards slam of her piston, releasing the force behind it forward as a directed shockwave powerful enough to be visible - blasting right through it and carrying onwards to smash into Corbina! She's not going to let things stay at a range, she's continuing to move right in to the front behind Liza.
Selene "That's right, monsters! But in my pocket! Sometimes!" Selene shouts with dramatic punches upwards punctuating each statement, doing a quick spin for emphasis as she points at the Golbat. "Like that one! He's not in my pockets because he's busy fighting your stupid government that just wants to keep people down instead of letting them do..."

As Selene trails off to try and remember how that whole thing goes, the Golbat jerks around wildly in midair to keep itself from getting brought back down to the ground. It's in its natural element in the sky, though, weaving through air-blasts while tucking its wings in and extending them to keep its movements unpredictable for as long as it can. It still doesn't attack right away, but it does seem to be getting antsier the longer Selene goes without commanding it.

"... Whatever it is they want to do. Your boss sucks!" With that eloquently said, the rooster-faced girl pulls out an entire ladder out of her fanny pack and flings it upwards. "But you've got potential, so join us! Come on, unless you want that ladder to the face!"

The ladder is going nowhere near Corbina. Instead, it's going towards the Golbat who, after watching it for a few moments, catches on and screams at it when it bursts into flames. Unlike the usual screeching, though, it's actually focused, striking the combusting ladder with concentrated sonic force that ricochets it right towards the swan.
Maricel Thorne      "Monsters," Maricel repeats carefully, as if studying the word's pronounciation. Her meatbody's tentacles slither back into their portals, which shut with an unnatural hissing buzz. Meanwhile, Maricel-the-humanoid reaches into her labcoat pockets and procures a pair of blue nitrile gloves, tugging them on and audibly snapping them around her wrists. "What a fascinating choice of term, Miss Corbina."

     Taking her surgical bonesaw in both hands, Maricel opens herself up from collarbone to pelvis, blossoming candyapple-red flesh off the moon-white bone; the dissecting incisions are so bloodlessly perfect that she could model for anatomical drawings. With ribs splayed open like a venus flytrap, the path that the sword took through her torso is plainly visible; in a flurry of audibly whickering movement she staples wounds closed, sutures lungs airtight again, clamps and reconnects severed blood vessels. Within the span of barely three seconds, she's already sewing herself back up and pulling the sutures taut to "zip" her torso shut again, then casually pulling her shirt back down over it.

     It's beautiful. It's horrifying. It's a flatly inconceivable display of surgical skill, as swift and effective as any healing spell but purely 'mundane' and manual.

     A moment ago, Maricel was a charcuterie plate of disassembled meat. A moment before that, she was coping with a sucking chest wound. Now she's perfectly healthy, and wearing a terribly innocent smile to boot. "What ever could have given you the impression that we're monsters?" As she's keeping to the back lines, fewer of the wind-blasts are aimed at her; she lazily dodges the ones that do come near her, answering the ranged attacks with a lethally-sharp bonesaw thrown as if it were a boomerang.
Xion "It's really convenient that it's horrifying for people to do rude things to innocent people when you've dragged or encouraged them to show up here, in some mockery of actual community-building and real constructive equity-reaching, and not when you're tearing up the very lives of the people you then put on trial with the laws that just so happen to benefit you. It really is."

"And I'm really sick of listening to it over, and over, and over, so I'm sorry that you're having to deal with being the example of everyone's garbage..."

Xion is buffeted back by wind-spells, tumbling and teleporting across the room and still not being fully able to dodge the wide diffusion attacks of 'the air', or its directed blasts and waves.

"I hate this kind of back and forth. It's not your fault, not really, but living in a new world means validating one part of your world-view: The stronger *do* get to make their statements. That's why it's the responsibility of the strong to listen."

As Selene engages in BURNING FLAMES BRUTES AND LADDERS, Xion wicks the red power off of that, sliding it across the length of her keyblade to infuse it with a pine tan and burning pyro orange-yellow energy.

"If you're here to play the heel--"

Xion charges in, meeting the sonic-shot HELLADDER at the swan for a stinger-thrust of LUCHA ENERGY.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      There's a bark of contemptuous disbelief at the swan's assertion. Bercilak comes back around for another pass, axe held high. "YEA VERILY, BICCHES!" He says, pumping his axe arm at Liza and Hibiki in vehement agreement. "THE CLEPING OF THAT WHICH IS IVEL NEDES ONLI THE EYES OF THEIM WHICH ESPY HIT," he cries, as blasts of gale-force wind buffet the bulky vehicle. Even as heavy as it is, there is clearly an effect being had, a violent rocking overtaking it--the sound of something sophisticated straining, too, rises over the roar of the rocket. "PER HAPPES 'TIS NOT THY MENING THAT THOU SHOULDST ALOUE IVEL, BUT I SHALT ILERN THEE WEL THIS DAI!"

     That thing shouldn't still be airborn, much less upright and more or less on the same course. But ridership is one part of the knight gig that Bercilak doesn't skimp on. The motivators and brake plates flex and shift in time with minute motions of the knight's fingers, while one of his knees works in tandem at the bike's controls to make up for his other hand holding the axe. The wind buffets those thick armor plates--and the axe is even used as a rudder of sorts, slamming it hard into the ground to turn on a dime around Liza and get right back at Corbina.

     "LET ME IETE *THY* FOD! SLEP IN *THY* BED!" It ends up being a fakeout pass, wherein only a heap of rubble churned up by that deadly green edge is hurled her way. "LET ME SCOMOUR THURGH THY EMPIRE ARMED AND ARMERED, SPREDING EXPULSINGE NOTICIES LIK A *FUCKING* EPIDEMIE!" The heel is precisely rammed into a column just as Bercilak guns the exhaust, making another tight 180 and attempting to ram her for real this time, once Liza catches her arm in that hold. It's a dirty one-two with several tons of milsurp bike behind it. The grip on the axe is choked up immediately after, all the way to the head, whereupon he follows up with a vicious upwards swing, using the edge as a punching weapon. As he passes by, several of her wind blasts strike true again--but that ridiculously thick armor of his seems to reduce the force considerably, where it actually strikes his body and not the bike.

     "AND LET ME THANNE EMPRISON OTH *IDWESH* ANI-WIGHT WHICH BIWAILS HIT OVERLUD! THY FRENDS, THY KINNE, THY LOVES!" Sparks fly from the weapon's edge as he eases up, dragging it behind him like a rudder once more-- "LET THIRE BE NOT ONE DAI THOU MIGHT WANDRE THY STRETS FRE OF MINE STILLI THREPENING!" --but this time, there's a special technique--jagged cypress knees erupt chaotically in his wake.

     "*THANNE* SPEKE TO ME OF JUSTICE! THOU IFELE ME, SIB?!" The shape they form is deliberate. A square ring turnstiles of elastic vines, for Xion and Selene.
Kale Hearthward "The part where he's getting a fair trial? You're the sort that would execute someone in the streets, I'm guessing," says the swan to the Liza, weathering the attack badly, taking hit after hit that slowly melts away her remaining blade. Hibiki comes in and more or less *slams* her against the wall of the courtroom, and then there's...

... a burning ladder, which is *entirely* out of the blue, and a bonesaw which is also out of the blue but mostly Corbina's looking *quite* upset at Maricel regenerating her entire healthbar nearly instantly. Stabbed people should stay stabbed.

Down both swords (one lost to Maricel, one melted by Liza), hard-pressed, demoralized, and being beaten down by a relentless wave of strikes, Corbina looks like she's just about at her limit, and the Watch looks like it's going to win ...

... but then the cavalry arrives.

A wind shield snaps into place - not entirely blocking the remaining strikes on the swan, but at least mitigating them, giving her a bit of cover, especially from Bercilak's incoming strike which would have almost assuredly ended her otherwise. "Officer Corbin!" calls a voice from offscreen.

A dozen more predator-coded woodland creatures, each in uniform robes emblazoned with the empire's spiral-G crest, leap into the courtroom via rocket-jumping from outside, landing in spots along the raised edge of the bowl.

"Tell me you have my spares," she calls up to one of them.

"They're on the way from the base as we speak," calls back one of the mages.

"Then cover me till they get here!"

There's no answering response. There's no words thrown at the Watch, either - no sworn bravados, no dramatic introductions, no pronouncements of justice or might or right or wrong or anything. From the ninth mage squadron, actual soldiers instead of the Empire's local version of elites, there is only casting.

The pressure increases dramatically in the courtroom. It briefly becomes the center of a tornado. Then sudden blasts of wind push this way, and then that, and then focused blasts lash out at everyone-

It's like being in the center of a very localized string of natural disasters, happening one after the other.
Selene Maricel certainly doesn't seem to take the monster thing well, and Selene can probably guess why. She can barely contain her excitement at that body horror thing she's got going on, and she outright lets out an excitable cheer when they create that ladder-bonesaw combo.

"Monsters, humans, birds, rats, who cares? Everyone needs their time in the sun, and I made a promise to my buddy that I'll fight anyone to make sure even monsters get theirs!" Finding her inner heat building up further and further as Xion draws on the power of RED, she pulls out a pair of chairs and slams them together with far more power than someone of her size or constitution should even be able to.

And yet, the chairs explode into a dark cloud of vaguely ominous energy, swirling around Selene not unlike that of a certain purple ghost that.. Is actually nowhere to be seen here. It would probably be prudent to bring out some more Pokemon what with Bercilak creating an impromptu plant ring and reinforcements showing up for Corbina's, but the trainer seems unperturbed.

If anything, she seems even more excited in her usual wide-eyed grin that practically radiates with a challenging aura. "There we go... Get the whole locker room out here! You're gonna need it if you want more than an eight and two thirds chance against us! And Jongdish... Leave it to me!"

The Golbat, apparently named Jongdish, is practically crying by the time it tries to fly out of the string of natural disasters coming along, getting tossed this way and that. Selene, meanwhile, just starts hurling more and more wrestling-esque furniture into the mix: Chairs, ladders, steels stairs, and even a ~~Spanish~~ announcer's table. Rather than just letting the furniture go flying wildly, though, that vaguely ominous force fights back against the combined wind energy, bouncing off the vines to build up speed and almost seeming as though they're homing right into the Empire's forces.
Liza Grier     "It's a trial for going where you don't like and inconveniencing your property. Their property, actually. Someone's freedom for petty bullshit. Laws made up to protect the people who made the laws." says Liza, flicking globs of molten sword-metal from her e-shield.

    "Fair, unfair, those aren't even distinctions. The entire premise is a joke. Your violent parasite superiors thrashed a people into submission and then made rules saying they can't fight back. Who gives a shit about rules like those? The only reason anyone follows them is fear, and at least a few people aren't afraid of you. The Watch isn't afraid of you. I'm certainly not afraid of you."


    Liza turns her sword under-arm in a tactical knife hold for a moment, using her shield arm to cover her PDA while her fingers work the computer. A machine-gun like sequence of glassy cracks follows, the device's slot spitting out a stream of spent telecrystals like brass. An ominous number. A truly alarming number. A flywheel sound builds louder and higher with a glowing red charge, forming a faint pillar around her.

    "Is there some kind of ethical gradient about how expensive the place you execute people is? The street, your house, the emperor's palace, I'll kill you wherever I find you first. Any place is as good as the other for people like you. Soldiers, police, commanders, emperors; you decided on your own that others don't get to live, so I decide you don't get to live."

    The military extraction squad swarms in. "That's better." Liza's helmet hisses.

    A blast of teleporter light falls on her from the sky, so large and bright that it absorbs her profile completely, just as the storm falls on her in its entirety. As the tele-energy takes shape, the sound of metallic pings, creaks, and groans can be heard from its center. The glow expands upwards, reaching a solid twelve feet in height, with the whine of capacitors, hiss of hydraulics, and heavy click-clunk of motorized feeds.

    The light peels off in so many red sparkles, and where Liza had stood, now a hulking behemoth of sinister black metal looms over the courtroom, bloodred optics glaring from its armoured head in imitation of her helmet lights. A vehicle-grade heavy machine gun mechanically extends from one forearm, a high calibre drum-fed shotgun from the other, and twin missile racks swivel up over its shoulders. A laser sight swivels from near its head, tracking and scanning the battlefield.

    "It won't make up for all the suffering you embody, but you'll die like worms anyways." The machine gun's charging handle snaps forward automatically, and then the barrel roars with the full weight of twelve hundred high-calibre rounds per minute, the muzzle brake becoming a solid bloom of scorching fire and wind-tossed smoke as Liza rakes burning streamers of tracer fire back and forth through the courtroom.
Liza Grier     "First I'll kill you here." The Mauler takes its first, crunching step forward. Then another. Empty casings spatter and roll wildly over the floor. "Then I'll track down your comrades and kill them too." The wind attacks bounce right off its armour, the storm having no effect against its mass whatsoever. Powered servos whine steadily as it pushes against the gale. "Then I'll go straight to your barracks and kill everyone there." The shotgun begins punctuating the screaming roar of automatic fire with heavy, percussive booms of its own.

    "Then I'll wait for your reinforcements to arrive, and kill every single one of them." The cover available here is in no way prepared for the amount of firepower involved. Benches, lecterns, seating, dissolve into so many splinters in the wind. The floor shatters and crumbles into gravel under the weight of fire. "And then I'll start killing every Galer imperialist and collaborator all the way to your capital until your Emperor is dead. And I'll kill Quicknest's ruler for selling out his people too."

    "You get it? I'm not here for the fucking trial. I'm declaring war."
Maricel Thorne      Maricel weathers the weather by, in large part, simply "not being there". After the initial buffet tosses her around like a ragdoll, she learns her lesson; a meat-tendril snakes out of its portal to grab her by the ankle and keep her from dashing her head on the wall a second time, and from that point onward she neatly teleports around, disappearing in a fizzle of unnatural energy whenever a cyclone threatens to envelop her and reappearing somewhere safer.

     After waiting for her teammates to cause sufficient distraction- and injecting herself with some glowy juice to soothe the head injury- she blinks in close, landing behind a pair of them and clapping her hands on their shoulders amiably. "Helloooo, friiiiends" is all the warning they get before her hands erupt with neon energy. In an instant, their eyes flash with TV static as their brains are exposed to-


         shhhhh. it's okay              open up
        don't scream              Easier this way.
                     obey
           or else                     fresh meat?
   You heard her.          LISTEN.
         They betrayed you.          all mine
     like a twig          chewtoy
                         Lie down on the couch.


     ... Much better. Those soldiers? They were never your friends. Kill them for me, pretty please.
Hibiki Tachibana     "HELL yea!" A loud shout back in response to Bercilak going off resounds from Hibiki, when she lands at the top rung of the courtroom and throws both arms wide before bringing her fists back up, prepping to deal with any last-ditch efforts from their opponent. She has to admit, she wasn't expecting the Burning Ladder Combination either. Anyone would be demoralized after that.

    Unfortunately, it's not going to be that easy.

    "Reinforcements--!?" She glances side to side as the group of mages drop in from above much as they did themselves at the start, gritting her teeth. Not good. Corbina is someone they /maybe/ could've argued with. Gotten her to see the tiniest bit of reason, after the fighting was over. But these guys are already gearing up for their job.

    The air gets heavy. Her eyes go wide. "Get down!" She calls back mainly towards any sympathsizing and not-superpowered onlookers who are still in the immediate area, then braces herself the moment before the terribly violent wind-aligned magic begins tearing through the battleground.

    A burst aimed right at her sends Hibiki tumbling off her feet and down the stairway. She flips and catches herself, coming down hard on her feet right as the next comes. The pistons within her leg armor turn, angling themselves downward, and their pointed ends lance down into the ground to act as stabilizers. "Ngh...! It'll take more than this...!"

    Holding on tight through the string of disaster-like attacks, Hibiki doesn't wait for them to finish before taking action - she only braces herself enough to prepare, eyes darting between the spellcasters. "--Hah!" One leg dislodges itself, pistons withdrawing only to come up in the opposite direction, extend, and slam back down in time with her heel hitting the stairs below her.

    They explode from the raw force, material flying upwards all around her in massive chunks. The back of her fist instantly hits one, propelling it towards one mage at speeds more than enough to break through the gale. A second--third--fourth and more, she uses the debris as makeshift projectiles fired to disrupt as many of them as possible, threatening them to either break concentration on throwing them around, lest /they/ get thrown around by torso-sized chunks of pain. The place is already going to be an utter mess after this kind of attack, so there's no reason not to do some environmental weaponization! And if they don't clear some of these guys out before 'the spares' get here, and Corbina comes at them again...
Xion The elite come in like a cutscene, filling the area with the determined energy that a real military cadre give off. Gazes that reduce people to labels and numbers.

Enemy combatant.
Target.
The other.

It's nothing new. "It's unfortunate that you all are the first responders. I'll try to go easy on you all, since you don't know better yet. If Liza hits you -- I'm sorry."

Xion throws her keyblade aside -- the blue-and-silver weapon barely leaving her grip before disappearing with a metallic 'shwink' and series of sparkles -- and draws more Dark Lucha Energy from Selene and her Pokemon and focusing it into a dark red medallion hovering between her palms. Upon the face is a strange, aggressive mask, like a relief of Selene's face in photonegative, trimmed in an odd frame.

Xion doesn't wait before activating the Medallion's power. "Mega Monsterize - Rudos X!"
Pronounced 'Rudos Key'

With the wicked darkness power of Selene's inner darkness, the Great Mouse Detective's form bulks and grows in strange ways as a terrible 'Big Rodent Energy' Luchanima banner flares behind her in dark flames.

She lunges for one of the soldiers in a grappling air-boost, and any touch converts into a flying corkscrew-throw.

The terrible part is her teleporting ability cuts out all the recovery frames, turning the terrible power of lucha into powerbomb and elbow drop one after the other.

It is Never Anyone's Turn while the Mega Monsterize power runs rampant!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Liza not only scans to him as the public execution sort, he approves. His tone, muttered though it is and drowned out by roaring engines and the din of battle, suggests it should be self evident. "Oh, fuck yea." There's a certain respect he feels--is it so different from an itenerant knight of old?

     Even though there's real ass actual dragons and dark wizards out there and at home... he's pretty sure his Earth's were metaphors for forces of despoiling, savage greed, albeit rather heavy-handed ones. These soldiers have no monstrous features to lend themselves to easy villification--but there is definitely an oppressed hamlet in this picture. And they're definitely doubling down on that, after having been given time to clear out.

     This pass could be the last one. Their quarry is tiring, the chase is almost over. With a lateral roll, he could confuse her angle of attack, get the beard around Corbina's neck, and--

     And collide nose-first with the howling whorls of a tornado. That would be her backup, then. The mages. There is an alarming crunch as the considerable size of the bike is wedged forcibly into a wall, Bercilak's correction only able to keep it from being a head-on collision. He is not thrown from the vehicle only because of the immense strength he brings to bear on the grip. A whoosh of air beneath it. The engine is idling. It still works--but prying it free means either ramming straight through the courthouse or dismounting and using his bare hands. To be frank, he just wants to keep swinging. So the bike cuts off, and he dismounts, only to be lifted by the winds, high enough for his helmet to collide with the lip of the open-air roof, sending a light shower of dust and fragments raining down ahead of his weighty impact with the ground. THUD. There's even a gruesome crack.

     But that noise--his arm relocates itself and it plays in reverse. Within seconds he's twirling his axe arm, getting it warmed up again. The bottom of the haft is speared into the ground, immense strength and patient determination carrying him gradually closer, not to their initial target, but to the mages, encroaching on them steadily as Selene's JONGDISH bounces off the vine turnstiles.

     Hibiki's voice pipes into his helmet's feed. His grin, were it not totally hidden behind that expressionless black visor, would look almost beatific for the way the soft glow of the HUD illuminates it. Clawing his way towards the mages is slow, but god is it fun--there's little so fulfilling as slowly bearing down on a mark who'd thought to avoid you. Though his cloak billows wildly, the axe helps his feet remain on the ground.

     "EI," he calls conversationally towards the mages. "GAZE UPON THIS!" He removes his helmet with his free hand and deliberately stands in the path of shrapnel made by Liza's guns--deliberately incurs a gruesome looking face injury, splinters and debris sticking out of his head. There's a bestial, madman's roar of sanguine elation, given over soon to howling laughter as he pries them free to get inside the Galers' heads.

     The very first grimace he sees, he capitalizes on, right around the same time that Maricel's compulsion takes root. In a flash the thrusters of his armor fire, carrying him alongside the Golbat.

     His axe seeks necks, limbs vital points in clean, measured strokes, as he coasts on a current of air over the heads of the mind-muddled mages. "What?!" he shouts at Xion--wait he doesn't have to there's a radio frequency. "Fuck that, sib! Thei wert yeven time to ileve and redoubled thire attemptinge instede. What thei idele the lothfolk, let the Green Knight idele to theim."
Kale Hearthward The counterattack starts. Furniture, chunks of earth...

... Giant luchador mice, just simply elbow-dropping their way across the squadron, one by one, with Bercilak cutting down the ones she doesn't hit.

Maricel 'recruits' two of the mages. They're well-trained soldiers, which means they're used to people telling them what to do, really, so it's not that hard. Within moments, whatever order the Gale Empire had here on the battlefield evaporates.

And then Liza declares war.

Liza declares she's going to kill Corbina, then all of Corbina's squadmates, her reserves, the collaborators and supporters and then the emperor.

Corbina, after the Watch's impressive counterassault, is effectively the last enemy standing, and that is only because she's been proactively covered by the Ninth's magical efforts. She stares at Liza's giant mech, wrecking everything else across the courtroom-turned-battlefield... the words she's saying rattling around in her mind as the wind shield putters out.

The hyena from earlier runs in through a miraculously-intact side passage of the courtroom, coming to her side, carrying a wrapped bundle. "I've got your spares but *we're leaving*, full retreat, c'mon."

"... No. This is..." The swan shakes herself, and finds her determination again. "This is something I need to end, here and now." She grabs the bundle and tears it open, revealing two more longswords identical to the ones she'd lost earlier in the fight. "Go - report what you saw today. What you heard."

"You - rgh, fine!" The hyena goes - glancing back at the swan just once before running full out away.

The swan brings up both swords, holding the hilts near her beak, and exhales. It's a short, meaningful sigh - the exhalation of something expressed wordlessly, the last breath of someone who sees their end approaching, but intends to do something with it.

The swords flash - and seem to start vibrating, as if they're alive and shifting nervously. She flips them around, returning her hands to a ready stance... and she starts swinging.

She's making directed strikes, at every Watch member across what remains of the courtroom - but her feet remain planted on solid ground, and no attempt is made to close the distance. She's swinging at nothing but the air, and yet-

- and yet the swords flicker across the distances, teleporting at *just* the exact moment of impact, striking and slashing and stabbing and parrying, before returning to her hands literally the moment after, to be swung at a different opponent.

It's rapid-fire, she's attempting to swordfight everyone here all at once, and managing to succeed at it.

... and Liza, in particular, gets the brunt of it. Strikes flash across her mech - one after the other, at every part, testing for weaknesses and vulnerabilities, Corbina determined to take her down, no matter the cost-!
Selene Something about Corbina's determination in this battle strikes a chord in Selene's heart. The potentially offensive rooster paint on Selene's face has long since melted off, revealing instead that she's just kind of naturally grinning all the time, and she raises her hand to the sky as the swan declares her intent to stay and fight rather than take that chance to leave.

"Maybe in a different time, in a different story, we could've been pals. One where you're not working for your current bosses, one where we were the real bad guys all along..." She almost sounds somber for a moment, but that moment doesn't last long as the swords flash with that last ditch effort to put an end to the Watch's mission. "Maybe not /good/ pals, but... Pen, maybe."

Selene knows she's been staying out of harm's way by mere flukes. This one's not going to turn out well for her if she doesn't pull something out of her ass, but her Golbat's already dazed and barely even a worthwhile defender on its best days. Unbeknownst to her, however, one of her flying chairs managed to clip one of the Pokeballs on her belt, and it's just loose enough that when the swan's attacks start coming in, they're intercepted not by Selene's chairs or some innate personal skill, but...

They're intercepted by a giant bearcat with a set of steel steps being used as a shield. That's not to say she isn't trying, of course, flailing a chair around wildly as she is with no semblance of skill, but it's the Snorlax doing all the work as it just eats those shallower cuts and thrashes those steel steps around to deflect the others.

"Hehe... See now, birdlady? If that's not the power of justice on our side, then I don't know what it is!" When the beast spots an opening, it bellows a mighty (but tired) roar as it tosses the steps forward at Corbina not unlike someone passing a basketball. It follows that up with an uncharacteristically (for its size) dash forward, thrusting its giant head right at her to try and break through her guard before leaping into the air and delivering an incredibly awkward, but massively weight-enhanced lunging drop kick!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      With the mages down, focus can safely be put back on Corbina. It should be easy to get back in range of her--at least, that's what's going through his head when his heavy metal boots strike the ground, digging yet another score into the ruined courtroom and kicking aside a fallen table. His face healed fully in seconds after his gruesome taunting--but Corbina seems determined to put his nanites through their paces anyway.

     The sound of metal on heavy metal, sparks flying through the air, a rhythmic series of rapid parries. His hands move up and down the haft, alternating, changing the grip however he must to solve the puzzle of those long-distance sword strikes. It's a matter of finding the marks of her style. Her habits. Her strategy.

     First, the cheek is used, grip all the way up, maneuvering it over his vitals like an oversized target shield. The massive harness over his chest seems to be plenty of protection already--but Bercilak doesn't like to rely on just one of his talents. He's in no hurry as he approaches--knows that the Watch's quarry has her back against the wall. Knows that word will get out--for that, he supposes, there can be some left alive. She's figured out his guard--the sword slips past the beard and catches his throat through the thick protective fiber of the bodysuit beneath the armor. It is wrenched out violently, causing a red ribbon to stain his armor and the floor.

     Half-way there, he's sidestepping, using his legs and shoulders to turn blows aside with the haft. Fingers are lost. Fingers are regrown. The grip is changed. Three quarters, and it's two steps forward, one back, using the eye to force the strikes backwards. Again, sparks, metal clashing--it's harder, normally, to deal with reach like that, using a sword. But most people don't have swords that can teleport. This time it strikes his side, attempting to dig into his armor. That harness hums audibly, and the armor warps itself, absorbing the blow as if it were something soft, thick and pliant rather than cold hard metal, then hardening in an instant as if anticipating the next blow.

     The huge drop kick from Selene's Giant Bearcat offers just the gap in her defenses that he's looking for--or so he thinks. When he's at last within striking distance her determined assault managed to land a stab right between his eyes, cleverly having baited him into overcommitting on a lateral swing.

     Despite the startling rivulet of red and the alarming nature of the wound... he isn't just standing... he's winding up for another blow. Liza said she'd do it--and in the interest of helping her keep her word, the Green Knight slams his axe not into Corbina, but the ground.

     Thick, thorned vines sprout from beneath her, not only attempting to bind limbs, but to squeeze and bleed the very fight from her with terrifying strength.
Maricel Thorne      The first swipe directed at Maricel flickers across her throat, and thus across the chests of the two taller brainwashed soldiers flanking her on either side. She immediately starts hosing more candyapple-red blood than a human body ought to be able to contain, more blood than the mass of an entire human being, but she doesn't seem to pay it any mind- instead, her attention is solely on her two new friends.

     Patient one, laceration at intercostal seven, bilateral; punctured aorta. Reconnect ends, repair diaphragm, suture. Patient two, laceration at intercostal five, right side; open pneumothorax. Seal airflow, cauterize, suture. Patient one, laceration at...

     In her flurry of motion, Maricel keeps her two patients alive in the face of Corbina's onslaught, but only defends herself incidentally. More and deeper gashes open up under the breath weapon assault, but she only seems to note them as distractions from her work, only repairing herself when absolutely critical to continuing the ceaseless surgeries. And the impossible blood flows out from her, forming pools, spreading until it almost reaches Corbina's feet.

     Only when Bercilak's attack halts Corbina long enough for her to tie the last suture on her patients does she finally turn around, still heedless of her own body's state despite blood gushing out of her shoes with each step. She twists her hand, and a neon-staticky telekinetic grasp seizes the swan along with the verdant bindings, creating a suffocatingly tight predicament.

     "I'd like you to stop that, Miss Corbina," Doctor Thorne gurgles softly. "I'm trying to practice medicine here."
Xion The power of the Rudos Mask was overwhelming dark lucha power -- the assumption of the heel mantle and associated terrible force of wickedness. Even it was a pale comparison to the raw force of Heel Magic that Selene engaged in, a shining beacon of Heel-Face force that tramples over dreams while talking of friendship.

Xion can only smoulder brilliantly with the echo of its power -- but she can use everyone else's too. All their experiences can collapse into a single moment, and she can know what to do.

"Corbina... It's really a shame."

When Corbina strikes in against the hulked-out Rudos X, the flickering advance tears into her, running her right through the chest. The magic sword topples her back -- or would, with toppling force -- but instead Rudos X sweeps out with a clashing folding chair, and the afterimage is gone.

The chair clatters to the ground, and Rudos X leaps, arms out, towards the flickering retreat of the swan.

If she gets a connection -- any connection -- Xion's meaty mouse-paws teleports her up above Bercilak.

"Illegal Move - Rudos Ultima!"

Then, as if she did not just 720 this swan and her squad into some bullshit heartbeats ago, Xion piledrives Corbina into Bercilak's grappling vines, a meteor of wicked wrestling.
Liza Grier     "No need." Liza's voice comes out from the Mauler through a second level of intense, ominous distortion, booming around even a chamber without a roof. The roving sensor pod snaps on the hyena like the saccade of a glaring electronic eye. The cover hatches on the right missile pod flick open, miniature warheads jutting out. "You don't get to try to fight me then keep your life. I'll tell them myself." A salvo of a dozen seeker missiles launch in rapid sequence, spikes of rocket fire on thin trails of white exhaust swirl upwards, outwards, and then converge on the soldier's heat signature all at once, to make sure that there's nothing left.

    Liza is, indeed, recording all of this. The parallel to a certain J is only half-lost.

    The teleporting sword strikes are beyond what she can do much about in a Mauler. A shield flickers around the mech itself, at first barely visible, then glowing brighter and brighter with each subsequent strike, until it bursts with a coruscation of blue energy tendrils. The flashing blades begin cutting into the armour, throwing up plumes of orange sparks, lacing the black plating with criss-crossing gouges. One of them diagonally slices across the helmet, cracking two opposing optics, before Liza hunks the Mauler down and puts its arms up in a defensive profile, continuing her inexorable approach across the courtroom. Whirr-crunch whirr-crunch whirr-crunch.

    "You can't beat me." Liza's voice sizzles through the speaker, taking on an incendiary stutter from damage to the speaker. "Your comrades can't beat me. Your army can't beat me. Your empire can't beat me. I've made myself into everything that you, your kind, your whole way of life fears."

    The Mauler only stops when Corbina's assault has been completely strangled by Bercilak and Maricel. "Everything you believe is insane." Says Liza. The Mauler raises its arm, mechanized fingers grabbing and squeezing at thin air. "The fact that is, right now, I'm the most normal thing in the room. And you can only fight normality so long." The arm servos whine as it clenches a fist.

    The enormous quantity of blood in the room, mostly Maricel's and much Bercilak's, though a great deal of it from the soldiers, almost instantly extrudes outwards from the floor, the benches, the stairs, like a rendering glitch. Spilled bloodmass shrinks in size and becomes long, thin spears of fluid, which lance from every place blood has soaked the courtroom, and converge on Corbina, intersecting with her like so many bugged and very deadly sharp vertices.
Hibiki Tachibana     The battlefield has quieted in relatively short order, but the tension feels much heavier than before, especially with Liza's declaration of war. Hibiki leaps out of the makeshift miniature crater she's left in this particular stairwell, coming down on solid ground once more and panting from the exertion, double-checking on the state of everyone left standing before she settles on the swan.

    "Corbina..." She murmurs quietly, to herself. Their opponent is intent on making a last stand, even if it costs her her life. To stop them here. To...

    Hibiki's eyes suddenly widen and then narrow, for reasons unrelated to the change in her weapons--but also at that. They're spare swords, supposedly similar to her previous ones, so the technique being used now is something /she's/ doing herself. She swings at...nothing?

    The Symphogear user is very glad her guard is already up, because it means instead of taking the impending slash to an unprotected part of her body, it 'just' shears off one of the headphones that make up her outfit, metal and machinery shattering and going flying after an instinctive jerk to the side. The next few attacks force her back strike by strike, where she struggles to keep up with the rapid strikes cutting through armor and drawing blood. Her face contorts in pain, and one eye shuts tight as her other darts around her to try and keep up.

    Despite that, she starts moving forward, refusing to lose ground. "You...!" Hibiki mutters quietly, her attention focusing on Corbina herself rather than around her. Following the strikes she's cutting through the air, moving her body ahead of time to react to any strikes that could be aimed at her. It's still something she's never dealt with before, leaving lacerations and forcing her to make split-second reactions when they actually come...but she's managing, parrying blows with her own strikes and swaying narrowly out of the way of others.

    And then she lunges forward, leaping in with all of her strength plus additional acceleration from her thrusters, to quickly close the distance herself.

    Her less damaged gauntlet is transformed midway, tripling in size as it extends past her elbow and trades out its piston for a rotating turbine, with extra thrust from the rocket boosters now behind it. Using the sudden, ridiculous speed to minimize how many more stabs and slices she'll need to guard against on the way, she roars in with a clenched fist and a loud shout--

    Where she slams her feet down into a ground-ripping skid so that she'll almost stop right in front of Corbina, transfering her momentum not into a punch aimed at her body, but a twisting uppercut aimed at one of her swords. She's going to hit it hard, with the intention of sending it flying out of her grip, if not break it in half. Disarm her.

    "Didn't I say--that kind of justice wasn't worth getting yourself killed for...?" For whatever reason, she didn't even attempt to hit her directly. Her voice comes out as a growl from between her teeth, and she turns away after the fact and shakes her head as the Great Binding + F-F-F-Finisher come in after.
Kale Hearthward In a different time, a different place, or from a different side of the story, maybe Corbina could be someone here's friend.

As it is... she's hit, kicked down and then held down, telekinesis and vines snapping into place to hold her still for the rest of what's to come. She remains defiant, struggling to the end, and looks like she's ready to try to peck the eyes out of anyone who might try getting close.

The question of fairness comes up. This is the world's first brush with the Watch. Corbina gets taken out for being the first, regardless of who she is, and there's a fairness in that.

And then it is done.

Off in the distance, a series of heat seeking missiles impact something - but the heat signature remains. Another Breath Weapon in action, one that will be dealt with later... probably.

"... Whew. That was something," says Harper. The Watch's new allies took a beating from the crossfire, but they're *mostly* alright after a bit of medical attention. "Is it always like that, with you lot?"

There'll be time to talk further, later. For now, the Watch has liberated their resistance later, it has a handful of new allies... and perhaps most importantly, it's made a stand.

The Watch has made an impact on the Gale Empire. Gears are turning, and the course of history is changing. Cause and effect, stimulus and response. It knows of you, now.

As to what comes of that... well.

We shall see, very soon.