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Owner	Pose
Maricel Thorne	TAKE ME DOWN TO MORTASHEEN CITY      WHERE THE SKY IS GREEN AND THE GIRLS ARE [REDACTED]      This place is thoroughly, cartoonishly weird. The sun, red and dying, peeks through polluted clouds to bathe the world in eerie crimson-green hues. The cityscape sprawls out in all directions, a surreal metropolitan jungle the size of Australia. No two buildings are ever alike, giving the impression that they organically grew from seeds of concrete and steel rather than having been sanely planned. Chrome spires and crooked ruins and architectural grotesqueries of no clear purpose crowd together to dominate the skyline. The air is crisp and has a zesty bite to it. It smells like dryer sheets, totally artificial and yet somehow addictively cozy.      This is the post-post-post-apocalypse where people build anew on the pulverized gravel and compost of past civilizations, unaware and uncaring that it isn't real dirt.      If "people" is the right word. It feels too colloquial, somehow too narrow. "Sapientkind" might better convey the feel. The streets, alleys, and burrows are bustling with foot traffic, and you can't find a single human face among the crowd- at best, half of one. There are mutants and zombies and toy-aisle monsters galore; less common, human-insect hybrids and brain-aquarium cyborgs fill out the local demographics. Somehow, all of them feel... neighborly? There's a mood of welcoming, affable joviality to all of it, where there really ought to be one of bristling menace.      You're fairly sure you see one person who's made of thousands of bugs, and another who's a birdlike walking syringe.      Count Baleen's cobblestone-and-metal tower is crooked like the spine of someone with an eight-syllable disease, thoroughly blackened with soot, and excruciatingly "mad sciencey". The fact that there isn't lightning flashing behind it right now feels like a missed opportunity. The windows are high, erratically-spaced, and grated. You can see grotesque bat-people peeking out from behind the curtains and conferring with each other in a panic. It is surrounded by black dead grass, which immediately marks its owner as kind of an asshole, because nobody else in the neighborhood has space for a lawn at all.      In a place like this, the Watch contact sticks out purely by virtue of how mundanely human she looks.
Maricel Thorne	Maricel Thorne is sitting at a booth that closely resembles a lemonade stand, save for the ten-foot-high pile of unlit torches and sharpened pitchforks behind her. "FRESH OFF THE VINE", one banner says; another declares the pitchforks "100% GMO!" A motley crew of a couple dozen Mortasheen citizens have taken up arms and are milling about nearby, with the approximate atmosphere of a community barbecue. A translucent magenta creature that looks halfway between a plesiosaur and a Ghostbusters toy is having a cheery conversation with her, only its head and neck sticking up above the ground via ghostly intangibility. When their business is finished, it "dives" into the ground, disappearing entirely.      That's when she notices the arriving Watchmen, waving them over with a giddy grin.      "We were juuuust about to storm the tower," she says brightly, kicking her feet up on the booth as she reclines. "Care for a pitchfork or torch? They are traditional for, ah... occasions like these. Something of a local holiday; you understand. I take it this'll be your first?" A Kafkaesque mantis-person standing behind her helpfully demonstrates how to properly menace someone with a pitchfork, as if that might be a foreign concept, and then smiles with their gleaming mouthparts. "Given the Count's, ah... typological composition, I'm not positive either will be terribly effective. But we've simply got to try."      She points the pitchfork she's been sharpening at the enormous, conveniently wooden doors to Baleen's tower. "Everyone ready to have a graaaand old time? Remember: smash the Dream Machine, and the Count gets whatever he gets."      Elsewhere...
Maricel Thorne	The Concord members are being led through a series of underground maintenance tunnels by a deeply unnerving being. Pagliacci the Morose looks a lot like a human clown, but also not at all like one. He seems to be some kind of literally boneless cephalopod/insect/ball-of-worms hybrid; rainbow gummy annelids slither and glide under disjointed chunks of greasepaint-white chitinous exoskeleton, plainly visible through the cracks and gaps. He maintains a roughly humanoid shape, but his movements are utterly unlike anything vertebrate, simultaneously jauntily comedic and droopingly mopey and one hundred percent incompatible with having a skeleton. His eyes are literally just wobbly googly-eyes, and you're almost positive that- like eyespots on a bug- they serve no real ocular function.      His voice, on the other hand, is deep and rich and dripping with inky-black melancholy, like a 1950s radio host whose wife has just died. "Now, we're almost there, I'm delighted to inform you." He sounds the complete and total opposite of delighted. "Good old Count Baleen won't even know what hit him. The locals, I do hope, won't have started their barbarous Luddite rituals just yet..."      His wobbling, unsteady steps come to a jiggling halt underneath a silvery hatch in the ceiling. He presses one "gloved" hand to its surface, opening it just a tiny fraction of an inch to ensure it isn't locked, then turns back to the group and nods. He tries to smile too, which is really just indescribably awful. "Here we are, ladies, gentlemen, and assorted others. No cold feet, I hope? No last preparations before the show?"      He tries to rub his hands together gleefully, but it doesn't quite work.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel Parsons only disengages his invisibility to catch his breath every so often, and restore endurance, which means his outfit for today isn't often seen. Despite that, he's done his best to fit in a little. He's gotten his most haunted-looking respirator to ease a little of the local spicy air and his most fucked up bug-eyed green-glowing goggles, in combination with a Tacticool Infiltration getup, with the form-fitting turtleneck and all, that leaves him looking a bit gaunt. Gotta amp up the uncanny look to match the local scene, so he kind of winds up looking like Tim Burton's Splinter Cell.     For the rest of the way, deep underground, he's been hidden invisibly. Sure hasn't been silent, though! "Delighted to hear it! You know, I've always wondered, do people still have clown phobias here in this world? Can't imagine how they would. You guys seem really charming!" He flicks his invisibility on, clamps a grip on the rim of the hatch, and pops his invisible head through, trying to make sure nobody will see him on the way through. He *did* come with the intent to fight whoever is between him and those blueprints, but he's gonna lead the way invisibly until that point. He's gotta get ahold of dream-tech, he's a Psychonaut after all! There's all kinds of dream defense and optimization that his organization can do with knowledge like that.     So, peeking up, and pinging with CLAIRVOYANCE, he tries to analyze where they're breaching, and surge straight for the nearest workshop or other center of innovation that they need to scour for the blueprints.
DIOMEDES	This is weird. It's like a completely alien planet. DIOMEDES has been to those before, but never one when it wasn't war against the natives. It's...nice, but discomforting at the same time. He can't show it facially, but he does sidestep a little. He's a lean and tall machine, with a high-tech spear and an energy rifle on his back. One of his hands moves up to wave at Maricel, as his Star Wars-drone-head eyebeams flare at the mantis-like person, DIOMEDES practicing with the pitchfork to make sure it feels like a spear. Close enough. He then makes sure the torch fits his hand perfectly. Then, he waits for everyone to give their affirmative, before humming. "Mission accepted. Target acquired. It's time for excision." Thrusters start igniting across his chassis, on the back, legs, and feet. DIOMEDES is launched into the air, jetting up towards the middle point of the tower, as he moves to fly straight at the weakest-looking grate on the windows. He's not going for the door - they're expecting that. The others can handle that, pulling fire as he goes for the target of the mission, priority one: destroying the Dream Machine. Torch and pitchfork are placed in miniaturization storage. Two hands go up for the grates, as his feet land on the wall of the spire. He moves to rip the grates straight off the window, throw them aside, and then, when they presumably try to poke something through the window to hit him... DIOMEDES takes out and throws his torch on the blinds to set the whole room ablaze, and hopefully one of the bat-people gets ignited, too, as he starts preparing to grab his pitchfork. The air feels like it'd be flammable. Hopefully it isn't *explosive*.
Priscilla	Priscilla, in media res, takes a moment to pinch the bridge of her nose between two fingers, and massage a temple as if that actually does anything; it doesn't, but she's had a lot of advisement about expressiveness.     "Sir George didst tell me of clowns." she mutters to herself. "He didst warn me."     Not that she seems to have any particular grievance with Mortasheen's brand of clown (yet), but just the overall presence of Pagliacci seems to be somewhat overwhelming for her. If asked about whether it's the worms or the gait or the bolted on bodyparts or insect stuff, she somewhat helplessly indicates that'd all be fine if it weren't also all rainbows and googly eyes. It's offensive to even her aestheticblind numbness to gothic horror grotesquerie. Dear god.     Creepy green skies and ominous mists are cozy on their own merits for her, so going underground is almost sort of a shame (and yet, far from unfamiliar). It nags her a little to think of how she'd *still* sort of stand out on the street here, but for literally the opposite reasons as usual, so maybe it's for the best. What else she has to say is "However, it is certain that these art the least 'unfortunate' sewers I hath ever had the ambivalence of traversing." That's super true. She's had to do so many sewer levels and they all fucking suck. At least a third of them have poison floors *without* counting Lordran.     Allowing Flamel to go in advance, and saving her own invisibility for just a little if he isn't immediately accosted, Priscilla lingers behind to ask Paggliaci (without letting her slitted gaze stray from the wall very slightly past his googly eyes) "I imagine their grievances with this well enough. However, is it truly so common that they . . ." She resorts to vague, interpretive hand gestures. ". . . Fall upon one another in violence, for things such as this? It wouldst seemeth a trivial reason to kill a man for." She's done so for less effortful offenses, but those had rules, and she gets the feeling that Mortasheen has anything but.     After that, she ascends through the hatch in a way that briefly manages to be somewhat too-fluid without actually breaking any rules about how bones work along the line. Her sensibilities demand that she look for two things: Stairs, and locked doors (or ones that open from the other side).
Hibiki Tachibana	"Why, imagine if it were used to spread a psychoparasite! It simply must be smashed."     Smashing is, in fact, the thing that Tachibana Hibiki is best at, so it's not a big surprise that she's on board - because if there's anything that deserves it, it's a device that butts into the sanctity of dreams for no particularly good reason. Really, if she were the one having to deal with someone ego tripping while she's trying to rest, she'd be pissed off. But she'll have to settle for being pissed off on other people's behalf and giving the Count a stern talking down.     Given how goddamn weird Mortasheen already is, something she's still trying to get used to even if the atmosphere is oddly warm and inviting--she's still far from the most out of place thing when she arrives pre-prepared in her full high-tech magical girl Gear, adjusting the scarf that's doing a good job of hiding her straight-laced frown while staring up towards BALEEN'S SPIRE MOST CROOKED. "I don't think I can pull off the angry mob aesthetic too well," she admits somewhat sheepishly towards Maricel while nonetheless taking up a pitchfork from the pile and seeming to weigh it in her grip for a few moments.     Spinning and then catching it, she takes a few steps in the direction of the doors while gesturing towards them and glancing over her shoulder at the mob happily prepping themselves. It's a little odd just how much this really does seem to be tradition, but she's trying to roll with it, apparently. "...I'm just gonna skip the part where we bang on the door angrily, if that's fine by you guys." Assuming position in front of them, Hibiki rolls her shoulders and takes a deep breath.     Then she promptly takes boot to the wood with a deafening SLAM, to abruptly smash-kick the towering entranceway wide open and very likely send chunks of splintered wood scattering across the hall. The pitchfork is immediately put to use as a projectile, meant to stab menacingly close into the wall next to the nearest unfortunate batperson while the girl steps in. "Oi, count Baleen!" Her shouting has an actual chance of carrying up the tower, as loud as it is. "You've got a whole lot of upset people down here who want you out of their heads, so make this easy on yourself! ...Or don't! You probably won't." She mutters with a small sigh.
Candy	A low whistle. Candy's palm rests over his brow as the light from the dying sun filters through clouds laden with chemicals. He's not the tallest--but it's especially easy to feel small surrounded by the sprawling, towering buildings. All the more so, for the fact that they follow such wildly differing designs... no. "Concrete and metal, but damned if it doesn't look like trees, ah?" That draws a crooked grin to his face.      It's impossible not to notice the diversity present in the citizens, either--and being rather social himself, Candy quickly overcomes any shock at the sight of bug-swarm-people or floating-brain-people. His trek to Baleen's tower, and accordingly, to Maricel, is fraught with dalliances. Handshakes, tentacleshakes, flagellumshakes. Garbage conjured for garbage connoiseurs, jokes exchanged with jovial jigsaw-people. He's only a little late.      "GMO, huh?" He grins at Maricel, clearly having no idea what it stands for. He casually vaults the counter to test the sharpness of a pitchfork, recoiling slightly after poking it. He gives her an impressed frown. "Not bad."      He settles on a torch, instead. "This, this I can work with. You will see--with the fire I am an artist," he advises the mantis-peson, admiring the torch and turning it slightly this way and that. Hopping back over the counter of Maricel's booth, he flags his fellow torch-bearers down:      "Ey! Your fire goes out, give me a holler, and I give you a light. We go together, soon as you're all ready."      But first... first they'll need a distraction, won't they? Especially if DIOMEDES is going to be coming in through the window.      The front door rattles with the sound of a battering ram. It shakes--but noticeably does not give. Perhaps the sound will draw the Baron's retainers away from less obvious entry points. "C'mon!"      A few times during the revolution, there was this exact situation. Some richie, barricaded inside their little castle, while their just deserts waited outside. The way to go is torches. The Baron gets what he gets. "We gotta get the inside of that place burning and smoke 'em out. Anybody that's strong and tall enough, get those grates off--and if we don't got nobody that can, somebody better say so quick."      Working with the assembled mob, Candy attempts to set up an ambush to decisively smash the Baron's forces, by drawing them to the ground floor with conjured noise and then supplying the crowd with copious torches to hurl.
Haseo	Haseo, somewhere along the way, did not get the news that this was supposed to be a stealth mission. Alternatively, he just didn't care. Regardless, every step he takes is accompanied by the jingles and rustling of his over designed anime armor. At the very least, he seems to be actively trying to minimize the noise he inherently makes, even if he's doing a pretty bad job at it.      "Pffft. If I had cold feet, I would have bailed earlier. If you're trying to get me to chicken out now, it ain't happening." The teen's voice is harsh and confrontational as usual, to the point where it almost seems like he's going to start something. But he doesn't, instead climbing his way up. In truth, he really just doesn't want to punch a weird bug clown thing. He really doesn't want to touch anything in this weird fleshy and sticky world, but he's probably gonna have to at some point.
Flamel Parsons	"I think 'sewer' is just a kind of place where you throw things you don't want, so they can wash away. The culture around here is pretty weird! I think sometimes the thing they don't want is entire-person-sized." Flamel rambles on his way up, replying to Priscilla. "That, or they just repurposed tunnels made by an old civilization for maintenance and stuff like that. Maybe we're in someplace that used to be a subway, or a shopping mall or something!"
Haseo	Haseo, somewhere along the way, did not get the news that this was supposed to be a stealth mission. Alternatively, he just didn't care. Regardless, every step he takes is accompanied by the jingles and rustling of his over designed anime armor. At the very least, he seems to be actively trying to minimize the noise he inherently makes, even if he's doing a pretty bad job at it.      "Pffft. If I had cold feet, I would have bailed earlier. If you're trying to get me to chicken out now, it ain't happening." The teen's voice is harsh and confrontational as usual, to the point where it almost seems like he's going to start something. But he doesn't, instead climbing his way up. In truth, he really just doesn't want to punch a weird bug clown thing. He really doesn't want to touch anything in this weird fleshy and sticky world, but he's probably gonna have to at some point.
Maricel Thorne	Pagliacci heaves a depressive shrug in response to Flamel's question. The rainbow-worms of his left arm detach halfway through the gesture, causing the limb to slough off and start wriggling on the floor; he sighs a long-suffering sigh and bends down to stick it back on. "My jolly people are unfairly persecuted everywhere in the Multiverse, it seems," he bemoans. It has the flavor of a long-brewing rant, bit short only for the sake of politeness and time.      "As for the surface-dwellers," he answers Priscilla as he primly adjusts his white rubber gloves, "they have no fear of death, and put a cheap price on life. They'd kill us just for trying to raise our grubs and build our merry circuses; who even knows what they'd kill each other for? The beastly descendants of beasts." It's not at all hard to tell that there's some substantial bad blood flowing here. Pagliacci doesn't seem deceptive, but he's not going to be capable of an unbiased account.      Flamel's scouting is fortunate in one respect, but unfortunate in another- likewise Priscilla's quest for stairs. The tower is so narrow and tall that each floor is practically just one large room; there's practically nowhere to go but up. As the silvery hatch is popped open, the room they emerge into is positively crowded with mutant bat-people. Some are armed with glowy mad-science guns, some only with claws and teeth; all are prepped for a fight and have a distinct "Igor vibe".      Before they can notice the Concord-plus-clown squad, though, the wooden front door is hammered on with a deafening noise (drawing even more bat-men down from upstairs) and then shattered wide open by Hibiki's flying kick. Following Candy's advice more-or-less, Maricel's motley mob start hurling torches in through the hole and through whatever ground-floor windows they can, setting the majority of the room ablaze pretty quickly. One of them- a skittering arachnid with an elephantoid trunk- projectile-spits a few gallons of a black, sticky, and extremely flammable substance to further fuel the inferno, too.      When the bat-mutants return fire with their mad science guns, the whole ground floor devolves into a milling, roiling battleground of roaring flames and crackling energies. The bat-mutants' loyalty and bravery is being sorely tested already; the one Hibiki menaces with a pitchfork breaks and runs outright, and the rest are considering the same. Thanks to Candy's help, the Mortasheen citizenry will prevail eventually. But in the meantime, anyone trying to book it for the nearby stone staircase will have either their stealth and agility, or their endurance and armor, sorely tested by the chaotic battleground.
Maricel Thorne	Diomedes cheats, of course. He's already there, KOing a couple of the bat-guards on the next floor up and starting to set the room ablaze. But he soon sees- as do the others, once they arrive- that Baleen is unlikely to be inconvenienced by the fire and smoke.      Count Baleen- literally an albino whale with snaggly vampire fangs and a collared cloak, floating in a titanic fishbowl of several-foot-thick glass- glares at the intruder with imperiously regal menace, and then at the other intruders with a sense of dawning alarm. "Halt, peasant!! You... you... hm. Oh dear. This is- this seems to be a bit of a scheduling conflict. Boris, were there really supposed to be this many?" A very tired-looking bat-human mutant dressed in butler clothes sighs quietly from the back. "No, milord. There weren't." "Ah. Hm. Right then."      Inside Baleen's fishbowl is something almost, but not quite, like a classic television set. Its bunny-ear antennae have been replaced with a crackling Jacob's Ladder, purple electric arcs zapping between its two metal prongs in the shape of "Z's". Its screen is playing back a recording of the vampire-whale himself giving a speech. That can't possibly be anything but the Dream Machine, though the whereabouts of the blueprints are still unclear.      "Well, there's nothing for it. Fetch me my cork." No sooner has the preposterous cetacean said those words than a trio of bat-mutants fly above his fishbowl with an enormous cork and plug it, hopping up and down a few times to make sure it's fully sealed. "This intrusion upon my time and property is quite unreasonable, and I shan't be humoring it any longer. Good bye."      With that he turns and rolls his entire fishbowl upstairs, as if it were a telekinetically-propelled hamster-ball. A heavy metal grate falls behind him, sealing off the stairway (at least to anyone without the requisite amount of elbow grease). Hatches open in the ceiling an instant later, pouring out several metric tons of writhing, disorganized zombie in various humanoid and inhuman configurations, rapidly filling the room waist-deep in seething omni-hostile undead- burning undead, thanks to Diomedes, though it doesn't seem to impair them much.      Boris the bat-butler seems deeply resigned to his imminent zombie-burial.
Maricel Thorne	Maricel and Pagliacci are both mysteriously missing from their respective teams. The instant they locked eyes across the raging inferno and crackling death-ray fusillades of the ground floor, they were destined for a duel of the bitterest kind.      "Red-nosed scum."      "Back-alley quack."      A gleaming monomolecular bone-saw shrieks and chimes as it scrapes against chitinous greasepaint claw-blades. No force in heaven or earth can pry them apart.
DIOMEDES	DIOMEDES's objective isn't to kill the bat people, so if they're just fire-KO'd it's fine. They'll die when the tower comes down. But there he is, Count Baleen... Who looks like a xeno, because DIOMEDES doesn't know what a whale is. He's never seen one. As the butler, Boris, is left behind and Baleen fishbowls up with the Dream Machine, zombies are dropped down, and they are set aflame because of DIOMEDES' actions... He doesn't tell anyone about the flaming zombies. Instead, he has his pitchfork in hand. But something stirs in his heart, as he sees Boris resigned to death. Suddenly, there's a red flare to DIOMEDES' lens, as he's dashing across, moving to grab Boris with one hand, lift him above the swarm, and use the other to start impaling zombies. From the sheer force he uses, the pitchfork will break pretty soon, as which point he'll throw Boris up, grab his spear, do a spin attack, and then take one hand off to catch Boris again. He can't clear *all* these zombies rapidly, so he does use his thrusters to get near the ceiling with the bat once he realizes the inefficiency. "I know what it's like to be a servant and then tossed aside. I won't let you die."
Priscilla	Priscilla really isn't sure that 'grubs' and 'circuses' are supposed to go in the same sentence, but she hovers just short of really challenging it in the same way someone would when they'd just read their diagnosis and thinks they grasp it but aren't entirely sure about some of the medical words. She settles on a slightly disappointed "So it wouldst seem." before leaving.     Frankly, invisibility wasn't going to do any good on the ground floor anyways. Even a Swift Action can be wasted you know. Spotting Maricel, a metaphorical glowing lock on ring snaps into place in an oddly palpable sense, but Pagliacci and she apparently have history, and Priscilla is more than glad to let that problem handle itself. Up and on.     The thing is that she actually can skip a lot of this floor by floor nonsense, unlike poor Flamel at the moment who got the super raw hand dealt. However, that wouldn't be the most efficient delegation of action here. Instead, she says "Sir Haseo. With Sir Parsons, if thou wouldst. Ignore the portcullis.", then takes her own advice, doing her Boss Teleport Animation to the shitty zombie level. However, instead of getting embroiled in that nonsense, instead of the blizzard VFX disappearing at her destination, they intensify, quickly becoming an expanding, miniature snowstorm.     Given the very small size of these floors, it doesn't take very long to circulate around the second floor, then have snow and fire-melted icewater pour into the bottom floor, and freeze all over again. Beyond dramatically limiting how much the fire can spread for a while, it's also constitutes the knee deep movement penalty for both the bats and rioters in the vicinity.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel has to sneak up the second floor, likely concurrently with the damn Watch while he does it! The chaos of this fight means he has to levitate and otherwise weave around the rioter-versus-bat combat, an incredibly elaborate human bullet hell to do in a stairwell. He flicks out of invisibility just long enough to silently have that dramatic confrontation with Count Whaleula the Super Monkey Ball DLC. He spends the whole time in a dramatic "gun drawn" pose with two fingers at his temple and two fingers extended in a hand-gun pose. "Freeze! Psychonaut Multiversal Investigations!" But he's gone, despite Flamel's "handgun" taking several shots of bright white light at him. The intrusion of the others, after that, is something he finally seems to acknowledge.     "This is really awkward! I wish you guys hadn't hurried so much. You can burn the place down, I promise! But I need to do some things first." As zombies rain around him and begin to pile up around his knees, he starts to levitate into the air... and clamps two fingers on each of his temples. Shining white threads filter out of his brain. First one, then a dozen, then hundreds!     Zombies are mindless, but they're still living, 'thinking' beings. And that means that, unless there's something very very weird about this world's undeath, they're *very* easy for Flamel to control! "Necrokinesis is *so* illegal where I'm from, but someone else already zombified these guys. So, it's a grey zone! Ha ha, necrotic tissue joke. Anyway, please give us some time!" If this works... suddenly, the zombies are going to be giving Priscilla and Haseo total clear space, and become much more viciously ravenous to the rioters -- and to any guards who choose to menace the infiltrators.
Maricel Thorne	The poor bat-butler in DIOMEDES's grasp finally seems disconcerted- not at his encroaching undead doom, but at being saved from it. He flaps his mutated wings and lets out a consternated squawk as he's lifted by his cravat, big bulging eyes darting around the room. "Y-you- what are you doing! You're supposed to stab me, you know!! Do you know how bad- urk." Being thrown up into the air and caught again manages to shift his degree of terror from 'indignant' to 'stunned silent'.      Good thing, too- as the zombies are extinguished by Priscilla (prolonging their lifespan) and then commanded by Flamel, they surge higher around DIOMEDES and the other Watchmen while parting for the Concord party. Keeping Boris safe now is a daunting task; he certainly doesn't need any more distractions.
Hibiki Tachibana	With the foyer descending into fiery chaos, Hibiki doesn't waste time when it comes to pressing forward. Candy is far better suited to leading the mob than she is, and in true vanguard fashion, she concerns herself with sprinting for the stairwell as quickly as she can. Any bat-mutants in the way who have yet to turn tail will suffer being bowled over or swiftly disarmed until they're scattering for safety like the rest, with the magical girl opting to dash right through flames and batter blasts out of the air until she can cheat the stairs by leaping straight up them. Down there, there's a battle that's about to rage that she dares not interfere with.     What they find when they finally reach Count Baleen himself is...not what she expected. The fact the Watch aren't the only people here comes second. "Wh--he's a /whale/!? With all the bats, I was expecting..." Like, a classical vampire. Not a vampire whale. Or a whale at all. This girl has a lot to learn about how things work on Mortasheen. She promptly eats her own previously radioed words when the corked fishbowl housing their target rolls right on upstairs and leaves them all in the undead dust.     Making it the time for quick action rather than asking questions about why people are where and exactly why the count has the room trapped like this. "I'll leave him to you!" Hibiki shouts off towards DIOMEDES as he retrieves the butler, leaving her to stand her ground against the rain of burning rot with rapid punches and elbow strikes to swat them aside as fast as they fall down onto her. The sheer volume of them doesn't really make that a viable strategy for long though. Between that, and the dropping temperatures and possibility of mind controlled undead turned entirely against them...     Raising one arm high, the piston housed within her Symphogear's gauntlet slams backwards within its confines, followed by her manually gripping it with her opposite hand to pull it back past her elbow. "HaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAH!" With a roar, she lunges forward and drives her fist straight down into the ground in front of her with earth-shattering might and an impact that causes a quake several meters around her, cracking and cratering it inwards...followed up with the machinery pounding back into place in a split second and expelling the shockwave-creating force directly down into the material.     The bottom floor may or may not be recieving a storm of dust, debris, and undead blasting through the resulting opening, with Hibiki opting to punch open a massive sinkhole that a good amount of the zombie flood can fall down into and be somebody else's problem - on top of the collapse spreading in the direction of Haseo and anybody else unfortunate enough to be near him, threatening to bury him under tons of /everything/.
DIOMEDES	DIOMEDES notices the zombies and the flames rising. As the bat butler gets Angry at being saved, DIOMEDES responds bluntly. "Shut up. I'm saving you." Trying to keep Boris with him in one hand is frustrating, especially as it becomes cold underfoot. So, taking the spear in the other, he moves to pierce through the swarm, and keep moving in a firm line towards Flamel. Something about him Ticks DIOMEDES Off. And if Flamel doesn't move out of the way, DIOMEDES is going to try and ram him into the hatch using his spear! While Boris haphazardly hangs on for life.
Candy	The arachnid is pat encouragingly on the most respectful-seeming part of its carapace. "My friend, it seems you are an artist, too, ah?" Candy grins, gently elbowing as he winds up with the opposite arm to chuck another torch.      One of those mad-science rays gets dangerously close to him--but there's an odd stuttering in his movement that abruptly places him out of harm's way. "Here." He offers a card--the six of spades. "Artists need erasers, ah? You see something on fire that shouldn't be, you think of me and hold this close. Then, you can spit water instead of the fuel."      Hibiki is right, of course, ar least insofar as 'we can't handle Baleen until we get to him.' He takes a step forward... only for his plain work boot to 'splash' in water that runs down from above. Candy shakes his head and tsk-tsks. "So it's like that, ah?"      Maybe it's from Baleen. Or maybe it's from one of his goons. He was, admittedly, a little distracted with rabble-rousing. But that's fine. The water rushes downstairs... until, for him, it doesn't.                 ----------     The water stops. So does all the noise. All the death rays freeze in the air. A riot in freeze frame--the sight draws a smile to his face. How best to get through this chaos, upstairs, where there is evidently a butler in need of rescue? *Easy. I bring it with me.*                 ----------      Time resumes. His actions take effect, 'rubberbanding' one after the other as if the world were attempting to catch up with him. -Death ray pistols mysteriously angle left or right, towards bat mutants instead of rioters. -Crates of old-timey waders made for all manner of feet appear near the rioters. -The stairs creak slightly. Splish-splash.      Upstairs:      Candy splashes a motorboat into the liquid undead. If the Concord will part the sea, then he, his allies (and Boris, he supposes) will simply cross it.      The ripcord is pulled and the onboard motor growls to life. Candy guns the throttle, waving Boris over as DIOMEDES rescues him. "C'mon! In the boat!" There's even a mounted light machine gun at the front--to discourage boarders or hostile maritime action. "Before you catch your death of cold, ah?" Hibiki's sinkhole doesn't bother him--nor the way the liquid undead swirl. This thing ought to have enough get-up=and=go to outrun that... right?
Haseo	First the room filled with weird bat creatures. Then the sudden intrusion of another party that deals with them. Then the room catches on fire, followed by a wave of liquid zombies that Flamel seems to have handled pretty well all by himself. The sudden, rapid chain of events has left Haseo blinking in mild confusion, even as he pulls out a comically large broadsword from nowhere by reaching behind his back.      Being tasked with sticking with Flamel by the Guild Leader herself, Haseo attempts to follow after. His attempts at being a good party member are cut short however, as he's suddenly sucked into Hibiki's sinkhole, dropping his weapon as he tries to scramble his way out.      It's probably karma that he fell in, given the shit he said earlier, but god damn it it still sucks regardless. Falling through and disappearing completely into what's probably a lower floor, there's an odd silence. Up until a very loud A in C major note blares behind the Symphogear user, a massive gold and black construct appears with both hands clasped together and raised over its head.      "WATCH IT, JACKASS!" The voice is that of Haseo's, at least briefly. However, as it brings both arms down in a swift motion in an attempt to hammer Hibiki with enough force to send her through the floor, it lets out a loud inhuman grunt.
DIOMEDES	DIOMEDES flies past Candy's boat in the process of moving to ram Flamel into a grate. He throws Boris at the boat - and rips off the LMG in replacement, thinking it's a battering ram.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel summons up his spherical barriers, seeming confident they'll at least blunt the impact. No such luck. The spear is *potently* piercing, and crashes through the barriers, and he only halts it when a pair of heavy telekinesis-hands clap their palms hard around the spear, already searing a shining light-wound over his body. "Guh!" He crashes back, his remaining barriers making a wrecking ball of sorts that risk smashing apart the zombie hatch or even the portcullis!     Unfortunately, the debris that kicks up mean that Flamel is suddenly a whole lot more obscured, and he takes that opportunity to flick his invisibility on, vanishing with only one soft flicker as a warning. The zombies under his command rush to grab and grapple at DIOMEDES! But they're not the threat. The real threat is when Flamel reappears behind DIOMEDES at his ending point in the charge, pairs of fingers on each temple. A ghostly Flamel projects at high speed, and tries to slam directly into DIOMEDES, an effort to pierce his mind and crash through to the interior of his faculties for aggression, trying to temporarily blunt his ability to form aggressive thoughts and act on combat instinct, an astral-Flamel wielding kinetic blasts as he dives into the mindscape!
Priscilla	Of all things, Priscilla was not particularly expecting the Watch to bring a boat along. She has absolutely no idea who Candy or the robot are, except the latter has a lot of shit to talk and is being a problem. She considers using this opportunity to simply scoot for the dream machine right now while they're occupied, but it seems Flamel has his hands full with just the tin can, and the weirdo in the motorboat is just going to skip him and go to the top floor along with her anyways. Which means now is the best time to get involved.     Which mainly means dropping into the back of Candy's motorboat while he's trying to steer it, causing the back of the craft to clunk against the floor, and then brutally smash the engine; which mostly looks like a spectacular mechanical failure, with bits and pieces flying off everywhere and the craft spinning out, except someone with CSI eyes can see that the metal warps inwards rather than tears outwards.
Hibiki Tachibana	With DIOMEDES and his charge having been up in the air, and Candy having some cleverly quick thinking, Hibiki's heavily destructive attack (which is totally fair game since they're planning to demolish the tower anyway) seems to have paid off--she's not going to hop on board the boat herself in favor of instead standing at the edge of her freshly made hole, taking a moment out of the hectic situation to narrow her eyes and peer down to make sure Haseo is going to stay down there while her gauntlet vents steam. "...Who's spineless, huh?" She mutters in a tone that implies she took the jab deeper than she probably should've.     But she's snapped out of it at the extremely odd sound coming from behind her, prompting her to spin around with wide eyes just in time to see something that's decidedly /not/ Haseo yet bearing his voice winding up. With hardly any time to react, she hastily crosses up both arms overhead to absorb the blow. But it comes down like a hammer, with a thunderous impact on the metal of her Symphogear and the unstable ground beneath her feet shattering and then exploding--there's a sharp yelp of pain right as her footing is lost and her guard snaps open, and the axehandle smashes down into her head to send her blasting down through the floor herself at breakneck speed.     "YOU ASKED FOR IT FIRST!"     Unlike him, Hibiki doesn't let there be a pause before she comes back. The moment she grits her teeth through the pain, her armor's boosters ignite and send her rocketing back up mid-fall to explode up from beneath the construct fist-first. Throwing it out to slam into its gut hard enough to create a visible ripple of force behind it if it fully connects, she flares her thrusters to their limit to try and continue ascending with it. Up towards the ceiling and beyond, fully intending to use its massive frame as a not-so-human battering ram to smash into the surface and blast her way entirely to the next floor of the tower. It's hard to tell if she's trying to kill two birds with one stone to get the dream machine, or she's just /really angry/.
DIOMEDES	The spear is true, even when it's not fired up in full form. But, Flamel obscures himself with the debris, and the zombies move to grab and grapple DIOMEDES! DIOMEDES moves to bash the LMG into their heads, unaware it has a trigger, and just tear them apart with it. This allows Flamel to reappear, slam straight into DIOMEDEs' mind, and astrally project successfuly into his aggression center. On one hand, DIOMEDES starts flailing, even sluggish, at high-speeds at Flamel, trying to smash him with the LMG and the spear alike, batter him around with raw strength and keep his barrier down. On the other... DIOMEDES' mind is weird. It's an infant's psyche with the knowledge base of an adult. The aggression center is a tactical 'mission room', with monitors overseeing what DIOMEDES can see. It is probably one of the most functioning parts of DIOMEDES' mind. Mini-robots move around, pumping in anger and adrenaline responses, and feeding reasons to fight from other sectors. 'He's a government agent. He reminds you of Gaia.' 'You can't trust humans who say they're mysterious and shady.' 'The Dream Machine will steal their rights. It must be destroyed. He's in your way.'
Maricel Thorne	The portcullis to the third floor is battered down with Flamel's body, clearing the path. Candy's ship ploughs the zombies underneath it to corpse-slush, but there are still enough intact limbs to scrabble and thrash, posing a marked tripping hazard to anyone who can't keep their arms and legs inside the ride- at least for a little longer.      Now even more liquid than they were previously, and buoyed along by Priscilla's meltwater, the zombies are slowly spiraling down the drain of Hibiki's crater. They're viscous, so it's taking a while, but they give a new meaning to "riptide". It's intensely morbid but also vaguely enthralling to watch, like the world's grossest lava lamp. Awful noises bellow up from downstairs- the bat-mutants down there are fleeing, as anybody can see by peeking out a window, but now the mob has a new opponent.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel turns the invisibility back on, but it's too late. The swinging impact is already too close, and Flamel can only roll with the strike so much. He bounces, but smacking rather than piercing means he can keep those barriers up. Slamming against some of the stairway walls, his invisibility flickers, and he begins a fighting retreat. Levitating, he maneuvers backwards, firing blast after blast at range. One hand's fingers in Tactical Psychic Battle Pose, and the other blasting DIOMEDES with the psychic equivalent of a truly massive hand-cannon. The aim's off while he maneuvers within as well.     Within, Flamel's efforts immediately go to trashing this. He has a range of tactics, of course. There's the obvious tactic of simply smashing the monitors and consoles, perhaps, but Flamel is more used to a different way of solving. Before he does that, he'll first try puzzling it, rearranging bots, sneaking in crashing commands on consoles, and otherwise trying to thwart the flow of adrenaline-like responses. Within and without, he tries to coordinate a vulnerability to those disabling psychic blasts as he levitates up the stairs. It's like one of those Time Crisis things!
Candy	"Ha ha ha HA!" Candy slaps his knee with his free hand, then points at DIOMEDES in the seconds before it happens. "You wanted a club, you coulda--"     Smash.     The back end of the boat implodes, and Candy is thrown--                 ----------     Into the air. He's heading for the liquid undead. Then he isn't. Splinters from the boat hang suspended in midair as he appears standing unevenly at the bow, which juts sharply upwards.     *What the fuck happened here, ah?*     He spends some time looking at it. Poring over it. Clearly someone did something to it. But who, and what? And how? If he didn't know any better, he'd say it was another mage. All he can conclude is...     *Yep. It's broken.*     There's still the butler to worry about. Candy scoffs.     *Save the butler, he says.* An annoyed glance towards the portcullis, where Flamel's form is frozen slammed against it, and DIOMEDES hot on his heels. *How can you save someone who is glad to wear a collar, ah?* The butler's cravat is tugged at in irritated fashion as he thinks this. *Well. I can think of one way. The one fucked with my boat, though... have to do them last.*                 ----------     In quick succession: -The boat creaks. -The Ace of Hearts is slipped into Boris' cravat. The back reads DUCK. The moment he does, he is 'blinked' outside to relative safety. Candy can do nothing about the economic war paint Boris is wearing. -Ripples like someone wading appear through the rapidly-draining zombie drink. They are subtle--the work of someone who knows how to move silently. They quickly trace a line towards... -Candy. Standing on what precious little solid ground there is near the portcullis. -A Depression-era water-cooled machine gun complete with its own tank appears on Candy's slender, short frame--and a wide grin creeps across his face.     He pulls the trigger, and the weapon, looking like a long muffler, belches a steady rapport, spitting out a wide cone as he sweeps it across the room. "Where you at, ah? You shy?" He's hoping it's invisibility, and not mind shit. Mind shit is the worst to try and find.      Of course, the zombies being as slow to drain as they are means he spends at least half of the time he could be shooting at the mystery saboteur, batting away grabby hands and kicking moaning faces shy of his ankles. "Ah, who gives a shit anyway--stop me if you can!"      With another raucous laugh he decides to stop fanning the room, and try to get through the portcullis following Flamel's gracious and painful opening.
Haseo	There's a smug sigh, both from Haseo and Skeith as they send Hibiki to the world below. Unfortunately, there apparently wasn't any vacancy there, as she came flying at full force.      Rocket powered fists connect with its ornate rocky body, creating cracks and holes that expose red wireframe as they're sent rocketing upwards with them.  Eventually enough is enough however, as Skeith has reached their Revenge Value threshold and begins to act once more. He raises a hand to catch one of her fists, which nearly threatens to snap it back from the sheer force, before disappearing once more.      There's the same dramatic tension of him not appearing straight away, but when they do, it's behind them yet again, scythe now in hand as the swing the weapon forward. They expertly hook the blade of the weapon around Hibiki's waist, before tugging back and spinning around at full force in an attempt to throw them back down.      "STARTED IT? WHAT ARE YOU, A KID OR SOMETHING? JUST PISS OFF ALREADY!"
DIOMEDES	Flamel is shooting powerful ranged attacks, and also fucking with DIOMEDES' aggression centers. He's slowing down, armor battered, but he's not done yet. He throws the LMG at Flamel, battering him one last time, before removing the energy rifle from his back. He fires it. There is not a single shot. There is a *spray* of bullets, all targeted for Flamel, like this was a bad knockoff Touhou game. He has to weave between them, but they're also not the main attack. As the Aggression Center starts to slow down more and more, going haywire... DIOMEDES moves to try and impale his spear into Flamel Parsons. But strangely, it's not a lethal blow, even should it pierce him. It's for the gut - something that could be repaired, even if it's likely to hurt hard. Why?
Maricel Thorne	It's easy to be at peace with the inevitability of something bad happening. It's really, really hard to be at peace with the probability of something bad happening. Boris, previously resigned, is now utterly terrified. He clings to the boat with white wing-knuckles; when Candy freezes time in the middle of the boat wiping out, he can see the bat-mutant's eyes bugging out of his skull.      Needless to say, he ducks- it isn't clear if he even read the card- and finds himself outsided. There is very muffled angry shouting from outside the tower as he's immediately accosted by passersby. Boris has a hard life.      Upstairs, Candy discovers, is an enormous computer room. Chrome processing hardware and enormous monitors displaying meaningless graphs and symbols take up three whole walls of the floor; one of them shows a spinning wireframe diagram of the Dream Machine, with various data-jack slots nearby. Obviously, Count Baleen is there too.      "What? You're still here? Fired. They're all fired. The Nosferati and the zombies too," he grouses in his burbling aristocratic accent. "If you're truly so eager to interfere in my plans, I'll have you crushed myself!"      It takes him several seconds to get up to speed in his enormous hamster-ball-like fishbowl, but he's a lethal hazard once he does, threatening to bowl over and flatten any intruders not agile enough to stay out of his (fairly predictable) path. He might weigh two hundred tons, and the glass is incredibly thick- it can't be cracked without a dedicated, concerted effort.
Priscilla	Priscilla balances well on the back of the exploding motorcraft even when it begins to actually bob in the viscous soup of snowmelt zombie puree. Though she doesn't know who he is, it's very easy to guess with whom the boat's operator is aligned with. Invisibly, her eyes track Candy up along his arc, waiting for the apex where he'll be the most still, small prepatory movements falling below the threshold that the air can bothered to be stirred, merely moving through the forgotten impression that she might be there. Then, at just the right moment--     (He disappeared? So has the bat. The boat wobbled again. So--)     Priscilla catches sight of the little man with the archaic machine gun only at about the time he begins shooting. A wild spray of bullets is hardly the spiciest tactic Priscilla has ever dealt with as a counterattack; it's old hat for her to watch for the flash, follow the line of where the last two bullets hit, and move side. With that kind of horizontal fanning motion, she knows to leap upwards too, leaving the bullets puncturing a swoosh of cold air.     However, boats, even above cars and tansks, are notorious for being absolute awful places to be when small pieces of metal are flying about very fast, for good reason. All it takes is one or two rounds to hit a curved or loose metal surface at an angle to fire off in a completely different direction. Being hit in the leg with two bullets she'd just dodged is something moderately far up Priscilla's list of frustrations, but right now she's fixed on hoping that Candy doesn't notice, having been focused on suppressing the area she just left.     (That was aimed at the boat and then swept to comb the room, not fired in panic, or as if he expects something to be charging at him. A gunman, but he must be familiar with dealing with these sorts of magics if he suppressed his reflex and made that guess. He will probably be on guard for a direct attack from behind now, even should he advance at speed.)     So Priscilla does what a sensible person with a grudge and an excess of plausible deniability does in this situation: Following Candy up to Count Baleen's room, she applies a sudden blast of winter wind to throw him right under the fish bowl the instant he thinks he's dodged.
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki had little clue exactly how Haseo slash Skeith got behind her before, but she gets something of an answer when the towering figure completely vanishes from right in front of her during the debris-scattering ascent, replacing the feeling of its wireframe body with her fist suddenly finding only ceiling. "Huh...!?"     Even if she would be able to guess she'd get surprised from behind again, that doesn't give her the ability to react to it in time. Her heavy acceleration in one direction means there's no chance of her avoiding the scythe locking around her and yanking her along. Her body being roughly tossed around as her momentum shift instantly hits her with a body-wracking ache, and she bites back a scream as she's flung back down towards the total mess, literally and figuratively, back down below.     But at the last moment, she reaches out and manages to grasp at the haft of the scythe. It's brief, but just barely enough to give her some leverage to stop herself from getting utterly tossed like a ragdoll and instead swing herself back around in a thruster-assisted spin, whirling like a blur several times over before her leg comes around to transfer all that momentum into a kick towards the side of Skeith's head. She's going to return the favor by smashing him off towards the nearest wall. Really, really hard.     "THEN STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE--AND GET OUT OF THE WAY!"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel weaves through most of the barrage, but he takes the main shot hard. The remaining barriers collapse and he gets struck by the spear through the midsection in spite of an effort to telekinetically parry. Orange and white light sprays wildly, and Flamel grunts hard through the pain that shocks into him. His fancy respirator is knocked off, and he grips the spear. "OOF!" He stumbles, his friendly smile leaking through now.     "Hahhhh... didn't think I'd messed up the aggression centers *that* bad! That sure didn't seem like a killer shot." He adjusts his goggles, and then grips the spear with his TK again. Lifting it, and himself, he pulls back and tries to wrench it free. "Hey, maybe Unbraked means you get to show mercy! Is that how that works? I really like that. You seem kind of cool. But... this *is* my job. I *can't* let that info get lost."     Backup systems. Backup thinking. Flamel's head emits a series of purple sparks. Something telekinetic happens that carves out a perfectly spherical chunk of the stairway, and a shockwave tries to drive DIOMEDES back. The projection within tries to surge to less developed areas, areas like mobility and other essential functions, and disconnect many artificial, less well-rooted pieces of functionality like the ability to run and chase. Candy and Priscilla might find themselves joined by the fleeting Parsons, though he won't get involved; he's too busy blasting back down the stairway with machine-gun fire towards DIOMEDES!
DIOMEDES	"You said some interesting things. Besides..." DIOMEDES remarks as he pulls his spear back as Flamel starts to wrench free, shockwave knocking him back. His mobility's dying down, as is his ability to run. He knows he can't defeat Flamel easily, with how he's lagging. But, he's not going to just leave. He's got one more chance to KO him. His leg, barely, moves back. It's a throwing position. The spear is pulled back, and then- Thrown, straight for Flamel's chest. To pin him to the wall and leave him there until DIOMEDES is done with him, hopefully.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel sees that throw winding up. He knows he can't take it head on. It'll spear through him and leave him harpooned to one of the walls here if he tries to stand and take it. And so... He doesn't. He can't exert much control over DIOMEDES, but someone without years of experience in motion is still subject to many of their reflexes and unsteady motions. So while that wind-up is going on, he digs deep into DIOMEDES' mind and into fast-impulse motion, ripping out the maintenance and hotwiring a cramp reflex into a muscular control center to throw off that javelin strike just a little.     A spinning spear slams its haft into his head, sending him reeling and skidding through the server chamber, until he slides to a stop. But even while down, he works as hard as he can. Propped up on one elbow, he gets both pairs of fingers on those temples. "Another time then!" He calls out. "We can talk shop, superweapon! I meant what I said, no hard feelings." A swarm of massive, translucent telekinesis-hands rush DIOMEDES and try to snatch him, with the intent of squeezing him and flinging him down the stairwell, trying to take him out of the fight with the power of a long way down, or at least buy Flamel some time to grab those blueprints...
DIOMEDES	"I've never had anyone say that to me..." DIOMEDES says with a bittersweet tone, about 'no hard feelings', as his spear returns to his hand. He's going to throw it again, when... The TK hands toss him down the stairs. He tumbles the whole way down. He probably tumbles into Maricel and Pagliacci eventually, honestly, if they're still right there. He's not pursuing Flamel any more.
Candy	*I haven't heard nothing yet. So they're smart, whoever this is. A lot smarter than this son of a bitch, for sure.*     "I'd tell you to bite my ass, but you couldn't afford it, ah?" As Priscilla predicted, he dives out of the way of that gigantic fishbowl. The look of frustrated indignation on his face would communicate it well even if he didn't scream 'fuck.'     Candy is swept up, the heavy, outmoded machine gun clanking as it scrapes against the ground. The belt drags behind him, snagged under the Baron's immense weight. There's a crunch--                 ----------     As his ankle is crushed. A wooden stick appears in his hand, promptly stuffed between his teeth. He bites down, tears welling up in his eyes, fingers clawing desperately at the ground.     *Can't scream. Can't make a single sound. Or they'll know before it's time.*     He lies there for a good, long while, waiting for the shock of the pain to pass into the usual dull scream. When he finally does teleport himself out from under the Baron, there is another Candy waiting there. A fake one--the eyes are the wrong color.     *Smart. Knew I would try and smash the damn thing--so they waited til I was clear. Well, what the fuck am I gonna do now? Can't keep fighting somebody I can't see. ...ah, that's it.*                 ----------     Time resumes.
Candy	-A fake Candy--the eyes are the wrong color--is pulped by the massive fishbowl, as is the real machine gun. -A long-fuse stick of dynamite appears in one of the data ports in the computers along the wall. Hiss... -A wooden stick drops to the ground, bite marks dug into it, followed by...     "Good with the wind, ah? Go ahead and blow it out like in the newspaper funnies," goads the real Candy, stepping out from a blind corner to sit atop one of those very consoles. A string of gibberish is constantly being typed by his sitting on said console. His ankle is broken, and he cradles a shotgun.     It's an obvious trap, of course. The moment that wind picks up, yes--he's going to blast in the direction it came from. There are other ways Priscilla might handle it besides what he teasingly suggested, sure. But there's also a big idiot rolling around who's growing increasingly agitated. "Or maybe the Baron handles it for you, ah? You got thirty seconds, my friends."
Haseo	There's a loud booming crack as Hibiki's foot connects with Skeith's head, the monster's head bending in a way that causes its stone-like skin to burst and crumble, as well as completely shatter the weird horn-like adornments it has. The rest of its force shakes its body down to its core, causing more fractures and exposed frame, but it seems to be refusing to budge.      Pushing its head against the girl in defiance, Skeith lets go of the scythe, a large hand grabbing hold of one of her legs as it balls its other into a fist.      "REALLY? GET OUT OF THE WAY? THAT'S WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING!"      Skeith lets out a roar and winds its fist back, before throwing its entire weight forward to punch Hibiki in the gut. It lets go of her leg as it does so, as the force of the impact creates both a visible ripple of air, as well as completely disintegrates its fractured arm.      Even though the damage on its body is still healing at the same rate it always has, Skeith, or perhaps Haseo, seem to have reached a limit, as it suddenly completely breaks apart in a mist of glowing red particle effects to reveal a barely conscious Haseo, who only barely manages to grasp on to a piece of debris to prevent him from falling down several floors and eating shit.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel sighs a heavy sigh of relief. Now there's just the issue of extraction. Candy -- one of them? -- is rigging the machines to blow, but Candy -- another one of them? -- is busy fighting Priscilla. Flamel doesn't know what Candy can do, he's got *zero* ability to recognize a time-stop and even less ability to affect it. There's also the fact that the Candy/Priscilla fight is clearly one on a higher level! Gosh, Candy didn't even scream or anything when they got "killed" before. And he's in no state to take a load of buckshot.     He signals to Priscilla in the midst of her fight, telepathically transmitting a short burst of info. "Hey, First! I can't fight much, but I'm clear! Tell me what you want done to get that data out of here. I think Haseo's cleared our extraction!" He's here to be a tactical option, even if he can't join the combat.
Priscilla	Despite the sheer number of times Priscilla has actually seen someone just get mulched by a giant rolling boulder and they die and stay dead, the way Candy had escaped danger before has her filled with a great deal of caution and suspicion. Knowing very well that her particular style favours the wait-and-see, controlling the pace by just giving the other side nothing to react to, she remains rooted still, rather than running to the computers.     (Let the Count roll himself around. He is unable to roll into me deliberately; I can see at the start of each motion whether or not I am in any danger. The weapon is gone. That one did not carry a rod with him before, though. An illusionist is most likely, if I remember the way he disappeared before. He may not be conjuring these things, but hiding them. Or perhaps a specialist of transportation, moving them about as he pleases. Either is good cause to wait.)     Which is of course terminated by Candy sticking a lit fuse of dynamite into the computers the Concord actually really wants.     (No. Half of one minute is enough time. Moving him from that chair is pointless. He will not fall for the trick again. Dislodging the explosive by hand would give him the easiest point to shoot at. He will feel the wind move if I do so from elsewhere, now that he is used to it. He is expecting that I will react in tension and panic. That I hide from his sight because I am one who has dedicated many years to learning it, and is thus disposed in personage to avoid confrontation, and fare poorly under stress. His attention must be focused on how I will defuse it. The only other place he should look is the Baron, and if he is endangered by him, so is the machine regardless; the Count likely has no intent to destroy his own work asides.)     Priscilla searches very briefly through the handful of glorified pockets on a chain she has, and decides on exactly the most confusing thing she has at the moment, palming a golf ball-sized orb of brown ceramic, and then slowly crouching down to one knee. When she sees the Count rolling past, she lobs the resin firebomb up into the air, and phases out with another boss teleport on the spot.     The sequence events goes: the giant fishbowl rolls across the room in front of Candy, just past it something hits the ground and then makes a loud, fiery explosion, flames fill a secretly already empty space out in the open, checking on the dynamite confirms it is still there, an R1 plunging attack with just an ungodly awful hitbox descends upon him from behind, using the unusual, diamond hammer-like reverse side of a solid metalloid scythe to make sure everything in the way gets physics crushed rather than allowing cheeky microspacing.
Hibiki Tachibana	Before Hibiki gets the chance to kick off of Skeith's body, it does the unexpected--letting go of its weapon in order to make sure she can't get away. Even as much as she's damaged it, there's no chance of her suddenly being able to pull away in time, much less with how the battle has wore down her own stamina trading blows like this. There's nothing she can do except watch the fist come forward in almost slow motion.     Followed by a stomach punch so hard that her pupils blink out for a split second, body ragdolling with the blow and only prevented from flying completely out of the tower from the fact she was being grappled. Instead, as Skeith begins losing cohesion and the grip vanishes, her limp body is left to fall back down through the air like a rock, her Symphogear dispersing in a burst of golden light just as the construct finishes disintegrating into red.     She falls a whole floor further than Haseo before consciousness suddenly snaps back into her and she scrambles to reach out for a stray piece of wrecked tower to grab onto, which she nearly slips off of before lifting herself just enough to splay out over it and let out a rough cough and a groan.     "C-...Crap...that guy's...seriously..." Hibiki doesn't get to finish with 'an asshole', conserving her energy and trying to get some wind back so she doesn't collapse again on the spot in the middle of all this.
Flamel Parsons	Priscilla's taking on Candy. But that dynamite! Flamel just *can't* let information be wasted like that. Even without Priscilla's instruction, he has to leap in. The dynamite may remain in the machinery, but not for long if he can help it. He rushes in as fast as he can, snapping himself into one last bout of invisibility to try to sneak a quick swap in. If he can just slip that stick of TNT out of the port and run his own spy-tech extraction, he can get out... but Candy had *really* better be occupied and distracted, because otherwise one load of buckshot would be enough to take Flamel down in this wounded state! This is *hilariously unwise* for him to be doing, but his obsession with gathering information like this simply hasn't gone away at all.
Candy	*Baron... wait. It's Count, isn't it? He's a vampire, got the whole stupid outfit.* Candy grins in spite of himself. It is soon soured quite severely, that grin.     First, the explosion. Candy gives in to his instincts instead of his experience, and dives for cover. She--for he knows now it may well be 'Priscilla,' whoever that is--anticipated this well. Her scythe plunges through                 ----------     His waist. Again, another wooden stick. He steps away from the scythe, teeth pressing into the grain of the stick. One hand grips the opposite wrist, thumb boring into his skin like an auger. He needs to scream.     In a flash, he is outside, looking at Boris. A scream here is only one more, among those harassing the beleagured butler. He falls to his knees, breath ragged and uneven following his cry. The legs, tentacles, hoverpads, and amorphous leg-alikes of the crowd surround him in that way like a ring of trees.     *Whatever she stuck me with, she's hell and Jesus with it. Worse, she's patient. Not like the idiot in his fishbowl. It won't happen today. But I don't gotta leave empty handed, neither...*     He's back in the computer room. An explosion still lies frozen in time, the dynamite's fuse cut evenly, light trapped in a furious illumination of that fishbowl.     *Don't know how she does it. Dunno how I'd even find her. But... I could come up with something almost as good.*     And so he does. It should be simple. A new game he'll play--or maybe an old one, with a different pot. An invisible, intangible muscle, massively overdeveloped, flexes outside of time, gathering up the possible and making it the actual. Light warps and bends...     *That's it! But if we don't get the machine today, we gotta at least get the bloodsucker in the bowl.*                 ---------- -Blood splatters against the ground. Candy's. -The screams of the rioters outside grow briefly louder. -Light warps like it's trapped in a plastic bag. Candy disappears a split second after his blood hits the ground. -"That's pretty good, huh?" His voice, gloating about his mimicry--but too tinny to be the real deal. -A circle of lit dynamite, in a ring, encloses the Count's fishbowl the moment he attempts to change direction. -Playing cards sharp as razors zip through the air--towards the Count's bowl. -The smell of smoke and a soft 'fwip.'     Outside, Candy clutches his bloodied side, button-up shirt matted to his skin with damp red glue. Shaking his head, he titters once more. "Tsk-tsk. Doesn't scare easy, that one. Those are the worst ones."
Maricel Thorne	As Candy's last acts leave him undisturbed, Flamel is able to grab the data, harrowingly dangerous as it might be. It's in some garbage nonsense Mortasheenian file format, but that's not their concern- it's for Pagliacci and his circus-hive to figure out.      But their own end of the deal is perilously in the balance. Count Baleen stands to be imminently blown up by Candy's dynamite, and the original Dream Machine is in the fishbowl with him, behind several feet of glass.
Priscilla	Priscilla lands amidst a pile of relevant destructible scenery rubble, predictably crushed into rolling physics bits by the sheer might and also intentionally unfocused throwing-a-lot-of-strength around power of the plunging attack. Unfortunately, a lot of other things are rolling around in the room too. Her head snaps up from wrenching her weapon free just in time to catch Flamel, then her attention turns right back to the Count, and the situation he is suddenly in.     (A transporter, rather than an illusionist; the matter is settled, then. Noxious. At the least, it is primitively modern fare, but now he need only defeat the Count, not Parsons and myself. The Count is beyond saving. There is no point in attempting it. There is likewise no purpose in battling the mob. We need only the device itself. Ignore other possibilities.)     The distance is short enough that fade stepping would take longer than just lunging out there, so that's what Priscilla does. A windy white streak, straight through the circle of dynamite, trailing snowflakes and painting crackling frost over the floor, she slaps her hand to the side of the titanic fishbowl in motion, and causes a small portion of the inside to flash freeze into a solid composite chunk of ice; specifically, it captures the region in which the dream machine is rattling around, encasing it in a glittering prism of ice intentionally broken into myriad fracturing planes, spreading out glacial fingers into the water. Drifting past the glass, she simply keeps running, and hurls herself away from the blast as fast as she can, rolling through the smoke and bouncing up against the opposite wall.     If she had a nickel for each time that the dynamics of cracking a safe without damaging the precious contents using water and high explosives had been crucially important to her solving a problem, Priscilla would have three nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that this is the third time.
Maricel Thorne	Count Baleen freezes in his fishbowl-rolling as Priscilla entombs the Dream Machine in ice, stopping dead in the center of the ring of dynamite. For a brief moment- as his enormous red eyes widen- it seems as though he might almost grasp the gravity of the situation. He really doesn't, though. "This is trespassing and theft," he says indignantly. "I'll have you--"      He promptly, explosively stops existing. There are lots of videos on the internet of what happens if you blow up a whale with dynamite. This looks a lot like those, only with less blood and more cape. The Dream Machine lays on the floor on its side, merrily replaying the Count's last bloviating speech.      The tower, not long after, starts to collapse in on itself from repeated structural abuse. The remaining Mortasheen mob starts to disperse like rats fleeing a sinking ship; Nosferati take to the sky on raggedy wings. Maricel reluctantly extricates herself as one of the last, soaked in rainbow-colored blood and almost absentmindedly giving first aid to the wounded. Pagliacci's head- and only his head- skitters out of the ruins too, sprinting like a spider on the gummy worms that sprout from its severed neck.      He effusively thanks the Concord team- or what passes for "effusively", in his inky-black depressive tones- and snags the data chip from Flamel with one of his neck-worms. "There will be great rejoicing at our circus-hive tonight. Our grubs will feed well! You really ought to come sometime- complementary VIP seats, of course."