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Owner	Pose
Meika Kirenai	'Their targets are two girls. Teenagers. I don't know how they're related-'     Vermillion's eyes squint shut at that. "Yeah. Okay. Figures." That the targets fit into what she'd expect them to be is an added layer of belief in the accuracy of Lilian's prediction, and whatever sense it's founded on. She pauses her interruption, waiting until Lilian finishes to continue her thoughts. "I wouldn't know either, how they're related, if they even are. But... relocating them... that's nice to have as an option, if it comes to that. I've never- Um. Finding out who it's going to be... hasn't ever gotten to happen ahead of time before." 'That thing's definitely more than a little weird for a mascot though...'     In 'more than a little weird' fashion, Drop, Vermillion's Cherub, and an all-around freaky little guy, patters just behind Touta, and looks up at him as he quips back and forth with Ritsuka. It makes a faint, ragged snorting noise, and blurts out in its copied scratchy-haunting voice, "That thing's more than a little weird..." The Cherub snickers, and dashes off, its motion tricky to track with the static-overlay doppler pattern on its hide. In brief summary,     The Elites responding to the Holy Refulgence's call for assistance have managed to group up with the city's magical girls, and evacuate numerous victims from a Temptation attack on a sporting facility. Two separate Temptations split off from their progenitor, after its target had been murdered prior to offworld help's arrival, and gone off towards new targets in nearly opposite directions. With ambulances filling the parking lot and emergency services tending to the survivors, the Elites have split off into two groups to pursue the threats, to stop them from finding their fated targets and splitting further.
Meika Kirenai	Northeast: 'Trapped' might be too good of a claim for the state of the Temptation in the Quarry. With steep bedrock inclines, and pooled rainwater below, traversing out of the pit would be difficult, but the staggering height of the monster, it'll only slow it down. Split-off Temptations are smaller than the ones that originate them, but it's tricky to imagine that the monster shrouded by the cyclonic shell of photovoltaics and ripped-off highway guardrails is small.     As it stomps through the water pooled at the bottom of the quarry, the smaller shards that impact the pond with oversized raindrop-splashes do not get whisked back up into the storm, oddly enough. Though, close approach, while certainly less foolhardy than with the southbound temptation, is still guarded and dangerous, both by the suspended makeshift shrapnel and an already skin-prickling, radio-crackling aura of electromagnetic interference.     Its torso moves frantically, as Elites begin to fill the air above it, the flickering reflections of Kayoko's markerlight off the photo-cells casting silhouettes of the titan like shadow puppets around the nighttime quarry, and it raises its arms up in something akin to bracing for impact, facing the oncomers and not the direction it still carries on walking in. It's almost a docile gesture. Don't let that stop you from pressing the attack. Southeast: Like the nova wreathing the bottom of a tornado, the cloud of dirt and fragmented bedrock getting kicked up by the store-bound Temptation obscures it from below its knees, a blended gradient of earth tones to compliment the monster's baked-clay orange coloration. Its footsteps, trudging as they are, don't thunder across the suburbs. Forward is the direction it is occupied with, more so than normal for Temptations, given the creature's gimmick of kinetic disturbance.     Upon further approach, watching the material be torn up without the hulking humanoid seeming to even notice, is eery at best. As its arms swing with its strides, fingertips come close to the roofing of a quiet house, and the shingles and woodchips of once-structural framing erupt into a crackling, momentary roar of commotion, entirely as a byproduct of simple walking. On the bright side, that sole focus of its means it has yet to notice the hurried Elites. For now, they have the advantage of initiation.
Ishirou	Ishirou was high above the creature, hovering in humanoid mode now as the plan to move it into the quarry went to plan... but it wouldn't stay in there forever.  Also, Ishirou picked up on that there was a limit to the size that it could pick up... or that it just preferred going for larger things.  Its real size is somewhat significantly smaller than the aura of debris and electromagnetic force around it.   Still, those sensors went to work, trying to pick up anything and everything else that could be done to keep it in there as long as possible, enough for the others to deliver a decisive blow to it.  His eyes light up, trying to look at every angle, every weakness, makeup, anything and everything that might give them an advantage.   "Even if you feel that it's not significant, keep swinging and firing.  It doesn't seem to go for the smaller bits of things that break off the larger ones.  Every bit of damage will count!" he says, trying to encourage the others.   Data is transferred, but instead of hovering OPTIONs, the OPTIONs stay static, providing points of ingress into the field and enough force to help yank them out again if they have to dive in, or areas where data is sent to their HUD's to help correct their sight.   The first beneficiaries of this are... Hibiki and Love!  Both were chosen at random! Ishirou himself faces a scattering of beams, followed by blasts of magical fire.  Each shot aimed at trying to weaken the field around the creature, instead of going directly for it.
Timespace Riders	Amidst the chaotic spread of sounds, there is another, nearly drowned out by the din of battle. Grey fabric swirls impossibly outward from an empty point in space. The vortex expands, as sand is also kicked up by the disturbance, until it is large enough for two people to stand within it. As it happens, two people -do- stand within it: Sougo Tokiwa and his retainer, Woz.      The gnarled swarm of fabric straightens out and sorts itself into a more normal shape, resting comfortably on Woz's shoulders as a seemingly ordinary scarf.      Both the Demon King and his retainer have come wearing their belts. Woz closes the mysterious book on his person, having apparently consulted it moments prior. From the unstable roof of a crumbling home ruined by the Temptation's passing, each of them wastes no time transforming.      Woz holds a futuristic Ridewatch -- ZERO! -- inserting it into the gate on the left of his green and black Beyondriver. An image appears on the belt's screen, of a Rider helmet, with backlit red katakana lenses reading 'ZERO' and two rose stems serving as the archetypical Rider antennae.                                      Action!                                     "Henshin." Woz closes the gate and holds his hand outwards.                               Touei! Future Time!                                               Dashing! Durable! Deadly! Futurering Zero! ZERO!                      Kamen Rider Woz, sporting the ZeroArmor, leaps from the rooftop. Laid overtop his silver and neon-green bodysuit is a cuirass formed of interwoven, thorny green vines. The lens of his helmet bears backlit red katakana reading 'ZERO,' while the 'hands' of the smartwatch-motif Rider antennae are the stems of two roses. Square pauldrons bear white rose cameos on a red background, and in his hand is a whip with a touchscreen affixed above the grip. With a few shouts of effort, Woz cracks the whip overhead. Arcs of green energy race through the air to impact explosively with the Temptation, as the retainer sprints to catch up.      Meanwhile, Sougo procures a watch unlike the others. Two halves, pressed together, with the face resting in the middle. One is bright and silver, the other black with gold trim. He presses the stop, the twinned watch activates, and he pulls it apart into two halves. Zi-O II!!
Timespace Riders	A sonorous tenor voice and a rumbling bass voice call the name in unison, as he slots each half into the belt. A synthwave keyboard melody plays, as two opposing sets of disembodied silver clocks flank him on either side. The chronometer on the Driver's screen displays not a year, but an omen: NEXT.     "Henshin!" He shouts, spinning the Timespace Driver. The tenor and the bass voices triumphantly sing, in chorus, as both sets of clocks collide to form a rapidly spinning silver-gold backdrop, shifting polychromatic armor appearing over his body:                                   RIDER TIME!                                                     KAMEN RIDEEER.. (RIDER..!) ZI-O--ZI-O!! II!                       Black armor sports swept pink trim at the shins, hips, and gauntlets, joined by gold and silver--darkness and light--at the pauldrons and hauberk. The cuirass is overlaid by two silver watch wristbands, traveling all the way up the length of his helmet. The helmet's lenses are formed by pink katakana spelling RIDER, atop which rest two symmetrical sets of hour and minute hands--past and future. Rounding out his equipment is a pair of swords, one shorter than the other, both silver and both resembling the hands of a watch.      As the Demon King leaps down, he combines the swords and swings downwards. A cluster of disembodied silver clock faces soars towards the Temptation hot on the heels of Woz's energy arcs, each one trailing bright, polychromatic energy.      Woz's whip curls around a streetlamp, thorns digging into the metal as the weapon pulls sharply taut. The retainer flies into the air, tucking into a nimble frontflip. The whip goes slack just as he lands atop it. With his free hand cupped to his helmet, he calls out to Zi-O:      "Sire, this Temptation seeks a girl working at a nearby convenience store. The others are already aware, thanks to Dame Rook." The retainer cracks the whip again, twirling it overhead in a spiral pattern. Rosebuds bloom in the air around him. The buds open all at once, firing green lasers at the Temptation.      "Got it--we won't let it reach her!"
Angela	SOUTH Carol and Rose head one way. "Was sending Nikki with Love the best plan, Tiphereth?" Rose mutters. "It keeps the firepower relatively level. Trust in Tamamo's work." Tiphereth says, sounding like she's trying to be detached but can't really manage it. "It's not Love we're worried about..." Carol mutters. "She won't make the same mistake again." Tiphereth says. They stow their weapons away carefully as they run though Rose is going to draw SOME eyes because her gear looks pretty anime so maybe they'll just think she's an Otaku so long as she keeps that skirt up. Rose has an easier time traversing wreckage than Carol but stays close to lend her a hand as needed. "Oh fuck me..." Carol exhales. "It's huge." Rose wordlessly readies her hammers, spinning them around her wrists. She doesn't seem to know what to say, in fact, beyond readying for what seems like an impossible fight even the experts couldn't manage. But eventually words do come to her. Two of them. "Courage, Carol." Rose darts forward, electing, smashing flying debris to bits with her hammers to open up a path forward for Carol. "This is what they have to fight...? No wonder they were able to derail the Train..." Tiphereth A says. Tiphereth B is silent today, maybe it's another inactive day for him. Needless to say, Carol's only real option is to run out herself and take a stab at hurting the Temptation, stabbing at it with her rapier The Sword Sharpened By Tears. Fortunately it primarily deals WHITE damage. Carol's really hoping that this means she won't have to deal with kinetic backlash but there's only really one way to find out! Otherwise she'll have to be sorry for it.
Angela	NORTH Nikki and the Queen of Hatred run together for a time. "So ... You still go by Love now or...?" Nikki asks. "I decided to take a new name, I felt that going by Queen of Hatred or the Magical Girl of Love would just encourage me forgetting again..." The Girl says, drawing out her magical staff which at least hasn't changed at all. "What do you go by now?" "...Chevalier Love. Do you like it? I'm...really sorry for hurting your friends. And you." Nikki sighs and says, "...Yeah it's good. I'm sorry we couldn't be the people you needed. I guess it required literal Divine Intervention." "I don't expect you to forgive me but ... maybe we could be ''okay''?" Nikki manages a smile. "...Yeah, sure. You're not the only one who fucked up." They have a sad little laugh together for a moment before focusing on the task at hand as they near the Temptation there. These two at least don't have to approach their target. Nikki draws out her pistols Solemn Lament and fires a stream of WHITE AND BLACK damage bullets while Chevalier Love readies her staff, firing a stream of cartoon stars out at the Temptation too, trying to discourage its path towards its target through violence. LOVE is used to receiving aid from her friends, so Ishirou lending a hand is something she can adapt to.
Kale Hearthward	PREVIOUSLY: > "Please listen to Chevalier Vermillion, Hearthward. I know you mean well, but that isn't a replacement for . . . They've been doing this, almost all by themselves, for all this time. Having more general life experience . . . Knowing it isn't quite the same as living it. So, for all their youthful flaws, please take them seriously this time." This catches Kale off-guard. Actually, Lilian talking to him at all, in anything close to this tone of voice, catches him a bit off guard. He'd been under the impression that... well, he hadn't really been sure where his and Lilian's relationship was right now, and determining it was a to-do item that he'd been continually putting off, but if pressed he'd have been certain that it was several notches beneath the point where she'd use 'I know you mean well' and 'please'. (He probably should talk to her sooner than later, regardless.) But more than that, what she's saying... it's something that finally gets some connections firing off in his brain. Things that had been apparent on the surface, maybe, but just that... he hadn't really put too much thought towards. The totally normal human glances from Lilian to the Kirenais and back, and frowns. "That... that they're the experts here, it isn't right." He clarifies. "What I mean is, I'm not saying they aren't, but if they are, then that's... not right. I hate this place." Even more than I already do, now. There's no more time to talk. He needs to split. "All the more reason to finish this quickly," he can barely be heard saying as he heads off. He seems extra motivated now. > NORTHEAST < Kale goes to get out ahead of the temptation, find a spot to fly up and perch at, and start casting. Offensively, the plan is simple: first a strong headwind, to try to slow down its advance as much as possible, then opportunistic crosswinds to try to wrest bits of debris from the Temptation's grasp. If possible, he's going to try to create some openings for others to strike... ... Defensively, he's keeping his distance and keeping an eye on his equipment in case he needs to ditch it. His swords and boots use something that's not *quite* electricity - it's kind of like electricity in the same way that calculus and arithmetic both use numbers - but he shouldn't risk it. And also everything's made out of metal, anyway, which might make that a moot point.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	EARLIER "Creepy little thing." "Real creepy! But it makes it work." "Is it? It's... Cute, in a way." NOW With Jeanne's questionably acquired motorcycles still puttering lightly behind them, she, Ritsuka, and Mash all stand ready to begin forcing the split Temptation back towards less-occupied ground in order to properly fight it without creating even more of a mess than it already has. They're still high-ish above the thing, watching its seemingly single-minded advance with mixed tension, anxiety, and impatience. Before Jeanne can prod at Ritsuka to finally start cutting loose, though, she's caught off guard by both her and Mash already rushing in after Carol, Rose, Zi-O, and Woz. The trio all leap off their overlooking position with little care given to gravity, Jeanne brandishing her flaming spears and sprinting to get past the Temptation before turning to face it. "Just like we planned. What say you, Master?" "Hm.. Yeah, let's do it!" "We didn't.. Oh. Um. R-right!" Coming towards it from directly in front of its path, Jeanne aims for a flashier  maneuver, swinging those flaming spears all over the place and launching them at the Temptation, as though trying to actually.. Push it back? Mash lands on the other side with Ritsuka sliding off moments later, keeping up a defensive stance and stepping in and out of what looks like arm's reach of the Temptation while smacking her shield against the ground to try and goad it into coming towards her. Ritsuka starts flinging light attack spells at it as well from nearby Mash, further trying to draw it towards them to make one direction (the northwest) seemingly more approachable than the other!
Lilian Rook	Lilian raises an eyebrow at 'figures' from Meika. She may know these two in advance, but she has no knowledge of any broader pattern. "Oh?" is about all she says for the time being, but Meika can get the sense she'll be asking more later. "It tends to be that way when I'm on the field." Lilian says. "First times and 'we never could before's. I'm a top of the line luxury item, you know."     'this Temptation seeks a girl working at a nearby convenience store'     Hearing those words make Lilian's eyes widen minutely. Her skin crawls with a faintly palpable shiver. She sets down Meika in as little of a hurry as she can manage, and paces out five feet of space. "Keep thirty meters of space." she says. "That's the perimeter I'll be drawing. As long as you're that far back, I'll be closer to it than it is to you, and I'll be able to intervene if anything goes wrong. Do you understand?" Lilian does spare Meika a back-glance, though, her brow just slightly tensed in concern.     "Not that you should have any reason to get so close to something that might disintegrate you for the temerity, but I want you to keep this in mind especially. Try visualize a circle around its feet, painted on the ground, and move accordingly." Of course, Lilian, as primarily a swordfighter, hasn't disclosed what she plans to do about that herself; not even as she takes off again, circling around over the rooftops with a sequence of streaking black bounds, and plants her weight directly on the road in front of the Temptation.     Drawing a deep breath, her eyes fix on the road, watching something. For something. Not the monster itself, but the instant where the street lights--     Cleasa o'Skye ~ Stailc Gearradh Sgàil     Night Mist catches the glow of the lamps and reflects it back red. The sword streaks down from over her head, slams into the empty asphalt, and keeps carving through as Lilian draws her elbows back in, pulling the blade through several straight feet of earth and cement all the way to her feet. The black void left in the fissure of her cut is too dark to be just shadow. Then it bubbles over with blood.          §The lighting is rubbish here. It's splitting its shadow into so many pieces. Overlapping two or four-- we can't keep it in one spot forever. Let's start destroying-- no.§     "Chevalier Cobalt! Lights!"
Touta Konoe	Drop's small snort in that brief moment had caught Touta's attention, his eyes peering back at the Cherub. He really should ask someone what this thing is sometime, but for the time being he just watches as it starts copying what he says in that voice. He watches it dash off while snickering and then rather than feeling spooked though...Touma just smirks, "And it's damn cheeky too."     Focused back at the quarry in the north...r     Touta's arrival is made fast and efficiently going from the sports complex towards the quarry. Kayoko's marker saves them plenty of time in their pursuit of the Temptation and with it, the group is able to focus on one thing, keeping this monstrosity from causing anymore damage.      "Alright, I see this thing. Everyone heading north, gonna put up some shade around the quarry. If you see the giant black fog, you're in the right place."     While Touta's going to try and make sure that as many people show up as possible before doing so, the Chevaliers made it clear before that there was no way to deal with memories should these things get exposed. Apparently concealing their existence was enough of a big deal in this world. If that was the case, a veil of black fog would begin surrounding the quarry.     The night sky, the lights of the city all began to vanish as the quarry was enveloped in that dark fog. Even the light from the markers find it difficult to penetrate out through the fog outside. The path it had yearned for was obstructed completely. The only opening within this fog is up above where Ishirou and Kale have situated themselves in the sky. They still find themselves within the walls of the fog, its shape taking more of the eye of a storm rather than an outright dome. "I'd hope this'd keep this thing from guessing where it's target is, but if it was spotting them from all the way at the foothills..."     It was probably a fair bet, just like Lilian, this thing had a sixth sense that it was using to track the girl. At the very least, should it try to escape, the Temptation would come to realize that this fog wouldn't be too keen to let it escape...     The group is already on the offensive, firing off shots one way or another to try and keep the beast within the quarry. With its size the pooled rainwater alone was slowing it down if only a little then the question was...What if the quarry was filled just a tad more? Touta intended to find out.     His hand rises up, and a part of the black fog from the encirclement swirls out, it's form condensing as it starts to appear more like a blackened muddy water that was being water bended from the fog itself. Touta's hand lowers and that stream from within the air shoots into the quarry. It's as though someone aimed a water cannon at the Temptation before unleashing it, pelting the creature as it ended to defend itself. At the same time though, it's doing more than that...The water level would be rising within the quarry, and even more so the water slamming into it, could even be distorted the field it was emitting to some degree, maybe not negating it completely but likely to have some form of effect.
Kayoko Kirenai	Kayoko's method of flight might be crude, but it's well-practiced. A disk of light beneath her feet carries her through the wooded hills, hovering low above the footprint trail to take advantage of the pre-crushed path of trees. Despite the southbound group having an impossibly easy time tracking their Temptation, making her guiding aid pointless, she doesn't take her eyes off of them, not now, not for the rest of the night.     In particular, unwavering surveillance is directed towards Nikki, as Kayoko races invisibly in front of them. It's not her main priority right now, but she's still anxious and uncomfortable with the Lobotomy Corporation agent's presence. The awkward looks, the microexpressions of discomfort, and lastly that little smile, are all accounted for, a sub-process of Cobalt's perception tracking them even as she watches the Temptations.     "Its target is that apartment building!" Kayoko only reappears partway through her sentence, armor and sword silently blazing into sight when she releases her habitual invisibility. "If I knew exactly who... I could make a duplicate to try to lure it away. But we can't wait for it to get that close in the first place!" "Chevalier Cobalt! Lights!"     Even kilometers apart, on opposite ends of the battlefiend, Kayoko sees and *reads* the words off of Lilian, faster than the radio can transmit them. "Cobalt Luster: Mirage Arena!" The halos of light on both Temptations wink out, as does her flying platform, dropping Cobalt to the ground with a flutter of her cape. The startling darkness of a Kayoko-less night only lasts for a moment, before perfectly cylindrical fields of featureless white light, daylight scrubbed of its warmth, flash into existence around the Temptations-- north and south both.     The Elites are enveloped too, as long as they stay relatively close, in the perfectly vertical light like studio illumination, flattening their shadows to exactly below their feet (though Kayoko's shadow appears unchanged, disjointed from the light source). The one combatant spared from the searing blank canvas is Chevalier Love-- who gets the same, but glowing pink instead!     Within the Mirage Arena, the Temptations' perception of the Elites is askew, refracted off-kilter to place them just away from where they really are. Images waver as if underwater, contracting and stretching unpredictably throughout fast movement. In the direction of the apartment complex, the light shuts off into a sheet of impenetrable darkness, though it's unlikely that Temptations use sight to track their quarry at all.     "Move fast! It'll have a hard time tracking you!" Kayoko holds up her golden shield, edges extending out in wings of light that flicker and vanish when hit by photovoltaic shrapnel, rather than charging in just yet. She's not the one who's capable of doing that-- so the rest have to fill Meika's role.
Hibiki Tachibana	Even having taken notice of them, the looming Temptation is still continuing its steady march. They're still on a time limit. For that reason, Hibiki isn't going to waste any more time than she has to - unlike a lot of the others, she doesn't have many good options for even attacking from a range, and once it clears the quarry, there's barely any distance to the unknowing apartment block at all. Close approach, while certainly less foolhardy than with the southbound temptation, is still guarded and dangerous...     ...She knows the shortest and quickest way to get where she needs to go, swirling cyclone of wrecked panels or not.     ...Which can only, of course, be a straight line.     So she does exactly what she said she'd do; flip through the air as the pistons within her Symphogear's leg armor eject forward, and once the angle is right, have them slam back into their moorings with the deafening sound of metal on metal, air cracking behind her as the kinetic burst instantly propels her down in a high-speed dive.     As she does so, there's...music? Music echoing out, although the natural effect of Temptations will keep it entirely localized to their fight here. Coming from Gungnir, although more than just mere music, it's a song-- with her mouth opening beneath her scarf as she falls. 'After overcoming so many darknesses     Shouldn't you finally be able to see         The light of dawn shining in the sky?'     There's an entire storm of solar panels, guard railings, and other metal objects between her and the monster, and her solution for dealing with it is the simplest one of all - beating her way through with the sighting aid of Ishirou's OPTION. What she can, Hibiki will shift her body to let pass by her at high speed...and when she can't do that, she'll bring back her fist, a bright shine beneath her clenched fist as the tune picks up, to bring forward to crush and shatter metal so it doesn't get in her way.     If she can clear the storm, the Temptation should be much less of an issue to deal with up close. And...the only way to ensure it doesn't make any more headway, no matter how much they take shots at it, is to block its path yourself. Doing that is still much easier said than done, but... 'I swore 'to protect others', but...     When the time comes, what if my two hands and I         just can't do it?'     ...like Meika said, they have to make sure there's no more than two. So she'll help force a path one way or another. That means pushing through this mess and coming down on that thing like a falling meteor.
Meika Kirenai	North:     Strong wind ripples against the quarry's pond, summoned up by Kale's magics. The momentum of air itself against such a large foe is noticeable, buffeting against the Temptation and making the cloud of suspended metal debris flicker and billow like a tree's leaves in a storm, and aided by the water Touta projects, particles do start to break off from the orbit. Hibiki herself is a storm of force to knock aside debris, the shrapnel she faces slicing at her even as she bats it out of the air in cacophanous bursts.     Disarmed fragments of it litter the quarry's cliffsides, and sink into the surface of the now-turbulent water, lowering the cloud's density bit by bit. In that all, up in the air, Ishirou's static drones get tossed out into the fray to try and help- and immediately, in a skin-prickling burst, the cloud contracts closer to the Temptation, dragging his drones quickly inwards, as if yanked in by invisible puppetstrings. Ishirou himself, high up above the fight as he is, feels the tug through the entirety of his chassis as well, inciting what would be a gut-churning drop in altitude.     Chevalier Love, after her brief moment of connection with her ally, finds that magical stars, unlike Nikki's bullets, are unaffected by the Temptation's electromagnetic aura. While the majority of the latter get swept up and diverted back into the encircling cloud, steel-blue flesh sloughs off like molten clay when Love hits it, carving craters into its legs and elbows. Ishirou's fire, too, makes it through unhindered, save for turning fragments of electronics in the aura white-hot. The defensive posture the Temptation had taken previously mismatches its complete lack of visible reaction to the injury- and, twisting to stand its ground, arms still held up like shielding from a flinch, the skin-prickling feeling cuts away for the briefest of moments before roaring back into effect.     From radios, to electronic sensors, a growing, crackling static of phantom feedback muddles usefulness. Distant streetlights flicker and blow out, the effects of which are quickly made harder to see, though, from the sterile brightness of Cobalt's Mirage Arena, locking vision to just that zone. Finally, its arms start to swing, slowly, and the close-held cloud jumps and jolts like living locusts, swiping its shrapnel and bludgeoning debris in wide arcs, and pulling at all the metal that comes close to the orbiting cluster. Then- the cluster flattens into a rippling plane, and launches outward in a cone, past the Elites, all un-blocked shrapnel coming to a halt at the distorting edges of the lit disc.
Meika Kirenai	South: 'Keep thirty meters of space.'     Chevalier Vermillion gives Lilian a quick nod as she stands, nearly all her weight balanced on her good leg's metal skate. "Thirty meters. Got it." Sitting that far out doesn't give the magical girl much chance to help, close-ranged as she is, and a pained reluctance does cross her face with how much it feels like being benched. Still, it's right- she's pained from plenty of other things, too, and so, supported by her hockey stick, makes to skirt around that boundary and keep an eye on the fight, just in case.     Sougo and Woz's appearance gets a sudden, small shout out from Vermillion, surprised that more help would care to arrive- and the affirmation of Lilian's foreknowledge with Woz's causes her to bite at the inside of her cheek. "..Mister Sougo. Woz. Um. Good to see you. We'll- I'm sure you'll all stop the Temptation."     The laser blasts pierce through the wreathing aura of the Temptation, burning at the monster's flesh, and boring holes into it. Nonphysical attacks connect, but physical ones, even physical ones that target the soul and mind instead of the body, are a different story. Rose opens a path, but Carol's rapier, as it gets just a half-meter away from the Temptation's body, gets pulled around and accelerated with a strong jerk, out behind the monster. Carol, without letting go, would get pulled with it, and spat out the other side. As the spears Jeanne directs at the Temptation similarly get sucked past, the heat from them bubbles and melts at nearby flesh, having brought flames close enough. The field is acute.     Mash's forward defense gets her up-close and personal with the Temptation, as it finally turns to face the group, helped along by Jeanne's goading. It doesn't lash out, steady motions simply bring its limbs to bear towards the shield-wielder, and as they brush close, the crushing force its kinetic disruption carries is felt, buffeting at the fortifying shield Mash holds as gentle-seeming fingertips extend from a door-sized hand, the invisible force turning each digit into a unseemingly deadly drill.     As the southward Mirage Arena forms, basking the section of neighborhood into distorted and cold light, re-unified shadows make for a brutal outburst of liquid-like softened clay-flesh, and as the monster's body takes hits and loses chunks, the way rubble moves around it shifts, slightly, the aura re-forming to keep its border true to the Temptation's body. Turned to face the group, slow hands reach out and swipe across the masonry walls that block out housing plots, dragging dust behind them, and careening like a slow-motion clap around irritating mosquitos.
Ishirou	The electromagnetic PULL is enough to nearly take Ishirou out of flight, he's forced on a completely different path, and that's /towards/ the massive cloud of death and unfunny business!  Fortunately, Ishirou isn't a piece of debris.  The engine on the RESCUE kicks on, attempting to counter the yoink, but also redirects his momentum in a positive way, allowing him to orbit the cloud instead of falling into it. The strain is there, the electromagnetic force tears at the structure of the unit, but he keeps flying, using the momentum of the tug and the force of the orbit to throw himself out of the spiral and back into the air again.  While he makes this manuever, several more OPTIONs are deployed, even as ones are lost to the electromagnetic field. That's fine, Ishirou had a plan.  Now there were things inside the field.  Things he could use to scan and ping off of.  Things he could do... Like sending a pulse of electromagnetism of his own, but this time an opposite charge, attempting to force the inside of the wall of debris to push out a bit too far, to weaken the armor it has around itself and try and tear itself apart.  More OPTIONs go in, and the disturbance will only grow.  It'll be a huge tug of war, but it's something the Tempation will have to contend with. The options will also continue to do their job, such as supporting Touta's accuracy, by feeding him data magically through his HUD, giving him better support and more accuracy in determining where his blows land... and Kayoko gets one of the OPTIONs connecting with her, aiming to give a boost to Kayoko's magical force, but also connect her to a mana battery to keep her spell powered.
Kale Hearthward	The wave of shrapnel blasts outwards Kale... "Crosswind. Low front, and some eddies in the middle..." Kale's hands move quickly. Above, over, around - pinch and twist and fold... it's as if he's tying knots out of invisible string. "Channel out, flow around, pinch the pressure currents... And release." The effect is subtle in its execution, but blindingly apparent in its result - Kale, despite not moving from his perch, didn't so much as get any dirt on himself from the wave of deadly shrapnel and debris washing over him. "The hard part - dealing with people, trying to do good - is over," he says to himself, after breathing on his hands to refresh the raw aeromagical material he's folding and twisting. "And what comes after - picking up the pieces - may also be another hard part." "But this? Fighting? This is the easy part." He shapes a ball of air - a steadily larger ball, formed of angry currents of wind and pockets of high pressure fueling them - till it's about basketball-sized, and he has to keep it stable using both hands. "Because if there's just one thing I'm good at, one thing I didn't have to study or train for...!" He winds up and pitches the ball, aiming for whatever opening in the debris he can find. "Not... people, or disasters, or being good - it's fighting!" The ball, whenever it impacts something (hopefully near the center of the Temptation), explodes - releasing all the energy of a small storm all in one blast of wind and pressure!
Timespace Riders	"Happy to help, Meika--ah!!" The mirrored clock hands on Zi-O's helmet race forwards, leaving pink afterimages. A vision of the immediate future is seen by the Demon King, hazy at the edges but crystal clear at the center. Three massive chunks of masonry, still clung together in places, hurtle through the air on a collision course, striking Zi-O and Woz dead-on and sending both flying down the street.      In the present, Zi-O exclaims: "I see it!"      They come unevenly, due to the almost lazy sweep of the Temptation's limb. One... two-three. Zi-O sprints towards Woz's position, ducking into a baseball slide to low-profile himself under the first. As it passes above with inches to spare, the Demon King hurriedly flips a switch on his greatsword, mounted on the unusual crossguard in imitation of his face. A hasty, clumsy swing sends a cluster of disembodied silver watch-faces flying into the path of the two chunks headed for Woz.      Masonry explodes into shrapnel, and the retainer is pelted heavily--but, crucially, not nearly so hard as he would have been without Zi-O's interception. Woz's boots dig furrows into the asphalt as he's forced backwards, maintaining his posture with significant effort.      "Woz--the other one's headed for the apartment complex, right? Find out which room! I'll cover you!"      "At once, sire." The retainer's whip cracks again, wound around the crumbling chimney of a house that caught a glancing blow. Bricks tumble to the ground as he sails upwards, his feet displacing shingles when he lands. The book is quickly procured and consulted, gloved fingers flipping through pages.      As Woz reads, Zi-O changes tactics. A quick glance around the battlefield shows Meika keeping back from Lilian, circling around--it makes sense, given what Woz said about this Temptation's abilities before they left. The Demon King procures a Ridewatch--this one bearing a depiction of a purple, draconic warrior on its face. The silver half of the Zi-O II Ridewatch is removed from the Timespace driver, replaced with--                            Fire? Flight? Ether! MIA!                                 The Zi-O II armor changes in a flash of light, its knightly silhouette made a little more primal by the inclusion of draconic features like fangs at the mouthguard, roaring dragons's heads at the end of his purple bracers, and most prominently, a pair of metal wings in imitation of a dragon's leathery span. He takes to the sky as well, and bombards the scarecrows with blasts of purple fire launched from his bracers.     The wings beat powerfully and drive him into the air, where he flies counterclockwise to Meika and goes on the offensive. Maintaining a distance from the Temptation, he holds his greatsword in the right hand and levels the left at the monster. Roiling purple flame builds up in the mouth of the dragon on his bracer, until it's so large as to obscure the face of the dragon completely. With a shout of effort, he punches, and the fireball is sent racing towards the Temptation.      After that haymaker projectile explodes, Zi-O endeavors to keep its attention firmly away from Woz by continual harassment. Stray bits of rubble, shrapnel and particulate matter strike his armor and send up waves of spars, but he maintains a consistent, purple stream of fire, powering through it until--      "I have it, my Demon King!"
Hibiki Tachibana	Diving headlong into the storm means getting sliced apart at least a little. Hibiki knew that much, that's just not going to slow her down - even as debris tearing past her shred apart at her embeds itself into portions of her Symphogear and tear shallow gashes into her suit, scarf, and face. But if that didn't give her any pause, there's no denying that the towering Temptation actually taking a direct offensive against them is much more of an issue.     Light dies out, save for what Chevalier Cobalt is granting them, and the blast of intense static hits her Symphogear as well-- but just as 'magical' as it is 'technological', the crackling din in her headphones is stifled enough that her own voice drowns it out entirely. 'But even if I'm scared, I can't just stand still     Time keeps mercilessly moving         On towards the future...'     Charging towards the center of the spotlit zone that Cobalt has made for them, and thus the Temptation itself, she ends up practically right in the path of the debris and fragments being swept around and shot forward. There's no chance of avoiding that much of it actually directed at them purposefully, so Hibiki doesn't bother. A fist comes back, the opposite hand pulling back on the piston housed in her half-cylinder gauntlet-- 'In the moment I have to make a decision     Will I still be able to be 'myself'...?'     --And she throws it ahead into the oncoming cloud at the same time it slams back into place with a deafening boom, a visible kinetic shockwave erupting directly ahead of her. While she normally adds these behind her punches point-blank for internal damage, in this case, an airburst should be effective for blasting away a large amount of what metal would otherwise hit her and send it scattering. 'Please tell me...     Please tell me!         But, even if it's just for now...!'     Even if there's no doubt that nothing good is going to come of the shrapnel left dangerously at their backs at the edge of the light, she should now have a much clearer line into an actual melee with this thing - and the leftover raw force she used to clear her path will smash right into the Temptation's body to unsettle its stance and threaten to unbalance it, helping to ensure she gets in there.     It won't get bad enough that they'll need to go through any of those evacuation troubles at all. She'll do everything she can to make sure of it.
Lilian Rook	'We'll- I'm sure you'll all stop the Temptation.'     "Hold this."     Meika has very little time to so much as look before one of Lilian's carry cases-- something sized to fit a stack of three smartphones, superficially black nylon but palpably set with thin rigid plates-- is detached from her belt and hurled into the magical girl's hands. Working the safety clasp reveals a four vertical compartments storing single wide stacks of unnaturally polished stones, each covered in minute ogham runic script. "Thirty meters, equidistant." she calls out. "You can still skate, can't you?"     The fact that even Lilian-made runestones won't actually do anything by themselves for an uninitiated is more or less irrelevant. Meika has an objective; an ostensibly helpful one, that she can do from that far. It'll require Lilian to actually catalyze anything afterwards, but the circle matters.     §Even if you can't, Vermillion, you'll try. And if you spend the whole time trying, that's a whole battle you didn't run from.§     Not that Lilian would say so; she's busy. A giant monster is right in front of her, dangerously close to innocent civilians on every side, invisible to the general public, and finally paying attention to the girl it should be, according to her. A zigzag green glint of eyes confirms that the Temptation's wingspan won't clip housing on either side from this position, and she vanishes in a burst of air and dust, leaving a faint ripple of clearing black magic to be smashed together in the monster's hands.     "Keep it there." is briefly whispered into Woz's ear. Up in the air, he can look just quick enough to see Lilian hanging at the apex of her leap, inches away from him, right before she begins to fall, and streaks back to earth at clearly unnatural speed.     The reflected light of Mirage Arena strangely collects in the contours of her armour; every minute plate and band is limmed in a cold glare that clings to it like water, painting light-smears across her wake. She plunges in near-perfect parallel to Woz's dragonfire, arms up and legs extended to skim it at maximum velocity. Her light trail deflects from a piece of flying rubble near the ground, then skips off another one. Hot sparks flare up in the concentrated dark of the Temptation's shadow, darkened and deepened by the glare of the Dysnomia-purple blaze from the air, as Lilian slides directly beneath it, between the narrow gap in the field between its legs.     "Cleasa O'Skye-!" mingles with the ripping of asphalt and the muddy bleeding of the road, where Night Mist rakes through the ground until Lilian nearly stops, then metal pings off brick and concrete as Lilian kicks up from a timely swirl of masonry, and deflects back up into the air on the Temptation's reverse side.     §The field isn't that wide defensively. I can touch where matter extrudes from beyond its outer limit. Keep it turning in place. Don't let it wander or swing wildly. I can outmaneuver it like this, so I'll let it follow me visually. Then--§     Lilian's perfectly angled leap has her slow to an aerial hang at the Temptation's near-face level. Her gauntlets on Night Mist, spun up into a close vertical hold and instantly stopped on her palm, clack like a loaded gun. Without feet on the ground, she takes the corresponding stance in mid-air instead, exhaling and inspiring as the flesh shredded by her last attack comes sloughing off the Temptation and falling down on top of her. Mirage Arena's light, collected in her armour, breaking her silhouette into stained glass, taints a different colour.
Lilian Rook	"Cleasa Iontach ~ Slais Gearradh Fola!"     A perfect horizontal and recoiling reverse arc, painted stark red, scythe through the blob of tumbling clay-like viscera, and spatter it to the winds. The mirrored damage is flash-carved into the originating wound, driven into the Temptation's flesh as if shot with a guillotine blade. Lilian's light trail gathers into a tight spiral as she coils and tumbles back, then shunts horizontal where she catches the ground with her sabatons and bleeds off her momentum with a dance-like spinning slide.     Lilian crouches down where she halts-- a clean twenty five meters away-- and her armour creaks with audible strain. Her sword swings down past to her side, so low it nearly touches the ground, then flashes blindingly where its flat is upturned against the light with a neat little click of armoured fingers. Cement cracks, and she hurtles back into the fray again, crossing the Temptation up once more before it can chase after her towards the houses.
Kayoko Kirenai	The biggest drawback to Chevalier Cobalt's magic, demonstrated time and time again during this exhausting night alone, is the focus that each different iteration of it demands. Healing demands that she dissipate her illusions, hardening light into weapons distorts her invisibility, and effortless mass-scale holographic scenery is muddled by the inclusion of a single moving person. The veil of stark safety and vision that she has layered over not one, but two battlefields, separated by forests and city blocks, compete for attention with her personal protection, the fortress of light radiating from Pridwen needing to condense into solidity at each point of contact from the debris.     Gritting her teeth and feeling the strain creeping up the back of her neck, the choice of which to sacrifice is easy. Pridwen goes dark so that the external boundaries of the arena hold firm. Warped solar cells, taller than Kayoko is if they were flattened rather than twisted, launch outwards away from the Temptation and *shatter* against her, glass and silicon spraying out around her, and her armor isn't scraped, and her skin isn't lacerated. Armor and shield anchor in place, shrugging off the impact and wiping away any damage incurred, and when Chevalier Cobalt flings her shield to the side to dislodge a crumpled tangle of metal clinging onto her, it's as if she wasn't hurt at all.     Monitoring both sides of the conflict takes her a moment, assessing conditions and positions, and scanning lips where the crackling radio fails her in the din of combat. <J-IC-Scene> Woz says, "According to this book, the northern Temptation seeks someone in room 310 of the apartment complex. Good luck."     The curtain of darkness obscuring the apartment complex doesn't hinder Kayoko's sight at all. Beige hallways and green carpets snap into her vision immediately, tracing through the apartment building to pinpoint 310 on the door, then peeking through a crack in the curtains, worming awareness through the kitchen and into the bedroom, scanning the target as she scrolls through her computer. Kayoko lingers on her for a few seconds, at the same time as charging at the expanding cloud of debris and arresting stray scraps with slams of her shield into the ground. She really is just about their age. <J-IC-Scene> Touta Konoe says, "Sorry, didn't get all the details on the debrief about how the splitting works! You mind giving the abridged version?" <J-IC-Scene> Kayoko Kirenai says to Touta, the energy completely leaving her voice, dropping to a neutral monotone, "Temptations have targets, and after they successfully reach them, they split and select two more targets." <J-IC-Scene> Kayoko Kirenai quietly lets out a wheezing, hoarse gasp after explaining, nearly disappearing in the electromagnetic static.     Kayoko locks up, immobilized by the nauseating guilt of failure in her gut. Her arms hang by her side, rigidly tense, eyes open and unblinking as she would if she was being scolded. Spots of blood appear on the ground as if out of nowhere, almost black in the searing light. Dripping invisibly out of the seams of her gauntlets; leaving perfectly-pristine trails of nothing down her chin.     Still, she has a job to do, and moving is only needed insofar as dodging the Temptation's attacks. The Mirage Arena shudders, making everyone's appearances wobble as if looking at them through swirling water in a glass, as Kayoko starts constructing an illusory replica of the girl from room 310. Identical down from her hair, to her clothes, to-- her face doesn't form at all, leaving an indistinct mass that blurs as the illusion turns and runs, ducking out from behind a rock so that the Temptation sees it.
Angela	SOUTH Rose can content herself with the knowledge that she's helping by destroying smaller to mid bits of shrapnel. The acidic properties of her axe can dissolve even small dust particles though she is having to be careful to not send that acid flying around into that whirling mess as well. Carol is not so lucky. She gets close, so close to that monster, but she can't push that rapier any closer and then-- Yoooooiiinnnk! Carol is propelled around the creature and away towards some a big sharp looking shard of stone, back first. "Shit...Shit!" She says, squeezing her eyes shut. There is a flash of Night that interposes between herself and that's sure punch through half her body as a much taller woman steps out of nothing Carol and catches her with both arms. "Brave Knight, you are not suited for this battle..." The Magical Girl of Justice says before tossing the Agent into Ritsuka's arms. Yeah, Carol has passed out from pure terror. "Chevalier Justice is here to lend a hand, Vermilion." Four swords shimmer into being behind Chevalier Justice and fling themselves towards the Temptation at hyperspeeds--they fly fast! The good news is, even if they are deflected--there's only one place those blades will go--they will either hit the target, or Chevalier Justice. Nobody else.
Angela	NORTH Nikki's relationship with Chevalier Love seems complicated. It has always been complicated. She seems sad more than angry at this point but she doesn't seem intent on doing anything VIOLENT towards Love. Well not intentionally anyway. Those bullets fail to hit the target--Nikki is not someone who has seen the X-Men and understands electromagnetics. She says, "Shit! I'm useless here!" and brings her hand up to the radio to talk for a moment, come up with something else she can lend a hand with-- --when the Temptation sends a surge of shrapnel back towards Nikki! "Nikki!" Love shouts, pushing her out of the way as four bullets slam into her body, one into her arm, two into her legs, one into her chest. Love hisses, sinking to a knee as blood drips from her mouth. "Nikki..." She smiles. "I'm so glad you're okay..." Nikki stares. "I'm okay... Just...try and get to them..." Nikki swears under her breath and starts running towards the target, putting her weapons away in the process. She just needs to... get the target away in a manner that doesn't draw attention to the horrible situation. That's all. Yup. "Dammit, dammit!" Love stands herself up and says, "Heed me, thou art more azure than justice... In the name of those buried in destiny... I shall make this oath to the light. Mark the hateful beings who stand before us... Let your strength merge with mine, so that we may deliver the power of love to all..." The staff becomes unbearably bright before... "ARCANA SLAVE!!" Love shouts, sending a huge laser blast heading right for the Temptation!
Ritsuka Fujimaru	'Keep thirty meters of space.' Realizing their mistake rather quickly, Mash can already feel that crushing field starting to pull her in, and she digs the bottom of her shield into the pavement to get some manner of footing even as those drill-like fingers draw closer. Mere moments before it can clamp them around her, however, Ritsuka yanks her back forcefully enough that she's able to snap out of that wall-like mindset, and she flings both herself and Ritsuka back out of harm's way before they're both crushed in that grip. "Too close. Leave the offense to me and Jeanne!" "Understood. I won't let them get to either of you!" "Tch. You really think I'm that slow?!" Jeanne has a chance to show off her speed a bit, then, leaping away as the Temptation's slow-motion clap starts coming around. The Avenger is mobile enough that just outrunning it the whole time might be a viable option, but the Shielder isn't quite so lucky with Ritsuka being not nearly as mobile at all. To make matters worse, those Agents... She's not really confident in their ability to survive the battle with this thing. Normally, not something she'd be too worried about, but knowing the Temptation's ability to multiply means even one among their number dying could be more trouble than it's worth. Groaning in yet more irritation, Jeanne leaps back towards Mash and Ritsuka, then snaps her leg up to her chest. "Brace for launch!" "Oh! We're doing it?" "U-understood! Shield re-" Without waiting for Mash to be ready, Jeanne boots the shield with a thundering pounding noise as she launches Mash and Ritsuka backwards, helping them clear some distance from the approaching clappers for the time being. As the pair sails backwards, Ritsuka sees the Knight of Despair making a save with Carol and readying to toss her to... Ritsuka? Wait. Normal people don't usually take those kinds of landings well, do they? Without missing a beat, Ritsuka sprints over towards what she can only guess is Carol's landing zone, slides forward, and catches the Agent right on her gut rather than anywhere else that might be less painful for herself. "Gah! Hah! Made it. You good, lady? Don't get too close, remember!" Despite the pain, Ritsuka still manages to still look just as enthused as she did arriving at that facility at the start of all this. Mash hurries over moments after the landing, helping to pull them both up so they can continue to stay mobile, and so Ritsuka can start throwing more of her own offensive magic at the Temptation at a more rapid clip. Spotting Zi-O's dragon-themed fireball coming down at it, she lets out a whooping cheer, then starts aiming her own blasts at the same spot as well. Jeanne, meanwhile, has to contend with the arm coming uncomfortably close now, and she flings starts having to actually sprint in the other direction just to keep ahead of it. She's not without her own method of launching a counterattack, though, as more of those spears wreathed in purple flames continue being conjured from the ground. They rip themselves out as the hands draw closer, not so much to actually halt the limb grinding towards her so much as she's simply trying to mangle it with so much searing metal twisting its way in.
Touta Konoe	A literal storm is mustered to deal with the cloud of shrapnel that envelopes the Temptation. Powerful winds, heavy blasts of water, and forces of light, stars, and fists all begin to shred away at the cloud. Its defensively slowly but surely dwindling.     On the other hand though, the north group's fire power only seemed to be increasing. Kayoko's Mirage Arena provided the group with a light show that seemed to dazzle the Temptations in such a way that the Elites were simply too brilliant that their visage became askew. The northern quarry becomes enveloped at first by that shrouded darkness, only for that field of light to appear in the next moment. The two contrasting powers layered with one another as the light field worked within the interior, the darkness lingered outside of it.     Through all the fighting it's through Woz's aid this time that they learn even more about the Temptation's target. Someone needs to ask about that book and with it, Kayoko, Nikki, and Ishirou prepare to intercept her before the Temptation might reach her first. Though while it's nothing that Hibiki says aloud, he too shares the sentiment that making sure there's no need for an evacuation is the way to go.     "We'll keep it here! You guys do your thing!" Ishirou's provided him with one of his Options, and even if it was only for a moment the magnetic field dropped. If there ever was a time to make sure that this thing was hurting, it was now. No longer does he attempt to dampen the power of the field, but rather just accepting whatever comes, comes with the attack he's about to dish out. If the others were going to focus on protecting the girl, then those that were still here had to double down and make sure that this thing didn't take the opportunity to escape from the quarry, and if the fog was the last line of defense that meant it was going to be on him.     It's a mad dash as he attempts to join into that spotlit zone, he attempts to focus on building momentum rather than dodging and in doing so ends up taking a heavy helping of debris. His fist raises as it begins to accumulate with a similar darkness eerily similar to the black shroud that veils the quarry only hardened in the form of what looks like a gauntlet. Though unlike Gungnir there's no kinetic shockwave that can work to disburse any debris that acts as a shield, so ultimately--     "You're staying right here!!!"     --He shouts out, even as shrapnel pierces through the parts of his body with such force that it seems like it should be him that should be blown away, and yet through the damage he stands his ground. His feet are still steady even in the turbulent waters as he cocks his fist back. His strike intending to work in tandem with Hibiki's. Attempting to land his blow just as its body is unsettled, as its 'defensive' stance is broken down so that his strike could lodge itself deep into the temptation's form.
Meika Kirenai	North:     As Ishirou's pulse-emitting OPTIONS dive in, moving counter to the push of the shrapnel wave, being beacons of opposing polarity serves less to directly push or pull charged material, and more to turn the air around the drones into maelstroms of somewhat diverted, and chaotically redirected shrapnel. It does wrest some material outside of the Temptation's control, but outside of his, too, reshaping the clean wave into more of a blurry cloud.     Kale's pressure bomb soars through the air, and when it bursts, the Temptation is nearly knocked to its knees from the resultant wave. Water splashed up from beneath it, both from the stumble and the pressure, turns the inner pit of the quarry into a burst of dew-point mist.     Hibiki's piston blows face resistance, as the buckling magnetic fields twist at the metal within her armor- it's a continuous strain, fighting against her every move, but singing her heart into the fight as she is, would she really have it any other way? Her blows batter away chunks from the cloud, even as she's made to stumble and buckle, and what's more, there is a clear path through the cloud.     Chevalier Love, bleeding as she is from the shrapnel she's taken, puts that opening to searingly effecient use. Her beam slams into the Temptation, and *through*, carving a hole through its shoulder, the clay-like mass of its left arm sloughing off in its entirety, and evaporating before it hits the ground. Rock is molten in the quarry wall behind it, and the whole warped-light arena twists echoes of the flash.     With the next goosebump-eliciting retaliatory pulse, electronics start to fizz and spark, all the shrapnel circling near the outer borders of the arena gets pulled inwards, a blade-like wave shooting in momentary tandem with the Temptation's stagger. Kayoko's replica of 310's resident, eerily, provokes no direct reaction from the monster. The illusion is targetted just as the Elites are, with the scything shrapnel waves, flowing inwards like the tide receeding prior to a tsunami.
Meika Kirenai	South:     While attacking the Temptation with physical implements is a risk, Zi-O finds good purchase in deflecting the rubble with counterprojectiles, as does Woz with navigating the neighborhood structures. The flaming plasma shot out from Sougo's re-transformed armor, once more, how only that which has mass can be affected, offensively or defensively, by the short-ranged aura. The Temptation's flesh, the same color and texture within as without, melts like liquid, until the moment it would actually drip off, where it fades into dust before it can even be shot away like other debris.     The flaming spears, too, continue to add to this. Energy without mass, it's the same deal- it melts where it ought to scorch, and damages, bit by bit, the slowed-down Temptation. Unfortunately, as spears get wrenched from their trajectory, and Elites circle around, that turns them into railgun-esque projectiles towards everyone else present. 'You can still skate, can't you?'     "Yeah- 'Course I can. I'll- I'll get it done. You can count on me." With her leg in the state it's in, that she can kick off balanced only on her uninjured one is thanks to the painkillers still in her system. She'd still try, without them, though. This isn't as bad a break as the first time, right? I couldn't- I couldn't then, but now- This is something to do, something to help with, something more than can be done for the- Too many names. Too many. Did we even get them all? Her breath comes shaky as she balances with her hockey stick, taking off around the wide perimeter she's keeping.     Thirty meters. That's a distance Vermillion can visualize easily, on the move with her armor's skates. The exact half-court mark of a hockey rink gets circled around, dropping off the runestones placed as close to periodically equidistent as she can while still on the move. With heeth gritted tight, and her bloodstained boot held gently aloft from even the nonexistent surface it looks like she's skating against, Vermillion's focus is resolute. On a night like this, she'd shatter if it wasn't.     Lilian's scything blow showers the arena in evaporating dust, the gaping wound in it sucking in the boundaries of the kinetic aura further from posing a threat. It staggers backwards, turning a street-parked car it grazes into a cloud of fiberglass and steel, spinning out like candy floss around the area. Then, suddenly, its silent footwork catches on something, and the Temptation *twists* forwards, spreading out its limbs into a lawnmower-esque lunging grab. It crunches through pavement it lands on, sinking into ground as a smokescreen of dirt and gravel erupts above its prone body.
Kale Hearthward	And... there! Kale nods in satisfaction as his pressure bomb destabilizes the northern Temptation. The next thing that happens is not a wave of shrapnel blasting outwards, but one being pulled inwards - which Kale, in his eternal overconfidence, doesn't even think to watch out for. His contingency defensive spells block some of it, but he still gets knocked off his perch, and into closer range than he likes. Full retreat, falling back to somewhere safe - anywhere with some room and elevation and stable ground, at this point he can't be picky. Then, renewing the assault with another wave of air magic attacks...
Ishirou	More OPTIONs are absorbed, and more disruption to the field happens.  That's fine that it isn't happening EXACTLY to plan because even at this efficiency it's affecting the field enough.   Once more the pull happens, but this time Ishirou is ready.  He flies with it, instead of against it, to once more plot a course around the creature.  Staying just outside of the debris field, and swooping around to escape velocity again.   Waves of energy fire out, aiming to try and cause more area damage as compared to focused blasts.  He doesn't need to destroy it directly but cause damage to the storm around it.  All he has to do is disrupt it, and the others can do the rest.   Options fly out for Kayoko and Touta, enhancing their powers for a bit, before detaching and being sucked into the field again to repeat the process.  However, near the end of things he soars over towards Hibiki, placing a hand on her shoulder.  This data stream was going to be a lot more high-powered and direct. Once he establishes all of the data he needs, he flies off again.  The plan is made, all Hibiki needs to do is connect.  He activates the disruptions in the field in just the right way to make sure there is a path.  Anything else comes in the form of more wave cannons, aiming to shatter debris.   However, he couldn't dodge the second blast, was forced into it by the pull, and blasted into the ground.  He skids across the ground and comes to a stop at the bottom of the quarry.  Groaning, he leans up and fires a focused blast of laser into the aura, hoping to destroy the creature.
Timespace Riders	Keep it there. "Eh?! ...Got it!" Zi-O gives Lilian a thumbs-up, then mashes the stop on the Timespace Driver with his free hand, starting a buildup of flaming plasma at each of his limbs. Where before there was one stream of fire, now there are four--as the Demon King's metallic wings help him circle the Temptation, the fire forms rings around the monster. Each completed ring violently compacts and implodes, buffeting the Temptation in an effort to stymie its progress.     Woz, meanwhile, having successfully peered into the book, joins in, just in time for the Temptation to fall. His thorned whip cracks, shattering errant debris as it approaches him. Twirling it again overhead, the weapon encircles and envelops the retainer. Roses sprout from its vined length, overgrowing his silhouette and then disintegrating, leaving nothing in his place. He reappears above the downed Temptation, bursting through a cloud of gently falling rose petals. In freefall, he rapidly opens and closes the gate on his Beyondriver...                                 BEYOND THE TIME!                                      The petals swarm and race past the falling retainer, who straightens out into a flying, downward kick. His foot makes impact--not with the ground, but with an ephemeral, floating platform of petals.                                 ZERO EXPLOSION!                                     Upon contact with his boot, the petals superheat, disturbed and provoked into an inferno of pink-violet energy in the shape of a rosebud. The fiery flower collides with the prone Temptation just as Woz's whip snares a traffic light. Swinging with inches to spare from the ground, Woz lets the weapon go slack just at the apex of his swing, sailing to a safe, nimble roll a moment later.
Angela	SOUTH ... Carol is out cold, Rose can only destroy so much debris at a time, making the battle marginally safer. But the Knight of Justice takes two full swords back into her body, both in cher chest, before she realizes she can't harm this creature. The Knight of Justice instead backpedals, hefting Rose up into her arms as the danger of the battle gets more intense, leaping away from the creature's range, trusting that her comrades can handle the rest. "So this is what Love has been battling. Truly, a fearsome thing."
Angela	NORTH Nikki is probably not gonna make it to the teen in trouble before the battle is over but, to be fair, the alternative was shooting bullets at something that could control bullets. Her plan is to knock on her door and ask for help searching for a lost cat wile claiming to be a neighbor and, like, crying the whole time because she got Chevalier Love shot and feels like a big dummy. It might still happen! But whoof! That timing is just not gonna work out. Love meanwhile has fallen flat on her ass, eyes looking up at the sky, smiling because she managed to get that good hit in with Arcana Slave. Exhausted as she is, she can't avoid the second wave of shrapnel either, getting hit with thin chunks of metal across her body and getting flung back several feet, falling flat onto her back, bleeding heavily from numerous wounds. Her new Magical Girl Chevalier Outfit is wrecked and torn and a huge swath of that cape has been pincushioned. She whispers, "Kayoko-Chan...." She squints her eyes closed, charging magical energy through her staff, using everything else to maintain the illusion that she's a human being instead of a monster, or even halfway between. "Meika-Chan...." She places her hands down. Just a little more, she tells herself, just a little more... She manages to stand herself up, slowly, using that staff of hers as an impromptu cane. "All we ever did was cause you trouble, but you still gave us a home. A kingdom to fight for... Spent so much of your precious time with us..." She straightens, hissing through her teeth like a snake as she takes an unsteady aim at the Temptation. Heart shaped energy targeting reticles expand out from the Magical Staff, tears flowing down her cheek. "No more resets. ARCANA SLAVE!!" The energy blast isn't going to be as potent the first time, but it's still a hefty laser blast with all that Chevalier Love has left in it. As the blast is sent out, she promptly faceplants back into the ground, slowly bleeding out as humans do.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	Assuaged by the visible success of those repeated blasts of flame and magic, Ritsuka and Jeanne continue launching their respective attacks at the Temptation as they continue sprinting, leaping, and scrambling across everything around them just to keep themselves out of the way of those encroaching arms. Jeanne's the more graceful of the two by far, although she seems more inclined to revel in seeing how far those flames can go. Ritsuka, in contrast, looks like she's just pitching fastballs in-between throwing herself around the area, scrambling for every bit of cover and distance she can while Mash has to just grab and jump over things with her from time to time. Staying at range should be good enough, all things considered. Ritsuka's finding her groove with Mash covering her, Jeanne's more than comfortable with fighting at range just as she is at close range, and the Temptation could very well be destroyed before it can spread that damage too far. 'I'll- I'll get it done. You can count on me.' Individually, they all come to the same conclusion, and they converge on her all at once. Leaping towards Vermillion, Mash slams her shield into the ground as she takes up a position between the magical girl and the Temptation's lunging arm. Ritsuka lands/crashes just behind her, rolling briefly before casting some of that vaguely supporting magic on Vermillion to try and give her a little more juice to push through. Jeanne lands on top of Mash's shield, and her flag materializes in her free hand with the banner already burning a bright, yet unmistakeably evil-looking purple. "Deploying Noble Phantasm. Stay behind me!" "Stay with us, Vermillion. Count on your elders sometimes!" "Are the two of you even...? Tch. Whatever." Flames surge around Jeanne's flag and opposing arm as she raises her sword to the sky, contrasting sharply with the massive shield-like glyph appearing in the air in front of Mash and facing the Temptation. The shield shimmers as it strains to keep the Temptation's attack at bay with Mash and Ritsuka pouring so much energy into withstanding it at close range to buy time for everyone else to get their attacks in as well. "I wonder how angry that Sister will be once everyone outside sees this. If she asks about it, do tell her to eat shit." Jeanne cracks a wry grin as the flames lift upwards, revealing a whole mess of those spears she had been throwing around earlier, all of them openly flaming and floating in the sky far overhead. She draws her sword back across her shoulder, then swings it forward and points it at the Temptation. "La Grondement Du Haine!" All at once, the spears come raining down at the Temptation, around it, at its main body, at its arms, but largely converging on the thing itself with all those flames streaking behind each one of those spears. The spears burn brighter once they make contact, eventually culminating in great explosion.
Kayoko Kirenai	Kayoko doesn't have much hope that the illusory duplicate will tempt the Temptation, even before the attack. Even with as little as the Chevaliers actually know about how or why the Temptations function the way they do, the idea that vision is their primary motivator seems too silly and simple to be true. Most Temptations don't even have *eyes*, and they select their targets long before ever being close enough to see them.     The complete disregard that the Temptation has for it is still *weird*, though. It not only isn't *fooled*, but it doesn't even seem to register the illusory copy as being similar to its target at all-- and that immediately sends Kayoko's train of thought down wondering what qualities Temptations *do* notice. How they perceive civilians and magical girls, how they choose--     Kayoko clenches her fist and grits her teeth at the thought, struggling to grasp onto it and feeling sick as she tries. She *knows* the answer already. Temptations are accumulated sin, manifested as purely evil, purely destructive entities, but ultimately humanity's fault, so the targets they choose are--     With Ishirou's Option fueling her with magical energy, the value of Kayoko's mirage arena is able to demonstrate itself, even with the clone still formed outside of it. Each time that a scythe of debris is sucked inwards towards Kayoko, it passes through through, meters away from her actual location displaced from the mirror images. Sterile white light hardens into shimmering screens to deflect the rest, thudding against metal like concrete rather than the more appearance-appropriate sound of glass. Once it's proved ineffective, the clone of the girl from room 310 twists away into motes of light, joining back in to the flat cylinder arena around the Temptation.
Kayoko Kirenai	Seeing Love shear its arm off, it's easy to see that the Temptation is starting to flag. Teetering on the edge of the quarry, head angled down towards the monster but not really looking at it, Kayoko lets out an exhausted, choked-high whimper of a sigh. Five. The worst night we've had since.... The apartment building, zeroed in on room 310, and the office buildings surrounding that convenience store, snap into her vision. Headcounts, emergency routes, worst-dreaded estimations and preemptive panic are collected, then discarded, and the immediate response of relief is then overwhelmed by the vision-blurring frustration. 'Could have been worse' is no excuse to feel better when five *more* people are *dead*, Cobalt! . . . Futano Hayashi, Hana Yukimura, Hikari Nakagawa . . .     Chevalier Cobalt leaps down into the quarry, running along an outstretched block of stone. The Mirage Arena finally shrinks, peeling up off the ground and crushing itself inwards into an increasingly-blinding dense spear of white light, mirrored a few kilometers away with the southern Temptation. Cobalt leaps off the edge of the rock over the Temptation's head, grabbing on to the condensed light and plunging it downwards, piercing white-hot light through where its spinal column would be, if it weren't made of featureless, inhuman clay-flesh.     "What is it you *want*, you *horrible* thing! Why do you *hunt* people like you hate us, but can't even *recognize* us when you see one!" Greaves plants on its shoulders, spear still embedded in its back, Cobalt raises up Galatine with both hands for once. Hoarse, choked voice betraying her perfectly clear eyes, she hammers her sword into its head to emphasize each word, shearing off chunks of flesh. "Why *her*?! Why the *rec center*?! Why the *cashier* why * * why *anyone*?! What about *any* of this makes any *sense*?!"     The lower half of the Temptation is obliterated by the barrage of air pressure bombs, Rider Kicks, and Arcane Slave, while Kayoko buries Galatine hilt-deep in the whittled remains of its head. Halfway between hissing and crying, barely audible to anyone else, she still manages to choke out, "Cobalt Beam: Shatterspike Supernova," and the glowing white spear in its back explodes, shredding the rest of the Temptation into dust, incandescent before it vanishes.     Kayoko wobbles and coughs. She barely manages to keep herself standing, or in her armor, and maybe she doesn't, even. She turns towards the Elites and coughs again to clear her throat, her voice still thin and weak.     "Apologies. Thank you for the assistance, Chevaliers. Love. And, um," She glances at Touta, still not knowing his name. "Everyone else."
Hibiki Tachibana	Lilian had used 'always fighting like she wants to die' to describe Hibiki before, and she's not doing a lot to dispute that claim right now - even if the electromagnetic mess around this thing might not interfere with her Symphogear's more esoteric functions much, there's still the metal around her forearms and legs and otherwise to rip and wrench at. It's not like she didn't guess that could happen.     But her Symphogear can handle the stress-- and so can she, because of that. Even if every part of it cracks and strains under the invisible force, and the next pulse sent out makes the gauntlet she had just used spark and crackle from somewhere in its internals, she brings her arm back in and shifts her posture, physically powering through the resistance and the pain that comes with it. "Just a little bit more, Gungnir..."     She only waits long enough for Ishirou to pass on his data - and then she's launching forward at full blast and full thrust, choosing to handle the incoming waves of attacks by outspeeding them, closing in towards the Temptation faster than it recall its flood of shrapnel back in. 'I'll step forward with a bang! (Burnin'!)     And turn today (Burnin'!) into the spark (Burnin'!)         That lights up tomorrow...! Living on so I won't             Regret the choices that I make (Live now, live now!)'     Right into the opening at full speed, with her other arm primed back this time. Why is she trying so hard right now in particular...? Because Lilian went out of her way to set her straight? Because she wants to take some of the burden off of Meika and Kayoko in the only way she's good at? Because she doesn't want these things to cause any more tragedy? ...The feeling of having things to make up for?     Maybe it's not any one more than another. But this is what she wants to do with all her heart behind it, so she can give it her all. Thus, maybe it doesn't matter. 'I'm still (Blazin'!) grasping for (Blazin'!)     The answer (Blazin'!) that connects us--'     Grating against the Temptation's influence, her still-working pilebunker attempts to pull back...and Hibiki tugs it back with her hand when it refuses to give, the budding energy from her singing filling the gap left behind with golden light. It races through the machinery, and her clenched fist, brimming with strength--     And slams a punch into the Temptation's clay-like body. An split-second after, the piston hammers back forward. 'To understand what it really means--     I'll continue my journey, with the wind pushing at my back!'     To blow a gaping hole right into the center of its body that sends flooded water and loose stone behind it scattering in all directions--and carry her through it on sheer momentum, where she messily staggers and stumbles on the wet slope of the quarry before catching herself on a knee rather than her face, while the rest of the combined assault batters the monster behind her.     She's once again, just like back at the ruined sports center, breathing harder than she probably should be.
Touta Konoe	At this point, the battle is all but won. The accumulation of the Elites provide an unyielding volley of attacks against the Temptation within the quarry that simply can not and will not be ignored. The efforts of all those in this moment shining through. Love's passion for the Chevalier's shaving away at the monstrosity's arm, after Ishirou's OPTIONs not only work working to wrestle some of the debris and shrapnel away from the cloud, but even still offering its support to the rest there. Kale's pressure bomb bringing the beast to its knees, and then of course Hibiki's fists filled with determination and resolve. Even when pushed through the debris, as it'd attempt to sheer through her, she stands strong to finish through.     Still, the Temptation tries for one final strike as shrapnel from outside the fog pulls in, and because of it...It's likely that no one will even see it coming as they come in without warning. All the same, no one deters. Kayoko's Mirage Arena goes from a veiling barrier, into one intended to full constrain.It allows for the onslaught of strikes that lead to the obliteration of its lower half, and then the support of Ishirou to Hibiki for her final strike, and Kayoko's spear attempts to impale it through the back on the other side.     Touta too is just about to land one more blow as if to make sure there's no doubts that this inhuman thing will perish, though what he sees is something much more painful than the injuries inflicted upon the monster. He watches as Kayoko begins to cleave into the beast with Galatine crying out her questions. The 'Why' and 'What's that will never be answered...     There's likely not much left of the Temptation by the time Touta even has a chance to put in a final blow, its body likely ready to fade into the aether. And yet...He finally pulls out his blade from the kendo bag for the first and simply severs what little is left of its head from its body before the white spear within its back erupts.     As far as things go, the fight's over. The temptation was thwarted. Yet the one who lives in this world clearly sees more defeat than anyone. Even as she looks to give some level of thanks. She looks tired, weak, mortified. Yet she still chooses to apologize to them?     Even going as far as thanks, though she doesn't even know his name. From the time she spoke before there's already thoughts going on in his head about how she really feels about all this. That for her there's nothing really thankful about this...     "Touta...You can just call me, Touta...We did a number on the quarry still...So I'll keep up the fog for a little bit. I'll hold it till someone can come along and handle try to make it look like it was before..."" He imagines his name, or the collateral damage is the last thing on her mind right now. Still, in the aftermath it seems that's the best thing he can do. That said, there's another question after all this he finds himself asking for better or worse.     "Hey...What ends up being told to people when this happens? You said this happens nearly every night, right? So..." This was the same person who seemed to have known very little about temptations. At the very least though, he seems to earnestly want to know more now at least. It's likely not an easy topic, but he tries to be respectful all things considered but even he admits that when one stops to think about it, there's definitely unpleasant thoughts coming to mind. Even now, he thinks back to the mention of the altering of memories and well...It makes him question going any further. If he should ask for the names of those that were lost. No, even if it wasn't the case... "..." He tries to speak for a moment but then opens his lips again. "If it's alright...Even if we're not part of this world, would we be allowed to pay respects at some point?" At the very least, they should probably be apologizing a bit too for showing up late.
Lilian Rook	'You can count on me.'     "I believe you."     . . .     The Temptation staggers backwards, and Lilian is there first; as always. Hers. First. Fastest. You go where I tell you. You do what I let you. Don't skip my turn. Lines of searing heat glow in shallow grazes down the road where she cuts behind the Temptation again, then where a cacophany of spears clatters off the frenzied motions of her sword and stab into the ground. Crossing slashes pass over the monsters shadow as it gets close enough to crawl up a building wall, a third raking along its side as Lilian lunges zigzag around the corner and back out the other side.     The lunge is faster, but still too predictable. Too linear. Lilian launches herself upwards again, passing in front of the lamps, then directly between the vertical light of Kayoko's and the Temptation, casting her own shadow over its back like a targeting laser; a promise of imminent, invisibly swift death.     §Ah. But she's done. So I may as well . . .§     Lilian snaps her fingers. How she does so in gauntlets, even that impossibly slim-fitted, is a mystery, but the glassy crack is instinctively recognizable as just that gesture. Like double tapping a detonator, a black-gold spark sizzles off into the night, and just in time for Meika to skate away, the complete circle of planted runestones flare in shades of molten starlight. A single revolution of magic pulses between them, clockwise-tracing a thirty meter radius circle in the blink of an eye, and then twelve equidistant points explode in towards its center. Narrow-angled detonations of elemental solar fire tear through side-alleys and parking lots, each buckshot-fan of flame striking the Temptation at the terminal width of a car, pouring over its body, flowing together, and crashing up skywards like striking waves.     Lilian knows what's done before it actually happens, of course; as always. Fist. Fastest. Hers. My turn again. She's beside Meika, gently palming the carry case out of her hands, reattaching it to her belt, and laying her hand on her shoulder with a reassuring squeeze, all at once. In a moment, she's already across town, next to the quarry, carefully setting down Meika in plain view of Kayoko, and storming across the field. She absentmindedly pushes her fingers through her hair as she walks, flicking Night Mist to spew dissolving clay across the ground.     "Confirming termination of secondary Temptation. As you can see, Chevalier Vermillion is unharmed. Now . . ."     Lilian hesitates, oddly. She nakedly scans the area with her gaze, biting just the inner corner of her lower lip in thought. "I thought I'd . . ." she begins to say, glancing at Kayoko, then back again. "The first target. That girl. She was just here, wasn't she? I don't think I'd normally have missed something like that, even from this distance." She looks back to Kayoko more intently. Interrogatively. "Chevalier Cobalt. You--"     Lilian fails to check her up and down a second time. She looks into Kayoko's face instead, and the younger sister's magical vision is what it takes to see the unnatural place her eyes come into focus; the way they don't saccade in any meaningful way, frighteningly fixed on what they meant to see in the first place. The older girl breathes in as if she's already getting ready to say something very uncomfortable, but necessary for Kayoko's own good.
Lilian Rook	"--worked very hard, tonight." Lilian says. "So, thank you. For that, and for being able to turn to adults when you needed it." Lilian closes her eyes. Her voice quiets, words spoken softly. "Thank you for trusting me with your sister, and, thank you for coming back safely." she breathes. "It won't be this hard forever. I know that some of us don't appreciate you enough, but I know you can do it."     The creeping tension in Lilian's voice, followed by the dread whisper of its release, makes it not too hard to fathom why she'd choose then to close the four steps of distance between them and tightly hug Kayoko around the shoulders. How could she not? Children had died tonight. Even the Dame Commander must feel something at that. Seeing Kayoko putting on such a brave show must be a relief. Or maybe she's a little worried in spite of herself. Kayoko is obviously fine, as always, but Lilian is old enough to be her big sister, so perhaps it's only natural that she'd squeeze a battered magical girl with such palpable concern; all gentle consolation and slow-abating regret.     All the cold-bleach glare of Mirage Arena couldn't make that armour feel any different. Hard like metal, smooth like glass, but giving like soft plastic, and radiantly warm like bare skin. Being hesitantly squeezed, like a recently missing friend, and not carried as an injured combatant, Kayoko can feel Lilian's combat-heightened pulse under the denuded armour over her heart; through a mere centimeter of pseudo-gambeson; directly against her collar. She can follow it slowing with her deliberately calming breathing. She can feel just how delicate those arms are being with her, to hold her only as a troubled junior who seems like she needs it, and imagine how much stronger they could be. She's so close she can smell perfume, mingled with recent perspiration; natural hints of cherry and clover and holly beneath--     Two and a half seconds is as long as it lasts. Lilian releases Kayoko, hands on her shoulders, looks at her straight on, one more time, and then resumes walking. "Treatment for Vermillion's leg. I assume that's taken care of by the Refulgence? Shall I be returning you to the church, or to school?" No, no. No. It's all business. Of course it is.
Meika Kirenai	North.     As the Temptation falters and staggers, clawing out at the quarry walls under the pressure of continued assault, gauging rocks free to fall across the muddy pond bank it's stumbled its way to, pelted and carved at by echoing blows and sky-brightening lasers. Hibiki's charge, guided by Ishirou, even as he struggles to stay airborn from the turbulent ebb and flow of the Temptation's lingering powers, cracks the monster against the quarry wall for it to fall to its knees in a spray of quickly-fading dust. She carries through, finding a rest on the slopes, as the circling Elites aim to finish the ordeal.     Kayoko's condensed spearpoint of light cuts through the Temptation's not-flesh, softened as it is from the continuous peppering of blows. She knows the familiar impact by heart, as clay shears away to dust. That it's the last thing on her mind as she screams at the fading monster, brutalizing its head as if it could answer her, as if it could suffer, as if it could give any sort of closure, or even look her way in hateful recognition. Dying as it is, the Temptation doesn't even strike at her before she gives up on prolonging its execution.     Not even dust remains of it. Just scant blocks away, the resident of 310 yawns, peacefully oblivious.
Meika Kirenai	South.     Justice's sudden appearance, and determined defense of the L-corp agents, pushes Vermillion to accidentally let slip a hoarse, whooping shout. It's not joy, in a moment like this, the air around these annihilated streets, cars, yards, and homes holds far too much guilt for joy. It's closer to just momentary release from staring only the adrenaline-fueled lingering dread in the face. They'll be okay.. Carol and Rose's evacuation, despine injuries to them and Justice, will always be better than more names on the list.     Her hockey stick drops from her hand, sometime in the circle placement, and she doesn't seem to notice. Skirting by a low wall, torn in half by the Temptation's earlier passive motions, the hand she held it in f-f-flickers as it intersects the boundary of cracked bricks and passes through them, and she doesn't seem to notice. She's not going quite fast enough for her motion to carry the faint, subtle outline smears it seems to anyways, her streaming ribbons taking on almost the same appearance, for a second, as the ringing red trail her skate does. It's all she can do to give everything for the tasks at hand, no matter how much that is, right? If the pain from twisted bone pins and the reopening of old wounds is something to bear to see this through, even in as small a way she still can, it's only fair.     Spears that fly down from above get catapulted towards the ground just beneath and around the Temptation, offering nearly as minimal colateral risk as possible when delivering those searing flames. That which does chip off and fly danger-close to the Elites, and ensuing neighborhood, is something Mash's shield interception can bear the brunt of, straining as it and its weilder may be. Woz's bloom of energy mixes with the catastrophic flames to sear eyes like the sun does, and like the collapsing vestige of the mirage arena does as it joins the array of spears.     A fine dust filters into and fades the still-disrupted cloud of rubble hanging in the air, as the grounded Temptations's flesh starts to give way in droves. Still, from where it lays, it tries to eerily-quietly push its way upright again. The damage to its limbs, its torso, the ground beneath it, don't come with indication of pain, and where chunks are missing, motion in the limbs still functions, no bones nor muscles need support the clay-like mass.     Bad move. Lilian's prepared runes sear bright to replace the glow of Kayoko's arena, a pyre to eradicate the Temptation in searing certainty. The flash is visible, cast across the surrounding foothills and neighborhoods, off closed windows and polished cars, off the scant clouds in the night sky. This, too, leaves nothing, not even dust, left of the monstrosity.     Rubble, trenches, collapsed masonry. It's hard to imagine, looking at it, what might fill the gaps, but hauntingly certain something will. The damaged canal, blocks back, visible through the gouged trail, reflects the flickering, dated streetlights just as it did before tonight, just as it will tomorrow, and none will know what happened here on these streets beneath their vigil.
Meika Kirenai	The Quarry, Afterwards.     In the ear-ringing rush, Vermillion reacts, instinctively, and always just too slow, to Lilian's actions around the retrieval of her carry case. The hand she'd held it in makes to clench, fearing she'd dropped it- then, at the shoulder squeeze, her back stiffens and a hand nearly reaches up to- it's flat against a concrete barricade she's been placed down on, her injured leg with no weight on it, and the hollow wrongness of being unable to cling tightly to the arms that had set her down so far away. Even still, she mumbles out a hushed "Thank you", not certain if she's heard. Quietly, she sits there, eyes fixing on the ground, the wet dirt and sparse grass. Her eyes don't close at all, as she starts to notice the chest-tightening exhaustion she's been feeling for too long.     A moment later, as she listens, eavesdropping on the conversation her sister and the Dame Commander are having halfway across the quarry, Vermillion's fidgeting fingers go to the scraps of index cards hastily shoved in her pockets, and a ground-down stub of a pencil to scrawl on them with. Putting lead to paper, to mark down the names Cobalt had managed to call out, back in the rec center, scrounged from IDs in wallets and name-tagged clothing, Vermillion's hand twitches. She's not looking at the way Lilian stands or hoists the other knight up, but echoing sounds shape action out clear enough, to her, and graphite skips across the shreds to the beat of her breath hitch.     Her heel- the one of her bad leg -taps against the barricade, drowning out the echoes in her ears with its metallic ringing, and her thoughts with the searing flash of pain it brings, recentering herself on that final, familiar task of record-keeping. They come first. Stay focused. You owe them that for letting this happen. You owe them more. Don't let yourself forget that, Vermillion. Her heel taps once more, and the pencil starts to move.