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Angela Angela needs a fair amount of time to restart the Warpgate. It is a complicated technological device classified as an Abnormality Tool (hench its presence in its own Cell). She doesn't have a precise timeline but says it'll take about a day due to the energy surge from Tiphereth's Meltdown further complicating matters.

But in the meanwhile she has expressed her gratitude to the Outsiders who helped the facility get past a challenge that she hadn't ever surpassed. The facility has cleaned up the other Sinners--more awkwardly was cleaning up the Tiphereth B bodies but Tiphereth A ... Well, just Tiphereth really took charge of this but her insistence of treating the bodies with some kind of dignity which made the work slower going--but she doesn't seem to be clingy to the bodies anymore so that's a plus. Angela approaches her, her gaze distant as she operates several aspects of the facility while half the Sephirah haven't recovered yet.

"Tiphereth..."

"Save it," Tiphereth says. "...I need time. We can talk about it later."

Angela closes her eyes and takes a moment and then says, "Understood. ... Understood."

She leaves Tiphereth be, and but heads off after to be alone on her to check on the King of Greed, still in stasis in her cell. She is a little unready to speak to others because of a slew of emotions she never expected to have and is struggling to keep under control, more visibly than ever--which is not very visible, but it is something.

The Upper Sephirah are gradually coming back online throughout the day. Malkuth has been taking her time to thank the Control Team for their hard work, Yesod has been guiding the Information Team in restoring the Warpgate with Tiphereth's support and Hod's been reviewing the video footage of the battle to try and update Training materials to better incorporate Outsider assistance in the future. Netzach is high off his ass but that's normal. The facility has been focusing on the Warpgate, not wanting to keep everyone within for any longer--they have their own lives to get back to after all! Gradually, normalcy returns. Calm returns. Cinder and Yuri meet back up and congratulate Petra on another mission well done. Meals are provided by the cafeteria ranging from vending machine snacks and cafeteria style food with many of the usual staples. There is a full shift change as Agents that were fighting earlier go off to sleep while another set come back to help finalize the Warp Gate activation.
Petra Soroka     Indigo Noon did a number on the facility, and in more ways than the body count (metaphorical; the red slush is uncountable) and physical destruction (gouges in walls, destroyed furniture, scorch marks). There are always more tables to retrieve from storage, if the cafeteria in Welfare Department happens to get smashed around from a particularly nasty breach; it happens fairly regularly after all, and people always need to eat.

    No, the real damage is the *stench*. Even though the metal armor of the Sweepers vanished shortly after the Ordeal ended-- who knows what's up with *that*-- each one crushed or cut or exploded drained out their entire body-plus-tank-volume of rancid liquid gunk. Soaked into carpets, into the banners on the walls of Central Command, into corners and stone and clothes, it's like the concentrated aroma of heated roadkill with a light overtone of rotting kelp and sea slime. In other words, the cafeteria is unusable, because even the *idea* of eating with the smell of Sweeper and bleach humid and heavy on the back of your throat is intolerable.

    Control Department, blissfully, was mostly spared of the Sweepers, being as far from Central Command as anywhere can get. Petra continues her trend of picking up interactable items in the facility and moving them somewhere else, by relocating folding tables up to the Control main chamber, outside where the Warpgate is contained, rather than by stealing a treadmill from the gym. Now, similarly to when Petra's birthday party was set up but with Hibiki outside of her cage this time, tables with festive Halloween (it's what they have leftover) tablecloth, spread out with mostly eaten food and dirty plates stacked up, is what's left of the celebratory meal for all the exhausted Elites before finally heading out.

    This is now the *fourth* time that Petra's set up dining arrangements inside the facility for an outside group, and while scurrying around and directing other agents to furnish it all, she was seen fretting a bit about how they really ought to just have bespoke furniture stored somewhere for this. Instead there's just folding chairs and folding tables, arranged under the soft brown lights and glowing green screens of the Control chamber. There's just a few minutes left until the Artificial Warpgate is up and running again, a task Petra has been helping with on and off-- maybe even enlisting Dysnomia's help, if Mia volunteered that she's experienced with warpgate tech, since of course Petra wouldn't remember on her own.

    Petra sits backwards on her folding chair, not too inclined to take the initiative to clean up early. She's tired, who can blame her. She folds her hands together on the back of her chair, resting her chin on them and staring at the mostly-green panel beside the Warpgate's cell door.

    "It's kind of... something, to know that this is the farthest the Seed of Light's ever gotten. Like, cool, on one hand, proof that we're totally making it better than before, and we're built different and it's not impossible. But it's also... a little scary, I guess. Not that I think we'll fuck it up. Netzach's basically a victory lap, Angela says, so we'll be back to normal for a bit."

    
Kukuru LAST TIME
Kukuru had tea with Laetitia, eat tasty treats with crunchy surprises inside, lounged around on the floor like a sleepy loaf, and put her foot down (gently) because mud is a sometimes food and not everyone feeds off soil like plant people do.

NOW
After finishing up with her work with Laetitia and receiving a nice gift of a cute glowing heart floating nearby for what little trouble that even was for her, Kukuru gets right back to work helping to put things back together. She might not know anything about repairing the facility, but she knows how to treat the dead properly, and she helps with cleaning up those Tiphereth B bodies according to any and all instructions given to her by Tiphereth A. Then there's cleaning up what's left of the Agents or Clerks that were sucked up by the Cleaners, the mess left by the cleaners, moving furniture, getting meals prepared for everyone, cleaning plates so they can be actually be used for those meals...

Kukuru doesn't have nearly enough energy to help with all of that, but she can at least help with moving more non-corpse stuff and preparing food, too. By the time she's finally done, she looks just as tired as she did after all the fighting against the sweepers, and Kukuru nearly falls onto Petra as she steps closer to give her a light pat on the back.

"We did good. We helped Tiphy, we're helping build this Seed thingy so the corporation can finish... Um. All of this." Kukuru encourages, clearly not grasping what 'all of this' actually entails, but still smiling pleasantly with only one eye half-open anyway. "We're all in this together, yeah? The sooner its' done, the sooner Angie'll be done with all this, too, and then we can take her all over to see everything she wants to."

Still in high spirits despite looking ready to pass out (and yawning constantly), Kukuru looks around slowly before finally pursing her lips in tired contemplation. "Where is Angie, anyway...?"
Ishirou Ishirou is taking a break in the makeshift dining area Petra has set up, sitting down with something to eat and drink.  He's exhausted, his body already pushed to its limits from the fight with the Queen at Rita's home, and then the Meltdown.  He's just glad it was ended, and things turned out a lot better than expected.  He was also glad the Manager didn't look away.  Though, he thinks Tamamo and Hibiki did more there than he did.  

He wants to doze off but knows it's probably a poor idea to doze off within stabbing distance of Petra, so instead has decides to get another drink and sip on it while people talk.  He takes a breath, as Petra seems to stir up some conversation.  Ishirou isn't sure if he should contribute to it at all, given their history together.

However, after a few moments, he does say something, "It's nice that Lobotomy Corp is closer than it has ever gotten..." a pause, as Kukuru asks where Angela is, "I don't know, I think I saw her heading down towards Tiphereth but I don't know where she went after that..." Ishirou says, shaking his head.  
Rena The body count in places Rena keeps finding herself is getting really disturbing.

This isn't the first time she's survived a massacre and she finds herself as uncomfortable (if that's the right word) as the last time she did. There were more people killed here than live in the entire town she came here from, and while Mado is a small village, that doesn't really make it *better*.

Rena is the kind of person who avoids freaking out by forcing herself to do things - real, physical things that don't let her dwell on it. In this case that was bandaging, making sure the ragged edge of her coat wasn't going to tear, then checking over all her weapons, and then, well -

She volunteered to help Tiphereth, too. And if she doesn't want the help, there's always other work. Rena is not terribly familiar with the tech in the artificial warpgate but she clearly wants to be, given how she hangs around and occasionally asks pointed mechanical questions, mostly on the practical aspects of how to run it.

"I figured she had stuff to do, given everything," Rena says. She hadn't seen Angela either, after all. Rena opens a bottle of water she'd been hanging onto, absently taking a long swig from it. "This place is more than a little complicated." Which is an understatement if she's ever said one.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine has to be half-dragged out of the Snow Queen's containment chamber at first, but is back on her feet after an hour or so. One decontamination shower later, she's... not right as rain, exactly, but at least vaguely presentable. It's not clear how she got her clothes laundered so quickly, though. Torrie is rather worse for wear; she does not share Madeleine's regenerative capacity, and is consequently covered in bloodied bandages, some of them improvised.

    After a heaping plate from the makeshift salad bar the minotaur is appreciating the chance to sit down, even if the folding chair does creak under her weight. The huntress's spear tries to get some shuteye, but the noise seems to be too much for sleep seeing as it has returned to lazily surveying the other Elites. Madeleine herself spends a minute or two inspecting the ostensibly-Swedish meatballs from the hot bar before trying one at last and finding the taste largely agreeable. She nods in approval and digs in.
Aidan Proudpick "A day?" Aidan lets out a little groan. It could be worse. He's not nearly dead this time and at the mercy of the East Wind, a prospect that barely let him sleep while recovering. And he brought food! He does not trust Kukuru or cafeteria food. Maybe a salad.

The natural inclination to help rises up. To do something, rather than just sit around. But there is a healthy amount of respect and fear for the Facility. Thus, Aidan sticks to Control. Petra gets a sincere but short "Thanks," from Aidan, as the chairs are brought out. Just enough to show his appreciation, but hopefully not enough to draw her ire. It gives him a place to apply an emergency bandage to the flesh wound on his side. "Don't even know why I wear this stuff when everything can just cut right through it." He firmly presses it down, then wraps it with ENTIRELY too much self adhesive wrapping before leaning over to bite through it.

Realizing it's at least in poor taste to NOT take some of the food offered, he does, at least, acquire a salad and coffee. And a bit away from Kukuru with a sheepish smile. He isn't sure she wouldn't serve him some sort of salad entirely cast in meat. His own sack lunch, in a plain hemp bag, consists of a terribly dry meal. Unsalted, unroasted peanuts, a brick of compressed chia seed, and some shriveled creminis tumble out onto the table next to his salad. Making it last means picking at the fare in front of him and sipping coffee.

It feels... better than usual. He has time to put down his moment of crisis in front of the Judgment Bird, sweep it under the rug. Time to just watch the monitors, watch Angela and Tiphereth. To grimace at it. "There has to be a better way to do all this..." he mutters to himself, popping another cremini into his mouth. A little turn over towards Rena, "Hopefully she gets a chance to... I don't know, do something. It has to be hard to be her every second of every day."
Dysnomia     "I called it a great filter. I meant it." Mia had closed the helmet of her suit, shortly after the meltdown finished, savoring the sweet, sweet processed air, and sparing everyone around her a look at her face while they tried to work up an appetite. Her voice came out distorted, half-synthesized.

    "But, it is troubling too, I guess. You know what the unbreakable barriers were. The things that could never be beaten." She doesn't touch the food herself, standing back, leaning against the wall by the warpgate her hands sliding expertly over it. Warpgates had never been her specialty, but people needed them so frequently out here, she found herself meddling with them again and again. "Even an unassailable entrenchment is at least familiar, if you've fought over the land before."

    "Sometimes when you pass a threat by, it just means you don't know the shape of what's next." True for everyone, but especially Angela as far as Mia knew, trapped in this endless loop. "I guess it's lucky we have competent people to handle it."
Timespace Riders      Woz and Sougo, waiting for the warpgate's return to functionality, have gone to the cafeteria. Sougo does have to restrain Woz with a gentle tug at his scarf, to keep him from going into the kitchen and helping. The two are seated beside each other; and they have been for about thirty seconds, before they each come to the same realization, sharing a glance between each other.

     There is simply not going to be any eating, with that stench--not through power of will, not even with the power of clothespins.

     Sougo's head hangs dejectedly as if the life had left him. "How can they call themselves Sweepers when the place looks and smells ten times worse..."

     "Fret not, my Demon King. I do believe I saw Petra ferrying tables and supplies--perhaps we need not wait until the gate is active again."

     Fleeing from the cafeteria to the Control chamber, the two are quite relieved to see that Woz's guess is correct, each taking a seat.

But it's also... a little scary, I guess. Not that I think we'll fuck it up. Netzach's basically a victory lap, Angela says, so we'll be back to normal for a bit.

     "Uncertainty often is," says Woz. "I have come to learn..." He purses his lips thoughtfully. "Not that it is 'necessary,' per se, but that the desire to be free of it can be as harmful as one's worst imaginings. I share your fears--but also, your faith."

     Sougo smiles, tiredly. "Yeah. I know that we still have a ways to go... and I know that a lot of good people didn't make it. But it's nice to know that as hard as everything has been, we're making progress. That it's, um... been in service of something, even before it's 'done.' You know?"
Hibiki Tachibana     There are plenty of things that might be asked of Angela in the wake of all of that, from legitimate concerns to just how she must be feeling when they've reached a point that's never been reached in the facility before, but it's no surprise she needs her space. If anyone intrudes on that, it won't be Hibiki, least of all while she's off doing who knows what.

    That said, she also doesn't seem to have a very good idea of what to do with herself while they're stuck in L Corp for the duration of the Warpgate reactivation. Winding down from the death and chaos of a Meltdown isn't exactly easy, doubly as much when they have a whole host of Elites in the place and the shadow of what lies in the future still feels like a heavy pall weighing onto things. An overwhelming sense of 'this isn't finished', sitting next to the relief that they were able to help Tiphereth, and by extension, Angela as well.

    Some of the time was spent with Rose, making sure she's doing alright after having to go through a fight like that while blinded. She made sure to check in with Carol while she was at it. After the Agent shifts swapped out, she thought about offering to help with the clean-up just to make herself useful - and because staying busy beats doing nothing and stewing in her thoughts, even if she's sore like no tomorrow - but the stench of Sweeper goop and the passive atmosphere of demise was way, way too much to handle even if she bundled Gungnir's scarf up in layers.

    Right now, Hibiki is patently /not/ in a seat in Control.

    She's standing. Against a wall. With a cup of what's probably some kind of juice, far enough away from the scrabbled-together tables that you'd have to turn to look to her, but not far enough away that she can't overhear conversation. Just like those taverns where somehow everyone has their own dark corner to brood in. Beats a cage.

    "...Tiphereth faced the future, and the Manager held it together too, huh. For the first time." Although rather than broody, she sounds like she's just tiredly thinking to herself and replying to Petra's comment at the same time. After a few seconds, she simply adds on, "Yeah. Place is really complicated," she agrees with Rena. Her thoughts go to Rose's desire for an ordinary life, the clerks throwing themselves into the metaphorical grinder, the situation of the Magical Girls...

    "...I don't like it very much."
UFO Gang Minamitsu Murasa had reacted to the thanks from Angela and Tiphereth with a couple of seconds of a glassy-eyed stare -- and then snapped back, beaming and giving a thumbs-up. "I'm glad we helped!!"

Nazrin also meandered back into the general area, having completed some task. Or other. Nazrin seems to look smug rather than concerned, but this may be the nature of this mouse-youkai's trot.

Both of them took the food offering.

"So what is this Seed of Light thingy anyway?" Minamitsu asks Petra as she eats Food from a tray with a spoon or other appropriate eating utensil. But then Kukuru's continuing. "... Huh!"

"So this entire place isn't even complete yet?" Nazrin comments.

"Armor's pretty tricky," Minamitsu says to Aidan with something like sympathy. "I figure it all depends on what you expect to run into. In a place like this, I don't even know how you'd do it."

Nazrin's Space Fun Helmet remains silent on the matter.

"So stuff has happened before this, but it didn't get any further than this, right? An' it had to do with the experiences Miss Tiphereth had which had overwhelmed her with suffering," Minamitsu says to Hibiki afterwards. She also looks to Rena. "Do I have that right?"

Neither of these two characters have explained a single thing about their presence, but this may or may not be a 'red flag' for the viewers at home.
Rena Rena also doesn't like it very much, but she said that already and doesn't feel like repeating herself.

"You're probably better off getting an explanation from someone else than me," Rena admits to Minamitsu. The presence of Minamitsu isn't suspicious because she doesn't know half the people here anyway or who's been here before. "I've only said a few words to this Tiphereth." She'd spoken to the boy a little longer, but Tiphereth A had only shown up near the end of that conversation. "...He wasn't well, even then. I'm just hoping things go a little better from now on."

Rena reaches into her coat and comes out with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She doesn't smoke much, but she pulls one out now... and then tucks it away again without lighting it, breathing out a short puff that stirs her hair. She probably shouldn't light it around the warpgate any more than she'd smoke while working on an engine.
Hibiki Tachibana     "...That's how I understand it, at least. I'm not really the person to ask about basically anything, but..." Hibiki comments back to Minamitsu, who she certainly does not question the presence of. That might be one quarter tiredness, three quarter simply not finding it that important to ask. She's good friends with one pirate already, who also happens to be aroun, so even the get-up doesn't hit her as weird in the least.

    "All the Sephirah, like Tiphereth, have a lot of emotions that needs resolving. ...And a lot of it has to do with the Manager. Things he's done." There's a drawn-out exhale after a second, glancing to the side away from her cup.

    "...But having to go through things like this to do it, every time..."
Kukuru "Did she? Must've missed her, then..." Kukuru replies to Ishirou with a slow nod, rubbing her closed eye with her sleeve and covering her mouth to mask another loud yawn rather terribly. "Mm.. Yeah, you're probably right. Even when Angie and the Manager and Petra make it sound easy..."

She trails off, nodding lightly after Rena's and Hibiki's comments. "It's complicated, yeah. But.. I guess it has to be, to handle everything that happens. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't hard, right? But... We'll be okay, however long it takes to get this Seed thing done." Once again, she's still a little clueless on the purpose of the Seed, and she looks to Petra for answers alongside Minamitsu.

She also doesn't notice Aidan shying away from the food she's brought out. Today's stuff-she-prepared-yesterday-and-reheated-today: Mushroom gravy on dry aged steaks, homemade apple jelly donuts, and little baggies full of crumbled bacon.

Mia gets a light nod in turn as she comments on competent people. "Even with the complicated stuff... We're pulling through. We just gotta get to that... Um. Yeah, what Sougo said. We need to get it all done, so nobody else has to get hurt on the way."
Petra Soroka "This place is more than a little complicated."

    Petra rolls her eyes, tipping her chair forwards and back to balance on just two of its legs. "Truly, it's the first time an Elite has ever had to deal with a situation more complicated than punching a big monster or an evil guy. Therapy? Guidelines? Long term projects? Oh my god, you're even forced to deal with *rules* here. The--" She glances over Rena's whole vibe, assessing something in an instant. "-- Watch never trained you for something like that."

    The soda in her cup is almost flat at this point, but she takes a sip of it anyways. "Jesus. I mean, Hook did the hardest work, anyways. Specifically because he didn't think of it as complicated. It's not really that complicated to just see what the people right in front of you need, and then do it."

    The flatly exhausted tone of her voice doesn't change even as she shifts into more positive words. Hibiki's input probably has something to do with that, but this entire time, Petra hasn't looked over at her. She hasn't pulled out her mirror either, instead relying solely on her utility belt of weaponry. "... Not that it really matters if you hate it or not. I'm still, like, glad you all helped. The whining's fine as long as you help Angela."

"I share your fears--but also, your faith."
"That it's, um... been in service of something, even before it's 'done.' You know?"

    Petra's head droops down and she closes her eyes, slouching over the back of her chair. That's agreement and appreciation, probably. She's not in her EGO gear anymore-- Petra lives here about a third of the time, so she's got a set of clothes in her locker down by the dorms, and is plenty familiar with the routine of the laundry rooms. Song of a Star was drenched in Sweeper gunk, and her transteam gun is still in Cinder's room, though the Silver FullBottle is strapped to the belt on her hip. She's got a flannel jacket on rather than her bomber, which is rare to the point of near unbelievability. She doesn't get up to move when the warpgate gets close to finished; presumably, she plans on finishing stuff up here after the Elites leave.

Once again, she's still a little clueless on the purpose of the Seed, and she looks to Petra for answers alongside Minamitsu.

    She halfway shrugs, exhaustedly low energy. She doesn't actually know what the Seed of Light is about-- or she's not willing to tell people. "Angela's trapped here until L-Corp's thing is done. That's all that really matters."
Meika Kirenai @emit ''Netzach's basically a victory lap, Angela says, so we'll be back to normal for a bit.''

"Yeah that's fair." Netzach says. "To getting it over with and being a victory lap!" He raises a can up of bear brand beer before guzzling down his chute. "Huzzah!"

Several Agents 'Huzzah!' in response. He pours an unhealthy amount of Enkephalin down his chute and he waddles off probably to doze off and feel himself melting into the floor.

The Agents don't seem to understand too much about what the Seed of Light is--free energy seems to be the prevailing opinion but others who are more in the know are quieter about it. Some Outsiders know the true purpose of the facility, but it's not exactly something people advertise on a whim.

Where IS Angie?

She's having a small panic attack in Central, feeling like an idiot since she's supposed to be happy. She knows where to go so cameras don't spot her and because she controls the facility cameras, she can just tell them to look elsewhere even if she doesn't bother. She knows every nook and cranny of this place like the back of her hand except better because she doesn't look at the back of her hand that often. She just needs to find the right words. She doesn't have to be perfect but she has to find the right words. Being farther ahead than before brings hope to the facility, but how does she handle this? She is so accustomed to the same old that she isn't sure what to do about this change of fate. Dysnomia, in other words, has it in one.

Yuri sits down near Madeleine, now appropriately fascinated with her considering how she took down the Snow Queen. "Hey, do you mind if I sit here?" Cinder joins shortly after on the other side. "Yeah heard you kicked some serious ass there." She grins. "Yuri barely made it back to the fighting in time."

"I had the important mission of getting Angela comfy." She says.

''I don't like it very much.''

There is a murmur of agreement from the Agents but Nonon shouts about it being kind of a downer thing to say on victory day and they're back to laughing with one another in no time--but suffice it to say the Agents are also struggling. The Agents don't seem to mind random youkai showing up either at this point but that might be because of the commonality of folks busting in to lend a hand at this point (relying on Outsider assistance is facility policy at this point even if the Training Updates are still on the way.)
Meika Kirenai @emit Angela eventually returns to Control. She mimics taking a breath as she sees everyone. Cinder shouts 'There she is!' and she raises a hand to hush her before it gets out of hand. "You told me not to doubt you but ... Well, Perhaps I ''have'' been overly pessimistic. In some ways I was more worried about this challenge than Gebura, even, since I know how capable you are all in battle. But we've made it to a 40 Percent Generation on the Seed of Light but you can likely count on it being 50 or 60 soon. At that point the process may proceed...very quickly but I can only guess at so much from here." Being helped this much by Outsiders has now made Angela feel worried she is taking too much from them, not pulling her own weight as a hopefully one-day-to-be-multiversal entity. She bows her head and adds, "We will keep the Warpgate open until you've all returned home but it may be some time before we can open it again. If Chevalier Vermilion comes here, you'll be the first to know. And if she appears elsewhere, we will help in her recovery."

There is some uneasiness about these words from the Agents and facility itself. Meika HAS killed an Agent. It's not clear to them how in control Meika was of herself at the time. And she may have been out in the City itself which threatens to bring danger to the facility itself in a far more permanent fashion than is typically the case. The Manager also gives his thanks but he seems, well he seems worn out. He would very much like to have boring days for a while. But he isn't going to get his wish.

The moment the Warpgate is open, a glimpse of Vermilion...

But moments before The Servant of Wrath pops into existence within the Extraction Department. It shouts, predictably, "COME OUT, EMBODIMENTS OF EVIL!" in a monstrous roar. She looks exactly as she did last time!

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                             -°oServant of Wratho°-                            
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There is only one Agent of Lobotomy Corp stationed in Extraction, known for her rationality and poise and--

"STAB STAB STAB!" Parker shouts as she throws herself onto the Servant of Wrath, stabbing her repeatedly in the back with a new EGO weapon that looks like a rake. "AHahahahaha! Shown your true face at last!"

The Servant of Wrath approaches one of the Extraction Department's many pillars, turns around and slams its back into the wall a few times, leading Parker to drop to the floor...stunned.
Meika Kirenai     The moments pass heavy and thick with tension, after the alarms blare down in Extraction. One emergency is never enough. The second is on her way.

. .

. . .


. . . .

    It echoes through the warpgate before she even steps through it. That click, clack, click of a metal against concrete floors, echoing through pipes and ventilation shafts. The Hermit shimmers through, wrinkled fingers tapping at the knob of the baseball bat she's made a make-shift cane of. Blood stains it, long since dried.

    The clerks, agents, and other milling figures of the Control Department watch the hunched, cloak-shrouded figure amble out of the warpgate's contaiment unit- and each eye that falls upon the Hermit find the oblong, off-white eyeballs dotting her cloak twisting to stare back at them. It's no struggle to do so, given that each eye is dotted with an uncomfortable number of small, shifty irises. While the ambling being's cloak obscures her actual eyes, a few whispy, rough-chopped strands of stark-white hair slip out from beneath the Hermit's hood.

    "Strangers abound. My path was long and weary, across this distant land, but it nears its end. So tell me- have you seen my friend? I know I'll find her soon. I know we'll be free soon. So get out of-"

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                       °Hermit of the Vermillion Forest!°                      
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    "M-M-My way! The Hermit of the- Vermillion -Forest, paired threat to the corrupted Magical Girl of Courage, has her rasping, scratched-up voice waver, for the faintest moment, but her quiet steps forwards don't. "It won't matter if you do. Courage is waiting for me. I'm sure you've heard. I'm sure you've stood and watched."
Meika Kirenai     The Hermit's face points only towards the elevator shaft down to Information. But there is weight to her threat, her demand to not be impeded. The cane- the baseball bat the old crone carries is tossed lightly up into the air, where it hangs suspended, all on its own.

    The hermit raises a hand, trembly, and slowly waves it to the side- and the bat duplicates into shaky, shardlike replicas mid-air- and another wave, where the shards home in like screaming, whistling arrows, crashing through plates and chairs and tables in the makeshift dining room, hitting cleanly, without injury. The original bat is back in her hand, as if it never left.

    But seeping out from the paths the spectral projectiles shot across, like blood welling up from a fresh cut, are lancing tendrils of ear-shattering magic, growing like tree branches and lightning strikes into an entrapping array. Where they pierce through flesh, there is pain, but no wound. Where they pin limbs there is force, but no blood.

    "There will be no stopping this reunion. There will be no stopping this ruin." It looks like the Hermit is about to laugh- but her face locks into a grimace, on the bring of coughing, of choking, of-

Is it just pareidolia, looking at this wretched crone, violent and rigid, and still seeing the parts of her mannerisms that come from elsewhere?

    Her path forwards is clear, any who've seen briefings, or seen this type of breach before know: The Hermit is seeking her Friend, and death follows that meeting like a vulture. Stop her.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     The tendrils of sound magic catch Torrie entirely off-guard. She groans aloud as spines of energy impale her in multiple places - thankfully no new wounds are opened, but it still hurts like the devil. Madeleine fares better, contorting to let the pinning force flow around her. There's not room enough for her to get her spear (which is rolling its eye, as if it expected *something* to go wrong) off her back, but she squirms out from under the branching beam-prison and blows a puff of frigid air ahead of her as she hurries to block the exit into the rest of the facility. By the time she gets there and has her spear ready, a heavy sheet of ice is spreading across the doorway. Madeleine prepares to play goalie against the Hermit's advance by raising some additional ice barriers between her and the Hermit, interrupting some of the force beams and offering cover to the other Elites.
Ishirou The gate comes online, and it's time to leave.  That's fine, he's ready to take some time to heal, and he gives Petra a side eye when she starts to complain about their complaining... though it dies down into 'as long as you're helping Angela'.  "Of course, I'm willing to do a lot to get Angela out of this hell.." he says, frowning.  This place, as it is now, really does suck, and to be stuck here... to watch it fail over and over again...

Then out of the portal comes the Hermit... Meika.  That means...

He skids to a stop, and then calls out, "I'll help them fight down the Servant of Wrath!" he calls out to Lilian, knowing very well how important this was to her.  They have to go down at a similar time... and he will be over here to make sure nothing goes wrong, because...

Should they meet it'll be trouble!  

Ishirou runs down towards extraction instead of the portal, aiming to try and keep ahead of the Servant's movements.  "Oh crap..." he says, before he dives back, the RESCUE flashing onto his body as it pushes him faster to avoid the feet of the massive lizard trying to step on him.

Ishirou draws out a datapad, pushes in some numbers, and causes it to vanish again.  He holds up a hand as an arm seems to materialize behind him.  "Dysnomia, heads up!" he calls out first, and swings the hand around, attempting to smash the Servant of wrath with it, before attempting to toss it farther away from its goal, and right in Dysnomia's way.  

Hopefully, with the heads up, she'll take advantage of it being staggered and deliver her devastating blows.
Rena "That's not what I meant." Rena raises her voice slightly. "It's complicated because there's a lot of moving parts that she keeps track of, every day. Things that need to be in the right place, at the right time, or the whole place falls apart. That's why it's got a manager, and Angela, and everyone else."

"So given she wasn't *available* for the whole... meltdown," Rena says, "I figured she'd be catching up now." She looks at Petra, still holding the pack of cigarettes. "You're right, though. The Watch didn't teach me that. I learned that you just keep going until the job's done long before I met them, or even before the Mindless."

Rena finally shoves the cigarettes away again, deep into her pocket. "I think they're about done," she says, nodding her head toward the Warpgate. Especially when Angela shows up to give her little speech.

But then the alarms blare... just like last night. Though not so many of them. There's not six at a time this time. If they represent a different intensity, well, Rena doesn't know all of Lobotomy Corporation's signals.

"It never rains but it pours." Rena thought the violence was *over* for now. She's still sore from yesterday - even if she never took any one grevious wound, battles add up. "Come on!" she calls, following the directions to Extraction, where the Servant of Wrath is battering an Agent -

"Put her down!" Rena's voice is strong, though she flinches when the Servant of Wrath does this by slamming Parker against a pillar several times. Still, that means Rena has a clear line of fire, and she takes it, firing both revolvers simultaneously, one at each of the Servant of Wrath's shoulders as she dives to the side to try to avoid a counterattack in acid or axe. Results are mixed.

She is only tangentially aware of the whole Meika situation, and she certainly wouldn't recognize her with all the eyes. But 'keep this thing away from the Warpgate'... she understands that.
Kukuru Angela arrives! Cinder shouts, and Angela's attempt to quiet her down is no match for Kukuru's hearing ability, but it does stop Kukuru from calling out in her own excitement. Instead, she just sort of half-slithers half-shuffles over to Angela, signaling her intent ahead of time with her arms held out moments before she just kind of falls at Angela for an exhausted, but otherwise relieved hug around the waist.

"Oh, Angie.. Dear, dear. It's okay. We'll hit 50, then 60, then keep going up until we're finally finished with all this. I know it can be scary to do stuff like this without knowing what'll come after, but... New stuff can be really good! Hard, too, but..." A yawn, a pause to gnaw on some meat around the side when she thinks Angela can't see her doing so right next to her, and then more speaking. "You won't be alone doing this. And then when we're done, we can go see all sorts of neat places like in those books~"

Although her body is tired, Kukuru already feels her mood improving considerably, and just in time for the Warpgate to open for everyone to start going back home. That, in turn, is followed by the arrivals/escapes of both the Servant of Wrath and an unfamiliar Hermit. The former shouts about embodiments of evil, and the latter speaks of looking for her friend.

"... We can go home later. Angie, stay safe, okaaay? And if anyone shows up near you, call for me." Kukuru asserts with one more gentle squeeze, then closes her eyes as she slowly recalls where the Extraction Department actually was. An inky cloud opens up behind Kukuru a moment later, and she waits for anyone else that wants a quick jump to Extraction before dropping backwards into it herself. It deposits her and any other passengers right next to the Servant of Wrath, and she turns around just in time to see it slamming Parker into a wall.

"That's some timing.. Mmn. You should go back inside, okay? If you keep hurting Parker or anyone else, I'm gonna get upset." Kukuru half-calls, half-mumbles as she drags her claws behind her while the telltale green glow of her nanites activating starts to flow off her body. They spread through the department, granting everyone a sizable chunk of healing, and plenty of those are focused directly on Parker to get her back up and ready to fight!
Dysnomia     As she heard the alarms blaring and the warpgate flared to life, Dysnomia stepped back just in time to see...Meika?

    No. Dysnomia didn't know the kid, not really, but she didn't need to to see how she'd been distorted. Overwritten. Broken down and rewritten. Her expression was hidden by her opaque helment, but it was enough to make her take a step back. Stars. Just what happened to the brat...?

    Could you even reason with someone twisted like that? No. And she had little hope that she could drive it from her with fear, not when her mind was already so...

<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "...I don't know you'll reach the kid. But, I'll hold back the other one until you do."
<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Good luck."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "I'll support you Dysnomia."

    She would be a hindrance here, Dysnomia justified to herself. She turned from them, her suit humming to life, harvesting data from the facilities' cameras to Mia's synapses, flowing into her. For a brief moment, she let the data flow, the layout of the facility filtered into her. All guesswork, gone. She breathed in staggering pleasure as answers came to her, and she was granted sight--even such shallow sight as this.

    Then, she let go of the pod, her body drawing in like a spring. She leapt--

    --Sliding through solid objects as though they weren't there, through floor and wall, springing her from one side of the facility to the other with the full weight of her power and all her propulsion, as she pulled back her into long burning claws and--

    --SLAMMED them into the servant of Wrath from above as Ishirou's own 'fist' struck. All of the force born of launching herself perfectly from one side of the facility to the other, to throw the Servant back as far from the others as she could. "Your reunion will have to wait." She growled to the thing, smears of color swirling around her. "There's more at play than your story. So shut up and wait your damn turn, you upstart tall tale."
UFO Gang "Huh... so it's sort of the fruit of this guy's past actions," Minamitsu muses when she hears about the Manager. She seems obscurely interested in Rena lighting up a death stick and nudges Nazrin about it, although Nazrin does not respond.

Petra sheds more light on the situation -- or at least the outlines of it. "So... she's trapped, huh," Minamitsu says even as Kukuru brings the food out. She considers the steak for a moment, shrugs, and just tears into it. After a few bites, she says, "I know what that's like."

Nazrin puts a donut in her own mouth.

"Anyway... once that Warpgate opens again, I guess we can probably get out of your hair," Nazrin says after eating the donut. "S"

The alarms blare.

"Got it!" Minamitsu says, leaping to action and -- flying? -- after Rena, who seems to have taken the initative. Nazrin, distressed, trots after them.

Minamitsu is thus not far from Rena when she opens fire. She's probably about to say something stirring. Instead an axe dripping with green acid swings towards her --

-- she swerves to the side abruptly and manages to graze it --

But the acid nonetheless backsplashes on her with a weighty sizzle. "Gahhh!!" Minamitsu squeals, before raising up her ladle directly above her head and immediately dumping a -- torrent? -- of water upon herself, which at least calms the immediate issue. Hissing as the water cascades down over her side, she says, "What the heck is this thing --?"

Her cheeks puff out. The water keeps... pouring down. It's honestly going to be a minor problem, though Minamitsu seems satisfied at the level of rinsing she's undergone and swings the ladle around as she jinks to the side while flinging another of those bursts of curiously-animate high-impact water at the Servant of Wrath.

"Is this another suffering being?!" Minamitsu exclaims, though it seems she doesn't expect an answer. "Let that person go!"
Timespace Riders In some ways I was more worried about this challenge than Gebura, even, since I know how capable you are all in battle. But we've made it to a 40 Percent Generation on the Seed of Light but you can likely count on it being 50 or 60 soon.

    "I haven't forgotten your wish, Angela." To see the ocean, with her own eyes. "I... used to be angry, about the things that happen here. It still bothers me--what you, and the Sephirah, and the Agents and Clerks have to deal with. But... now I know that you wouldn't be doing any of this, if it weren't to survive all of that. If it wasn't a reflection of how the City is. You wouldn't be doing any of this, if it wasn't to make things better. I'm going to be there--at '100 percent.' And I'll be there after, too. Even after everything that's happened, and the people we've lost along the way... I wouldn't miss that day for anything, and I'll work hard to make sure it happens."

If Chevalier Vermilion comes here, you'll be the first to know. And if she appears elsewhere, we will help in her recovery.

    Sougo frowns softly, but nods. "Thank you, Angela."

COME OUT, EMBODIMENTS OF EVIL!

    Woz and Sougo both startle, rising from their seats with their hands on their transformation belts.
    "That voice...!"
    "If she is here, then the other is fast approaching."

                               TIMESPACE DRIVER!                                
                                  BEYONDRIVER!                                  

Strangers abound. My path was long and weary, across this distant land, but it nears its end. So tell me- have you seen my friend? I know I'll find her soon. I know we'll be free soon. So get out of- M-M-My way!

                        Action! Projecting! Future Time!                        
                                  RIDER TIME!                                  

"Henshin!"
"Henshin."
Timespace Riders It won't matter if you do. Courage is waiting for me. I'm sure you've heard. I'm sure you've stood and watched.

    Woz slams the gate on his Beyondriver, and Sougo spins his Timespace Driver, as shardlike replicas of baseball bats fly forward...

                  KAMEN RIDEEER.. (RIDER..!) ZI-O--ZI-O!! II!                  
                             KAMEN RIDER WOZ? WOZ?!                            

     Zi-O's disembodied silver clock faces, and Woz's laser printer array, both collide and blast the replicas, the onboard AIs governing their belts misinterpreting them as threats. The real threat--that ear-piercing magic--sends both Riders stumbling backwards, even though their transformations protected them from the worst of it. Armor--whether it's the knightly, silver-gold-black-pink of Zi-O, or the futuristic, lightly armored bodysuit Woz wears, is much better suited to protecting against direct pummeling than speectral projectiles.

There will be no stopping this reunion. There will be no stopping this ruin.

    "Beozzi?" Zi-O's helmet dips in confusion. "...no. You're not her, are you?" That hair looks familiar. Doesn't it? "Woz--cover me!"

    The twinned, mirrored watch hands above Zi-O's pink lenses turn backwards rapidly, leaving pink afterimages in their wake.

    It only lasts for a split second--but in a fight, that's quite a long time. Woz leaps to the side, springing off of the wall to cut a path in front of Zi-O. His hand stretches out expectantly--into his waiting grasp, a spear flies, announcing itself: JIKAN DESPEAR! Its sharp, green tip cuts a broad swath as he lands, the Rider twirling it into position for a series of harassing thrusts, before finishing with a jumping back kick. Each movement of the weapon comes with an aftershock of green energy, cutting a second time with burning hot force.

     Zi-O's form flickers, as if linear time had dropped frames--and the watch hands above his lenses halt their backwards march. "Meika?!"
Solty Revant      Solty has been here before, and last time was also during a Meltdown. She was a bit late to this one, but she's here now and is apparently helping with the clean up! Extraction might be one of her least favorite places in this place full of not favorite places, but cleaning and searching for survivors must be done in every area.

     Which means she is very near when the Servant of Wrath pops into existence and summons the embodiments of evil! Solty's ears droop as the alarm goes off. "More?!" she whimpers. She really isn't used to this sort of thing.

     She makes her way to the Servant quickly just as Parker goes down, smashed against a pillar, and Solty leaps at Wrath a moment later! "Hasn't there been enough trouble for one day?!" she exclaims. She's wearing the chibification goggles this time. Last time she went without and well...that wasn't fun. "Take this! Hyaaaa!"

     The green-haired android girl attacks the only way she knows how. With a powerful punch, augmented by her energy generation abilities!
Aidan Proudpick Aidan huffs out a breath. "No. It doesn't. And sometimes life doesn't either." Aidan takes another bite of the brick of chia, not really answering Petra, but just reflecting on himself. His own failures. "And I don't always get it. But... everyone deserves a chance at a happy ending. And if this everyone is better off with this place finished? Then I better damn well help, right?"

A smile comes up on his face as Angela finally reappears. He lifts up his... well, his empty bag in a sort of cheer. Hey, it's something. He doesn't have any good speeches for Angela. Just a cheer. It'll have to be enough for now. He'll come by later to ask how he can really help. And see for himself. Damn, if only he had... cared sooner? The implications of THAT are daunting.

Alarms blare. Aidan casts his head around, trying to find the computer screens. There! "What the... what IS that thing?" Ears twitch and lift, and Aidan's head twitches to hear Meika's voice. His statement applies to her as well. She deserves a happy ending. But.. well, he hasn't tried to reach very far through the thorny branches. Should he have? Shouldn't he be willing to keep getting stabbed just to help someone, even if those barbs are merely verbal? Would it even matter?

It feels like a lead weight sits on Aidan's chest. He grabs at the last of the nuts on the table, cramming them into his mouth as he limps after the rest. Once again, choosing the easy path.

Well easy if it weren't on the other side of the whole suffocating facility.

Upon entering Extraction, Aidan is huffing and puffing, not good for a wind mage. He flexes backwards, tilting far enough back to let the axe roll over him. And throw him down the ground. Where nanites drift down into him, quickly staving off the pain. All of the pain. Everywhere. Aidan looks down at his leg, grabbing at the straps of the boot. He yanks it off as quickly as possible, thrusting it off his dainty squirrel paws. "Blessed breeze," he sighs, throwing it to one corner of the room. He flexes the leg twice before being satisfied enough to get up to a kneeling position.

The accelerator. What happens when you don't have gun powder, but you learn to compress air so it can violently combust anyways. He HAS to stay away from that thing. One good swipe and his torso is going to be split in half. And without easy access to his wind magic... Aidan focuses down the sights, aiming for the eye in the middle of the Servant's torso. Or a hole of some kind? It still seems like the best thing to shoot. Three shot bursts of bullets flash out, iron rather than copper jacket, but still as lethal.
Lilian Rook     Lilian is ill at ease with waiting here after all of that, but unfortunately, she sort of has to. Leaving on her own wouldn't be quicker ('quicker') than waiting for the Warpgate anyways, but mostly, it's because her second objective hasn't shown up. For all she'd said to the Manager, it somehow hadn't been relevant. Which worries her.

    'It's kind of... something, to know that this is the farthest the Seed of Light's ever gotten. Like, cool, on one hand, proof that we're totally making it better than before, and we're built different and it's not impossible. But it's also... a little scary, I guess.'

    "It's always frightening to push past what there is precedent for. Never mind what people even consider possible." says Lilian to Petra. "Do you think I just like repeating myself? I mean it every single time I say that people should just trust me to handle it. However new and untested or allegedly impossible it is, it's always easier to be second from the vanguard."

    'Netzach's basically a victory lap, Angela says, so we'll be back to normal for a bit.'

    Lilian raises an eyebrow. "How would she know if this is the great filter? And for that matter, I thought it was Gebura that the facility never overcomes?"

    Still, for the same reason as she'd arrived the way she has, Lilian has to stick around and look unfazed. A little stray goo comes out of her outfit with a careful application of three kinds of magic, a room with a tolerable level of stink lets her force down food well below her otherwise minimum bar, and the opportunity to be present, visible, 'unscathed', and confidently unwinding, is important for agent morale. The fact she doesn't put her sword away at all is only partly for that purpose. Let them stare, but have it at hand.

    'It's not really that complicated to just see what the people right in front of you need, and then do it.'

    "People know how to heal themselves." Lilian says, low enough to be nearly under her breath. "Pull the arrow out and give them a chance to recover, and they will. The shittiest thing you can do is try to heal their damage yourself. Everyone wants to cause the big moment of closure and nobody wants to do the hard work."

    Known to just Lilian, she was already quietly obsessing over the hard work that didn't matter during every second of the wind-down. Unknown until the very last second, the big moment of closure is about to happen anyways.

    All the way from when Lilian bolts upright from her chair, braces herself against the strain even the breathing will put on her chest, and sets herself back to the grinding task of forcing one sprinting foot in front of the other for the short distance it takes, to actually meeting the Hermit before the Warpgate, Lilian is nearly overcome by thoughts of what she plans to say, what condition Vermillion might be in, how many possibilities there are to breaking her out, and the human cost of doing so.

    But she knows, when she arrives, whatever Lilian had expected of her was more Meika than this. The thing she stops and stares at for those long seconds of stretched out dismay is more story than person. Numerous emotions fight to take control of her face, clash together, and neutralize into strangled, unblinking calm. Only the look she gives her, seeking and not finding, deflected away by the blindfold to settle into its usual nowhere focus, says anything beyond her words.
Lilian Rook     "I see." is all she can handle at first. "So 'Chevalier Vermillion' was such a half-hearted flight of fancy that her story can't even compare to an Abnormality. Not even as real as a figment of imagination pulled from the Well . . ." Lilian breathes out slowly, righting her sword into position. "I'm sorry, Meika. I suppose I was only getting excited on my own. You never asked nor expected me to get so absorbed in 'Chevalier Vermillion'. So it's my own fault for being the only one who wanted so badly for her to be real."

    Lilian's hand hovers halfway down to her waist, to draw Winter Crow, and then pulls back. Her fist balls up over her heart instead. A spark catalyzes into a flare of gold, and the black particulate of uncreation suddenly stands out starkly in its corona.

    Drawn in by the gravity of a single heartbeat, mirror-reflective blackness collapses and divides into solid matter, condenses in winding spirals that sheath her skin, and immutably affixes itself to its every proper place along each radiating line of gold. Muted, until the instant any given plate parts from its win at just the right flex of motion. Like glimmers of sunlight catching and sliding along the edge of a sword.

    'It won't matter if you do. Courage is waiting for me. I'm sure you've heard. I'm sure you've stood and watched.'

    "I've been waiting for you. I know you stood and watched." says Lilian. "And then you turned your back on me. Now someone is dead because you did; and you can't make that unhappen." Reluctantly, but without a glimmer of hesitation, Lilian raises Night Mist to point her way. "So I'm sorry, Meika, but this time I can't keep giving you everything you want. I can't be the cool, rebellious, understanding friend that you want. I can't give on this. I have to do what's right."

    A folding chair clatters over the table to the left as Lilian leaps off to the one on the right, skids right over the surface, and diverts into head-on sprint that bends the rattling legs of the table behind her. The next wave of homing bats come within inches, before she sidesteps back to the leftward row, then skips twice over each adjoining table, hard pivots off a heap of tumbling chairs, and lunges forward under the third wave, letting each crash into the floor in thick, controllable clusters. By the time they're exploding into those magical fractals, Lilian is already well ahead of the burst, throwing the last table off its feet behind her to accelerate airborne straight into the Hermit.

    Whether or not the phantom bats cause damage is intangible to Lilian. Meika hasn't ever had an opportunity to watch her fight with any kind of clarity, but it still feels off that the woman she knows would approach her so openly and directly.

    In the gap between running and colliding, the opportunity for a tactical misdirection comes and goes. Instead, Lilian's armoured knee comes all the way up to strike the Hermit just beneath the throat, her hand claps down on its hood, and she vaults overtop of it with the cloak as her anchor to swing down around behind it. She sinks deep into the landing, until her leg scrapes out behind her and strikes out for the back of the Hermit's ankle, from out under it. Rather than letting go, Lilian plunges Night Mist under her opposite arm, for the Hermit to accelerate into its blade.

    It is only just not hideously lethal. Lilian's ability to be a child of space is limited, but her feelings about Meika are enough for half her strike to pierce somewhere deep and cold and clear as moonlight cutting clouds into the tangled mess of 'Meika' inside the Hermit.
Hibiki Tachibana     It's not really that complicated to just see what the people right in front of you need, and then do it.
    ... Not that it really matters if you hate it or not.

    "...Yeah. Guess so. I /am/ glad everything... with Tiphereth worked out today. Will deserves a lot more than a day of rest for that." The tension building up in Hibiki's posture fades away after a few seconds, settling into tired agreement with Petra. Ultimately, she's just happy herself that everyone came together. Despite anything else.

    Plus, Nonon isn't wrong about her vibes kind of dragging the mood down, so she puts on a somewhat-forced smile as the Agents laugh it off and take in getting through the day. Angela's reassurance, when she shows up, that they'll handle the situation with Meika together is...

    ...

    --a reassurance that falls on deaf ears. Her heart stops for a pulse, and her blood runs cold. What makes her drop her cup into a splatter on the Control Department floor, though, isn't the sound of alarms blaring about an intrusion off in Extraction. It can only be the sight of what's stepping through the reactivated Warpgate. /Who's/ stepping through it.

    The eye-lined cloak is all too familiar. The posture of a hobbling old crone is familiar. But even if she didn't already know, she'd be able to tell. Being ready for it to happen isn't the same as it really happening right in front of you. Her throat's dry. "...Meika...--"

    Metal and ceramic and plastic shatter, and the pain of tendrils of head-pulsing magic spiking through her body and slamming her back against the wall with a choked gasp also restarts her bloodflow, makes the beat go from silent to deafeningly loud even over the thrum of the assault. The Servant of Wrath. She's an old friend. She used me, and I used her... A shaky exhale leaks out, and it leads to clenched teeth.

    "B-Balwisyall nescell...Gungnir tron--!" An eruption of golden light, from the pendant around Hibiki's neck, blasts through the binding branches around her and lets her immediately hit the ground running. The shining silhouettes of undersuit, skirt, boots, gauntlet, headset, and finally scarf - they spark into being for real one after another as she goes. Her hand tightens into a fist--

    And loosens. And goes tight again. It repeats a dozen times in the span of a second, until finally shuddering and going white-knuckled taut.

    "Even right now, even as the Hermit, 'Courage' instead of 'Wrath' hasn't changed...!" The observation is half-choked, but it doesn't change what she knows will happen if the two meet again - and that's why, as Woz finishes his kick, Hibiki comes right in on his heels to throw her body weight into an overswinging, heavyhanded and messy blow for center mass to force her back.

    Followed by Hibiki physically imposing herself right in her path, heaving audible breaths.

    "...You can't... go any farther. Why...? After everything with Courage, and Beozzi-- /this/ is really, seriously what you want!? This!?"
Petra Soroka "I mean it every single time I say that people should just trust me to handle it."

    Petra nods, automatically straightening up in her chair when Lilian addresses her, though she's still sitting with her legs wide around the back. "Well, but-- it's easier to be the-- the vanguard if there's two. I'm doing it however scary or impossible it is, too."

"How would she know if this is the great filter?"

    "Neztach is Upper," Petra points up, despite Safety technically being a floor down from where they are now. "Central's Middle." She points down.

    Then she looks briefly confused. "I don't know why we're out of order."

"And if everyone is better off with this place finished?"

    Petra gives Aidan a look, eyes half-lidded and dark with sleeplessness. She's worn out enough to let out the singleminded drive she has, above everything else, despite the other agents around. "It matters that *Angela* is better off. If everyone else in the fucking City got worse for it I'd still help her."

    Alarms go off deep within the facility. This is already cause for Petra to droopily push her way up out of her chair, loosing Pence to hover beside her with the tablet hanging below him to check where it's going off. At first, this isn't cause at all for her to think that the Elites need to stay-- if a *First Trumpet* was enough to call for help, then the Elites would never leave, and even Petra leaves sometimes.

    It's just business as usual, because fights happen again tomorrow and tomorrow, and no matter how triumphant you are one day, the next still comes just as quickly. It's expected enough that she doesn't even bother to open her eyes before standing, tongue exasperatedly sticking halfway out, hand already moving towards her hip for a weapon.

    And then she opens them and sees the warnings blaring across the screen, and the name of the breaching-- or rather, *invading*-- Abnormality registers, and she goes pale. "Ah-- shit, fuck, that's the-- Servant of Wrath, which means the Hermit--"

    Which means the Hermit follows moments later. There's no time to run to the dorms and grab her armor. Morphmetal sweeps out of the bottle at her hip and flattens into a sheet to protect her, expecting a more physical attack than what Meika throws out. Fluid-metal barriers muffle the sound itself from cutting into Petra, but instead cavitate from the sound themselves, tearing the hasty barrier apart and rocketing metal flechettes through the air.

    A cluster of them slice across Petra's cheeks and arms when she shields her face, reducing another one of her jackets to ribbons. "*Fuck*! So it really happened to her!" She'd heard the report of course, the agents were all on the lookout for her, but it's something entirely different to see her actually transformed in person. I'd kind of hoped there'd be some... power of friendship bullshit, so she could resist it. But that's stupid, right? No one here-- Her thoughts briefly hitch, -- is even good at being her friend.

    "Still." It doesn't make any sense for her to say that out loud, since she's responding to her own internal monologue. "That's *really* her in there, so we're not-- not killing her, just--" She's about to gesture approvingly at Madeleine's technique, before the full extent of how fucked this all is comes crashing back into memory with those words.
Petra Soroka <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Er--"
<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "This shit's more complicated than just hitting them until they're suppressed."
<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "The suppression guidelines-- for usual, I don't know what happened at Tachibana's school-- involve... er...")]
<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "They're both unkillable until the Servant kills the Hermit. They'll both keep regenerating until that happens."
<J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "But we'll, uh... figure something out. Something else. ... Hopefully."

    The best thing for 'something else' that comes to mind, after clicking the radio installed in Pence off-- the little glimmer of delight she has at using the ratbot as an announcement microphone and mobile screen isn't *entirely* drowned out by the horror of the actual words she's announcing-- involves doing something incredibly risky without any armor at all. Rather than keeping away from the Hermit and using her array of guns, Petra twists her morphmetal into a thin halo surrounding her, making that her only defense when she pulls Pillar of Creation off her back to dart into melee.

    The hope, she reasons, is that her aura will be useful for once-- psychic shards grating away at whatever mental influence is suppressing 'Meika'. Petra catching a swing of her bat on the haft of her spear, using the momentum to duck beneath and roll up to slash across the Hermit's back. "Lilian! If you're planning on doing-- psychic stuff at her, let me know to back off!" Worst case scenario, this still prevent *Meika* from using her psychic powers without backlash.

"I have to do what's right."

    "I-- don't, really." The words slip out of Petra's mouth unthinkingly. Matching Lilian to harry Meika with the spear from behind, she extends her ring of morphmetal to slice through the base of one of Madeleine's ice pillars, then directs Pence to dig its hook into it, altering gravity's effect to 'fall' horizontally across the room into Meika. She directs it to smash into her with an extra swing of her spear-- ironically, it's more like air hockey or baseball, than it is like ice hockey.

    "I don't have to do the right thing. I have to support Lilian, and I have to support Angela, and my coworkers, and *that's* why I'm not going to be too delicate about this. You've hurt-- a lot, of people that are important to me, Meika, and--" She gets a bit quieter. "And I get it. I think. But that's even more reason to stop you."
Angela Come on down to Extraction! Ishirou's been here before, but the short of it is that it's a pitch black section of the facility with glowing rune-covered pillars, a small table with a tea set already prepared to the side where a Binah is sitting, singular eye closed.

The Servant of Wrath is quickly smashed in the face by an Electroamgnetic Fist before she can reach the Elevator.

"SINNERS OF THE FACILITY," She shouts. "I COME SEEKING THE HERMIT OF THE VERMILION FOREST! Never again shall temptation lead us astray!" This may be familiar words to some. Nevertheless, she knocks Ishirou's POD up into the air with one hammer before sending it flying at his face with another strike of her Hammerhands. "Consider this a warning, cur!"

Dysnomia slams into the Servant next, bouncing across the floor and then slides across it as she comes to a stop near Binah's table.

The singular eye opens up and looks towards the Servant of Wrath.

"Do not interfere! The reunion must come!"

"I wouldn't dream of it, darling." Binah says, waggling mechanical digits at Ishirou.

The Servant rushes towards Dysnomia, intending to slam its hammer into Mia's body, thrusting it forward like a spear towards her gut.

''I'm gonna get upset.''

"YOU are going to get upset?! You should get upset! The Hermit has betrayed you all!" The Servant of Wrath swings her hammer up and brings it down upon Kukuru to try and squish her down to an even tinier form!

Rena clobbers her with a pair of shots into the shoulders. The Servant of Wrath is naturally tough against Red Damage but they still seem effective! The Hermit snarls through her jaw and rushes Rena, quickly building up speed as she aims to slam her body into Rena and Rena's body into a pillar as well.

Parker gets up woozily and says, "More stabs...!" and she spins around to stab at the Hermit, missing before tumbling back down dizzily.

Aidan catches the Abnormality with another spread of gunfire. It's starting to get frustrated as its body becomes potchmarked with ruins even as they slowly start to repair themselves even as they'e being inflicted. Striking the eye makes it snap closed as it closes in on Aidan and spews ACID all over his body! "EMBODIMENT OF EVIL! The Balance Must Be Restored!"

Before she disolves Aidan, Solty comes in swinging herself with another punch, forcing the Abnormality to take a step back. The growl grows ever heavier. "You... You must be punished as well!" Solty gets the experience of two hammers coming in for both of her sides, green fluid dripping out of the creature's mouth as if in anticipation for when Solty dissolves.

Then water from out of nowhere comes blasting into her mouth and it stumbles back, failing to grasp at its neck and just hacks acid and fluid everywhere in an attempt to stop choking on the water, creating a spread of acidic globules that Minamatsu is going to have to weave between them somehow without getting melted--child's play! But she gets extra score if she cuts it as close as possible, probably. "My friend...does not trust others or herself! She'll betray me just as she betrayed you!"

"So...why do I get the benefit of having so much wonderful--if noisy--company," Binah asks. "My oh my, I don't even know the most of you. Ah but I've heard plenty from Dysnomia over that lovely radio, well most of you really. To see you all in person...How lovely... Is this too easy for you? Should I make it harder?"
Angela Meanwhile, before everything had gone wrong, Angela elects to clarify for Lilian. "We hadn't made it past anyone in Central, not in any shape where the facility could continue functioning after. Normally Netzach has been earlier--Where'd he...?"

But before she can finish that thought, TROUBLE arrives in the form of the Hermit of the Vermilion Forest. A flicker of guilt passes across Angela's eyes before she smothers it with her mind and she says, "...This is an unusual reaction...The Hermit is supposed to be from the Azure Forest. There may be some resistance...?"

I must thank her The King of Greed tells her. For being so kind to bring one of my wayward sisters back home. Now I wonder how long my other sisters will wait for her to return home...

"...Be right back." Angela says, nodding to Petra and Lilian. She then leaves Control, making her way back to Central and the King of Greed's lair. She has a bad feeling but if she can disable the King first then the facility will be considerably safer. She's done it before. She can do it again.
Touta Konoe     After the events of the Meltdown, it seems things did end up calming down. A bit of relief coming over the facility as Elites are thanked by Angela and Tiphereth in kind, and the Agents begin repairing the facility. It's certainly a time for reflection while waiting for the Warpgate's repair. Since that time, Touta's had a few radio calls to someone back in his world apparently, but otherwise has been keeping to just a few people since then. Though when Petra speaks up about the progress even he feels curious enough to speak up about it.

    "So how many more Meltdowns are supposed to be expected at this point? Is it just Netzach's?" He'd only come up since the last Meltdown himself and even then, there never had been a good opportunity to ask. Though once he has the answer, it's not like he finds himself lingering for long. Though. Despite most Elites being in the cafeteria area the stench was definitely lingering enough that it really is hard to imagine anyone trying to keep anything down. "Wonder if the Agents have to get used to it..." The answer's probably a resounding yes. Though it's something he'd prefer to not think about.

    There's honestly one place he's considering checking out in the facility before the Warpgate finishes its repairs. The thought of quickly asking a clerk, or a nearby Agent which Department 'She' might be in. Though as it was, it seemed that time was not going to be on his side as the notification of its repairs were already on the way. Though what really sells the fact that it was best to simply leave things be is when Angela returns to them all. Her genuine words expressed to everyone. Hearing it alone is enough to leave a small smirk on his face. Sougo's words resonate just as well. "Yeah, that feeling's the same here."

    Surely he could say more, or attempt to be as grandiose, but with Angela he knows sometimes it's better that less is more. That there's no reason to fluff out what he wants to say, that the meaning might get across. He hopes. Speaking of hopes, one might have hoped just like the Manager for a day of rest in this facility, but hope is hard fought for here.

    Even after a Meltdown it seems L Corp truly is never a dull place for better or worse. Everyone in Central can hear alarms ringing as mention of the containment breaches are made. The first breach doesn't seem too abnormal, but the second alarm that comes in and its origin.

    "Wait...That breach..."

    It's only remembered off-handed as to which containment unit had the Warpgate but there's no doubt about it in the aftermath. Agents /and/ Elites alike are already starting to move. Most of whom were still rather crungled even before the Meltdown. It only makes sense that he tries to act as a vanguard in this case. Or at least, he had wanted to.

    "Strangers abound. My path was long and weary, across this distant land, but it nears its end. So tell me- have you seen my friend? I know I'll find her soon. I know we'll be free soon. So get out of- M-M-My way!"
Touta Konoe     At first, there's nothing discerning from the Abnormalities appearance. A cloaked figure that stumbles in on a bloody cane- -No, baseball bat..? That doesn't seem right with a hermit...

    "It won't matter if you do. Courage is waiting for me. I'm sure you've heard. I'm sure you've stood and watched." There's a chill that runs up his spine for a moment as that word is uttered. Though it's only as Hibiki's disbelief and Lilian's words etch themselves into the air does it come together.

    "Wait...This is..."

    He has to try and think back, this isn't the familiar voice of that person, even with those white streaks of hair it's so unassuming. Though there's very little time to process the situation as the metal and ceramic dance across the room. The tension of the moment is enough that Touta doesn't originally move, though as it stands those shardlike replicas seem as if they were never meant to cause injury. It's only when that ear-ringing magic is applied is he finally forced to react. His body moving to weave through those tendril-like formations.

    Still, the Elites are already on the attack. Lilian's knee-sweep combination, Woz's flying kick, and of course Hibiki resolving to throw her weight around. Though Touta finds himself staggering for a moment. "What the hell's been..."

    He knew so little of what's been going on, what the hell had happened to Meika? He asks himself these questions and when he does a final one comes to mind... How did you expect to help her?

    He hasn't taken a genuine blow, and even if it was, he's sure that it would have healed. Yet...He feels a stinging in his chest as his teeth grind. His grip on his blade tightens so painfully. Uncertain of his actions and yet... I can't just do nothing...

    Touta ends up joining the assault on Hermit, rather than using his blade though, he finds himself joining in with Hibiki, a curled fist following the attack ready to act in tandem with the Magical Girl of Fists. Only, even as it comes there feels like there's so little heart, so little weight from it.
Kukuru At first, Kukuru really doesn't know much at all about what's going on with the Servant and the Hermit. In her eyes, it's another fight with another pair of Abnormalities, and she doesn't even consider the possibility that letting them meet or kill each other could be out of the question. Her initial focus is just on making sure her family and friends, the help, and the Agents get out of this mostly alive, and that means having to contend with the Servant of Wrath slinging that terrible hammer all over the place.

"Betrayal? Balance? Your... Friend?" True to form, Kukuru's distracted just long enough by what the Servant of Wrath says that she doesn't quite move in time to not get smashed by that hammer, bringing her claws up just in time to get her arms smashed rather than her face. The impact shakes her to her crow with a painful grimace and a slight crunch coming from her body, kept in check only by Kukuru's own strength to contend with it and her healing abilities already working overtime in that very room.

"H... How did she betray us? How did she betray you?" The look on Kukuru's face softens slightly, conflicted emotions already starting to show as she tries to make sense of what's being said through that physical pain. She knows she shouldn't because of what happened the last time she connected with an Abnormality, but... One more can't hurt that much, can it?

"Who hurt y-" She can't quite get the rest of those words out, though, as she feels something swelling up inside her chest. It's not swelling up in that good way, either, but a distinctly painful way that halts her train of thought for the time being. It'll be a bit before she realizes what that is, but it keeps her head on task for now as she brings her claws back out. She gives that strangely colorful heart besides her a gentle pat, almost like she's trying to reassure that little thing from Laetitia, then starts dragging her claws across the ground as she approaches the Servant again.

Unfortunately, she also hears the story of the Hermit, and the Magical Girl of Courage. She also makes the connection that the Hermit is, in fact, Meika, and Petra confirms it for her just in time to make it all the more painful that they have to fight at all. "Can't you two ta-" Kukuru hitches again as that pain in her chest intensifies, shutting her up momentarily so she can focus on just trying to fight the Servant back until some kind of plan forms in her or someone's head. Until then...

She starts swinging again. The claws comes together like she's trying to squash the Servant between them, but she doesn't stop at just clapping together. Instead, she's trying to grab the Servant of Wrath outright, then digs her claws in and tearing outwards like she's trying to open up a clam or something in the most violent way possible.
Ishirou POD is caught up in the air, before being spiked down at Ishirou.  Ishirouh reaches out, aiming to try and grab his support drone in the air, but the two crash along the ground.  They roll across the ground for a few moments, before slowly, and groaningly stand back up to face the Servant.  

He can't just think of himself right now, Meika is over there caught up in this story that never seems to end, it always plays out like this.  Someone /died/ who escaped this fate again.  It's unfair, but he can't think that right now, right now he's got to push forward.  "Listen to you, saying this is evil, or that's bad..." he says, "I get you were betrayed, and that you're powerful..."

"But get over it!  We've all been betrayed, we've all suffered... and doing this to people so you can play out your fantasy is what's the embodiment of evil.  She came to try and help you, and instead, you wrapped her up in /your/ punishment fantasy!"

Ishirou draws his rapier, frowning.  "Stop hurting others and instead think about what you're really doing.  Do that and /let/ her go!" he shouts at the Servant of Wrath, and dives in quickly, he thrusts his rapier a few times, aiming to try and open its defenses up, before aiming to kick into the side of the massively tall creature, and flip off of it, trying to land some distance away.

To Binah, he shakes his head, "No we're more than hard pressed here, so please don't trouble yourself, Ma'am." he says, trying to appease her before she decides she's bored.  

To the Servant, he speaks again, "Please.  Please listen to me and remember the PERSON trapped in your story right now, and how much she wanted to help you..!"
UFO Gang Embodiment of evil! The balance must be restored! More stabs! A lot of people are hollering in the area of Minamitsu, and that nice glowing person seems to already be strained. Bad scene all around.

The acid globs fly towards Minamitsu, who gains altitude and swish-swip-fwoosh's back and forth in the air -- which avoids the acid globles ("Hah!") which then smash against the wall 2 meters behind Minamitsu and backsplash all over her, well, back, which makes her produce a truly impressive agonized face. "Hiiyyyhh!"

MEANWHILE, Nazrin runs into the Extraction chamber, sees the Servant of Wrath and immediately turns around to leave.

She doesn't go far.

Making small, angry fists, Nazrin reaches an internal consensus on something or other. (It may involve whether or not she can actually ditch Minamitsu. The question of '/will/ I' is a different story.)

Adjusting her helmet, she ducks near to the entrance to call out, "Hey, Captain!"

"ow ow ow ow WHAT?" shouts back Minamitsu.

"They're saying you have to get through to the --" Nazrin just sort of waves her arm at the Servant.

"Like a penetration attack?" Minamitsu says, looking backwards.

"No. Move their heart."

"Wait, do you mean like preach?"

"Yes!! Like Hijiri!!"

Minamitsu cries out, "I can't do that!!"

"None of the others are here, and I sure can't," Nazrin points out, "so it's up to you. As a captain, I'm sure you'll figure something out."

She then moves behind a barricade, before Minamitsu turns her head to look upon the Servant with new eyes. She is marginally relieved when Ishirou opens up with his rapier, because it both buys her time and makes it clear that, yes: she can continue firing water blasts.

As she shrugs loose the anchor, Minamitsu says, "So, you got betrayed, huh...?" Another sweep of the ladle makes more water appear around her, levitating this time instead of just, like, slopping onto the floor. "Feeling betrayed can be hard to deal with. It can make everything turn to gray ashes that sit on your tongue."

"How did you get betrayed, O Servant?"

Nazrin leans around the door jamb to give two thumbs up before ducking back to (POSSIBLE) safety. ("Hey," she comments to Binah, but it'd be easy to miss in the whole battle thing.)

As Minamitsu speaks, the water streak spreads out in front of her, wobbling as it breaks into three separate components -- before streaking down with a thwap-WHAP-PLAP to try and stagger the Servant.
Dysnomia     "Do not interfere! The reunion must come!"

    "Because you say it must." Dysnomia almost sounded bored. "Because that's the way it goes. Oh, go fuck yourself." She snarled, colorful mist swirling into oversized claws. The hammers came down on her again, again, AGAIN. Her body pounded into ethereal mist, coiling back into her body, like wounds passing in reverse.

    At its end, she stands still between courage and the elevator, a bastion.

    "You think I don't know the brat's fucked up?" She growled to Wrath, "Of COURSE she did. She's a mean fucking kid." And she didn't mean it as a compliment. "Course she is. That's what kids are, you storybook thug. Angry and spiteful and fucking EVERYTHING up."

    "But you know what's even worse than all that," she growled, stalking forward. "The girls she liberated from your storybook cycle, and made real, if you butcher that kid, they'll be left behind. All the things she could have been, the good and the bad, gone, all because she got spun into your story, mindlessly going along with what you can't help but be."

    "That brat's still more than just your Hermit. She? She can change." A sigh. "But am I wasting my breath, on you? Are you even capable of hearing me?"

    "My oh my, I don't even know the most of you. Ah but I've heard plenty from Dysnomia over that lovely radio, well most of you really.

    "Really, because I don't know you." Her eyes were still trained on the Servant. "We've enough problems already."
Aidan Proudpick Aidan jerks his gun back with him, trying to weave out of the way and backwards. The spray of acid hits him across the side, splashing through the armor. It hits only a glancing blow, preventing him from simply being DISSOLVED in an instant. But where the splash does hit burns away the armor and some of the flesh underneath, opening up a layer of skin. He is going to shell out for expensive healing AGAIN after this just to get that fur back!

He lets out a howl of pain, a lung cracking sound of pure agony as the acid works away at his skin, trying to get his breathing back under control. Contain and talk. Contain and talk. That's all he can do.

Aidan opens his mouth. No. Listen first. He throws himself up against a wall to steady himself and LISTEN. Does he have the tools? "She's not evil. She's doing the best she can. I've never seen her betray anyone." Aidan rasps out a sharp breath and thrusts his hand forward. A wall suddenly rushes forward towards the Servant of Wrath. A flat plane of wind, a simple single wall to thrust against the Servant. Not terribly damaging or painful. Just to push it back. And keep pushing it. "I've never been betrayed... not really." Aidan thinks, casting back to the things that have stabbed the hardest in his heart.

"How much does it hurt?"
Rena Nanites are well beyond Rena's personal knowledge but she knows not to object to green healing, no matter what form it takes. As she tumbles when she hits the ground, a roll before she springs back to her feet, she calls, "Thanks!"

Rena's only real option here is direct, physical damage. Unless she can otherwise bind the thing, which gives her an idea - but she'll need a moment to actually put the thing together, and right now she doesn't have a moment.

"The Hermit can't betray me because I don't know them," Rena says, which is a) not entirely true, she's met Meika, but also b) true in her mind, because she doesn't think of the Hermit as Meika yet. Then again, she also hasn't had a good look at her - she's spent all of her time trying to keep the Servant of Wrath still.

Keeping the Servant still hasn't entirely worked, given that the Servant of Wrath rushes Rena. Rena waits, bouncing on the balls of her feet, before throwing herself aside and trying to get the Servant to slam herself directly into a pillar - but she's a hair slow, and the Servant catches Rena, driving her bodily into the stone post.

It's better than the axe, Rena thinks, woozily. Is something broken? She can't tell.

Rena slides down the pillar a moment later, landing in a messy heap at its base and struggling to rise. She reaches into her jacket, pulling out a different weapon than before. This one is... odd. A boxy device, about the size and shape of a particularly bulky old-style TV remote, decorated with hearts. Some of them have rhinestones. Some of the rhinestones are *also* shaped like hearts. SOMEONE wanted to make this glittery and sparkly and it wasn't Rena. Under other circumstances she'd be embarrassed to wave this heart-encrusted thing around.

But it also has a button, and a ... probably a barrel. Some kind of emitter, anyway, extended a little bit from the top of the 'remote' where an antenna might be if it was a phone. Rena fusses with the remote, slotting some chips into slots on its back before closing it back up. Then she points the remote at the back of the Servant while it's busy with someone else and depresses the button.

The ... device, there's not really another word for it. The device begins to whine ominously. The rhinestones glitter extra hard. And then it disgorges a tremendous blast of sticky, gritty gel that immediately begins to harden into something halfway between bakelite and cement... which also sparkles, because the device has a theme. Breaking the stuff turns it into a whole lot of razor-sharp shards which are still sticky. She figures it might keep things still long enough for Aidan and Dysnomia to get out what they want to say.

Only then does she respond. "No harder!" she calls up at Binah.
Meika Kirenai     Sougo can feel the Hermit's myriad eyes upon him, crossed and spinning tracking the afterimage special effects of his time-turning. Her reactions afterwards, to his surprise, and to Woz's slashing spear attacks, are both muted. A languid- no, feeble swirl of the hand, trying to catch the weapon in the skin-like veiny fabric of her cloak, where the blade passes through like a hot knife through butter- uncomfortably empty. There is no blood, just a ripping of-- paper --unsettling fabric.

    What's less languid, is bringing the bat around to swipe at the side of Woz's head, the crude weapon screaming through the still air before it can collide.

    Hibiki and Touta apply fists to fabricated story, with similar effect to Woz's strikes. The smiles, the coughing half-laughs, are wrong. Bat strikes are returned with crushing force, faster than the old crone ought to move. The eyes stare from the cloak back at Hibiki, with straight-on glances unsettlingly dissimilar to Meika's habitual groundward stares. But the magic crackling off her weapon is that same shade, still.

'After everything with Courage, and Beozzi-- /this/ is really, seriously what you want!?'

    "This is what I must. The cards have been laid, and my path arranged. Do not slow me down. Make way."

    Madeleine's interception nearing the elevator entrance places her right in the line of attention, a dangerous spot to be. She may be playing goalie, but the Hermit has-- always played offense, winger or center, break through the lines, the ice is clean and fast and I'm faster, I'll --no trouble simply slipping through the barrier, with a pealing cry like sky-tearing thunder, even as the still-fractalizing shards plink against it uselessly. When the Hermit strikes at her, the bat simply passing harmlessly through her flesh and leaving behind a similar upwelling of magic- far less harmless in how it tears outwards and tries to rip through all in its way, going as far to batter at the walls of ice, too.

    Ice cracks- from Petra's charge, too. The knocked-free ice pillar careents and 'falls' into the Hermit, with a sound like shattering and a texture like something shearing and ripping. Unsteady, unbraced by her baseball cane, the abnormality-posessed girl tries to get her bearings- all while spiking threads from the magic stuck to Madeleine's flesh lance out to give Petra hell.

'But that's even more reason to stop you.'

    "My path doesn't end here. What lays in its past, what lays in its future, I will carve through to. There is nothing else. Ruin is set in stone." As her raspy voice lets those words slip, it's eerily, shockingly, like just rattling off a script. Petra's itching, hellish aura doesn't seem to-- be innefectual, it's awful, unbearable, the closer this is the more it all --be hampering the Hermit. But deep in the jagged edges of her emenating magic, there are f-f-flickers of something still.
Meika Kirenai     Lilian's onslaught, leaping through the air, and despite the fabric of the Hermit's cloak thwacking and rustling as she spins to track her, she can't keep up. She crumples, and falls onto the sword blade, and it pierces-- somwhere, backstage, behind the curtain. There are no watching eyes visible to widen in pain, to tear up, to wince with shock-frozen guilt and shame. But there's a shudder. She can feel the hurt that she's earned. The stab is where her --her heart should be, but it buys only a momentary pause.

    'Just next to lethal' for an undying story rips through the papery skin of her cloak, rips through the smudged-grey flesh of the Hermit's body.

'I have to do what's right.'

    "So must I. I've promises to keep. A friend to meet. Even in betrayal, this all goes on. There's only one way this will end." The crackled lips of the Hermit's mouth tremble, and go still- She crumples to the floor, despite the blade through her-

    No. She crumples through the floor. This close to the elevator shaft, phasing down and out through concrete and pipes into the opening, her escape is slippery and lightning-quick, like a snowman melting on hot asphalt.

    The Hermit of the Vermillion Forest has reached Information!
Solty Revant      Solty is starting to understand what is going on as she listens to the others and the radio chatter. And she does not like what she is hearing. "Th-these...use to be magical girls?" she says quietly after bouncing back from her punch. She kind of stares for a few moments, shocked. How could this be a magical girl?

     Solty's wonderings are interrupted when those two acidic hammers come in. There is a loud metallic CLANG as she is hit, and she cries out as her sides dimple inward a bit. She falls to the ground, a bit of electricity arcing where some of her mechanical internal bits are exposed by the damaged outer skin. She holds her side as she raises her face to Wrath. She doesn't melt...not quiet yet at least.

     She charges back in with a powerful tackle and actually tries to...wrestle the Servant! Solty's strength is enough to lift mecha back on her world, and she's hoping to leverage that strength to slow Wrath's advance! "You...you have to try and forgive her! Friends have to forgive each other even when they make big mistakes! If you don't, a lot more people could get hurt! If you can do that then maybe we can all learn to trust again! Together!" she exclaims, her body starting to glow as she tries to push as hard as she can against the Servant.
Timespace Riders      Woz's helmet dips in sharp, stunned confusion at the sound his weapon makes. Accordingly off-guard, he is struck dead on by the bat, still unused to how to deal with the ghostly aftershock of the attack. He ducks--but comes back up too soon, struck by the screaming pain of the magical followup. Sparks spray from his helmet as he nearly falls over from the impact, using the butt of the Jikan Despear to keep himself from totally falling over.

    So 'Chevalier Vermillion' was such a half-hearted flight of fancy that her story can't even compare to an Abnormality. Not even as real as a figment of imagination pulled from the Well . . .

My path doesn't end here. What lays in its past, what lays in its future, I will carve through to. There is nothing else. Ruin is set in stone.

    "I won't -let- that be true! ANY of it!!"

    Zi-O procures another Ridewatch. The face of the watch bears the visage of a Kamen Rider, as all the others do. The helmet references a familiar circlet, as well as a pair of earmuffs at the side. The Demon King presses the stop on the watch.

VERMILLION!

I've promises to keep.

    "Did you forget the promise *I* made to you?!" The name resounds through the chamber like a bell, as a hardlight image of that same Rider appears before the watch. Zi-O removes the silver half of the twinned Zi-O II Ridewatch from his belt, replacing it with the other--the crystallized moment at which Chevalier Vermillion was made.

    "That I would retell that story, and put it into the world--that no matter how much if it was erased, it would still touch people's hearts! If the first retelling is today... fine!!" Zi-O's fist mashes the stop on the Timespace Driver, and he spins it with both hands.

    The LCD chronometer reads AU28--about four years ago.

                  Striking! Brilliant! Steadfast! VERMILLION!                  

    A rich red cape, befitting of a valiant knight astride a steed, sprouts from between Zi-O's shoulders. Large speakers weave it into his armor via wiggling crystalline waveforms. Those save waveforms forge gleaming silver plates upon his armor, their shapes distinctly paying homage to European knights of old. A heavy greatsword flies into his outstretched hand, its point bent, almost resembling the crook of a hockey stick.

    Tangible red katakana, reading RIDER fly through the air, to press with an audible 'clang' into the black visor of Zi-O's stylized bucket helm. The last details are etched upon that helmet--symmetrical 'crowns' of a wristwatch, which also resemble Meika's earmuffs, and a silver winged circlet. A red jewel gleams at the center of the circlet, cut to resemble the bow Vermillion wears; its loose lengths stylized to serve as Rider antennae, tapered off at the ends to -also- resemble minute and hour hands.
Timespace Riders      "VERMILLION!" Zi-O bellows, his voice ragged from the force of his shouting. "Did you think I wasn't serious?! I'm not going to let you be forgotten that easily!" Shouldering the greatsword, he lets out a war cry, charging after the Hermit and leaping down the elevator shaft. The greatsword's bent tip carves a gouge in the wall, used to slow his descent, before an elbow strike launches him out.

    Zi-O sails low and fast, landing with a roll to bring up the greatsword in a low sweep aimed at the Hermit's legs. The impact creates a shardlike torus of visible aftershock, demanding to be heard as much as felt, extending well beyond the Abnormality's body. Rising with another determined shout, he rakes its hooked edge across the Abnormality as he does, creating a wide crescent of that same red aftershock, before drawing it back and holding the weapon half-sword for a powerful thrust.

    Woz, evidently, won't let her story be forgotten easily, either. Getting to his feet, he leaps down the elevator shaft one palm guiding him. He lands with grace that belies the onerous attack he'd taken a moment before, his head turned upwards as he issues a proclamation.

    "IWAE!" he proudly calls, held head high. 'Rejoice!' "He is heir to the power of all Riders. The ruler of time, traveling beyond time and space to reign over past and future... His name is Kamen Rider Zi-O Vermillion Armor. And in this moment, he has immortalized the story of Chevalier Vermillion!"

    "Let the hearts of all who overhear her tale swell with inspiration! Let the howling winds of history and the grip of this wayward Hermit do their worst--for today, the will of the King is made manifest!" Like a butterfly alighting from the smallest branch, Woz leaps overtop of the Abnormality for a high flying dive kick, delivered in tandem with a powerful pommel strike from Zi-O.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine's eyes widen in shock as the Hermit careens through her barricades. Right. Hockey star. The realization comes too late to spare her from the swing of the bat - and she's even *more* surprised when it simply phases through her. She senses what's about to happen next just before it does, and redirects her energy to conjuring a bubble of ice around herself.

    There is nothing else. Ruin is set in stone.

    "You're a fool," Madeleine coughs as she struggles against the magic planted in her. "You've seen your end and you're going to lie down and die? Resign before the game is over? You can be better than that, right? Look at me. Look at me. I know my doom. Not here, not now, but someday my curse will devour me. I will not walk gladly into its jaws." As the sphere of ice closes around her, she spits at the Hermit's feet.

    Then, the moment the huntress is completely encapsulated, she finally lets the hostile magic in her out. Waves of sound echo off the inside of the spherical chamber, ringing and reverberating back onto the huntress. She's battered this way and that like a rag-doll, slamming against the sides of the orb, but the sound waves do not escape the makeshift prison either. Vibrations can be felt through the floor - the interior must be horrendous.
Angela "How was I betrayed? I spoke softly to an Agent of an enemy kingdom, we shared stories. She used what I told her to attack the Kingdom of Happiness." The Servant of Wrath speaks, answering the question from a few folks. "Vermilion betrayed me by breaking the balance, disregarding the book of law. She gave and gave when it was unasked for, she left behind her sisters to fight her battle alone, she abandoned her fellow Chevaliers to fight alone. There is no one more suited to be the Hermit than one who has made Isolation part of their being."

The Kukuru digs her claws in, causing green goo to drip out from the wounds. In turn, the Servant strikes down with both hammers. It is not an agile creature, but it hits about as hard as it looks like it can hit.

''If you butcher that kid, they'll be left behind.''

That gets the Servant to hesitate in her swinging more than anything, but she recovers after stalling for a moment--allowing Rena to use the ultimate power of all: Stickiness. It binds the Servant in place, rendering her pretty much unable to move much beyond her arms. The Servant sprays acid towards Dysnomia and Rena, trying to catch them. "Such a faithless girl, how do I trust my sisters in her hands, you Sinners?"

Ishirou's words don't seem to have an effect, "It is precisely because I am thinking of her...! She is a dear friend! I will stop her with my own two hands!" The Hammer is coming for his head. The rapier slices up her body in the process, green fluid pouring copiously out from her form but she just won't go down.

''Hey'' Nazrin comments to Binah.

"Hey." Binah comments back. A splatter of acid drops on her table, burning a small hole into it. A glint in her singular eye that gets even Parker to start backing away from the creature. The Abnormality gets another mouthful of water that's seriously shutting down her ability to summon acid.

''How much does it hurt?''

The Servant creaks against her bindings, staring balefully at Aidan. "My acid is a mercy compared to the burn of betrayal. My hammers are less forceful when it comes to crushing the heart. Betrayal turns your own body against you, your own mind. You see phantoms where you see friends, every knife that can be driven into your back shocks your soul."

"You have never been betrayed? Then you cannot understand how it unmakes you. Not quickly, no no. Slowly. Your every word becomes a gesture of hesitation, every moment of unease from your friends becomes a question. Fear fills your heart and you start to wonder if you can even have true friends again because you cannot take that pain again, YOU CANNOT TAKE THAT PAIN AGAIN!!"
Angela She roars suddenly, rearing back with her head

''Friends have to forgive each other even when they make mistakes.''

"Even if they take everything from you? Your home? Your FRIENDS. Even as they whisper behind your back, laughing laughing LAUGHING about how they really feel, how terrible you are, how foolish... With one mouth they say how much they treasure you and with another they insult everything about you!! It is easy to be a ''Friend'', child... But a true friend is honest, not deceitful! They do not ignore the pains they inflict upon those they love. They--"

Binah snaps her fingers and a pillar erupts underneath the Servant of Wrath with enough force they go THROUGH the roof of the Extraction Department, cratering right into the lower floor of Central.

"Ruining my favorite table." She tsks. "Struck a bit too hard, I suppose and she's where you don't want her, but Rena did say ''No... Harder!'' after all."

She settles back down for more tea.
Ishirou The hammer comes down right as he is about to sail out of range, the hammer catches him midair, slamming him right into the ground and splattering him right then and there.  He rolls across the ground and /screams/ in pain.  Sparks fly from the sheer power and hit, causing him to hit a wall and sink down against it.  Ishirou slowly pulls himself up, clutching his body in pain.  

He's trying to recover, but the blow was pretty big.  Thankfully, or... unhelpfully, Binah decides to step in and blast the Servant of Wrath away.    This gives him the moment he needs to recover, but at the same time puts the Servant /closer/ to her target.  "Damn it," he says, hitting the side of the wall, as POD hovers by and does some emergency repairs.  Not much, but enough to keep him going just a little longer.  

He jumps up after the servant, using POD and the sides of the now-damaged facility to follow the Servant up until they reach the top.  He lands, clutching one side, but starts to speak.  "I am sorry what happened to you was so devastating that it holds a place in your heart to this day... but does she /really/ deserve it?  Meika?  What she did was stupid, and it hurt a lot of people, but the answer to that isn't death.  The answer to that is to keep living life and to PAY for your mistakes one day at a time."

"She's too young to die because of something like this!" he says and draws up another hand created out of electromagnetic force to clobber the taller Servant back and attempt to drag them back into the path made by Binah, attempting to shove them back down into the hole.  Once more, attempting to also provide an opening for Dysnomia to take advantage of.
UFO Gang Nazrin casts a covetous eye upon the widget that Rena produces, and Minamitsu looks at it as well as it disgorges a hellacious G L O B out and towards the Servant!

Others are calling out. The Servant speaks of betrayal. Being broken in balance. An uncomfort that comes from an over-surfeit of grace and care. And when the time came, she went alone and left her friend in pain. Minamitsu's face grows strangely more solemn.

"So, you work here?" Nazrin remarks to Binah, before saying "woah!!" with a jump start as Binah calls up a column of stone smashing the Servant up into the lower floor of Central. She shades her eyes and looks upwards. "That's going to make them --"

Minamitsu flits past in pursuit.

"Sweat?" Nazrin says.

UPSTAIRS:

Minamitsu doesn't strike at the enemy immediately. (Inwardly, she thinks: I'm faster than all of 'em. They might not get here in time. And --)

"Hey," Minamitsu says.

(-- I can't just let this happen. Or I'd never be able to look Hijiri in the face.)

"I know what it's like to be betrayed," she says.

"The humans did that. They couldn't handle that Hijiri looked out for us. She dragged me out of a blood-soaked hole that was only going to send me deeper and deeper into despair, accompanied by the souls of those I killed," Minamitsu continues, with conviction and also possibly some details that might be a smidge shocking. "Nobody else could do it - I killed the earlier exorcists. But Hijiri extended her hand to me, and it saved me."

"They buried my ship," Minamitsu says. "They were afraid to wreck it. I watched 'em do it. I stood on the deck and I wanted to drown them and see their bodies thrash and struggle and go limp before they float back to the surface like busted dolls. But I didn't. The worst I did was give 'em a dirty look. Because if I took it out on them, I'd have been saying nothing Hijiri did ever mattered. That they'd been right."

She raises the ladle upwards.

"... is it okay with you, to become someone like this?"

"Or are you just making two betrayals out of one?"

Water is pouring out of it, running down the hole in the floor and possibly into Binah's tea (rude).

"... I probably can't stop you," Minamitsu continues, "if you really really want it. I can tell you've hurt all the others. But I can make you take a minute to think about what you're doing." The water she's spilled out surges, and there's enough of it now that it isn't exactly bullets. It swirls around the Servant, around that hole, spinning in languid circles that steadily accelerate. Her head turns to give Ishirou a somewhat hollow-eyed stare, before twisting her ladle in a commanding little swirl --

At which point the water she's called rises upwards and surges like a succession of out-going waves, aiming to add physical force to the electromagnetic crackle of Ishirou's fist. Will water and lightning combine for the ol' One Two!?

("Hey," Minamitsu says to Ishirou after letting out a huge breath and, seemingly, brightening up a little, "This place is underground, right? Can they flood it or is that just going to make stuff worse?")
Lilian Rook     'This is what I must. The cards have been laid, and my path arranged.'

    "You've never given a single solitary fuck about 'what you must'." The Hermit isn't talking to Lilian, but Lilian isn't talking to 'The Hermit' anyways. "Every step on that path you've been desperately searching for a ramp off. I'm not a fucking idiot. The rest are, but I can see how bad you want out." Lilian tries to keep it out of her voice, but she can't. The stress leads into the slip leads into the crack leads into the crumbling of airs.

    'Do not slow me down. Make way.'

    "Shut the fuck up Meika. All I ever do is make way for you. I bend and pander and go out of my way and worry about you and care so much about what you think that people lose their minds about how you're such a special case."

    The Hermit's shudder makes Lilian's grip squeak tighter into her hood. Out of what emotion is a secret between her and someone far from god. The sword plunged through her chest is no doubt agonizingly painful, but that much is only an inconvenience to the infinite regeneration Petra claims is true.

    What matters is the sliver of light; the single ray of unmasked feeling that can slip through. One that pierces through Meika's mind at psychic oblique, and drives home the intangible heart Lilian's steadfast opposition, in the only way she can. Limited. Scarred. Deeply aware of its faded colours compared to the beautify of those children. How she can fight without fighting, and mean it. But that sliver nonetheless escapes from an undimming core of raw and radiant genuity. The flawed way she can still summon them doesn't make the feelings any less real.

    Blade to heart, even Petra's aura can't quite scramble the signal. The edge of a frigid night chill, driving one back into warm inaction. A long shadows of a dark forest and the harsh moonlight that delineates the unapproachable boundary into them. The feeling of being winded like a swift blow to the diaphragm by a sigh that vents every little frustration and leaves on feeling hollow. It isn't warm and fuzzy and playful and deeply, lovingly, beautifully, human, but it is so nakedly heartfelt that reality decides its weight is a little bit real, and it slices through the Hermit's core, if just by degrees. Raging emotion and unchangeable conviction can bleed and weaken, when cut by another human heart.

    §I refuse. It's my turn to tell you those words. You don't deserve to say them; not until you can look me for real.§

    §I can't help that I want to be kind. I still do. But when it really comes down to the two of us, your story against mine, the one that breaks is yours. You should have realized the real difference between us sooner.§

    The Hermit dropping through the floor is something Lilian can already follow. She'd done it earlier today. In her 'transformed' state, the look is a little different; thus the spectre that chases the Hermit down glitters with the alien stars caught in its shroud in the instants before it dissipates. No matter how quick the Hermit is, it may gain ground, but it can't outrun her.

    "The way you talk about the end coming on, how you can't look away, can't deny it . . . I really thought a part of you was dying, Meika. I thought you couldn't bear to lose Chevalier Vermillion. Even the version before she was called that."

    The retaliatory attacks phase through spaces where Lilian ought to be, but isn't. The magic multiplies into thin air where she stood, but wasn't. The bat doesn't so much as cross with her sword. Lilian doesn't hold it in a duelling stance, but in a monster-slaying one.
Lilian Rook     "That sketchbook broke my heart. The idea that you were burning up that precious, beautifully stupid dream, one page at a time, just to stay above water-- You let me believe that. It made me so furious I felt sick."

    The myriad eyes of the Hermit's cloak are everywhere, so Lilian doesn't try blindsides at all, but merely weaves through the rapidly shifting safe space around it with graceful, frame-skipping steps.

    "I wanted to fight that. More than anything, I wanted to push back against the thing choking Chevalier Vermillion and slowly taking her away, memory by memory. Even though the fact that you even had something that pure to lose at all made me feel so wretchedly envious I couldn't stand it."

    Lilian leans back and turns under the momentum of the bat, dragging the sword in a circle of fiery sparks around her to swing it through the Hermit's middle. She carries it on and upwards, building on its momentum until the point orbits twice and thrice up through the Hermit in a tightening spiral-- she tilts her body to the side and steps precognitively out of the way from another attack-- and with a weightlessly flick of both wrists-- and metallic clack of her palms on hilt-- she brings it through the cloak from shoulder to hip with projection of force reserved for robustly inhuman horrors.

    "But I guess I was just projecting myself on you. What you really meant by the dreadful, inevitable end, was that you were getting too old to like beautiful things anymore. Right? You were trying to tell me that you were done with with 'Chevalier Vermillion', and even if you'd miss her, you couldn't help but grow out of her. I'm sorry that you tried to tell me that you were throwing away childish things, and I went ahead and thought I had to save you from something cruel."

    Lilian leaps back, zigzag skips, and finally blinks away from the next wave of attacks, then readies her sword with the hilt by her ear and the flat braced over her folded elbow, clicking like intuitively weaponoid menace, and extends a single step into a corridor length lunge to pierce the Hermit. Each blow carries a little bit more of that psychic force. Each one cuts a little bit more psyche than flesh; chipping down a little more willpower than it cuts away cloak. Even a ragged glimpse of a 'heart made real' is strong against the inertia of a story.

    "If your heart is set on something else-- someone you want to be-- then that's fine. But wherever you're going, Meika, I can't follow. As much as I try to be the adult, I still haven't let go of the stupid, beautiful, hopelessly childish things from a long time ago. Even if they're roughed up and cracked and stuck back together, I can't stop caring, and I can't stop fighting."

    The way Lilian moves around the Hermit like an apparition is intentionally chosen to draw the attention of all those eyes. To drag its focus back to the others. To leave it paused in decision and action while they speak. And to constantly turn it around and around from its path forward. The relentless slashes through its body, reversing course and crisscrossing its cloak with erratic, weightless ease, are punctuation points to each and every smoking raw thing she has to say. The strikes require the venting of the heart to work, and the vomiting outpour of feeling requires the fighting to keep it going.

    "So once I save you from this, I'll leave you alone. I promise won't get in the way of you growing up and forgetting all this silly bullshit. The place you're going, and the path I'm walking; they're totally different, so I shouldn't try to go with you. I can't understand a girl who'd give up on the more beautiful version of herself."
Dysnomia     "She menaced you with help you did not ask for?" She retorted. "She tried to help you and she got it wrong? Stars, do you even hear yourself?" And though she was sneering, she was gaining far more ground with the creature than she'd expected. The moment's hesitation, a suggestion of something less than Meika believed in. Of something more than Dysnomia had expected.

    The acid pours over her body, boiling and hissing and steaming. But when it drips from her body, it reforms, her helmet half-burned through, exposing a piercing eye. "You'll kill their friend for that, you'll kill the one that freed them for that, because you can't tell the difference between a Traitor and an IDIOT!"

    "Then you cannot understand how it unmakes you. Not quickly, no no. Slowly. Your every word becomes a gesture of hesitation, every moment of unease from your friends becomes a question. Fear fills your heart and you start to wonder if you can even have true friends again because you cannot take that pain again, YOU CANNOT TAKE THAT PAIN AGAIN!!"

    This, more than the acid, makes Mia recoil, a wince that can only come from Knowing. But her mouth firms in its line. "These aren't Meika Kirenai's sins," She growled, "Are they? She hurt you, so she's the same as the worst person you've ever known? Don't make me laugh."

    "There's no difference to you, between some fool who doesn't know how to help you, and who'll rip out your heart? You're making light of betrayal, storyboo--"

    And then the abnormality was propelled upward, into the floor above. Her stare sweeps toward Binah, venomous, and then she's gone, floating upward through the ceiling as lines of color sweep and coil around the servant, trying to hold her down.
Kukuru The Servant speaks of its past, of what the Hermit did to it in betraying its trust. Kukuru can't find any fault in that at all, and she can't help but feel a little more inclined to let the Servant reach the Hermit. It also speaks, however, of what Meika did to betray...

Balance? Law? That doesn't quite make as much sense to Kukuru, and her expression quickly shifts from an understanding frown to a baffled grimace. "How did Meika betray anyone? She was ju-"

That horrible feeling in her chest returns, setting off all manner of survival instincts in her head telling her to fight, to escape, to do anything but what she just did. She still doesn't know what's caused that feeling to come up, but it could have certainly come at a better time as she sees those hammers coming right back in at her. Kukuru brings her claws up again to try and block them, but they don't quite reach their targets in time.

Instead, the hammers smash right against her shoulders, drawing out a pained scream from the short green-haired creature and forcing her to break off from it for at least a moment. As she focuses on restoring feeling to her arms and also putting them back where they should be, she hears Dysnomia speaking to the Servant of Wrath. She sees its reaction, too, and she sees Rena trying to buy even more time for the battle against the Hermit-no. Meika to conclude to stop whatever may come.

Exhaling painfully, Kukuru's eyes drift over to that strangely colored heart nearby, and she gives it another gentle nudge, like she's communicating with someone through it or something. She doesn't actually know if Laetitia can hear her through it, but doing that much still helps soothe that pain in her chest for a moment. "Don't worry. I'll be back to play with you ag-"

"Laetitia needs one person to work with her. But anyone who does, can't go work on another Abnormality, because she'll get jealous." "Just be really, really careful not to get too close to another Abnormality after that."

That's what Petra was warning her about on the way to LAetitia's cell. Whatever that feeling is must be tied to talking, and there's a brief look of dread of Kukuru's face as she realizes she can't try and help the Servant of Wrath in the way she wanted to. She might not even be able to help Meika, if trying to help at all is what's causing that pain. All she can do safely is swing, smash, and heal those already trying to keep the Servant at bay.
Kukuru It hurts. It hurts so much. She desperately wants to try and find some way to help Meika. Even though she knows she messed up terribly with Nothing There, she feels something different about the Servant of Wrath. She feels more confident that she can help them somehow, and she's sure that there's some kind of answer that can get them to a better resolution than just striking them down. Everyone's fighting the Servant despite their existing injuries and fatigue, and she sees what Rena's doing to try and buy more time to get through to it, but...

That buzzing. That chittering. That pressure inside of her chest makes it too hard to try and do any of what she wants to. It almost makes Kukuru want to reach into her chest just to find out exactly what's going on in there, but that's not something she has the luxury of doing right now. All she can afford to do so far is just keep those nanites flowing and trust in-

"... Everyone. I'm counting on you. Save Meika!" Kukuru pleads, then throws herself right back at the Servant of Hatred. The claws come right back up, but instead of just swinging blindly, she actually looks at it more closely for once. She's looking for weak points, areas along the Abnormality's arms that are already deeply wounded that she might not have seen normally, and starts ramming her claws right into them. She's trying to force its attention on herself again, to hamper its ability to swing anyone that might have a better shot at actually getting through to it than she can now.
Aidan Proudpick This creature could simply flatten him. "I know a little bit. I never had a friend betray me. Maybe I've betrayed a few. Thinking about my feelings first over theirs. The dull constant ache of extending a hand towards my family." He struggles to get more wind out. He keeps his shield in front of him, preparing for a deathblow within the next few seconds.

She gave and gave when it was unasked for, she left behind her sisters to fight her battle alone, she abandoned her fellow Chevaliers to fight alone. There is no one more suited to be the Hermit than one who has made Isolation part of their being.

"I don't know her. I don't know if she'll ever let me know her. All I know is she'll fight until she dies. Maybe so no one else can hurt. Maybe because it's too hard. I hope she figures it out."

The wind up. Aidan is out of wind. His lungs hurt. Just like at the battle for Rita's world. Pain fills the right side of his chest cavity, bringing tears of pain up to his eyes.

Do you think you can just get it by wanting it more?

Yes.

Reach past the lungs. Your life breath doesn't just stay in your lungs. It moves to your heart. Your body. Your mind. Take it back. The flesh around the acid wound suddenly goes pale, a chalky white as Aidan pulls wind back from his body. Just a little. Just enough not to start staggering this time. As his vision blurs at the edges, he forces that life breath into Aegis. Red light blossoms like a flower, forming a tremendous shield wall in front of Aidan. The hammering strikes, the acid, all push against the shield, driving Aidan back up against the wall. The shield takes every blow, spreading it out along the circle of red, dampening each blow. Fatal blows become simply crippling blows, smashing Aidan up against the wall with each one. His chest cracks. His back blazes with pain each time he is bashed against the wall.

"Y-"

WHAM.

Aidan staggers forward, staring upward as the pillar pushes Wrath upward through the ceiling. Five full seconds pass, red light bathing Aidan's face as he stares at the pillar.

After five more seconds, Aidan bursts through the floor, the Aegis not bothering to slow when met with puny things like 'floors' or 'possibly organs in the walls'. Water rushes down the hole as well, spreading quickly into Extraction.

"It is precisely because I am thinking of her...! She is a dear friend! I will stop her with my own two hands!"

"You'll kill her? Then what about her sisters? Are you thinking of them?"

Aidan can't tell if he is talking to the Servant or himself. "It hurts. But you aren't thinking about her OR her sisters. You just want to feel the pain go away."

WIth his shield flaring like this, powered briefly by his Life Breath, he takes a stand, holding the shield in front of him. A grand wall. With a skip forward, the massive wall of wind and shield flies forward, a monolithic force to slam into the Servant.
Rena Rena's LOVE Machine (don't ask, or at least don't ask right now) starts to beep warningly as she uses it, slowly accelerating the rate of beeps, and after a few moments of that she stops pushing the button to not overload the thing. Shaking it, she shoves it back in her pocket for later, when it's had a chance to recharge. Reload. Whatever it does.

She's finally managing to catch her breath after that impact, and she's pretty sure nothing is actually broken, which is honestly a lot better than she was expecting.

Rena is willing to admit that she maybe didn't enunciate very clearly and she shortened her sentence, because her ribs hurt and she got the air knocked out of her. She's still upset with Binah. "That's not what I meant and you know it!" She looks up through the hole the pillar made... and the pillar. How's she going to get up there?

Aidan makes a way. Rena bounds up after him, ignoring the stitch in her side, the pain in her ribs; Aegis can plow through all that stuff, but she has to climb it, though she cheats and uses a grapple gun several times to pull herself up rather than actually climb the slow way.

"guh," is the noise she makes at the top of it. Rena hurts. Rena hurts *bad*, and a spray of acid isn't helping matters. Her skin feels scorched and burned, chemically; her tattered coat is a little more tattered than usual, and one of her boots is halfway to melted from putting her foot in something she shouldn't have on the way up. She mostly survived by intentionally going through the water that Minamitsu was accidentally pouring down the hole and trying to wash most of it off. (So thanks, accidentally, she thinks.)

But she's here.

"Betrayal sucks," Rena croaks out. Her voice is raspy, too. "I've been betrayed, and it's awful. And some sins are worth killing for, yeah. There's a guy I need to kill, because he killed some people who are important to me. It won't bring them back but I still need to do it."

"But you still have to trust sometimes. I don't know Meika well, so I can't say much about her - but I can say that she helped when it was needed, even to the end of the world, and I trust her to do that much, at least. That's not worth killing her for."

Rena cannot try to bind her with the LOVE Machine again, unless she wants it to explode in her hand. There's not a lot she can do there. But she *can* fire her gun, though she aims - this time - at the legs, to try to stop the Servant from being able to resist being thrown around by the others.

"And anyway," Rena says, still rough, "if I let you get to her and kill everyone, I'd be betraying *myself*. What I came here for. So, I can't let you do that, either...!"
Hibiki Tachibana ...At my school. Everyone came together to not just stop, but get through to Beozzi-- ...the Hermit. And Courage... Wrath.
...
So that's... what, the fucking power of friendship?
So Meika's fucking dead then.

    The exchange with Petra rings through Hibiki's head about as hard as what's in front of her. The grin on her face, which feels achingly unfamiliar. Don't look like that. The stares loosed at her, reminding her far more of the ones felt on her in Meika's presence rather than the ones the other girl gave her. Don't look at me like that. And the too-familiar magic, as if the 'cane' wasn't enough unnecessary proof already. This is what I must.

    "Who the hell said it /has/ to be!?" That's as much as the Symphogear user gets out before said bat smashes into her side, an audible crack on impact forcing her body to jolt with the motion a split-second before the screeching force carries through, and sends her into a halloween-decorated table hard enough to make the whole thing crumple in half. Vacated of all the air in her lungs, a pained heave makes it seem like she's down.

    Before Hibiki grips onto the debris, crunching beneath her fingers, and uses it to help fling herself forward. Full speed for the shaft leading between departments just as the Hermit drops down, hitting the opposite wall before freefalling down. Right on the tail of Zi-O and Woz, she descends with no hesitation - up to plummeting and plowing through any halted elevators if they're in the way - to come down boots-first at Information.
Hibiki Tachibana     Meika Kirenai, no matter how you look at it, really isn't her friend. Even if she'd like that to be true. Even if Meika was willing to entertain the silly idea, after everything. Another case of someone she just can't seem to do anything but screw up with.

    Hibiki has thought about it a few times, recently. How much easier it'd be to... give up. Stay home. Nothing is /making/ her come out into the Multiverse-- or well, there won't be, once a certain 'arc' is wrapped up. It'd hurt a lot to do that, at first.

    But it'd hurt a lot less in the long run, stepping back from all of it. Maybe eventually get rid of the kind of hurt Haru was talking about. Stopping herself from running headlong into the jagged spikes she's apparently all too happy to impale herself on. Like this one. My Courage...was the Courage to open up one's heart to others, even knowing...that it makes it easier to stick a blade in.

    "I don't give a crap if 'ruin' is unavoidable or not...! You're the one making the decision to rush into it without stopping for anything, like you're embracing it with everything you got!" But somehow, Hibiki Tachibana still finds herself barreling into the department as fast as her legs will take her, left hand clenching onto the gauntlet of her right.

    "Making Courage have to repeat this story all over again, knowing how it hurts her...! What happened with Beozzi...! When you were putting all your feelings into helping make the miracles that saved those girls from Wrath, and Despair, and Hate--" There's a forced pneumatic hiss as machinery is pried back past its limit, and a fist primes back. "--were these the kind of things going through your head then, too!?"

    And in her ever-predictable way, she takes a straight line to the Hermit with the single-minded intention of slamming her fist into her, as hard as she can, with a little more than just raw physical force behind it.

    "Are you telling me, with your whole heart, this is how you want the end of it to go!? What you /want/ to leave behind!?"
Solty Revant      Solty listens to the Servant of Wrath, and feels bad for it...her? Her. She listens, and at the end she nods. "Yes...even then! You have to forgive them for yourself! You don't have to stay friends with them, but you have to let the anger go! Because if you don't, you end up doing bad things because of that anger! Things like breaking into a facility and hurting a bunch of people that had nothing to do with it!" she exclaims earnestly.

     The moment is kind of ruined when a sudden earthen pillar smashes them upward. Solty takes quite a bit of the brunt of that pillar and gets smashed through the ceiling right along with Wrath.

     She is thrown upward far enough to hit the next ceiling, then falls back down and lands with an 'oof'. She slowly stands up, scratches and breaks in her armor-like skin riddling her now. "Wh-what happened?" the android girl wonders. Her ears twitch as she hears Binah. She mmphs softly, then leaps into the air high enough to reach the ceiling of central. "No matter what someone has done to you, hurting other people to get to them is wrong!

     As she is talking her body glows more brightly in an unusual orange-yellow light that flows off of her in a way sort of like how light looks on the bottom of a pool. She braces against the ceiling, then with a sound almost like some kind of large energy weapon firing she kicks off and comes plummeting down at Wrath. "But, you'll have to forgive her from afar! We can't let you talk it out face to face yet! I'm sorry!"

     She aims to impact Wrath hard enough to smash her back through the floor, causing a shockwave when she hits. And to Binah she calls out, "I am pretty sure she meant less difficult, please!" Possibly while bringing some ceiling down around Binah.
Touta Konoe     When Touta's fist along with Hibiki's makes purchase into the Hermit, there should have been more feeling, yet...It all feels so hollow. It feels like a bull chasing into red fabric only to find on the other side is just empty space. The follow-up strike is a completely different kind of monster as that bat swings into them. Touta feels bones cracking as the impact sends him flying back to several feet even as he tries to catch himself. "Was that part of her magic too or the Abnormality...?"    The situation was now becoming even more daunting. If she could pass through walls and floors then the eventual arrival with Wrath could be imminent. He doesn't know what the ETA of a Hermit - Wrath meeting would be, but he knows that they can't let this happen. Even if it's only to stall, they needed to do something. If there was a way to grab the Magical Girl's attention. To pull her from her mission...Even if that meant.

    "Hibiki, if I fuck this up...I don't want you thinking I want to be...This." It's words that he can only mumble to her in their close proximity. Though in the moment that the Hermit fades...So too does the vampire into dust.

    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

     The Hermit of the Vermillion Forest has reached Information.

    In the time that Touta Konoe and Meika Kirenai have spoken. There has never been any bond to form. Any form of understanding to be made. Every step has been a step back in trying to build something genuine. Unlike the others that stand before Meika he knows he can't reach her with words of genuine care. That whatever binds to Meika, and her own resolve is bound to her mission. So...Touta resolves to a different approach. An approach that most Elites do by default, but so few do intentionally...Bring upon themselves absolute ire.

     "KEEP LAUGHING THROUGH GRIT TEETH, /BRAT/!"

    The moment that the Hermit passes into Information, she finds that she's welcomed with a grittier punch that collides with her jaw. The feeling of tensed knuckles clenched with such force that the friction from impact feels as if it leaves a sear against her cheek as the blow is delivered. The point of collision lingering as if the punch was almost trying to caress her cheek, only in the next moment to try and send her reeling. Though there's something even more to it than that...The feeling of something...Bright? From that fist extends a light that radiates outwards and past the Hermit as if she'd just been hit by some sort of Magical Beam. Only, there's no damage that comes of it itself...But something might feel broken? There's perhaps an unfamiliar lacking that is there that otherwise shouldn't be for the magical girl.

    In the moment she had slipped through the floor, he too had slipped away to greet her. An unusual form to his strike as a metallic hoop had been revolving suspended around his waist as he let his fist dig bare into her jaw before popping away, unwilling to receive the immediate counter.

    "You gonna keep running? I thought you were a real Magical Girl. Not some half-baked excuse." As he says the words, there's an absolute shit-eating grin that rears itself towards the Hermit, making sure that every single one of those gazing eyes upon her cloak can see it. This is gonna suck...
Touta Konoe     The others would surely arrive, but in the time that would take, no matter how miniscule that timeframe would be...He needed to keep her here. Even if that means having to act as gross as you see me as... He starts bringing a hand over his chest while the other extends out to her as if singing her own words back to her. "So must I. I've promises to keep...You're really just lip-service aren't you? Didn't you say that if I messed with you here, you promised were going to gouge my eyes out? Or was that the other one? Well, maybe she could pull it off. But you...? Guess that bat's for fucking show, huh?" As he makes the remark, he just casually shows himself off. Not even a scratch on him."Seriously, were you being nice, or is that the kind of chicken shit kind of stuff that people expect from you?"

    There's probably a better way for this but...I can't do it. So I guess I get to be the asshole while waiting for someone to give you the words you actually need to hear.

    His goal here wasn't to save. It was just to be the most stereotypical, asinine Elite that ever graced L Corp. To be someone that reached the hearts of others not by empathy, but by just wanting to get them to shut the fuck up. The kind of person that you'd hear on the radio that you'd just want to strangle with your bare hands. And yet, while his heart pounds, it's the first time in a long time that he's wanted to do /nothing/ over /something/. Because anything could be better than this, right? And yet...

    It's then that Sougo would likely be one of the first to find Touta as he's all but staring her down. He's not even attacking at this point with his fist, just trying to harass the Hermit with words. "Come on, Vermillion...Stop with the poetic bullshit. You're not that kind of Magical Girl...Though maybe you're barely one to begin with? You tell me...Or should I just be waiting for the usual, 'I-I don't know...'"

    His words trail off, unsure of just how much sting those words can give. Not sure how far this girl is gone. But he wants to believe...Believe in Magical Girls as he's known them...To be on occasion incredibly spiteful and broken when talked down to. It's at this point, as the others would finally be reaching Information in tandem that surely Touta's going to be done with his shit-talking, probably coming in just at the last moment to hear everything that comes out. But if that's the case he already will consider this his win. It means they can keep her Information for a little longer. It means that those who can reach her will.
Petra Soroka "There is nothing else. Ruin is set in stone."

    "That-- can't be. Ruining a stone changes it." It's unclear really how much of this is audible to Meika, but Petra feels like she has to act like it's all directly to her. "If you ruin a stone enough, then it turns to sand, and if you ruin that enough, it melts and turns into a totally different rock anyways."

    "So no matter how much you ruin things, there's still tomorrow. Even if it's different, and worse, you'll still be there." The last of Petra's words are breathed nearly silently. If they're picked up, then it's sort of like a direct line to Meika herself, through that horrible cocoon, right? "You fucked up, but I'll still be there after. When this is over, you can still call me a friend."

    The Hermit is faster than Petra, especially without her armor. Catching up to her means unholstering her revolver just enough to shoot at the floor and give herself enough of a boost to kick up the side of one of the ice pillars while it slides across the floor with the ratbot. The Hermit phases through the ice wall that Madeleine left, and Petra purses her lips and prepares to leap from the rapidly moving, slippery ice over the wall, a risky maneuver even in the best scenario. It quickly becomes worse than the best when a deafening crack echoes from through Madeleine's wall, and the ice beneath Petra's feet starts crumbling.

    "Ack-- what--?!" Her foot slips through the unstable surface and she falls, ducking her head behind her arms and crashing through the wall as it breaks down. Placed right beside Madeleine, defenseless, and surrounded with vectors for Meika's magic to jump between, the blast from Petra's own body completing the sonic lightning's connection is deafening. The factoid from the last time she was subjected to Meika's magic-- at the Queen's hands-- dimly pops into her mind.

    Sound, if intense and concentrated enough, even *non*magically, can be lethal. Petra feels her insides turn to jelly, with the horrifying and potentially inaccurate imagination that this could literally be what's happening. It's unbearable to keep her eyes open, when it feels like they might burst, and she presses her palms into them, dropping her weapon and clenching her teeth so hard to prevent what feels like them rattling out of her jaw.

    In a blink of near-unconsciousness, Petra stumbles through the ice and instinctually is about to fall to her knees, but gut instinct has her blindly grind her soles into the ground and push herself away from the next jolt of magic. She spits out a glob of mucuousy blood; from clenching her jaw as hard as she did, rather than directly from the magic, but the spike of panic from being unsure which it is has her imagining tears in her esophagus, vibrated into pieces. Pillar of Creation is in the ice somewhere, on the ground, and Petra fumbles around her hip to grab a gun instead. "      ,       ,       --    ?!"
Petra Soroka     What anyone else hears is a muttered 'stupid, stupid, stupid-- huh?!' What Petra hears is a harsh ringing, her vibrating voice through her bones, and nothing else. Ragged, open-mouthed breathing against the back of her throat is evidence of her mounting panic, and she lapses into it with her hands white-knuckled around her revolver.

    All normal communication has layers of translation, introducing inefficiency compared to simple telepathy. Speech is letting muscular impulses translate into air in the right patterns that the other person's ear assembles them into feelings, and Petra's already familiar with an alternate route. Morphmetal swirls around Pence, establishing an electronic connection with the TTS program in her tablet, typing with mental instruction translated into digital communication.

    That doesn't make being deafened any less scary, though. A quick message into Cinder's phone:

Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka says | shoot me in the head
Phoning Cinder, Petra Soroka says | healing bullet pls not gun

    When the Hermit falls through the ground, Petra has to follow the hard way. Morphmetal squeezes between the crackes of the elevator doors, wrenching them open for Petra to slide down the shaft herself rather than waiting. She kicks off from the pole she slid down into Information, unsteadily landing outside the elevator a short bit away from the fight.

    The idea of running at the Hermit in this state is suicidal-- and that's a *bad* thing, actually. Watching Lilian's lips move as she flashes around the Hermit in the incredibly technical dance she's mastered, with every sound temporarily erased from the world, imagining what Lilian might be saying helps build Petra's resolve. Her voice, even if not her words right now, in Petra's head is her best distraction from the awful ringing in her ears.

    "Can't hear for now. If you need me for something tell Pence." Text to speech keeps Lilian in the loop, since there's no need for Petra to manage this all alone. Staying a short distance away to not get blasted again, Petra's morphmetal dissociates into fist-sized blobs floating in a grid in front of her, each one fired through by a silent shot from her revolver. Borrowing the bullets' momentum, the morphmetal lengthens out into a series of spears, arcing in to collectively impale the Hermit with the bullets nestled inside.
Meika Kirenai     Lilian's attack, her efforts to cut away at the core of the Hermit, build on and elicit more of the faint f-f-flickers that have been creeping in at the edges of her magic. Even the Hermit is silent, when-- there is no mouth that can call out. There are no words to be found. No eyes to meet. It's unfair. It's unfair. It's-{- I hate it -}-achingly unbearable to feel the cold needle cut at the heart like surgery. Sharp in the way that's meant to fix. Steady in a way that isn't gentle. Cutting in a way that leaves things rent open. Words and blade both so hard to stand leaving in silence but -- face with the Dame Commander.

    The only thing that bleeds from the wound left in her is the frantic weight of desperation, shredded up and muted the moment it's subject to Petra's aura.

    Coming down and out of the elevator shaft into Information, her descent unnaturally fast, the Hermit marches straight into the center of the Information department of the facility, and many are right on her heels. Spectral, Lilian harries her the entire journy, chipping away at the fabric. But every wall she slips through, every floor she falls through, every blow stitches itself back together just enough to keep moving towards that inevitable end.

    Where Sougo's strikes ripple into the Hermit's body, fueled with-- four years is so long. It's hard to imagine, looking back, that it's over. It'll be over. This feels like some sort of ending, when you're wearing that better than --destructive sonic force, ripping through her sharper, stronger than before. The aftershock makes the Hermit's cloak billow and flare, before careening into the ambient scenery of the department, crashing against structure and fizzling. Consoles and screens rupture.

    When he impales the Hermit, she *grabs* at him, and loops the baseball bat behind his neck, even while the hockey-ish sword is deep within her, tearing through material with horrifying dusty shearing noises. There are no eyes to stare into Sougo's helmet's visor. But at least she doesn't grin. The cloak's eyes, however, fix on Woz, even as she wrenches the bat back to collide with Sougo's neck. Hard.

    "This story is not one of pleasantries. Watch what end lies in store. It's-" -not how it should be, it's not right, there's got to be something else, still-- "-growing so, so near."
Meika Kirenai 'KEEP LAUGHING THROUGH GRIT TEETH, /BRAT/!'

    The hermit, spinning away and dropping Sougo from where she'd clutched him, tosses her metal bat like a cannon's projectile just over Touta's shoulder- where it careens backwards to collide with the base of his skull, echoing like a gunshot, strong enough to crush bone. There is no malice on the Hermit's face-- stop! it's horrible, it's awful, there shouldn't be any of this, and everyone is right to hate --save for a faint, gnarled smile. The words get no response. He simply gathered too much attention.

    Bikki is next. Horrific spears of sound lance across from Touta her way, bounding through walls and shelves in Information, and clinging to her. It's to slow down, to hamper, to buy time, to-not any more of them, please, there's already --just cause pain.

    Petra's spears stop the Hermit for a moment- that's big. Like the impaled wings of a pinned butterfly, half of the morphmetal pikes just latch at the cloak, but some the papery-tearing flesh beneath. More of the lances of sound try and find her in return, from further and slower. But it's-

'Are you telling me, with your whole heart, this is how you want the end of it to go!?'
'So once I save you from this, I'll leave you alone.'

    There's another moment's falter. The Hermit, unstaring, unspeaking-- in the way that clawing at a choking throat is 'unspeaking', because -{-I can't fix this by myself, please don't leave me to -}-there's nothing but that hollow ache, to just --simply clutches her cane as the morphmetal tears away more at her.

    Again. She slips right through the floor, quicker than she should be. She can't outrun the group forever, but there's finite ground she needs to cover. The flashing edge of her cloak, its horrible, ragged edges is just around the corner in corridors, just clipping back from the edge of the concrete ground, and just-

    The Hermit of the Vermillion Forest has infiltrated Central!

    Less time passes this time for her to start causing havoc. Angrier, according to what her face barely shows. The bat rakes tears in Central's walls, as she storms through the last gap there is before her friend will be there to find her.

    There's just one stop. One door to bash in. One King to free, to-

    "Ah. There. Oh, Courage, won't you come find me, if I bring out your sister?"

    The containment cell of the King of Greed gets bashed at with the sound of cracking, sky-rending thunder. The baseball bat-cane bends, and nearly shears at the pressure. It's one last unforgiveable, -- not how I wanted this to--act to this story, this play, this stage here tonight.
Angela The Servant is still stunned, an eye flicking up towards the King of Greed's Cell. They push up to their feet. "I must...defend the King."

Electromagnetic force grabs at the Servant but she presses on, determined to reach that cell. At this point they've given up on fighting back and is determined to press on to her targets. Perhaps Meika shouldn't die, but nobody is too young to die. Just ask Gebura about that.

"A prisoner and an employee, nice to meet you." Binah doesn't seem intent on following through the hole she made. "Did you really come to help us, friend? You scarcely know us compared to the others. Perhaps ... There is something else you seek in coming here."

Binah seems charmed by Nazrin. She places her hand on where her cheek would be. Is she attempting to show fondness? Hard to tell without a face.

Water spills into her tea and Binah gives the impression of frowning even without a face. She quietly crushes the teacup into dust and lets it blow away.

The Servant stops, surrounded by water. She turns her head back towards Minamatsu.

''Is it okay to become someone like this? Or are you just making two betrayals out of one?''

"...I did not want this... I wanted... to be true friends." Copious green fluid spills from her eyes. "How often can you withstand that pain? You stand strong now, but where do you get your Courage from?"

But the water comes crashing in, the lingering electricity from Ishirou's fist coursing through it and sending intense voltage through the Abnormality, forcing it down to its hands and knees, its breath turning ragged.
Angela Dysnomia crashes into the Abnormality next, pinning her down with lines of color. She writhes and pushes against the strange energies.

"Hah... That is why one strikes now, before the blade drives in deep... That is one must do with EMBODIMENTS OF EVIL."

She kicks Mia off of her, the energies bursting around her as she pushes through the water, intent on continuing her journey no matter what it does to her body. It is not as if she will die, right?

''Then what about her sisters? Are you thinking of them''

The Servant hesitates again. "Are you? You hide from that pain more than anyone, don't you. What sort of Knight is scared of getting hurt?"

The Shield slams into her nonetheless, slamming them against a Containment Cell (not the King's) that is presently empty! Though the door is closed and, naturally, is designed to withstand some damage. Wrath roars in his face and raises her hammers to crush Aidan's head like a grape.

Wrath does not go back through the floor when Solty clobbers her but it does make the head twist in a strange angle that doesn't look quite right, even for the Abnormality. She drops into a crouch, struggling.

''Ah. There. Oh, Courage, won't you come find me, if I bring out your sister?''

"I AM HERE... I MUST BE THE ONE TO DEFEAT YOU!" The Servant of Wrath starts to leap--

BANG

Rena catches the leg again, green fluid spurts out and she collapses to a knee again, unable to get up. Leaving her perfect bait for...

Kukuru snaps off one of the Abnormality's arms with a single punch, hitting an already weakened area on her body and snaps it clean off. Then her claws come in and Kukuru tears the Servant apart, again and again... It can't be killed while the Hermit still lives.

But Kukuru can make that a painful experience and soon even the Servant can't move or fight anymore, just sinking back down into a crouch, head bowed. Waiting. Waiting for the Hermit to find her. She's so close...
Ishirou Ishirou stands in front of the Servant.  He stops, for a moment, she doesn't seem to be going forward.  It seems that for this moment they have this situation under enough control.  They have to trust in the other team to make the miracle happen while waiting just in case they can not.  But... in that moment he wants to say something.  

He walks up to the Servant of Wrath, and places a hand on her shoulder.  "Stop.  I'm sorry you were betrayed so long ago... I'm sorry you carry that pain with you still and I'm sorry it was hard for us to hear it... but..." he says, calmly.  "We... people make mistakes.  Sometimes we do what we shouldn't do out of good reasons, or bad ones."

"She didn't want to betray you, and I don't think she meant to betray you.  I think she thought she wanted to do what's best for you and your sister.  She was wrong... but because someone does wrong doesn't mean they have to be that way forever.  That's what forgiveness is for.  Please.  Please forgive that girl and..."

"Please forgive yourself."
UFO Gang Nazrin cranes her head to look upwards. Her tail whisks back and forth. Water flows.

As for Minamitsu -

"From hope," she tells the Servant. "That suffering can end. And that if it was true for me, it can be true for anybody--!"

But there are other attacks storming in. Crackling snapping and arcing, the lightning makes Minamitsu wince a little, before she looks to Ishirou for a moment aaaand other people engage! Minamitsu hovers a little lower, craning her head as she looks down momentarily.

(Nazrin remarks to Rena, "Wow, you look awful. Take it easy.")

Minamitsu unlimbers her -- anchor, apparently, yes, it sure looks like one, who gave her that? Anyway, it'd probably be a lousy weapon but it may be what she has, or it may have some anomalous factor other than being thrown around by her water magic. She watches --

BLAM

the Servant gets knocked down and disarmed. Grisly!

Minamitsu lands. (Okay, she thinks. What would Hijiri say here. Hmmmm...)

"It's alright, to hurt," she says, kindly if perhaps not quite gently. That grim moment has passed. Wiping her forehead with the back of her arm, Minamitsu continues: "But if you cling to that hurt... you're just repeating it, over and over again. If bad things happen, good things will happen too; you can keep living."

("Mm hmm," Nazrin says downstairs, getting out her dowsing rods again. Maybe her rodentine senses tell her the crisis is ebbing.)

("Are you alright?" Minamitsu also adds to Kukuru, with concern.)
Angela Angela arrives (she actually has been here before everyone having left in advance, but she had to get her EGO Gear on. She rushes towards the King of Greed's cell, only to see Meika approaching it.

"Meika! Stop!!" Angela shouts. "If you release her too, you're putting us at risk for the Walpurgisnacht! The Jester of Nihil will imprison them again!"

But they're long past reasoning. She runs--you've probably never seen Angela run in your life--but with a CRACK of the bat.

The Cell door is eradicated.

The King of Greed is there encased in amber but neither the Hermit nor Meika nor Courage need to smash that amber prison open.

It starts cracking on its own and then shatters completely, letting free the white haired woman with the strangely patterned yellow dress that shows off just how leggy she is. Her hair floats up into the air and she touches down, her heeled shoes tapping lightly against the floor. She presses a hand against Meika/The Hermit's cheek with a hand.

"Oh aren't you a dear." She coos. "You could've reached your friend, but you decided to free me first. At the perfect time..."

She then steps away, moving past her, ignoring the bulk of the events unfolding, making her way towards Angela.

Angela readies Gold Rush. "Get back in the Cage."

The King says, "You think this is his Kingdom and perhaps this is true. But it will be yours someday, won't it? I let you devour me last time..."

"But this time... I will Devour you."
Angela Cinder at this point texts back to Petra: On my way!!

But it'll be a minute. She gets the response message right then at such a terrible time. The King of Greed rushes at Angela in a blur of motion, parries her gauntlet with her own, and then places her lips directly onto hers, honeyed amber pouring down her throat.

Angela takes another swing and the King's dress suddenly twists and contorts. Eyes open up along the thread and twitch, fangs rip up along the underside of the clothes, it bulges around Angela, engulfing her in its threads.

Predictably, this leads immediately to Fourth Trumpet alarms. Angela is the one person in the facility not allowed to die and whatever is going on here is putting Angela existentially at risk.

The Queen's mass grows and grows. AH. The voice is now communicates with the mind directly. THIS IS TOO DRAB FOR MY PALACE.

Ishirou's readings go off the scale as the Refined Enkephalin engulfs the facility in light. Golden honeyed pillars rise up out of the floor, summoned from nothing but pure heavily refined mental energy.

The King continues to walk, unheeded, as she reaches The Servant of Wrath she says, YOU MAKE TWO. AND TWO SHALL COME.

And with a twist of her legs, she kicks The Servant of Wrath away from Ishirou and into a cell, using Angela's permissions to slam the Cell Door shut unceremoniously.

A throne rises up and the King approaches it, sitting down on it and crossing one leg over the other.

"I will grant her every desire." The dress seems to become something more than cloth, twisting into impossible directions like she'll engulf everything here if she's let at it.
Kukuru Almost everything the Servant of Wrath says just twists that knife deeper into Kukuru's heart. How could she feel that much anger at someone that knows the sting of betrayal? If not for being told off by a certain imposing Sephirah, Kukuru herself might have even sympathized with it entirely, but now...

She still has to remember to stop herself. Petra warned her about this, and Kukuru knows that giving into her emotions would just put everyone else in danger again. She just needs to turn that part of herself off for now, focus entirely on the battle, and make sure everyone gets back home safely. That might include Meika, that might include the Hermit, but that probably doesn't include the Servant of Wrath.

And so, she stabs. She tears. She rends the Servant far more than she probably even needed to, wielding her claws like they're part of her own body just to make sure the Abnormality finally stops trying to go where it wanted to. She just needs to make sure it isn't going to disobey her anymore, even if she has to hurt it more often and far longer than she can ever really recall doing to anyone else before.

By the time Kukuru even realizes that she doesn't have to tear anything apart anymore, the battle against the Servant is already over, and Ishirou is already in the middle of saying something to it. The haze settles out of her vision, and Kukuru forces herself to step away to recollect herself, to remind herself that the best way to help everyone now is healing, not killing it again and again, and certainly not enjoying it.

Pushing that troubling thought out of her mind, Kukuru focuses first on getting those nanites flowing properly again. "Y... You did good, everyone. Maybe now we can get somewhere better with all this." She commends the group while sending those nanites around to kickstart the healing process. Looking over at Minamitsu, Kukuru giggles softly with some mild relief evident in her voice at hearing someone actually flipping the script on her.

"Aw... I should be asking you that, dear. I'll be okay. Just gotta..." She closes her eyes momentarily, spreading more of those healing nanites outwards, trying not to dwell on her thoughts about the Servant for too long even as others speak to the Servant as well. Her concern for it gets the better of her, and even though she knows can't try and talk to the Servant, she can at least offer a gentle hand unlike the one that she had just used to rip it apart, right?

When she actually starts reaching for the Servant of Wrath, however, she feels that horrible tension again, like something's about to burst. Kukuru lets out a strained noise while backing away from the Servant of Wrath, nearly toppling over as she starts to sweat just from looking at it. Before the frustration can start to mount too much for her to bear, though, she catches movement from the corner of her eye, and she hears the Fourth Trumpet.

She sees the King of Greed coming, and she sees the Servant of Wrath getting punted into a cell while the King claims a new throne and speaks of granting- "Who's desire? Where did you come from?"

Kukuru doesn't feel all that relieved about her chest not hurting this time, but she's not sure why.
Hibiki Tachibana     Spears of sound rip through the air, and then through her body. Hibiki is very far from being in top form. Even if you ignore her injuries from the near-end of a world, she's spent the day at Lobotomy Corporation straining muscles that shouldn't be strained, re-opening still-healing wounds, and not giving the tears that Sweepers tore into her proper time to recover.

    When they vibrate through her, everything aches. And hurts. And throbs. Common sense tells her to fall to her knees and let it stop. Anyone reasonable would listen to every part of them screaming from head to toe, the sensation of her insides jolting and the building urge to retch, and pull away from it. She can't hear herself think over it. 'Save those in front of me' is a nice way of saying that they have to be right in front of you for you to care.

    ...But she can still feel, like the brief instant of fist-to-cloak and the faint brush at the undelying emotions. And she can still see, that barely-there hesitation that says everything it has to. If that's how it is... then she just won't let her out of her sight.

    With a wrench of her body, Hibiki /shatters/ the lances slowing her up, trudging forward just as the Hermit vanishes again. She doesn't have it in her right now to punch a hole from here to there-- so she takes a dive straight down the elevator shaft for the second time, nearly not sticking the landing this time.

    Nearly. But she does, pushing herself out in a dead sprint to catch up.

    Because nobody here wants it to end this way.

    If she's strong enough to help stop it from happening is another matter entirely. She's probably not. Almost definitely not. Something as simple as a fact like that isn't going to slow her down at this point, but the undercurrent of fear when she realizes exactly which sister is being prepared to be released actually is. If that actually happens--

    "Meika--!!" Fist clenched. Arm reared back. There's nothing special about it, other than the feelings behind it. "If you seriously want different, you /have/ to keep wanting it! Changing a story and making something impossible happen, like back then--!"

    Miracles don't happen for free. They come from desiring something more than anything, and trying to reach for it as hard as you can. It'd be nice, if they could all make one where a despairing magical girl ends up freeing herself just in time, pulling herself up with some help from the hands of others.

    But that kind of thinking, about the power of desire, really does take an awful turn when one puts in everything they have and still has to come face to face with Greed itself.
Timespace Riders      The bat is wrenched through Zi-O's neck--so viscerally that a crown of sparks explodes from his armor, and he is downed, the greatsword still held firmly in one hand even as the hooked tip clatters against the ground.

    "My Demon King!" Woz rushes over, as the Abnormality passes to the floor below. He offers Zi-O a hand up, but his king is, for a moment, unresponsive.

    As they had before, the hands over his lenses spin rapidly in reverse. Zi-O is witness to past events, in further detail than the last time. Observing, yet unable to intervene, he slowly gets to his feet. Returning to the present is a jarring 'skip' in his stance, from barely standing on all fours to leaning on the weight of the sword in the blink of an eye.

    His ruby lenses bore into the floor, after a slow sweep downwards.

    "Vermillion..." It's no wonder I haven't gotten through to her. She must think it's over--that I'm using her story in the past tense. A... memorial. The plated mail of his gauntlets clicks as his grip on the sword tightens.

    "...Get me downstairs, Woz."

                          Futurering Shinobi! SHINOBI!                          

    The cell of the King of Greed can't endure the Hermit forever. A rustling of fabric sounds, and a moment later, two Riders appear, ready to intervene. The purple, iridescent scarf of a stylized ninja spools into the air from nothing, swirling outward and depositing its passengers.

    The question is asked softly, with a voice that wavers for the threat of tears. "How could I possibly wear this any better than you, when it wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for you? Meika..."

    "MEIKA!" He shouts, over the beating the cell door is taking. "I retold your story because I wanted people to see the good that you put into the world!" He angrily swings the greatsword--not at the Hermit, or even at anything, just a motion made to punctuate his point. "Because I wanted people to be touched by that good even when you're not around!" His voice wavers, and he chokes back a sob.

    "Why do you think that means you get to just leave? IT DOESN'T! Do you really think that Lilian doesn't 'get it?' That I don't? That no one could ever see that part of you and believe it?!" Zi-O's free hand mashes the stop on the Timespace Driver, vehemently spinning it.
Timespace Riders FINISH TIME!                                  

    "If I have to use it -on- you, until you believe it, if I have to reach underneath all of that again and again until it touches you--fine!!"

    Zi-O lifts the greatsword high. Its blade shimmers with those same crystalline echoes, this time without even being swung. They cascade off of it, forming duplicates of the greatsword that encircle the Hermit and rapidly strafe around, until any distinction between one and the next is gone.

    A red cyclone of sorts, shimmering like a hoard of rubies, forms around the Hermit, deafening as it pounds against the lower register of audible sound--like the rumble of a rocket taking off.

    "...it was not unpleasant to have you as a guest. Please return to us at your leisure." The Jikan Despear has, just beneath the tip, a rectangular touchscreen displaying several 'apps.' He swipes his finger rapidly across it...

                                BEYOND THE TIME!                                

    Just as Zi-O plants the greatsword into the ground. Red crescents of visibly perceptible sound blast the Demon King in the back, launching him towards the red cyclone. The 'wind' sweeps him up and hurls him into and -through- the Hermit right as his leg extends for an explosively charged kick.

    At the same instant, Woz takes off, darting across the room so quickly that numerous afterimage doppelgangers of himself flicker into existence. The Jikan Despear's bladed tip has become a curved sickle, sweeping numerous times across the Abnormality as the retainer's finishing strike goes on.

                             VERMILLION TIME BREAK!                            
                                ICHIGEKI KAMAN!                                

    A pair of explosions follows, and the cyclone winds down, two exhausted Riders standing side by side.
Lilian Rook     'Can't hear for now. If you need me for something tell Pence.'

    "Get your ass up and call for two medical bullets." is Lilian's reply. Even for Petra, she doesn't have the time to sound normal. The harsh-edged unburdening limmed in smouldering relief is a critical release channel that has to say open. "One of you and one for her."

    'It's unfair. It's unfair. It's-'

    "I know." says Lilian, to the silent Hermit. The Abnormality doesn't stay it. The script doesn't have it. Meika can't say it. But she responds to something or other anyways. "And never gets any fairer. So I don't blame you for moving on to the side that always wins."

    Lilian vanishes aside the hail of morphmetal javelins, fading perpendicular to them to strike from the side, as rehearsed as dance. "But it's just you this time, Meika. No Refulgence. No Cobalt. No one who hates you. Not even the devil. You fucked this up all on your own. So badly that I feel stupid for not believing you would."

    -I can't fix this by myself, please don't leave me to-

    There's still time to buy for Sougo. Lilian even feels like she knows what's going to happen then, too. Just this once, here and now, it's hard to shake this eerie feeling. Like she already knows everything, and was only ever pretending.

    But it's for her own personal closure as much as it is teamwork that she pursues the Hermit yet another time, plants her feet between it and the cell, and says. staring into that blindfold, "If any of this meant anything to you; If it weren't a childish dream you've already quietly decided to wake up from, you'd have been fighting against that unfairness this whole time. That's what a magical girl, or a knight, or any kind of hero I could draw in a sketchbook would do."

    The decision to cross blade to bat at this point is practical. Lilian can't actually wound an infinite regenerator, so attacking the Hermit directly doesn't actually keep her from the containment cell right there in front of her. She's been training to compensate for that in particular for years, but she's just come off the worst of all in the form of the Queen; her limit is much closer than it looks.

    Each time she deflects the bat away from the cell, it's because she had no replacements ready for all those runestones she could have used. Each time she sends it crashing into a wall, it's because she has half of one last clip for her sidearm. Each time she forces increasingly strained breath down her wounded throat, it's because she had just enough magic to get here at all. Each time blunt on forte is turned aside and rolled down the length of the sword, and each time Lilian's left arm sinks a little lower against the force, her left hand shaking more and more on the hilt, it's because she can't stop feeling just how close to the normcausitive redline she was before she even got here.

    There's no one else to take the pressure off. No one else to shoulder the burden. She can hope for a Kamen Rider with that much momentum behind him to be able to finish it, but she can't place her trust in it. Lilian is the only one who can stand here in front of Meika and the worst possible outcome, and even her core strength is starting to give out as the damage in her side worsens from the onslaught.

    Lilian becomes acutely aware that she is only struggling to save Meika because she already spent all of her strength to save herself before. The realization hits her with a muted sense of miserable poignancy.
Lilian Rook     It strikes her just before the last, desperate attempt to save Meika comes down on the Hermit, and right at the moment something cracks in her left shoulder under the last blow she can foil. The way her eyes widen in that painfully slowed-down instant says that she knew it'd be her body that gave out first, but is still shocked to feel it. The cold resolution in them says that she has already accepted the circumstances and recalculated what she can do. Even a second can be Tomorrow.

    The final strike is one Lilian has to take dead on. That's the hard math that she has foreseen with experience rather than futuresight, and blandly accepted as a matter of survival bordering on routine. She brings the hilt in up and high without hesitation, folding her left arm close against her body to brace against her chest, and hangs her guard down over it to fend against the actual force of the blow. Lowering her center of gravity and digging in her heels, Lilian minimizes her profile in the split second before being struck again, and resolves to pull with her good arm, turn along her weak side, and trust in her armour at the moment of impact.

    The maneuver is a little desperate. The swing is more violent than she anticipated the Hermit had strength left for. Her split-second decision is still good enough; the crash of collision is loud enough to make her ears ring, and even the distributed force shoots pain up her arm, but she can handle it; though the corner of the bat clips the armour at the join of her neck and shoulder and embeds a single black plate into the steel wall behind her. Trusting in her Lady in Black is cutting it close, but well-reasoned. Lilian is physically hurled from her feet, and meteorically collides with the containment cell behind her, but the explosion of black-gold embers from the impact of her back against the cell keeps anything else from breaking, even if she has to stagger back to her feet.

    It may have been a mistake to trust in the Containment Cell itself.

    '- not how I wanted this to-'

    "Nothing you do or say or tolerate, every single day, is what you actually want." The supreme confidence is adulterated with Lilian stopping to wipe blood from her lip on the back of her gauntlet. "You've forgotten how to even say it. All you do is keep your head down and try not to let anyone notice you exist. You spend all your time watching everyone for the slightest disapproval, trying to glide through life as a silent, invisible, utterly forgettable girl."

    Lilian exhales a hint of redshifted vapour, then drags the air she needs back into herself by force. Her bared neck already shows the damage, fully intact, three-dimensionally flawless, beautifully inhuman wound she tried covering up before. "I don't know if you were never all that committed, or if something broke along the way, but you stopped being 'a magical girl' a while ago. The only thing that the Meika I've know has ever unfailingly cared about is avoiding trouble for one more day. Her sister isn't even much better."

    Lilian shifts into an offensive stance anyways, switching footing with leaden scrapes. "I know you won't remember this anyways. Nothing I say here matters; just like always." Night Mist snaps to perfectly still attention despite her arm. She can make herself hold it a little longer. "But if I can't feel sorry for you, then I think I sort of hate how girls like you can be so faint-hearted and half-assed with life and death in one hand and your own dreams in the other."
Lilian Rook     "If all that power is good for is inflicting petty misery and hiding from the consequences until you age out--"

    She had enough in the tank for this one. It wouldn't have stopped the possible breach, but it'll work after Sougo's finish. Lilian--
                -----[stop]-----

    --leverages her back palm on the pommel, lunges into the Hermit's side, and--
                -----[start]-----

    --stands behind the Hermit with a smoking sword. The paralyzing vertigo of simultaneously experiencing and recalling being run through and slashed an indeterminate number of times in irreconcilable order strikes Meika's heart with the more salient overload of cumulative force.

    "--then graduate all of this tomorrow. Leave this kind of thing to the girls who can still fight."
Meika Kirenai     It's a literal damage race, against the cell door. Hibiki's catastrophic violence, Woz and Sougo's pressure, and the vigilance of Lilian's interception are the barriers she faces in the foray of freeing the last imprisoned sister, here. And it's a futile, heart-wrenching one at that.

    No eyes meet Lilian's-that she can see --stare, in the midst of the exhausting tradings of blows. Whatever she hopes to find she'll have to bore deeper for- but the deeper still reels from it. The baseball bat, blow after blow, dents and crackles and spews ugly, lashing magic on anything it can stick to, jumping down blade lengths to rip at their wielders, skipping through the air to crack wall panels and strike across distance.

    As the pressure continues, as the blows escalate, as asymetric exhaustion bites and burns and eats through the capacity to handle just this more, please hold out, the ear-burning, crackling last shot the Hermit puts into ending this back and forth with Lilian collides- is mitigated, but-

    The cell is blown open, and the King stirs.

    When the dust settles for just that last, brief moment, when the air is only slightly clearer of deafening ringing, and the King has stepped her way to the threshold, and put her hand upon the Hermit's cheek, the echoing magic emenating from the otherworld traveler ceases.

'You could've reached your friend, but you decided to free me first.'

    "I only need you to-"- get back from me, please, it's bad for you to-{-this isn't even my face you're touching, I want it back-}- be this close -"-Ah. There she is. My friend." The Hermit turns from the King of Greed, even as she too makes to step away, and her cloak's bulbous eyeballs lock on the Magical Girl of Courage.

    Speak my-"- but that's not *my* -"-Name, Courage, as I speak yours-" Her speaking is interrupted, facing the Servant, as Kukuru begins to tear her limb from limb, undying and bleeding acid. She begins to step forwards, towards the incapacitated servant, and raises her bent-metal baseball bat up and off the ground.

    "Ruin comes for us, dear Courage. But I'll ensure-" There's another f-f-flickering stutter in her demeanor, growing more and more bright, with their discordant, static sheen.

'If you seriously want different, you /have/ to keep wanting it'
'Nothing you do or say or tolerate, every single day, is what you actually want.'

    It's fitting, speechless and locked in as she is, for Meika to have to hear, still. Soft, distant thunder echoes through the pipes of the facility's infrastructure. But the Hermit gives no outward indication of having listened in the slightest.

'That no one could ever see that part of you and believe it?!'

    Behind the Hermit's thin-pulled smile is-- What the hell makes you think-{- I know there's parts of me no-one should ever, ever have to see like-}- that?-- nothing, at the surface, and Meika's bitter, horrified desperation everywhere else. To anyone capable of piercing that, she's growing much, much louder.
Meika Kirenai ''Because I wanted people to be touched by that good even when you're not around!'

    How much better would it have been, how much more good could have reached people I without me around, if God had just blessed someone who deserved to live instead of me? How much happier would you all be? If the end result is still that I'll-

'...you'd have been fighting against that unfairness this whole time.'

    I don't want to give up. Twenty pages. A few weeks. There's still time, there's still something, if I can just- There's nothing to strain at. No magical solution to the role she's been given, here. No way yet to cry out, to kick or claw or do anythting but ache and listen.

    In the distance, unlooked at, the King of Greed devours the Servant of Wrath. That's an end to the story, the path, the play and all its actors. It's the moment that Lilian, Sougo, and Woz set off their final motions, the last dregs of their reserves. Sougo's blows with the hockey stick-sword shatter foundation, and his propelled kick shears through form and function of the Hermit's body. Woz's sickles shred her, in shrieking, papery echoes.

' Leave this kind of thing to the girls who can still fight.'

    Lilian's final blow is the first that truly makes the Hermit bleed- inasmuch as horrible, ugly smears of graphite-dust smudging dancing through her blade's wake can be called blood. Something tears with it, deep inside. The same crumpling, ripping noise of those sketchbook pages. Fleshy fabric peels away, while the ash-like wrinkled demeanor of her ignites into sparking a flash of light-- and then even that reverses, fades and smears away in the same eddies of the blow. Cutting through her transformation is similar- more excessive than, but similar- to when it fades on purpose, but more drawn out, sharper around the edges. It rings like metal on metal, something just slightly harder than the force expects to meet, to snip that.

    But it's done. She's severed free. And crumpled, barely even breathing, on the floor. Her uniform is wrinkled, her boots are untied. It's pathetic how she tries to sit up, how hey eyes scan the room like she aims to stand. It's just not possible. Meika's fingers reach up, trembling, and absentmindedly tug at the uneven ribbon in her hair. It loosens, as they come away.

    "I hate that you'll never see that girl in the drawing again." Meika's words, as her eyes stay listlessly half-cracked on the edge of unconsciousness, are muted, muttered, and aching with shame. It feels like admitting to murder. It feels like admitting to a lie. "S-she's never been true. I- I've always been worse than her. B-but I always- always thought, hoped s-some of it could be, could still be, m-maybe, if I could just..."

    Even as barely focused as she is, the bitter, aching way her eyes look down and towards the cold floor makes manifest Meika's shame. Her trembling arms tuck her knees close to her chest, and her eyes flutter closed- unconscious, but breathing.