Chevaleresse

The symbol wasn't that dissimilar to the original look of Opal, before she'd made her modifications. They were different enough that it was probably coincidental, but it still stuck out to her. She interrupted her gazing at it to glance sideways - and noted the group moving on. She pulled herself away, but didn't quite make her way after either of the other two yet. There was still more of interest in this room. Lucine glanced about furtively, looking for any signs of booby traps or similar, then walked towards the sheet. Was that a chair under it? Or, a throne, she supposed. This looked a little like the castle back home, at least. She reached out tentatively. . . then tried to tug the sheet off the throne in one motion.

This place made her hair stand on end. She felt like she could have cut the smell of demonkind in her with her sword, if she'd wanted. "First step is finding that Hunter. It looks like they dragged someone around, or someone dragged themselves around, so I'm following that." The half-angel pulled a strange folding contraption off her back, and it separated into two pieces as she did so; one went to her left, appearing to be a heavy shield, and the other being a lance-like weapon of some variety with a trigger on the handle. Without further ado, Brigitte did as she claimed, following the trail of blood.

Nemesis simply unsheathed the katana, plunged it into the man's chest, and returned it to its place without a word. He pulled the revolver from his belt to replace the weapon and stepped over the fresh corpse. He poked his head into the hall just long enough to get a read on where the men were, then snapped off three shots down it with quick, cold precision, sending bullets flying at the three men that were furthest away from Richard.

AA24 shooteth the soldier

"Away we go, Mink, on the winds of battle." Kane J22 Justine to E22, dance Lenore

That was less than promising. If Watcher was around (and Hiroki had a sinking feeling he was, given that he didn't seem to be the type that would have died without anyone hearing about it) then he was almost certainly going to show up. "We have, um, to plan for him." She tried to take a quick stock of who was on the plate. Slumbering Giant, whoever the Councilor was, Arcturus, Watcher, Princess, Supernova. Though she doubted they would field Supernova; she'd already beaten him fairly cleanly, even if the mere thought of that match brought a pang of guilt. Even if you were working with Cardinal, I'm sorry. "If Watcher appears, then, um, we have three matches we, um, could win." Saying that out loud visibly bothered the girl, and she looked at the table for a moment. I have to try anyway. "So, um, we have to be ready." She glanced back at Gryffin again. It almost seemed like he had something to say, but hadn't let it out yet.

I9 hatchet soldier

Heidrun liked this less and less as it went on. She tried to assuage her doubts by going over the situation, though. The man dropping the pretense of friendliness was actually much less unnerving, and there was apparently information on the package that they could look at to confirm that it wasn't dangerous. The healer tried not to think about the trustworthiness of the source of said documents too hard. The people in possession were also probably criminals, so it wasn't that bad to take it back from them, right? "Well, umm, there's no time to lose then, right?" She glanced about at the party. "We'll go over these and get that shipment back as soon as possible. Um, assuming everyone here is okay with that. . ." She shrank back slightly; Heidrun was fairly sure she wouldn't be able to relax for the next week at this rate.

Watcher was another unknown, then? If he was totally unheard of for all this time, it was unlikely that he would appear now, but the last few weeks had been full of very unlikely things. Especially considering the meddling of another complete unknown. "It might, um, have been a good idea to not, um, chase away the person who talks to Merlin." She almost startled herself; was she really talking back to Lord like this? Though. . . they had offered her this seat. Even if she felt like she didn't belong there, that meant she should at least try to speak as an equal while she was in it. Still, she did her best to move the conversation on. "What do we, um, do if Watcher does appear?" She felt callous for just moving on from Temperance like that, but there wasn't much she could do. What she knew of dream spaces was only what she'd acquired in the process of building her mech. Thinking about it made her feel sick, though; the circumstances essentially meant that the gods may as well have killed her themselves, by putting her into this tournament and then deliberately pushing her as far as they could. It didn't bode well for Hiroki at all.

"Well, let's get going then!" With only a glance back at Adeline to confirm that she was following, Brigitte strode forward towards the mouth of the labyrinth. "The demons aren't going to kill themselves, and we might still be able to save that angel." Another glance at Adeline, this one with some concern. Maybe she should be careful around full angels; you never knew what was going to happen with them. Much like humans, they were all a bit different. . . but "angel demon hunter" was generally not the kind that was perfectly alright with hybrids, at least in her limited experience. Once she was inside, barring any sudden attacks by demons, she'd head further in toward the checkpoint.

Ritsu rushed into action, placing herself between Hikari and Marisa with a mighty roar. The first target of Marisa's ire was Rory, her attention drawn by the faunus's arrogant words. She blitzed the Hunter, slamming into her at high speed and dealing [33] damage before zipping away. Rory's semblance causes her to recover 3 HP. Her next target was Hikari, but her and Ritsu's evasive maneuvers combined caused the witch to narrowly miss the magical idol and her feline companion. The overworked herbalist hurried to catch up with her even after her sudden maneuvering, and managed to press yet another poppy into the girl's face before anything else happened. LOTUS, for her part, still managed to hand out some tactical advice in regard to taking down Marisa. Empi, meanwhile, uses her own method of supporting the group, adding a little bit of heat to Marisa's expression. Or, well, maybe she did, it was hard to tell given she was wreathed in shadow. Masako let off another dazzling display of danmaku. . . only for Marisa to neatly weave around it, the tengu stunning nothing but a passing fairy unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. Rory lines up a Wyrmstake, and misses Marisa - but the projectile still lodges itself in her broom and begins to burn. Marisa takes [2] damage. Marisa uses the momentum to her advantage, changing course and moving to a more central position. She raises the strange artifact over her head, and suddenly the area starts to grow darker - though Marisa herself seems somehow unaffected. The space around her seems to pull in light, which coalesces in the space around her in rainbow-colored swirls of stars, flooding the area with light magic as she uses her spell card Black Magic: Event Horizon! Hikari lets off a burst of pulse rifle fire from her elevated position, dealing [18] damage to the witch as it rakes across her path, and narrowly avoids the burst of light magic as she does. Walmond releases her own burst of magic to counteract Marisa's; Hikari, Rory, Ritsu, Masako, and Lambda find themselves rejuvenated for [19] HP. The first burst of Marisa's assault strikes hard, multicolored stars striking and seeming to cling to Isobel, Empi, Masako, and Walmond for [10] damage. Lambda and Rory take [7] and [0] damage, respectively, while Ritsu simply recieves a message that she is at full energy capacity already from her internals. Initiative Status

Hiroki squirmed uncomfortably in place, then cursed herself mentally for doing so. It was no big deal, really, so why did she have to be embarrassed about it? Though, she could at least take solace in that she was taking the idea of being physically tossed or carried over the gap a bit more gracefully than Cicivexa, who was one of the few people she encountered that was actually shorter than she was. "I, um, I guess you should carry, um, me across." There, she said it.

"Yeah. . ." The grassy hill felt strangely secure and comforting to her, but it still wasn't managing to prop her mood up through all this. This was actually worse than before; even knowing what witches were, she could still comfort herself with the fact that she was ending their suffering. There was no such consolation here. She'd managed to avoid fighting other magical girls before (though there were a couple tense moments of posturing), but it seemed that was going to end, too. Twoearle's words only made her feel even more despondent; it as if someone had thrown a literal wet blanket over the girl. She didn't think she'd ever fought an old friend. . .

Lucine walked forward slowly, making sure not to advance too far beyond the watchful gazes of Proditor and Nader, When she got to the archway, though, she stopped for a moment to examine the symbol. "This is kinda weird, but I don't see any monsters around or anything." She glanced back toward Nader, as if she could glean something about the man's thoughts from his mask, before returning her gaze to the arch. "What do you think this is?"

"It looks like we got here just in time, Phoenix. The prisoners here sound like they're already busy freeing themselves!" Kane E22, attack Soldier F Justine to E23, dance Kane Kane attack Soldier F

"Uh, yeah." Her mother technically lived close enough that it was probably feasible to get forms to her when necessary, but she was busy and Arturia liked the small bit of freedom it offered. Fortunately or unfortunately for Betwere, Arturia was too lost in her own anxieties to note what signs of his were visible. What to do with Lilith was still a concern; having her just squat in Arturia's room wasn't exactly viable long-term, especially with the new roommate. There was the counseling system (that she'd considered using herself once or twice) that might be able to place Lilith somewhere, but there was no guarantee they wouldn't be separated without Kallisto's help. Not to mention the risk of her rooming with another student and an. . . incident happening. She glanced at the girl, only to see her continuing to beam at something. "What's up?" she asked quietly, while she waited for Betwere to get the forms ready.

"Yeah. Wouldn't it be weird to be able to turn into something you'd never seen? Though I guess it'd be really cool- haaa-" Gwyn sneezed midsentence. "-CHOO! Uh, really cool to turn into a dragon or something. Or a goat. Wait, actually, I've seen goats. I don't think I could turn into a goat anyway, though. Maybe." Gwyn shrugged. "What do you think?" A distraction in the form of Neve presented itself, and Gwyn seemingly forgot about the conversation entirely. "I'm Gwyn Maeleachlainn, the strongest half-fae in Tameloc!" The wildfolk looked quite sure of their own statement. "Me and Gaheris are unstoppable together. Bad guys beware!"

Arturia narrowly avoided cursing out loud, mostly only stopped by Betwere's formality. "That's. . . unfortunate." She glanced at Lilith who was . . . grinning like a loon? Maybe she'd just thought of a joke or something; she'd need to ask in a moment. "Let me think for a sec; it's kind of urgent." She couldn't really give him the full message; that would invite far, far too many questions. Of course, so would her other ideas. "It's also private." A bad combination. She also didn't trust anyone else to help her with the issue; the closest thing to an influential person Arturia knew was Kaede, and they'd already agreed to not speak about whatever was going on for one another's mutual benefit. "Uh, do you think you could just, I dunno, tell her to call me as soon as possible? I can give you my phone number, if that helps." That was also probably weird, but it was at least less weird than her trying to sneakily ask for Lilith to be placed in a room without a guardian's consent.

Spook rolled her eyes at Austin's reaction, and merely stepped out of the way to let the girl with the actual gun do the work. Though he prepared to brain the thing with his bed leg if absolutely necessary.

"I could send Opal through." The comment was followed by an irritable-sounding squawk from Lucine's bag. "It's not like she does much more than be a pain in the butt, anyway." More squawking, but it seemed that Lucine had managed to secure the container such that the imitation Kaleidostick couldn't free itself from its confines easily.

Well, her standards had been set fairly low, and yet somehow, Handsome Jack continued to disappoint regardless. The kits were higher tech than she was used to, but they couldn't even manage a proper docking? Just, threw them out the airlock and called it good? Not to mention the lack of propulsion on the kit; where she was from, most people didn't walk around with jetpacks. She supposed her flamers or her railgun would do in a pinch, but this setup wasn't something you used for people you wanted to curate good relations with. It was the kind of setup you used for people you hoped to never deal with again. Scarlet had never been a fan of being disposable. At least they seemed to be actually on the base. She hunkered low to the floor, and carefully pulled herself along toward the bridge. When the artificial gravity caught her, she landed rather ungracefully before popping back up to her feet. "Fucking hell." NO signs of activity yet, either, and they hadn't even given them the courtesy of mentioning where these things were. Scarlet was even less fond of weird black goop than most, given her recent experiences; it being the primary objective was the cherry atop the shit sundae of this mission. The mercenary moved forward carefully towards the left asteroid; going right seemed to be heading more directly toward the source, which gave more chances for them to get in deeper into where the things were without realizing it, and she'd rather be in an enclosed space rather than somewhere an errant recoil force could send her tumbling into the void.

"Nemesis." The cloaked figure had remained almost perfectly still and silent on taking a seat, except for an impatient tapping of the foot that happened at an oddly precise interval of once every half second. Similarly, after giving the almost-certainly-false moniker, Nemesis fell silent once more. A shift of the head indicated that he was glancing around the room, assessing what he saw. This entire trip would have been nonsense already if it wasn't for the fact that the man was clearly testing their competence; he had the look of someone who didn't need to worry about paying for a trip like this. The only consolation was getting to off the pawns of the other nobility and disrupt their cruel little game with the hopeful poor.

"Brigitte Lughaidh, at your service." Brigitte didn't have the money to hire someone to airdrop her in so she could burn power gently drifting into the battle, but she took comfort in the fact that it would have been on her own wings. She also didn't have the money for coke, and briefly considered accepting "Uhhh's" offer, but quickly decided it wouldn't be practical going forward. "Me and Adeline can handle the issues you've got, here." She couldn't help the faint look of disdain that crept across her face as she reviewed the other comers. There wasn't much to impress her. A homeless drug dealer, a bunch of entertainers, and the one guy who seemed to put way too much effort into his entrance. Even if it did look really cool. On top of that, half of them made her fingers itch the way Adeline used to. Especially the dirty one.

Hiroki blinked. She had been expecting arguments, perhaps outright reprimands. She had been mentally bracing herself to be shouted down; the group seeming to accept it immediately put her off balance. She shifted uncomfortably where she sat, meeting Gryffin's gaze for a moment before glancing away hurriedly. "What, um, about Temperance? She wasn't in, um, Wrath, so she could be, um, someone to look for." A part of her wanted to summon her mech and speak through that; she could at least manage to say more than five words at once without halting, but that wouldn't exactly make the situation less awkward. Returning to the situation at hand, she continued to think. Hiroki didn't know much about Temperance other than her being somehow loyal to the gods - but given the schism, it was tough to place her anywhere. She wanted to ask why they had just accepted her reasoning for challenging Arcturus as well; it gave off that same kind of feeling that Aries's offer did. Was she being used for some other purpose here? She thought back to her previous encounter with the gods, in the Oracle Chamber. Arcturus, Merlin, and Watcher. . . After a pause that was just barely too long, she added another question. "And do, um, we know where Merlin and Watcher, um, are?" They'd been referred to in the same breath as Arcturus; if they didn't count as gods, then they couldn't be completely discounted here.

Gwyn simply shrugged, and moved one hand to brush "Blodeuyn's" hair aside for a moment. Underneath it was more or less Gwyn's original ears, though angled further upward as to not poke out of the sides of the woman's hair. The half-fae let it fall back after a moment, but seemed content to remain in Blodeuyn's shape while they spoke. "Why do you ask? Did you think they were green?" The half-fae didn't seem to take note of Mercia's explanation whatsoever, besides a momentary look of confusion.