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That had worked out so incredibly well that it actually surprised Lizaveta, as she found herself rapidly and handily demolishing the armored knight, and now invigorated by that and by Justine she found herself moving forwards. The fact that at least the fight was very much going well actually boosted Lizaveta's spirits somewhat; it was hard to stay too crushed about a battle when their opponents were getting flattened. M13, Worm Archer B

Lizaveta was... about to advance right into the midst of a bunch of heavily armed Gulan soldier, wasn't she? Well... she supposed Virtuous wasn't going to get anywhere if nobody was willing to make any sacrifices. (Even if she was less sure just where it was Virtuous was trying to get.) "I'll go first...!" M11, drop a Worm on Knight A.

Ceridwen's mouth drew into a grimace as Argos was suddenly struck down not only by the cavaliers, who she'd figured wouldn't be an insurmountable problem, but by some sort of ballista -- that wasn't good news. And she didn't fancy her chances against those mages much, either; this wasn't the best position she'd ever been in. Still, she could help! "H-here! Hold on for a moment, Rhian!" R27, vuln Rhian

"I am ready to make some money!" "And also kick some ass!" "But also, make money." "But also, kick ass."

Tim Randomness: 99, 10 Deciding that he would rather not, in fact, attempt to navigate back up from under the ground through a life-size piece of Escher, Tim elects to use his gem in order to dig around and get back to the surface. This time, Tim is significantly luckier, significantly luckier indeed: no circular staircase nightmare makes his life difficult, and the mage is very easily able to make his way up to the surface. Right as he is about to make his last bit of staircase, though, he notices a bit of material in the wall, and identifies it as constantan. Pulling it, he finds that there's a sizable rod of the stuff in the dirt, and continuing to pull it takes the rod to the point where any further length would have meant the material intersected into the hole -- and then he manages to keep pulling, the rod continuing to come out, but the new section of rod now being made of osmium. The whole thing ends up rather like a magician pulling knotted scarves out of his glove, and pulling and pulling and pulling: before Tim's eyes, by the end, the finally twenty-foot rod reveals sections of diamond, and microcline, and what may actually be pitchblende. Tim gains the Rod of Constantan, Osmium, Diamond, Microcline, and Pitchblende! Vitor Randomness: 25, 40 Chances were that the Brazilian mage-historian was going to be disappointed: he most certainly wasn't getting the magical powers of Gilgamesh. Actually, though, it was rather bizarre: reading the book's history revealed pretty much the history of Gilgamesh that Vitor would have expected, but at some point during the process of creating an Emulated Phantasm, it seemed that the bizarre particularities of the world interfered with the way that his magic reached out across dimensions to attempt to draw upon the history of the world of Gilgamesh, and what Vitor got was a book written in strange scripts and graphs -- the more he looked at it, the more he simultaneously began to understand and not understand. It twisted his mentality to consider: with more thought came understanding that the book held a sort of symbolic resonance to superior technology, which would allow him to shut down a technological device, but he also found his own mind ceasing to think in normal ways, but instead in references and allegories. It was something Vitor seemed fully capable of tearing himself out of, but it was probably still a bit frightening. Gear: Tamarian Captain's Log (level 1, perk-backed): A book full of strange graphs and glyphs, something about this twists the mentality of the person focusing on it, causing them to think like a strange alien race instead of in the ways they normally operate in. It is symbolically tied to technological power, which has manifested as the ability to jam a technological device -- but at the cost of speaking only in allegory. Vitor can disable a single technological device that is not perk-backed as long as this is equipped, inside or outside of battle. However, as long as it is equipped and/or being used, Vitor can also only speak in situational allegory and reference instead of in sentences, and automatically fails any action that requires otherwise. Trump: Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel (Trump, level 1, perk-backed, magecraft): The bizarre aura given off by the piece of gear Vitor received from his attempt to emulate Gilgamesh's power is not only one of technological superiority, but also one of cooperation and friendship, even at the cost of his own power. Once per Battle. Vitor can allow somebody to use a Once per Battle Trump again, however, doing this prevents Vitor from using any further Once per Battle Trumps during the combat in question himself. Tied to the Tamarian Captain's Log. Satomi, Ena, and Kusuke "Um, yes, sure, let's go! It would be useful to see if the ship gives us a safe base away from all of these strange effects with location and time!" Satomi shouted over the gunfire, nodded sharply and followed the physics-breaking bounty hunter and the physics-enforcing robot into the ship -- all three (but especially Kusuke, of course) immediately noticed that re-entering the ship quelled the feeling of unease that came from being out in that world. In fact, to Kusuke, the sudden lack of disorientation and the comfort coming that suddenly back might have been a shock! As for Ena, she got some amount of likely reassurance from the fact that her sensor readings all checked out with each other inside of the ship: space measurements were normal and consistent with time, and speaking of time her timestamps came back at the proper scale. "That's... better. What did you want to test, Kusuke-san?"

Well... that was that, then. Lizaveta supposed she'd move along with the others next. It wasn't really like she had anything else to do... M10

----

Perlita let out a rather loud sigh and then mumbled something in Spanish with a rather aggrieved tone. "Why didn't I see this coming? Oh, she is ALWAYS like this. Before we were part of this larger group, even. Well, I'm going to go -- we were going to split up and go for Trick anyway, right? Five of us! Come on, two of you! I'm going to go give her a-- a piece of my mind!!" The aggravated Latina teenager made her way towards Mira and Lyra, grumbling loudly the whole time, hiking up her dress very slightly so she didn't trip over it, and muttering to herself the entire time as she jogged towards them. Once she got near to them, well. "MIRA!! We were all planning to go over to deal with Trick anyway!! What's the point of leaving us behind?? I can't believe you thought you would just ditch us, when you have already seen what Judge was like -- I don't know why you do this! Is it some sort of-- some sort of-- some sort of lone wolf complex, or something? All you're going to do is fail to stop him if you go at him alone, which I won't let you do, but let us actually do this like we planned instead of storming off for no reason!!"

Looking down at the strange creature, Nader finally realized that it was probably a child. Accordingly, he spoke up. "We... won't want to stick around this one room too much. We've never been out this far before, but we've never actually seen those holograms before. Of course, we know the story behind them already, but... it's another thing entirely to see them for real. To really understand why it's so sad, you need to be here and hear these things for yourself, I think. But, I don't know, maybe that sort of thing doesn't interest you so much. When I was your age, I didn't really care about a whole bunch besides playing tricks on people, but now that I'm an adult I think it's important that we understand these sorts of things. We need to really get the emotion behind why do what we do, you know. But, yes, because of that we should keep moving soon. We haven't seen it all yet."

Lizaveta may not have liked that she was here, but nonetheless, she really had no choice but to fight... and she supposed that fighting the troops of the Gulian monarchy really wasn't the end of the world. "Well... here goes nothing, I suppose..." She hadn't used Anima magic in a long time, but with the practice she'd generally been getting with magic, and her previous study, Lizaveta was pretty sure she could... Blast Soldier A with Wind!

"Man, what, death squads?" Jeanne whined at the announcement, and then began to walk off with the others (not bothering to get a gun). "Man, fuck these guys, honestly. Total assholes. Why are they sending in death squads if we're in here? And, like, in the armory, too. Fucking PMCs, dude. Can't trust 'em, you know. They're totally all hiding super fucked up secret experiments." Jeanne fell silent for a moment. "Like this one!!! This totally IS a fucked up secret experiment they're hiding, isn't it! Man. Big scoop except that I'm actually a zombie now okay fuck don't think about it that hard ANYWAY UM what's next? Some... some sort of... I dunno... um, fuck, nevermind."

Perlita shook her head at Gabriel and Lyra. "Erh, sorry Gabriel, but you all should actually probably send me with whichever group is fighting Trick, not Atton. Trick is probably going to be the most serious danger here, because, well, yeah, and I'm a better healer than Atton. U-um, I don't mean that I'm just-- generally-- better or something, but it's just that I can put out more healing spells more consistently and all. Plus if Trick is as prone to fighting dirty as it seems he is, then my spell Patra could be pretty useful for keeping us still able to fight him."

"It appears that these men are remnants of some German anarchist group -- getting a bioweapon out of their hands is moral enough, but I must confess... I do not know that I like the idea of returning this to the corporation that owns it. I have been tasked in the past with returning weapons of mass destruction to their owning governments, specifically Russian nuclear devices, but... that held a certain international approval to it. The United Nations, and the International Union of Heroes, and both groups sought to avoid these weapons being used. This is different. Returning this, we have no guarantee that it will not then be used in a way other than its stated purpose." He sighed. "As for my own abilities, I am proficient in close combat and should be able to do so stealthily -- most of what I do is my nature loud though. I can deal with obstacles precisely, or deal with them... less precisely, through the directed blasts I am capable of creating around my body. I... am not as used to the quiet approach as the loud one, admittedly, but it is not my first time attempting stealth." His mouth quirked into a decided frown when Friedhold spoke, and Navin turned to stare at the man. "Let us NOT send a child through ventilation shafts. We do not need to do that, and that-- sending a child out on a mission-- is the sort of thing that should never be done except in the moments of gravest necessity."

Jack watched as some of the other people around him took fairly heavy blows, looking himself unconcerned as a blue flash flared up around him, his shields taking the assault intended for his leg without breaking. "Well, hell with it, might as well, huh?" He proceeded to charge headlong into the midst of the enemies, wildly firing his pistol and shouting at the top of his lungs. "HEEEEYYYY FUCKERSSSSSS HOW ABOUT SOME OF THISSSSSSSSS, YOU ARE... WELL HONESTLY I DON'T REALLY KNOW HOW TO DESCRIBE YOU BUT FUCK YOOUUUUUUUUU!" He even stopped directly in front of the one with the shield, spreading his arms in challenge, mere feet from it. "DO YOU THINK YOU'RE HOT SHIT, WEIRD FUCKIN' THING? PROVE IT!" Jack uses YOUR BEST IS MY WORST, taunting the Taskmaster, the Maroon Dirge, the Violet Hymn, and Neo-Shadows C and D.

Isobel finally let out a sigh of relief -- a few seconds were passing by now where she WASN'T getting the tar continually beaten out of her. And with her own safety no longer such an urgent concern, she tossed a flower Lamba's direction. "Ah, hah, here! Jesus, this is actually beginning to get pretty tiring..." "Hold off from her for a few seconds -- those danmaku are going to present a problem if you lunge for her, I think. Just hold back and recover your strength!" LOTUS followed this up with some tactical advice on movement for Masako. Isobel uses Healing Poppy on Lamba, healing her for 4d4+INT damage! LOTUS uses Pathing Advice on Masako, fixing her initiative directly behind LOTUS and Isobel's for this round and the next. Active Cooldowns: Tactical Uplink (Partial) upcoming in one turn.  15% dodge chance, 20% poison damage reduction and poisoning effect durations shortened by one round.

The best way to describe Nader's response to the friendly little monster was "awkwardly brimming with paranoia". The creature being evidently harmless and cordial wasn't enough to make him drop everything and trust it, that much was for sure, but he also wasn't going to be blazing away at it unless it DID drop the facade and reveal its participation in the plot to kill humans on sight. But... well... it wasn't, right now. Nader didn't think that any verbal contribution he could provide would be presently helpful, so all he did was rather uncomfortably shift around and continue to compulsively check on his guns. Just in case he needed them. Which he probably would, always.

Ceridwen drew up next to Argos. "I'll help you, Argos! I can't leave you to just take the brunt of things alone. Don't worry, Johanna, I think the two of us can handle those horsemen together. S26

Candide would have rolled his eyes if he had them -- directly in the middle of the town square? Was that really necessary? It was a dramatic locale, to be sure, but seemed like a path to wholly unneeded damage. The first words Candide had been planning to say died on his lips at Blodeuyn's words, the blind knight faltering for a moment in awkward confusion. But he began to speak afterwards, creating a poem intentionally loud enough for Nicolos and his followers to hear. "It's at Swampmill we fight, so, Gwyn, let your axe bite! Today we start to see through war for whose claim is true. The queen, the only one who did what must be done? Or he who raised his head but once the king was dead? I've fought two things in my life. Bandits, robbing by knife and nobles starting war for naught else but power! You are not one but both, both things I've learned to loathe. I've felt the pain these cause, I'll fight them without pause!" Candide to F11, use Artemis' Song on Gwyn.

"Thanks. I... it's just..." Liza trailed off with a sigh.

Lizaveta kept silent about it, but to tell the truth, she was feeling somewhat demoralized. There was a fire in Ferdiad's eyes, and she could tell that he was practically a man possessed, a man whose reason to be in this moment aligned perfectly with his situation. That was a man at the zenith of what he believed in, of who he was, and as she watched him Lizaveta could only note that he practically shone for it, like the sun. But not her. Lizaveta didn't really know why she was here -- defending royalty, from the attacks of other royalty. Did it really matter? There would always be royalty warring against royalty. All she was doing right now was just keeping a queen in power. This wasn't why she had spent what little she had left to wander across the world to search for Virtuous. Was this what they would do, from here on out? Just defend monarchs from each other? It was what Baldur seemed to want to do, at least. "..." M7

Unfortunately, despite her pouring both her heart and her reasoning into what she had to say, Lizaveta watched as Kane came out to contradict her with a ruling. She immediately wilted a bit, looking down and speaking quietly. "I... I won't leave." Regardless of anything else, after all, it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go but Virtuous, so she couldn't leave. There was no use thinking about if she wanted to,

Lizaveta managed to stay calm talking to Baldur this time -- she was experiencing a sudden moment of clarity, and in that moment she felt that what she was arguing was more important than her grudge with him. "If Virtuous didn't want to help those who can't help themselves, neither of the previous two missions that we did would have made sense to do, Orchid. Without getting into the details in front of the Queen... those were things that we did that we wouldn't have done if we were only out to stop war. We may be more than just what I am here for, but we're more than just what you're here for too. And how do you intend to change the world without the people living in it? If you don't care what they think, if you don't care what we represent to the world, how do you expect it to change? Do you think that we will just come in and fix every problem in the places we go to? We won't be in every piece of society at the same time, and we can't, because society is made of the people in it -- not us, not just the few of us. The world will not change unless the people in it change as well. And unless we show to the world that we're fighting for all of it, that we want to change the world instead of just being a part of the Kingdom of Ceda... then we don't present a message that changes the people. We don't present something that people can believe it, that they can follow, that they can use to come together to change their world. We can't do it ourselves, Orchid. No matter what the queen wants to do, she is still the Queen of Ceda, and that still means something if we announce working with her to the world by staying in her castle. We can't just ignore that meaning."

Lizaveta frowned again behind her mask -- this time less angrily, after the lengths that the Queen had gone to, but... "...I still don't want to go. What message does it send, if we operate from the castle of Ceda? What does it mean for what we represent? Would the people in Vini, in Ria, in Gul, in Vaa, in Ulux, those oppressed in Perus feel like we are there to help them? If we move to the castle of the Queen we are in a very real sense operating as part of Ceda. We'd be using their very seat as their base, doing so with the knowledge and in fact outright support of the Queen... that might not be taking orders from her, but it is definitely aligning with her. Can we claim to the world that we're impartial, that we exist for the good of all of Purgus if we do that? And, though... even I have to appreciate the lengths she's gone to... what does it mean that we would be operating from a castle anyway? We're here for people that have fallen through the systems of the kingdoms of Purgus, and those people who aren't powerful enough to protect themselves from tyrants and exploiters. The fact that we're not known to work as part of any powerful person's forces helps show that. ...it's why I took pains to find Virtuous, myself. I didn't feel that anyone that was part of the system could ever truly change it. How many people would we be telling that we've come to be a part of the very thing that keeps them from finding appreciation and liberation? I won't leave if we go to the castle, but I think it would betray many of the things we stand for and could do."

“First of all, Mink, I was talking to Orchid, mostly. But secondly, L— ergh, Mink, you aren’t in charge either. I think maybe you want to be, but you don’t get the right to shut me down and make a decision on your own either. We are a group, L, dammit, Mink, and that means that it isn’t just you who gets to say her piece. Why do you think you’re the one whose job it is to represent everybody here?”

It wasn’t visible behind her mask, and she had been being silent for a while, but Lizaveta Medvedeva was fuming. Not only the Queen of Ceda was here, but the Prince of Ria? She had come all this way, all this way, to find the one group that she thought was capable of making the world a better place, and now it was already being hijacked by the royalty. Not even that, but the Queen of Ceda was trying to move them to their castle. And her guard, of course, had drawn his sword at them. She remained at a sort of brittle, tense breaking point for a while, until she heard the way Baldur was speaking to Shin — and, holding herself back from an explosion but with frustration and fury still audible in the way she was nearly grinding her teeth as she spoke, and from the tension in her voice: “Maybe, if it would result in people like Shin “knowing their place”, maybe, if we would have to risk being thrown in the dungeon by somebody for lack of deference, maybe if we want to be a group that is there for the world, not just for Ceda, not just for its royalty, but people who seek to help every person in every corner of Purgus, then we shouldn’t be moving to the castle of one of the continent’s monarchs.”