Powder Miner

Isobel Low Isobel took a while to chip in to the conversation, mostly because she hadn't really been addressed and she didn't want to end up being impolite by interrupting someone. Still, there was a topic that she could contribute to, and that was what she ended up deciding to speak about. "About the appearance of this man... it is entirely possible that it could have been the work of Miss Yakumo, but it could also well have been something else. While it was Miss Yakumo that brought our group to Gensokyo, we have otherwise been transported between worlds by an entirely different force; it may be some sort of force of the, multiverse, um, how do I put this... it may be some sort of cosmic force that teleports people from their worlds to our group, or it may be actions made by..." The Battered Hero came to mind, "Some sort of larger force fighting these Trespassers as well, but the end result is that sometimes people just kind of appear around our group, or disappear from it. He could have experienced that." LOTUS "Well, I agree that it doesn't look very dangerous down there immediately. I would say that moving closer would be a good idea, especially with UB-65 reinforcing us, but caution would still be adv--" LOTUS' voice suddenly cut off as the group was approached by an unknown being, who LOTUS watched carefully as she spoke. She didn't seem hostile, and as such an overwhelming amount of paranoia was probably not advisable, but at the same time LOTUS did feel the need to take some level of care. "We were given a legal deed to an area in this realm, in order for services provided in getting rid of an outside threat to Gensokyo. We are outsiders ourselves, but have been "entered into the system", so to speak, in a couple of ways, not least of which is the danmaku system. We came to deal with an active corruptive force that would have threatened Gensokyo --and this entire universe, for that matter-- existentially, had it not been caught early by one Yakumo Yukari, who brought us here." LOTUS had begun to understand from her demeanor that Yukari was a very difficult person to understand and work with, but she figured that that would probably make any hostilities an unappealing concept.

Eulalia spoke with some clear dissatisfaction. "At least you’re all doing a much better job of fighting than I have thus far." Eulalia to J5, Alunda to L6 and heal Owena.

The one remaining armored bug soon found himself the next target of the offensive of the bugs of the Scholars' Redoubt, something he bore silently even as the Ebon Knight bore down on him. Ebon Knight attacks "Elite" Plunderer A! It's a fairly solid blow that the crow-riding mercenary deals to the armored Marauder, as the momentum cracks a wooden piece of the Marauder's armor and causes him to stagger back a step. Yet thanks to that armor and thanks to veteranship, the bug was tough -- and despite the powerful blow dealt by Ebon, he seemed to be very much willing to continue the fight, voicelessly raising his lance in both hands, bracing himself once more, and giving a look of challenge to Ebon. TURN 8 ~ ENEMY PHASE The armored bandit moved immediately to make good on his wordless challenge, his braced stance turning into a forwards one as he took a step towards Ebon -- then another -- then another-- and then swung. "Elite" Plunderer A is attacking Ebon Knight! It's an exchange which ultimately goes quite poorly for the Marauder -- between the grass, the state of heightened alertness that Ebon is forced to be in thanks to Stardust's fragile presence, and what speed the crow-rider does himself have, the Marauder is completely unable to touch him, but Ebon is quite able to hit him in response, The cracked armor plate is hit again, and finally falls to pieces right off of the Marauder's body, revealing a red tunic underneath, and a vulnerable spot that will almost certainly spell his end the next time he is struck. "I will leave you to your target, and I will find mine!" With that declaration, Seeker-of-a-Dignified-Death came in towards Lotus, stopping short of the grass and hurling an axe at her. Seeker-of-a-Dignified-Death attacks Lotus! Despite having every single one of the disadvantages that his sole remaining comrade had, Seeker-of-a-Dignified-Death managed to actually succeed in striking Lotus, his hatchet flying heavily through the air before striking her in the chest with a burst of blood. The slim, small bug was almost knocked off of her feet by the force, left balancing on one heel as a contrast to her usual stillness... almost. Regaining her balance, she managed to regain her poise and stillness too, and an arrow flew right back between blades of grass to strike the Marauder leader, who merely grunted and took it. "This battle is not yet over." TURN 9 ~ PLAYER PHASE Map Notes Status EXP: 50/100

Perlita had mostly been quiet during the meeting -- she wasn't a technological or tactical or military person or whatever, so she didn't think there was much that she could contribute aside from the already-vital task of healing. (Also, she was trying not to stare too hard at the guy with the Stormtroopers because holy shit, she'd already seen worlds of things she recognized before, but this guy being the Star Wars bad guys was something else entirely.) That meant that she really wasn't doing much but looking down at the table when Lyra came up to speak to her. An initial "Huh?" quickly faded away back to her looking down at the table, though, once Perlita registered just what Lyra had asked her. "Uhm..." Perlita sighed. "Well, uh... once we all got here, the people here handed out a bunch of items we could use while we're here, and one of them was kind of a... um, a revive-y light shard. So I used that on you to keep you alive..." It was the logical next question that Perlita was afraid of.

Lizaveta had been still and silent for an awfully long time, now. At first it had been taking in the new information, and calculating based off of it. The King of Perus was consorting actively with Great Merchantry in order to concentrate as much power and wealth into Perus as possible... that made sense. She had thought that Perus' king was basically a nonpresence, but evidently he was just a secretive and scheming one. It figured, she supposed -- and was an instance in which the Manifesto was wrong. Clearly, the aristocracy and merchantry were plenty willing to work together if they could commonly put themselves above others. And the queen of Vini had been the one responsible for its king's death... that was downright funny, in its own way. She didn't care at all about the death of Cyrus himself -- Vini had never been an especially nice place. But she had distinctly been making everything worse for everyone unlucky enough to live in that accursed kingdom... and now Lizaveta supposed she had another weapon that she could use to liberate Vini when the time came. There was an anger in the back of her head, she could feel, but oddly enough, she felt in that moment like she was cool and calm. This was information, and useful information. It was vital that they held onto it as carefully as p-- Some of Lizaveta's other lack of movement and sound came from her being frozen in shock as Ferdiad suddenly went on the assault, a scene of violence playing out before her eyes. The armored man was throwing people to the side, advancing, and she found herself simply rooted to the spot. On and on it went, until Kane was struggling to hold Ferdiad in place (and likely going to inevitably fail, for that matter), with Justine standing in his way and Lenore... throwing a mug at him, apparently. She realized none of that was likely to work... Kane wasn't strong enough to stop Ferdiad, and she didn't think Justine was either, not with him being so tough. And the mug... well, that was barely worth mentioning. She didn't think her own magic would actually be able to solve it... she'd seen Ferdiad fight mages, and he was tougher against her spells than she would be against his fists or sword, she was certain of that. And the attempts to talk to him... they felt a little limp, to Lizaveta. Appealing to his better nature... well, Justine had known him for much longer than Lizaveta had, of course, so maybe there was some meaning to it... but the way he was acting didn't seem like something that that would work on. Rage, pure determined rage... that wasn't going to be brushed away with something so simple and optimistic. But maybe she could use words to her advantage. Baldur had once stricken her, after their argument revealed him to be a vile person obsessed with putting people down and with a worldview that matched such, presumably adhering to the same old views about wealth and nobility. She had struck a vicious chord, without at the time even meaning to. Maybe if she could do the same with Ferdiad... her mind raced. She didn't know him well, but she was an observant girl and she had had access to some basic facts. His codename was "Knight", and he very very much looked the part, with full plate armor and hair that clearly spoke of grooming. He wasn't very creative, either -- she felt like he was probably in fact a very literal knight. He had seemed to have some familiarity with Ceda, and vice versa... she didn't know the details of it, but it made sense that he was probably a Knight of Ceda. He had left the group after the king of Ceda had been murdered, and now he was trying to murder one of his murderers... well, it did not take a genius to reach a conclusion here. She ran up to Ferdiad, and shot a look at Lenore as she did, an intense and somewhat panicked jerk of her eyes outwards to try to beckon her to get Pestilence away, to GO. And then she started screaming at Ferdiad, with an anger that she realized hadn't been quite as distant as she'd felt it to have been. "ARE YOU INSANE? ARE YOU, PERHAPS, FOOLISH?" Her words came out a mile a minute, as nervousness, anger, and no small amount of hidden fear drove them. "We literally COULD NOT ASK for a better source of information! We COULD NOT ASK for a better way to right the wrongs of Perus! We COULD NOT ASK for a better way to know how to help fix the broken kingdoms of this continent! AND WE SURE AS SHIT COULDN'T ASK FOR A BETTER WAY TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED WITH YOUR KING, COULD WE?" "BUT YOU DON'T SEEM REAL INTERESTED IN THAT, DO YOU? Do you WANT to keep your queen safe from those of Gul who ordered her assassination and SENT AN ARMY to try to conquer Ceda? Do you WANT to make sure that they don't get away with it? Do you WANT to understand how to deal with it?" She took a deep breath, and now she screamed at him at the absolute top of her lungs, jabbing a finger in his face, even if that meant hurriedly dancing backwards to keep up beside him. "OR IS IT, MAYBE, THAT YOU THINK THAT KILLING HER AND GETTING RID OF ALL OF THAT WILL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER ABOUT COMPLETELY FAILING TO KEEP HIM ALIVE IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

"W-what the--" Bend physically shook Stardust off of him, flailing his arm up and down until she was forced to let go. "What the fuck are you talking about??? Some-- some bee thing about queens? Look, I'm trying to help deal with the bugs suddenly kicking our asses!" This was followed up with a desperate flute tweet. Recruit Bend refreshes Lotus! Given a quite literal second shot at taking Shinywings down, Lotus loosed yet another arrow at the Marauder beetle. Lotus attacks Shinywings! Finally, finally Shinywings' luck ran out, as this particular arrow landed dead center-of-mass, slamming solidly into him and causing him to finally fall rather bonelessly to the ground. Still, despite the fact that he was dying, the Marauder second-in-command didn't seem particularly unhappy about it. "Hahaha, well... good luck going out as dramatically as I did, Seeker. I think... that I've gone and set the bar... quite high... hmmm...?" "That you have, my friend..." he reached out and put a hand on Shinywings' shoulder. "I will meet you there. Come, Scholars' bugs! Let me see what last battle you're capable of giving me!" Meanwhile, back with the party... "Oh, thank fuck." Map Notes Status EXP: 44/100

Nader let out a heavy sigh at Lucine's words. "You don't need to apologize for me very nearly killing you, Lucine." It did sting a little to word it that bluntly, but he could think of little to do but address the subject directly. "None of that would have happened if I hadn't been slinging guns around ready to shoot like I had been. I wasn't in my right mind, but... well, I suppose that there's still a lesson there to learn. And the lesson certainly isn't that you should feel guilty about it... you've been doing the best you could in situations you really shouldn't have to be in in the first place. The lesson is just that I should be more careful, and I will, so you won't have to worry about me in the future, okay? I swear that I will never repeat what happened in those tunnels." He slapped his chest with a clawed fist, to emphasize the vow.

Isobel Isobel's eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly as they met with a very fast white blur of a youkai(?), and then one of those eyebrows raised higher at Masako's explanation. Of course, it wasn't actually that surprising at all that Masako had chosen to self-aggrandize (really, Isobel would've been surprised if she hadn't), but it did require some correcting. Isobel figured that this "Inubashiri" was likely to be well aware of Masako's particular quirks by now, but as Masako did seem to be her subordinate or coworker, some politeness was still probably a good idea. Isobel gave a little bit of a curtsy as she began speaking. "My name is Isobel Low, miss Inubashiri. The scent of soup, I'm afraid, is Masako's handiwork," okay, she couldn't resist pointing that out, "but I and a larger group of people have indeed been working with Masako. I imagine you would like a little more explanation for just who I am and who the people I'm referring to are, if you're in charge of security here." She cleared her throat. "While I would in other circumstances maybe wonder about this sounding unbelievable, I think it won't sound too crazy here: I'm not really from this world. Not just not from Gensokyo, or the Earth, but from this whole... dimension, realm, universe altogether, my apologies if I'm not sure which word makes the most sense. We have been traveling between various of these dimensions as we've been fighting an outside enemy called the "Trespassers", who tend to corrupt and then devour worlds. We were brought here by one Yakumo Yukari to thwart an incursion, and Masako here was brought in as well to join our group. This incursion took the form of corrupted artifacts which took control of the people who came into contact with them, which we've dealt with -- I doubt miss Yakumo would give a solid answer if you asked her about this, but if you have questions about the veracity of all of this I could name some other people you could ask." That was quite formal for her normal standards, but Isobel felt that it was quite informative! Even LOTUS would be proud, she was sure. LOTUS "I'll come with you if you go down to the village, but I would caution you to be careful about this -- if they are hostile, then going down there with just you and I would be potentially hazardous. It would be a good idea to attempt elevated, indirect, or stealthy reconnaissance before entering the village proper, in my view. I could provide the latter of these, but my ability to perform the former would be quite shaky, and I am unsure entirely about indirect reconnaissance. In any event, however, I am willing to accompany you, as I am not greatly worried about my own physical safety due to what I am either in fairy form or tablet form."

As the entire crowd of undead thing people assembled, and as a bunch of different colorful beings emerged from the ground to join a being of necromantic dancing and a chorus line, as disco beats pumped through the air and energized the room, Stretch's reaction was immediate and unhesitant, as he slapped one fist determinedly into his other hand (causing both to bounce away and jiggle mightily). "Oh! This is a... a DANCE-FU BATTLE! It's where people move their limbs in weird ways to do magic thingies to battle! It's the long and ancient tradition of the People Who Have Weird Arms And Stuff On That One Giant Ship Thing!! We must take this challenge seriously and demonstrate our proficiency in the ways of DANCE-FU! Do not worry! One of the People Who Have Weird Arms And Stuff On That One Giant Ship Thing told me I had a strong arm once, which I'm pretty sure means that I am, like, good at DANCE-FU and moving arms and stuff!!!" With that "assurance" out, Stretch politely waited for the first dance from the Necroforce to end before he took action. But when it did... "STREEEETCH AAARMSTROOOONG DAAAANCE-FUUUU POOOWWEEEERRR!" Stretch shouted at the top of his lungs (which is really loud considering how he can inflate them) and then he grabbed two handholds on opposite sides of the room, dragging himself back across most of the room perpendicular to his arms...and then slingshotted himself back, sending him rocketing into the other wall. But his journey didn't end there -- instead he bounced off of the wall in the exact opposite direction at extremely high speed, carrying him over to the wall. Then he bounced off of that wall, hitting another, and bouncing off at terrifyingly high speeds all across the room, a living and remarkably elastic projectile. But there was an additional quirk to this. Every time he bounced, he crossed back over the exact same spot in the room, opposite the NecroForce, where he struck a pose -- and he was bouncing so fast that these poses came in quick succession, Stretch becoming a human slideshow of poses and moves. These moves and poses lacked in technical prowess, for Stretch had never actually danced before... but they made up for that in sheer enthusiasm, kicks and points and twirls and a handstand bouncing off of the floor, a whirlwind of energy all over the room translating into a high-energy series of "DANCE MOVES" right across from his DANCE-FU BATTLE OPPONENTS. Stretch uses the Wild Slingshot Trump, which grants him an extra Action and 2 Initiative for 2 turns! And he uses it to GET FUNKY!

That silence stretched out for a long moment as Nader sort of... stared... back at Lucine awkwardly. To his surprise, looking at her didn't exactly bring on crushing waves of guilt. It did bring on a hell of an urge to be careful, but... well, he had expected to feel worse about now, and it just wasn't coming up. Lost in thought for a moment, Nader realized that on some level... he actually felt like he was even? He let out a long sigh, although it turned out more rumbling than he'd intended thanks to his new body. It seemed kind of sick to him that he considered it that way -- paying a soul for a child-killing and settling accounts that way -- but he didn't really want to actively try to send himself into a spiral of guilt. "Hello, Lucine." There was another moment of awkward silence here. "And... if you're wondering about my mental state, I'm doing much better. Being..." Another rumbling sigh. "Being separated from my body seems to have removed me from the worst of whatever my illness is, and I suppose that separation is going to be permanent. To tell the truth, I'm not really sure if I'll keep being this lucid, but I am right now, at least." Nader let the silence last for a few moments. "...good job on getting everyone free, though. That was half of the reason I gave up my soul in the first place. I felt like it wasn't right to have all of these people just... stuck down here, trapped. So using me and the other Souls to let them all finally go was exactly what needed to happen. You helped a lot of people escape something very terrible, there." He shrugged, squaring himself a little. "I'm sorry to drop something so heavy on you, Lucine, but... what's Asgore's status? I talked to him when he took my soul -- he felt that he had to die for monsters to be able to be free, since he felt that he ought to be held responsible for everything."

Well, unfortunately, it hadn't seemed like what Leo was going to deal with was actually something terribly grand or dangerous... but... bah, it wasn't like she would get anywhere standing around and waiting for something to happen. She had to... be less choosy about what she was going to be doing, she supposed. Something being stuck inside of a clocktower... well, maybe that would ultimately be the most interesting thing. If she had to guess, it was likely that time was taken by some sort of device -- she had briefly seen clocks back on the realm with the costumed people who fought crime, hands moving by clearly mechanical and measured means, so a very extra large clock was probably going to be quite something to behold. Maybe it would have to be fixed, too, which sounded enjoyable. "Well, better that than nothing, hmm?" Satomi jogged off in the direction of the clocktower, with a none-too-quiet jangling noise as her many pieces of gear bounced around off of her and each other as she moved. Now, sure, maybe she couldn't see the distance beyond a vague rising and falling series of blurs, but would she be able to find her way to the clocktower? Pro-- probably! It was a tower, after all, right? She just had to find a big thing.

Suddenly, once more, Nader found himself corporeal, his world once more filled with sensations — sight, sound, smell, and feeling all flooded back to him, a small gasp exiting him as the sudden return of senses overwhelmed him... and then after a long moment, the Moskurg man noticed that his body... was not... the same body. It was still tall, and it was still insanely muscular, in fact now even more broad-chested and strong, but it was... Vivid orange fur ran along his body, black stripes running horizontally along its length and white fur down his front, with claws on his fingers and furry ears were positioned at the top of his head. (He also seemed to be just a tad less... physical? It was hard to describe, but he... seemed to be a monster.) For a long moment, Nader remained entirely still, and entirely silent. Then he finally spoke, with a voice now much deeper and growlier. ”W-wha—“ The altered sound of his voice put his first stammering attempt at speech to an end. After a moment. ”I... am a tiger. I am a tiger. I... am a tiger.” He flexed his clawed fingers experimentally, moving around a little bit. ”Y— ya khabar abyad...!” This was... this was... Nader had difficulty processing this, but what of his mind wasn’t blanking totally right now was completely torn. On one hand, this was not his body, and there was an odd feeling that came from that. On the other hand, holy shit, he was a tiger, he was a motherfucking tiger, a strong tiger, glorious, incredible, he was the very pinnacle of all that a man of Moskurg could hope to be. He let out a bewildered little laugh and finally seemed to notice Arminius. ”The tiger... to the Moskurg people, tigers are... the greatest animal. So I... ahahaha... well... I suppose I didn’t expect to be alive again at all... and now I’m a tiger!” Nader tried a roar out for size, which then was followed up by a giddy laugh. ”I am the greatest Moskurg to ever live! Ahahahahahaaaaa! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy SHIT! Moskurg strong, land of the tiger, Forenia strong!!” One furry finger was brought up to wipe a tear from his eye. ”Iiiii have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to feel right now.”

Perlita paused for a long moment, crouched down near Iowa. "So, um... there's not really much I can do about whatever the, like... the core thing is that is causing this to happen. And I'm... not really sure if there's an ocean nearby. But, ummmm..." Perlita paused for a moment, trying to figure something out. "Well, I guess I don't... really know how it works, but sometimes people just... leave? I don't really know quite how it works." Of course, back in that one war world with the castles and, uh, history people and all (Servants?), some of those people had showed up in some weird poker room, but that might have just been some sort of illusion and she doubted that everyone went there even if it wasn't. "I think that maybe if you're not able to fight anymore for some reason, the same thing that brought you here might take you back? I'm honestly not quite sure, but I think that that's something that might help if you need it."

Navin crouched down and let out a long, quiet sigh as the unfolding situation with the ghost continued. "...oh... of course. Do you think she is the same as that spirit...? I am afraid that I cannot quite tell... and I am not very useful in this sort of matter, either." Navin paused as he considered the situation a little more. "She is speaking Chinese, I am not sure if it is Mandarin or not but either way I cannot tell what she is saying. But..." Those flashes of memories, and this place in general, made the situation that had caused all of this abundantly, terribly clear. "She may have been either an immigrant, kidnapped, or a victim of a human trafficking ring bringing people in from abroad. Either way, whoever it is that acts as heroes here have failed seriously in their vigilance. ...but from the looks of this entire world, I suppose that is not uncommon. At least this facility itself is no longer active. Is there anything that you can do for her?"

Lizaveta had spent much of the night... well... really, there was no way around it, she had spent a lot of the night more or less pouting that she didn't get her way. She had at least had the courtesy to make sure that she wasn't disturbing the dancer now sleeping in the middle of their room, though -- it was more silently fuming than anything else. What was going to happen next? Was Darcy just going to hang around in Stella's castle forever until either he killed her or some other brand of royal nonsense? Was it just going to be a status quo where nothing happened with Darcy and some regent just ended up taking his role for the foreseeable future? Ugh. Admittedly, Lizaveta hadn't been prepared to work for revolution in Ulux, but... to see the chance to give the people some control over themselves and to be unable to take it hurt. To her surprise, though, Lizaveta found that there was something else entirely to take her focus away from that. The arrival of Pestilence brought many questions, really too many for Lizaveta to straighten out in her head, much less ask... so she elected to just ask the question that she found the most important. "Wait... the Icons of Sin work for the King of Perus...? What, uh... what are your goals? Why are you doing what you're doing?"

Isobel Isobel raised one eyebrow a little at Empi's talking about murder-sex dungeons, but kept her reaction to that somewhat muted. Still, though, when she spoke to Empi, she couldn't prevent a giggle from coming out in her voice. "Well, Empi, if you came expecting sanity and steadiness, I suspect that you may have not quite come to the right place." Isobel paused and her expression grew a little pensive. "Actually, I guess that could apply to me too, wouldn't it? But, ah well, I've got to know better than to expect things not to be at least a little crazy, if what we've experienced so far is any sort of indication. I'll just have to roll with it, huh? As long as it isn't, uh, Hell, or that awful warzone." She then turned to Masako. "Well, if I'm gonna be honest with you, I had actually kind of been meaning to go see Youmu's garden again, but I guess it might be kind of rude to leave and then come right back. And I have to admit that all of your... adventures have turned out well so far. So, against my better judgment... heheh, sure, I'll follow you." LOTUS LOTUS flapped over to IP, a process that... well, it took several seconds, as LOTUS was anything but a steady flier. Still, she did eventually make it over. "The first thing that we are going to want to do is figure out location. Obviously, this train, being that it will be our primary means of access to useful locations here, will be something of a limiter -- we are not going to want to set up so far away that accessing the train becomes an ordeal. But we may want to see if there's anything useful in our immediate area. If there is, we should endeavor to set up camp in an area that can access as many resources as possible easily. Otherwise, we'll probably just want to set up a little while off from the train. Then I believe we will want to make the base somewhat centralized, placing our buildings or tents or whatever we manage to create close to each other -- we want to make it easy to perform any operations down here, including working with whatever supplies we put down here. This would mean that if anyone hostile did come across this place, it would be a juicy target, but I think we could deal with most of that with a little bit of security, and by keeping most of our supplies in the castle -- for your reference, we also inhabit a dimension-traveling castle, which is uniquely secure because of what it is. To summarize: scout a little, place the base in a good location for accessing whatever resources and tools there are, centralize it so we can access our resources and tools, divide up what we want to be putting here and why, and then attempt to create security as needed."

None too happy with the swing in the tide of battle that Shinywings' dodge had caused, Lotus elected to put an end to it herself, backpedaling smoothly through the grass from her attacker and taking a shot at the (at this point rather pesky) beetle. Lotus is attacking Shinywings! Astoundingly enough, she actually missed again, and once again by a hair's margin, as Shinywings started to throw himself to the side at the sight of the incoming arrow -- and he did so with something of a smile on his face. "Frankly, I'm probably as surprised that I'm proving to be this much of an obstacle as you are." Map Notes Status EXP: 34/100

Shinywings was far, far from out of the woods yet -- although Sting was bleeding, swaying, barely on her feet, she managed to push herself to go further, dragging herself along the dirt to make it up to the beetle mage that the rest of her team was collapsing on. Sting attacks Shinywings! The battle between Sting and Shinywings was a bloody one -- and it actually seemed like under different circumstances the two would have been almost perfectly matched, in nearly exact parity. But with the current circumstances... well, it had been practically a miracle that Sting had moved without falling flat on her face in the first place. She came in, lurching forward at high speed with her sword out... and she did manage to stab Shinywings, drawing a grunt from the beetle. Unfortunately for her, though, he was still quite upright... and with a whispered sentence to concentrate despite his wounds, he let loose thunder into Sting, causing her to lock up, make an almost comical shaking sound as she was zapped, and then fall right over. Sting is down! Even as Sting fell down, though, Pinecone was stepping up... and he was stepping up with his javelin in hand. Pulling out Sting's sword, Shinywings looked at Pinecone with visible dismay, but raised his tome nonetheless, in case he was lucky. Pinecone attacks Shinywings! As Shinywings watched the javelin hurtle towards him, he barely twitched aside, having no expectations that he would be lucky enough to be missed a second time. And yet, that bare twitch actually prevented the javelin from bouncing off of his face and knocking him to the ground, probably permanently. He paused for a significant amount of time, slackjawed, staring at Pinecone uncomprehendingly. A half-hearted bolt of thunder was sent the bee's way, but disappeared into the ground, blowing a pebble half an inch into the air. Then he began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh, sending a second bolt of thunder Shinywings' way that burned with much more accuracy. The beetle spoke, now, but his sentences were much less terse now, instead infused with an odd gaiety and triumph. "Well, I should really have been dead about now! And I will die soon anyway, I suppose. But, haha... maybe your whole philosophy is right after all, Seeker. I can't say that I expected to stand quite this tall ever again! Ah, but I suppose it matters little. Either way, Seeker... together to the end, like I promised." "I will never have the opportunity to thank you enough for your dedication, Shinywings... your companionship over these long years has meant more to me than I think you could imagine. But... yes, together to the end, Shiny." TURN 7 ~ ENEMY PHASE "Tell you what, Seeker... for it to be truly us working together, even at the end of it... why don't you do me a favor, step back, and continue in on that armored bee for me." "Of course I would do that for you, Shiny." True to his words, Seeker-of-a-Dignified-Death followed his friend's instructions to the letter, clearing out from in front of Lotus to stand behind the remaining patchwork-armored Marauder, before hefting one of his plastic hatchets in the air and sending it thrown Pinecone's way with a strong, muscled arm. Seeker-of-a-Dignified-Death attacks Pinecone! Pinecone was left to uselessly flail this time -- the first axe struck solidly into Pinecone's fuzz, drawing some blood despite his fuzz's thicknes and forcing the large bee a step back, and then it was followed with the other axe around Pinecone's collarbone, which struck Pinecone every bit as solidly, very nearly bringing him low. A javelin was tossed in response... but it did not hit, with Seeker slapping the javelin right out of the air with the back end of his axe. Pinecone wasn't on the ground, but he was close -- bleeding, sagging a little. ...and then Shinywings turned right back to Pinecone, tome in hand, and just smiled, prepared to finish the job. Shinywings attacks Pinecone! Yet another bolt of thunder left Shinywings' hands, and this one was aimed with confidence and even aplomb, compared to the mechanical motions of before or the half-hearted surprised reaction that Shinywings had earlier missed Pinecone with. And once it hit, forcing Pinecone's muscles to clench and unclench, his perseverance to stay up was finally forced to break simply by the motions of his body, the wooden-armored bee dropping to the ground with a thud as he hit the dirt heavily. Pinecone is down! "Right. Now, Scars, the archer, if you would?" The scarred and older of the two armored Marauders (and now the only surviving one of the two) nodded completely silently (although he was unable to speak, rather than stoic like his partner) and he advanced towards Lotus, hauling his lance arm back. "Elite" Marauder A attacks Lotus! Lotus was an archer, and not a half-bad one... but she was an archer who focused on using her stillness and her long-range to shoot enemies from afar before they could notice, not an archer who was skilled in dancing around blows and then stepping back to deliver a cool counterattack. Instead, she was ultimately unable to react in time to the incoming plastic lance, her own stillness working against her so that she didn't even dodge as she was stabbed. If there was a mercy there, though, it was that the Marauder's old bones weren't terribly strong, and the blow that she was dealt was not a catastrophic one, especially with the awkwardness of striking past grass. TURN 8 ~ PLAYER PHASE Map Notes Status EXP: 32/100

Lizaveta sighed and pinched her nose. “That’s fine, I don’t need things to be instant anyway. But don’t be surprised when taking a king as hostage is both less useful than expected and more of a commitment than we’re prepared to make anyway. I can just let events prove me right.”

“I led with my point, Orchid, it’s not my problem if you can’t understand.” Mim’s words caused her temper to flare, though. “Here you are calling me naive and foolish, but it seems to me that you have less of a plan than anyone else. So, say we take the king hostage... then what? What’s to stop any of the things that you just theorized from happening? If the military is really that organized and ready to take power, then why in the world would they ever wait on the account of Darcy? Why would they have some sort of undying loyalty to that man in particular? We’ve already defeated him, so if the army wants to revolt, then they already know they can. And certainly it’s not like the other monarchs are going to care about him, either. For a country like Perus, Vini and Ulux are already easy targets. They have economic capacity and military might that far outstrip anything of these two countries and have for a very long time — if Perus wanted to go to war, then they already would have. They are simply satisfied being paramount, dominating everyone else by dint of their size and their power, and there’s nothing that can be done in Ulux to change that. For that reason, as much as I despise that kingdom, they will probably not let any other kingdom go conquering. You can only rely on having a hostage if they’re worth something, and Darcy is a thoroughly worthless man. He would have stayed in power because he would have seemed invincible; we’ve already broken that. It wouldn’t matter if we take him as a hostage, because nobody is going to stop to prevent his death except for the most corrupt noblemen in Ulux, and I doubt very much that you want to put people like Pud in power. If the ultimate goal was to keep anybody from getting ideas about changing who’s in power, then that was out the window the moment that we decided to come here and take the relic. When you start to challenge the systems of oppression that rule Purgus for the fragility they truly have, then you can’t simply expect to pull back and depend on the status quo. It is already too late.”

Lizaveta starts out with a perhaps predictable opening, but a bombastic one nonetheless. "He needs to die." "...but I can agree that it is best for the people of Ulux to have a chance to do it themselves. I'm from Vini, this kingdom's neighbor -- many aspects of life here are the same there, and it's because of people like Darcy and the aristocracy and merchantry of Perus that life is such unending misery. So suppose that we leave him alive, and just try to put him behind the queen. He is a king, and he is a manipulator, and he has been a king and a manipulator for a long time -- we pat ourselves on the back, leave, and then he just worms his way back into power, and the misery continues. Suppose we just put some other person in charge of the monarchy -- do we have a nice list of candidates for monarchy? What do we do there? Are we kingmakers? But suppose we do put someone in. Maybe they're a Stella, but for every Stella there are three monarchs that are corrupt, evil, incompetent or all of these things -- and because it's a monarchy, the misery goes on for generations and generations and generations. It certainly doesn't end just because we find someone clean-looking and slap him into the throne. We need to give the people of Ulux a hand in their own country. We have Minstrel here," Lizaveta wasn't sure if they were being listened in on by the trapped guards, "But the people as a whole deserve a chance to determine their own future. Do we just come in and say that we know better than the peasants, that they should just sit down while we put another monarch over their heads? Maybe if we leave it open, some general comes in, sure. But generals can't last forever... eventually, maybe even in a mere few years, he would be deposed. But a monarchy like Ulux's can last nearly forever, the same old misery and the same old oppression century after century. And maybe... maybe the people here can come up with something better. Maybe they can some up with a country that isn't defined by its particular brand of misery first and foremost. For that is what all of the kingdoms are defined by, yes? It is not a coincidence."

Navin let out a frustrated sigh, looking down at how his outfit was heavily stained with his blood and a whole lot more of the spirit’s blood. The exact same scenario, hmm? Navin really wasn’t looking forwards into plunging back into it, because if he had to fight again so soon after... after really having lost control like he had... well, he worried that he would potentially snap again. But then again... he was a hero, wasn’t he? He traveled the world and now worlds to protect the innocent and, especially, those too weak to protect themselves, didn’t he? He plunged through lairs and fought supervillains and monsters for that exact purpose, didn’t he? Those had been risky too, and yet he’d never let that stop him from doing what he needed to do, even when he feared it would be horrible for him, so he couldn’t now, could he? ”Please, I would ask that you all back me up if this goes wrong once more.” And Navin stepped forward into the tunnel, one foot making contact with the floor as he reached for her hand. ”...it is going to be alright, now. It is going to be okay.”

Perlita sighed and allowed herself to crouch down a little in the time that Mira’s dispatching of Brave took — it was only a precious few seconds, of course, but she needed absolutely any time she could manage to snatch to decompress. She knew that sue was going to have to tend to some people after the battle, of course... but it was just exhausting to sling so much healing magic with so little break. There was a bone-deep weariness that using one’s Persona for too much magic always imparted, and Perlita in particular almost always found herself in that state sooner or later. At home it had been at the end of runs through alien facilities, having kept Malachi and Gabriel and Diane and all the others topped up through the dungeon, and now it was... well, now it was after every single one of these awful, grueling, life or death battles that everyone kept going through. It was hard, especially when dealing with whatever that robot man thing had done to her, but... well, it was extremely apparent that they needed her. And then she heard herself being called over by Lyra and she sighed, popping back to full height. ”Who needs help?” Now, she scanned over everyone real fast... Atton was a little banged up but fine, just like her (actually... she could tell she would really be hurting later, thanks to both the lightning and... crystal energy thing), 6D was on fire still oh no, and Iowa was fainting for some reason, looking... green. Triaging the two... well, 6D WAS ON FIRE. ”H—hold on for just a moment, Iowa!” Perlita dashed towards 6D, wincing at the running with her exhaustion, and then channeled a Patra spell into her, stopping the fires cold. Then she ran over to Iowa, nearly stumbled and fell herself, balanced herself on Lyra, then let out a frustrated huff. ”Here, just hang on, let me...” Perlita used another Patra, wincing hard now as she felt the exhaustion tangibly sink in further, but at least Iowa was looking better, though Perlita had no idea what the problem had been.

Still trembling somewhat, Navin only responded to Heidrun’s request with a shaky nod and silence, finding himself unable to easily speak for the moment after experiencing... that. That feeling had... it had been artificial, of course, some sort of magical effect that the ghost had put on him, but the shock of it remained still. It had been... Navin had thought that he would have been long beyond experiencing that sort of anger, he supposed. It had been a long, long, long time since he had allowed himself to feel like that. He had his dharma, after all... would he be able to protect others if he spent his time raging like some of the less savory “heroes” that he had worked with over his career? No, of course not. Navin had never understood those kinds of vigilantes, “anti-heroes”, and why they thought it was acceptable to turn their duty into some sort of sadistic quest for vengeance against anything and everything, as if darkness and violence were things to be celebrated rather than mourned. And yet he had gone and fought like that in a fit of pique, now, hadn’t he? Would this be all of his time here — fighting violently, killing violently? He grit his teeth. But nonetheless he walked over to the second hatch, braced himself in case yet another ghost was behind it, grasped the handle, and wrenched it open (leaving whatever was in it to see a muscular man in a mostly-white jumpsuit absolutely spattered with blood and meat).

Isobel stood there still and silent for a long, long time. Eventually, though, she spoke... still seeming rather shellshocked. "So." She let out a disbelieving little laugh. "I guess I'm in Hell, then." She let that statement lie there for a few moments. "Yeah. I, umm-- I-- I am technically Catholic. So. Uh... I'm not... I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to react to this, just..." She waved her hands vaguely at their surroundings, before a thought occurred to her and she laughed -- a little strainedly, but still mostly genuinely. "I guess the gays really do go to hell, huh, heh heh heh. I know some people I should... never mention this whole escapade to, I suppose." She sighed, and shrugged. "I'm gonna be honest, this place kind of freaks me out, even if I guess it's really not the Christian Hell or whatever, so I think I'm not really gonna want to stick around for too long." "I would really prefer you didn't, I was going to scan the atmosphere and then perhaps aid with the creation of a base loca--" LOTUS paused, a very small port on his chassis opening and then closing. "Right, I suppose that I don't actually have to stay with you, do I? I believe that you are free to go." LOTUS popped between forms, the tablet changing once again to a very small winged woman with short white hair and green circuit marks around her face and body. Slowly, she fluttered out of Isobel's pocket, her flight still quite unsteadily. "Still barely have the hang of these blasted wings..." Still, LOTUS managed to make contact with the ground in a non-disastrous way, cupping her hands over her mouth to speak loudly. "Alright, here are the results of my scan. The atmosphere down here is largely normal, but I would make note of two things: there are quite small trace concentrations of sulfur (quite fitting for Hell), and even smaller trace concentrations of radon, of all things. Neither of these are so far out of the ordinary as to likely be dangerous --the radon in particular is in the low double digits of picoCuries per liter, making it not much more dangerous than many normal residential indoor conditions-- but I suppose that I would recommend some caution if you decide to make your residence down here for years, for some reason." Isobel let out a long sigh. "Oh boy... fire and brimstone, quite literally. Well... I suppose that I'm going to take that as my cue to leave. Take care down here!" Isobel made her way out of the portal that Yukari had made to the Hakurei shrine.