Difference between revisions of "2022-11-19: Musou ~DREAM~"

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     SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!
 
     SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!
  
−
That anger swells as his mind immediately switches over. As he realizes that his priorities are being shifted. An anger that rises further as he sees the red giant of Unit 02 standing in the distance. Just... unmoving.
+
That anger swells as his mind immediately switches over. As he realizes that his priorities are being shifted.
  
 
A subtle dread is given birth to within his chest...
 
A subtle dread is given birth to within his chest...
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     GOOOOOOOOOOLDYYYYYYYYYMAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!
 
     GOOOOOOOOOOLDYYYYYYYYYMAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!
  
−
As the Super AI he dreaded facing the most reveals itself amidst the brilliant light of Triple-Zero. It stands in the way. As the Carestia takes a single step, then another. The presence of mighty giants like Domon Kasshu and Koji Kabuto would normally never be 'missed' by Eisen like this, as he feels another 'fetter' snap at his shoulders. As a feeling of tunnelvision dips down towards the golden giant. But he tries to tear his eyes open and set that gaze on the red giant behind it.
+
As the Super AI he dreaded facing the most reveals itself amidst the brilliant light of Triple-Zero. It stands in the way. As the Carestia takes a single step, then another. The presence of mighty giants like Domon Kasshu and Koji Kabuto would normally never be 'missed' by Eisen like this, as he feels another 'fetter' snap at his shoulders. As a feeling of tunnelvision dips down towards the golden giant.
  
 
Yet, undeniably, Goldymarg stands in his way.
 
Yet, undeniably, Goldymarg stands in his way.
  
−
<"I told the boy. And I will tell you the same thing - Goldymarg."> The green eyes of the Evangelion Unit-Zahlos breach open. The second series of eyes pulling wide as its claws move to the sides. <"DO NOT STAND IN THE WAY OF MY FRIENDS' FREEDOM!"> For he will not stop. And with that same demand, the Evangelion brings its arms out, and ROARS. A sonic burst flares forwards, as the gossamer lights across its skeletal wings span. A violent burst coming forwads as Eisen makes his and the Carestia's presence known.
+
<"I told the boy. And I will tell you the same thing - Goldymarg."> The green eyes of the Evangelion Unit-Zahlos breach open. The second series of eyes pulling wide as its claws move to the sides. <"DO NOT STAND IN THE WAY OF MY FRIENDS' FREEDOM!"> For he will not stop. And with that same demand, the Evangelion brings its arms out, and ROARS. A sonic burst flares forwards, as the gossamer lights across its skeletal wings span.
−
 
 
−
Yet that shout isn't just meant for Goldymarg. That wave of sound, that shock of his voice is also meant for the red giant beyond. For the one within.
 
 
</poem>
 
</poem>
  
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  KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg parries Eisen Daiwel's Annihilator's Roar, taking 1170 damage!
 
  KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg parries Eisen Daiwel's Annihilator's Roar, taking 1170 damage!
 
  KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
 
  KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
−
 
−
<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.
 
−
<poem>
 
−
When the call came for the Evangelion team to finally deploy to Tsutsujidai, Eisen felt like a weight was being lifted from his shoulders. No...
 
−
 
−
No, not a weight. It's more as if the fetters were being released from Fenrisulfr itself. Anger and anxiety being allowed a release. As if something that was holding him back was snapping, and permitting him to start moving again. With that buried deep in his chest, the youth sped through the headquarters in order to deploy. Plugsuit donned, and soon, going through Orbit Base in order to get to Junius Seven.
 
−
 
−
In his mind, he's repeating the kinds of things he might say to his former allies. The people who were taken from them by the girl-ruler of Tsutsujidai. Having no actual experience with her, he imagines her like some evil villain upon a throne - no matter what Yuta might have tried to impart upon him.
 
−
 
−
----
 
−
 
−
As the lights of the Evangelion light up, and the LCL fills the chambers, Eisen's gaze is set forward with purpose. Buildings in Tsutsujidai are toppling and being destroyed. The Kaiju is being brought out into reality, permitting them to start dealing with it. Soon, reality forms around him, as the cockpilot permits for the full display throughout. A tug at his chest, as he soon feels that other presence besides him. As Carestia joins him.
 
−
 
−
The machine slowly rises from its moorings, a cable attached to its tail, a tether that permits it to function for a longer period of time. But rather than breaking out into a run, Eisen is dealing with an ache. An itch in his heart. As the scenario unfurls before him, and Powered Zenon appears before the Kaiju.
 
−
 
−
The sensation at Eisen's side connects. The sync rating quickly rising within the Evangelion, as the youth's brow furrows. His target lays before him. Yet...
 
−
 
−
    SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!
 
−
 
−
That anger swells as his mind immediately switches over. As he realizes that his priorities are being shifted.
 
−
 
−
A subtle dread is given birth to within his chest...
 
−
 
−
    GOOOOOOOOOOLDYYYYYYYYYMAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!
 
−
 
−
As the Super AI he dreaded facing the most reveals itself amidst the brilliant light of Triple-Zero. It stands in the way. As the Carestia takes a single step, then another. The presence of mighty giants like Domon Kasshu and Koji Kabuto would normally never be 'missed' by Eisen like this, as he feels another 'fetter' snap at his shoulders. As a feeling of tunnelvision dips down towards the golden giant.
 
−
 
−
Yet, undeniably, Goldymarg stands in his way.
 
−
 
−
&lt;"I told the boy. And I will tell you the same thing - Goldymarg."&gt; The green eyes of the Evangelion Unit-Zahlos breach open. The second series of eyes pulling wide as its claws move to the sides. &lt;"DO NOT STAND IN THE WAY OF MY FRIENDS' FREEDOM!"&gt; For he will not stop. And with that same demand, the Evangelion brings its arms out, and ROARS. A sonic burst flares forwards, as the gossamer lights across its skeletal wings span.
 
−
</poem>
 
  
 
  <Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
 
  <Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.
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Sarangay slams into the street even as the jetpack continues to burn, unable to lift the wanzer up against the Goldion Grasp. It sputters out a few moments later, leaving Sarangay trying to brace against it, but slowly losing the fight. The wanzer drops into a squat, then further, catching itself with its fist hand and looking like nothing so much as it's kneeling.
 
Sarangay slams into the street even as the jetpack continues to burn, unable to lift the wanzer up against the Goldion Grasp. It sputters out a few moments later, leaving Sarangay trying to brace against it, but slowly losing the fight. The wanzer drops into a squat, then further, catching itself with its fist hand and looking like nothing so much as it's kneeling.
  
−
Qivi feels the gravity too. It pulls her down; her hair flattens down against her head, her helmet feels like it weighs thirty pounds, and there's assorted other pains and aches as her body rebels against the increased gravity. She tries to sit up straighter, but is slowly losing that fight, too.
+
Qivi feels the gravity too. It pulls her down; her hair flattens down against her head, her helmet feels like it weighs thirty pounds, and there's assorted other pains as her body rebels against the increased gravity. She tries to sit up straighter, but is slowly losing that fight, too.
  
−
Qivi releases her controls to get her hands on her knees to push herself up, against her own body weight. This time she does manage it, though not without a streak of increasing discomfort - but what can she possibly do against that? If he's pulling in the hammer, then...
+
Qivi releases her controls to get her hands on her knees to push herself up, against her own body weight. This time she does manage it, though it makes her arms burn - but what can she possibly do against that? If he's pulling in the hammer, then...
  
 
The discomfort isn't all physical. She &#42;shouldn't&#42; have come out here. She's only a liability. Maybe Akane was right, and all she can do is struggle pointlessly. The last grasp of Bujack still holds her back.
 
The discomfort isn't all physical. She &#42;shouldn't&#42; have come out here. She's only a liability. Maybe Akane was right, and all she can do is struggle pointlessly. The last grasp of Bujack still holds her back.
Line 1,929: Line 1,896:
 
And then the mirror coating projectile lands. Koji looks up... and UP. "... Where did you scrape this bastard up from?" He asks, horrified. One hundred metres of Titan G9 - and the Marg Hand attaching to its right arm. That means -
 
And then the mirror coating projectile lands. Koji looks up... and UP. "... Where did you scrape this bastard up from?" He asks, horrified. One hundred metres of Titan G9 - and the Marg Hand attaching to its right arm. That means -
  
−
Oh, shit.
+
Oh, ''shit''.
  
 
A memory resurfaces - many memories, in fact, a singular moment repeated time and again during the Primeval War - Guy Shishioh, yelling with unrestrained fury as GaoGaiGar brings the Goldion Hammer down: 'TRANSFORM INTO LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!'
 
A memory resurfaces - many memories, in fact, a singular moment repeated time and again during the Primeval War - Guy Shishioh, yelling with unrestrained fury as GaoGaiGar brings the Goldion Hammer down: 'TRANSFORM INTO LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!'
Line 2,129: Line 2,096:
 
  <Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.
 
  <Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.
 
<poem>
 
<poem>
−
Domon's mind is laser focused on gathering strength, and he only barely notices Goldion's transformation and his subsequent attack. Thanking the EVA pilot mentally for the AT Field that shielded some of the attack directed towards the God Gundam. Even so, the damage to the God Gundam is brutal. Plates of armor are eradicated with the advent of the shockwave, with parts of the mobile fighter's internal frame exposed and sparking. Domon grits his teeth as his partner creaks under the strain. Hyper Mode was taxing even normally, and to force the God Gundam to maintain this state was nothing short of torment to the suit.
+
Domon's mind is laser focused on gathering strength, and he only barely notices Goldymarg's transformation and his subsequent attack. Thanking the EVA pilot mentally for the AT Field that shielded some of the attack directed towards the God Gundam. Even so, the damage to the God Gundam is brutal. Plates of armor are eradicated with the advent of the shockwave, with parts of the mobile fighter's internal frame exposed and sparking. Domon grits his teeth as his partner creaks under the strain. Hyper Mode was taxing even normally, and to force the God Gundam to maintain this state was nothing short of torment to the suit.
  
 
Hang in there, old friend.
 
Hang in there, old friend.
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Which is when Domon blasts the arm. Gravity shockwaves scatter some of the power, but it isn't a strictly physical thing and much of it slams into the Titan in full force.
 
Which is when Domon blasts the arm. Gravity shockwaves scatter some of the power, but it isn't a strictly physical thing and much of it slams into the Titan in full force.
  
−
That's the signal the others were waiting for. The Goldion Hammer roars down toward Eisen in a parrying move, but he's able to divert much of the attack into the Titan's arm and shoulder, which scathe and burn. Alloy's, likewise, slams into the Titan and sends it staggering, one, two, three hits back.
+
That's the signal the others were waiting for. Sarangay comes in, Qivi roaring her defiance on renewed spirit. If it was comparatively small before it's MINISCULE now, but that doesn't stop her spirit nor her drive, and the Wanzer SLAMS into the wrist unit, fracturing the connection. The gold from the Goldion Hammer starts to flicker across the surface of the Titan, some of its protection faltering.
 +
 
 +
How exactly Qivi gets to the ground alive is a question she has to figure out on her own time, which will hopefully be in the next, oh, call it ten seconds.
 +
 
 +
The Goldion Hammer roars down toward Eisen in a parrying move, but he's able to divert much of the attack into the Titan's arm and shoulder, which scathe and burn. Alloy's, likewise, slams into the Titan and sends it staggering, one, two, three hits back.
  
 
Lucine's support arrives. Some of the bullets evaporate on the hit, but  others pepper through. And then, at the last...
 
Lucine's support arrives. Some of the bullets evaporate on the hit, but  others pepper through. And then, at the last...
Line 2,464: Line 2,435:
  
 
Then the Titan starts &#42;falling up&#42;, Goldymarg still attached to it, as the Hyper Tool Robo exerts his phenomenal gravity control to simply send his machine upward until an ES Window opens for it to disappear into.
 
Then the Titan starts &#42;falling up&#42;, Goldymarg still attached to it, as the Hyper Tool Robo exerts his phenomenal gravity control to simply send his machine upward until an ES Window opens for it to disappear into.
−
 
 
</poem>
 
</poem>
 
  <Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
 
  <Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Line 2,477: Line 2,447:
  
 
</poem>
 
</poem>
−
<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.
 
−
<poem>
 
−
Shockwaves of gravity blasting in every direction. But still they persist.
 
−
 
−
Koji calls the shot immediately: Go for the wrist. But will even that work? Gravity shockwaves are eating at his Ichinana just ''being there'', his sword's edge turning into light as it swings too close.
 
−
 
−
But he's not counting on the situation with Bujack having deteriorated as far as it did: The blast from the other fight catches the Titan in the chest, sending it staggering backward, one massive step that covers two city blocks. It rights itself. Its eyes don't flash because it is under Goldymarg's control. It rears back, and Goldy starts to GLOW, the hammer's gravity shockwave generator TRULY coming online.
 
−
 
−
Which is when Domon blasts the arm. Gravity shockwaves scatter some of the power, but it isn't a strictly physical thing and much of it slams into the Titan in full force.
 
−
 
−
That's the signal the others were waiting for. Sarangay comes in, Qivi roaring her defiance on renewed spirit. If it was comparatively small before it's MINISCULE now, but that doesn't stop her spirit nor her drive, and the Wanzer SLAMS into the wrist unit, fracturing the connection. The gold from the Goldion Hammer starts to flicker across the surface of the Titan, some of its protection faltering.
 
−
 
−
How exactly Qivi gets to the ground alive is a question she has to figure out on her own time, which will hopefully be in the next, oh, call it ten seconds.
 
−
 
−
The Goldion Hammer roars down toward Eisen in a parrying move, but he's able to divert much of the attack into the Titan's arm and shoulder, which scathe and burn. Alloy's, likewise, slams into the Titan and sends it staggering, one, two, three hits back.
 
−
 
−
Lucine's support arrives. Some of the bullets evaporate on the hit, but  others pepper through. And then, at the last...
 
−
 
−
Liam punches it in the ankles. Size wise it's like a gnat biting a titan. But with the other damage accrued, and the raw power dealt otherwise, it's enough that parts start COMING OFF, rather than moving.
 
−
 
−
"Ah, crap," Goldy grunts. His face blinks in the hammerhead when he speaks. "Shoulda gone for the Titan faster, huh...alright."
 
−
 
−
"Guess we'll settle this next time. UTSUGI!"
 
−
 
−
Then the Titan starts &#42;falling up&#42;, Goldymarg still attached to it, as the Hyper Tool Robo exerts his phenomenal gravity control to simply send his machine upward until an ES Window opens for it to disappear into.
 
−
</poem>
 
−
 
 
  <Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.
 
  <Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.
 
<poem>
 
<poem>
Line 2,679: Line 2,622:
 
Sarangay tumbles out of the Ichinana's grasp after they hit the ground, rolling and trailing shards of armour and one of the control surfaces of the jetpack in a mirror of the Ichinana's lost wing. Qivi lets it come to a complete stop before she says anything, mostly because she's not entirely sure which way is up for quite a few of those moments, and then she needs to catch her breath.
 
Sarangay tumbles out of the Ichinana's grasp after they hit the ground, rolling and trailing shards of armour and one of the control surfaces of the jetpack in a mirror of the Ichinana's lost wing. Qivi lets it come to a complete stop before she says anything, mostly because she's not entirely sure which way is up for quite a few of those moments, and then she needs to catch her breath.
  
−
"Been worse," Qivi says, slightly pained. "Been better too. I think the safety bar caught my - ribs. But, uh..."
+
"Been worse," Qivi says, slightly pained. "Been better too. I think the safety bar - caught my ribs. Can't get a good breath without it hurting. But, uh..."
  
 
How do you apologize for something like this? Qivi has never been good at apologies at the best of times. "...Thanks. Tell the Evangelions that too. I don't wanna talk to them." And she can talk to Domon herself, given everything.
 
How do you apologize for something like this? Qivi has never been good at apologies at the best of times. "...Thanks. Tell the Evangelions that too. I don't wanna talk to them." And she can talk to Domon herself, given everything.

Latest revision as of 15:31, 20 November 2022


<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"Even in dreams, I can't reach them."

Akane huddles up on the construction crane, drawing her knees up into herself. She can't handle any of this. The outside world is pressing in on her and she simply cannot take it anymore. No more miracles. No more. If miracles were meant to be at all, they would have been for her.

Her head isn't throbbing.

A deafening crash echoes through Tsutsujidai as Bujack's feet dig into pavement, tear up asphalt. It is as real as anything in Tsutsujidai ever has been.

Was it Gridman's Grid Kinesis -- entering the dream, tearing the creature's ephemeral wings apart -- that forced it into the real world? Or is it simply Akane Shinjo -- confronted with the horror of rejection, made that much more painful by Rikka's gentle reminder of her kindness, by Yuta's acceptance of the world she constructed as a gift, of Utsumi's honest opinion that if she could cede control over these moments they could be beautiful -- giving up on her new strategy, just as she's given up on each one in the past?

Does it matter? The beast stands here -- its spell is broken.

Half torn apart and split between layers of reality, the place where wings ought to be now bleeding a bright red light, the beast is here. And shunted from the realm of ideas...

Its spell begins to break.

Akane can feel it -- feel the countless threads she's put out into other minds snapping. It's fine, she tells herself. It has to be fine. The understanding she reached through kaiju is surely not so fragile that it was only ever held up by the kaiju, right?

(She doesn't even notice the threads around her own mind snapping. Her first priority -- however panicked, however ashamed, however twisted -- it may be... isn't entirely herself.)

She sends out VERTEX messages one at a time -- to the friends she'd made of her enemies. They're the same each time, though it's in direct messages -- it's best if she breaks this one to them as individuals.

> Hey
> I know I said I was kind of done with this
> But there's kind of an emergency
> My kaiju will be fighting Gridman or his friends or something. Maybe it's already fighting him
> I don't really get how it works in a situation like this
> (sticker of Nalgus with a 'brain cooked' frustration spiral)
> Anyway
> Do you want to come watch it happen?
> After this we can figure everything else out
> It'll be fun right? Like
> (sticker of Tarabaman Mika punching Tarabaman Zora)
> Gridman is a threat to this world still
> That didn't change
> That didn't change at all
> Haha seriously though
> Kaiju fight! It'll be great.
> (sticker of Nalgus doing the clippy hands)

And to her other enemies turned allies... A more formal, more demanding set of VERTEXes.

(Her head can't be throbbing.)

> Now's a GREAT time for you guys to fulfill your end of the deal.
> There's people coming.
> I'm counting on you. Remember, Mikoto says this is a nicer way for miracles to end than just killing everyone.
> Fight as hard as you can for me! Don't leave anything on the table.
> That's what heroes are for.
> If you lose, don't show your faces here again.


The Gridman Alliance has been abruptly, unnaturally asleep for a few hours already; it's given the Neon Genesis Junior High Students plenty of time to reach out to allies -- and their allies, in turn, a chance to reach out to their own allies.

It's no trouble at all to be in position for the beast as it emerges into the real world.


Alexis Kerib has abandoned Akane to her own devices at the crane. He stands atop one of the floodgates of Tsutsujidai, deep in thought on his own.

"I suppose it would be too much to hope for, for Akane's unfortunate alliance to hobble the forces of the Dawn as well," Alexis reflects. It has been a long time since something plausible felt too much to hope for.

He doesn't like it. 

KTS: Alloy Kaas has deployed in Evangelion Unit-Null-Sigma.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has deployed in Evangelion Unit-01.
KTS: Qivi has deployed in Blizzaia L Custom <Sarangay>.
KTS: Rikka Takarada has deployed as a Sub Pilot for Yuta Hibiki!
KTS: Qivi has changed loadout.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has joined Akane Shinjo's bucket!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has deployed in GMX-GH101 Goldymarg.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has joined GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's bucket!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has deployed as a Sub Pilot for GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Akane_Shinjo has deployed as a Boss for 4 opponents.
KTS: Alloy Kaas has joined GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's bucket!

<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.

As the scream of Bujack's pain fills the air, maybe nobody hears the low chuckle from what appears to be a parade float parked out by the PLANTs ring of a lake.

"Heh. 'bout damn time."

And it begins to drive, a large golden tank that takes up both directions of the conveniently empty streets of Tsutsujidai, with a gun that looks like it ends in a squeeky hammerhead.

But as heroes descend to prey on the villain that has abused their friends, theyll definitely hear a bold, bombastic scream: "SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!"

That great big tank suddenly crests a hill at speed and completely takes to the air. It shifts, legs swinging down, arms punching out and head torso righting itself. It slams into the ground, new feet lined with thick wheels grinding into the pavement. It flexes, dawn-colored light exploding from every seam, and screams: "GOOOOOOOOOOLDYYYYYYYYYMAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!"

The Super-AI Brave with peerless strength and a brash heart, now turned to the grand task of seeing Cosmic Laws will be done. With the Gravity Shockwave Generating Tool called the Goldion Hammer at his very heart, Goldymarg was once the King of Braves stoutest of allies. Now...

He thrusts a thumb at himself. His posture says hed be splitting a cocky grin if his face had a mouth and not a grille. "Not letting you kids smash up this quiet little town that easy! I'm gonna make every one of you go to sleep, and you'll STAY that way this time!"

Now, he stands between you and destroying the kaiju at the heart of the current malaise. Pulsing with Dawn's light, he must be defeated! 

KTS: GMX-GH101_Goldymarg has deployed as a Boss for 5 opponents.

<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.

Yuta runs. The city sprawls out before him, deep-blue sky and black, shining buildings. Sweat pours down his face -- his school uniform is too hot, restricting his movements, clinging to his skin uncomfortably.

"Rikka!"

Yuta pants, pushing himself faster. In the distance, a silhouette of a Giant rises up, unmoving.

"Calibur -- Max, Borr, Vit!"

"We have something. Something only we can do! Something we must do!"

Voice heavy with emotion, Yuta bites his lip, forcing his feelings down. Whatever he wanted doesn't matter. Everyone is trapped. And he promised to never turn away from their suffering again. Even if that means dragging them back to the cruel realities of their lives.

"Right?" Yuta screams, feeling his throat ache from the effort. "Gridman?!"

The Giant turns, facing Yuta. Yellow eyes look down, emotionless still. "Right! I had faith, and waited for you!"

He can't understand what Yuta is feeling. But that doesn't matter. A kaiju is waiting. Yuta's left hand reaches out, and the two merge in this odd realm of dreams.

Long and draconic, the kaiju holds still, even as Gridman approaches. It doesn't seem to be aware standing in a nest of mist and dreams, of its impending doom. Grabbing one wing in each of his hands, Gridman shouts, tearing the creature asunder. It's violent -- more violent than he's experienced thus far...

Yuta can feel his heart tearing with it.

---

While in reality...

Buildings topple! An electronic roar echoes across Tsutsujidai. Now wingless, the dragon emerges, fully physically. Its tail lashes back and forth, causing more destruction to the sleepy city.

Max and Calibur keep a vigil outside the Junk Shop. "The kaiju materialized." Max intones, his hair messy after a full day of watching over sleeping children.

"G--Grid kinesis?" Calibur wonders, one hand already on his swords. Quickly, both men duck back inside.

Borr and Vit keep watch over the children. Both have bags under their eyes -- it's been a long, long night. "Looks like Gridman only woke up on the other side."

Rikka and Yuta are collapsed on Aya's couch, soundly asleep. Nothing wakes them, no matter how much Borr pinches Yuta's cheek or drops plates in the kitchen.

Vit sighs. "We've got to deal with this kaiju ourselves..."

"All right!" Max shouts. "We'll shrink down our output and go out as four!"

Assembling before Junk, the Neon Genesis Junior High Students speak as one. "Access code..."

Slouching, Calibur's eyes are sharp with worry. "Samurai Calibur!"

Max, hands clenched into fists, voice louder than usual. "Battle Tracto Max!"

Vit stands up straight. No sign of his phone, for once. "Sky Vitter!" And Borr, in the very front, no hint of irreverent jokes in their voice. "Buster Borr!"

Light consumes them, and before the kaiju... A strange new form emerges. Four pieces without a whole to form around, brought together out of love for their children. It's difficult to combine like this, but there's no world in which they wouldn't try it. Armored arms and legs carefully snap together, metal wrapping around empty space. A head pops up. Not that any of them really need it. Even Calibur takes a new shape, his hilt snapping on backwards to form an axe.

Together, once more, they shout. "War God Combine! Powered Zenon!"

The kaiju roars a challenge, and Powered Zenon roars back. This isn't about Tsutsujidai, or Akane Shinjo, or even Gridman. This is about getting back the things they treasure most, consequences be damned. 

KTS: Domon Kasshu has joined GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's bucket!
POT: Mari Makinami Illustrious is now set observer.

<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Utsugi has posed.



        The Vertex messages went to Swan's terminal, but it didn't need to reach her. Mikoto hadn't actually gone back to the J-Ark yet after her meeting with Alouette.

        <<We're coming, Shinjo-san. We will protect this dream.>>

        She owes Alouette that.

        She steps out of the ES Door, onto the crane where Akane stands. She doesn't have the perfect balance that the Goddess of Tsutsujidai does, so she is further down, a hand holding to the crane. Goldymarg has already made his arrival, loud as he always is.

        "Sigma and Volfogg will take care of the others." She confirms, watching the fight. "Goldymarg!" She shouts into her communicator, "Please, take them down quickly!"

        She knows Goldy is a Brave, and he has the fire in his heart. She just has to give it a spark. 

KTS: Mikoto Utsugi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Sound Spirit!

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Out in the untamed wilderness of the unnamed Plant Tsutsujidai nestles in, just far enough from the city to escape notice:

A cylindrical pod, 20m in height, with a Londo Bell personal shuttle parked next to it, a man in a red pilot suit with an enclosed winged helmet opening the pod's pilot access hatch and clambering inside. With the Double Spazer still in repair after the assault on Orbit Base, and Mazinger Z never designed for colony or space operations, this is Koji's best option to survey and monitor Tsutsujidai.

The pod's doors hiss and it splits open, unfolding like a flower to reveal an Ichinana painted in white and grey, marked with the emblem of the Photon Power Lab on its left shoulder. Koji dumps the MP-Mazin's passive sensor data into the shuttle's memory banks, before setting his hands on the pilot's yoke. It's been a while since he testflew one of these, but the controls were deliberately designed to be similar to Mazinger Z's, so...

As part of the preflight cycle, the Ichinana's shoulder-mounted pods flex one way, then the other, and Koji announces: "Scramble Dash." Scrander wings deploy from those pods as he lowers the robot into a runner's start, waiting for the moment he knows is coming.

Even outside the ward, he can see the dragon materialise out of thin air, as though it was never meant to walk astride the physical realm. That's go sign. Silently, he thumbs the activation button for the scrander thrusters, and launches the Ichinana towards Tsutsujidai.

And yet as he comes in low over the cityline... Bursts of orange dawnlight. The Giant from the Orbit Base attack, and Volfogg, fully restored... and one of the chunkiest robots he knows, standing guard beside the dragon.

"The Apostles." He grunts, pivoting the Ichinana and coming in to land. "Akane, you fool." Desperate enough to cut a deal with the corrupted 3G? Honestly, it wouldn't surprise him.

"Hey, Goldy!" The Ichinana skids on the asphalt as he lands it opposite the grandstanding Brave Robo. "Sorry, an endless dream isn't my style! MAZINGER BLADE!" The Ichinana's right arm swings around to its waist, grabbing a hilt stored there and swinging it around as a great blade unfolds from it, set in a low stance with its tip almost scraping the road.

Koji, in the Ichinana's head, locks eyes with Goldymarg. "Let's do this," he hisses in challenge, and lunges in with the sword!

<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.

        Lucine's hands keep going for controls that are no longer in the same place. She feels too large. She feels too slow.

        This is an illusion. The eEXM-17FT Alto Flight Type is similar to the machines that stole the Dianthus away from her. Other people fly other units all the time. She should be able to do this, right? The Dianthus only flies with a pilot. She is the pilot, and a pilot is needed to make a unit move and fly. "That is what's needed here, not the Dianthus," she says, softly, to herself. "Just me." Just her. Her, and piloting a unit she can trust.
        
        She also knows that the thing that is holding hostage people she cares about is now venerable. She needs to be here, even if it means destroying Akane's dream.

        < "This is Lucine Azul of the Di... the... eEXM-17FT." > Her hand gingerly touches the bandage on the side of her head. < "I'm... here to help. >
        
        ..... She wishes she could play music on here.

        'I'm gonna make every one of you go to sleep, and you'll STAY that way this time!'

        She wishes she felt like she knew what she was doing like before.

        ".... Baby, tell me what to do.... hand on the wheel, I am waiting on standby....--" (https://youtu.be/icHp2w-jlHQ)

         How do people like Ranka and Sheryl Nome do it? She's hummed and sang along with this song a million times, but without the music masking her, it feels so naked, even if she's singing to just her cockpit.

        Ranka sang this to reach someone earlier, from what Lucine heard on the grapevine. Ranka did.

        Lucine can stand to at least follow through with this much.

        ".... Want my heart and want my love, no let's swing, and kiss..."

        Her fingers begin falling over the controls, beginning to lean into the rhythm of the eEXM. This is a spring morning, and the frost will melt.

        The module cannon pops put, spraying beams of light towards the Bujack. Lucine's tactics are to simply ignore Goldymarg altogether for as long as she can; she won't be distracted from her goal. 

KTS: Koji Kabuto targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Mazinger Blade Lunge!
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Akane Shinjo with Flight Module Cannon Maneuver Shot!

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


The water had long ago become lukewarm. Lukewarm to a warm body however is so cold in comparison. The drip drip of the faucet continues, and Asuka drowses with her head near the edge of her tub, her messy auburn hair already dry.

Here in Tsutsujidai she's happy. That euphoric sensation had been with her ever since coming here. It was so fulfilling, affirming, like it seeped into the gaps of her consciousness like rain through cracked tile. It doesn't change, it's just there, a constant. To let her know she happy now, when she'd never been before in her entire life.

Maybe you're not miserable...
But you're not happy, either.

Why'd he have to say something like that?

The buzz of a text chime to a few notes of the Tarabaman OP causes her to lurch forward. She wouldn't react to any other stimulus from the phone, but this one she does. Groping for the phone, she realizes she's shivering a little as she reads the text messages from Akane.

>really?
>what are they, stupid?
>u'll obviously win
...
...
...
...
...

For a while there's just the message of Asuka typing, as she types a few characters, then stares off in the distance. Didn't she make all kinds of plans for this? However, Akane seems to have it under control.

Shouldn't she be doing more for her? Even if she doesn't have to do anything.

A thread frays.

>do u need me to do something?
>i could help

Rising out of the tub, she towels off quickly, letting the warmth flood through her before getting dressed in clothes strewn out on the bathroom floor that Akane bought her.

There's only a vague thought of heading to a certain place when she's out the door, not even fully formed, like she was waiting for a text for confirmation...

-=-=-

        A deafening crash echoes through Tsutsujidai as Bujack's feet tear up asphalt. From where he stands atop a street light over an underground downtown substation, Kaworu Nagisa's smile twitches not one millimeter. He's been in Tsutsujidai for some point--has been going back and forth between it and the Tokyos for most of a year now. And now...

        "The time has come," he remarks to the air.

        Yuta sent him warning; Max gave him details. It was enough for him to send word to NERV, and specifically to Orbit Base, to send a transport of pilots and their mobile suits to deal with whatever threat would come of Bujack being grounded. He himself is prepared. Lo: he clicks a button on his wrist; the dark plug suit whooshes vacuum-tight around him.

        Forward he steps, off the street light and down to the street some twenty feet below. He lands lightly, as if gravity were merely a suggestion rather than any true concern. Sauntering towards a subway station across the street, he dips down from ground view to a certain spot below he prepared earlier--not that much preparation was needed, since it had already been set up. It's a trivial matter to reel it up and attach it to the substation.

        A short time later, four eyes blaze light into the darkness.

        The motion has all the inevitability of a mountain's movement. One crimson arm crumbles the streets above it; then a second; then, as if emerging from a pleasant bath, Unit-02's head shatters the pavement as she rises from her hiding spot below.

        "<This is NERV Administrator Kaworu Nagisa,>" Kaworu transmits calmly from within her entry plug. "<Unit-02 has been retrieved. Now securing a route to return to HQ. Any obstacles will be dealt with accordingly.>"

        Rubble rains down around the red giant as she rises, rises, carefully rises, using broken railing and intact buildings as hand- and foot-holds to aid in her ascent. Once she's out, she brushes some lingering concrete off each of her shoulders. The damage she sustained from the space battle with the Ninth Angel's second instance is still there, but only for a second; even as she emerges, a shimmer of light closes up the material beneath. The armor's puncture wounds anyone's only hint that she'd suffered anything at all.

        For a moment, she lifts her four-eyed gaze to peer out across the city, dozens and dozens of blocks away, at where Asuka has come to watch the battle about to unfold.

        Then, at Kaworu's bidding, she turns and starts to lumber away, umbilical cable trailing in her wake.

-=-=-

As the Red Colossus comes into view, something like anger rises, only to be smothered beneath a wave of euphoric apathy, "Fifth String." She says dully... what's the point in getting mad? She's not an Eva pilot anymore.

Except... now she really can't do anything, but watch. The Red Giant continues walking, and... her response is to tap a text...

>so nerv is here
>fifth string has 02
>i dont think i can do anything now for u
>do u still want me to come?

Rather than go anywhere, do anything. Asuka... sits on the steps of her apartment complex, and waits for a text reply, feeling guilty that she may have made things harder for Akane. Will she be upset at her now? Hate her? Maybe she won't even want her to come watch now. Staring off into the middle distance, Asuka just says vaguely, "... this sucks."

And yet, she can't still help but feel like she's happier than the alternative. Isn't she?

A Kaiju roars in the distance, she looks at Powered Zenon. She doesn't move from where she sits. It's like there's no impetus for it at all, now, until the next text arrives.

KTS: [Mirage] Akane Shinjo's False Awakening activates, and she slips into a mirage.
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Lucine Azul's Flight Module Cannon Maneuver Shot, taking 0 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

When the call came for the Evangelion team to finally deploy to Tsutsujidai, Eisen felt like a weight was being lifted from his shoulders. No...

No, not a weight. It's more as if the fetters were being released from Fenrisulfr itself. Anger and anxiety being allowed a release. As if something that was holding him back was snapping, and permitting him to start moving again. With that buried deep in his chest, the youth sped through the headquarters in order to deploy. Plugsuit donned, and soon, going through Orbit Base in order to get to Junius Seven.

In his mind, he's repeating the kinds of things he might say to his former allies. The people who were taken from them by the girl-ruler of Tsutsujidai. Having no actual experience with her, he imagines her like some evil villain upon a throne - no matter what Yuta might have tried to impart upon him.


As the lights of the Evangelion light up, and the LCL fills the chambers, Eisen's gaze is set forward with purpose. Buildings in Tsutsujidai are toppling and being destroyed. The Kaiju is being brought out into reality, permitting them to start dealing with it. Soon, reality forms around him, as the cockpilot permits for the full display throughout. A tug at his chest, as he soon feels that other presence besides him. As Carestia joins him.

The machine slowly rises from its moorings, a cable attached to its tail, a tether that permits it to function for a longer period of time. But rather than breaking out into a run, Eisen is dealing with an ache. An itch in his heart. As the scenario unfurls before him, and Powered Zenon appears before the Kaiju.

The sensation at Eisen's side connects. The sync rating quickly rising within the Evangelion, as the youth's brow furrows. His target lays before him. Yet...

    SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!

That anger swells as his mind immediately switches over. As he realizes that his priorities are being shifted.

A subtle dread is given birth to within his chest...

    GOOOOOOOOOOLDYYYYYYYYYMAAAAAAAAAAAAAARG!

As the Super AI he dreaded facing the most reveals itself amidst the brilliant light of Triple-Zero. It stands in the way. As the Carestia takes a single step, then another. The presence of mighty giants like Domon Kasshu and Koji Kabuto would normally never be 'missed' by Eisen like this, as he feels another 'fetter' snap at his shoulders. As a feeling of tunnelvision dips down towards the golden giant.

Yet, undeniably, Goldymarg stands in his way.

<"I told the boy. And I will tell you the same thing - Goldymarg."> The green eyes of the Evangelion Unit-Zahlos breach open. The second series of eyes pulling wide as its claws move to the sides. <"DO NOT STAND IN THE WAY OF MY FRIENDS' FREEDOM!"> For he will not stop. And with that same demand, the Evangelion brings its arms out, and ROARS. A sonic burst flares forwards, as the gossamer lights across its skeletal wings span. 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel: Will Barrier Activates.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Annihilator's Roar!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has activated the Accel Spirit Command and Has Engaged with GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Yuta Hibiki targets Akane Shinjo with Pass!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi's sound spirit flares with his performance, raising GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Morale!

<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.

Qivi had been out. Not at Aya, though that's where she ended up working; she had some time to herself on the weekend (Saturday is the weekend to her; she'd rather work Sunday than Saturday, otherwise Japanese schedule or not) and she had gone shopping. When she had come to Tsutsujidai, she did not bring much in the way of luggage, and she was tired of living out of a small suitcase's worth of clothes.

She has a bag with her when two things happen: a tremendous crash and, moments later, her phone buzzing. Qivi reaches into her pocket, retrieving the phone with an expression of disbelief. It's not JUST Bujack. It's something orange. Something that she was present for a briefing of. Renais had given that briefing, and Qivi had said she'd help, any way she could.

A thread frays. Not the one Akane expected, perhaps.

> you promised
> I thought you were turning over a new leaf

Qivi hesitates for a few moments. Does she run? Does she not? She needs to decide one way or the other, and it takes quite a bit of her remaining courage to type the next words without admitting she's over her head. Which she is.

> I made a promise too

And then, with actual punctuation:

> I just don't think I can watch it with you.

Even if her strength can't change the world, Qivi thinks, she should be there. If Goldymarg wins - if 000 wins - from everything she understands, there will not be a world to change, eventually.

And if nothing else, Sarangay is tougher than she is. It can survive things she couldn't. Maybe that will be important. Of course, she could just run, but something about that feels wrong to her. She might have escaped to Tsutsujidai, hiding from the grinding inevitability of the world, but Qivi has never run away from mere physical danger.

She hops on her motorbike and peels out, swerving sharply down a street, completely in violation of speed limits and quite a few traffic laws.


An unexpected machine wheels in on landspinners from the outskirts of town, riding along roads like it belonged there, legs slightly lowered to stabilize its balance.

A green and black wanzer, wielding a shotgun in one hand and a weighted knuckle guard with a pair of projecting spikes in the other mismatched, bulkier arm; it has a L-shaped shoulder shield mounted on one side and a blocky, square missile box on the other. And there's a symbol painted on the shoulder shield, too, perfect and pristine even though the machine has sat outside under a tarp for the last few weeks.

It's a snorting bull head, ringed with stylized gems in the colours of the rainbow.

Inside, Qivi sits, gripping her controls tightly. She didn't take the time to change into a proper piloting suit, so all she has to protect her is jeans, a tank top, and a helmet. This isn't the first time, though. There's a familiarity in that.

Why is she doing this, she thinks to herself. She's not the first. Look, there's a machine, fighting the kaiju (she has never seen all of the parts of Powered Zenon, individually or together); there is Mazinger and an EXAMAC, both of whom can do a better job than she can on Goldymarg. There's even that goddamn Evangelion who she's fought twice. Goldymarg is four times as tall as the wanzer, and she doesn't even want to guess how much heavier. She's outclassed even before she begins. She shouldn't be here.

But she promised. And to Qivi, a promise is as good as an oath. Even if she doesn't think her help is good for much, she said she'd give it.

Rather than go straight in as she usually does, Qivi switches combat styles to one she's much less experienced with; she fires the shotgun as she skates almost sideways across a road, legs rotated nearly ninety degrees from forward, and then vanishes from Goldymarg's immediate line of vision behind a building. Hit and run. A distraction.

She doesn't speak. At least, not where anyone can hear her. 

KTS: Qivi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Covet V300 Shot!

<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.

It feels like Rikka has been dreaming forever. A part of her is sad that it's coming to an end... but she has to wake up eventually. Her friends, everyone... she wants to be there for them. There are others who need to wake up, too.

She finds herself running now, making her way through a cityscape. Though she has awoken within the dream, in the physical world her body rests sleeping on the couch on the Aya's shop floor. She will remain asleep, until the source of the unnatural slumber is dealt with - so strong is the spell cast over her. But for now...

"Yuta! Utsumi!" Rikka calls out in response, as she hears her name called in turn. She runs, faster now - and soon enough, she catches up to him. She has to pause and catch her breath, her hands on her knees. Even in a dream world her stamina isn't the best, but even so she looks up at Yuta, offering him a smile. And then, as Yuta calls out to Gridman she looks up, into the horizon.

Rikka sees the form of Bujack as Gridman grabs hold of it, tearing apart its shining wings. Now, it is both here and not here, split between worlds. And with the kaiju split between worlds, Rikka can see it - faintly at first, the chaos in its vicinity. The more she focuses, reaching out with her heart as much as her mind, the more clearly she can see. And soon enough, there's a surprise.

"Is that... Calibur, and everyone?" Rikka gasps. They transformed, without Gridman... they can do it? With the need being so great, then, perhaps...

"You guys..." Rikka murmurs. "...Fight hard, okay? This dream needs to end. For everyone's sake."

Maybe it's the nature of the dream, of Bujack's presence in both the physical world and this one. Or maybe it's something within Rikka herself, that she isn't fully aware of yet. But somehow, her thoughts and feeling carried forth. And if the friends who are fighting so hard to see her, and Yuta, and Utsumi awakened, returned to them, are paying attention, maybe they'll feel it - her encouragement, and earnest desire to see everyone again. 

KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Yuta Hibiki with Sound Spirit!

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Anti allowed no one to reach out to him.

        Nevertheless, he is here, after his long routing through Frontier and further on.

        He has been searching. Akane's kaiju knows Akane's kaiju. He has been searching, and now he is here.

        In Tsutsujidai, the home denied him.

        "Akane Shinjo," he says, atop a traffic light. "I know you're here."

        He speaks to no one, into the empty air of a world too still, framed by an artificial sky.

        "It's here..."

        Across the Earth and further out, and always they come back to roost. His scarf flaps in the breeze as he scowls, all fettered intensity, into the distance.

        Just so, his eye narrows. The other is still covered by that patch -- professionally wrapped. A little old, for a dressing.

        "There!"

        His hand flexes, and as it crosses the mid-section of his body, there's a circular saw grasped tightly in his fingers. He could not have pulled it from his sleeve; there is no other explanation.

        There's nothing he can do. There's nothing he can do, here on the ground, dwarfed by giants.

        There's nothing he can do, but he charges for Bujack, nonetheless.

        And here is an essential truth: Anti is a kaiju. Though he is shaped like a human -- though blood runs through his veins -- he is a creature designed to fight. It is no less evident than in the way he leaps twenty metres into the air, to meet Bujack, and in the way he falls twenty metres to the ground.

        The details aren't important. The details couldn't have mattered.

        This is what matters:

        "Even if I'm like this, I'll never give up--!!"

KTS: Koji Kabuto anchors GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, forcing him into close range.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to parry Koji Kabuto's Mazinger Blade Lunge, taking 3840 damage!
KTS: Koji Kabuto has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Koji Kabuto roots his unit, coming to a standstill and leaving him vulnerable.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel anchors GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, forcing him into close range.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg parries Eisen Daiwel's Annihilator's Roar, taking 1170 damage!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!

<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.


Jana was grading papers, when it happened. At her classroom, the classroom she'd taken over in order to study better the world of Tsutsujidai, to understand the kaiju that had taken so many of their people and others.

And now, NERV has arrived, and Jana rushes from the classroom down the steps, towards the waiting Ichinana that her technology has empowered. Sn, she approaches.

The heavy armor of the Ichanana TG slows it compared to others. But it is fast enough to get here, all the same.

Jana's Ichinana raises its arms into an 'L' shape and invokes its Imitation Ultraseven Array. Then, it lets loose a sudden white beam to grab and pin down the kaiju, hoping to slow it and make it more vulnerable to the efforts of the others!

"You cannot keep them," Jana's voice comes over the loudspeaker and the radio. "But you can still find a way to keep yourself. This does not have to be the end, Akane Shinjo."

"...Their lives are their own, to live. For my colleague--for my students. I will stop your kaiju." 

KTS: Jana Cektru targets Akane Shinjo with Chain Beam!

<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.

Shinji never fully understood the situation. He assumes, on some level, the nature of dreams means that's impossible. He spoke to Akane. He spoke to those affected. He spoke to Yuta and his other friends, trying to grasp Tsutsujidai's nature and the nature of these... disappearances, if they can be called that. Except no one disappeared. Only parts of them seemed to.

Asuka. Liam. Rei. Who would be next?

But one thing he suspected in all of his fear: it wasn't sustainable. No one person could possibly carry the burden, right...? Would it be all right if someone could? All of this was deeply wrong from the start. It has to end. It still hurts for some reason. Like there's no good answer.

There's never a good answer. Shinji's not good with thinking -- only overthinking -- and not good with words -- always messing up -- and in general a mess. The things he said to Asuka might have just been for himself. Cowardly. Self-serving.

Shinji takes a deep breath and grips his Eva unit's controls. He has to stop thinking like that.

He has to take initiative.

Opportunity has to be seized. Kaworu gives him the opening he needs, like it seems Kaworu is always doing. And it's Kaworu's words Shinji needs to cling and clutch to in order to force himself through today to reach for what's important.

Bujack sings it cry, and Unit-01 lurches across the battlefield in a forward heavy sprint.

"I'm bringing Asuka home!" he calls out, Unit-01's fists flying in a frenzy for the kaiju to pommel it with strikes fueled by desperation, nearly tackling it in the same move.

If it's all or nothing, then he'll bring everything!

KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Akane Shinjo with Eva-01 Unarmed Brawl!
KTS: Jana Cektru rattles Akane Shinjo, making her next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Jana Cektru's Chain Beam, taking 1575 damage!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Yuta Hibiki's Pass, taking 0 damage!
KTS: Akane Shinjo successfully avoids Shinji Ikari's Eva-01 Unarmed Brawl

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        Five Minutes Ago

        It's past midnight, and Liam hasn't gone to sleep. He lies on his bed in his school clothes, because showering, undressing, and putting on pajamas seems like a colossal effort. Jana's extra homework sits on the kitchen table--a set of college-textbook segments, an introduction to electromagnetism--but he's barely started it. Everyone here has been so kind to him, and he keeps letting them down. He told Yuta he'd be all right, but he's not. He'd told Jana he'd do better, but he can't.

        He promised Akane he'd help protect this place, but he can't even help himself. What good is he? He can't be normal. He can't even be a weapon right. He--

        His phone--which Akane gave him, she's given him so much, and what has he done to repay her--starts to buzz on the nightstand as the messages come in. Liam didn't think to turn it off for the night, because he wasn't sure if he could sleep. He reaches out, picks it up, and starts to read. His eyes go wide.

        A kaiju? Akane made another kaiju?

        A thread snaps. (Why does it feel like he's missing something that's right there in front of him?)

        Gridman's a threat?

        Another thread snaps. (Yuta said Gridman would protect him. Which of them is correct?)

        Liam sits upright on the edge of bed, and types out a message:

> Where are you? I'll be right there.

        Liam puts the phone in his pocket, crosses the apartment, and puts on his shoes. Gridman's going to fight a monster? Here, in the city, when people are asleep? Why does that bother him so much?

        He doesn't remember to lock the door as he heads out into the soup-thick nighttime fog.

        Three minutes Ago

        The ground trembles. Liam hops forwards, grabs the pole of a streetlamp to keep himself upright. As soon as the movement passes, he pulls out his phone and starts typing again.

        > Akane? Where are you? I hear something

        A machine roars overhead--

        And for a split-second, he sees not an Alto, but a Qubeley, as another thread snaps.

        Liam is down there, on the ground. He starts to sprint after the Alto, phone still in hand. (He remembers two others, holding his hands so they wouldn't lose him in the crush of the crowd.) Then, a familiar voice.

        "Doctor Cektru?!" What's going on?! Where's Akane? What if she gets hurt?

        He's on the ground, in a city, and machines are coming in, and his guts twist like something awful's about to happen.

        He doesn't stop running.

<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.


        Alouette Kaas. Alloy. It was suggested that there might be a chance to retreive and rescue Asuka Shikinami Langley. Details weren't clear, but it involved Kaworu finding Unit Zero Two and get it back into NERVs arsenal.

        She would have loved to see the way the Red Colossus rising from the earth the way that Null-Sigma rises from the waters. But she ahd been waiting, standing by to deploy. Arms crossed over her chest, foot tapping, she tries to clear her head. But she has doubts. Is this, what's best for Asuka?

        Time runs out as alarms and spinning lights indicate they are ready to deploy. Lithe fingers wrap around controls, and the sleeping kraken wakes.

        "This is Null-Sigma, Dropping in three... two... ONE!"

        From respite to frenzy, everything now moves in that way combat does. Simultaneously slow and racing at breakneck speed.

        "Unit 01, Carestia, I'm moving to flank!"

        Blue with orange trim, Unit Null-Sigma uses her tentacles, to pull and manuver quickly between the building to try and position herself. Another beast, which she meets with her own beast. Without announcement, she charges in. The gripping teeth at the end of each tentacle plunging forward, trying to take this thing by surprise. 

KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Alloy Kaas: Will Barrier Activates.
KTS: Alloy Kaas targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Crushing Embrace!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to parry Alloy Kaas's Crushing Embrace, taking 2775 damage!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to parry Qivi's Covet V300 Shot, taking 2400 damage!
KTS: Qivi has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!

<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.

The past few days have been... fraying. Those two kids, Hass and Namiko... What they'd said. And how they acted. It was all so strange. She looked into it later. When she could finally extract herself from the chair she'd sunk into... neither of them were like that. Something was wrong. Maybe it's her. Maybe the problem is Yuka... as an outsider who shouldn't be here. Even though Akane invited her to stay. Maybe Tsutsujidai doesn't want her either. Maybe, to go along with 'nothing only I can do', there's 'no place I can belong.' And that thought turns her stomach. Something she winds up expressing into a sink in the staff lounge.

She's still at the school, dwelling on those thoughts and feeling sick, when a message comes to her from Akane. A kaiju fight...? Gridman? Something's... going on then. In the back of her mind, she can feel something. A quick message is sent back.

>I'll be there soon to cheer on your kaiju.

>Good location?

Followed by a sticker of Gaiakku leaping out of the water to tail-slam a Tarabaman like he's a kaiju-scale volleyball.

First... she has to gather her notebooks. That won't take long. And then she's heading out. HOPEFULLY Akane sends a response. Otherwise she'll have to run all around town until she spots the carnage and finds the right vantage point.

As she's considering that, a line of thread, pushed to its limit, pops in two.

What a time to not have STEGG on-hand. (Why is she thinking about that? That goofy little car she used at her old job, decorated with Sevenger accessories... And why does that memory make her stomach feel less... heavy.)

When she finally finds a place to watch from. She's not looking great. She's sweating and breathing hard. But... there's a manic look in her eyes if anyone else winds up on the same rooftop, one that's so rare of late. Akane invited her to a real kaiju fight. A battle for Tsutsujidai's fate? She definitely made it sound that way at least, even if they're not both here watching in the same place.

>Sorry for going quiet, but I finally found a place to watch and take notes. Long run from the school.

That might, maybe, bother somebody. Why was Yuka still at the school this late? And why did she run through the fog and darkness, just for a spot to watch? Just because of the message? Does she actually care THAT MUCH about being invited to watch a kaiju fight? Even... the way things are twisting? ...And where's her sense of self-preservation at that!? She could have been stomped, or any number of other things!

One of the first things she notices though, is a familiar shape, coming from the direction of the school she JUST left.

Another line of thread grows weary, and yet... something DIFFERENT is like a piece of steel cable.

"Just... like I said. She can do everything I can. But more. Is there really... nothing that only I can do?" ...Maybe if it were a kaiju, Yuka could...? She ponders these thoughts, as she watches the fight beginning. Still cheering on Bujack, but something is still... different. She's a little bit more lively, as her hands dance across the pages of her notebook. Not just detailing combatants... but thoughts on something else as well. "A kaiju, but... not like that one." She thinks on the difference. Between Akane's kaiju, and her own. ...The Red King model she made to try and cheer up Haruki, it was heavy. She can remember now. It was too heavy to hang onto and she dropped it. Because of its interior.

It wasn't hollow. 

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

A lone figure wanders through the haze, a ragged cloak billowing around them.

Silence.

Naught but emptiness. Then the discordant false tranquility is interrupted. The sounds of battle begin to echo out in the distance, a symphony of combat and curses, of buildings being crushed into rubble and of impossibly large metal grating against equally large hulks of steel and sinister strength.

The cloak flaps in the gusts sent out by metal titans of varying origins and make as the figure's hood is finally thrown back after one particularly violent gust of wind. Unruly black hair protrudes messily from a scarred face, a red headband doing its best to keep the worst locks from obscuring its wearer's visions. A grimace wore thin on this man's face, as his eyes focused in the distance, seeing the lights of combat sparking in the gloom, while shrouded silhouettes lunged and charged at one another.

Domon Kasshu continued to look on wordlessly, as he kept trudging his way towards the mechanized melee. The Shuffle Alliance had many members who called this phantasmal shopping district home, and even as unsure of he was of his actions these days, he knew he couldn't just stand by and let their home be ravaged. Removing his clutched hand from around his weather-beaten cloak, Domon let it fly from his grasp as he reached up to snap his fingers.

Come to me, old friend. 

KTS: Domon Kasshu has deployed in GF04-017NJII God Gundam.

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

As the God Gundam rose tall above the fog-laden streets, Domon urged his erstwhile partner towards combat. As they approached, the figures became more distinct. A small wanzer with mismatched arms fired at a glowing figure, a robot corrupted by some strange force. Multiple EVA units were scattered around the battlefield, while an unfamiliar, large robot was facing off with the wanzer's target.

Goldymarg.

There was something very, very wrong with the Super AI, but the questions would need to wait until later. For now, Domon knew he had to intervene, he had to fight. He just hoped that this fight was the correct one, after so many years of mistakes. 

KTS: Domon Kasshu targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Cross Slash!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Domon Kasshu's Cross Slash, taking 1530 damage!
KTS: Domon Kasshu has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Domon Kasshu begins a Formation attack!

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Mikoto reaches out to Akane through the Limpid Channel. Akane -- tries to think back, 'Right,' though that's about all she has the mental bandwidth for. (Can Mikoto hear that? Akane isn't sure.) Fortunately, she appears a moment later, and Akane offers, "You guys seem like you committed, at least."

Akane starts texting back. She's not even interested in the fight itself, save the occasional cursory glance up to make sure Bujack is still moving. Certainly she has no interest in things happening even further afield from her, on the other side of town.

For Asuka:
> Haha totally fine
> Anyway uhhh this is turning into a really big fight all at once
> Honestly you can probably see it from where you are

She's not really in a state to entertain, actually.

For Qivi:
> I'm trying
> Gridman just won't leave me alone
> ... do whatever you want though!

Her gaze swings up to Bujack again, and she sees -- Anti? Huh.

To Alexis:
> Is that Anti? I heard he was around but I kinda thought that was wishful thinking on someone's part.
> I wonder if Anti has changed sides and likes Gridman now...

For Liam:
> These go pretty fast. Thinking you'd get there in time was kinda wishful thinking. Just stay out of the way. This doesn't need to involve you other than watching.

And finally, for Yuka:
> Good! I was going to tell you guys where I was but I think it's better if we stay separated.
> I didn't really design this one for combat, so I got some help... sorry it's not exactly a kaiju extravaganza here.


Bujack is a beast of the world beyond, much more than it is this one -- the part of Akane clinging desperately to the possibility of returning to the warmer world. Its presence in this world is inconsistent at best. When Lucine opens fire on Bujack, a part of the creature's body flickers -- just for a moment, but that moment is enough to leave the shot in the pavement instead of in it.

Shinji has similarly poor luck, though in his case it's because Bujack takes to the air for just a moment; he can't quite catch up.

Jana's beam fixes the kaiju in place like a chain, though -- finally arresting that momentum. More importantly, though, Jana is talking to Akane herself -- and the extent to which hearing herself get addressed is demoralizing seems to have an effect, in turn, on the kaiju.

"... shut up," Akane mutters, though she doesn't broadcast it.

All Bujack has to offer is a roar -- a roar with deep green lightning behind it. Akane never designed for this inevitability; it becomes apparent almost instantly that Bujack isn't meant for combat as it sweeps its lightning around. This makes even Ghoulghilas's relatively-unassuming-for-a-kaiju flames look intense. 

KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Enable Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Yuta Hibiki with Dream Lightning Blast!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Jana Cektru with Dream Lightning Blast!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Lucine Azul with Dream Lightning Blast!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Shinji Ikari with Dream Lightning Blast!
KTS: Rikka Takarada's sound spirit flares with his performance, raising Yuta Hibiki's Morale!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki charges into the attack!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki partially guards Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Blast, taking 3230 damage!
KTS: Jana Cektru blocks Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Blast, taking 1700 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Strike Spirit Command.

<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.

Goldy laughs, all bluster and boast. "You betcha, Utsugi! Just gimme a few minutes to warm up, here."

Such as, the minutes that begin when Koji arrives. "Well well! Koji fricken Kabuto! The pilot of the Black Iron Castle his own self! Word on the street was you retired!" He squares his stance, hands open, ready to fight. "Sit still a while, I'll make sure it sticks this time."

Koji rushes at him and Goldy sweeps to one side, trying to CATCH that Mazin Blade-arm. For all his bluster, that one misses, slicing down Goldy's chest. But Triple Zero's light soon fills the wound. "Heh. I'm stronger than ever, Kabuto," Goldy boasts. He lunges then and surges forward to simply SHOULDER CHECK the Ichinana, raw STRENGTH potentially sending it toppling.

Eisen's sound waves stir the air to cacophany - but suddenly the AIR ITSELF starts to turn away into motes of light, the Goldion Hammer that is Goldymarg's head and shoulders and spine pulsing with Triple Zero-enhanced gravity shockwaves that turn the assault blast to nothing more than drifting, harmless light.

"You call what they get out there freedom, kid?" Goldy asks, with a harsh kind of sympathy. "No. You're just deceived by the same light that fools 'em all. That emerald-green courage..."

It keeps happening. Qivi's shots turn to light when they get too close to Goldymarg, though some of them do burst through, skipping past waves of photonizing shockwaves. "Tchah! Stung! Woke up for a little midnight exercise, little lady? Goldy'll getcha snorin' real soon."

Alloy's tentacles surge forward and THIS time Goldy MOVES. He leaps skyward and GRABS the oncoming tentacles that are veering for Bujack! It gets him flicked down and knocked into a building, but the next time he hits the ground he STICKS, as though his weight had suddenly increased a millionfold, and not even Null-Sigma's power can lift him.

His power, however, can lift it, and he SCREAMS, every light on his body pulsing with gathered strength, just before he exerts entirely inhuman force to SPIN Null-Sigma around by its tentacle, whipping it around and around in the air before he SLAMS!!!!! it down into the ground!!

"NOW THEN," Goldy roars, triumphant. "What's next!"

God Gundam appears and drives a sword straight at him. A gravity shockwave turns some of the beam sword to photons, giving Goldy an opportunity to shift his stance enough that when the blade resumes, it cleaves a shallow cut in his abdomen. "WHOA hey! Don't know your deal, but you look important!"

So his reply is to try and punch the Gundam of Gundams directly in the grille. It's like Argo's wrecking ball, an ENORMOUSLY powerful hit, despite the relatively svelte size. But rather than stick around, he jumps back, and yells, "SYSTEM CHANGE!" again.

He lands as a tank, which immediately sweeps around in a wide knockout circle aiming to send Sarangary and Carestia toppling. 

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Eisen Daiwel and Qivi with GoldyTank Spinout.
KTS: Shinji Ikari fails to evade Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Blast, taking 3400 damage!
KTS: Qivi's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage.
KTS: Qivi blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's GoldyTank Spinout, taking 3000 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Qivi!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Koji Kabuto with Supreme Goldy Strength!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Alloy Kaas with Goldy Grapplin'!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Domon Kasshu with Supreme Goldy Strength!
KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg rattles Alloy Kaas, making her next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Goldy Grapplin', taking 4200 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Alloy Kaas!
KTS: Koji Kabuto fails to retreat.
KTS: Koji Kabuto fails to react to GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Supreme Goldy Strength, taking 3300 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Koji Kabuto!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's GoldyTank Spinout, taking 2250 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Eisen Daiwel!
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Wall Spirit Command.
KTS: Domon Kasshu rushes into the attack!
KTS: Domon Kasshu partially guards GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Supreme Goldy Strength, taking 3600 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Domon Kasshu!

<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.

"Look, everyone made it!" Borr shouts, their voice heavy with relief. "Let's take this thing down!"

After a terrifying night of worrying over the children, the sight of their allies sends the Neon Genesis Junior High Students' morale soaring.

"This thing looks like it's made out of crepe paper. Shinjo really must be slipping." Blue light flashes as Vit speaks up, voice one note away from laughing.

Bujack's lighting comes arcing toward Powered Zenon, but there's no way the Hyper Agents are backing away! With the clanking sound of empty armor, they charge forward, powering through the attack. "Stay on your guard! This is still a kaiju. It is still a threat, no matter how many of our allies arrived." Max shouts, as they reach the kaiju's body. "Punch with all we have -- now!"

Sliding beneath where the kaiju's neck meets its body, Powered Zenon jams their fist straight up, hoping to send the creature off the ground from the sheer strength of impact. "Powered Breaker!"

"I -- I don't appreciate this form." Calibur's voice comes from the axe. "B--but. Don't hold back."

Borr laughs, as Powered Zenon stands back up, brandishing their axe. It's a strange sensation, fighting without the unifying spirit and body of Gridman. Their thoughts aren't in sync, so they're slowing than the Giant of Light normally would be.

"Next time we get close. We use the axe!" Max decides, with three sounds of agreement meeting his call. 

KTS: Yuta Hibiki has activated the Rouse Spirit Command.
KTS: Yuta Hibiki targets Akane Shinjo with Powered Breaker!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Yuta Hibiki's Powered Breaker, taking 7540 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Telepathic Link activates, causing Insight L1!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Mediumship activates, causing Nullify!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki has engaged Akane Shinjo!

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"I did!" Koji replies. "Then I - gah!" The Ichinana takes the shoulder-check full on, smashed down into the tarmac and, in the low gravity, bouncing up for much longer than a machine of its weight distribution might otherwise, sword also floating next to it.

Don't overthink. It's Goldymarg, the mightiest of the Brave Robo Corps. Let instinct guide you, use the situation to your advantage.

"MAZIN KICK!" Thrusters flare and the Ichinana spins mid-bounce, lashing out with one of its legs against the tank form of Goldymarg and finding its footing again in a three-point-landing. "Then I realised the world wasn't gonna get better if I was sitting back doing nothing, so I'm fighting for what I believe in again."

"If you think you can snuff that out," he continues, snatching the Mazinger Blade out of the air, "feel free to come try me!"

He scans the IFF readouts. Is that... He opens a channel to the God Gundam. "Mister Kasshu. It's a pleasure to finally fight alongside you." The Devil Gundam Incident had happened while Koji was retired, but the name of the man who destroyed it and won the Gundam Fight is well-known to the OCU's citizens. "Hopefully I'm not too old to keep up with you!" 

KTS: Koji Kabuto targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Ichinana CQC Strike!

<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.


Jana picks up Yuka's presence, but she cannot hear her from here. She only sees that she's there, on a rooftop. Similarly, she does not hear Liam call out her title.

...But she notices that the kaiju seems to shift, when Jana addresses Akane. Is she out there, listening...? She cannot be sure, and yet, she must try.

"Is this what you really wish?" Jana says over that loudspeaker. "To ally yourself with those that would end all life? Is your own so painful that that seems the only option?"

But there are others, too. Shinji will bring Asuka home...

"You will." Jana's image and words appear on one of Shinji's displays, a channel opening. "Believe in yourself, Mr. Ikari. And you will bring her home."

Then she appears on Lucine's screen, too. "You are needed. Do your best. He's waiting for you."

That L-shape to the Ichinana's arms returns, as Jana works her machine. The best thing against a kaiju is something like this, she things--and thus, as she starts to let loose a barrage of beams, Jana calls, "Rapid Emerium Beam!"

Bzzt bzzt bzzt! Multiple powerful Ultra beams loose themselves at Bujack!! 

KTS: Jana Cektru has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Shinji Ikari
KTS: Jana Cektru has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Lucine Azul
KTS: Jana Cektru targets Akane Shinjo with Rapid Emerium Beam!

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

<"Understood, Alloy."> Eisen calls back to the pilot of the Null-Sigma. <"Be wary of this target. Especially their hammer. Do not underestimate them, regardless of their small stature. Even before Triple-0 got a grip of Goldymarg, he was a combatant to be respected and feared.">

The youth then shifts focus for but a moment to Shinji; <"Shinji! Go get her back. We'll keep Goldymarg busy!">

The youth's gaze narrows, as does the Evangelion's. <"It's better than to be held hostage by some little bitch playing god."> He snaps back at Goldymarg. <"Emerald-green or not. Their Courage is but part of the freedom taken from them."> Eisen declares as the Carestia moves forwards, trying to time in with the Null-Sigma.

<"I am here, Alloy."> He declares, as light pulses outwards. The Carestia suddenly sliding downwards as the tendrils are swung around. And the moment Goldymarg slams the Evangelion to the ground, the Carestia brings its arms up and tries to capture the tendrilled Evangelion in on arm, and raise its hand with the other. A sudden A.T. field bursting to life. Trembling as it slightly reduces the sheer force being used.

Eisen feels his hand ache as the enormous force comes upon the Carestia. Through the LCL, the area around his left hand begins to BOIL. Searing at his hand. Pain snaring his body. Gritting his teeth. The Carestia brought to one knee. Only for one of the wings to suddenly shift and unfurl, as he releases the A.T. field at the end of the thrusting slam - and is pushed back as the machine suddenly changes into its tank form.

The Carestia brings both hands down, trying to slow it down. Digging its legs in. The wings PIERCING into the ground. Tearing apart the roads of Tsutsujidai. Ripping them apart as the driving force damages the machine. But with those hands down, it tries to dig its hand-claws in. Glowing, as they start to vibrate at higher and higher speeds.

<"DEMON'S TECHNIQUE!">

Looking to tear and grab at Goldymarg in order to forcefully undo the System Change!

<"SUNDERING..."> His voice trembles with tension as the pressure of trying to put this much force against such a DENSE and superior oponent isn't something he's quite so used to. Yet, he is to fight angels. He is to be able to push past the limits of humanity.

"Carestia!" He calls out.

<"TEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!"> 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Progressive Claws!
KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Jana Cektru's Rapid Emerium Beam, taking 2025 damage!
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul fails to charge.
KTS: Akane Shinjo enervates Lucine Azul, reducing her Morale significantly.
KTS: Lucine Azul partially guards Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Blast, taking 4080 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Akane Shinjo's Collapse activates, causing Deject!

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Asuka's eyes watch the battle joined, by Triple Zero. But also by three other Evangelions. Asuka just watches it vaguely from afar.

'FRIEND'S FREEDOM!'

Eisen has friends? Asuka wonders vaguely. He must be referring to Liam or someone... Asuka herself certainly doesn't have friends. Alloy joins in and Asuka just watches as she flanks it. And then Shinji...

Asuka freezes, then gives the purple Evangelion this vague look of disbelief.

"What's there even for me if I went back...?" Asuka asks him quietly, from afar, there's no chance of him hearing her, but...

Her phone pings, and she looks at the text even as the city shakes and rumbles. Asuka finally gets off the steps just to avoid the possibility of anything collapsing on her, her gait sedate as she moves forward, eyes upon her phone.

It's a relief she doesn't seem upset.

>yeah i see
>its a lot
>but u'll have it handled

Something gets under her skin about all this though, Shinji shouting out he'd bring her home. It's passively nagging her. Why would he think fighting that Kaiju would do anything. She keeps eyeing the battle...

...
...
...
...
>hey i know ur in the middle of something
>but u think this is about what guy said?
>like shinji is shouting about bringing me home or something and
>that's stupid
>do they really think fighting u is gonna convince me?

Asuka immediately feels like she shouldn't have sent all that and... taps something else, to try and smooth things over.

>ur kaiju is
>a pretty good design
>looks fierce

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Koji Kabuto's Ichinana CQC Strike, taking 1665 damage!
KTS: Koji Kabuto has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

Domon and the God Gundam are sent reeling backwards. Despite its small size, Goldymarg was giving Argo's Bolt Gundam a run for its money. It might not have been a Gaia Crusher, but Goldymarg definitely have knocked out teeth if this had been a brawl between flesh and blood. Even so, the Gundam of Gundams weathered the blow and spun on its heel to dive back into the fray, refusing to relent or give Goldymarg an inch of reprieve. This was their element: in close quarters, Domon and the God Gundam were at home, displaying their mastery of Master Asia's inherited teachings, a lethal ballet of blows while sidestepping attacks with the barest regard for their own safety. The only thing that mattered in this fight was ending it, and the swifter, the better for all involved. Even with just a single blow traded, Domon could see the extent of the devastation. Whole portions of the district were collapsed, while electrical wires hung and sparked loosely and entire walkways and bridges had collapsed onto the streets below them. The King of Heart grunted and stared down Goldymarg. As the others around him weathered their own blows and rose, a small, disparate, but nonetheless united front of bruised machines staring down their aggressor.

As a comms channel opened up from the pilot of the Mazinger, Domon nodded slowly as he replied. "Much the same to you, Koji Kabuto. I just hope I haven't lost too much of my touch since then. How about we show Goldymarg what we can do?" Without waiting for a reply, Domon breathes in and focuses. Everything is shut out. Sound. Vision. Touch. The King of Heart retreats into his inner world, every second stretched on for seeming eternity as he gathers himself.

Meikyo Shisui.

When Domon's eyes open again, they are completely white, an eerie, yet empty focus emanating from his gaze as he attempts to grasp that feeling from so long ago. It'd only been a few years, but already, the battle against the Devil Gundam felt so far away. Chibodee. George. Argo. Sai Saici. And himself, inheritor to the title and reign of the King of Heart 4711. Now he was returned, here to protect what mattered to him and the other members of the Shuffle Alliance. "Let's go, God Gundam!" As Domon cried out to his partner, they lunged towards Goldymarg once more, his Mobile Fighter's arm igniting in a brilliant blaze. 

KTS: Domon Kasshu targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Burning God Buster!

<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.

Strikes missing as Bujack goes up, Unit-01's too-fluid movements and momentum send it stumbling. Shinji's teeth clench as he tries to gain control and balance, wincing as Unit-01 collides with the ground, scrapes against it, and flips back upright.

Hunched and poised for another assault, Unit-01 and its pilot have to eat a cascade of lightning first. Shinji screams through it, not in anger, not quite pain, just a call to exist, to keep going, to keep fighting, wild and rattled.

Alloy with Null-Sigma arrives, announcing her support. Eisen calls to him to get her back. The two of them covering for him. Jana's image appears as Shinji drinks in breath. Believe in himself. Bring her home.

...Be reliable, he keeps telling himself. Stand on his own two feet. Be stronger. But. He can't do this by himself. And... other people miss Asuka, too.

"...<Thank you, everyone,>" he says, voice shaken. "<I will!>"

Unit-01 shakes its head back and forth like getting a cold chill out of its spine, then charges again. It reaches back, smoke pouring from one of its shoulder pylons, and seizes hold of a hilt. With a single, brutal rip, it arms itself with and slashes for Bujack with a high overhead swing in the same motion.

"<I don't know what you did, but... give her back. And then if she wants to leave again, she can leave! She can be as mad at me as she wants! But give her back!>" 

KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Akane Shinjo with Magoroku Flourish!
KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Shinji Ikari's Magoroku Flourish, taking 3608 damage!
KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Akane Shinjo!

<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.

This time, Qivi does not respond to Akane. She is going to do what she wants, actually! Which is just another break in the link, another strand broken, whether either of them realize it or not.

More combatants show up to deal with Goldymarg and Bujack. Qivi recognizes about two thirds of them, which just goes to show how well-known they are. It's hard not to recognize God Gundam of all things... and she remembers what Renais said about trying to purify them.

Does this mean they have a chance?

For the first time in a while, Qivi feels hopeful. Not that *she* can do something but that someone can. With Domon here, Koji here, two different Evangelions, they're actually prepared for this situation. She doesn't *like* Eisen but at least she knows he can handle himself, and though she's less familiar with the other, presumably they're comparable.

The Covet's pellets don't connect with Goldymarg cleanly, most of them sublimating into light. And while Sarangay can duck around the corner, it doesn't help when a tank literally chases her down, sideswiping her and sending Sarangay flying.

But unlike most wanzers, Sarangay has back-mounted thrusters; a combination jet and power pack, which isn't enough to let Qivi fly but is enough to let her right herself in midair and land Sarangay on its feet. "F - " Qivi bites back whatever she was about to say (it was what you expected it to be) as it slams down heavily, absorbing the shocks with its legs as best it can.

She feathers the jetpack thrusters again after she's landing, accelerating faster than the landspinners can spin up with a squeal and spray of sparks until they catch up. She always feels comfortable in the cockpit of a wanzer in a way she doesn't always other places, and despite herself she's starting to settle into piloting again.

Qivi actually turns on her transmitter for the first time. She's broadcasting an independent IFF, as Sarangay (which is both her wanzer name and her callsign), and doesn't appear to be connected to any Shuffle local comms. "I don't snore," Qivi says, keeping her voice as neutral as she can rather than her usual high-energy, high-emotion, to avoid giving her mental state away. She only speaks because she's been told she does snore and *hates* it - though how would Goldymarg know? she thinks to herself. She's never met him.

She glances over toward Domon before circling, firing a quartet of missiles from the square launcher on her shoulder; it has four tubes, and she fires them one after another at Goldymarg, trying for a lock-on so she can once again remain back while she does it. If she can manage to not get in their way, she thinks, she's doing her best. She briefly considers opening a comms line to one or another of the combatants - Domon and Koji are highest on the list, and Eisen the least because she really does not want to talk to him - but eventually decides not to. 

KTS: Qivi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with MGR-M Launcher Missiles!

<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Utsugi has posed.



        The dreamers will feel it. A voice in their heads. It's not hard to feel the stirring here, in Tsutsujidai. They all stream down the Limpid Channel from Akane- from Bujack- after all.

        "Please, don't give up on this world. On this happiness. You deserve this place... this happy dream. Please keep dreaming."

        The voice is not Akane's, it's a stranger- a one way communication granted by the sheer power of Dawn. "We are, Shinjo-san. This place is important." It's a way to a peaceful end. If Akane would work with them... If they could infuse Bujack with the Aura of Dawn... they could put an end to it. All the pain and suffering, and everyone would end their lives in peace and happiness.

        "We won't give up on your dream." She reaches out again, past Goldymarg- and towards the machines that seem to have minds and souls. After all... she doesn't need to reach the pilots if she can reach the machines.

        And then the Aura of Dawn reaches the souls of the Evangelion units. It pounds against their barriers with a power that defies sentient life.

        <<Leave. You enemy isn't here. Just children who want to be safe. Even beings like you can understand that. Your fight isn't here.>>

        The words aren't exact, but the feeling, the sentiment is there. The Limpid Channel from Mikoto is nothing if not clear. And then longer she presses- the longer the souls of the Evangelions can feel the Aura of Dawn reaching for them. 

KTS: Mikoto Utsugi targets Eisen Daiwel, Alloy Kaas, and Shinji Ikari with Shock.
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Akane Shinjo
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi shocks Eisen Daiwel, reducing his Morale significantly.
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi shocks Shinji Ikari, reducing his Morale significantly.

<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.

It's not just the Neon Genesis Junior High School students - others have come to Tsutsujidai. They must all be here to save their friends, too... It's a wonderful thing to see. Rikka can see them, and hear their voices faintly, too. If she strains a little, she can pick up the words...

They're fighting now. The kaiju might not be made for combat, but it's still a kaiju forced into a fight. It's dangerous through size alone, if not through the lightning that emits from its roar. Rikka winces a little.

"Come on, stay strong... There's someone waiting for you, right? Someone who needs a hand now, more than ever, even if they don't, can't, know it... Keep going." Rikka urges. Once again, her feelings carry through the cognitive layer. Those fighting alongside the NGJHS against Bujack might it feel it too, now. 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel anchors GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, forcing him into close range.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Eisen Daiwel's Progressive Claws, taking 4557 damage!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel: Will Barrier Activates.
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi shocks Alloy Kaas, reducing her Morale significantly.
KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Yuta Hibiki, Lucine Azul, and Shinji Ikari with All-Out.
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting Jana Cektru
KTS: Rikka Takarada orders an all-out attack, raising Yuta Hibiki's Skill!
KTS: Rikka Takarada orders an all-out attack, raising Shinji Ikari's Skill!
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Lucine Azul

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.


        Has Anti changed sides?

        This is not the first time he's attacked one of Akane's kaiju.

        First, he lashed out at anything which dared to try and kill Gridman -- when killing Gridman was his purpose and his right.

        Then, he lashed out at Gonglee, Ranka Lee riding on his shoulder.

        And after that...

        He's always been a quarrelsome boy.

        "Akane Shinjo!" He screams, as he leaps, for Bujack, again. Too high, too fast, and even as its massive claws crush the ground he doesn't disappear beneath them.

        "WAKE UP!"

        Less like a dawn, his words have all the characteristics of the sunset.

        The next time he lands, in those leaps impossible to make, he falls aside Liam's path. He lands on his feet and one hand, and straightens, as if the impact didn't shudder right through his bones. He still holds his circular saw. It's buzzing.

        "It's not watching where it walks," he says, and perhaps the ominous phrase is a warning.

        He does not stop Liam. Neither does he stop.

        He charges Bujack, again, as he is.

        This guy is really persistent.

KTS: Rikka Takarada orders an all-out attack, raising Lucine Azul's Skill!

<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.

        "... If it's boring it's not my style.... I want a love that takes my heart soaring... Beautiful, excuse me, I only see... possibilities..."

        Angling her head to look towards the distinctive profile of Unit-01, Lucine turns her radio on. < "... Shinji. Let's... get our friends back." > Lucine's hands fly across her dashboard, sending information to his unit. < "I'll fight for all I have here. If I fail, I'll try to keep inside here to provide support. We'll do this. >

        A flash of pale hair, as what looks like a young man skip up Bujack like a flea on a dog. Is this... Anti? That must be him. Lucine's fingers fumble to turn on the outside speakers. < "Anti? Is that your name? This is Lucine, I'm Liam's..." >

        Green lightning fills the air, and Lucine instinctively tries to soar ahead, not accounting for her new unit's abilities. < "Ghh!" >

        The eeXA crashes into a nearby building, Lucine thudding against the back of her chair.

        Jana's face on Lucine's screen grabs Lucine's attention. < ".... right! >

        Getting back into the field, Lucine lets loose another shot from her Module Cannon, taking aim from her vantage point.

KTS: Lucine Azul targets Akane Shinjo with Flight Module Cannon Sighted Shot!
KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Lucine Azul's Flight Module Cannon Sighted Shot, taking 4219 damage!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.

<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.

When she's in the zone, Yuka has a bad habit of tuning out people around her. Or just not noticing them in the first place. Thankfully, her phone's alert being a kaiju howl is good for getting her attention. So Akane won't wind up ignored.

>It's okay. Kaiju are amazing no matter what their purpose is.

Besides, she likes robots too, even if it's somewhat lesser. Studying how they're designed and what they're made for can provide its own kinds of insights. Besides, some kaiju fall into a mid-point where they're ALSO mechanical. ...And some robots behave all too familiarly to an upset kaiju.

Jana being there is still just... so distracting. And she keeps thinking on those words. On the contradictions. "...No such thing as a thing only I can do. ...But then why did you insist only you could defend this place? Only you could fight. Only you could make them." Akane hadn't said it about that many things directly. But... She has said it. Right in front of Yuka's own face. "Was that what you decided on your own? Or what he told you...?" She's not talking to anyone in particular of course. Just thinking out loud.

But then this person almost none of them know, decides to interrupt and talk into her head. Mikoto is giving her a headache. And it's not helping her conflicted mood. In the fuzzy, unpleasant state Yuka's in right now, the voice sounds a bit like one of those suit and tie guys, trying to tell her how to act. What's proper for a military organization. ...Yuka HATES being told how to behave. Thankfully for the owner of the voice, it was one-way. So they don't have to be on the other end of her Bad Mood. Further thankfully, they're not somebody she can go and show how she normally deals with that. 

KTS: Domon Kasshu rattles GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, making his next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to evade Domon Kasshu's Burning God Buster, taking 2625 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.


        The only* thing that keeps Alloy from blacking out, is a familiarity with operating her Eva in three dimensional environments. Save for the one that was being Goldy handled from Goldymarg.

        But it wasn't the only thing that saved her. Eisen, thankfully, intercedes. Cushioning what would have been devastating, Carestia and Eisen's ATField saved her from having the extra limbs critically damaged. The flash of the defense field like a drum, there is a rebound of the surface.

        One, two, three menacing arms reach out to grab nearby buildings, pulling the Evangelion upright. They then brace, as Alloy pushes forward and then yanks back to reclaim the menacing metal appendage from its captor.

        "Eisen!! Carestia- thanks. I'm sorry, the tactics used by Goldymarg... Thanks, Are you ok?"

        Alloy does her best to offer a helping hand to Carestia, to put them both back on their feet. A quick systems check affirms that she and Null-Sigma are still in the fight. Once more she steers the humanoid vehicle in a flanking of this, enemy? She shakes her head again, focusing on options. The fight is far from over.

        "Shinji!"

        Calling out the for the other pilot as a series of lighting arcs across the massive purple form. She toggles a quick change of comms from isolated channel to general broadcast. It would be optimum if she coordinated with the others she is less familiar with. Doubt plagues her. What if-?

        Her eyes go wide with surprise as God Gundam and Damon... is that a pose in the middle of the fight? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the arm of God Gundam erupts in a blaze and strikes out.

        "Holy- Eisen! Shinj-"

        A sudden pain, in her head, and a wave of vertigo. Alloy fights the acid trying to crawl up her throat. The Eva and the young woman experience a error in synchronization. A feeling not had since she first trained to pilot. There is a sense of delay, like an echo, and it shakes the young woman. Her hands fly up to the sides of her head. She tries applying pressure, but it doesn't stop. Alloy screams.

        Evangelion Unit Null-Sigma, the sea monster Evangelion stops. Each limb strikes heavy and hard around her, anchoring as it's massive body plants its feet, it's actual arms curled into fists. A blended seam, begins to tear, and Null-Sigma roars.

        Alloy grits her teeth, and makes fists of her own around the controls. She pants with heavy rise and fall of her chest. 'Not my EVA!' Whether that goes out on general channels or not, Alloy fights, and concentrates to reassert her control of the giant. Pain as the synch rate climbs back to normal bands, or near normal. With effort she pulls each limb back from anchoring. A slow step, rapidly icreasing in speed.

        Null-Sigma feints right, but ducks behind a building to her left. A building between her and Goldy, Alloy not knowing the source of disruption. Heavy feet brace, as the limbs... Alouette drives them THROUGH the building, to grab or pierce Goldymarg and strains to pull it of balance and into the building.

        "STAY OUTTA MY HEAD!"

        Alloy cries out with the strain. But that door is opened, and a 'voice' of doubt grows, and she begins second guessing her self. The Evangelion strains to pull at Goldy. 

KTS: Alloy Kaas targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Bloodboiling Pressure!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Qivi's MGR-M Launcher Missiles, taking 1665 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        Liam's phone buzzes again. The young cyborg skids to a stop beneath another streetlight, and braces himself against it while he reads. The ground shudders; he's getting close to the fight. Why is he running towards it?

        His heart drops into his stomach.

> sorry
> I'll stay out of the way
> please be safe

        Useless. She must've finally realized he's just a burden.

        But why is she treating this like it's Tarabaman? Even if she's just watching, she's in danger. Everyone nearby is in danger. Liam realizes it's been almost ten minutes, and he hasn't heard a single alarm--even his old home had functional air-raid sirens despite Britannian neglect--

        His old home...?

        'Please, don't give up on this world. On this happiness. You deserve this place... this happy dream. Please keep dreaming.'

        Liam goes perfectly still. A frisson of fear races down his spine, despite the gentleness in Mikoto's voice. He doesn't recognize her. Maybe she's right.

        But if she was, was he ever happy here?

        There's the kaiju. Liam stops in his tracks as he sees it--sees the contrast between the vaguely-draconic, solidly-kaiju body, and the bizarre... offness of its presence. Like it's slipped into this world from the one next door, or been forced here.

        Like it came out of one of the fairy forts his mother told him about, in her stories.

        Something human-shaped blurs through the air and lands in front of him. "...Anti...?" Liam says, his face a mask of shock. "I--I know, but Akane's out here! People are here, why haven't the alarms gone off--" But Anti's gone, engaging the kaiju again.

        Liam's hands clench, helplessly; the phone creaks ominously in his grip. Akane. This is his lifeline to her.

> please stay safe

        He taps out another message.

> i don't know what i'd do if you died because of me

        The ground shakes again--really, it never stopped, it just intensifies--and the light of the Alto's weaponry illuminates something up ahead. Girders and scaffolds and generators and prefabbed portable breakrooms. A construction site. And there, cradled in its charging dock, is a large, armored humanoid shape.

        Like one of the ones his father piloted, before he lost his job and went to work the kelp lines.

        Mathair. Athair. Both dead, because they tried to protect him. The boy they tried to save is dead, too, and only this husk is left.

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Alloy Kaas's Bloodboiling Pressure, taking 4650 damage!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Alloy Kaas: Will Barrier Activates.
KTS: Alloy Kaas begins a Formation attack!

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane gets back to texting. She still has things under control -- everything is fine. Her friends are still her friends. It's fine. Nothing is wrong.

For Asuka, she spares:
> Honestly this is pretty tame for me. I've done better. Mecha-Ghoulghilas is still the big winner on fierceness.
> This one's... a different kind of attacker.
> Guy is kinda paranoid, though... when you guys started moving here he was so sure I was gonna use you to attack Orbit Base or something.

Akane glances back at Mikoto, now curious about something. "A lot of them won't accept their own worlds... do you wanna come to graduation? It's like a year and a half off, but still. Might be a good time, given how many of them are connected to you guys."

The texting gets a little more frantic -- the tension builds in Akane before she even realizes it.

For Yuka:
> Right? Though I guess it's kind of the same purpose every time, right? Kaiju just... want. And then...

For Liam:
> I'll be fine. All you need to do is stay out of it. This isn't your concern.


Anti strikes at Bujack with all the might he can muster -- which is nothing. Gridman isn't here, and Akane didn't ask. It accomplishes nothing; in the end, for all the power in his leaps, Anti is just another person, like this. Akane glances up to see him striking again.

"Stupid."

She looks back down before Bujack starts really exchanging blows again.

The fist of Powered Zenon lances straight up into Bujack, nearly snapping its neck as Gridman has done so many times before, to so many kaiju. This 'Gridmanless Gridman' is no less effective, it seems -- even with Gridman performing dream-surgery, Powered Zenon is still a force to be reckoned with. The beast goes flying into the sky --

-- where it's immediately met with the rapidfire beams from Jana's machine. That light... it's become familiar, to Akane. The light of a hero.

... she decides to spare a text for Dr. Cektru. (It'll get there, because she wants it to get there.) Actually having a chat is a little too far beyond her right now, but...

> They're more reliable than BioNet ever was. They actually showed up.
> Bad guys are pretty unreliable. Heroes definitely have consistency on their side here. Besides... if you guys stop fighting, I don't think they'll even need to end things, from what I've figured out about that assertion in their heads.

As Bujack comes back down, Shinji rushes to meet it with a vicious overhead slash, while Lucine fires a shot from the Alto's module cannon. Both connect; Bujack hunkers down into a defensive posture insofar as it can, but it's really getting whipped around. Riveted armor pits; a wing cracks. Try as it might, Bujack gets ground down step by step by step, and its hold on the psyches of its subjects weakens.

In desperation, it orients fully on Powered Zenon, trying to slam it into a building with the sheer force of its lightning -- as much concussive as anything else. It's a wide burst -- and as the beast thrashes around, it catches others in its barrage, neck waggling as it sweeps and sprays green energy in wide arcs. 

KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Yuta Hibiki with Dream Lightning Special Trick!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Shinji Ikari with Dream Lightning Spray!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Lucine Azul with Dream Lightning Spray!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Jana Cektru with Dream Lightning Spray!
KTS: Jana Cektru fails to evade Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Spray, taking 4836 damage!
KTS: Shinji Ikari's EN Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage.
KTS: Shinji Ikari fails to evade Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Spray, taking 4836 damage!

<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.

Goldy completes his circle, and then, rather than immediately turn back, the center-mounted Marg Cannon levers up.

The cabin blinks in line with his speech, even with no eyes to look at Koji with. "World's not gettin' better any which way, Kabuto. You think we don't got the news out there?"

The kick comes in. GoldyTank braces hard, the wheels digging into already-damaged asphalt, and the GROUND cracks rather than him, bouncing Koji away. He blasts Koji with a glowing orange beam for his trouble.

As for Eisen, Goldy turns to him and outright laughs. "Hostage? Buddy, that's a word with a meaning, you know?"

Then Eisen attempts to shuck him like a lobster. "WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA" Goldy yelps, claws tearing deep into that armor. "Alright, how about SOME O' THIS!"

The Marg Cannon hums loudly and builds up an enormous internal charge, still grappled and pulled by the Carestia. "Hnnng FIRING!" Goldy shrieks, a PILLAR of light exploding toward the sky. Tsutsujidai's fine; that's fine. Well, Eisen may not enjoy it. Then a blast of gravitational shockwaves turns his claws to photons, and Goldy hollers, "SYSTEM CHANGE!" again and lands as a Brave Robo again.

Goldy is a Brave Robo and more than that a complete meathead, so if any of them have Awakening abilities it ain't him. This is leadup to say he has absolutely no idea what he's getting when Domon suddenly fires a blast of light at him, and he squawks in surprise and shock when the light sears him, sparks dragging along his frame for seconds afterward. Maybe that gives Qivi time and opportunity to rally. And give him some very pointed advice.

"Yeah? Major snores. HAH! Can hear him through the bulkheads sometimes." He's rounded on her, heavy orange feet clunking into broken concrete, as the Sarangay draws near. But GOldy isn't watching her, he's watching *Alloy*, because that tentacle monster sent him for a ride earlier. A Wanzer is as much smaller than Goldymarg than Goldymarg is Akane's kaiju, so he's banking on...

The missiles splash across his back, causing him to limp one leg forward, and expose his back to her in full. That's when Null-Sigma strikes - tentacles bursting down at him THROUGH a building, and then tries to drag him INTO it. His bracing doesn't do too much this time, and shhe successfully smashes him into a building tall as he is, sending it toppling.

And then he slams both feet into the rubble, and yells, "Alright, FEELIN' GOOD!"

And then the Goldion Hammer glows...but it doesn't blast out with a Gravity Shockwave. Rather, the gravity in the whole area grows enormous - dragging anyone near enough to Goldymarg down to the ground.

"Now then," Goldy says. A man might roll his shoulders. Crack his neck. Goldymarg remains still. He has nothing to stretch.

"Utsugi. Think I'm warmed up."

Mikoto's communicator lights up with an Operator request: Hammer Relief.

"Get it out here." 

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Domon Kasshu, Alloy Kaas, and Qivi with Goldion Grasp.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Eisen Daiwel with MargRifle Charge Zero Zero Zero!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Koji Kabuto with MargRifle Pattern Fire!
KTS: Qivi's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg anchors Qivi, forcing her into close range.
KTS: Qivi blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Goldion Grasp, taking 1400 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Qivi!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel partially guards GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's MargRifle Charge Zero Zero Zero, taking 6600 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki rushes into the attack!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki partially guards Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Special Trick, taking 3885 damage!
KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg anchors Alloy Kaas, forcing her into close range.
KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Goldion Grasp, taking 1875 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Alloy Kaas!
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting Shinji Ikari
KTS: Akane Shinjo enervates Lucine Azul, reducing her Morale significantly.
KTS: Lucine Azul blocks Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Spray, taking 4836 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Akane Shinjo's Collapse activates, causing Deject!
KTS: Koji Kabuto blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's MargRifle Pattern Fire, taking 4680 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Domon Kasshu rushes into the attack!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg anchors Domon Kasshu, forcing it into close range.
KTS: Domon Kasshu partially guards GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Goldion Grasp, taking 3600 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has engaged Domon Kasshu!

<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.

Goldymarg turning aside from Qivi after her missiles does give her the *time* to rally, but not the inclination.

After her missiles, Qivi once again tries to scoot backwards, and she makes it partway down the street before Goldymarg is literally thrown into a building much closer to her. Ordinarily she might take advantage of that to shoot at him, or flying punch, or *something*.

This time she uses the moment to take off into the air, firing the jetpack in a boosted jump... just as something pulls her back down to the ground.

Sarangay slams into the street even as the jetpack continues to burn, unable to lift the wanzer up against the Goldion Grasp. It sputters out a few moments later, leaving Sarangay trying to brace against it, but slowly losing the fight. The wanzer drops into a squat, then further, catching itself with its fist hand and looking like nothing so much as it's kneeling.

Qivi feels the gravity too. It pulls her down; her hair flattens down against her head, her helmet feels like it weighs thirty pounds, and there's assorted other pains as her body rebels against the increased gravity. She tries to sit up straighter, but is slowly losing that fight, too.

Qivi releases her controls to get her hands on her knees to push herself up, against her own body weight. This time she does manage it, though it makes her arms burn - but what can she possibly do against that? If he's pulling in the hammer, then...

The discomfort isn't all physical. She *shouldn't* have come out here. She's only a liability. Maybe Akane was right, and all she can do is struggle pointlessly. The last grasp of Bujack still holds her back.

"...Sorry," she says over the radio to the other fighters, and then tries to wheel Sarangay away. The landspinners kick up sparks, as the feet are pressed against the street; she doesn't go anywhere. 

KTS: Qivi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Pass!

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


The texts ping again, one by one. And Asuka reads up. "Paranoid...?" The incongruence of it all just doesn't line up. She finds herself fumbling for one thing in her pocket. Looking at the White Card he gave her.

Choosing to live on your own terms is absolutely courage. You deserve to hold that courage with both hands. It's yours and only yours.

>he really thought that?

Shinji shouts again, and Asuka just starts being more and more unsettled. Guy said he could prove in an instant she was being controlled. Shinji seems so convinced that she is.

"Why did I...?"

Why was the decision so abrupt and impulsive? She thought it was because that terrible date just proved how miserable she was but...

... was that really it?

She's never been happy once in her life. Why has her happiness now that she's here been the same? Why does it never vary, why is it just - there?

Why? Why? Why?

A frayed strand breaks, leaving only the thinnest one left. Suspicion starts to darken her features. Did she really just give up after so many years of training to be an Eva pilot? After so many struggles? After her worldview altered so thoroughly thanks to people she bonded with.

>hey akane
>think theres something to be done after all
>you won't have to hear baka shinji go on about me again after im done

Asuka who had barely moved since this had started, starts to storm right up to a parked motorcycle. Reaching behind the taillight housing she grabs a spare key, and jams it in, bringing herself astride it as she revs up the motor and tears out of the parking lot. She's very close to the battle... but she makes a quick detour first.

-=-=-

A figure far too small to be of any notice takes a knee, shouldering a boxy tube, sighting her target, and hitting a trigger. Fire spews forth, as a quartet of rockets streak towards the Kaiju's center mass.

She trembles, anger seething beneath the surface as she wars against an effort to sedate it right out of her, as she tosses aside one piece of heavy ordnance, and shoulders the other she brought.

Where did she even get these!?

That will remain a mystery.

She's close. Far too close to be considered safe on foot, especially with everything going on. But that isn't stopping her.

Shinji, if he looks closely, which may be difficult without zooming in will notice that her hair clips are back in.

"He better believe - I'm going to take him up on being as MAD as I want to be."

But whether that's towards him and the other Eva pilots? Well... she'll figure that one out later. Right now she's not sure she trusts herself, not sure she trusts this. Her purpose right now is supposed to be figuring out how to love Akane...

... maybe that's what she's working out right now, doing this.

KTS: Asuka Shikinami Langley has deployed in Grille Sechs.

<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.

"I hear Rikka." Calibur says, speaking up as the kaiju is sent soaring from their punch. "They must be okay. In the dream world."

It's a thought that bolsters the NGJHS. Bujack is falling, but they can feel the beast looking at them. "It's mad." Borr offers. Max's armor clanks emptily as they bring the axe up to bear. This kaiju is a ranged attacker, it seems, so staying in close is the proper tactical decision.

"Mister Ikari!" Max calls, seeing Shinji's Eva struck by the kaiju's attack. "Be careful! You are dear to Yuta, and many others! Retreat if you need to. We will finish this fight, regardless of who is by our side!"

Powered Zenon begins to move forward as the dragon charges its attack. This is between them. Everyone has their reasons for fighting, but Akane is here because of them, and ultimately, they're responsible for all of this. "Yeah, let's see what you've got!" Vit taunts, as lightning sparks toward them. "This is nothing!"

Despite their confidence, Powered Zenon cries out as they're struck by lightning. It only makes them slow, gradually pushing them back. With an angry shout, Powered Zenon presses on, axe-first, deflecting as much of the attack as they can. As electricity sparks between their empty armored parts, Calibur spurs his companions on, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. "Come on!"

Max roars, raising the axe high. There's no art in this -- only a desire for vengeance. Vit plants their legs, and Borr twists as best as she can, each part coming together to bring Calibur down as fiercely as they possibly can. 

KTS: Asuka Shikinami Langley targets Akane Shinjo with MULS-P Rocket Launcher Barrage!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki targets Asuka Shikinami Langley with Powered Axe!
<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

Domon grunts as he and the God Gundam take another hit, a crushing grasp from Goldymarg. For something so small, it was unusually powerful...but whether that was a trait naturally aspected to it, or something fueled in greater potency by its corruption was a question better left to people who actually...cared. All Domon saw before him was a stubborn tin can that refused to be crumpled into the recycling, and said tin can was hurting his comrades. No one else would perish on his watch. Not after his mother. Not after Kyoji. Not after Schwarz Bruder.

Not after Master Asia

Hunched over, Domon's head shot up, glaring at his enemy from his pupil-less eyes, their white glow becoming more pronounced as he sank ever deeper into Meikyo Shisui.

Opening his mouth, a roar emanated over the Shuffle Alliance comms band as the God Gundam's wings engaged themselves. A bubble of power, a calm but focused dew greeting the morning of battle. Lightning was his fury, his foe a shadow to be banished by his incandescence. The illusion had to end. The dream had to stop. With barely contained fury, Domon keyed the Shuffle Alliance comm channel. "This is Domon Kasshu. Anyone who can distract Goldymarg or cover me, please do so. I'm going to show Goldymarg what it means to anger a disciple of The Undefeated of the East."

Without waiting for a reply from either, the God Gundam began to glow, its light searing the sky and shadows alike as the unit began to enter Hyper Mode. Gold began to envelop the God Gundam in a pure aura, as it started to gather energy. "Here I go! The School of the Undefeated of the East! This hand of mine is burning red..." 

KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Asuka Shikinami Langley's MULS-P Rocket Launcher Barrage, taking 2100 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.


Jana feels Rikka's intent keenly through the cognitive layer of reality. Someone who needs a hand...

"Thank you," Jana says, though it is more accurate that she thinks it back from where she 'feels' Riika's intentions.

She would like to be able to sit and talk with Yuka. She finds her passion for kaiju to be wonderful. But she will not have the chance to work with her if she cannot free her from Akane's control.

Speaking of control, though, Bujack's wide burst of green energy is too much to avoid; Jana tries, but instead her system simply must weather it. She grits her teeth as the whole cockpit shakes as a result, but while the Ichinana TG is smoking, it is still operational. And this is when she gets this message...

She could reply instantaneously. But Akane has invited her to speak in a particular way. And so, instead of saying it aloud to everyone, Jana engages a thought-to-text protocol and replies:

> I appreciate your candor. It's true, those who believe in what they are doing can be better relied upon. But do you think they would tell you the truth if it would trouble you?

But she finds herself regarding Anti, this boy on foot--no, this kaiju--who keeps fighting, and fighting, though assuredly there is nothing he can do from here. But she considers the NGJHS....

"I think I liked your coffee more than I like the battle," she says over the speakers and radios to them. "...But I am glad to be with you."
%Jana does not, this time, use the light of a 'hero'. She checks a gauge in her system, and the Ultraseven Array needs more power yet to perform her hopes, needs more passion yet to emulate that level of strength. So she pulls the Ichinana's machine gun, instead. Taking aim at the kaiju, the Ichinana jumps into the air and fires a full burst of hailing bullets! 

KTS: Jana Cektru has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has gained proficiency bonus.
KTS: Jana Cektru targets Akane Shinjo with Ichinana MG Full Barrage!
Yuta Hibiki has cancelled his attack.

KTS: Yuta Hibiki targets Akane Shinjo with Powered Axe!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Jana Cektru's Ichinana MG Full Barrage, taking 4140 damage!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Yuta Hibiki's Powered Axe, taking 4278 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Telepathic Link activates, causing Insight L1!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Mediumship activates, causing Nullify!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki has engaged Akane Shinjo!

<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.

The roar again... Yuka looks down at her phone. Oh. This. This is... Yuka shakes her head, unseen. There's a snap, as a shine comes to her eyes, joining the manic energy.

>True sometimes, there are those cases, but... not every kaiju is like in Tarabaman.

>Sure, they have wants and needs. But they're not just here to make a fuss and die.

>...I should have said that, before. A kaiju can be so much more than just a momentary star burning out.

>Kaiju are... beautiful, complex creatures full of potential, the same way people can be.

>Complete with their own hearts, even if we don't yet understand them.

She didn't get it before. The way things were. The state she's been in. She couldn't grasp the words, no matter how she pushed. They always sank away. Now she has it. She can refuse the ideas that weighed at her heart. While screaming something into the night... Hopefully this doesn't raise questions later. "I LOVE THE COMPLEX HEARTS OF KAIJU!"

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

Qivi's machine hasn't gone unnoticed by Eisen. But when its IFF goes up, there's a momentary slight smirk on his face. He doesn't say anything to the woman, but he will consider her presence in this battle a boon to the lot of them. The Sarangay is certainly a lot smaller, but that means they can get in and out in ways that an Evangelion cannot.

~"We've got this, Alloy. Don't worry about if I'm okay. This isn't a moment where we can waver."~ The youth answers the young woman in the octopus-slanted Evangelion. Trying to show confidence. Even showing himself on a quick video-feed to Alloy, his glowing eye facing her way.

However, that's a smile that suddenly disappears when something else streams through - and that video-feed cuts. "Carestia?!" Eisen lets out a confused sound the moment that the Aura of Dawn reaches out... and SLAMS against its chest in a very different way. Yet, its A.T. field suddenly bursts to life. Its wings flare with bright glimmering light, multiple hexagons cast across eachother rippling along them, only for them to suddenly shatter - in order to erect a greater barrier right at its chest, and right near Eisen.

As a rainbow of lights pulses down from beneath Eisen, and the Sync rating suddenly goes haywire! There's a pressure right up against Eisen's heart as the Carestia grips for its chest at the same time the pilot does. A golden glow trying to eminate from within Carestia, as that A.T. field grows and tenses. As Eisen grits his teeth and the words of Mikoto reach Eisen through Carestia itself.

The youth is gritting his teeth in response. His heart beating faster. "Reject... we reject..." Eisen begins to pant, while the Carestia is forced to release Goldymarg from the sheer pressure. It stumbles back, crushing a nearby car, and causing the car alarm of another one behind it to immediately go off. Its massive tail sweeping through the street, tearing along the side of one of the buildings of 'sleepy' Tsutsujidai.

<"WE REJECT!"> As a spark of light flows, and the A.T field suddenly grows twice the size of the Carestia, before it seems to push something away that defies sight! Eisen's heart beating faster now. "Carestia!" He speaks to a being that does not truly answer him. Not in words. But the sensations that flow into him through the LCL, through his synchronization with this devil-giant tells him enough. It is against that massive A.T. field that Goldymarg's terrible beam strikes!

A searing beam of light strikes, and then TEARS UP into the skies above! Alarms burst to life within the machine, as the A.T. field is strained to its limits within the time of a second. The shattering of the barrier as it is ripped to shreds by the sheer intense power of Zero-Zero-Zero's energy. Eisen pushes forward in his seat, but the sheer force of it envelops the entirety of the Evangelion. Parts of its body melting apart. Its wings turning into connected pieces of slag!

Its right arm slowly moving forward as Eisen reaches deep within. Deep inside, trying to keep going! Not for himself. Not for some kind of coolness factor. Not because he is made to fight angels or Kaiju. But for something outside of him for once in his life! Something beyond...

<"My friends aren't so weak..."> He strains to get out, as pain flares across his body. The LCL searing across his entire body. A small rip tearing across a part of his plugsuit. <"~ that they need this kind of 'safety'! They don't even know they need to fight!"> Reach inside. Reach deeper. Reject them! Reject this damage! No... that's not right. This is not a rejection!

This is pushing back with what is inside! <"So I --- will fight --- for them!"> As the light pillar's force comes to an end, the Carestia brings its arms out, shattering the last particles of the intense force apart. Its left jaw molten. Its armor seared and torn apart. The Carestia retreats just a moment, not to get away from Goldymarg, but so Eisen can re-establish his connection with Alloy. Glancing aside to the Null-Sigma as its tendrils rush through the building and seek out their opponent. To let her know he's still there.

~"Alloy, don't let it get to you. You're still here. Your Evangelion will protect you. Trust Null-Sigma."~ He pauses, as he grimaces and looks forward. ~"And otherwise, just trust in me."~ The man who stands there, Carestia severely damaged. ~"And trust in Koji Kabuto and Domon Kasshu. You are surrouned by great warriors this day."~ They've not gone unnoticed by Eisen.

Then, the Carestia points forward. <"Do you have any idea how annoying it is NOT to have Langley around yelling at people and keeping them in check?"> He's still on this, but he realizes he's just ranting. That he's speaking from this angry place in his heart that hasn't been allowed to properly speak out. <"And without that Kaiju-Scientist around, who can I trust to actually give a second opinion that has any value? Instead you have them here doing what?"> Indignation drives him. Just as it drove him to strike against Yuta Hibiki that one day. That physical pain brought on my Goldymarg's blazing pillar of light refusing to let him come down from that high. Yet...

Yet.

   I am not here to win.

        I am here to make sure Shinji wins.

            I am here to make sure my friends get home.

Another combattant takes the stage. He's not familiar with the machine, but he is more concerned as he suddenly hears Qivi say she's sorry as she backs off. Instinctively, in that moment, he replies to Qivi; ~"Don't be. If fighting is too hard right now, let us handle it. You did good."~

Hearing Domon Kasshu ask for a distraction, he nods within his machine. Carestia nods in that moment as well, and storms forward.

Broken. Torn, the Carestia keeps coming forward. Life breathing through a broken being. A broken machine. Its wings useless, but its turbine still functions thanks to human engineering! Ramping up, it lunges at Goldymarg once more. Trying to grab at his head now that he's out of his tank form. Trying to grab, springing over him. There is no technique called out. There is just ruthless will in that moment. The breathing green glow of the Evangelion speaking of something far darker than that Emerald-Green Courage.

Reaching. Grabbing hold, to try and rest his head with those progressive claws, and to grab one of his arms with the other. ~"Alloy! Help me restrain him!"~ 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Oppression!

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Gridman isn't here, and Akane didn't ask, and for this reason Anti cannot become himself. He has never been in control of himself.

        Akane made a kaiju like herself.

        But even when Gridman appears, now, he cannot become himself, all trapped in his flesh and his veins and his beating, pulsing heart. Akane's rejection is a rejection of his self; that he lives at all may well be an oversight. He feels keenly the lack. More keenly, to look up at Powered Zenon and see the empty space where Gridman should be.

        Not so long ago, Gridman appeared, in Frontier, when humans cried out for aid.

        Anti knows why the alarms haven't gone off, though he doesn't pause to tell Liam. But it's why he screams so ferociously, and why he's screaming for one girl alone. Aside from all the dreamers Akane has collected...

        ... Anti came here for the girl giving up, one thread at a time, one slip at a time, one orchestrated failure and one push at a time.

        He looks up, though, to one of the machines engaging Bujack. He recognises his name, booming out so loudly. He knows his voice is too quiet to reliably carry, all his contents under pressure. Perhaps Lucine's cameras on her borrowed machine will catch his sharp, deliberate nod, regardless.

        He leaps for Bujack, again; this time a flex of its claw knocks his circular saw clear from his hands, falling too, too far to bounce and scatter. (It may well be too small for anyone to notice it's gone, when Anti stops thinking about it.) It's that same twitch of its massive existence which sends Anti crashing aside, off into a construction site.

        There is a plume of smoke.

        Anti pulls himself from the wreckage, and springs out -- sees Liam on the approach, and lands beside him, again.

        "If you don't like it," he says, to Liam, scowling deeply, "do something."

        He pulls his hand back -- and grasps a katana in his hands, when it enters Liam's field of view again.

        "'Lucine' is here, too. For you." He looks up, to the Alto, and then his attention falls on Bujack again.

        "Me... I won't give up."

        And he leaps, again, with too much power in his tiny body, though it's not nearly enough strength to pierce Bujack, even with a borrowed blade.

        "I WON'T GIVE UP!" He screams, again --

        And perhaps someone like Jana might be able to hear his defiance, even as his words are so small on the wind, because his heart's screaming just the same.

        Don't you dare give up.

<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.


The AT Field flickers without an obvious attack, and Shinji straightens, alert. Screens pop up in the entry plug in glitched warnigns Shinji does not quite understand before an impulsive flood of dread hits him. So plagued by this is Shinji's mind that it's difficult tell that any outside assault could be taking place. Asuka just wants to be safe. Everyone just wants to be safe. NERV won't make anyone safe.

...The truth is, there's no such thing as safe. And the people who were supposed to protect them won't, no matter how much Shinji cries and begs. A strange, warm feeling counterattacks it. Someone needs his help. Shinji needs to be worthy of giving help.

And Shinji is, for better or worse, no stranger to fighting with his morale scraping against the floor. He's not brave, he thinks. He's not determined. He's just... trapped from any other option.

Lucine lends her support too, and Shinji nods firmly on reflex, even if his screen isn't sent to anyone's display. "<Right. We'll get them.>"

Unit-01 barrels forward. Bujack bodyslams a building, weakened, flailing. But still holding their friends captive. Energy spews out, a bolt of lightning cleaving into Unit-01's shoulder. Shinji bites on a wince, Unit-01's dropping limp, sword and all.

Max tells him to retreat, but... "<I'm not running away!>" It's a dangerous delcaration of a child stubbornly on a mission, set in his self-given purpose. Should the battle take a turn where he should... he won't.

Not while Alloy and Eisen are fighting so hard, too. Not while Asuka -- and the others -- are still in the clutches of a dream.

Undeterred, no hesitation, the second pylon breathes smoke and Unit-01's other arm grabs a prog knife to drive and twist it into Bujack's neck, trying as much to attack as pin it still and cease its more erratic attacks.

Nerves alight, the smallest flicker on the battlefield grabs Shinji's attention. This is a boy who once stopped everything to protect two civilians who would later become his friends. He zooms in, not wanting to take the risk of missing something else like that. Of hurting someone's little sister -- or anything else -- ever again, if he can prevent it.

Shinji stares. He sees the clips. His whole face comes alive in an uncertain hope. "Asuka?!"

KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Akane Shinjo with Progressive Knife Twist!
KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Shinji Ikari's Progressive Knife Twist, taking 5400 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Shinji Ikari's You Can (Not) Advance activates, causing Nullify!
KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Akane Shinjo!

<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Utsugi has posed.



        As Akane glances to her, Mikoto pauses. "Shinjo-san... I can't. This world won't exist by the time of your graduation. Nothing in this universe will." She looks deeply sad, but determined. "That's why this place to be protected. A place that makes it okay for people not to fight."

        Her communicator beeps. "...I'll be right back, Shinjo-san." She steps through the newly formed ES Door, onto the bridge of the Tsukiyomi. She sits at her seat.

        "Utsugi, everything's clear! Launch it!"

        The Tsukiyomi emerges from an ES door as Mikoto slides in her chair. "Goldion Hammer Assist Device J9! EMISSION!" She *slams* the launch button with all the force she can muster. The tracks on the Tsukiyomi haul something towards thef front of the Mirror Catapult launching the mirror coated object on a direct route to Goldymarg. Her chair slides forward again, and she pulls out her swipecard as the monitor changers.

        "SAFETY DEVICE-" She drives the card through the reader as though she was slicing through an enemy, with all the same force and ferociousness. This is her job, and she won't half ass it.

        "RELIEVE!" 

KTS: Domon Kasshu targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Pass!

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Koji turns the flat of the Ichinana's blade towards the beam fire, gritting his teeth as alarms blare from the barrage of Ruin Apostle energy. "C'mon, Ichinana, hold out, hold out..."

He wishes he had something as tough as Z to make this battle more of an even match - a true Mazinger that could take the battle for justice anywhere the Castle of Iron needs to stand... but maybe the Evangelions and Domon will be enough, as long as he backs them up.

The gravity wave drags the Ichinana to its knees, Koji fighting at the controls to stop it collapsing in an ungainly heap.

He glances over at the wanzer hesitating in the battle, squinting. He opens another laser line to Sarangay, making sure Qivi can hear him as well as Domon and Goldymarg.

"Of course the world's a mess. Britannia want to run the show at everyone else's expense, the wars with ZAFT and Neo Zeon are getting worse... But even so - that's exactly why we've got to fight for the world we want. Every stumbling step, every gain we claw back, no matter how small... Those are all worth fighting for! I'm not going to settle for some second-best illusion, sitting back and eking out a small existence - I want the Ideal world for everyone, and no matter how impossible it might be, I'm gonna keep fighting for it."

The Mazinger blade is glowing red from holding off Goldymarg's bombardment, its systems are struggling against the Goldion Hammer's gravity wave... And yet the God Gundam stands up. Koji grunts in exertion, hauling back on the yoke and firing the Scrander thrusters for enough force to get the Ichinana back to standing. He tightens the comline so he can speak to Qivi privately.

"Hey. You're the Wanzer battler from Huffman, Qivi, right?" This is a little awkward, they've never met, let alone spoken, but someone needs to reach out to a pilot struggling. What should he even say...?

"I don't know if Akane came to you too, but... however you got here, I'm glad you're fighting with us. Don't give up, okay?"

He returns his attention to Goldymarg. The heating on the Mazinger Blade... It's useful, maybe. But uneven.

He shunts power to the Ichinana's heat sink, just enough to get the chest array to flare with light - and presses the other side of the Mazinger Blade to it, until the sword is no longer red, but a radiant white. 

KTS: Koji Kabuto targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Pass!

<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.

        Anti's nod is noticed, and acknowledged. Lucine smiles, softly. < "We're behind you, Anti." > Literally, yes, but also spiritually. This is his fight too.

        < "Point, I don't care... dollars, they're so fake... >

        The speakers are still on, but still recovering from that initial blast, Lucine hasn't figured it out. It's not even that she's putting on a concert, besides-- her words are too soft, uttered under her breath like a singsong mantra.

        Even as her drive stays dim, it still stays lit, and briefly, it sparks. Come on, stay strong, something(one) says. Someone who needs a hand now, more than ever--

        < "Point, two becomes one...." >

        Lucine feels it. Someone is communicating with them, someone familiar. She can't quite understand it be Rikka's words, but it drives her further.
        
        < "But if it's--" >
        
        The Bujack thrashes around; still on the ground from her earlier aiming, Lucine has the Alto thrust up its guard, absorbing some of the blow, but still throwing it skidding across the the pavement.

        Something begins to break through Lucine's focus. Something that is one of the very reasons Lucine is even here for, in fact: Liam, himself.

        < ".... Liam!" >

        Lucine fires the Alto Flight Type in a straight line towards Liam, trying to cover for him using the Alto's bulk. < "I told you I'd come back.... Please.... be careful. I don't want to lose you." >

        She uses the Module Cannon again and fires a barrage of beams, trying to keep from losing her protective position by Liam. 

KTS: Lucine Azul targets Akane Shinjo with Flight Module Cannon Rapid Fire!
KTS: Akane Shinjo partially guards Lucine Azul's Flight Module Cannon Rapid Fire, taking 3990 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Qivi's Pass, taking 0 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Domon Kasshu's Pass, taking 0 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Koji Kabuto's Pass, taking 0 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to parry Eisen Daiwel's Oppression, taking 3960 damage!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel begins a Formation attack!

<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.


        The voice of Eisen pierces the veil of doubt. It is a small light in the darkness and doubt. Yet it provides a second wind.

                ~"Alloy! Help me restrain him!"~

        "Eisen- I'M HERE!"

        What moments ago was something to overcome, Alloy begins to anchor Null-Sigma as it had done on it's own. But this time, this time it is by choice, and with clear* intent. (It's not that clear, the doubt boils within even as Eisen tries to ground, or anchor her.)

        "Attempting restraint!"

        Thick limbs fly out and attempt to wrap around Goldy like a thick rain forest Boa Constrictor. It's a balance, a dance, demanding parts of her mind that bears the cost of attrition, the longer she is in combat.

        The armor covering the massive body of the Evangelion creaks and cracks with strain. A cacophony of sounds like being in a scrap metal crusher.

        "Hurry Eisen, whatever you have planned... I can't hold this for long."

        She pleads for a next step that might not exist. Teeth clenched and growling through them with effort. If synch rate dropped again at this point... No that was more of the doubt growing. She was here, Eisen told her. Trust Null-Sigma.

        A new window pops up, announcing a pedestrian in the area. Her hands are full of the task at hand, restraining Goldymarg, so she can't dismiss it. THen she sees...

        "Asuka- ASUKA!!!"

        The attempt to hold Goldymarg, she nearly blew it. But seeing Asuka, realizing how much danger she is in, and it was Shinji on comm that confirmed it. Alloy's confidence shines however briefly, and she let's her attempted hold slip. Each tentacle swings at the towering thing. Right hook, left jab, an uppercut and a cross. Alloy pushes herself, and the Eva, trying to put Goldy off balance and take advantage to get a better restraint. She hopes, for success. Did she provide an opening instead? 

KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Alloy Kaas targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Hug From The Abyss!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Alloy Kaas anchors GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, forcing him into close range.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to parry Alloy Kaas's Hug From The Abyss, taking 2697 damage!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Alloy Kaas continues a Formation attack!

<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.

Calibur says he can hear her. But what's more surprising is when Rikka feels something projected back to her from Jana. 'Thank you'. Simple words, but they mean a lot. It means that her feelings are being received. She might not be able to fight with them, still sleeping in the physical world as she is...

...But she can still help, even in some small way. But she'd like to think that's still important. But she's not the only one - is that... Anti? And Asuka, too, even? Will their feelings be able to get through?

She hopes so.

She can see how severe the damage is to Lucine's Alto, though, so this time, she tries to focus on that feeling a little.

"...Hold out just a little longer. You can make it through." Rikka urges. And to everyone... a feeling of trust shines through. "I know you can do this."

...But, in all this, she realises. Akane... she must be here too, somewhere, right? Could she reach out to her, too...?

...Should she...? 

KTS: Rikka Takarada targets Lucine Azul with Sparkle!
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Yuta Hibiki
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Shinji Ikari
KTS: Rikka Takarada has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Jana Cektru

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        Another buzz, another message. Liam stops in the shadow of one of the prefabbed, portable rally rooms. One of the big floodlamps cuts through the fog, illuminating his screen, and Akane's message. Stay away?

        He made a promise. (A thread snaps. She told him she'd protect him, before this, but that was when she was still making kaiju. Before she joined them, briefly, and started that fight in Paris.) Liam's hands twitch and clench, and this time the cellphone--not his, the one Akane gave him--crunches inwards. Polymer and metal and battery break in half with a solid SNAP. Liam flinches, looks down in horror, and drops the pieces of the phone.

        Again, something small and humanoid flies through the air and past the skeletal skyscraper. Again, Anti leaps out, and Liam stares at him, horrified. "Anti, it's going to kill you if you keep this up!"

        Do something? What is he--

        His gaze falls, once again, on the civilian construction robot in its charging cradle. It's a Labor, a Bulldog-variant with optimizations for low-G work in colony interiors. Its hull is white and teal, with warning lights and stripes of safety orange further establishing it as civilian construction equipment. The stock right arm has been swapped out for one with a specialized pile-driver, lightly-built but powerful and precise. It's meant for setting piles in a colony environment, where 'the ground' could be layers of artificial turf and concrete lining the inside of a cylinder wall.

        It's like the pile bunker on the wanzer they 'trained' him on. The one he piloted when he first killed someone.

        "'Lucine is here, too. For you.'

        Bujack lashes out, and the Alto goes flying. Liam's heart leaps into his throat as he hears its pilot's voice. Lucine. Lucine! Why isn't she in the Dianthus?! What happened? What happened because he wasn't there?

        Threads snap, one after another, until Liam's consciousness dangles by a single glistening strand.

        When he needs to move, Liam is almost as fast and agile as Anti. He leaps, his high, low-G arc taking him to the Labor's access ladder. He grabs it with both hands and hauls himself bodily to the hatch, which is still open (Athair would've told its pilot that was not safe). Liam shuts it behind him, clambers into the seat, fastens himself in. He pops open the panel he knows contains the onboard computer, and starts hot-swapping the circuitry.

        He hears the Alto's engines through the hatch. Shinji. (Gridman?) Jana. Lucine. Lucine.

        Liam shuts the panel, and presses the foot pedals while holding 'restart' on the hand controls. The Labor's computer boots up. The sudden, sharp beeping of a moving construction vehicle starts to underscore the sounds of battle.

        BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyDQhl0zVL4&ab_channel=GuilhermePallas

        Under normal operations, Labors can hit maybe twenty kph if used wisely. Liam has jammed both foot pedals to the floor, and the machine sprints towards the kaiju, wobbling back and forth; it's not built to move this fast. "LUCINE!" Liam shouts, over the loudspeaker. "I'm here! We do this together!" The Bulldog dashes past the Alto, using Lucine's covering fire to its advantage. Liam pulls the arm with the pile bunker back, and cocks it with a HISS of pressurized air. A moment later, a sharp BANG splits the air as it rushes forwards, towards Bujack's belly. The Labor jerks forward, but Liam braces and keeps it upright.

        "You STAY AWAY FROM HER, PEISTE--!"

KTS: Liam 7-020 has deployed in Tendus.
KTS: Liam 7-020 has changed loadout.
KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Akane Shinjo with Labor-Spec Piledriver Puncturing Blow!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Liam 7-020's Labor-Spec Piledriver Puncturing Blow, taking 3720 damage!
KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged Akane Shinjo!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Attune Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane turns the corner. The freakout begins setting in in full now. Qivi's not responding to her texts at all. Asuka tells her she doesn't need to worry -- and then sets off a missile launcher. Jana underlines that Akane can't actually trust the forces of the dawn.

And then Mikoto answers her question. Her eyes widen and her heart sinks. ... not even graduation?

She wanted forever! If there isn't -- if forever isn't on the table --

"No you won't. Don't bother coming back," Akane hisses after Mikoto. "Heroes. Uuugh. Unbelievable."

She mumbles to herself, "... note receivable, irretrievable, unachievable..." ... it's not that fun when it cascades that quickly.

For Jana, then:
> Kinda late for it but you were right on this one.
> Big L for me. ... for everyone. Guess that one got away from me!

Yuka goes right back to liking kaiju the way she likes them, and not the way Akane likes them. She receives a short message:
> You're free to think that, I guess.

It's more than Akane means to admit.

For Asuka:
> I guess this is how it's going to be... okay then. Guess I couldn't do enough for you. Is it back to 'Bakami,' then?

Bujack's tactical position worsens -- putting it mildly. The missiles Asuka's set up pound into Akane's kaiju, and it screeches in pain; Zenon's axe isn't far behind on this front, biting hard into Bujack's wing -- setting it up to lose several of the armored 'panels' along its front to the Ichinana's machine gun. The beast's anger gives way to anguish shortly.

Shinji cuts its neck -- and keeps going all the way down to the other wing. Both wing assemblies, damaged as they are, offer little chance that the kaiju will manage to phase through much of anything -- and so Lucine pierces through Bujack with beam after beam, cutting through its midsection.

It sags, traces and wires spilling out of wounds, revealing how hollow it is on the inside.

This time, it's Jana and her Ichinana that faces the meat of Bujack's ire -- lashing out as the truth encroaches, perhaps. Just as before, it's trying to practically shove with lightning; the response to less focal targets is weaker this time, though -- because Liam drives a stake into its belly, turning the lightning into sputtering sparks after the initial barrage.

Akane is sure there's a lot interesting going on in a battle happening all across the city -- but she just stares down at Anti. ... a kaiju would never fight this hard while so helpless. A kaiju would never care this much about someone else's feelings or their pain. A kaiju would never work so hard for the sake of anything but itself, helping someone.

... What, then, is Anti, the kaiju she'd once...

Akane wonders -- just briefly -- why Alexis was so eager to punish him.

Then she doesn't wonder anymore. 

KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Enable Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has disengaged.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Akane Shinjo has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg and Akane Shinjo with Heart.
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Jana Cektru with Dream Lightning Special Trick!
KTS: Rikka Takarada sparkles, reducing Lucine Azul's incoming damage!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi bares her heart, letting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg deal some extra damage!

<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.

"Now see, that's your problem, Kabuto. Fighting to get the best for everyone...I know why. But the damage it causes, we can't sustain that. We can't allow it."

An Escape Window explodes open above Goldy. It's MASSIVE, a hole in the sky big enough for a SHIP to drive through. But that's not what comes out.

A mirror-particle-wrapped bullet fires down toward Tsutsujidai, its feet rupturing the ground it lands on, the Mirror Coating exploding off of it in thick sheets before dissolving into the air in their usual way. What emerges from that shroud is an enormous behemoth in purple-pink, clad with armor like a toga. Its proportions are preposterous, a MASSIVE upper body and comparatively stubby legs. It doesn't have its trademark weapon, but Koji will know it on sight: the kikaiju, Titan G9.

Why doesn't it have its trademark weapon? Well, it's also missing its right hand.

Eisen makes one final attempt to stop Goldy from transforming. Alloy gets in, grasping and coiling. But he roars: "SYSTEM CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE!!!" as the claws dig deep, as the tentacles curl...and there's a PULSE of gravity shockwaves, loosening grasps just enough. Then his ENTIRE HEAD flies off, rocketing away from his body, which fires off in a different direction on Ultra-Technology thrusters. The body folds in half, and from within unfolds an enormous HAND.

BGM: https://youtu.be/P6I9dCB1mqU

The Titan begins to move - lurching, as though it weren't being controlled by the usual internal kikaiju AI. Goldymarg's gravity control is far too refined for such trifles. It thrusts its arm forward, and Goldy attaches to it, screaming, "HAMMER CONNECT!!" in a voice that thunders across the battlefield.

Gold light rushes up the Titan, plating it in gravitational protections.

And then, holding that hammer aloft, Goldymarg's voice roars, "This is the end of the road for you folks! Guess you won't be goin' back to sleep after all, shorty! HAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Gravity Shockwaves ROAR away from the Titan, turning ruined streetwork, walls, plumbing, fences, playgrounds...all of it shattering apart.

All that remains is drifting, floating photons...the whole area turning into light. 

KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Yuta Hibiki with Dream Lightning Burst!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Lucine Azul with Dream Lightning Burst!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Shinji Ikari with Dream Lightning Burst!
KTS: Akane Shinjo targets Liam 7-020 with Dream Lightning Blast!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki fails to evade Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Burst, taking 4185 damage!
KTS: Jana Cektru blocks Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Special Trick, taking 4690 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has been disabled.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has deployed in Zero Marg Titan G9.
KTS: GMX-GH101_Goldymarg has deployed as a Boss for 5 opponents.
KTS: Shinji Ikari successfully evades Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Burst
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi bares her heart, letting Akane Shinjo deal some extra damage!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Heart!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi bares her heart, letting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg deal some extra damage!
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Attune Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: Mikoto Utsugi has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting GMX-GH101 Goldymarg
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg targets Qivi, Koji Kabuto, Domon Kasshu, Eisen Daiwel, and Alloy Kaas with Gravity Shockwave
Aura.
KTS: Qivi fails to Charge.
KTS: Qivi partially guards GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Gravity Shockwave Aura, taking 5460 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Koji Kabuto blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Gravity Shockwave Aura, taking 5040 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Alloy Kaas's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage.
KTS: Alloy Kaas blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Gravity Shockwave Aura, taking 4440 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel blocks GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Gravity Shockwave Aura, taking 4440 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Domon Kasshu
KTS: Domon Kasshu charges into the attack!
KTS: Domon Kasshu partially guards GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Gravity Shockwave Aura, taking 5460 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Brave Spirit activates, causing Sparkle!
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul charges into the attack!
KTS: Lucine Azul successfully avoids Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Burst

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Eisen calls out how it won't be the same without Langley yelling. Shinji calls her name as a question in a hopeful tone, Alloy as an exclamation.

Is it back to Bakami?

Asuka doesn't look at her phone for the past message. Not right now. She's afraid of how she might react, nerves shot and frayed. She picks up another boxy tube full of heavy ordnance. At this distance, noone can see her shaking as she takes aim again, sucking in a deep breath as she steadies herself, and unloads another salvo of rockets right at the Kaiju, tossing it aside, before trying to run back for cover.

She doesn't trust how she feels right now. Only the thinnest thread is left.

And part of her still thinks her purpose is to figure out how to love her. It's an emotional connection she has trouble letting go of, even if it hasn't lasted long. Her happiness was false, she doesn't really want to let go.

Once something is hers, she never wants to give it up. Her doll. Her connections to other people. Her purpose.

Anger floods her, and she's so mixed up right now, finding that angry feeling spiraling out of control.

For now, she tries to direct it at the three Eva pilots at least, by yelling, as if on request. "Hey! How is this not taken care of already!? You three gonna leave me standing here or what!?"

Apparently as foolishly brave as it is to be standing out here right now, even she realizes it would be stupid of her to KEEP standing around out here.

Taking out her phone, she looks at the screen, then draws back her arm like she's going to pitch it away...

... and then thinks better of it and puts it back away.

Is it back to Bakami? Right now... she genuinely doesn't know. She just doesn't want to hurl it all away either, as if this never happened, as if it never mattered. Even if she doesn't know what to do with all of that anger at the moment.

KTS: Asuka Shikinami Langley targets Akane Shinjo with MULS-P Rocket Launcher Barrage!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Asuka Shikinami Langley's MULS-P Rocket Launcher Barrage, taking 3300 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

"... Yeah. What we believe in - you and I - that precept you're all working off, and the world I want to see - they're irreconcilable."

Despite the grim subject matter, Koji grins. "So let's not pretend either of us are gonna just roll over."

And then the mirror coating projectile lands. Koji looks up... and UP. "... Where did you scrape this bastard up from?" He asks, horrified. One hundred metres of Titan G9 - and the Marg Hand attaching to its right arm. That means -

Oh, shit.

A memory resurfaces - many memories, in fact, a singular moment repeated time and again during the Primeval War - Guy Shishioh, yelling with unrestrained fury as GaoGaiGar brings the Goldion Hammer down: 'TRANSFORM INTO LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!'

There's got to be something - anything - he fumbles at the controls, panic overtaking him in a way he hasn't felt in a long, long time.

He brings up the superheated blade again, trying to block the terrible shockwaves threatening to rip his Ichinana - and himself - into discrete photons.

The shaking subsides. Alarms are flashing in his cockpit. Parts of the Ichinana's armour are just gone, obliterated in the Hammer's gravity shockwave.

But it's still standing. He's still breathing.

And there's a ringing in his ears, a surge of adrenaline, a dizzy exhilaration as once more he comes inches close to death. Panting, he opens a channel to the other fighters, speaking almost too fast to make out: "Target the connection point where Goldymarg's attached to Titan G9! Forcibly separate them, it's our best shot!"

And then the panic transmutes into rage; there's no more words or witty banter as the Ichinana launches forwards, Scrander thrusters at full burn, the white-hot sword catching and bursting into flame from the rush of air as Koji charges in. There is only a furious roar, echoing through the broadband transmission.

He launches straight up towards Titan G9 and brings the searing Mazinger Blade around in a two-handed overhead sweep, aiming to cleave straight through Titan G9's elbow joint. 

KTS: Koji Kabuto targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Mazinger Blade Topple Strike!
KTS: Liam 7-020 charges into the attack!
KTS: Liam 7-020 successfully avoids Akane Shinjo's Dream Lightning Blast

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

Asuka. Why did Shinji just call out Asuka's name!?

~"Focus, Alloy! Shinji will manage that side! We can't risk losing our concentration against this foe!"~ He calls out to Unit Sigma's pilot! Whatever he has planned. His plan is to trust. To trust in Domon Kasshu. To believe in the one who destroyed the Devil Gundam.

But when Goldy pushes him and Alloy back, he grits his teeth. The Carestia stumbles, as Goldymarg's head flies off. <"Alloy! A.T. field up! Incoming hammer of light!"> The young man who grew up to the stories of GGG, the Getters, and Mazinger... to him this is something horrifying. To see something like this... this light, which had destroyed so many Kaiju - which had freed so many people being used to supress humanity.

Of course he recognizes the transformation sequence. Of course he can warn. And of course he knows that what comes next will require every ounce of power he's got! The region a bit outside of the city begins to flicker. Power being drained at a rapid speed as Eisen flicks off the limiters.

<"ALLOY! TOGETHER! DEVIL GATE TECHNIQUE - PATTERN A.T. DELTA!"> Eisen calls out, as the Carestia puts a hand out right next to Unit Sigma. And immediately, he erects an A.T. field in front of her, in front of Domon Kasshu. In front of parts of the city as the hammer connects.

Somewhere, Asuka calls out about why this isn't done yet. <"We can't pick up all of the slack when you go missing! We need you in this team!"> Eisen immediately retorts, just before the impact comes. The gravity waves SOAR. And the light sears. Environment eroding. Disappearing. And the A.T. field flares.

Energy rapidly drains. The enormous strain that Carestia is already suffering from only gets worse.

<"FORWARD!"> Yet, amidst all the pain, Eisen moves forth. <"Let's give this man the path he needs."> The young man straining. Pieces burning off of Carestia as the wake of gravity and light sears through the A.T. field. Tearing small holes into it, before they seal again. A part of its left arm being ripped off as Gravity takes hold, contorts it, and TEARS it off. Eisen crying out in pain. Tears coming down his eyes, but he keeps moving forward.

Asuka is back? Something is working. He has to believe this is helping.

He looks back, God Gundam behind them for the moment still, as they reduce the amount of damage coming through - until finally, the Gravity dies down, and the Evangelion remains cooking. Standing there. Waiting for Domon Kasshu...

As a heated burst of breath mists out of the Carestia, ready to follow-up!

<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.

Bujack shrieks in agony, attacked on all sides. If Yuta were here... What would he think? Would he pity this kaiju as it dies? None of the Neon Genesis Junior High Students spare it a thought. It's a kaiju, nothing more. One hurting their kids. Maybe later, the young man will be told about this battle and he can mourn for this piece of Akane's heart.

But now...

Without Gridman, they're not quick enough to dodge Bujack's lightning. Powered Zenon clumsily lurches to one side, only to be hit solidly by the blast. They all cry out, Max bringing his arms up to try and disperse the attack as much as possible, but -- really, they should be taking their own advice. Without Gridman to run out of time and energy, they could theoretically fight until they're destroyed. But who knows what the consequences would be?

"We have to finish this thing off." Vit says, sounding as though he's speaking through grit teeth. His armor is chipped and shattered, barely holding together around Powered Zenon's legs.

Borr, hearing Jana, manages a laugh. "Can't help but agree! Thanks for fighting with us." With a slow movement, Powered Zenon stabs Calibur into the ground, using him to leverage themselves back up onto their feet. "Alright. You got our back, lady? We're gonna give it all we have."

Things aren't going well in the other half of the battle, it seems. The faster this kaiju goes down, the faster they can help out over there.

Calibur, becoming aware of Asuka, makes a worried sound. "There are kids on the battlefield now. Max."

"I see her. Everyone! Angle this final strike away from the young lady!" Max calls, hefting their axe from where it sank into a Tsutsujidai city street. "This is our all!"

Armor creaking, Powered Zenon leaps in front of Asuka, both protecting her and keeping her from getting caught in the backlash of their own attack. Lifting Calibur and twisting him, Powered Zenon brings the axe crashing down with a cataclysmic sound. Shockwaves echo out, destroying yet more of Tsutsujidai, bringing buildings crashing down.

It really was their all. Max's arm snaps off with the strike, still clutching Calibur. One of Vit's legs gives out, and Powered Zenon crashes down to one knee. All they can do now is count on their allies. 

KTS: Yuta Hibiki has activated the Detonate Spirit Command, reducing the Powered Zenon to 1 HP!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki targets Akane Shinjo with Powered Axe Crush!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Yuta Hibiki's Powered Axe Crush, taking 7150 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Telepathic Link activates, causing Insight L1!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Yuta Hibiki's Mediumship activates, causing Nullify!
KTS: Akane Shinjo has been defeated!
KTS: Yuta Hibiki has engaged Akane Shinjo!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has activated the Wall Spirit Command.

<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.


 > So they showed you the truth. What will you do?

This time, it is another voice Jana 'hears'. As she focuses her attention upon Anti, she understands his defiance. 'Don't you dare give up', his every motion says, and Jana nods within the cockpit as she considers. Yes... This is a battle for more than just the captives.

It is a battle for the first captive, too.

 > Can you hear him? His voice is so clear. He does not wish you to give up. And neither do your friends. I hear them even now.

Like Rikka's presence. She trusts in them--Dr. Cektru cannot be the one to let her down. But what's this...?

Jana hears Yuka's shout, and smiles. She does not have long to do so, however--the Bujack, hollow as ever, lashes out. The lightning shoves towards Jana's Ichinana, and the machine protected by the Tector Gear clatters backwards into a building, unable to stands its ground even as Jana is able to reinforce its systems. Barely functioning, certainly it would have failed by now if it had been allowed. And yet...

"Yes," Dr. Cektru says, when Borr talks to her. "I have your back." And she, too, sees Asuka. Asuka...

But they do it. Dr. Cektru sees them strike down the kaiju, and she turns her Ichinana away. "There is one thing left yet in this batle to do..."

Jana's Ichinana ooks to the Titan, and notices that gravitational protection. This technology... She must bring all she brought with her to bear.

The area is turning into light--bt she can add more light to it still.

The Ichinana adjusts its stance, widening its feet and raising its arms into a familiar posture. It looks up with its face towards Goldymarg, and calls upon the light within. A system designed to draw upon the power of heroism itself...

"Imitation Ultraseven Array!" Jana calls as she works the systems, moving it into place, and places her hand on the pad. "Wide...!"

"SHOT!"

White light crashes towards Bujack, barreling through all obstacles, shining into the dark like a beacon. 

KTS: Jana Cektru has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has gained proficiency bonus.
KTS: Jana Cektru has activated the Enable Spirit Command.
KTS: Jana Cektru targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Wide Shot!

<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.

Of all the people who spoke out to her, Qivi was not expecting Eisen to contact her. Her reaction is immediate - and probably not what he expects, given her previous tone.

"I don't need your pity!" Qivi snaps back, suddenly, her face reddening as she shoves herself the rest of the way upright. As the gravity grip slackens slightly, she feels practically bouyant in comparison, and it's not just a physical sensation. It's as if her mind feels less weighed down, too. Seeing Domon doesn't hurt, either. It's inspiring - it's people like him, and Chibodee, that convinced her to join the Shuffle Alliance, no matter what Sayla spoke to her about originally.

But then Koji contacts her.

Qivi hasn't spoken to Koji before, though of course she knows who he is; he's famous. The fact that she *doesn't* know him means more, not less. He has no reason to speak to her that way - no need to speak to her at all, really.

And yet he does.

Koji says to Qivi, entirely without knowing, something she has said before. Not in precisely the same words, but she's expressed the same belief, the same hope. Her breath catches, then comes faster. Her heart pounds.

"But even so - that's exactly why we've got to fight for the world we want. Every stumbling step, every gain we claw back, no matter how small... Those are all worth fighting for!"
"No matter how impossible it might be, I'm gonna keep fighting for it."

"I've got to fight for the world, because if I don't, and everyone else thinks the same way, nobody will. And I gotta try, because it might never be perfect but it can sure as hell be better than it is now!"
"So I'm not going to give up. If there's anything I can do, I gotta try. If I don't, I'll hate myself."
"And anyway, I promised. I don't break promises."

And with that, the last of Bujack's threads give way.

Qivi lets out a sudden roar in her cockpit, wordless. As Goldymarg brings out the hammer, she swerves. That's the most dangerous thing yet, something that can not just kill her but make her as if she's never been - and unlike before, she doesn't try to hide from it. (There's no point, anyway.)

Instead, she drives straight at him. The shockwave blasts into Sarangay, but here she has an advantage; Sarangay is, compared to every other unit fighting Goldymarg, tiny. Gravity does affect it... but it has a lot less weight, and a lot of thrust for its size.

The leaping Sarangay is caught by the shockwave - and kicked upward as Qivi turns the impact into short-lived flight. It takes her longer to get in than she expected, and she comes in from an unusual angle: almost straight up, diving downward with her two-spiked fist weight first even as armour shrapnel is thrown away from Sarangay's torso and exposed legs.

"SARANGAY, COMING IN HOT! I'm not going to give up! Not this time...!"

Qivi aims, as Koji says, at a specific spot: on the arm of Titan G9, where Goldymarg connects to it. She drives into it with all her weight, momentum, and strength, forcefully enough and with enough excess momentum to crack plating on Sarangay's arm from wrist to shoulder on that side from the force of her own impact.

She has not yet considered how to land safely. 

KTS: Qivi has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Qivi has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Qivi has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Qivi has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Qivi has activated the Alert Spirit Command.
KTS: Qivi targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Double Nail Shatter Punch!

<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.


Asuka yells at them.

Any other time, Shinji would be put out. Put down. Scolded and drawing inward. Sometimes, he gets petulant. Sometimes defensive. Today, his face breaks into a broad smile, heard easily in his voice: "<Asuka!>" She fires a rocket launcher at the kaiju. Yes. That feels very Asuka.

Asuka's back.

Once the shot is made, Unit-01 weaves through lightning bursts. Every motion is lumbering and awkward, yet precise and agile, avoiding the worst of the damage and sliding to Asuka. While Powered Zenon defends them, Shinji scrambles to get Asuka access to his entry plug, carefully lowering Unit-01's hand to help.

"I'm -- I'm here! I'm sorry it took so long."

The pick up, or the whole thing in general? Yes. All of it. His smile is self-depricating: a sheepish, embarrassed thing, but still a smile. Fragile, but sincere.

Once Asuka's safely secured within the entry plug, Shinji's attention turns back to Bujack.

"...I'll take care of it," he promises her, and with her right there to see, Shinji pushes all of himself forward, piloting Unit-01's strength into a pointed, devestating thrust into Bujack's body, every one of Shinji's muscles tense and trembling.

Maybe it's worse, knowing she'll see how shaken he really is in here. How average he really is.

All the same, Unit-01 moves forward, and the prog knife plunges. 

KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Trick Spirit Command.
KTS: Shinji Ikari has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Shinji Ikari targets Akane Shinjo with Progressive Knife Drive!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Qivi's Double Nail Shatter Punch, taking 4725 damage!
KTS: Qivi has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: Akane Shinjo fails to react to Shinji Ikari's Progressive Knife Drive, taking 5000 damage!
KTS: Akane Shinjo has been defeated!
KTS: Shinji Ikari has engaged Akane Shinjo!
KTS: Koji Kabuto has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Detonate Spirit Command, reducing the GF04-017NJII God Gundam to 1 HP!
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
KTS: Domon Kasshu has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
KTS: Domon Kasshu targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Bakunetsu Sekiha Tenkyoken!

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

Domon's mind is laser focused on gathering strength, and he only barely notices Goldymarg's transformation and his subsequent attack. Thanking the EVA pilot mentally for the AT Field that shielded some of the attack directed towards the God Gundam. Even so, the damage to the God Gundam is brutal. Plates of armor are eradicated with the advent of the shockwave, with parts of the mobile fighter's internal frame exposed and sparking. Domon grits his teeth as his partner creaks under the strain. Hyper Mode was taxing even normally, and to force the God Gundam to maintain this state was nothing short of torment to the suit.

Hang in there, old friend.

The King of Hearts tilts his head slightly, heeding Koji's instructions to attack at the merging point between the Titan G9 and Goldymarg. Continuing to amass power like a nuclear reactor being purposefully driven to explosive meltdown, Domon witnesses all the attempts made against Goldymarg and all the stops pulled out to allow him to continue amassing power. He curses his slowness, as even one errant second too long could cost someone their life.

With that in mind, he roars and energy flares up from around the God Gundam, a golden aura sending tendrils of energy into the sky, like dragons reaching for the heavens. He continues the mantra from before, focusing his rage into a white-hot point, a weapon to put an end to this fight, or to at least give another the chance to finish what the Shuffle Alliance had started on this day.

"...This hand of mine is burning red! Its loud roar tells me to grasp victory!"

Gathering his hands in front of him, Domon concentrates all of his power within them and his core, the God Gundam mimicking his exact movements via Mobile Trace. "This ends now!" Electricity begins to crackle around the Gundam of Gundams as pieces of rubble around it float into the air, buoyed by the immense power of the King of Heart's fighting spirit.

"The ultimate technique of The School of The Undefeated of The East! Bakunetsu...Sekiha...TENKYOKEN!" Firing off an immense burst of energy, Domon shapes it into a gargantuan fist of flaming energy, aiming it directly at the joint connecting Goldymarg and the Titan G9.

<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.


                ~"Focus, Alloy! Shinji will manage that side! We can't risk losing our concentration against this foe!"~.

        Alouette bearing down so hard with her teeth, it feels like they may break. Then everything else breaks. Light starts to build, and the restraint attempt is for naught. It threatens to overwhelm, to blind her... and her Eva. Eisen breaks through on comms.

                <"Alloy! A.T. field up! Incoming hammer of light!">

        "No- NO!"

        She understands what Eisen called out for, and Alloy has a two step to reset her footing, taking post next to Eisen. Null-Sigma matches Eisen, with four execptions. All arms post before her, pushing with will and *magic. Light meets light as the two Evangelions combine AT-Fields, octagonal shields that shimmer brilliantly in opposition.

        "DEVIL GATE TECHNIQUE - PATTERN A.T. DELTA!"

        The fields pattern plays visibly like stones on a flat watre surface, rippling as it meets force. Alloy puts it all forward, willing, pressing. Null-Sigma stands defiantly in concert with Carestia, providing cover for Domon and God Gundam. Pattern Delta, calls for a followup strike. Fingers with white knuckles as she leans forward in her plug. Tightly gripping and ready, ready to close this down... No don't get ahead, stay here, focus. Alloys effort builds to an angry shout.

        "Mister, you better take your shot!" 

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage.
KTS: Koji Kabuto rattles GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, making his next maneuvers more difficult.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg blocks Koji Kabuto's Mazinger Blade Topple Strike, taking 1110 damage!
KTS: Koji Kabuto has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Jana Cektru's Wide Shot, taking 2610 damage!
KTS: Jana Cektru roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable.

<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.

Bujack is hurt, nearly at its limits... but it isn't stopped. Not yet. Rikka watches as it continues fighting, even after being torn open.

"Everyone...!" Rikka gasps in surprise, as the NGJHS, as Powered Zenon, takes a nasty blow. It seems like they're nearly at their limit, too... but she can't help but be proud of them "...You've done really well."

Her attention turns toward Bujack, watching it. ...She's conflicted for a moment, her expression sad. And then...

"...Thank you. And, I'm sorry it had to turn out this way." Rikka murmurs. A kaiju... probably wouldn't be receptive to her feelings, huh? But this has been a rare opportunity. She can't help but be grateful. She's not sure how much of this will remain, or if she'll even remember it, but connecting to others like this... there's something beautiful to it.

"...Akane... Will I be able to reach you like this someday, too...?" Rikka wonders. 

KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Domon Kasshu's Bakunetsu Sekiha Tenkyoken, taking 8640 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Domon Kasshu's Master Asia's Teachings activates, causing Nullify!

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

Sparks rip across the Carestia. Its armor still melting. Part of the jaw having seared off. Hot glowing metal landing on the ground, making it look like the Evangelion is bleeding from its maw. Some of its horrifying teeth exposed as it lumbers. A faltered step follows as Eisen's A.T. field finally falters. Grabbing at its chest, just as Eisen does the same.

<"Thank you, Alloy. I knew I could count on you and Sigma."> He remarks to the young woman at his side.

In so much pain. His right eye's system isn't damaged, but he can't see clearly through it. But he refuses to take it off. Somewhere, as his consciousness is trying to drift, he hears Qivi's words. She doesn't need his pity. Was it pity he felt?

Yes, it was pity he felt. He saw her as a victim - no matter how foolish that may be. It's why a true hero's words can reach where he cannot. For the same reason he's stood by for this long. Because he doesn't truly know how to connect on that level. He doesn't know what needs to be said. Still, as she snaps back, he grins instinctively. <"Good."> He simply answers Qivi. <"It's cooler when you fight."> The Carestia puts another step forward.

A massive piece of armor crashes down from its chest as the one armed giant remains standing. Every alarm going off within the machine. With a trembling arm, it shifts its hand away from its chest, as a slurry of burnt xeno-biomatter falls to the ground. Bringing its arm towards one of its warped and melted wings...

And Eisen grimaces.

Carestia grimaces.

Pain burns as that hand pulls, tearing... ripping at that metalic wing. Wresting on it and then pulling out a massive piece of it that looks like a warped and twisted spear. Shearing it off and bringing it down. Activating the tip. A violent screetching song eminates from it, as the Progressive Blade at the tip of it begins to buzz. Out of sheer exhaustion, the tip is lowered for a moment, ripping into the ground, sending debris everywhere.

"Looking cool, Qivi." Eisen whispers to himself as the Sarangay dives in for its assault. Tearing its own body apart in the midst of the attack. Koji's Ichinana follows up. Blade striking forward.

<"I'm not... done yet either."> Eisen declares, as the turbine at the back of the Evangelion revs up one more time. Sputtering, bursting. The roar of a jet fighter the size of an Evangelion starting as the one-armed Evangelion points its blade towards Goldymarg amidst Domon Kasshu's assault. Leaning in, one leg trembling forwards. Slamming into the ground. The asphalt is gone, but the Evangelion remains.

<"I WARNED YOU NOT TO STAND IN MY WAY! HELL BLASTING TECHNIQUE!">

The tension forms heated within Carestia's single remaining arm, as it draws it back... his heart aches. It hurts from beating so fast. In his cockpit, he hears warnings go off as the cockpit lowers deeper into the machine. Light flurrying across his body.

From that feeling welling up in his chest. Watching as the Champion bores through, Eisen follows.

<"CODE - ANNIHILATION!">

As the Carestia lowers through its body, shifting a bit sideways. Its left leg sweeping across the clear ground now. No holding back! The turbine causing the machine to spin around its own vertical axis. Driving low, spining once... twice, then releasing the claws from the ground and bursting forward.

<"SEVERING SPEAR!"> As the enormous Evangelion follows after Domon's strike to that connector point - and instead goes for the head of the Kikaiju. The progressive blade seeking that head, attempting to sink in as the machine just goes full brunt forward, and leaves the blade burried within as it touches that one remaining arm to its shoulder...

Flipping across it turning, tearing the blade out from the other side, shifts down and turns its attention towards the heavy Hammer held above...

Guy's ally. He cannot kill him... both because he doubts his skill in that moment, but also because Guy would never forgive him...

So, the blade comes up, reaching towards the transformation link in the hopes of stopping Goldymarg from continueing this battle.

<"GUNG---NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIR!">

And reaches out! 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Code: Annihilation!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has activated the Accel Spirit Command and Has Engaged with GMX-GH101 Goldymarg

<Pose Tracker> Alloy Kaas has posed.


                ~"Focus, Alloy! Shinji will manage that side! We can't risk losing our concentration against this foe!"~.

        Alloy roars from with her plug at the standing (barely?) figure.

        "TRIPLE~ HAY~ MAKER!!"

        Evangelion Null-Sigma rises to height. The hands, come together in an overlapped fist. Then the tentacles, pairing with each other do the same. Alloy charges with her yell, rushing forward.

        The first Haymaker comes from a tentacles pair to the right, and another with the second pair coming left. The last of the combo is the two hardened, armored fists together in a straight blow.

        "Stop messing with ME!"

        Each blow to land, to strike Goldymarg, AT-Field anounce themselves with bright flashes. With all the worry and doubt gone in this action, the AT-Field turns against Goldymarg. Human will, shouting defiantly, putting what little remains into each blow. 

KTS: Alloy Kaas targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Death From The Abyss!

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        Bujack is wounded, if not by Anti's hand. It's not by Anti's hand, but he's still fighting, even though all Bujack has to do is shift at the wrong moment to send him flying. He's all scuffed up, but he's still going.

        Even if a kaiju wouldn't work this hard, it's a good thing he's not just a human. His efforts would get most people killed; his efforts reveal him, implicitly, as something less or more than average.

        He doesn't focus on Goldymarg; he does not care for the dawn. His attention is a single-minded thing, oriented entirely on Bujack, with its bleeding wings.

        (It may well save him.)

        "Akane Shinjo!" He cries, again, as he leaps, and brings his katana down overhead. But even though Bujack is a storm in a teacup, it can't be cleaved so easily.

        He crashes down to earth, and it vibrates through him, through his bones and his red, red blood. He straightens. He turns, to Bujack, again.

        "This is what happens, Akane Shinjo!" Anti yells, into the wind, though he has no radio, no loudspeaker to transmit his words.

        "Prepare yourself!"

        And without a vision into his heart, the way he's trying to steel her for the reality that they won't give up on her either, his aggressive words might even sound like a threat.

        It isn't.

        Not for her, anyway.

        Even so, there's violence to him, as Anti charges Bujack again, again, so tirelessly, without ending.

<Pose Tracker> Mikoto Utsugi has posed.



        Akane lashes out her, and Mikoto flinches. It hurts. It hurts that she couldn't understand, couldn't accept this little happiness. Even a girl with a heart as fragile as this can't accept a happy end... How can she accept anyone else to. Her duty propels her through the ES Door, before she responds.

<<I'm sorry.>>

        "Goldymarg." She's seen enemies turned to light anymore. It's no longer the spectacle it once was. "Shinjo-san has asked us to leave. We'll pull out when you're finished. There's nothing relevant to our goal here now."

        Without Bujack, and with no keys, there really is no reason for them to be here. They had to walk away, and now...

        Now she couldn't even keep that promise to Alouette. Not if she was going to wake up.

<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.

        'Hold out just a little longer. You can make it through.' It's more focused now. Lucine can get a firmer grasp on who is who was encouraging them,

        < ".... Rikka? You're here too?" > It's not the same as a Newtype message, since, otherwise, she'd still be stuck grasping the threads of connection just out of her grasp. < ".... I intend to see this through. With everyone here..." >

        Tsutsujidai... it's their home too.

        Someone's attacking the Bujack nearby. It's... Liam? < "... Hold on, I'll cover for you!" >
        'I'm here! We do this together!'

        < "Liam..." > Tears run down her cheeks, feeling a protective pride. < "Yes, let's do this, Liam!" >

        A bright light, coming from Goldymarg, briefly blinds Lucine, but her instincts kick in, as Bujack's lightning fires.

        The Alto finally sails through the air with a distinctive, almost daredevil ease, as Lucine pushes it to its limits.

        Her heart feels alive, even if she also feels a touch of sadness as the Bujack's last moments come, remembering Akane's expression that day. Seeing the flatted area around her, the pilot feels a crushing sadness. < "... Liam... we're destroying her dream. I don't know what will happen, now." >

        There's still the other half they need to deal with. < "Liam, keep an eye on Anti. I'm going to see what I can do from here for the others." >

        There's not much energy left, unfortunately. But she can still offer support. And she can still shoot. Planting the alto on a flat surface with a clear shot (which is admittedly easier now), Lucine quietly aims.

        Here goes. 

KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
KTS: Lucine Azul targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Flight Module Cannon Rapid Fire!
KTS: [Spirit Defense] GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Silver Puma Spirit activates, and his spirit endures.
KTS: Eisen Daiwel enervates GMX-GH101 Goldymarg, reducing his Morale significantly.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Eisen Daiwel's Code: Annihilation, taking 9000 damage!
KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Eisen Daiwel's Experience This Curse With Me! activates, causing Deject!
KTS: Eisen Daiwel has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Lucine Azul's Flight Module Cannon Rapid Fire, taking 3675 damage!

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        Bujack sags, its clay 'flesh' parting to reveal the wire armature inside. The Labor's cockpit shakes as the kaiju slams into the street, but Liam is--for a moment--not paying attention to the world around them. He's seen those wires before.

        He's standing in front of Akane, surrounded by wires, and he doesn't know if he's Liam the weapon, or the Liam that could have been if Dublin hadn't happened. She's reaching out and shutting his eyes...

        "This is," Liam says. The Labor's loudspeaker is still on. "Asuka! The dream! The kaiju! This is how she did it! Kill it, and we can..."

        Go home? Does Liam even have a home to go back to? Home is gone. The boy who lived in that home is dead. The final thread might as well be made of steel; it holds tight, anchored in place in Liam's psyche.

        But more of the fog slips free, and for the first time in this fight, Liam recognizes the light spilling from the machine aiding Bujack. His eyes go wide with terror as the ES Window opens, and the change happens. "LOOK OUT!"

        Blinding light shines into the Labor's cockpit. The ground shakes violently; Liam instinctively drops the machine onto hands and knees, limbering it up so it can sway. Metal groans around him. When the light dies, one of the Labor's cameras focuses on the street ahead. The Goldion Hammer has done its horrible work; Goldymarg, and the kikaiju he's attached to, have turned a chunk of the city into a crater. There isn't even dust left. Were there people there, asleep? Did they evacuate?

        Liam's hands grip the Labor's controls until they start to creak. For a moment, it feels like he's going to scream, and fly off into space, and Lucine's voice is the one thing keeping him grounded--

        His mother and father stand on the transport's boarding ramp, so close, and yet so far away. "You have to stay here," his father says. "I know the Captain--he'll get you and everyone else to safety. We'll be right behind you, on the next flight."

        "They died to save me," Liam says, tears clouding his eyes. "And now, I'm--I'm this--"

        "<I love you,>" his mother says.

        "<I love you,>" his father says. "<No matter what, we'll always love you.>"

        He remembers the transport lifting off, the second the missiles came raining in for the civilians clustered on the tarmac. He remembers the blooms of flame, and the wash of light as the transport's drives ruptured. He remembers the dull shock he felt as he realized that was the transport his parents boarded, and he never even saw the machine that killed them. The pilot that killed them.

        Tears stream down Liam's face. His body is moving before he even realizes what Vit and Borr and Calibur and Max have done--that they've wounded themselves to kill the kaiju. The Labor reorients itself, and starts sprinting towards the towering form of Titan. It shakes with every step.

        The last thread SNAPS, and Liam's eyes light up with sudden, boiling anger. He cocks the Labor's pile-driver once again, the sharp HISS punctuating the sounds of ongoing battle. As he clears the last few dozen meters, red warning lights appear on the board. Liam ignores them, calmly pushes up a panel, and rips out a power-system governor.

        Electricity arcs down the pile-driver as the battery overloads. Liam roars, letting out eight years worth of pain and rage and grief in a single scream. He drives the Labor's arm towards Titan's calf, and fires; the pile-driver literally erupts, ripping off the machine's entire limb. The pile-driver rockets at Goldymarg's commandeered kikaiju, along with a good ton and a half of shrapnel, and a wave of searing lightning.

KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Detonate Spirit Command, reducing the Tendus to 1 HP!
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets GMX-GH101 Goldymarg with Labor-Spec Piledriver Melee II!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage.
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg fails to react to Liam 7-020's Labor-Spec Piledriver Melee II, taking 2700 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has been defeated!
KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg partially guards Alloy Kaas's Death From The Abyss, taking 6935 damage!
KTS: GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has been defeated!
KTS: Alloy Kaas has engaged GMX-GH101 Goldymarg!

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

"You're barely even a real person right now," Akane hisses back to Mikoto, unsure if she'll hear the words if she says them out loud. "Shut up."

Akane's gaze finally sweeps out over Tsutsujidai -- at least, what she can make out. Off in the distance to the north, there's more fighting, she realizes, but she just doesn't have the heart to try to parse that out visually now.

Zenon and Shinji's Evangelion both come down hard on Bujack; frankly, there's not a chance in hell it would survive that kind of concentrated force. Her kaiju screams its last, as Anti -- small as he is, helpless as he is, a kaiju that isn't -- continues his relentless assault until it falls apart. The world seems to crackle around it -- there's an explosion --

-- it's gone, as if it never was.

She doesn't want this anymore. Does she want anything anymore?

Tsutsujidai has always been a place Akane counted on to numb the pain and fear of the real world. And now...

... she spares a message for Jana, as the threads tying her down to the feelings she'd been spreading snap.

(She is, after all, the first captive -- and her own, as much as Alexis's.)

> My kaiju is gone.
> I'm not doing anything, anymore. Take your friends and go. Take everyone.
> Please. Anyone who didn't wake up... will, soon. And when that happens... make sure they aren't here for what happens next.
> Kaiju only ever ruin people's lives. All it takes is them existing.
If this is what it looks like when Akane Shinjo decides to care about someone other than herself (did she ever really? wasn't this about -- wait, was this about isolating Gridman? About making people understand her? About making them happy? ... among the snapping threads is the one by which her actions made any sense --) then...

... in the end, what she truly needs is loneliness, in all its freedom.

She stares down at Anti, as he tells her that this is what happens. To prepare herself.

Kaiju exist... for what purpose, again?

... She slumps into herself. Thinking about this anymore... this is just too much.

She takes a ragged breath in, as she feels -- something, in the tail end of Bujack's death throes.

... it's not worth it for a kaiju to feel, so Akane lets the whatever-it-was slip away from her. It's... for the best.

<Pose Tracker> Asuka Shikinami Langley has posed.


Powered Zenon descends, and Asuka hastily backpeddles, "HEY! You almost-!" Asuka trails off, stunned as she realizes that wasn't an accident, that Gridman as Powered Zenon was protecting her. She has some mixed feelings about that, but in the end she decides not to yell at him... this time... "... Not half bad." She mutters. Even as Liam calls out to her to kill it, "Yeah TRYING! It's a bit hard on foot with Portable Ordnance!"

Asuka seems to be shocked that Eisen says they need her on this team. A single eyebrow arches, as if trying to figure out if she's being messed with, but in the end, "Wasn't missing. Everyone knew right where I was all along... not like I made it some big secret!" She clucks her tongue, "Tck. If Fifth String had just waited a bit longer to take my Unit-02 then we could already have this settled!"

Asuka leaps onto the palm of Eva-01 with a certain ease, before scrambling up with his assistance to the entry plug. He apologizes. The familiar smell of LCL floods her senses even as it fills her lungs. She takes a breath in the fluid filled environment, the scent of blood. There's something calming about that.

"I'll let it go this time... just don't keep me waiting again in the future!"

That rather implies that she feels there is a future? Remembering that she's in Eva-01, she starts trying to order her thoughts in Japanese so Shinji doesn't have too much mental contamination to deal with.

"Yeah?" She questions him when he says he'll take care of it... before something in her voice softens a touch.

"You better."

She tells Shinji, moments before he plunges that prog knife in.

And that last thread of connection just snaps. It's difficult to keep her composure, the moment everything becomes clear. She was never happy. Never, not even once did Akane make her happy. She was played for the fool. Anger floods in... but also sadness, for its absence.

"... Let's get out of here."

Asuka says, quietly, so angry that she can hardly speak, and yet restraining herself in this moment.

Angry that as much as she wants to clobber her, scream in her face, take every rotten impulse she's ever had and inflict it upon her for what she did to her some part of her... is actually still worried about her...

<Pose Tracker> GMX-GH101 Goldymarg has posed.

Shockwaves of gravity blasting in every direction. But still they persist.

Koji calls the shot immediately: Go for the wrist. But will even that work? Gravity shockwaves are eating at his Ichinana just being there, his sword's edge turning into light as it swings too close.

But he's not counting on the situation with Bujack having deteriorated as far as it did: The blast from the other fight catches the Titan in the chest, sending it staggering backward, one massive step that covers two city blocks. It rights itself. Its eyes don't flash because it is under Goldymarg's control. It rears back, and Goldy starts to GLOW, the hammer's gravity shockwave generator TRULY coming online.

Which is when Domon blasts the arm. Gravity shockwaves scatter some of the power, but it isn't a strictly physical thing and much of it slams into the Titan in full force.

That's the signal the others were waiting for. Sarangay comes in, Qivi roaring her defiance on renewed spirit. If it was comparatively small before it's MINISCULE now, but that doesn't stop her spirit nor her drive, and the Wanzer SLAMS into the wrist unit, fracturing the connection. The gold from the Goldion Hammer starts to flicker across the surface of the Titan, some of its protection faltering.

How exactly Qivi gets to the ground alive is a question she has to figure out on her own time, which will hopefully be in the next, oh, call it ten seconds.

The Goldion Hammer roars down toward Eisen in a parrying move, but he's able to divert much of the attack into the Titan's arm and shoulder, which scathe and burn. Alloy's, likewise, slams into the Titan and sends it staggering, one, two, three hits back.

Lucine's support arrives. Some of the bullets evaporate on the hit, but others pepper through. And then, at the last...

Liam punches it in the ankles. Size wise it's like a gnat biting a titan. But with the other damage accrued, and the raw power dealt otherwise, it's enough that parts start COMING OFF, rather than moving.

"Ah, crap," Goldy grunts. His face blinks in the hammerhead when he speaks. "Shoulda gone for the Titan faster, huh...alright."

"Guess we'll settle this next time. UTSUGI!"

Then the Titan starts *falling up*, Goldymarg still attached to it, as the Hyper Tool Robo exerts his phenomenal gravity control to simply send his machine upward until an ES Window opens for it to disappear into. 

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

The Mazinger Blade barely scars Titan G9's limb and Koji grimaces - but the other fighters have heeded his call, and followed up with a brutal assault that, while it doesn't separate Goldymarg from the vessel of his gravitic destruction, does damage Titan G9 enough that the bright orange robot-beefcake calls it quits. And there's Qivi's Sarangay, close behind him, and not a flying unit.

Koji spins the Ichinana and boosts in as the wanzer starts to drop, on an intercept course. Metal screeches as the two machines collide, the slagged Mazinger Blade tumbling to the asphalt forgotten as the Ichinana grabs onto Sarangay with both hands.

"I gotcha!" Koji grunts, turning the Scrander thrusters to full burn again to buy enough time to land safely. Well. Safely enough, at any rate. The two machines end up in a heap on the tarmac, the Ichinana taking the worst of the fall, left wing splintering apart as it scrapes against the road.

Koji slams the manual release on the pilder cockpit as the motion abates, popping his head out of the Ichinana to look down at Sarangay and call out. "Hey! You okay in there?"

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

Domon emerges from the cockpit of the God Gundam, the two of them raising a triumphant fist into the air as Goldymarg and its hijacked Kikaiju fall to the ground, defeated. Noting the shattered wreckage and suits all around, Domon's face falls back into a grimace. So much destruction and devastation, and how much of it was necessary? Master Asia's dying words and pleas still echoed within his heart. Be a caretaker of the Earth and its nature. Protect its peoples. And yet, here he was, Tsutsujidai now a flaming pile of rubble, rubble he helped crush and pulverize even if it was the only way forward.

Sighing deeply, Domon hears a groan from a distance. Noting the flaming wreckage of a civilian loader machine, Domon rushed over upon hearing another pained groaned. "Hey! Pilot! You okay? Answer me, dammit!" No, no, no. He would not see another life perish on his watch again. "I'm going to get you out of there, stay still and don't shut your eyes, no matter what!"

Hopping onto what was left of the construction machine, Doman begin to pry open the door. Master martial artist and Gundam Fight Champion he may be, but Domon was still only human. The door refused to give, crumpled inwards as it was, buckled from the massive force of its all or nothing strike. Looking around, Domon spotted a pole on the bar, still mostly straight except for the tip. An impromptu crowbar, that works.

Jumping back up, Domon slotted the bar into the door and pried it loose with all his strength. Slowly, surely, even as his arms screamed in protest, the crumpled door began to give as the King of Heart was able to pry it loose and to the side. "Hey, you okay? Hey! Wake up!"

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        There's an explosion, and Anti turns to face it, where he landed. He looks up, at the place Bujack isn't.

        He makes a motion to sheathe his blade, and it is gone. It disappears as his hand passes the far side of himself, that brief moment unobserved.

        He looks up, at Powered Zenon, and pulls out his phone.

        Anti reached out to no one.

        He calls Calibur's number, now.

        "The kaiju is gone now." Anti issues his statement, gruff and sharp, and does not begin with a greeting. "Why hasn't Gridman appeared?"

        Phones are connected to human lives, and that's why it might be striking, the way he uses his to try and reach someone else.

<Pose Tracker> Shinji Ikari has posed.

Shinji's gasping for breath when the battle ends. He hasn't got enough strength in pride to put on a show, even with Asuka there with him. He's not happy when he wins. Only relieved... and relief is a delayed emotion as he simply lets it all being over process.

But it is over, and everything is quiet, and Asuka asks to leave.

Shinji looks toward her in concern. There's a thousand questions, but he won't ask any of them right now, and all the ones flavored after her well being don't seem kind right now. The biggest, most important question is already answered by her being here.

"... Right," he agrees. "Let's go home."

He does not wait before Unit-01 shuffles off of the battlefield, because Asuka told him not to keep her waiting just moments before, and because if it were him, Shinji thinks, he would want to be somewhere quiet and away.

<Pose Tracker> Eisen Daiwel has posed.

The single armed Carestia falls to one knee, using the wretched spear's body to stop itself from ultimately falling fully. Turning quickly, looking for any of the smaller units that might get caught in the gravity wave and erecting a small A.T. field beneath Moldymarg. Eisen is not taking any chances of Qivi or Liam being taken through that E.S. window - even if there is no intent to take them away.

Only for the Evangelion to fall silent, its head tilting down.

A slow green beating light coming from it. Flickering from time to time. As Eisen is hyperventilating a bit within the LCL and trying to get his act back together. Drawing back from the brink within the cockpit. His entire body feels like it's burning up, as the Evangelion remains silent amidst the 'crater plain' that has been created by Goldymarg.

A part of his mind is trying to guard him. Telling him 'these people were not real'. And it's enough to ward off the initial wave of sickness that swells up within his throat.

There are things he wants to say right now. But he doesn't yet know if this had been enough. What's more, that realization of his own weakness is starting to settle in.

The head of Carestia turns, giving Eisen a vision of the stump that had been erased by gravity waves and light. The side where his own arm is currently pins and needles.

Domon is seeing to Liam, and it looks like Koji is seeing to Qivi. Good.

Slowly, the Carestia begins to right itself. Leaning on the broken wing like a walking stick. Pieces of armor falling off of its legs, its tail contorted at the edge like a cat that got it stuck in a door. And quietly, he retreats now.

Eisen has completed what he sought to do. He wishes to say something. But... he doesn't know what to say.

As Asuka said - she had made it clear where she was.

And he never visited any of them. So he did what he could. The only thing he could. And that is fight for them.

And now that the fight is over, the words do not come anymore. And he retreats with a strange feeling of loss in his heart. 

KTS: Eisen Daiwel's Evangelion Unit-Zahllos - Carestia has been disabled.

<Pose Tracker> Jana Cektru has posed.


Jana does not answer Akane's messages immediately. She looks at them, on her screen. That message...

It would be easy, to leave it at that. To allow this girl who has forsaken her humanity to retreat into herself, and simply take the victory. Simply go, and leave her be. What happens 'next'...

Jana looks down, and no one can see the soft expression on her face in the moment. This girl who made such an impression on her...

"She is so young," Jana murmurs to herself, and cannot keep her heart hardened against her. ...No, she chooses not to keep it that way.

 > I will deliver your warning.

But the promise she makes is not that one. The promise she makes is different. It is for her, but to someone else, and she closes her eyes, and reaches out not with electronics, but with her mind and her heart.

We will not give up on her either.

She looks at her screen, then. She watches it a few more moments.
To Akane:
 > Thank you for communicating with me.

Jana looks up at her displays, and considers what it means, that Anti takes that moment. He reached out...

But for now it is Yuka to whom she turns her robot. "I look forward to reading your findings on this kaiju... Dr. Ohta. When they are ready." When 'you' are ready.

And then she looks back to the others...

Perhaps I will make the coffee this time, she communicates to the helpers of Gridman. 

<Pose Tracker> Yuta Hibiki has posed.

Bujack explodes. Powered Zenon watches, then gets back to their feet. It looms over Tsutsujidai, silhouetted against the night sky. In the distance, train-coming barriers raise up from a road, heralded by gentle alarms. Despite missing an arm (and Calibur laying on the ground), the War God is triumphant. Now that the battle is over, the city feels so quiet... For about five seconds.

ring ring...

Calibur's phone, ringing, somehow. Despite everything. Only one person has Calibur's number who could be calling right now, so all four of them know who it is right away. Powered Zenon lumbers over, picking the axe up, 2/3 nosy.

"What do you want?" Calibur asks, his voice ragged. A green light in the base of the axe glows with his every word -- loud enough for all to hear. Anti speaks, and there's only a moment of hesitation. "G--Gridman will not be facing you in battle. There's no need for it. You are a living being who posesses a heart."

With that, Powered Zenon fades into light, vanishing before Anti's eyes.

---

With great effort, blue eyes flicker open.

Max is behind the bar. Vit is on his phone. Borr and Calibur watch anxiously... And there's the smell of hot chocolate in the air.

Why are they looking at him so intently?

Yuta stands, and memories rush back to him. He keeps his head low, hiding his eyes. The atmosphere in here is already too heavy. They don't need to hear about his issues. Something's around Yuta's neck... He blinks, and looks down.

"W--welcome back." Calibur murmurs, a slight smile on his face.

It's a scarf. Bright Gridman-red, hand-knit, and soft. Yuta gently lifts its tails and brushes one against his face. It feels... real. Grounding. His clothes are here, just as they should be. Comfortable... Things he chose on his own.

Yuta raises his head, and smiles. Max is already in front of him, offering a mug of hot chocolate -- one for Rikka, too, when she wakes. Another waits on the counter, should Jana join them. If she wishes to make coffee, she can -- but they'd hardly leave a guest to fend for herself.

"Morning, sleepyheads." Borr says, with a grin.

It takes a second to convince himself that his Primal Acceptor is still on his arm -- Yuta rips his wristband off, just to double check. "Gridman, where's --" Panicked, still unsure what's real --

"Yuta." Comes the Giant's calm voice. "I'm right here."

A little smile from the young man. "Thanks so much, Gridman. I don't know if we could've come back, without you."

Gridman's yellow eyes meet Yuta's evenly. "But there's another. Another human being who must wake from their dream."

"Akane..." Yuta murmurs, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. The mug is warm in his hands. Yuta sits back down on the couch, watching over Rikka gently, waiting for her to wake.

At least, if he has to wake up, he had people waiting for him. If only everyone could be so lucky.

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        The Bulldog sags forward, catching itself on its remaining arm. In the cockpit, Liam smells smoke, and sees red lights through his haze of tears. He can't stop crying. His parents' faces still float in his mind's eye, the way they were mere minutes before they died. It hurts. It hurts in ways he hasn't felt in years. He'd thought BioNet burned that out of him when they remade him, but...

        He still loves them. He still grieves for them.

        But on a more conscious level, he is aware he is in the cockpit of a machine that is on fire, and the last time this happened is fresh in his mind. He unbuckles his seatbelt, turns around, and prepares to open the hatch. Then--

        '--Stay still and don't shut your eyes, no matter what!'

        Liam freezes. He knows that voice, but he's never heard it sound afraid.

        Liam holds perfectly still as Domon Kasshu pries the door off the Bulldog's wrecked hatch. He blinks, once. His face goes pale.

        "You're Domon Kasshu," Liam says. He looks like he's been sobbing, which he has. He's wearing a mismatched cosplay wig and cowled sweater over a Tsutsujidai uniform. But his face, and his build, match that of the contact the Brave Police lost a few weeks ago.

        "Please don't hurt me. Batteries are on fire. Get clear." And with that, the cyborg heaves himself out of his seat, and moves to leap free of the burning Labor.

<Pose Tracker> Qivi has posed.

Qivi did not really consider the 'landing' part. It was either not going to matter, or she'd do what she could when she could.

She tries to right herself with the jetpack, but with the damage on the legs and torso she's not sure she can trust a landing, and it's coming down pretty fast -

But Koji manages to snag it out of the air. She cuts the thrusters to avoid flaring them directly into the Ichinana's face as she tumbled, and so she ends up slamming pretty hard into the Ichinana. Not so hard that Koji can't deal with it, but hard enough he can really feel it and so can she, strapped into her wanzer's piloting seat. Qivi knows what's coming next, and braces as best she can.

Sarangay tumbles out of the Ichinana's grasp after they hit the ground, rolling and trailing shards of armour and one of the control surfaces of the jetpack in a mirror of the Ichinana's lost wing. Qivi lets it come to a complete stop before she says anything, mostly because she's not entirely sure which way is up for quite a few of those moments, and then she needs to catch her breath.

"Been worse," Qivi says, slightly pained. "Been better too. I think the safety bar - caught my ribs. Can't get a good breath without it hurting. But, uh..."

How do you apologize for something like this? Qivi has never been good at apologies at the best of times. "...Thanks. Tell the Evangelions that too. I don't wanna talk to them." And she can talk to Domon herself, given everything.

She doesn't pull out her phone to talk to Akane. No, she sends it straight from Sarangay, so it has a different 'from' field, one she's never seen before, and it might take her some time to figure it out. If she's even reading her phone. But there's a faint memory pushing at her, and if Qivi doesn't get the words out now she doesn't think she ever will.

> I need to go.
> It wasn't all bad while it lasted, though.

<Pose Tracker> Rikka Takarada has posed.

"Kind of...? It's, uh, hard to explain. I'm asleep right now, but... I remembered everything." Rikka explains. She doesn't really know how it works. She just knows that it does, and that it's a feeling she can rely on.

In the end... Bujack is defeated. With it gone... she's probably going to wake up soon, huh...? ...She's going to miss this feeling, a little - that feeling of connection with others. But, it's as she thought... she really couldn't connect with it.

"...Thanks, everyone. See you soon." Rikka says.

...

...Over at the Junk Shop Aya, Rikka begins to stir from where she sits on the couch. She feels... groggy. Her head full of fog. But... the scent of hot chocolate gradually helps draw her into wakefulness.

"...Thanks..." Rikka says, both to Max for the hot chocolate and Gridman, for what he's done. And then, Gridman speaks. Another human being who must wake from their dream...

Rikka's gaze falls and she settles for staring into the hot chocolate for a moment. Akane... A feeling of melancholy washes over her.

...For now, she takes a grateful sip of the beverage. That, at least, can warm her up a little.

<Pose Tracker> Anti has posed.

        "What?!" Anti issues, on the heels of Calibur's voice. His hair catches in the air, flaring with the anger of his jerking head, as he yells into the phone: "You're wrong... I'm a kaiju!!"

        He yells so fiercely, but Powered Zenon disappears, anyway.

        "Rrrgh," Anti growls, as he turns and stalks away. He does not dignify his weariness with any particular attention, the way he has grown so dirtied and battered in his vainglory attempts.

        But -- even as he's walking, Anti gets a sense that they won't give up on her either, an ego-dystonic thought clearly not flavoured like his. And if he's a kaiju... someone like him can only fight, after all.

        Don't look away! He issues, sharply, inside himself. Akane Shinjo is crying out..!

        He's a kaiju. He's a kaiju, who can only destroy. He --

        I can't save her alone, Anti collects his thoughts, as his head bows and his hands grasp tight to fists beside himself.

        He does not go to Junk Shop Aya for aid and comfort, this time.

Beam Coat goes home.

<Pose Tracker> Domon Kasshu has posed.

Domon looks on puzzled at the strangely dressed youth within the cockpit, but his eyes widen upon being informed the batteries were on fire. Leaping free from the construction unit, Domon makes distance from the mechanical corpse and begins sprinting as he begins hearing a high pitched keening sound coming from the unit. One second. Two seconds. Three. Then an explosion sprays dust from behind him as the fires ignite the batteries further and detonate what's left of the Bulldog.

Turning around, Domon scans for the youth and sees them scrambling to make distance as well, though going the other direction from him. Despite his get-up, he looked oddly familiar...the King of Hearts gave a tired grunt and sat down on a piece of upturned roof. Later. For now, it was time to rest.

<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.

When the fight got particularly worked up, and the Titan appeared... Yuka wound up needing to take cover. Well, not necessarily needing it. But deciding she really didn't want to test whether or not she'd get turned into light. She has a lot to explain to people. And... a lot to work on. Her notes are incomplete, but as things stand, she's beginning to put together more details. If any of the others allow for an interview... There's so much she'll be able to glean.

But that part will have to wait. For now, she makes a motion at Jana, when her Ichinana turns in the proper direction. Suggesting they should talk somewhere.

She has things to apologize for, so surely the two doctors can wind up in a friendly location. Even if she plans to show that there really is in fact, something only she can do. That's still something she can do while working with everyone.

She's going to have to stick around Tsutsujidai for a while longer, whatever else is going to be going on. But she'll at least be able to go back and forth. And maintain her real job... She thinks she might like to keep teaching about kaiju biology though, at least part time. The way she is now, she can put her whole heart into it again.

Assuming she doesn't wind up kicked out of town, anyway. But they do have a shortage of good teachers, so... 

<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.


        For a few, surreal heartbeats, Liam leaps through the air next to one of the men he trained to kill. He hits ground beside Domon, and starts to sprint; the older man is moving away, and for that, Liam is quietly, deeply grateful.

        Behind them, the poor, valiant Bulldog gives up the ghost. (It'll be just fine the next morning, when the Venora finish rebuilding.) Liam doesn't stop until he's back in familiar territory, standing in an alley behind a building. He presses his back to the old-fashioned brickwork, and takes a few moments to breathe. The tears start to come again.

        It hurts. It hurts, and he's still scared. But he needs to find Yuta and tell him he's sorry. He needs to find Lucine, and hug her, and cry into her shoulder. He needs to find Kaworu, and tell him what happened, and what he needs to do to help Anti and Akane.

        The first thing he does, though, is reach up and peel off the cosplay wig. Next comes the sweater-vest, which he folds up and tucks beneath his arm, along with the wig.

        Better, he decides.

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Clambering down off the barely-functional wreckage of his Ichinana, Koji smiles as Qivi responds to his callout, nursing a spot just under his own ribcage that is definitely bruising badly. "Yeah, I'm pretty battered up myself. Pain's how we know we're still alive, right?"

On foot now, he surveys the destruction; the crater left behind by the Goldion Hammer, the other machines pushed to their limits by the Ruin Apostle Goldymarg. "Damn." Another hard-fought victory, but it feels bitter. Less triumphant than the desperate defense of Orbit Base did.

In the distance, he watches someone in a Tsutsujidai uniform clamber out of a civilian-spec Labor and run into an alleyway. Is that Liam, maybe? The height's right. He doesn't pursue immediately though, instead heading over to carefully inspect Sarangay. "Think you can get her moving?" 

<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.

        Liam may have been alone for the first time since the fightning started once he got into that alleyway, but it isn't for long.

        Because the Alto is making a landing nearby. Never fear, Liam, for the Newtype has found you instead.

        "Liam!" The cry can be heard as the cockpit of the Alto opens. Lucine spills out, nearly slipping in her haste to land on the asphalt below.

        There's a thick bandage to the side of her forehead, and singed hair, but the look on her face is teary, joyful, painful mess as she tackles the tall pilot with a tight embrace. ".... god, Liam, you... I.... your... the... I felt..."

        Words just fail to make sense, after a while. She'll just stand there and hold him close, stuck there in that moment.

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