2023-05-19: First Gate Open
- Log: First Gate Open
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Alma Stirner, Elisa Kafim, Liam 7-020, Sayla Mass, Shelby Korts, Lucine Azul, Rena Lancaster, Puru-1, Killy Garrett, Banagher Links, Anita Rosetta, Sayaka Yumi, Roux Louka, Athrusa Hsieh, Crossfire Salem, Koji Kabuto, LiSA, Yuka Ohta
- Where: Lagrange Point 1
- Date: 2023-05-19
- Summary: The Kafims engage Ra-Shalom's defenders in a battle for the fate of humanity. Some discover how wounded a dear friend is; others discover how cruel and great both the kaiju and its maker are; still others find that the dancer is no less acidic now she's not in physical danger. Alma can't defeat her former comrades, and she isn't even permitted to die to them. But Emptear's Voidframe resonates with the Psychoframe of the machines she's fighting -- and those present are washed with a terrible understanding of what it means to see the world through Yuliana's eyes. Unfortunately, Yuliana sees the world as she makes it through a regular Newtype's eyes, too, and her mettle shatters. Elisa puts a stop to proceedings after she cries out for help... though she doesn't dismiss the Eclipse Dragon, T'maakva. The defenders destroy it, and save reality from the encroaching Void. For now.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
--------------------------------- | Llyph ot th'ioll | | EMPTEAR | | Y-yth'yollyshy-k... OK | | Ll:o sh'jsth'ianish llkh'ioll | | Tiallth'ou-j llkh'ioth'you | ---------------------------------
"Emptear, get set!"
She rose from the icy sea like a siren or a stalagmite, towering over frozen floe. She rose, and rose, and rose, though gravity weighs so much upon the Earth's soul.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StfdiMu2Axo The Black Mages - KURAYAMINOKUMO
She is a Queen. The Threshold Queen -- EMPTEAR -- who feels the edges of existence, and tears them down with the stars.
And the stars are her backdrop, now. She is black against them, an abyss on emptiness, her edges and sharp points all highlighted in emerald green. A crest -- no, a crown -- across her head. Four eyes, glowing green. A sharp, sharp grin, painted eternal across her maw. She has the appearance of a woman -- of a dancer; sharp decorations at her shoulders, at her hips, long sharp gloves along her arms and stockings to her legs. A barely-glimpsed jaw set into her chest is consumed by the black Void; behind her, two dark serpents form from that nonexistence, crests upon their heads. All her jagged, black edges are woven, beneath, with grey wires and metal cord. Her nails are sharp, but she holds no weapons in her hands. All she bears is a dancer's cloth, a long black scarf draped along her elbows.
It tumbles down, and down, and down. It is not nearly as large as her, and it alone is large enough to wrap up most machines whole. Emptear is a robot standing sixty metres tall; she dwarfs any passing space rocks, floating by in the open space she occupies.
"You have heard our summons," she says, with her voice, unveiled. She speaks as a queen speaks. She is not here as a soldier.
"The call of the Void brings you here... to witness the beginning. The birth of paradise... salvation of all mankind. Safe within the embrace of the Threshold Queen, EMPTEAR, I will not fail you a third time." She sounds so certain, as she invokes her wife in affectionate Zaftran: "You are too late to stop us. The ritual completes. Now, zhenushka!"
What is horrible becomes sharp, now, as all those kaiju who plagued you -- mighty Ivnerre's corruption, Tosivya's entwined and eternal love, the tiny swarm of Protivisny in all their Altos -- are sacrificed, at once, as that empty power drains away from them and above Emptear. (Before they were placed upon the altar, Ivnerre and Tolsivya relentlessly dogged Rena and her friends; the Protivisny swarmed on Lucine. Do they know -- was there intent -- or is it a horrible coincidence? They are dead, now, with no way to ask.) A single Spinatia escapes the devastation; it is different than the others, and it moves to her side, at once.
Space is weak, here, about her.
And it cracks.
What comes will come slowly, laboriously, and Emptear does not wait nor worry. Even as the asteroid field is freed of the torments which harried them, she reaches out, and asks: "Won't you dance with me..?"
Not everyone will; not everyone should. Now the miners have a clear path to freedom, some turn to save them, foremost. Eight York and Lahvi Orlodhari turn around, in their Monster, to call the Ra Mari II closer and get everyone out safely. Ryoko Subaru is one of the Nadesico's shining ace pilots, and surely could have given Emptear a piece of her mind -- but her Aestivalis's batteries are running low, which means it's smarter for her to help cover Eight and Lahvi, on a path which will lead her back towards the Nadesico. She leads a daisy-chain of smaller vessels -- some of the miners followed Shelby's suggestion -- towing them to safety. There are others who may come, to help the people still stranded on 2100 Ra-Shalom, and the people already trying to flee.
Perhaps it is better if they do not catch Emptear's eye. Let us leave them to their efforts, heroic and just. Thanks to them, this will not be a repeat of Metis, days prior. The destruction will not be so absolute.
The dreams -- the dreams will be more difficult to save them from. But that is for tonight, and tomorrow night, and tomorrow; now, they needn't die.
But some -- some will stay, and some will fight. Like Banagher, in the Unicorn, chased here by the Banshee and its mysterious pilot.
<"Yuliana."> Banagher intones, voice grave. <"Yuliana! What have you done?! There are people here -- Naturals! They're terrified! Are they just sacrifices to you?!">
Without instruction, the Unicorn stows her beam sabers, quickly wrenching out her beam magnum and the spare shots she keeps. They've never had to use these before -- thankfully, it's an easy thing to reload.
The gun is leveled at the Emptear's heart. Magenta light begins to gather.
Banagher flicks his radio back to the asteroid. <"This is Bangaher Links again. I'm sorry, we won't be able to escort you. There's something -- bad here. We have to stop it. Please, leave as fast as you can. Get to the Ra Mari II.">
Reality twists and flows around the Unicorns, making Banagher clutch the arms of his pilot's chair to try and stay steady. The beam magnum is ready, but he -- can't shoot. Not yet.
Won't you dance with me..?
Banagher has seen her dance once before.
<"Yuliana! Please, stop! I don't want to fight you! This isn't right!"> He calls, desperately, holding back the power of his Gundam. <"Please stop, please!">
She won't be moved. He knows. But he has to try, if only for the sake of his own soul.
<"Miss Pilot,"> Comes one last hail to the Banshee, with Banagher looking straight into the camera. <"Thank you for helping me so much. I promise, I won't forget. You really need to get out of here now. Yuliana is -- she's my --">
Friend?
<"...she's someone I know. She's really dangerous, especially to Newtypes. I -- don't know what's going to happen. But you don't have to do this. The Unicorn and I can handle it.">
Banagher sits back, letting his helmet shadow his face, trying to hide the way frightened tears gather in his eyes once more.
<"Please don't shoot me down as you go. That's all I ask.">
Magenta light reaches its apex, and Banagher squeezes the trigger.
And that's when the armor plating of the Banshee begins to separate, more of that dim-orange gold shining just a touch brighter as the interlocking plates expand and twist. As the strange comb like horn separates into jagged antler like V-Fins.
The hand of it abruptly slams into the Unicorn roughly, knocking it further away from Emptear. Its limbs sprouting mounted beam sabers, as it hurls itself straight at the towering thing of nightmares.
Despite that effort, the Banshee is too late to stop Banagher from his foolish act.
But it really is a foolish act, after all.
The Beam Magnum is a weapon to destroy towers. It completely vaporises one of those larger space-rocks, not quite large enough to be an asteroid in its own right but certainly large enough to land on, as it pulses towards the Threshold Queen on the measure of milliseconds. It is a harsh, immediate reminder of how many mobile suits have been hollowed through their middles, facing that gun. Here, again, the Beam Magnum blasts for the blackness of Emptear's midsection --
-- and stops.
There is damage visible, on the green-tipped maw in her chest, barely visible against the Void. Where it hit the outskirts of her armour, it damaged her. But the Beam Magnum enters that blackness, and does not emerge from the other side, as it always has with so MANY obstacles. It is elsewhere, now.
It is Hers, now.
And Emptear -- and Yuliana -- laughs, as she reaches out to grasp the Banshee entire, with no care for how those sabers cut. She reaches out and she reaches out, because inside that endless black, there she is: clad in a green normal suit, with jewelled bands about her tentacles and bracelets at her wrists and ankles at her feet, a tiara set upon her head, a scarf about her elbows. Inside the crystal cockpit of Emptear, she moves as Emptear moves, but for the way that what Yuliana grasps is a solid shadow made of foulest magics. It gives her the tactile feedback she needs to operate her robot with such finesse; she grasps that analogue for the Banshee, just as Emptear's regal claws wrap about her midsection.
And she spins her, with a horrible SPARK of green against gold, a deeply unnerving moment which ends in an instant. (Perhaps she blinked.) It is the cruelest way she could throw her away, this echo of the dance, with fluid and flowing movements as she tosses the Banshee back towards those gathered.
If there is any suggestion that the Banshee is not their enemy, here in the shadow of the Threshold Queen, let it be this.
They're all standing on the same side -- and Emptear on the other, dwarfing that Spinatia below her, dwarfed by what crawls from the abyss above.
Her laughter quiets, in the wake of it. A moment of silence, as she looks over them. As she centres herself. All is well.
"Foolish boy," she says, then. Her smile is audible, though the expression on Emptear never changes from that sadist's grin. She looks to him, and sees
the hands, clawing through him, occupying the same conceptual space as teeth which gnash and bite, fingerpads dripping into fangs and fangs and fangs,
the Beam Magnum in his hands, for surely he'd not have dropped it, even with the Banshee's efforts.
She has four eyes, and with them, she sees two realms.
Physical reality is only one option.
"I applaud you for firing on my cockpit without hesitation... but it was futile. I have always stood apart from you. I have always been different. The cracks have grown larger, Banagher... you cannot touch me."
Her vast head turns, to take them in.
"But I should reward your efforts, no? Of course, punishing you is just as futile... you take punishment onto yourself as a desert flower yearns for rain. It's all right," she assures him, all too soothing. "There will be no need to lash your own back, soon. I will put this world to rights. And you will fight me. No... surely you must fight me. Would that we had more time! I could have swayed you all so gently." The worst part is how sincere her remorse sounds. There's no emotional information coming from that machine at all -- indeed, empathic abilities are difficult to use at ALL, around her -- but it's entirely possible she does feel bad. Does that make it worse, or better?
A beat passes. "But each day I delay, more lives are lost. More spirits, shattered. If I succeed here, today, I will sacrifice someone I love as well. Even so, I must take the opportunity... as soon as my Elisa mentioned Emptear, I knew what I had to do, to capitalise on your weariness. I couldn't squander such a chance..." And what might she have decided on, thinking about it, herself? What violence would she have visited, Rita's salvation occupying her mind? She doesn't say. Instead: "It is better if you understand the position from which you fight. Yes," she says, fingers curling as they brush her cheek, "this is a kindness."
A kindness. That's what she calls the way those snakes behind her rise -- the way horrible black beams fire, from their mouths, converging on Liam's Long Dagger. Their abyssal beams scour the machine with the magic of the Void, above and below; in an instant, she disables his machine, as if it were nothing at all. Deliberately, she spares his cockpit -- the magic was angled in such a way that the hatch isn't even impossible to open, though so much of the rest of the machine is slag.
"You are not the only one who delights in taking all burdens upon himself, of course," Yuliana tells Banagher, and her smile is still quite audible. "It's so much easier when someone does it for you, don't you think?" And her face shifts -- by degrees, she doesn't have to turn her head MUCH to regard anyone here, it is a VERY large face -- to regard the smoking Long Dagger. "I suggest you stay out of it," she says, to Liam, and not without sincerity. "Given your episode the other day, you'll probably lose your head... and I would certainly advise you all to consider your own defence, during this performance. Even if it hurts some, it's my responsibility to do this, you see." A brief pause, as those four eyes focus, with glints in their eyes, on the Impermanence Gundam. Athrusa. "... none of you need be so close," she adds, a shade quieter. She knows it's pointless to insist they not fight here, of course -- but for the good Doctor, she'll try, one more time. "You may leave, now. You will not be forsaken. The future will find you."
Even dishonourable as she may be, Yuliana clearly operates on some logic, with her own strange values; her hand gestures, to the Spinatia, beside her. "Leave the transport be, Rusalka," she instructs her, softly. "It has brought no weapons to bear." Cruel as she is, titling Alma that way, she won't have them attack LiSA when she can't defend herself from the start.
A moment later, she shakes her head, and gestures expansively, with those horrible claws. "Place your trust in me. This is for the greater good!"
And she looks up, as space -- as the concept of physical space -- is forced apart. Her voice, in this moment, is rapt. Adoration.
"The Eclipse Dragon, T'maakva... isn't it beautiful?"
KTS: Yuliana Kafim has deployed in Threshold Queen EMPTEAR.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The Spinatia... honestly reminds its pilot of different times. The Amabilis never felt like hers -- there'd always been a rift between her and a machine with even partial psychoframe, even if it wasn't used for funnel management. (More so, now. This pilot has come to regret, bit by bit, exploring the possibility within the human heart.) Certainly the agonizing strain of forcing her way through using the mass-production Nu Gundam's funnel array was miserable. The Titania...
... nostalgic, but nostalgia's a cruel thing. Time only flows forward, washing away everything, bit by bit.
The Spinatia Voidsent -- with its single shield wing binder and heavy armor for a Spinatia -- offers something Alma was denied: a swifter swordarm, with no true connections. It isn't even really Yuliana's or Elisa's gift; it's simply another mobile weapon.
The newness of the Spinatia, that feeling of nothingness, brings something like joy to Alma for the first time in ages; she's really, truly feeling like herself again, really feeling like things have evolved in a manner that will lead to something better. It's been so rare for her to be Yuliana's personal instrument in this matter -- so uncommon to simply be allowed to be an empty thing with rocks in her head that can do no wrong by Yuliana.
She streaks forward, forming up with Yuliana with absolutely no hesitation. "Yuliana..." Already she's choosing targets. Just how much can this thing handle?
... however much it is -- she needs to get the attention of more. For Yulie's sake, the best thing she can do is...
KTS: Alma Stirner has deployed in EXM-E7r Spinatia Voidsent.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Stop. Can you hear it?
The trumpet of sacrifice is sounded, and the weakened space above Emptear becomes more. Power draws towards it. Power, unadulterated by such concerns as time and reality. The space cracks And from it begins to emerge something. It is slow, laborious. First, a claw grips the edge of the crack in space, then another, and another, and another, visions of horrid geometries etched in every speck of skin and scale coming forth. They rend the opening further, further, further
A faint, dark laughter begins to echo through space, a feminine laugh of cruel merriment.
And that rent in spacetime grows and grows and grows, bigger even than Emptear, big enough to blot out the Sun. Indeed, it is very much like that; the green cracks in reality begin to themselves disappear as the Thing that crawls out from them dwarfs the size of the crack. Perhaps never has the opening been so fully engaged. It is time.
Finally, slowly, horribly, the Gate is opened, and a gigantic silhouette is there, in the darkness. A giant of giants, the Eclipse Dragon is true to its name. There is no sinuous beauty to this thing; it is a mass of horror, longsome 180 meters longand broad, huge, possessed of arms and jaws askew. There is no single 'face' but many, and each open to ROAR in the depths of space. Sound, of course, does not travel so well through nothing.
It does not have to. Can you hear it..? The whispers at the forefront of the mind are that roar, the invitations to the abyss.
Its whisker-tentacles wave, writhing in obscenity. There is a certain beauty, if one is mad enough, in this thing. Between tails at odd angles, jaws at strange joints, claws on each of its hundred wingsyes, there is something here.
There is a mosaic of suffering, and the dragon ROARS once again, inaudible except for the whispers, and that feminine laughter grows louder, and louder, and louder. Even now, the cracks in reality behind it begin to splinter and grow. So long as this thing exists, the Void is inescapably Present. The Sacrifice of Sacrifices manifests.
The Eclipse Dragon T'maakva is come. May the world tremble. May the world quake. May the world welcome it.
KTS: Elisa Kafim has deployed in Eclipse Dragon T'maakva.
<Pose Tracker> Banagher Links has posed.
Horror echoes from Banagher as his Beam Magnum fires for what must be the Emptear's cockpit. There's no way he can miss, and there's no way the gun will do anything but obliterate Yuliana in her strange, terrifying machine.
"I'm sorry--" Banagher whispers, as the magenta bolt of light makes contact with the Emptear. But... nothing happens. The Beam Magnum's attack seems to simply vanish into the void, making the young pilot recoil in horror at the wrongness.
<"Banagher Links, Unicorn Gundam!"> He calls out on an open channel. <"Did anyone else just see--agh!">
With terrible concussive force, the Banshee collides with the Unicorn, forcing Banagher away. His head slams back against his pilot's seat, dazing him for a moment. By the time he recovers, the Banshee has already launched herself at the Emptear.
<"Miss Pilot, no, it's not safe--!"> Before he can think the better of it, Banagher urges the Unicorn forward at top speed, chasing after the Banshee. <"You don't know what she can do!">
Yuliana grabs the Banshee, and they dance, terribly, for a few moments. Nausea builds up in his stomach, this close to the Voidframe, but he can't let Yuliana hurt the Banshee's pilot!
Before he can fully catch up, the Banshee is hurled back toward the gathered mobile suits. With a sharp turn, the Unicorn manages to snag her sister machine, pulling the both of them to a halt before they can crash into Banagher's allies.
<"Please, you have to get out of here. She's like poison for Newtypes."> Sweat trickles down the back of Banagher's neck, annoyingly out of reach with his helmet on. <"The last time she was like this -- the sky cracked open, like reality itself was breaking.">
Yuliana addresses him, and Banagher turns his attention back to the Emptear. The Unicorn's cameras zoom in on the shadowy cockpit of the enormous machine, uselessly.
Indeed, the Beam Magnum hangs from one of the Unicorn's hands, the other still braced along the Banshee's back. Yuliana's voice is full of zeal and faith, and it makes Banagher shudder. Everything in him is screaming that he shouldn't be here. The terrifying, empty space taken up by Yuliana's machine... There are far more horrors in store for the young pilot of the Unicorn tonight.
<"I don't want to fight you!"> Banagher cries in response, desperately. <"I-- why are you saying these things? Yuliana, please, you don't have to do this!">
The Emptear's partner invokes the disaster at Metis, and a choking sound comes through the radio before Banagher cuts himself off. It's too fresh in his mind, too similar to the fate of his own home. He can't bear thinking about it, not now.
Perhaps Yuliana answers his distress with her next action, banishing Metis from the Unicorn pilot's mind.
<"LIAM!"> Banagher screams, even as Yuliana continues to taunt him. <"How could -- how could you!">
Liam is alive. Even here, the shockwaves of his death would've reached Banagher's soul. Even so, rage builds in the heart of the Unicorn's pilot. With the Void surrounding him, his connection with the Unicorn is so faint. Anger, grief, fear... The NT-D loops these feelings back into Banagher's heart again and again.
Red motes of light begin to shimmer through the verdant radiance of the Unicorn's psychoframe. It's a danger sign. He might lose himself, he knows that, but-- there's no way he's leaving everyone to face Yuliana like this.
Gently, the Unicorn pulls her hand away from the Banshee. Again, the Beam Magnum is lifted, aimed, charged...
<"Shooting the cockpit is useless."> Banagher broadcasts. <"I'm going to try to take out those snakes.">
Then, a private message, sent solely to the Banshee. <"If you're staying,"> His voice is soft, as magenta light bathes over the sister Gundams. <"I've got your back. Try to stay at range as much as you can. Her powers are stronger the closer you get.">
Once more, magenta light reaches its apex, and Banagher squeezes the trigger.
<Pose Tracker> Puru-1 has posed.
The Banshee, or rather Puru-1 is grasped by the towering Emptear, the sabers offering precision cuts. The shadow within reaches, Emptear follows and moves, it spins the Banshee around, a SPARK. A moment. An intense feeling of dread wafting out between all whom can feel such things.
no fun no fair
why won't you be mine
The orange-gold psycoframe of the Banshee hums, dimly in the dark as it is hurled back, as she is made to dance her tune. The cruelty of dancing with someone named Puru-1 is not lost. Nor is the cruelty of what happens next, even after she's caught anew by its twin. Banagher's pleas for her to leave are ignored, instead her answer directed towards the pilot of Emptear, "That's no kindn-" The comm crackle feels distant, near to muted nothingness as it breaks it up, the voice upon it distorted. "-my target. My miss-" And again, maddeningly, again and again, it is like so little can function RIGHT in this space save that which is WRONG, "-e's mine!"
With what happens next, it is like the Banshee is wailing mutely, howling into the night, yet noone can hear it. Noone can. Last time when in a space of dealing with Yuliana, the machine could only spasm in an apoplectic fit, now, something seems to have changed. It's azure thrusters flare, even if the light is ever so dim here, but then immediately a counterthrust is applied and the mobile suit is like a hound that sensed something else, another threat.
Can she hear it? Is there anything out there? Power is drawn forth, and slowly laboriously The Eclipse Dragon T'maakva appears, and the pilot within is caught within the maddening whispers of nothingness. The sound of torturous breathing over the comms is the only other reaction to this horrid, blasphemous act in this mosaic of suffering.
And then there is a Spinatia. It seems so very small, compared to the rest. In the aftermath of Yuliana's transmissions though, the Banshee looks at it for a prolonged moment. And something cries into the void.
mother mother
i'm here why can't you hear me
why why why why why why why why
The pilot of the Unicorn, or rather, her target offers to watch her back, and his only response is a sharp rebuke, "Save it." Azure lights up again, carving trails in the dim void, as the Banshee wheels around, to its flanks then behind, two mounted sabers lighting up, as it brings both down savagely upon Emptear's left shoulder. "You people, TAUNTING ME!"
KTS: Puru-1 has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has gained proficiency bonus. KTS: Puru-1 targets Yuliana Kafim with Beam Saber Rush! KTS: Puru-1 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Banagher Links: Will Barrier Activates. KTS: Banagher Links targets Yuliana Kafim with Beam Magnum Shot! KTS: Banagher Links has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena Lancaster knew something was terribly, terribly wrong when she first laid eyes on Emptear.
It transcends being -- or maybe it is because she is -- a Newtype. She sees the Threshhold Queen, and there is something terrible familiar about its utterly unfamiliar, four-eyed and glowing green alien form. It is something like the psychoframe, the same one inside of the Gaia Gear, and yet so, so different.
It isn't when the kaiju are sacrificed that she gets scared. She already was when they are given over.
Some people are hurying to save the civilians -- and Banagher moves in, the Emptear towering above them all -- and above the Spinatia. Rena sucks a sharp breath in, as the Eclipse Dragon is called into this world. She looks at the two Unicorns.
"Annie," Rena transmits. "I'm going in. Be careful, okay?"
The Gaia Gear Alpha shoots forward -- thrusters firing even as its limbs fold up and nose cone folds out. With careful, precise movements, Rena makes it tilt slightly so the thrusters always keep it rocketing forward, even as it sweeps into its waverider form.
"BANAGHER!" Rena cries out. "Banshee pilot! We have to stop her!"
Three missiles drop off from the underside of the Gaia Gear Alpha. They explode forward, snaking and twisting; the tips of them flash, superheating and glowing an ugly orange-gold, before they come crashing in for the Emptear.
"Yuliana... what have you done to yourself!?"
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster: Will Barrier Activates. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Yuliana Kafim with Needle Missile Salvo! KTS: Rena Lancaster has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim blocks Puru-1's Beam Saber Rush, taking 1290 damage! KTS: Puru-1 has engaged Yuliana Kafim! KTS: Yuliana Kafim successfully evades Banagher Links's Beam Magnum Shot KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to intercept Rena Lancaster's Needle Missile Salvo, taking 4200 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
Their long journey through the void leads them to a truly horrid sight: looks like Yuliana's got herself a super robot, perhaps a true match for a Mazin. It's not just her, either... the legions also offer a dragon of the eclipse. Two opponents.. two of them. "Looks like we'll have to split up for this one, Koji. After all, we're fighting together even when we're apart!" She declares, confident. "LiSA - get in one of the Mazins! We're not taking any chances even if she's courteous enough not to fire right now."
Liam, on the other hand gets himself into some serious trouble, Yuliana effortlessly busting up his Long Dagger. He's their responsibility right now, so she makes sure he hears it. "Liam! Get out of there - you're in no condition to keep fighting. Link up with the evacuation squads!"
As Sayaka and Aphrodite Areia thrust forward to meet Emptear in challenge, the Artemis wings almost get caught by some stray fire. A mobile suit, covering for Yuliana. She can realize that this pilot isn't like the squads that jumped them on their way here, nor is the machine. "SCARLET BEAM!" Eyes glowing red, Aphrodite Areia fires a ray of photonic energy towards the Voidsent Spinatia, basic, but effective in subduing opponents. "You're one of the void footsoldiers, huh? Let's see if your heart's really in this."
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
For her, leaving the strange cloud of emerald green gas(?) and light(?) feels a little different. It isn't so much that her machine has a hard time crossing the boundary back into normal space, but it feels like her mind is being pulled against; the sickening sweet song of decay and darkness that pulls against her head and her mind and --
-- and the miners. When her sensors come back online and reorient to the return to normal space, her first instinct is to turn slightly and glance back at the group daisy-chained to the Jagd Doga through tow cables; from digging units and petite mobile suits to transports and mining rigs. Words and thoughts resolve again as well; the chaotic Noise in her mind returning to the whispers and words and thoughts of those in normal space, and--
-- and then those thoughts twist and bend and swirl like they're caught up in the force of gravity itself, bending around the epicenter of all of the fury of the void. Shelby's head turns to look and see the Emptear, to see the Thing that is Yuliana and her chaotic unit; her hands tighten on the controls as she accelerates a bit more, puts more of the engine into it and lead the crew along to a safe trajectory away from the zone.
"Go! Follow to these coordinates -- I'll keep you covered!" she calls, the Jagd Doga hefting it's knife-saber and cutting the line.
Twisting in place, the Jagd Doga, bearing the marks of voidflame and pestilence across it's damaged chassis, moves at jet-sprint toward the Emptear. The beam gatling swings around in both scuffed, damaged hands.
<"Temperance, in position!"> Shelby calls out. <"Calling Ra Mari II-- get some base jabbers out here to escort the crew the rest of the way!">
The rifle tucks against the Mobile Suit's side as she strafes the colossal void-beast, chattering bolts of energy flying Yuliana's way!
KTS: Shelby Korts targets Yuliana Kafim with Beam Gatling Gun Barrage! KTS: Shelby Korts has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Sayaka Yumi targets Alma Stirner with Scarlet Beam! KTS: Sayaka Yumi has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
There she is. The Queen. With the stars behind her, darkness as her silhouette, highlighted in that ever familiar green that she's ever chasing...
Athrusa's heart tightens a little. What is this feeling that she feels? She speaks to her, imperiously. They are here to witness the beginning, the birth of paradise... and they are too late. The kaiju that harrangued them before all gather and are absorbed into Emptear.
The Unicorn is already entreating -- and firing a shot towards the darkness -- as the Banshee joins. Athrusa spends a moment to focus on how she feels... is this fear? It is accurate to say fear is in her heart. But what sort of fear is it? She doesn't think she fears being overwhelmed in combat. No, there's a fear that tells her that it's simply too late now, and what doors may have once been open... is nothing but a second-guess, hindsight, always vicious to the psyche.
She is addressed.
"... if I leave now, Yuliana, then what? Here, at this moment of your ascension into this Void..."
Athrusa lowers her head.
"I don't wish to give up on you, but at the same time, I think I know in my heart somewhere that this is closure as well. A closure to what once was, what was too late... I could ruminate on what could have been, but... at the same time..."
The Eclipse Dragon roars. It is a mass of horror, a cluster of faces, whispering its invitation to the abyss.
"... I'm Athrusa Hsieh. But I'm also Hsieh Baihe, your Doctor. And as your doctor, it's my responsibility to see to your care, no matter what the situation has become."
These are grand words, but Athrusa is literally fighting with one arm and an incomplete, broken mobile suit when Yuliana is at her most ascendant. Is this just an empty boast? But... she does not have anything else that will let her exert her will upon the world.
Thus, as it must be, an impermanent desire must pass, too.
The Impermanance Gundam alights on those false GN particles, drawing close to the other attackers. Its four Living Metal Funnels -- the Pinions -- launch in tandem from its left shoulder, coming in close to the Emptear and, anddddddd...
They turn into little pow hammers and start bonking away. Athrusa, you're going to have to figure out how to imagine a real weapon sometime.
KTS: Athrusa Hsieh targets Yuliana Kafim with Pincer - Juhua Formation! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim blocks Shelby Korts's Beam Gatling Gun Barrage, taking 1320 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
They had fought their way through the dragons, forcing their way through the asteroid field into the heart of the matter. Now, they witness the arrival of a Queen, beautiful and terrible, in all her splendor. Anita stares, briefly surprised, and then, she hears a voice.
Yuliana... Anita's grip tightens on the Svipul's controls.
"...'Paradise', huh." She mutters. She doesn't buy it for a second. She buys that she believes it, trusts it, but this... What she's seen has been no paradise. She watches as so much is sacrificed. The dragons that had given them so much trouble on their way here... She doesn't know if they're even capable of feeling, but it's a little sickening to see them just used like that. "...I don't know what you're planning. But we're not gonna let it happen."
So much happens - but it isn't for her to interfere with, because it's the Spinatia that escaped the sacrifice that draws her attention. 'Rusalka'... She knows who that is. She's torn between relief that she wasn't among the sacrifice, and despair that she's here at all.
...However she feels about that, though, it doesn't change what she has to do here. She draws her gatling gun pod and flies in, unleashing a spray in Alma's direction.
"...Sorry we have to meet again like this." Anita says. "Are you... okay with this? These people didn't even do anything."
KTS: Yuliana Kafim successfully evades Athrusa Hsieh's Pincer - Juhua Formation KTS: Anita Rosetta targets Alma Stirner with Gatling Shot! KTS: Anita Rosetta has completed their actions for the round.
KTS: Sayaka Yumi rattles Alma Stirner, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Sayaka Yumi's Scarlet Beam, taking 3600 damage! KTS: Sayaka Yumi begins a Formation attack! KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Anita Rosetta's Gatling Shot, taking 2775 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
It has been... A rough week. The fighting at Metis left a bitter taste in Koji Kabuto's mouth, even despite all the lives they saved; and now, atop that, this crisis at 2100 Ra-Shalom.
Mazinger Z leads the charge to the heart of the Void Singularity, Astro Scrander shining on its back. The Castle of Iron is called to stand in defense of the weak; its pilot's fatigue can wait another day.
He watches the sight, of Yuliana's machine dancing in the void, with the Spinatia piloted by Alma Stirner at its flank - the one they got involved in this mess for, at Leina's behest. "Sayaka - try and get her out of this," he says, before the partner Mazins split apart.
The great Void Dragon manifests, to Yuliana's speech about how this is all for 'a better future', 'the greater good', and how she's going to 'save everyone'... and that fatigue he's been feeling shatters.
"Save it," he spits in a snarl. "The world needs light, not... this. If you're going to call up monsters to spread your 'better future'... then I'm gonna RIP THEM IN HALF! MAZIN POWER! FULL THROTTLE!"
((OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSb4ZMpPi0U ))
Light surges around Mazinger Z against the starkness of the Void, as Koji pulls the Original Mazin's right arm back. "NO HOLDING BACK! ROCKET... PUUUUUUUNCH!!!"
Thrusters fire on that great forearm as Mazinger Z thrusts it forward towards the colossal dragon before it - and it detaches and launches, hand clenching into a terrible fist of devil's justice.
KTS: Koji Kabuto targets Elisa Kafim with Rocket Punch! KTS: Koji Kabuto has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux Louka had remained on the Ra Mari II. It is bad practice to throw all of your force in reserve, and Roux Louka (if she does say so herself) is a potent addition to any force on the scene. She had watched on the screens in the Strike Zeta's cockpit, what little could be seen.
She did not like any of it.
In fact, she hated it.
And sometime around the time when Banagher began to plead with Yuliana, or what had been Yuliana, Roux said to herself, "You know all those times you" (the royal you; she's speaking to herself) "didn't punch someone, Roux...?"
She clicks on the flight control signal. "I'm getting on the catapult. Launch me as soon as you can," Roux concludes, and a few tight heartbeats later --
"Roux Louka, launching!"
-- there she is.
And there THEY are. There is chaos out there, and madness. The form of Emptear. And near it, in relation to it, the Eclipse Dragon. The Strike Zeta's cockpit cameras struggle to resolve it. It is like nothing in the database and so they have to do direct feed; it is probably good for Roux that the first rendering pass gives her more of a general SHAPE, something that seems contorted and organic as the Anaheim-built computational environment tests, renders, compares, and tests again. The electronics may be heedless of what is coming.
But she gets the idea pretty quick. Yes: Pretty quick indeed.
Something crawls up the back of Roux's spine and she pushes forwards. A quick glance at indicators around the HUD parameter for the Thing, for the Eclipse Dragon, and Roux detects-- the signals are strange, the estimates varigating constantly. She isn't even sure of its velocity. But it's not putting out Minovsky particle, and so the very first thing Roux does about the dragon is shoot a missile at it.
The second thing Roux does as the blunt-headed anti-MS missile streaks towards its target, guided only by terminal optical homing, is say "What in the HELL is THAT thing!?" And the next, the very next, is -- "Banagher! I'm out here!" A cry of -- support? Encouragement? Roux herself is not sure.
Somehow, she had hoped it would just be something like a Kikaiju.
KTS: Roux Louka targets Elisa Kafim with Standoff Missile! KTS: Roux Louka has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
Anger pounds still in Lucine's head as the party she's a part of faces the Emptear, with all the majesty of the void around it. She holds onto it like a life preserver in a churning ocean, letting it buffet her upwards the rising tide of oblivion.
The bigger they are, the easier it is for Lucine to fall into that natural high that curls her lips and shines in her eyes. It's the sort of detritus that could lead to the gate of hubris, but, just as easily, could goad the pilot into facing the void for a little longer than she normally could. < ".... You helped entrap your childhood friend because you were caught up in a deal with Luio & Co. It doesn't matter what trappings you have on-- you're as human as any of us are, Yuliana!" >
However, Lucine's life and connections do not occur in a vaccuum; the charismatic zeal of a cowboy doesn't play well when you have so much to lose.
< "LIAM!" > Now it's Lucine's turn to scream his name. The Dianthus breaks away from her formation with Koji, Sayaka, and LiSA. As an afterthought, she radios back to Koji, Sayaka, and LiSA: < "He's still alive. I'll see if I can get Liam to safety-- keep going!" >
Spraying cover fire at the roaring dragon that has just manifested like it was simply a hazard she had to keep at bay, the Dianthus hovers near the dismantled cockpit protectively. < "Liam... I'll think of something-- Maybe you can fit inside the Dianthus, or..." > Sure, Liam can, but having him come into the cockpit in the middle of space? < "Maybe I can somehow hook you onto the Dianthus..." > It would make her a sitting duck in a warzone.
But she's not leaving Liam's side without a good reason; she won't lose him again.
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Elisa Kafim with Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Shot! KTS: Lucine Azul has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Crossfire Salem has posed.
Crossfire Salem, in the Amabilis, approaches with the others, having made great time. She watches Yuliana and her Emptear in horror. Banagher doesn't deserve this. The Banshee doesn't deserve this. In her cockpit, all she can do is...
"Yuliana...YULIANA!" She shouts in her cockpit, only for her to hear, trying not to work up a berserker rage. She sends Sayla Mass a message, an answer to her question, to ground herself.
<<"Because this machine has a spark of hope in it. I think it can do good things. Stabilize me. That's why.">>
And then, she's target-locked. She eyes her opponent. A sinking feeling. No, a damning feeling.
Alma.
Crossfire knows she'll recognize the robot, but doubts she'll recognize her. It was repurposed by the Federation, after all. She makes sure her voice modulator is on, and then...
<<"Pilot, don't throw your life away.">>
Directed at Alma, before she suddenly rushes forward at full-speed, thrusters at tmax, moving to smash the Amabilis's shield straight into the Spinatia Voidsent to close the gap.
KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to evade Koji Kabuto's Rocket Punch, taking 4320 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim blocks Roux Louka's Standoff Missile, taking 1750 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim blocks Lucine Azul's Argen-21 Beam Arbalest Shot, taking 1450 damage! KTS: Crossfire Salem targets Alma Stirner with Amabilis Shield Bash! KTS: Crossfire Salem has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Killy Garrett has deployed in Me-02R Messer 'Killer Harpy Mk II'. KTS: Alma Stirner partially guards Crossfire Salem's Amabilis Shield Bash, taking 1440 damage! KTS: Crossfire Salem has engaged Alma Stirner!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The Void yawns wide, a ragged, bleeding hole in the fabric of spacetime. A bottomless abyss that swallows light, hope, and bonds, and shines forth obscene radiance.
SHE HUNGERS. And whatever her intent might be, there is no doubt in Liam's mind that it holds only endless terror.
Liam's ad-hoc squad--himself, Koji, Lucine, Sayaka, LiSA--made it through the Void's minions largely physically unscathed. His Long Dagger is down an e-cap, and it's sustained mild spalling damage from the Protivisny in their Altos, but it's still fight-capable. Its thrusters roar behind it, pushing it towards that great crack in space...
And towards that horrible, alien signal that the sensors can't make heads or tails of. Visually, Liam recognizes the shell of a machine of tremendous stature, stylized to its pilot's aesthetics, like Mazinger Z or Aphrodite Areia. Even before Yuliana issues her decree, Liam knows who's in the pilot's seat. His chest tightens. His throat joins it as Yuliana speaks--not as a soldier, or a covert operative, or even a human weapon--but as a queen, as glorious and terrible as the Void she channels. Liam's head spins. Is this Elisa's doing? Was Yuliana hiding this the entire time? Is she even in control of herself?
'You are too late to stop us. The ritual completes. Now, zhenushka!'
"YULIANA, STOP! PLEASE!" It's a desperate, horrified plea. It does nothing to stop her from siphoning the remains of the kaiju--all of them, great and small--to CRACK REALITY OPEN, to start the summoning.
Banagher tries to stop them. "BANAGHER!" Liam roars, and he floors the accelerator. The Long Dagger's shield slots into place on its forearm. The spent e-cap ejects from the base of its beam saber, replaced with a fresh one. The Banshee's helping, Liam realizes, and for a second, he feels hope.
It's dashed in a few heartbeats. Desperate rage replaces it. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Liam jets forward, and in doing so, walks right into Yuliana's trap. Was there even a trap? Or was it spur-of-the-moment? Calculated cruelty, or impulsive? It's so hard to tell with her, sometimes. The serpents' sorcery comes at him from above and below, the only warning a lashing of space, and an anomalous spatial alert a half-second too late. The Long Dagger's Fortestra is engineered to withstand focused fire, but the eldritch energy MELTS through it, decapitating the Mobile Suit and continuing downward to shear off its sword arm. The lower beam sweeps across its knees, burning through the joints. Alarms howl in Liam's cockpit--critical damage. Retreat immediately.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
'"I suggest you stay out of it.'
It's the sincerity--the fact that Yuliana isn't wholly wrong--that hurts the most. It's salt in the wounds she just inflicted.
'Given your episode the other day, you'll probably lose your head...'
Liam is left to tumble, helplessly, as the summoning completes. He's fought Ivnerre before, but that could not prepare him for the monstrosity forcing its way into reality. It blots out the stars. It blots out the sun. There is no sense to its body, beyond it being made of parts of the sacrifices. Terror clutches at Liam's heart. There is a very small chance Yuliana will ignore him, even spare him, but what then, is he supposed to just sit back and cower while the women who tormented him and Lucine--
'Liam! Get out of there - you're in no condition to keep fighting. Link up with the evacuation squads!'
Sayaka's right, isn't she? He can't do this. (He has to do this.) How is he supposed to--
Your bonds will guide the way. You should trust in her, and the way you feel about her, and in anyone else who makes you feel that way.
Kaworu's words come back to him. Liam puts his hand to his chest, and he can feel the Connemara marble pendant beneath his suit.
Liam is ragged and raw and weary, but his heart is saying something clear and true, instead of being torn every which way. The Ra Mari II is right there, and with it, his new weapon. All he has to do is get it.
"Lu," Liam transmits, to the Dianthus. "Cover me. Going to do something reckless."
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
BGM: Masayoshi Soken - Final Fantasy IV - Thunderer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UbDk2NQsSs&ab_channel=dudewhereismyspoon
The battered Long Dagger opens a second transmission. <"Liam to Ra Mari II hangar control."> The supersoldier's tone is as tight and dangerous as garrote wire. <"Transmitting code a seacht dash fiche, liath.">
<"Code received and acknowledged, Liam.>" The voice on the other end is one of the Ra Mari II's hangar techs--a cross-trainer from the Eternal. <"It's ready. Give them hell.">
For the second time in a week, the Ra Mari II is a beacon of safety for people fleeing catastrophe. It shields the miners' craft with its bulk, welcomes their mining suits and transports into its cavernous hangars. But now, something streaks out from it, a silvery object that's moving so, so fast. It matches course and speed with Liam's stricken Long Dagger as it tumbles through the void. Liam sees it on the sensors, and starts to brake, using his few functional thrusters to stabilize his flight. The silver streak follows.
Liam reaches out, and turns on the Mobile Suit's salvage beacon. He unstraps himself, floats upward to the overhead emergency locker, and pulls out the EVA rig. It snaps into place over his normal suit; a display ignites on his visor, showing fuel and oxygen remaining. Thus equipped, he drifts to the cockpit hatch, and pulls it open. The cockpit pressure zeroes immediately. Liam kicks off the side of the hatch. The jets of the EVA rig ignite a moment later, directing him towards the slowing silver streak.
It's a second Mobile Suit.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
There is no escape from the horror of the void this day, no matter how hard she tried. Sayla's sense of the world, of other people in this space, is taken from her. In many ways, she is half blinded, half deafened, half numbed.
And the half of her that can still hear, see and feel can nonetheless not think. Not in here.
The four eyes in the stars appear with the snuffing out of the lights of so many lives. It's... horrifying.
Not since before the One Year War has she seen so many lives lost... And felt nothing but the violent ache of her own heart. But it's a horror so deep she can barely speak. The horror that is the Emptear fills her heart with a dread she can't put words to.
But there are still those here she came with. Her own hand was a Heart and the Temperance. The flop gave them another heart club and two hearts. The turn and the river are not hers to play, but she'll take their support anyway.
So who is the one with the wildcard that is the Banshee in their hand?
She hits the comms on the exhausted, partially armed Masquelion. No modulator. That's fine. She came here as Sayla, not the two of hearts.
"Sayla Mass, Masquelion, deploying! Banagher, Shelby, Athrusa, I'm your support!" Her voice as shaking, even as she steels her spine. "Pilot Lancaster, I'll be with you as well."
The dual railguns mountted on the Masquelion's shoulders, and they unload everything at the giant that is the Emptear, all Sayla has to bear. To draw her attention.
As Battle commences... Another mesage comes through. Fine then,
"<<Then don't you dare lose it,>>" Sayla says, in the tightbeam to crossfire. "<<It belongs to a friend of mine. She'll want it back some day.>>"
KTS: Sayla Mass has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Crossfire Salem
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam maneuvers around the machine to the hatch. It slides open without prompting, thanks to the autopilot's directions; Liam hauls himself inside, pulling the EVA rig free as soon as the hatch seals behind him. He jams it into the rear storage locker, hauls himself into the pilot's seat, and straps in. It doesn't even have to adjust to his height and mass. Text glows on the screen before him:
ZGMF-575-F CGUE II-L Liath Macha
OS: Green
Main Reactor: Green
STRIKER Hookup: Green
STRIKER Reactor: Green
Phase Shift Armor: Green
Liam's hands rest on the sticks. "The noble Grey rides," he says, in Irish, and Liath Macha comes to full, vibrant life at his command.
The Mobile Suit flashes the Dianthus the 'OK' signal with a hand. It is unquestionably of ZAFT design, of the lineage that produced the CGUE in particular. The armor looks like an iteration on that precise line of Mobile Suit, but the head is... not the usual ZAFT mono-eye. There's no V-fin, but there are two optics. Its coloration ranges from deep grey to bright, dazzle-camo silver. A Striker Pack is mounted on its back, bearing additional jets.
"C'mon, Lu," Liam says, as Liath Macha takes off at tremendous speed. "Let's kill a dragon!" Liam's lips pull tight as crosshairs line up in his cockpit. Liath Macha whips a standard-issue ZAFT beam rifle from its mount, and opens fire, spraying T'maakva with a barrage exotic particles. Liam isn't sure what to aim at in that mess, but if nothing else, he can test its defenses.
KTS: Sayla Mass targets Yuliana Kafim with FT Railgun Full Fire! KTS: Sayla Mass has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Liam 7-020 has deployed in ZGMF-575-F CGUE II-L Liath Macha (Striker Pack). KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to evade Sayla Mass's FT Railgun Full Fire, taking 4059 damage! KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Elisa Kafim with MA-M21G Beam Rifle Shot! KTS: Liam 7-020 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to evade Liam 7-020's MA-M21G Beam Rifle Shot, taking 3000 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Killy Garrett has posed.
Killy arrives shortly after, her shining Killer Harpy wasn't made with space in mind, but she didn't let that stop her. She watched Yuliana and her Emptear in horror, but didn't dwell on it too much as she was here for someone else.
She spotted the Spinatia Voidsent, and rushed towards it. She didn't want to fight Alma, but she knew standing around isn't an option with everything going on around her.
Killy was hoping Alma would see her emblem on the Harpy and recognize her, and in order to grab her attention, she rushed towards the Spinatia Voidsent at full speed, smashing the Harpy's shield into it.
KTS: Killy Garrett targets Alma Stirner with Me02R Heavy Shield Bash! KTS: Killy Garrett has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Killy Garrett's Me02R Heavy Shield Bash, taking 3020 damage! KTS: Killy Garrett has engaged Alma Stirner! KTS: Yuka Ohta has deployed as a Sub Pilot for Liam 7-020!
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Something knocks at the corners of Alma's perception -- painfully. The world presses down on Alma in a way she can't identify anymore -- she can tell that hearts are reaching out toward hers, but she can't understand it anymore, she can't understand the words, she can't feel the feelings the way she's supposed to...
... so she can only bitterly shut it out. Whatever happens to the Banshee isn't her responsibility anymore. Whatever it wants from her is something she can't give.
Besides -- she has more pressing concerns. A bright energy beam bites into the Spinatia's armor -- which holds strong as Rusalka continues her charge. Even the burst of gunfire from Anita doesn't get her to stop -- though the comment over comms does. "It doesn't matter if I'm okay with it..." Alma concedes, weakly, over comms to both Anita and Sayaka. "I've never had a choice. I'm not any different from the rest of the people Dr. Kafim has handled. ... Yulie hates them -- Yulie hates anyone like them -- but I can't... no matter what I do -- I have to be useful to her! It doesn't matter what she does! I need her to need me!"
She's almost ready to fragment apart, but... that voice over the comms. The one she can't place. "It's the only thing I can do! Even Yulie says it would've been kinder if she'd just killed me! So --" The Voidsent's single wing folds in, clashing with the shield.
Continuing her full-speed rush, she puts the all-melee loadout of the Spinatia to use. She lashes out with the axe, seeking to hook it over Crossfire's shield. The vulcans of the Spinatia spray a wide-range burst toward Sayaka and the Svipul, but --
That emblem...
"... Killy?!" Alma's knocked hard to one side, having no time whatsoever to react to the blow. "You -- Killy, you can't be fighting Yulie and Dr. Kafim, you just -- I can't let you..." As much work as Yuliana and Elisa had put into shutting Lilith and the Purus out of her heart... they'd never had to shut out Noisy Fairy.
"All of you! Just -- stop fighting! This can just end with me...!" Alma pleads, even as she aims a quick stab for the shoulder of the Messer. Tears streak down her cheeks.
KTS: Alma Stirner targets Crossfire Salem with Voidsent Axe Hack! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Sayaka Yumi with Witchlight Vulcans Burst! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Anita Rosetta with Witchlight Vulcans Burst! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Killy Garrett with Voidsent Saber Stab! KTS: Alma Stirner has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Anita Rosetta blocks Alma Stirner's Witchlight Vulcans Burst, taking 870 damage! KTS: Sayaka Yumi's EN Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Sayaka Yumi blocks Alma Stirner's Witchlight Vulcans Burst, taking 720 damage! KTS: Crossfire Salem parries Alma Stirner's Voidsent Axe Hack, taking 1500 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Crossfire Salem! KTS: Killy Garrett blocks Alma Stirner's Voidsent Saber Stab, taking 2100 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Killy Garrett!
<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.
The Void, as it were, is something Yuka has yet to deal much with. Rather, this is her first experience with it. She's not in direct contact... operating remotely and providing her aid from battleship distance. To that end, she has a few spaceworthy drones out there. Hopefully they'll still work... Truthfully, she's terrified out of her mind right now, more than a little out of even her depth, in The Void. She's glad she left Lim Eleking at home with a capable babysitter. The knowledge her precious kaiju is safe eases things on her a bit. Enough to manage.
"I'll do what I can here... but these two are like nothing I've dealt with before. I... even if I'd give my liver to study them fully, I don't think it would be safe for my continued survival." One of the drones moves in, attempting to provoke the unholy monstrosity at the heart of this entire ordeal by sending it a mass of 'garbage data', to cloud both audio and visual sensory input. She's not expecting it to last more than a few seconds, honestly. If that.
KTS: Yuka Ohta targets Elisa Kafim with Goad! KTS: Yuka Ohta has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuka Ohta goads Elisa Kafim, reducing her Intuition drastically.
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
Sayaka speaks, LiSA listens. A pause, and then a whirlwind. Inside of the unarmed transport, LiSA is politely instructing a older gentleman about what she's learned that is important as she struggles into a suit. She closes her arm (???) and finishes up, and then takes off as she gets replies out to Sayaka and Koji.
"I'm closest to Master, so I'm on my way to the Mazinger!"
Ah, and she had been doing so well...
"I'm home!" Well, she's in the Mazinger, at least. But, home??? Well, I suppose when one is born inside of a Fuji-sized Mazin... The Z is kinda like an apartment. Downsized. "Please, aside from m-- Sayaka, who else do you want me to keep in a loop? Lucine, Li..."
Speaking of Liam. "Oooh, that's a nice machine." She says, as complimentary as a part-machine person can be. "I think you're getting outdone." She finally adds on to Koji. "Lucine, Liam, it's me again! I'm in the scrander with Koji! Keep your ears and eyes out and let me know!"
KTS: LiSA targets Koji Kabuto, Liam 7-020, and Lucine Azul with Coordinate. KTS: LiSA has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"It is vital that I do this," Yuliana invites Banagher, curling her fingers in towards an open palm. "I am the only one who can." Her unique capacity to split the sky and invite these horrors... Banagher saw how hard it was, before.
But she was just a woman, then. A woman dwarfed by giants, dancing herself to death.
Now, she towers.
"Light illuminates my scars too harshly," she issues Koji, and there's a sharpness, there, which speaks to honest complaint. "I've had quite enough of the interrogation glare. You'll find darkness more a comfort, I assure you."
Those snakes are lithe and swift; Emptear half-turns, all too gracefully, and the both of them arc out of the way of that Beam Magnum as it burns holes in space debris. It keeps firing onwards... and onwards... and on, and surely it will dissipate, eventually, but not at any distance that matters. The snakes aren't like to let him fire with impunity, though -- they fire back, with a horrible black-magic beam.
She grasps her dancer's cloth in a hand, and twirls. Its fabric -- made of something like metal which flows like silk -- veils the Banshee's slashes, and the Jagd Doga's gatling fire, absorbing part of the force of both of them before they tear through. Something like wire weaves together, in the holes, and that green-black fabric knits together anew. (Something like, something like, something like. Always it is something LIKE, with her; always approximate to what the brain knows.) She looks down on the closer of them -- the Banshee -- first, and Emptear's four eyes cannot narrow, the way Yuliana's do. "Hmm... is that so?" She wonders, a shade distantly --
-- and that cloth wraps about the Banshee, as Emptear pulls her closer, Yuliana reaching out to grasp at solid shadow in some pantomine of her machine. "Dance with me!" She demands, and if the Banshee's pilot isn't wary, she'll send her tumble-twirling right into Shelby's Jagd Doga. The reaching lash of that cloth may well tangle Shelby up, in the process, almost careless as she tugs it (and perhaps Shelby) back towards her. She's still talking to the Banshee, though, and 'taunting' is a good word for her tone: "Or will you defy me, girl? Choose!" Taunting -- and tense. She thinks of Alma, raving down there. Tch.
Luckily for Shelby -- and the Banshee, perhaps -- there's a brave Lion willing to unload everything on her, and perhaps Yuliana was too occupied with her acid words, because Sayla's railgun actually scores long lines along her graceful dancer's legs. She hops backwards, giving the two of them... a little distance, at least. Distance enough for the green crackling in that black core to settle.
But the Gaia Gear... in many ways, Emptear recognises it before any words are said, though Emptear has never risen before her foes before this. Those superheated missiles careen in, orange-gold, and perhaps there's nowhere Banagher COULD have aimed but dead centre: the missiles are pulled into Emptear's core, and explode at the edges of its armour, before the rest disappears. "What I've done to myself?" She issues, and that sharp edge returns to her her imperious tone. "Ugh, you've always been such a careless speaker. This, Renalle, is what was DONE TO ME! And since I am no more a woman, the world will have me as a QUEEN!" That horrible black core surges -- and erupts, with a lash of blackness like lightning coursing for the Gaia Gear. It crackles with a green out of space, uncomfortable to see.
"I -- was human, once," she admits, a moment's halting, as Lucine challenges that assertion. "I fought monsters, once." Koji can attest to that much; he's heard firsthand accounts of her bravery, back when she was starting out. "But now, I..." call them beautiful, for one; or perhaps she meant to say she is a monster, controlling this machine as she is.
Her attention orients on Athrusa. Perhaps there's no other place it could go. "So, what? What are you saying?" She demands, a shade petulant. (A shade hurt.) It's a lancing question which only builds to a temper pitch, so like the tantrums she threw, in that office. "You're giving up on me?! Fine! FINE! You're as bad as the rest of the Institute's doctors! I'm GLAD I sold you out! I hope they DO find you, showing yourself like this--!!"
Emptear -- Yuliana -- turns, and there's anger, in her flowing movements, as she leaps and kicks over those pow hammers. Where they tap, suddenly she isn't, as if abjuring her touch a second time. It's only after she stops spinning that her claw comes up, to grasp her spiked arm. "No, I... I don't mean that," she says, at strain, upset. "Just -- just go away, Doctor!" No horrible magic, no awful motion; just the past, echoing out.
She turns her rage on the Lion, instead, whirling on her. "Doctors, doctors, doctors," she chants, on repeat, as she twirls around her, and finally reaches out to try and grasp Sayla's Lion in her vast hand. Her fingers t i g h t e n, whether or not she's caught anything at all. "Why is it always doctors?! I don't need any of you!" Again that horrible green sparks, against her, from that core of black.
Finally she empties her hands, and spins, her scarf spinning long above her head.
"The Gate will open--!!"
And, indeed, where that cloth sweeps space above, it grows more fragile; there's something, on the other side. Waiting. Hating.
KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Banagher Links with Void Snake's Purity! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Puru-1 with Dance With Me! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Shelby Korts with Black Scarf Flourish! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Rena Lancaster with Hollow Heart Calamity! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Athrusa Hsieh with Demoralize! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Sayla Mass with Queen's Claw Grasp! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim demoralizes Athrusa Hsieh, reducing her Morale drastically. KTS: [Spirit Defense] Athrusa Hsieh's Inner Stillness activates, and her spirit endures. KTS: Puru-1 has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Puru-1 has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Puru-1 has activated the Strike Spirit Command.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
A rocket fist slams towards the colossal bulk of the Eclipse Dragon, and there is a terrific explosion where it impacts--revealing inky-black darkness that coalesces back into scales. Roux's missile, next, runs into a number of gigantic wings that close like a Seraphim's, only impossibly oo many at once. This, too, is the fate of the beam arbalest shot from Lucine.
The dragon makes no response at first to the words arrayed against it.
And there--there comes Liam's new weapon. The Liath Macha moves at tremendous speed, and while he isn't sure what to aim at, the blast hits something before the dragon can interpose part of itself in the way. It roars once more, and whispers echo into the minds of those facing it--no, not the mind. Just the cockpit, as if it comes from all around, clearly audible and not merely in the mind at all. The green clouds in the voidly space pulse with its roar.
And then comes a voice. It is individual. It speaks only to those to whom it is addressed. And first, to Liam, "Dear boy... You reject her mercy? Then come." To Koji, "When faced with blinding light, why not seek for the comfort of darkness? You think nothing of the violation your light brings."
Roux receives musical laughter, the same as happened when the dragon was manifesting, before, "It is the future." And Lucine, the same laughter--but harder.
But when Yuka sends out that garbage data--she may notice of course that it disappears into the creature, with no seeming effect... Until it starts flailing wildly, suddenly much less controlled than it was.
"So you wish to interfere?" a voice comes from all around Yuka, feminine and menacing.
T'maakva moves, suddenly, rushing for Mazinger Z to attempt to lash out with a dozen clawed arms over its ent form. Then, six wings BEAT brightly to try to bash the Liath Macha back, inky black darkness rushing towards it to sap and snare like a storm.
Nine jaws distend, opening up and pointing directly at Lucine's unit next, blasting horrid dark breath towards her even in the vacuum of space. Then, jaws at what appears to be its 'head' snap down at Roux's powerful Zeta Gundam.
KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Daunt Spirit Command targeting Koji Kabuto KTS: Elisa Kafim: Will Barrier Activates. KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Koji Kabuto with Draconic Fury - Rush! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Liam 7-020 with Oblivion Wing Midnight Hurricane! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Lucine Azul with Pitch Black Breath Blast! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Roux Louka with Draconic Fury - Bite! KTS: Elisa Kafim has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim anchors Puru-1, forcing her into close range. KTS: Puru-1 fails to Parry Yuliana Kafim's Dance With Me, taking 4320 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has engaged Puru-1! KTS: Yuliana Kafim roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Banagher Links has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Banagher Links has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Roux Louka has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Banagher Links has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: LiSA coordinates maneuvers, raising Koji Kabuto's Piloting! KTS: Koji Kabuto fails to parry Elisa Kafim's Draconic Fury - Rush, taking 6240 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has engaged Koji Kabuto! KTS: Roux Louka successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Draconic Fury - Bite KTS: LiSA coordinates maneuvers, raising Liam 7-020's Piloting! KTS: Banagher Links fails to Charge. KTS: Banagher Links successfully avoids Yuliana Kafim's Void Snake's Purity KTS: Rena Lancaster fails to charge. KTS: Rena Lancaster's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Yuliana Kafim rattles Rena Lancaster, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Rena Lancaster partially guards Yuliana Kafim's Hollow Heart Calamity, taking 2450 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim begins a Formation attack! KTS: LiSA coordinates maneuvers, raising Lucine Azul's Piloting! KTS: Roux Louka has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Lucine Azul successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Pitch Black Breath Blast KTS: Shelby Korts has activated the Focus Spirit Command. KTS: Shelby Korts's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Yuliana Kafim anchors Shelby Korts, forcing her into close range. KTS: Shelby Korts blocks Yuliana Kafim's Black Scarf Flourish, taking 2200 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has engaged Shelby Korts! KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Focus Spirit Command. KTS: Sayla Mass has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 successfully Evades Elisa Kafim's Oblivion Wing Midnight Hurricane KTS: Yuliana Kafim anchors Sayla Mass, forcing her into close range. KTS: Sayla Mass fails to Evade Yuliana Kafim's Queen's Claw Grasp, taking 7440 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has engaged Sayla Mass!
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Claws ravage Mazinger Z's chassis, Super Alloy Z cracking and splintering under the terrible onslaught of T'maakva until Koji ducks the Mazin under the assault to gain space from the Void Kaiju. He's growing more and more adept at weightless combat, even though Z is badly damaged by the monster's raking charge.
"I've heard enough," he growls. "Take your solipsism and shove it!"
Energy gathers at the mouths of the Astro Scrander's hull-mounted missile launchers. "If the light we need to see and thrive blinds you so much, then EAT THIS! KOUSHIRYOKU CIRCUS!"
Stars of light are spewed from Mazinger Z's back, curving towards T'maakva and exploding against its colossal bulk.
KTS: Koji Kabuto targets Elisa Kafim with Photonic Missile Circus! KTS: Koji Kabuto has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Crossfire Salem has posed.
As the axe comes in to hook over Crossfire's shield, she's already moving. The spare hand draws a beam saber, meeting the axe head-on with a clean parry to recoil it backwards, even if she sparks from the strain.
<<"Would it have? Is dying, or transcendence, or whatever this is, truly better than living? Is a warped love, where you're told you're better off dead, greater than a pure one? Look around you! You still have people who care about you, 'besides them'. That pilot just raised her shield to reach you, didn't she?!">>
Crossfire knows she can't reveal herself. She doesn't know how far the brainwashing goes. But she can try her uneducated best to shake it.
Killy Garrett... are you the key to helping Alma Stirner...? After so many years, you make your dramatic entrance.
The void makes Crossfire sick. She can't rely on anything she usually does to pilot. But she can rely on the training drilled into her in the 0070s.
The second beam saber is drawn as she takes a dash back, and then recharges in, moving to clash one with the axe and the other---
For the closest shoulder.
She'd never shoot for the cockpit.
KTS: Crossfire Salem has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Crossfire Salem targets Alma Stirner with Amabilis Twin Beam Sabers Strike! KTS: Crossfire Salem has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Koji Kabuto rattles Elisa Kafim, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to intercept Koji Kabuto's Photonic Missile Circus, taking 3000 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner fails to retreat. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Crossfire Salem's Amabilis Twin Beam Sabers Strike, taking 3150 damage! KTS: Crossfire Salem has engaged Alma Stirner! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Spirit Spirit Command.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
"I can't give up on you. If I did, I wouldn't have even come here," Athrusa responds softly, through the tinted shade of her Normal suit's helmet. "But at the same time, I found myself so tightly wrapped up around circumstance. How much I told myself I didn't want to just go 'No, Yuliana, don't do that'. From even before, when you were working with the wetworks team..."
Athrusa's already really dealing morale damage to herself, but Yuliana doesn't let up, as she seems to switch tracks. She blinks a few times. "... I can't. I can't go away. I know it's painful. It's painful for me too..."
The emotion of the Void just seems to engulf the Impermanence Gundam for a moment; the light of its GN Drive just seems to gutter out for a moment, as Athrusa's concentration starts to fade. But she can't dawdle here -- people are fighting, people are getting hurt!
"... I'll promise you that I'll be with you right up to the end, whatever that end may be. Whether it's your end, or my end, or both of our ends, whether the reality of the world wins, or your Void."
The Gundam raises its arm, where its singular weapon that isn't the Pinions show up. It's an ill-sized beam rifle that was scavenged from somewhere, which Athrusa forces to function simply by being the gun for a moment. She takes aim into the appendages of the Emptear -- she doesn't have the courage to fire at what she thinks is the cockpit -- and fires a single grenade from the undermounted grenade launcher.
KTS: Athrusa Hsieh targets Yuliana Kafim with Scavenged Beam Rifle Grenade! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
Roux sees a cockpit open up - it's small and distant but she knows the evidence - and she says aloud, "Are you insane?!" He's jetting fast -- Roux can't worry about Liam for more than a moment. Maybe he's panicking, maybe he has a plan.
Others are there. Koji and Sayaka, and LiSA as well. Good, but also, worrying. Banagher she knewfelt already. Rena is a pretty good sign, at least so Roux hopes. Shelby? Something about this --
-- some of the things she had heard, or intuited, from -- not Yuliana, of course, but perhaps her *near occasion* -- are nagging at the back of her mind. Maybe alongside other things. The Strike Zeta accelerates closer, despite the fact that it might in fact be a good idea to go the other way, perhaps to fetch a brace of Reflex weapons, or perhaps to simply evacuate back to Jupiter. Even so...
Even so, the great beast, the wyrm of space, is there. The world is taking on a greenish cast. Pastel gels in the ambient light aren't unknown, since Minovsky particles often spontaneously end up aligning around each other, but they're usually mistier, more nebular. This is more uniform, and it seems to be seeping in the corners. Somebody laughs, and tells her -
It is the future.
Roux gazes ahead and for a moment even as the dragon comes towards her and the world shades towards that dreamlike sickly green Roux sees her uncle, sitting at the kitchen table. He's playing with something. He turns his (a?) head to look at her and leans forwards and there's nothing in his eyes or his mouth and --
a little red twinkle in the memory
-- "NO!" Roux cries even as the Strike Zeta's thrusters fire and it artfully sweeps itself out of the way at the last moment, a Beam Saber in its hand and erupting into coruscant fountaining and mostly-coherent particles as it goes. "You don't get to decide the future for everyone, you arrogant psychopath! What have you DONE?!"
Authentic, strict, from the heart. Roux's hand moves without her telling it as she turns her head. The mounted beam emitters on the Strike Zeta's upper legs erupt outwards into a solid half-sheet -- in normal times, this has a spread, to increase the odds of a hit at range. Against this thing?
"Isn't that your wife out there!? She's losing her mind!" Roux continues, even as the Strike Zeta rises upwards relative to the great dragon, beam saber held like a knight's sword of old.
KTS: Roux Louka targets Elisa Kafim with Thigh Beam Fountain! KTS: Roux Louka has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
Koji makes it clear that the one in the mobile suit is none other than Alma Stirner. Those much more familiar with her immediately orient on Alma, hoping to free her from the grasp of the void. Well, in Sayaka's opinion, this has gone on far, far too long.
Even Crossfire makes her appearance, although not in the cockpit of the Banshee, but rather the Amabillis. They can put their differences aside for this common cause.
"Mobile suits, variable fighter!" She signals to Anita, Crossfire, and Killy. "This is Doctor Sayaka Yumi from the Photon Power Labs. Moving in to assist against Lieutenant Stirner! ...I hope we're able to bring her home this time."
Alma's clearly overwhelmed, and Sayaka can't be certain if it's a good sign or a bad sign. Whether it means she's close to overcoming the void's curse, or sinking right back into it. All she offers Sayaka is a head vulcan assault, though... barely enough to dent refined Super Alloy Z, let alone enhanced by a barrier.
"Lieutenant Stirner, it doesn't end with just you. Just look at the monstrosities you're defending... is that really where your heart is? From how you fight, I can tell it's not." Sayaka counterpoints as she draws the Mazinger Blade from its hilt. But... her words really speak to the level of conditioning she's put under. To the point where it's probably impossible to convince her otherwise... meaning Sayaka's goal here is to keep her away from Yuliana and the Emptear, keep her occupied in battle. Maybe then her friends can convince her...
"I'd like for this to be simple too, but unfortunately... as long as you stand between me and Yuliana, who's chosen to stand as a god and a devil, I can't stop fighting." Sword pointing forward, Areia lunges forward aiming to strike the Voidsent Spinatas in the arm. "Mazinger BLADE!!"
KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Sayaka Yumi targets Alma Stirner with Mazinger Blade Slice! KTS: Sayaka Yumi has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to charge. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim partially guards Roux Louka's Thigh Beam Fountain, taking 1860 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner successfully avoids Sayaka Yumi's Mazinger Blade Slice KTS: Sayaka Yumi completes the Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
'It doesn't matter if I'm okay with it', she says. Anita grits her teeth.
"It does matter, though. You deserve to have a choice. You're more than your usefulness to her." Anita replies. She shakes her head.
"...It isn't too late for you. But if she killed you, that'd be it." Anita says. Alma's Spinatia sends a burst of vulcan fire in her direction. She raises her shield, letting it wash over her. The Svipul takes it well, but... Anita still doesn't like it. Crossfire's speech gives her some pause - just who is this...?
The Messer, though... Anita doesn't know Killy, but she can see the way Alma reacts to her. Anita considers this for a moment, and then taps a few lines out into the Svipul's console to send some targeting data her way. She doesn't know what she's planning to do, but it can only help to help her do it.
Sayaka contacts them. Anita's glad she's here with them, too.
"Gotcha, Doc. Good to see you here." She pauses... and then admits, "...Yeah. Me too."
She grits her teeth, then, as Alma pleads with them - she can hear the tears in her voice.
"Sorry... I can't do that. Especially not with you sounding like that." Anita replies. She darts to the side, opening fire again - this time, to force her into the firing range of the others.
KTS: Anita Rosetta has activated the Attune Spirit Command targeting Killy Garrett KTS: Anita Rosetta targets Alma Stirner with Leading Fire! KTS: Anita Rosetta has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Anita Rosetta's Leading Fire, taking 3150 damage! KTS: Anita Rosetta begins a Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Banagher Links has posed.
<"Rena!"> Banagher replies, relief in his voice. <"I'm with you! The Banshee's -- I don't know. It was after me, but I think it's on our side for now.">
Roux calls out, and Banagher smiles. <"I'm so glad you're here. I don't know what Yuliana's doing, but I know it's bad. Take out those snakes!">
<"Sayla--"> Hearing the tremble in her voice, Banagher feels his own heart accelerate. If this is enough to scare even Sayla Mass... Do they really have a chance? He swallows, mouth dry. <"Thank you. Please, be careful. You know how dangerous she is.">
In bursts, the Banshee pilot's distorted voice comes through. <"Miss Pilot--!"> Again, she charges the Emptear, and again, Yuliana grabs the Banshee, sending it hurtling toward the Jagd Doga. It's too distant for him to try and intervene this time.
Yuliana speaks the phrase used to control Callisto, and Banagher sees red. Yuliana more than anyone should know the horror of conditioning. Again, rage swirls into his heart, encouraged by the NT-D.
<"Yuliana--!"> Banagher shouts, even as he pilots the Unicorn around another blast from those serpents. <"Of everyone here..! I thought you were better than this!">
With a wild cry, the Unicorn charges forward, stowing her Beam Magnum. Twin sabers ignite as she approaches the Emptear's snake-heads.
With her green glow, the Unicon Gundam is practically a beacon in space, especially with her young pilot screaming in rage. But wasn't Banagher's advice to the Banshee's pilot to stay away..?
At the last second, the Unicorn darts upward and away from the serpents. In the same moment, her shield rounds the Emptear from the opposite side -- having flown around the enormous machine as Banagher made his charge.
"Unicorn!" Banagher shouts, and guns concealed within the shield whirs to life.
Bullets spray in intense bursts, aiming for the Emptear's 'eyes', crashing over the horrible grin. The Unicorn circles around Yuliana's machine and races toward the Banshee.
<"Grab my hand!"> He shouts, extending the Unicorn's arm toward her sister Gundam as he rockets toward her. If they time this right, he can pull the Banshee away from the Emptear. Perhaps the Black Lion will be able to fire an attack as the Unicorn pulls her away.
Or perhaps, she won't take the offered hand.
KTS: Banagher Links targets Yuliana Kafim with Shield Gatling Spray! KTS: Banagher Links has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Killy Garrett has posed.
It pains Killy to see Alma like this, she can only imagine the awful things they did to her to turn her into this tool. This wasn't the same girl she looked after in the One Year War.
"I'm not here to fight anyone." Killy said over comms. "I came here for you. Don't do this, Alma."
Before she knew it, Alma aimed a stab at the shoulder of her Messer, which Killy was able to block, but the recoil of the powerful attack still sent her back - damaging her slightly.
She can hear Sayaka introduce herself over comms, which Killy responds to. "Killy garrett" a pause follows, and there is a certain sadness in her voice when she says the next. "...I really hope so too."
Killy was pleased to see the data Anita sent her way, it seemed that they were shared the goal of saving Alma.
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Alma. This is for your sake." Killy really didn't want to do it, but her beam saber was drawn, aiming a quick stab at the Spinatia Voidsent, avoiding the cockpit too.
KTS: Killy Garrett has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Killy Garrett targets Alma Stirner with Beam Saber 100 Slash! KTS: Killy Garrett has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim successfully evades Athrusa Hsieh's Scavenged Beam Rifle Grenade KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to charge. KTS: Yuliana Kafim partially guards Banagher Links's Shield Gatling Spray, taking 4950 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Puru-1 has posed.
As Rena calls out, the Banshee pilot finds itself getting more and more annoyed. So many have arrived. The mission was likely a wash today. The only thing to commit to is survival, stopping this, so she can try again another day. She can feel herself being clawed maddeningly at the edges of her perception as if there were a wall between them.
"Don't act like this changes anything." Is Puru-1's warning to the room, perhaps indicative of her actions the other day in Metis. She certainly seems more awake, coherent. Perhaps that too is the effect of the Void, that it loosens even the grip of the NT-D on her consciousness. The aperture opens wide, and she is overwhelmed in a different way.
Emptear's cloth wraps around the mobile suit in a pantomime of shadow, try as she might, she can't get away. And as she's flung towards Shelby's Jagd Doga, slamming into it roughly, Shelby may perhaps notice only the faintest murmurings from the Banshee today, incoherent, like a distant echo in the dark. A child's perception of the thing in the closet.
dance for me dance for you dance for her
lets play
make you mine yet
In frustration, the pilot starts to shout, "Shut up shut up SHUT UP!" She howls, before her comm bleeds back into a hush of static. And in that moment, the Unicorn reaches out a hand in the flyby.
A Beam Tonfa deactivates, and for a moment it looks like she might take it. Only for the Armed Armor she was holding out to suddenly separate as it raises its arm like a horrid claw, backhanding the Unicorn's away. "-don't NEED-"
The nails vibrate at hellish speeds as it reverses and slashes down, to try and shear right through that shadowy wisps of fabric. "-YOUR HELP!"
She offers an answer, what sounds like defiance, is instead an addendum to Yuliana's dance card, an issuance, as she tries to free herself, then draw that claw along the length of her former bonds, to try and shear it en route to the main frame of her assailant.
i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it
if it opens then
"Not today." Is her succinct summation to the coming of the gate, as the Banshee tries to sink that claw right in, churning and shredding the Voidstuff with Psycoframe adorned talons.
KTS: Puru-1 targets Yuliana Kafim with Armed Armor VN Claw Swipe! KTS: Puru-1 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim partially guards Puru-1's Armed Armor VN Claw Swipe, taking 3016 damage! KTS: Puru-1 has engaged Yuliana Kafim! KTS: Puru-1 begins a Formation attack! KTS: Alma Stirner partially guards Killy Garrett's Beam Saber 100 Slash, taking 2842 damage! KTS: Killy Garrett has engaged Alma Stirner! KTS: Killy Garrett continues a Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
Rena doesn't feel a flicker of awareness as the Jagd Doga comes in. It's not until she registers it on her sensors. But then, her eyes widen. "It's you," she transmits to Shelby. "Be... be careful! She's very dangerous in this!"
The Gaia Gear Alpha sweeps in closer, even as she sees those liquid metal hammers swooping in ahead of her. Her eyes blink -- but she recognizes the Impermanence Gundam. The same one she came to the rescue of, once upon a time.
She swallows.
"Doctor Hsieh..."
She blinks when she gets another ping -- then Rena nods. "I read you, Miss Mass. I'll support you as best I'm able."
Banagher tells her the Banshee is on their side. She blinks -- then she nods. "Right...!"
She hesitates for a moment longer, though, at Puru-1's warning. "Don't... don't just turn Banagher's help away like that!"
She sucks in a breath as Liath Macha shoots out -- for Liam to use -- and then she nods. The Ra Mari II to the rescue, again and in more way than one. "Glad to have you with us, Liam," she transmits to him. Then, her eyes are back on the Emptear.
"Done to you? Did you choose this, Yuliana?" Rena asks, her eyes narrowing. Then, the Gaia Gear Alpha rockets in -- and the waverider-form white Mobile Suit shoots up the black lightning, coasting over it, even as its barrier activates -- and arcs of the void energy slash into and rip at its barrier.
It breaks free, though, and the Gaia Gear Alpha's legs unfold again -- and this time, the feet-mounted thrusters fire to help slow and control its charge, but not stop it. The psychoframe flares to life, particles of green light exploding from it. They glow about both hands.
The white Mobile Suit hurls something forward -- a cylindrical beam saber hilt -- and then boosts inward, and slams its right hand for the mass of the Emptear. The left flies out, too, in a blow for the neck. Particles of green glow about it.
Which is when the beam saber it threw catches up -- and Rena grips it with a space-silent clang -- and the beam saber explodes to life a moment later, forming and stabbing down for the neck of the Emptear at the same time.
"Stop saying it's inevitable!" Rena shouts. "Anything you choose to do... that's not inevitable! You're just giving us the responsibility for what you've done!"
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Yuliana Kafim with Gaia Flash! KTS: Rena Lancaster has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
'Lu. Cover me. Going to do something reckless.' Lucine's eyes briefly stray to her transmitter, caution and fear rising in her gut.
Instead, she transmits, < ".... I trust you." > A simple 'roger' would have been a better fit, but this runs deeper than a simple confirmation. She'll trust Liam.
Thankfully, Elisa's dragon, nor Yuliana's queen attack with anything significant just yet; there's far too many fish in this pond for them to be the stars of the show.
Is that a star coming from the Ra Mari II? No, another suit. Coming for Liam. Lucine's eyes widen. < ".... A second... suit..." >
She keeps to her duty to protect Liam as he disembarks the Dagger and boards the Liath Macha, and, finally signals to her and all others that he's fully taken control.
Tears well in Lucine's eyes, pooling about the edges of her eyelashes. ".... Liam..." LiSA makes her friendly assessment of this new addition, and Lucine agrees. < ".... You're full of surprises, aren't you?" >
Meanwhile, Sayaka signals her going to try to retrieve Alma. < ".... Best of luck, Dr. Yumi. Today may be that day we get her back.." > Her breathiness from that jolt of adrenaline still lingers, but the sentiment is there.
.... After all, Lucine could have easily been there with Alma, in another life, if she had been more confident in that first meeting with Elisa.
Focusing her attention back towards the Eclipse Dragon now as it laughs, Lucine focuses. < ".... You can't touch me." > A dare, delivered a little too proudly, but her confidence is bolstered by LiSA's help. < "I'll destroy you, just like all the other dragons." > The nine mouths distend and open in unison, expelling impossible miasma into the vaccuum. < "And I'll sleep good tonight." >
The Dianthus falls back, boosters jetting it out of harm's way; all the better to possibly launch a wave of shots before the breath dissipates. However, does that logic even work, when this beast has too many eyes for it to be stopped by such petty tactics?
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Elisa Kafim with Lunate Crown v.2 Curtain! KTS: Lucine Azul has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to charge. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim partially guards Lucine Azul's Lunate Crown v.2 Curtain, taking 2660 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma tries to retreat -- but despite trying her hardest to run away, she's being pursued aggressively. She flinches as the saber bites into her machine, scoring armor -- and shouts back, "Yulie said so! She said I'd be better off dead than everything she did to me, and I..."
Trailing off, she swings her saber at Crossfire's machine, saying, "Every minute I've been alive since the One Year War has been borrowed, anyway... if I had died, at the end... I never would've fallen in with that woman later."
The Spinatia's axe meets Sayaka's blade for a split second, and Alma's Spinatia deftly dodges to one side. Anita swarms her with shots, and it's at this point that Alma lashes out in anger rather than helplessness -- though really, aren't those the same thing, in the end? "Stop! This is cruel! This is pointless! Did you drag Killy out here to see what I've... what I've --" Her machine rattles, and she once again turns back to Killy, trying to find the words.
"For my sake...? Killy --" Part of her longs to address her more formally. To wind back the clock. "... I'm sorry things never lined up for us to meet again," she says, limply. "Noisy Fairy will just -- have to go on without its field commander..." Her heart wavers.
Alma turns it into more violence. It's all she can do. Sayaka and Crossfire get the worst of it; Alma's single-winged machine dashes back and forth between them time and again, harrying them with vicious downward slashes and backslashes. With each successive slash, the blade turns a brighter, more eerie unreal green...
... and Alma starts to level off again into a stance that -- if not happier -- at least sounds more level. "... Really, I don't know what I was worrying about...!" she enthuses. "You always had us test against each other, Killy -- I never got the chance to match up with the Commander! Maybe I'll at least get to have a few new experiences!" The glow of the axe starts to subside as Alma crosses the battlefield for the two of them, trying to close with fire from her vulcans.
KTS: Alma Stirner has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Alma Stirner has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Alma Stirner has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Alma Stirner has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Alma Stirner has activated the Valor Spirit Command.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The impossible black cloth lashes out; the Banshee being sent toward her-- and ultimately getting the Jagd Doga pulled up into the mess of the voidcraft material. The limbs extend, trying to keep the space open as much as possible-- but she's still sent into a mecha-to-mecha tumble that throws the young woman for a roll in the cockpit, weight shifting to follow the inertia as much as she would rather keep in place; hands tightening on the sticks and the arm of the seat digging into her hip; counterbalance verniers try to aid her in the spin-out but she has to shift her footing on the pedals a bit; heel digging down and opposite toes driving ahead to try to slow herself down enough that she can get 'rightside-up' relative to the voidcreature.
She glances first to the Banshee once they can be disentangled. What is that--
With Yuliana's taunt, Shelby tightens her grip on the controls. <"I'll defy you every damn time!!">
Her head cants; tactical data updating as friendlies move in and out of range. Banagher and the Banshee she can sense from Forever distance away; the psychoframe always a constant feeling at the back of her mind, even in the spinning roar of thought and emotion that is Yuliana Kafim and the Emptear. Liam, Lucine... Roux?
<"Banagher, stay focused!"> Shelby calls. More comm windows cycle in; Rena's next. <"Yeah ... I know she is.">
A chassis-rattling set of 'PANG' noises ring out along the shoulder-mounted shields, the canisters of her Funnels igniting and scattering away-- but for her part, Shelby twists her machine around, presenting the damaged and frayed round shield of her Zeonic machine to release a close-range barrage of weapons fire from the four barrels built into the guard!
KTS: Shelby Korts targets Yuliana Kafim with Shield Scattershot! KTS: Shelby Korts has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Alma Stirner targets Crossfire Salem with Rusalka! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Sayaka Yumi with Rusalka! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Killy Garrett with Witchlight Vulcans Dash-and-Fire! KTS: Alma Stirner targets Anita Rosetta with Witchlight Vulcans Dash-and-Fire! KTS: Alma Stirner has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Crossfire Salem blocks Alma Stirner's Rusalka, taking 9000 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alma Stirner's Guard Shift activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Crossfire Salem! KTS: Alma Stirner roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Attune Spirit Command. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Killy Garrett
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
Sayla Mass is a woman who usually has a plan. She doesn't have one here, and that's not making things better. She hears the 'invitation' Yuliana and-
Martha utters a sound of disgust, "There'll be none of that. I have neither the time nor the patience to deal with any further weakness today. Commence retrieval of the Key and the Zeon Princess. Puru-1, dance for me."
"Don't you dare!" Sayla shouts, to Yuliana, before once again trying to reach the Banshee's pilot. "Elpeo! Elpeo, please, don't-"
This is a mistake. Whether driven by the same selfish impulses that drove her to try and reach the girl at Metis- or harrowing guilt over what she said to Koji and Sayaka days before- her attempt to reach the Banshee's pilot is stymied by the fact that she takes her eyes off the Emptear- and without the newtype senses she is so dependent one- has no warning when her Masquelion is grabbed and crushed. One of the FT Railgun's crumples into unusuable mess- as does one of it's legs. Monitors at the 150 degree angle of the Personal Trooper's cockpit spark and explode as the camera are destroyed. One eye falls dark.
"Kafim..." Sayla whispers, pained. She may not be physically harmed... but in the hands of the void her head feels like it could shatter. Her soul feels like it could break. "Is this..." He breathing is heavy, hard. Sweat drips down her face and her eyes feel with spots.
And then the spots are hands, red and purple and black and white and green
The air rushes out of her long as real as though she were the one in Emptear's hand, without anything to protect her. The iris of one of her eyes turns slowly red, as one of the many tiny, weak blood vessels bursts.
"Is this..." She squeezes out, barely. "Is this... the better world... you wanted?" She pushes the control like she's under intense gravity, activating what little is left in the beam saber her Masquelion carries. "Or was... accepting what I offered... just for you?"
With effort, Lion's arm cuts forward to try and free her from the Emptear's massive hand- but will it be enough? Will it be anything against the void that crushes and consumes all?
KTS: Sayaka Yumi's EN Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Sayaka Yumi fails to parry Alma Stirner's Rusalka, taking 8400 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alma Stirner's Guard Shift activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Sayaka Yumi! KTS: Alma Stirner roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Anita Rosetta has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Anita Rosetta rushes into the attack! KTS: Anita Rosetta partially guards Alma Stirner's Witchlight Vulcans Dash-and-Fire, taking 4320 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Alma Stirner's Guard Shift activates, causing Sparkle! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Anita Rosetta! KTS: Sayla Mass targets Yuliana Kafim with Standard Beam Saber Strike! KTS: Sayla Mass has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
"You know it," Liam says, a note of playfulness in his voice despite the horror around him. LiSA hails him, then, and he glances down as data flows across his screen. "Understood, LiSA."
A familiar voice, lightly distorted by Minovsky interference, filters into Liam's cockpit. "Yuka?!" He's--never been so glad to hear her voice, actually, and would be even if they hadn't gone through the same ordeal. "Void kaiju intercepted, name T'maakva, numerical designation HSD-3. Opening telemetry uplink." Wherever this thing came from, it's ultimately a kaiju. Koji and Sayaka are the closest thing they have to experts in the Void, but Yuka has uncanny insight into strange beasts, too.
"Koji," Liam tightbeams, openly, from a ZAFT-engineered suit bearing a Three Ships IFF. Explanations can happen later. "Dr. Ohta from STORAGE is here."
IThe Eclipse Dragon is massive--so massive that even Liath Macha takes a few seconds to circle around its vast bulk, probing for weaknesses. Before Liam can take another shot, a voice echoes in his mind. A familiar voice.
Liam snarls. "'Doctor' Kafim." There's as much venom in there as in Yuliana's tone, when she said the same word. "What did you do to her?! The dragons--each time, she's been there!"
But he doesn't take his eyes off the dragon's roiling mass, and he sees movement in his direction. Snapping wings. Liath Macha boosts downwards, the AMBAC reorienting it flawlessly as it changes course and accelerates. The wing snaps into the space the CGUE-II occupied mere moments ago. The wash of eldritch sorcery comes close enough to scorch the paint. That was close.
Liam is taking so, so many risks right now, but he adds one more to the pile.
"Why did you target us?" he demands. "You sent those letters. Your goons stole the Dianthus. Why?! Because Lucine wouldn't work for you?!" Liath Macha weaves between the Dianthus' shots, using them as cover for its own attack. It slips the beam rifle back into its rack, and draws something else: a long pole, with a beam emitter head vaguely like a beam saber's. A containment field forms, and particles pour into the long, lance-like shape.
Liath Macha rushes the kaiju, trying to bury the spear up to the emitter, then rip it free!
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Elisa Kafim with &w - Stab! KTS: Liam 7-020 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Killy Garrett has activated the Attune Spirit Command.
[OOC] Liam 7-020 says, "Blu-ray: Please replace my derpy &w with 'JS-F03A 'Gae Buidhe' Beam Glaive'"
KTS: Killy Garrett rushes into the attack! KTS: Killy Garrett partially guards Alma Stirner's Witchlight Vulcans Dash-and-Fire, taking 2952 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner has engaged Killy Garrett! KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to rush. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim partially guards Liam 7-020's &w - Stab, taking 2800 damage! KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged Elisa Kafim!
<Pose Tracker> Yuka Ohta has posed.
It would be easy to say Yuka is glad she only has the usual electronic connection to the drones she's using. In fact, that statement is quite simply true. More true really, when it disappears into the nothingness. Despite it working, somehow. Still... that isn't the true horror. No, that comes moments later, when a voice echoes around her in all directions. Even within her mind. It's a whole other level of terrifying, from what she's used to. To the point she starts to curl her knees upward her chest while whimpering.
The only reason she keeps herself going is the sake of helping the combat teams. That, and the stubborn resistance she's always had to authority figures trying to corral her behavior. She can't send out another interference drone yet... she's too shaken, and needs to adjust it first. But she can do something a little less intensive. She sends a data package to Liam's new unit. Offering him some maneuvering advice based on what she's seeing of the dragon's patterns, and also some cuteness of Lim Eleking playing with electrical devices to boost his spirits. She doesn't know if it will help, but she feels a need to try.
KTS: Yuka Ohta has activated the Enable Spirit Command targeting Liam 7-020 KTS: Yuka Ohta has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Liam 7-020 KTS: Yuka Ohta targets Elisa Kafim with Pass! KTS: Yuka Ohta has completed their actions for the round. KTS: LiSA has activated the Rouse Spirit Command targeting Sayaka Yumi
<Pose Tracker> Crossfire Salem has posed.
Crossfire's rebuked. She doesn't reply, instead goiing defensive. As Alma barrages, the shield goes up.
That sickly green blade tears through it, annihilating it with the final swing and shearing off armor platings on the arm shield. Nothing irreplacable..yet. Crossfire can't lose this machine.
It's all she has left.
"Shit, what do I do..." She asks herself, as Alma loses herself to violence. She can't convince her. She can't pull her out of the cockpit. None of her tactics will work for this. There must be a technique, something Alma won't see coming...
A thought dawns across her mind.
"Our final duel...what if I..."
Crossfire is a good learner. She has that duel memorized in her head, stitched to memory.
The Amabilis suddenly bursts forwards, both blades at the ready. It's a simple but rawly effective maneuver.
She slashes leftwards, into the side of the main body. She makes a regular slash to follow it up.
It's like a dancing fairy.
Only two people could predict what she's going for next - but it's too fast, even if you assume that's correct.
Crossfire makes a spin slash straight into Alma's shoulder, not once, but twice, allowing the beam sabers to hopefully rake against Alma's machine full-force, only barely (but calculatedly) missing the cockpit.
"This is what it felt like...hahahah...she sure always fucking pushed herself. I still have somewhere to be, don't I?"
She glances in the directiton of the Banshee as she says that, before turning full focus on Alma's Voidsent.
She says nothing. Hopefully, it connected enough...
KTS: Crossfire Salem has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Crossfire Salem has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Crossfire Salem has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Crossfire Salem targets Alma Stirner with Code Fairy! KTS: Crossfire Salem has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Crossfire Salem's Code Fairy, taking 8400 damage! KTS: Crossfire Salem has engaged Alma Stirner! KTS: Crossfire Salem roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Crossfire Salem completes the Formation attack! KTS: Yuliana Kafim retreats from the attack! KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to react to Shelby Korts's Shield Scattershot, taking 4092 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim partially guards Sayla Mass's Standard Beam Saber Strike, taking 1665 damage! KTS: Sayla Mass has engaged Yuliana Kafim!
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
LiSA, perhaps inappropriately, giggles at Lucine's agreement.
"What can we say, I've been around a lot of machines old and new. Mazinger is nice, but that just as nice." A flicker of thought, then humorously: "I've seen bigger." She deserves to be grounded for that one, later.
"Holy moly!" Is what she exclaims though as she, Koji, and the Mazinger get shaken around. "Good grief, I'm feeding the data into save points, I don't know how but we can run through it later with Sayaka and Doctor Ohta if she's willing." Speaking of data....
Tightbeam to Sayaka. "I'm still with you, since Koji's got to keep his attention on our side! We are all still together, though. Not just the two or three of us! All of us! Keep it up!"
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
"Thank you, Lucine. Take good care of Liam, okay?" She transmits back; she was too caught up in the heat of battle to initially react to Liam's new mobile suit, but now that she's aware, she feels it's good he has Lucine to ensure he doesn't get too cocky after his second wind.
"No!" Sayaka rejects Alma's idea that she's the one who brought Killy here. "She found you, Alma! She's here because she's one of the people who cares about you, deeply." Sayaka continues to face down the Spinatia, studying its next moves. "...And even if I did, showing you that is no crueler." Than the Kafim's isolation of her, implicitly.
Seeing Alma prepare for an attack, Sayaka extends a barrier to Killy's machine as well; trusting her ability to understand Alma. But anger of Alma's, whether it's deep and true, gives way to a devastating attack, as Aphrodite Areia's Super Alloy Z desperately tries to stand strong against Alma's furious series of seemingly endless slashes, barrier shattering. Ultimately even the Mazinger Blade isn't enough to stop her.
"Everyone..." She begins, Aphrodite Areia standing up in the aftermath of the attack. "If we're going to do this, it has to be now! Give it your best shots! LiSA, all the targeting data you have, please!" Crossfire, seemingly understands on her own, using a rather similar devastating combo attack back on Alma, and pushing her back.
"Photon power, charging to the limit!" Sayaka announces as the Artemis Arrow turns from wings into a longbow, trained on Alma's Spinatia. "ARTEMIS FINAL ARROW, FIRE!" Seemingly, she's going for a headshot, if she can cancel out the censors and cameras, they'll be able to go for the capture... hopefully keeping her away from the Kafims for good.
KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Attune Spirit Command targeting Anita Rosetta KTS: Sayaka Yumi targets Alma Stirner with Artemis Final Arrow! KTS: Sayaka Yumi has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Attune Spirit Command. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Koji Kabuto KTS: LiSA targets Elisa Kafim with Pass! KTS: LiSA has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Yuliana Kafim rushes into the attack! KTS: Yuliana Kafim partially guards Rena Lancaster's Gaia Flash, taking 2902 damage! KTS: Rena Lancaster has engaged Yuliana Kafim! KTS: Rena Lancaster completes the Formation attack! KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Sayaka Yumi's Artemis Final Arrow, taking 8060 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Sayaka Yumi's Light of the Future activates, causing Sparkle!
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"That's your answer?! So be it! I don't need you to understand me! I will DRAG YOU TO PARADISE as your NAILS BLOODY THE EARTH!" Yuliana yells, to Koji and those fighting her wife's beautiful dragon.
A note of some minor errata: 'Paradise' is, by and large, another translation of much the same concept...
... as the Christian 'Heaven'.
Perhaps she and Rita aren't so different, after all.
She releases Sayla; drops her like the useless stone at the heart of a fruit, all chewed through. "The world we want is nearly here," she tells her, cool, as nothing churns above. Perhaps she sees something of her own devastation, in the way the Lion dents inwards -- because she leaves her with those chill words, and does not crush her further, despite the way those sabers carved into her armour.
"I know better than anyone," Yuliana spits, to Banagher's rage over the Banshee, "what it takes." It's a distorted account, of course, but she's always been a self-centred woman. "And I've the stomach to do it. Do you, boy? Do you even know what I ask? Why?" The Unicorn circles her -- and Yuliana reaches up, as Emptear reaches with that same giant hand, in an attempt to grasp the Unicorn and spin him about. "Dance with me!" The Unicorn's bullets pepper into her eyes; they dim to grey, for moments, before lighting again. Inside the dancefloor of her crystal cockpit, Yuliana blinks, rapidly. "Nnh," she grunts, as the feedback between herself and her robot overwhelms her for a moment -- and she releases the Unicorn back to space.
It's not easy, existing at sixty metres, moving just as she would as a woman. Her entire self-concept has to scale UP, and the differences score into her psyche. Roux isn't wrong, to say she's going a touch mad. It's an unfortunate side-effect of the attunement.
But at the same time as she whirls, the Banshee tears through the dancing cloth grasped in her other hand. In that moment of distraction, her pilot gouges her claws into Emptear's outer chest, dangerously close to that yawning Void. She may know, there, its absolute chill. She may catch a kaleidoscope glimpse, in the nothing, before nothing floods it again.
When those eyes activate again, they zero in on Killy, for a moment. What it takes, she echoes, to herself, a second time. That woman...
"Test her if you like," she speaks to Alma again, finally. "But all you must do here is distract them. Disengage as you must; keep them occupied until then." She could tell her to kill Killy here and be done with it, certainly.
She could.
Anyway.
"Then, you refuse," she issues, to the Banshee, as she denies her opening. "You do not wish to dance, though you've come to the dancing hall. A wallflower like you --" and she slaps her, backhanded and careless and dangerous only for her sheer mass, to send her tumbling away -- "ought to lurk by the walls!"
Yuliana scowls, but Emptear can't.
She pauses, again, and turns to Athrusa. "Don't... don't talk like that... it's not the end! It's the beginning! Our glorious beginning, and I--!!" She's whining -- whining, as she gestures, with a stomp of her giant, elegant leg. "But if you're here, I -- but I have to give up on -- I don't want you to see that! Even if I never really betrayed Rita, obviously I betrayed you! And now, I'm--!!" She shakes her head, grasping it, in her claws. "I just keep doing worse things and you stupid people keep SHOWING UP AND POINTING IT OUT! STOP IT! STOP IT!! I just want to dance!"
And she does, twirling away from those grenades with a speed which belies her size. The snakes behind her pick up on her distress, though, and fix it the only way they know how: a horrible, black beam, fired on the incomplete Impermanece. She didn't tell them to do that. Anyway.
"Of course you defy me," she tells the Jagd Doga, though she can't know it's Shelby, in there. "You people... you don't know what's good for you." She can't quite evade those shields, but the snakes at her back lash out, and she'll find that their bite is as bad as their beam -- metaphysically speaking. Physically, they're things of magic, and they don't break through the Jagd Doga's armour; spiritually, they crunch right through, and their teeth are colder than the coldest peak.
But it's the Gaia Gear she advances on, now, reaching out a hand.
"No," she decides, at length.
"They asked me if I wanted to help my country, but they never told me just what they were asking, of me. What I would have to give. The Republic --" the Republic, not her wife, which might offer Liam some cold salve -- "made me hybrid with some legacy they knew not, and by some miracle, I alone survived the process. Now... now I am Elisa's miracle," she insists, as she reaches out to grasp the Gaia Gear, even as its sabers bite into the cables at her neck, hand to her chest.
The former reveals black machinery; the latter, something terrible and green.
"IT'S NOT MY FAULT!" Yuliana screams, all fever-pitch, as she draws her closer to her heart --
As that green out of space surges out, around them, in a threatening flash.
When two Psychoframe machines meet, a miracle happens. But this isn't Psychoframe -- it's Voidframe.
What will happen... can they allow it to happen?
Could they stop it?
KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Sayla Mass with Demoralize! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Banagher Links with Dance With Me! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Puru-1 with Queen's Claw Slap! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Athrusa Hsieh with Void Snake's Abyssal Beam! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Shelby Korts with Void Snake's Bite! KTS: Yuliana Kafim targets Rena Lancaster with Hollow Heart Miracle! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Puru-1 blocks Yuliana Kafim's Queen's Claw Slap, taking 1800 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim repulses Puru-1, forcing her to disengage. KTS: Banagher Links has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Banagher Links has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Banagher Links fails to rush. KTS: Banagher Links's Will Barrier activates, negating 500 base damage. KTS: Yuliana Kafim anchors Banagher Links, forcing him into close range. KTS: Banagher Links partially guards Yuliana Kafim's Dance With Me, taking 5145 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has engaged Banagher Links! KTS: Yuliana Kafim roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh fails to evade Yuliana Kafim's Void Snake's Abyssal Beam, taking 4860 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
The voice does not answer Koji. But the lights of the Mazinger slam into the dragon, and the locusts that infest it are not fast enough to forestall the blast, and it screeches silently (with whispers to the cockpit) in protest, though it may not be capable of pain. Rushing towards him, it simply slashes out with a claw.
But Rx, the Strike Zeta, comes next. The voice has answer for her, as it tries to get close but can't quite close in on the Strike Zeta as it's slashed across six of its joints.
"And yet you shall see our future all the same," the voice says to Roux. Losing her mind? "No. She is as sane as ever. She is right." The Dragon rushes past, and five tails batter at the Strike Zeta.
But Lucine answers the voice, which does not pause even as the shots crash back nito one of the mouths of the terrible creature, destroying that particular opening. But there are so, so many more, despite that one fleshing over. The scales begin to grow again; the horrible sights of the Void continue to pulse.
"Will you?" the voice taunts Lucine. "I'm sure the arms of your 'friend' make for a secure hold. Hm hm hm..."
If there were sound here, Lucine might hear it. As it stands, she simply sees the innumerable wings that come from the Dragon's vents, T'maakva's locust wing crashing towards her, to surround and bind and destroy. "But anything can be taken, do you remember...?"
Liam, too, receives his share of the locusts, as they swarm around him, vibrating, trying to eat away at the plating of the Liath Macha as if they can eat their way to the pilot. Perhaps they can, if given the chance. But even as Yuka's data package comes next, the 'voice' continues to Yuka, "There is nowhere to hide. When we are finished, all will know."
To Liam, meanwhile, "Who are you again? ...Ah, yes, Lacy's boy. You understand nothing of Yuliana. I protected her. I protect her even now. And you...?"
"You are irrelevant. An irritant. Nothing more. You insulted my wife, and that is the only reason you exist to me at all."
Next they all hear, "Yes. Yes, witness!"
KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Lucine Azul with Locust Vents- Plague! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Liam 7-020 with Locust Vents - Swarm! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Koji Kabuto with Draconic Fury - Claw Swipe! KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Roux Louka with Draconic Fury - Smash! KTS: Elisa Kafim has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Koji Kabuto fails to Parry Elisa Kafim's Draconic Fury - Claw Swipe, taking 2970 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has engaged Koji Kabuto! KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Focus Spirit Command. KTS: Yuliana Kafim demoralizes Sayla Mass, reducing her Morale drastically. KTS: [Spirit Defense] Sayla Mass's Tempered Heart activates, and her spirit endures. KTS: Rena Lancaster successfully evades Yuliana Kafim's Hollow Heart Miracle KTS: Yuliana Kafim completes the Formation attack! KTS: Roux Louka has activated the Wall Spirit Command. KTS: Roux Louka successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Draconic Fury - Smash
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
"Anita Rosetta. Nice to meet you." Anita's introductions joins the others - but she's soon given something else to focus on.
"I bet she did say that." Anita comments. "And she's also the one who did this to you. You said so yourself. So... there's that."
Alma lashes out in anger - and Anita weathers her anger with a frown.
"Hey, I've never met her before. You heard her though, right? It's like the Doc said, she's here for you. Sounds to me like she's here because she wants to be."
Alma closes in with vulcan-fire and Anita grits her teeth. Well, if she wants to get close, she can get close...! Anita charges in, keeping her profile low and letting the shots hit parts she knows can take it.
"...Okay. Right behind you." Anita replies, as Sayaka announces that it has to be now. Anita takes a deep breath, and then...
Get ready, Alma Stirner...! This one's for you!" Anita calls out. Within her EX-Gear's helmet a second visor lowers over her eyes as she avtivates the Visual Link System - connecting her sight and herself to her machine. The Svipul shifts into Fighter Mode, rocketing away from Alma's Spinatia. The Gungnir SC emerges, taking aim and firing several shots from the cannon upon her as she retreats - and then, at the last moment, the Svipul's Extensional Arrestor fires off, latching onto the terrain. She lets the momentum carry her, using it to rotate around - aiming her right at Alma again. She detaches and goes soaring toward her. As she does, the Gungnir SC launches from its brace. Anita catches it mid-charge - and with a spinning flourish, a beam blade ignites to life.
Closing in, the Svipul shifts into Battroid mode, grasping the Gungnir SC like a spear and driving it toward the Spinatia Voidsent as she aims to render it unable to fight.
KTS: Anita Rosetta has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Anita Rosetta has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Anita Rosetta targets Alma Stirner with Divine Valkyrie Charge! KTS: Anita Rosetta has completed their actions for the round.
KTS: Liam 7-020's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: [Spirit Defense] Liam 7-020's Catecholamine Regulation System activates, and his spirit endures. KTS: Elisa Kafim enervates Liam 7-020, reducing his Morale significantly. KTS: Elisa Kafim rattles Liam 7-020, making his next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Liam 7-020 blocks Elisa Kafim's Locust Vents - Swarm, taking 2530 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Elisa Kafim's Beyond The Void activates, causing Deject! KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Alma Stirner partially guards Anita Rosetta's Divine Valkyrie Charge, taking 2925 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner has been defeated! KTS: Anita Rosetta has engaged Alma Stirner!
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
In a different combat situation, Koji might have a quip for Lisa; after all, Infinity's staggering bulk at roughly twenty times Z's comparatively-humble 26-metre height is hardly fair to compare other machines to.
(For those of you keeping score at home: That's a machine about 520 metres tall. Yowza.)
Right now, however, Koji Kabuto is an incandescent, furious devil on the battlefield, focused only on one thing: Destroying the creature of the void before him.
T'maakva rakes another claw across Mazinger Z's front - part of the radiator plating on its chest array shatters, fragments spinning into the void - and Koji's feral grin broadens. The time for debate has long-since passed; now the only words that need be uttered are "KOUSHIRYOKU BEAM!" as rays of light surge from Mazinger Z's eyes, swiping across the Void Dragon's body in searing parallel lines.
Silently, seething, Koji flips switches on the Pilder's dashboard, tweaks dials to their limit. In the Astro Scrander's cockpit, LiSA can see alarms light up and signals for the flight craft's reactor to funnel into Z's as Koji begins to warm up every weapon system on the Castle of Iron.
KTS: Koji Kabuto targets Elisa Kafim with Koushiryoku Beam! KTS: Koji Kabuto has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Alert Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim enervates Lucine Azul, reducing her Morale significantly. KTS: Elisa Kafim rattles Lucine Azul, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Lucine Azul fails to evade Elisa Kafim's Locust Vents- Plague, taking 4070 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Elisa Kafim's Beyond The Void activates, causing Deject!
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
Athrusa hears Rena calling for her. She doesn't recognise the Gaia Gear, but she can sense Rena's presence within. "I see... Miss Lancaster, that is you, is it not? It is me, Athrusa."
A horrible black beam soon lurches over her, prompting her conversation short; she sees it coming, but everything about her feels so sluggish right now; it's as if, even interfaced directly with the machine, she can't move as she wishes -- there's an attempt at evasion, a left, a right, and the black beam grazes directly against the Impermanance's left knee -- and cracks show on the red GN Condenser, those red flecks of light oozing out amidst the darkness of the Void.
Athrusa struggles to cope with the shock inside the machine, gripping her flightsticks tight with a grimace.
"I don't mind that you betrayed me. I don't mind one bit. From the start, I just wanted you to be happy. Maybe at one point, that was clear to me; to give you care and compassion where no one really gave that to you, the basic respect a human being deserves, even from someone who can only imitate being a human being. But when Elisa came into the picture, as your talents went further, I was stricken in doubt as to whether or not this really made you happy..."
She breathes out.
"I'll be selfish for a moment. I don't want you to be Elisa's miracle."
The Gundam manoeuvres again, trying to get into a relative blind spot -- if one even exists with how the Emptear behaves -- and launches its Pinions once more, this time...
"I wanted you to be your own miracle..."
They're shaped like magical swords, each of them, suspiciously looking like weapons from the Animes she's watched, threatening to carve away at the Emptear's spiked arm and other appendages.
KTS: Athrusa Hsieh targets Yuliana Kafim with Assault - Meihua Formation! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Killy Garrett has posed.
Killy frowns - "No one dragged me here Alma. I came here on my own, the moment I knew you were here. I'm sorry our reunion couldn't be a happier one. But you're being used, Alma. They don't care about you, please listen to us." She tries to reason with her, but it's all futile, Yuliana has a tight grip on her.
Killy could only watch as Alma viciously attacks Sayaka and Crossfire, the Spinatia dancing around them, the green blade delivering slash after slash.
Suddenly, Crossfire pulls an attack that brings Killy way back. Her eyes widen, it seems like Crossfire wasn't just any random person. Then...who are they?
Killy doesn't get to dwell on that before Alma targets her, sending a burst of fire from her vulcans in her direction, which Killy rushes directly into.
She doesn't the opprutinity to thank Sayaka for the barrier, but she much appreciates it. The sudden shift in Alma's tone catches Killy off-guard - but she keeps her cool. "Very well then, show me how much you've improved since we last met, Alma."
Rushing forward, Killy draws out her beam saber once again. The Spinatia was in poor condition, and Killy was ready to finish this. "I'm sorry, Alma. But this is a battle you can't win." Rushing forward, with a swift motion she aims her saber into the Spinatia's body, giving it everything she got.
KTS: Killy Garrett has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Killy Garrett targets Alma Stirner with Formation NexT 100! KTS: Killy Garrett has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Alma Stirner fails to react to Killy Garrett's Formation NexT 100, taking 7970 damage! KTS: Alma Stirner has been defeated! KTS: Killy Garrett has engaged Alma Stirner!
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"The Republic did that to you," Rena agrees. "And it was horrible. Just like what my mother used me for was horrible. We're not so different. You wanted to be sure I knew that. But--"
Her fingers tense around the controls of the Gaia Gear Alpha. The Emptear's massive hand reaches out. Green light flows off her Gundam, in waves of motes of light. That green meets the Emptear's green. It's a sudden, brilliant flash -- and it is something very, very wrong.
There is a tremendous, brilliant flash of light when Psychoframe and Voidframe collide. Rena's brown eyes widen, swirling with the reflected motes of light from both machines. But the Gaia Gear Alpha shoots up, relative to the Emptear, and the golden beam saber tears free.
"--you chose this! We're MORE THAN WHAT WE'RE MADE TO BE!"
Then, Rena comes crashing back downward for the Emptear's head. The beam saber swings down -- and curves in the light of the warring Psychoframe and Voidrame, before she chops down across Emptear as she slams down.
KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Yuliana Kafim with Beam Saber Cleave! KTS: Rena Lancaster has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Shelby Korts's Physical Wall L1 activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Yuliana Kafim anchors Shelby Korts, forcing her into close range. KTS: Shelby Korts blocks Yuliana Kafim's Void Snake's Bite, taking 1980 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim has engaged Shelby Korts!
<Pose Tracker> Banagher Links has posed.
<"Shel--?"> Banagher almost calls, catching himself at the last second. It wouldn't be wise to reveal Shelby to Yuliana. <"Please be careful! This isn't -- a normal fight!">
Even as the Unicorn reaches for her sister, she's rejected, the Banshee slapping away her hand. Banagher winces as if struck himself. Shaking his head, he refocuses as the Unicorn shoots past the Banshee.
<"What is there I haven't done!"> Banagher shouts back to Yuliana, voice ragged. The Unicorn pulses with psychic strength -- though most of it is eaten by the void surrounding the Emptear. <"What is there -- what is there I still have to do?! Turn into a monster, like you're doing to yourself?">"
The Emptear grasps the Unicorn, even as her shield fires on the enormous machine. Banagher cries out in distress as he's tossed against his safety restraints.
<"Not happening!"> Banagher hisses. Yuliana stumbles in her dance, and the Unicorn pulls free of the Emptear's giant hand. It's not without a cost -- white armor cracks and splinters, left behind in a wake of blue starlight.
A pulse of... something. Something bad. Washes over the young pilot of the Unicorn. Banagher squares his shoulders, watching Rena's Psychoframe react with Yuliana's monstrous Emptear. An idea comes to his mind -- remembering the horror of Torrington.
<"Miss Pilot! Our Psychoframe can do something against that machine! I know I said to stay away from her, but I think we need to get in close!"> The Unicorn's sabers are still drawn. <"Follow me!">
With her shield covering her approach, the Beast of Possibility charges into the void. Banagher braces himself as he pushes the Unicorn to her limit, aiming for the center of the Emptear's heart.
<"It's not too late! Yuliana!"> He screams, even as the Unicorn raises her saber, slashing at the shadowy aura around them. <"You have someone waiting for you!">
KTS: Banagher Links targets Yuliana Kafim with Beam Saber Slash! KTS: Banagher Links has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
"Heh," Roux answers Banagher. "Hopefully we can get out of this..." (Snakes? she thinks; do they look like snakes to him? What does this thing ACTUALLY look like...?)
But there isn't time to hesitate for long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZscRQJY3rZM&
The voice speaks to Roux even as she can hear what -- what was at least conditionally Yuliana at one point is saying, even if, of course, she can't 'feel' her the way that she can feel others. Even that Banshee is here? Roux wonders, finally registering something. This must be bad, if even those tin-pot tyrants are -
It's dashing! The Strike Zeta swerves away -- damnably swift again, AMBAC shifting to spin it in place and center it facing the Dragon again even as it continues on its grim path.
"What I'm seeing right here is space-based terrorism! Mayhem! And whatever in Hell THIS is, it probably shouldn't be HERE!" Roux counters Elisa. As this happens she can hear others - Liam responding... her eyes lift upwards, towards where she can feel Lucine is, and Koji. Koji! He's right there! Thank god.
Mazinger Z is bearing the brunt of this THING's wrath. It gives Roux, maybe not an opening, but space. As castles, throughout history, are wont to do. And in that time, Roux dismounts something mounted on the back of the Strike Zeta and reconnects it. An umbilical attaches to a thick port and in the silence of space, a machine begins to move from ticking over to something more profound.
"She's screaming," Roux says.
"Can you really ignore these cries--"
The great weapon isn't brough tto bear just yet. What happens instead, perhaps more comfortingly, is a sudden ripping-and-tearing of 60mm cannon mounted in the Strike Zeta's head, throwing uncountable rounds at the great form of the Dragon, walking over it, aiming to overwhelm hide and peril through sheer mass and velocity!
But can such concepts truly apply against THIS?
"She's sending you LETTERS?" Roux answers Liam as she holds fire steady: "-- Trying to recruit Lucine? FOR WHAT? A blood sacrifice?!"
KTS: Roux Louka targets Elisa Kafim with 60mm Vulcan Barrage! KTS: Roux Louka has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Yulie tells her that all she needs to do is distract, and...
... to disengage, if she must.
Why? Why tell her to protect herself one day, and how much worse her current state is than death another? If she could -- resolve this tension, this ache, this feeling inside her, that'd be one thing, but to simply twist at her, sending her this way and that until she bursts...
Her heart is pulled in two directions, and the Spinatia attempts to defend itself with that single wing. The longbow blows the wing off, exposing the head -- and forcing Rusalka to defend herself with her weapons, instead.
Crossfire's approach catches Alma entirely off guard indeed. Her heavy saber falls apart -- the halberd comes up next, but the spinslash blows clean through it and sends Alma's machine rolling back, helplessly, through space.
The cannon hits the most armored parts of the Spinatia -- and the spear, a moment later, strikes that armor. It doesn't hit cleanly -- but it does leave heavy scoring and cracks spreading through.
Alma never could defend herself against Killy in any sense -- her commanding officer always did know best. She hits the damaged chunks of armor and bites through -- so close that the cockpit itself can be seen, and just barely, Alma's pilot suit-clad form.
... it'd be so easy. All she'd need to do is press just a bit more, and that last pilot -- the one she doesn't recognize, and yet, who knows her movements so intimately would... but...
... Yulie said to disengage if she couldn't...
"... Lilith... Killy, Sayaka, Anita..." Her heart sinks. "... I really wanted that reunion, but there's nothing left of me."
The Spinatia's battered frame boosts away. Only the boosters are left; the vulcans are spent, the weapons all shattered, the shield destroyed, one of the arms hanging on by a thread. All she can do is...
... disengage.
<Pose Tracker> Puru-1 has posed.
The good Doctor pleads with her not to obey. The girl in the cockpit shouts over the comm breakdown, the static, "-mocking me, PROVOKING ME!" She does not appear to be obeying, but neither too does she sound calm. Whether it is the atmosphere, or its pull upon the NT-D making her erratic.
elpeo elpeo elpeo
i am
mother why why
please be mine please
dont leave me alone
There is something calming as Crossfire speaks to her across the comms, the static steadying, the voice coming out more evenly, despite the distortion. "That's right. Where you belong." As she looks towards the Spinatia as it disengages, "Not here, with me."
Yuliana points to Puru-1's comment as a refusal, calling her a wallflower, and Emptear slaps her, right as the shield mount clacks into place dully. The slap contacts with it, and the titanic mass of Emptear sends it flying backwards. It is a wonder it does not crack from sheer size.
The Banshee's jets fire and auto-balance, preventing it from careening into the weird space of this realm or the locusts from Elisa's dragon. Banagher urges them forward, and it's unclear if the Banshee is obeying it or not, for that Psycoframe reaction, and suddenly it surges forward. "Wallflower."
She echoes, hollowly over the comms before it breaks up for a time, "-a Doctor at Vist, asked me. What drives the wolf?" Before she asks, more urgently, "Do you know?"
she knows she knows she knows she knows
The targeting prongs of the beam smartgun suddenly rotate forward at point blank range, as she demonstrates the answer, by bathing it in Violet flame along the length and width of the Emptear, at point blank range, it erupting erratically from its barrel like napalm from a hose.
"Because I know." The words arrive from such a hollow place within her very being.
KTS: Puru-1 targets Yuliana Kafim with Armed Armor BS Full Barrel! KTS: Puru-1 has completed their actions for the round.
KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Yuka Ohta's Pass, taking 0 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to LiSA's Pass, taking 0 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim rushes into the attack! KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim partially guards Koji Kabuto's Koushiryoku Beam, taking 1044 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim blocks Roux Louka's 60mm Vulcan Barrage, taking 900 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to react to Rena Lancaster's Beam Saber Cleave, taking 4050 damage! KTS: Rena Lancaster has engaged Yuliana Kafim! KTS: Yuliana Kafim charges into the attack! KTS: Yuliana Kafim partially guards Athrusa Hsieh's Assault - Meihua Formation, taking 6720 damage! KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to react to Banagher Links's Beam Saber Slash, taking 3600 damage! KTS: Banagher Links has engaged Yuliana Kafim! KTS: Shelby Korts has activated the Dash Spirit Command and has failed to disengage.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
The biting force of the serpents strike and stab through the machine; the teeth like sheets of ice and the sensation bringing back visions of the deep void-- and though for her it just happened, it brings back that sensation of someone watching her, staring at her--
-- Staring through her--
Shelby tightens her jaw and closes her stinging eyes, sending the Jagd Doga spinning with a swing of it's arm, battering at the spirit-serpents and trying to duck and dash to either side, not quite able to squirm out from Yuliana's reach--
<"Don't worry about me,"> she replies, comms toggling back. <"I don't plan on letting her win.">
The funnels -- scattered into the darkness of space -- return, swarming and swirling around at varying angles and patterns, streaking by Yuliana and taking long shots at tentacle and torso alike, beams even trying to carve into the voidmachine's face with dip and dodge tactics!
KTS: Shelby Korts has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Shelby Korts targets Yuliana Kafim with Jagd Doga Funnels Pursuit Formation! KTS: Shelby Korts has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
When she is released from the Emptear's grasp, Sayla's Lion seems to just dangle in space- Once again, a thruster is ruined. Once again, the hands have grasped her- and she cannot free herself.
She can breath again. Just. But her arms still feel weighed down. Her soul feels weighed down, by something heavier than gravity. Her arms won't move.
But she can see her displays. Her comms channel is still open.
"Banagher... Banagher. Listen." Her voice is raspy, as though she's had life strangled out of her. She can't operate to tight beam this. Not at all. So everyone hears. Even Yuliana. She has to choose her words carefully. "Survive. You have people to go back to too. We're both going back to them." Her voice fries again. "To her." Desperate. Trying to make a promise.
She has always done her utmost to keep her promises.
Athrusa tries top reach Yuliana. "Athrusa... if you want-" She starts coughing. A few specks of blood float free in her helmet, before settling on the visor or her face- until next she moves. "If you want that... you need. To survive."
Her final words in this burst, strained, as she tries to find a way to move again. "And you..." She shudders. Guilt racks her heart, regret her soul. "You have to survive here too." She can hear the question... and she answers. "A wolf... hunts for it's pack after all."
And with even one member of the pack missing, it can feel so horribly small and empty.
KTS: Sayla Mass targets Banagher Links, Athrusa Hsieh, and Puru-1 with Caution. KTS: Sayla Mass has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
Lucine smiles at Sayaka's comment. < "I'll do my best." >
It might not be that easy, though, as Liam understands what Lucine failed to acknowledge: that Elisa is the entity behind the dragon, and indeed, all these Void dragons. Maybe even the notes, stealing the Dianthus, everything.
She can't deny her own anger; it was a burning force that got her to here without flinching, and it's why she directly taunts the beast.
She wants to hear that answer, but, thinking back on what Leina said, she might not recieve a better answer that she already received from Leina herself.
All she can find in answer is the improbable buzz of locusts, an alien sound that shouldn't be happening here. < ".... You've already tried once." >
It feels like those locusts are consuming her confident words, if the Minovsky particles didn't manage to decimate them already.
Raspy chitin wings crash against the Dianthus like a thundering curtain; Lucine bids the Dianthus to power through, below the fray. It angles in a graceful turn, as sharp as a swallow in the early evening summer air, glaive at the ready, aiming to make a vicious swipe at the dragon as it soars directly 'up', or whatever the equivalent could be in this space.
KTS: Lucine Azul targets Elisa Kafim with CL0-V3 Glaive Shine! KTS: Lucine Azul has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Sayla Mass suggests caution, raising Puru-1's Intuition! KTS: [Spirit Defense] Yuliana Kafim's Inevitable Abyss activates, and her spirit is adjusted. KTS: Puru-1 enervates Yuliana Kafim, reducing her Morale significantly. KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to react to Puru-1's Armed Armor BS Full Barrel, taking 8400 damage! KTS: [Dynamic Hit] Puru-1's Hands Meant For Holding activates, causing Deject! KTS: Yuliana Kafim fails to react to Shelby Korts's Jagd Doga Funnels Pursuit Formation, taking 4050 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to evade Lucine Azul's CL0-V3 Glaive Shine, taking 3440 damage! KTS: Lucine Azul has engaged Elisa Kafim!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
'Will you? I'm sure the arms of your 'friend' make for a secure hold. Hm hm hm...'
Liam's skin crawls. If it were anyone else making that joke, he'd simply blush, but the thought of Elisa Kafim doing it feels... intrusive. Like she'd take the opportunity to leave something in their room to remind them they weren't safe, and were never safe.
Things that also make Liam's skin crawl: those horrible locusts. Liath Macha jets back, raising its shield to try and ward off the swarm, but as fast as his machine is, the locusts catch up. They crawl across the CGUE-II, blocking cameras and gnawing at the joins between its armor plates. But there is one major obstacle between them and their dinner:
Phase Shift Armor. The locusts are eldritch in nature, but they're still interacting with the world like normal matter. That means kinetic energy. That means the Phase Shift Armor activates, sheathing Liath Macha in pale radiance. Liam hits the jets, and twists his machine through a loop to shake them off. His machine looks... gnawed-on, afterwards, but it's still in one piece.
'Who are you again? ...Ah, yes, Lacy's boy.'
She doesn't even remember their names.
"Big words," Liam snarls, "for someone HIDING BEHIND A KAIJU!" He's still terrified. But the enemy has a face, now, and he knows things about them. A queasy green flash erupts from the space near Emptear, washing across the monitors. Liam's stomach lurches, but he doesn't dare take his eyes off the dragon. As Lucine goes in for another strike, Liam falls back to cover her. He swaps the spear out for the rifle with ease and grace, and then sends a withering hail of fire into the claws, wings, and appendages closest to Lucine's flight trajectory. Each shot is precise, lightning-fast, and ruthless.
KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Elisa Kafim with MA-M21G Beam Rifle Rapid Fire! KTS: Liam 7-020 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Liam 7-020's MA-M21G Beam Rifle Rapid Fire, taking 3690 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liam sucks in a breath after that. "I don't know!" he says, to Roux. "She wanted a gardener, but--" But what would have happened to Lucine, if she'd entered Elisa's employ? Maybe nothing. Maybe she would've ended up just like Alma.
KTS: Sayla Mass suggests caution, raising Athrusa Hsieh's Intuition!
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
Together, they manage to inflict serious damage to the Spinatia. Anita hoped they would be able to reach her, but...
Anita grimaces. There's nothing left of her...
"Alma... That's not true at all." Anita says. "...Wait! Alma!"
Still connected to her, the Svipul echoes her movements - the Valkyrie reaches out toward the Spinatia as it boosts away... but, it's too late. It's arm falls limply to its side as Anita lets herself go limp in her seat for a second, too. The Visual Link System's visor retracts, and Anita shuts her eyes tight. She has to take a second to take a deep breath and calm her nerves.
"...This isn't the end, Alma. I'm not gonna stop here." She mutters, and shakes her head. "...Sound off, how's everyone holdin' up? If you need to retreat for repairs, the Ra Mari II ain't far."
For now, though... she turns her attention to the fights still ensuing. She should be ready to provide support, just in case.
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
"All units in contact, I need status and any assistance requests." LiSA says, frowning over Koji's shoulder at the view. "Keep with the focus, I need you to stay with me. Don't feel like you need to pull back, but I need you to remember to ignore the words. Don't argue, show them what we do."
"Fight!"
"I realize there's a ton of stuff to unpack and I don't disagree with doing that but maybe we can like. Brunch later? French toast? At the Power labs? I'll learn how to cook them."
"Just don't let them bait you!"
KTS: LiSA has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Koji Kabuto KTS: LiSA targets Koji Kabuto, Liam 7-020, and Lucine Azul with Caution. KTS: LiSA has completed their actions for the round. KTS: LiSA suggests caution, raising Koji Kabuto's Intuition! KTS: LiSA suggests caution, raising Liam 7-020's Intuition!
<Pose Tracker> Killy Garrett has posed.
Killy will admit she got carried away, she didn't want things to go this far - Alma's Spinatia was in a sorry state after all of this.
Lilith...Where did she hear that name before? She'll have to think about it some more later, but it's clear this person is important to Alma, perhaps they can work something out.
Nothing left of her...the words broke Killy's heart, she wanted so desperately to go after, but she knew better not to amidst all of this chaos, but she will back for her. "...I'm...holding up well, thanks for helping." There was a clear hint of sadness in her voice, but Killy shook her head. As much as she wanted to fight against the people that made Alma into the tool she is now. She wasn't in the best state to do so, she was distraught.
"I'm going to retreat, I have no more business." She turned to face Lilith, pausing before speaking up. "...Lilith, thanks for everything, let's talk soon."
With that, Killy began boosting away as well. "Until next time, Alma."
KTS: Killy Garrett's Me-02R Messer 'Killer Harpy Mk II' has left
<Pose Tracker> Crossfire Salem has posed.
Ah. Alma realized who she was. Crossfire realized that was possible. As much as she wanted to go focus on Yuliana after this, the Amabilis was in no condition - she couldn't bare to sacrifice it.
As Killy speaks to her directly, there's a pang of guilt in her heart, but she says nothing. They'll need to talk.
Maybe together, they can save Alma.
Crossfire starts boosting away, preparing to retreat. She doesn't have the time, permission, or bandwidth to answer the questions others may have for her once this is all over.
She just has to believe they can win.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Rena tears free, and that light pulses, again. Down she comes, and the light curves, and splits, as her saber cuts straight through one of the points of Emptear's crest-crown. It falls, carried through space by the momentum; the gap bleeds that same green light, as Emptear spins away.
"More...? Yes, of course! I am so MUCH more! SO MUCH MORE THAN WHAT THE REPUBLIC SET OUT TO MAKE! I am not only a Newtype Destroyer -- I am herald to this world's salvation!" Yuliana laughs. It isn't an even sound.
She charges Athrusa's pinions, heedlessly. "How could you want me to be anything less?!" She demands, wounded. "You were kind, but you left, and my Elisa SAVED me! I'm really happy, now! That's why I'll do this, for her! I'd do ANYTHING for her!" Those anime swords cut at her limbs -- there's six to target, each horrifically large -- and she doesn't even care to defend herself. "And she'd do anything for ME! That's what love IS!"
Banagher charges in -- and Yuliana howls, "MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE A MONSTER!" She turns to face him, head-on, as his saber plunges in -- more colours, to add to the cacophony. "She's waited for the beginning for so long! I won't make her wait a minute longer!"
Screaming at Banagher as she is, she doesn't see Shelby's funnels until it's too late -- they pepper into her, and those snakes look as if they really ought to scream, being shot so grievously. They don't. They're part of her, and she's already screaming.
Emptear can't convey the stricken look on Yuliana's face as she turns from Banagher to the Banshee -- but the way her head whips about might speak something of it, just the same. "That won't work any more," she insists, an edge of panic to her heated voice. "My Elisa made sure of that. Just ask this boy -- he knows the lengths she went to!" Banagher may well remember Leina offering Yuliana information on deprogramming indoctrination, a slower and more painful process than any magic. "Yes," she adds, with a beat, a glance to Sayla's battered Lion, "for the 'pack'... loyalty was priced so high. Yes, it's how they bid me to destroy -- had me devour everything in front of me like some ravenous beast." And there are some, here, who may remember how much Yuliana spoke of consumption. The reason -- "You know why you know," she insists, to the Banshee's pilot, at a growl. "Come to me!"
Not that she needed to invite her. That smartgun empties into her, and she empties it, into herself. She reaches out to grasp the Banshee -- the Banshee, who knows, just as she knows -- and those cacophony of colours FLASH. They wash over the field -- and all those open to feeling it, regardless of whether they're Newtype or old, will know at once:
Yuliana isn't the opposite of a Newtype.
She's just bonded with a different realm than theirs.
There -- do you see it? The cracks in the world? No! No, not the ones around Yuliana, the ones she has made plain for the physical eye to see. The ones around the Newtypes, you and you and you and her, and Yuliana, hollow spaces where information ought to go. Places where God took a knife and GOUGED out something that should be there, something precious and important, and now all that's left is the empty space.
You should see something.
And you don't.
All YOU see is NOTHING --
And in the worst gaps, the largest scars --
Eyes.
They are green and innumerable and they are watching, always; they speak with mouths of their eyelids, and the voice is feminine, and the voice is furious.
YOU ARE NOT MINE
As much a feeling as a thought, rejection and anger and panic.
YOU TOOK WHAT IS MINE
Fingers rise from the Void which is so close to existence, and they pull, and grasp, and reassemble. They unmake, and remake. They search your flesh for what you have taken.
YOU WILL TAKE NO MORE FROM ME
Unravelled, and rewound.
WHAT DID YOU DO
"What did you do?!"
You are still whole.
GIVE HER BACK
"Give Her back!"
You always woke up whole, until they went too far.
But there's a voice in the physical realm, in unwitting echo.
As the abyss welcomes you there is one who sees nothing -- feels nothing -- nothing at all. Yuliana has always silenced the hearts of those around her; her heart has never been silenced. Perhaps she never knew it could.
Now she is the one, silenced beside them.
"Elya!" Yuliana cries, two of those eyes dimmed to grey again, as she clutches blindly at her face. "Elya, I can't see! I can't see anything! HELP ME!"
There's a crack of black lightning -- summoned from Emptear, though perhaps not from Yuliana, suffering as she is -- and she's able to leap back, clear distance, and that colourful glow fades from the battlefield.
-- MINE, but the feeling is where it's meant to be, now, all buried in Yuliana's heart where her blood should be.
"I am yours," she says, a shade panicked, trying to be reassuring, and she doesn't realise she has a wider audience. "Llou-okh'ysh jowllsh, Empress. Sh:, sh:, llysth'ia... th'iallia..." The words are terrible to hear, all unravelled and spooled out. It's not any language spoken here. But --
Even so --
If you saw that twisted miracle --
Always yours, Empress. Shh, shh, listen... there...
... the words make sense, to you.
That giant robot relaxes her tension, as she feels some affirmative reply, and takes another step back. She looks out, to those gathered.
"That's... what it's like..?" She asks, and now she's not focused on Her, her voice grows thinner for it. "I--I..." Her hands curl around herself; Emptear doubles over, as she does, hands clutched about her midsection. Small and whining, she asks: "Doctor Baihe, what's happening to me? Why... why is this happening to me? What did they do to me...?!" And it's so similar to those things she'd cry about, in her office. She may have said those exact lines, time and time again.
"Dr. Baihe," she looks up, and reaches for her, "please, can't you do someth--"
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
The time for debate has indeed passed. Koji is warming up every weapon he has, and the Dragon takes that set of light rays surging towards it. Searing parallel lines crash into its terrible form--and sink there. They are too small to do it much harm, with the way that the Void crackles around it, eating away at their energy.
Perhaps they will get out of this. But not yet. Roux counters Elisa, and Elisa's voice retorts, "Then this place shall 'become' where my creation must be. It is inevitable."
But she's screaming... Yes. Yuliana is calling out. Can she ignore it? The voice is conspicuously silent. The uncountable rounds, meanwhile, are mostly eaten up by that terrible energy, and as it turns out, mass and veolocity do not apply this time.
"And succeeded," Elisa points out to Lucine. But the Dianthus's graceful turns slash through the dragon as it moves 'up', scything off another clawed arm. Liam's attempt with the beam rifle, meanwhile, is quite precise indeed; even as the strange geometry of the kaiju shaves off damage that should be more telling, he is able to blast jaws and claws and joints and prevent them from taking hold of the Dianthus.
"Am I hiding?" the voice asks Liam. "You could come to me at any time..."
But the Dragon seizes, suddenly, in the wake of the terrible miracle that comes. It jerks, and all of its titanic form becomes utter stillness.
Black lightning crackles about Emptear, and suddenly, if one looks closely, a woman is here. She is tiny, compared to Emptear, even any of these machines, but sensors can pick up her presence, the dark robes she wears, the appearance of Dr. Kafim.
"NO!" she roars, and somehow it is audible even in the vacuum.
Dr. Baihe is called for, but in that moment, a gate opens below Emptear. It looks to Nothing; the great and terrible robot sinks into it, with Elisa behind, both hands focused on her work. And the witch disappears with it, along with the portal.
The kaiju starts flailing, burning, and everything around it becomes black, undulating flame.
The crack in the world above begins to widen. There is very, very little time now.
KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim targets Koji Kabuto, Liam 7-020, Lucine Azul, and Roux Louka with Oblivion Wing Ebonpyre. KTS: Roux Louka successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Oblivion Wing Ebonpyre KTS: LiSA has activated the Trust Spirit Command targeting Koji Kabuto KTS: Koji Kabuto successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Oblivion Wing Ebonpyre KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Focus Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 successfully Evades Elisa Kafim's Oblivion Wing Ebonpyre
<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.
Alma retreats... it's not the outcome anyone wanted. Nothing left of her, maybe that's true if she refuses to let the people she cares about pick up the pieces. "If there's nothing left of you now, I hope you realize it's still not too late for you still. I hope this battle and all the feelings it brought forward is proof of that." She doesn't expect a response; she lets it hang regardless.
Anita makes her offer then. "Thank you, Ensign Rosetta." While a huge part of her wants to head straight forward to fight the Emptear, or assist as backup against the Eclipse Dragon, she knows that she lost a huge chunk of armour against the Spinatia, and just clocked out the reactor to boot. "I think I'll take you up on your offer: Areia could use it. I'll have to give the Captain my regards as well." She was a huge help at the Battle of Metis too, after all.
When LiSA asks for a status report, Sayaka quickly responds. "I'm bringing Aphrodite Areia up to the Ra Mari II for repairs. Although it's not the outcome we were hoping for, we've forced a retreat from Lieutenant Stirner." A pause and then to Koji specifically: "I don't need to say as much, but don't lose, okay? You know what a Mazin's supposed to overcome."
Just as if to illustrate, Yuliana tears through reality, cracks and eyes of green visible even from the deck of the Ra Mari II... Then she vanishes, the entire massive super robot vanishes into the darkness of the kaiju awashed in flame.
It's eerily obvious who is responsible for this work. And what must be done to stop it... Sayaka eyes Mazinger Z and its allies with renewed determination.
KTS: LiSA suggests caution, raising Lucine Azul's Intuition! KTS: Sayaka Yumi targets Koji Kabuto, Liam 7-020, and Lucine Azul with All-Out. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Sayaka Yumi has activated the Foresee Spirit Command targeting Koji Kabuto KTS: Lucine Azul retreats from the attack! KTS: Lucine Azul successfully evades Elisa Kafim's Oblivion Wing Ebonpyre KTS: Sayaka Yumi orders an all-out attack, raising Lucine Azul's Skill! KTS: Sayaka Yumi orders an all-out attack, raising Koji Kabuto's Skill! KTS: Elisa Kafim has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Is this really more!?" Rena calls back at her. "You're just... reflecting your pain back on all of us! You're not moving past what happened!"
Rena cries out, even as Emptear spins away. Her eyes narrow, as she hears her howl about Elisa. The Psychoframe swings to the side, beam saber aglow, as she moves -- and she draws to a sharp stop when she feels something else. Something past the silence and nothingness.
She sees the eyes. She hears the voice. Her back goes rigid -- she feels a sharp, sick sensation in the pit of her stomach.
And Yuliana is crying out, begging, and in pain. She is asking Dr. Baihe to help.
Rena swallows. She thinks of her mother. She thinks of Eight; of Arriety; of Anita. Of all the people suffering, trying to somehow push through. She said that Yuliana and her aren't so different.
The white Mobile Suit rockets downward, towards Emptear -- towards those dull grey eyes -- and Psychoframe particles swirl around the Gaia Gear Alpha. "Yuliana," she says. "Please. Just--just remember. If someone won't let you see the world, then they can't be doing right by you!"
She cries out, then: "Funnels, GO!"
The back of the Gaia Gear Alpha bursts into a dozen vapor trails as all of the funnels explode out from it, all at once. They shoot outward, every which way, around the Gaia Gear Alpha. Then, the white Mobile Suit tears free the beam rifle.
She fires a trio of shots -- hurtling off towards the dragon. The funnels fire, too, as one; lances of beam energy criss-cross over the dragon, before Rena sends the Gaia Gear Alpha flying forward. It folds up into its waverider mode -- and then shoots by Void Dragon. By, but not into.
It breaks away, leaving a brilliant trail of Psychoframe particles all around it, before the Gaia Gear Alpha unfurls into Mobile Suit mode again. It spins, turning on a dime, and aims the beam rifle with both hands -- draws a bead -- and fires, the lance of mega particle energy firing into the dragon and the storm of Psychoframe particles.
Which ignite into a brilliant, green flash of wonder.
KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Rena Lancaster targets Elisa Kafim with Shooting Star! KTS: Rena Lancaster has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Koji Kabuto has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Koji Kabuto has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Koji Kabuto has activated the Trick Spirit Command. KTS: Koji Kabuto has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Rena Lancaster's Shooting Star, taking 6050 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
In the middle of Koji's fury, he hears words from the Banshee's pilot. Z's head turns to stare at the black RX-0 as Koji opens a laser comm to the mobile suit, to speak to the girl he doesn't know. The rage is throttled back - barely. Sayla's Lion, too, receives this communication - a statement of solidarity, despite everything.
"... Every wolf deserves their pack - their family who love them."
"The people who've done this to you will pay. I swear it."
Rage and bile resurfacing, Koji lets out a breath as T'maakva's own thrashing scours the battlefield in shadow and flame - and something coalesces as he finally reaches the eye of his own furious storm.
"Hold on, Lisa."
With a gentle tug of the yoke, Mazinger Z glides backwards away from the flames, then up and over the waves, slipping between the lashing dark infernoes like a black-and-gold leaf.
"As long as we're together," he replies to Sayaka, "there's nothing we can't do. I know what my ideal world looks like - and this isn't it."
"We never got the Kafims a wedding present," he comments dryly, balancing Z's reactor output carefully as the Mazin's eyes, horns and the remains of its chest radiator brighten and brighten to dangerous levels. Its left forearm detaches, Iron Cutters springing out of both it and the drifting right arm as the latter's thruster reignites, exposing the missile tubes mounted in its upper arms. Finally, the golden diamond on Z's gut opens out like a hatch, and a much larger missile tube in the stomach irises open, a warhead protruding.
"Then this will have to do! Mazinger Z, give me everything you've got, and LET'S GIVE THIS THING HELL!"
Photon Power Beam. Freezing Beam. Breast Fire. Additional beams firing out from the wingtips of the Astro Scrander as its own missile bays disgorge an unrelenting cascade of golden stars. The gut-mounted missile launches spews colossal warhead after colossal warhead, a rate of fire that seems impossible given the size of the missiles and where they might be stored, and in the upper arms' launches the deadly penetrating Drill Missiles bombard T'maakva. The circling fists of the Castle of Iron veer in, delivering rocket punch after rocket punch to the Void Dragon's head and their Iron Cutters slicing apart scales to reveal shadow.
Mazinger Z gives everything for its pilot, and unleashes every weapon at this monster of the Void.
KTS: Koji Kabuto targets Elisa Kafim with Full Arsenal Volley! KTS: Koji Kabuto has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Koji Kabuto's Full Arsenal Volley, taking 8840 damage!
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
There is a horrible tension in the air even as they cut and carve at the other Thing that iswaswill be Yuliana. She boasts and she cries, and she proclaims, and Roux's eyes stay on the giant dragon. Koji, Sayaka -- did they come out here just to -
to -
to -
to -
Something horrible happens and for a moment Roux feels like she's standing on the ocean. She turns her head and looks towards where Yuliana iswaswill be and can see the markings. The rips and the tears. Something there. Something else that she's with. Something -
But what does that make -
And at that point thought is moving too fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjtktfWClys
Roux thinks she sees it and she gets it and she knows it. Something else is there, something perhaps that came through the thin places, whatever that means. Something that watches and lurks and against which they only huddle in vain, with only ignorance and darkness as protection, but -
BUT-
BUT -
BUT - !!!
"We're not defenseless any more, you maniac sons of bitches," Roux curses the Void, even if she doesn't seem to be clearly answering anyone (maybe Elisa? maybe she's quoting a movie or something). "We have --"
The Hyper Mega Launcher shifts in the Strike Zeta's hand as Roux's head turns and so does the Gundam. Space is threatening to rip apart *but that's where she lives*. Total determination and alignment lock in together. The Hyper Mega Launcher is held out but -- that's wrong, Roux realizes. It's thrashing. If I stay at this range it's just going to dodge over eighty-two percent of the particle on average. And the Strike Zeta finishes turning, grasping the Launcher up near the barrel and accelerating *TOWARDS* the creature:
"-- this -- on our side --"
Roux stares ahead as the undeniable cosmic enormity of whatever hellacious Thing this is rises before her, swirling in chaos and death and atrocity against the very order of well-known physical reality. False vacuum collapse, Roux thinks, remembering a television program about TITANIC COSMIC DEVASTATIONS she watched on Jupiter. Is that what it's trying to do?
"--haaaaaahhh--!!!"
IMPACT: Press the front of the Launcher against the side (flank? top? whatever, a FACE) of the thing and as she clicks into saber mode, the Hyper Mega Launcher all but purrs through the Strike Zeta's hand. "Koji!! You gotta destroy the whole thing!!" Roux calls out, before the *TITANIC BEAM SABER*, with the power of a dedicated reactor that not so long ago would have run an *entire MS*, erupts forwards, outwards, inwards, blooming. Roux waits until the 'beam developed' chime plays and then TWISTS towards the side that seemed longer at a glance, kicking in the thrusters to add all the force she can to the sweep.
KTS: Roux Louka has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Roux Louka targets Elisa Kafim with Hyper Mega Launcher - Carve and Slash! KTS: Roux Louka has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
Sayaka thanks her, and Anita nods.
"No problem, Doc." Anita replies, offering her a thumbs-up. For now, though... the Svipul's still holding up. She can still fight - but then, something happens.
Something happens.
Something Happens.
SOMETHING HAPPENS.
It passes - and Anita is left, wide-eyed and shaken, drawing breath in deep.
"Wh-what the hell was-" Anita starts, stammering. She is usually always so cool-headed - but who could be, after that? To see that which should not be seen, in such a way... It... takes a second, for her to resteady her grip on the controls.
Emptear disappears - but the dragon is still here. Rena's still fighting. Anita fixates on the Gaia Gear for a moment, watching her fly.
That's right - she's still here with her. Anita breathes, in and out.
"Rena!" Anita calls out - and then, the Svipul shifts into Fighter Mode once more. She accelerates, darting through the air. She peppers the dragon with bullets, assaults it with missiles - and stays always just out of reach, flitting just in and out of range to distract it and create openings in a way that requires every ounce of her acrobatic talents.
KTS: Anita Rosetta has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Anita Rosetta targets Elisa Kafim with Dazzling Acrobatics! KTS: Anita Rosetta has completed their actions for the round.
KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Roux Louka's Hyper Mega Launcher - Carve and Slash, taking 7150 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated! KTS: Roux Louka has engaged Elisa Kafim! KTS: Roux Louka roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Anita Rosetta rattles Elisa Kafim, making her next maneuvers more difficult. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Anita Rosetta's Dazzling Acrobatics, taking 4550 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated! KTS: Anita Rosetta begins a Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Puru-1 has posed.
The Doctor reaches out again, as does the Mazinger pilot, and tells her she has a pack to live for. For the moment, she does not answer her, too swept up in the assault against Emptear. Yuliana's low key panic is met with something strange, like validation. "-oesn't need to work."
Her invitation to the dance was met with this extension of this strange validation, this kinship, perhaps if only by the cruelty of Dr. Murasame, through a former colleague of his.
"You know."
The reaction, as Psycoframe meets Voidframe is deliberate, and instant. The reaction is reversal, the reaction is isolation. The reaction is there and suddenly the hollowness of the human heart is stronger than ever. She can feel her, that connection. That hatred from the eldritch being, the consumption of self within it.
Otherwise.
She is alone. She is alone with something that hates her. All other sides of her cut off.
How perfectly appropriate.
A child screams into the void, wails at the sudden disconnection. Noone hears her, noone can hear her, except someone that hates her. It churns torturously against her, it winds her up and spools and unspools her as punishment.
"Mine." The girl within the cockpit echoes to herself, within the darkness. In this moment where she understands how her opponent feels, sees. The fundamental isolation of the experience.
Her fingers reach. She should have so many hands, right now she only has two. The hands in the dark are there but she cannot see them, she cannot feel them. She cannot reach for others with them. This sense of complete disconnection, and pain.
One will have to do.
The hand grips hold of the Unicorn. And wrenches it free. She cannot feel the occupant, even now there is the hollowness of experience. She pulls it free from Emptear, and HURLS it away with all of its Psycoframe imbued might. Away from this.
Away from her.
Even if she cannot take him in today, he must live to see another.
"No. I am alone" She eventually answers the Doctor, and Mazinger's pilot on the wolf pack as an afterthought to the situation, as if she were suddenly contemplating the nature of her existence. This suffering, this punishment.
"And I deserve to be alone."
She can feel the crack in reality growing, the panic of both of their opponents in this moment. The Banshee turns, and azure jets fire, as it flies away from the battlefield rapidly, as if in demonstration of this.
She will not participate in their triumph, for she is not one of them.
<Pose Tracker> Athrusa Hsieh has posed.
It's so strange... Athrusa doesn't really understand how to reconcile the seemingly different reactions Yuliana has. Was she not under her own control, when she speaks of how much she enjoys Elisa's presence, and then reaches out for her to help? She doesn't have any experience or senses that lets her tell what's happening. She wants to believe her, but the conflicts happening here...
Sayla reminds her that she must survive if she is to want what she wants. It's a good reminder. "... thank you, Dr. Mass."
"We can be more... with lesser," Athrusa affirms to Yuliana in turn.
Then, there is a cacophony of colours, and... and...
Nothingness, again. Infinite, unrelenting, inexorable nothingness. And in those worst gaps... green eyes, innumerable, watching, with a feminine, furious voice.
"You..." Athrusa whispers, as her body -- her mind? no, this is something a little more core... her very reason to be is floating within that nothingness, innumerous eyes set upon her. There is a contradiction here which is exactly the same: the existence that should return to mud, that refused, and...
The Something within the Nothing.
The fingers reach, pull, reassemble. Unmake and remake. Unravelled and rewound. It's extremely familiar to her.
Because this is what VEDA would do, to its bio-terminals.
A computer that looks like a human should still behave like a human. It should boot up when you want it to; it should shut down when you want it to. It should be reformatted when it gets old and clunky and riddled with transactions from the world. It should be replaced when its parts wear out.
A computer that says 'no' to all that...
Is it still a computer, at that point?
Yuliana cries for someone, a name she doesn't know. Is it Elisa? Is it someone else in her past? She doesn't know.
"Yuliana, no... come here--"
The words are terrible, but then she suddenly shifts in tone; she asks Doctor Baihe what's happening to her. What is happening? What did they do to her? The past echoes back in a roar, all those times, in the Republic, in that office...
"Yuliana!" she calls out, impassioned for the first time. There are tears on her face, and she doesn't even realise it. "YULIANA!"
The Impermanence Gundam lunges, its arm stretched out as black lightning crackles about it; the terrible robot starts to sink into it, and the Impermanence Pinions suddenly become an arm -- they become one long arm that terribly and threateningly dares to reach into that portal, into that void.
She'll reach for her, no matter what; no matter if that arm of hers begins to burn.
She fails; but she sees that figure, the witch, Dr. Kafim, in that instance.
Computers shouldn't have emotions, either. They can run hot, and run cold, and they can overheat and shut down; but when your computer, at that moment, learns how to hate, just a little...
Yuliana and the Emptear is gone, but she has a target of ire to launch upon, turning towards the Void Dragon.
"... Athrusa Hsieh, Impermanence Gundam, Pinions ..."
Every syllable feels weightful and heavy, thrumming with her heart beating against her ribcage. Her eyes -- canvassed through the Gundam's own -- is locked upon that horrible and unknowable dragon, full of tendrils and the unspeakable, as its void-wings roar with black, undulating flame that threatens to consume her.
Enough!
(BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM_xBLjtIH0 )
The Pinions style themselves as traditional Funnels for the first time, and they glow red.
They glow red with the toxic nature of the False GN Drive. As Athrusa so often puts it: a poison that shouldn't be brought into this world. She has ever once leveraged a GN Beam Saber or Rifle for that very reason -- because its weapons are pure poison. Its weapons are a war crime that shouldn't be explored, upon this world. But here, they dance, delivering quartet upon quartet of poisonous Drive shots, threatening to corrode and devour away with each blast.
Against the Creature created by the Unspeakable...
"Athrusa Hsieh... Eliminating the Minus Factor."
She's willing to become the poison of the world.
KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Puru-1 targets Banagher Links with Pass! KTS: Puru-1 has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Athrusa Hsieh targets Elisa Kafim with Assault - Meihua Formation! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Athrusa Hsieh's Assault - Meihua Formation, taking 7410 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated! KTS: Athrusa Hsieh completes the Formation attack!
<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.
https://youtu.be/KlRxAIYy-WU
It makes sense of course. If there's a warmer world beyond this...
There has to be a much, much colder one.
Cold. Dark. Alone. Empty. A world of isolation. Sayla opens her mouth to scream, but even though her lungs empty she cannot hear herself. The voice is too loud. She feels her eyes searching desperately for anything to lock on to, there is nothing. Nothing and the eyes.
the eyes the eyes the eyes
Those still in the living realm can hear Sayla's screams, terrified, shaking and then shutting down as she runs out of oxygen again.
But for Sayla, she feels the world as Yuliana feels it. The silence, the darkness. This is not the same as how Sayla lived before she awoke. This is that absence taken to a level beyond what she can handle.
No newtype couild live like this, and not be changed. Not be destroyed. Not have their heart collapse.
So it's a real voice that reaches her, that reminds her to breathe. Every wolf...
Panic and terror drives her to her next desperate action, reaching for her last weapon. A spiked hammer on her chain. But even as the Emptear vanishes... there's still something here of that void.
"This world you want..." The words of Nanai come back to her. "This world of yours..." She forces out, hearing her own voice again. Hearing the distressed sounds of her lion cockpit. Her helmet showing extra oxygen being pumped into her normal suit. She slams the controls forward, and the rockets on the hammer burst to life as she swings with all she has left. Even if this is how Yuliana sees the world... Sayla can't allow it.
"...is not for the living!"
But even as she brings herself back, words cut through her heart. She is too committed to the attack to look back. She should call out to the fleeing Banshee- but it took all she had to do this. Perhaps, though, with Emptear gone, those feelings may reach the pilot who claimed the name of Elpeo Puru.
Even if the pilot deserves their loneliness... her family won't let her.
Never again.
KTS: Sayla Mass uses Hyper Reloader KTS: Sayla Mass suggests caution, raising Banagher Links's Intuition! KTS: Sayla Mass has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Sayla Mass has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Sayla Mass targets Elisa Kafim with Hyper Hammer 200 Power Swing! KTS: Sayla Mass has completed their actions for the round.
<Pose Tracker> Shelby Korts has posed.
So close to the epicenter, it doesn't matter whether or not the psychoframe-equipped cockpit is awakened: With Shelby's abilities; her ability to read hearts as well as thought, she looks again into the void-- as deeply as she had when she plunged in after Sayla to aid in the rescue of miners from the anomaly.
The colliding forces of psychoframe and voidframe generate a light, and--
The world as she knows it goes silent. For a time, in evil green radiance, Shelby hears nothing. No world, no Noise, no calling; her Funnels spin off into standby mode and float as it feels like her very connection to the psycommu system is cut off. For a brief, terrifying moment, someone puts their hands over her sixth sense.
It's so quiet. She can hear her own heartbeat. She can hear her own breathing.
Her own thoughts. Words...
Is this what it's like...?
Voices echo in her mind; the sensation far different than what she's used to. More terrifying and broken and visceral; the black lightning that rips through space enough to send Shelby into a panicked reversal, stomping her feet down hard against the pedals and throwing her control sticks back as hard as possible.
Her eyes press shut as it feels like a knife is being pushed through her skull; the emergence of the Noise and the voices that accompany it -- the return to normal. Her version of 'normal.' One more rattling twist of the battered Jaga Doga to watch as others tear into the spaceborne beasts.
Even at longer range, Shelby levels her gatling gun on the dragon-- and just fires until the E-cap gives out, be it from capacity or overheat. She may or may not be screaming.
KTS: Shelby Korts has activated the Strike Spirit Command. KTS: Shelby Korts targets Elisa Kafim with Beam Gatling Gun Constant Barrage! KTS: Shelby Korts has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Shelby Korts's Beam Gatling Gun Constant Barrage, taking 5720 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated!
<Pose Tracker> Banagher Links has posed.
<"She needs us more than ever. Don't give up, Sayla!"> Banagher calls out. <"I won't let her be alone ever again!">
The pilot of the Banshee is speaking up far more than she ever has. Banagher wonders to himself if this is some kind of breakthrough -- if this time, maybe, they can convince her to come back with them.
<"It doesn't matter what drives the wolf."> Banagher manages, even as the Unicorn slashes at the Emptear. <"None of us are wolves! We're people, and we're driven by the connections we have with each other!">
Before the Unicorn's beam saber can connect with anything, the world around Banagher--
tears apart
leaving nothing
but eyes.
Everything is wrenched away from him. His distant connections, his Bond with his Gundam, even the feeling of the Unicorn around him. Reality twists, spins, leaving him sick and weak.
A terrifyingly powerful woman stares at him, wrathful in her rejection. Banagher grits his teeth, trying to snap something back at her-- but reality collapses again, around him, raising a wave of nausea that leaves him silent.
Banagher chokes on the nothingness surrounding him, trapped in an endless empty moment. It feels like-- he's falling, deeper, never to return to the light--
Until someone grabs him. It's not a kind gesture, not really, but it wakes Banagher and yanks him out of the influence of the Emptear's Void. He cries out as, again, the Unicorn is sent hurtling away by her sister.
And I deserve to be alone.
<"No!"> He shouts, desperation turning his voice into something ragged. <"That's not true! Miss Pilot, I won't -- let that be true!">
The Emptear vanishes, carried away through a familiar splintering portal, consuming Yuliana's terrified voice. Banagher watches his companions fall on the remaining dragon. It's a fierce monster. They need his help, but--
The Banshee's jets fire.
<"You saved me."> Banagher's voice is soft. <"I won't leave you to this fate!">
Turning from the battle, Banagher throws everything the Unicorn has left into pursuing the Banshee, leaving a blinding trail of starlight behind him. As he exits the Void's influence, Banagher connects with the Unicorn once again, encouraging just a little more speed from his Gundam.
It isn't enough.
Even as the Unicorn runs out of fuel and her thrusters sputter to a halt, even as the Banshee races away from him, he reaches out a hand. The Unicorn moves in harmony.
<"I won't give up.">
KTS: Banagher Links targets Elisa Kafim with Pass! KTS: Banagher Links has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Banagher Links's Pass, taking 0 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated!
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
The Eclipse Dragon's immense mass and bizarre physiology make it difficult to tell just how wounded it is. But those awful, intrusive cries of pain are hints they're doing something. Liam knows they can't afford to stop.
"You'd like that," Liam growls, to Elisa. "You'd like to break me, hollow me out like you did that poor woman!" Alma. He doesn't know her name. Who was she before Yuliana and Elisa got their claws in her? Liath Macha draws the rifle to its shoulder, and sights one of the great dragon's heads. The instant before Liam pulls the trigger, there's a brilliant, sickening flash...
A terrible pressure inside his head, like when he first met the Banshee. (The Banshee's right here and he hasn't felt a thing.) Has he? Instinctively, Liam's head jerks towards the Dianthus, sighting Lucine's last known position. He doesn't see her. She should be here, but he doesn't see her, just a HORRIBLE YAWNING NOTHING where his beloved should be. Liam's eyes widen in panic. "LUCINE!" he screams. "KOJI!"
YOU WILL TAKE NO MORE FROM ME
Something is there. It's looking at him, and his bravado is elsewhere, his blood turned to ice. Liam goes very still, but it's no use. She's seen him. She's seen him, and she is ANGRY. "YULIANA!" Liam screams, "STOP!" But Yuliana is screaming, too, and those fingers are reaching for him, into him, and then--
Then Liam hears the frantic beeping of the vitals monitor, and feels the crush of acceleration on his chest. He hit the jets without even realizing it. He eases off; as the lightning erupts, he glances back towars Emptear, watching it vanish. He realizes he understood those horrible words.
But something has happened to the kaiju, on top of that. Horror returns as the space around it starts to burn. As the sphere of destruction expands, Liam floors it again. He feels the acceleration settle in his ribs and hips and spine as he outraces the shockwave, clearing it by mere meters. When he eases off into a gentler turn, he starts gasping for breath.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
BGM: Warframe - Undercroft https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU16QDN12A&ab_channel=UnreleasedVideogameOST
Lucine. Liam looks at her machine, and it's just the Dianthus, just her inside. The other holes are other machines: the Unicorn, Shelby's Jagd Doga, the Masquelion, the Banshee. Is that how--
Liam swallows, and gently pushes the thought aside. It obligingly slots into its little box, for now.
Control returns to Liath Macha's maneuvering. "Lucine," Liam says, to let her hear his voice. "Together. Let's--let's show them. Even if--even if that's what they see, what they want, it's--" He sounds just as angry as when he yelled at Elisa, if not angrier. "The world does not DESERVE more horror!"
The Eclipse Dragon writhes, surrounded by its field of agony. Liath Macha reaches for its spear; Gae Buidhe ignites, its blade lengthening and widening until it's about half the size of the haft, and three times as wide. Liam twists his machine around a thrashing wing, past banks of raking claws--
And then PLUNGES IT into the heart of the beast, wrenching and dragging as he fires his machine's thrusters. He starts to carve, opening the wound as wide as he can. This thing has no place here. Liam will not mourn its passing.
KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 has activated the Valor Spirit Command. KTS: Liam 7-020 targets Elisa Kafim with &w - True Strike! KTS: Liam 7-020 has completed their actions for the round.
KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Liam 7-020's &w - True Strike, taking 7930 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated! KTS: Liam 7-020 has engaged Elisa Kafim!
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
The eyes see her.
What did she do? Where is she? What is she? Who is she?
Take no more, there is none to give.
( BGM: https://youtu.be/T1Z0MrfMPLo )
Because the rug's been slipped from underneath Lucine, and she's falling, falling, falling--
For someone who has been a Newtype as long as she could remember, and knew she was a Newtype for nearly the same amount of time, it's like experiencing herself in the negative.
There is no Lucine. There is no self. There is no thing here.
A house with its foundation torn away is just an absurd structure floating in the air, a magician's trick for a laughing audience with no eyes.
It balances on air that isn't there, and the sky inverts, stars falling up to the cracking, malfunctioning sky.
She rejects it all.
The Dianthus exists. She will be the Dianthus.
'Together. Let's--let's show them.'
< ".... Am I....?" > A voice creaks, unsure, through the transmitters.
Is she Lucine? Can she be Lucine?
That proud glaive is thrust downwards as the flower comes spinning down down down, a scalpel to pierce through all pretense.
To skewer this unreality, and invert it to where she can feel again.
KTS: Lucine Azul has activated the Spirit Spirit Command. KTS: Lucine Azul targets Elisa Kafim with CL0-V3 Glaive Dragoon! KTS: Lucine Azul has completed their actions for the round. KTS: Elisa Kafim's Will Barrier activates, negating 1000 base damage. KTS: Elisa Kafim fails to react to Lucine Azul's CL0-V3 Glaive Dragoon, taking 7020 damage! KTS: Elisa Kafim has been defeated! KTS: Lucine Azul has engaged Elisa Kafim! KTS: Lucine Azul roots her unit, coming to a standstill and leaving her vulnerable.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Mega particles and Psychoframe energy crash towards the dragon. Scales and wings and claws explode under the Gaia Gear Alpha's assault. Every weapon Mazinger Z has assaults T'maakva, in a cascade of golden stars and drills and rocket punches. The Hyper Mega Launcher meanwhile slashes through its entire bulking form, sending her through its shadowy form even as Mazinger Z's power begins to unravel it.
But even that would not be enough for its sheer scale.
That poisonous essence from the Impermanence Gundam eats away at the very substance of the dragon. Decrying this world that the DRagon represents as not for the living, Sayla rockets that hammer forward, and smashes into the dragon sending cracks all through it. In the wake of he Jagd Doga's gatling gun, the void expands, making it hard to see the sheer damage that it inflicts before it finally overheats. But Liam, closer, can tell; he can tell that his new machine is tearing gigantic bulky scales apart. Finally, the Dianthus--Lucine?--skewers through what remains. The kaiju, abandoned by its mistress, can do nothing in the wake of these assaults but fade. There is a terrible noise, a gurgled whisper in the heart, and then it bursts into green energy that fades and fizzles.
The strange energy that infected this area is gone. The clouds of green energy exist no more; the crackling portal to the Void has dissipated. Locusts remain, dead in their thousands, floating through space. ...But those miners who were evacuated are evacuated; the damage to the asteroid remains, but lives have been saved. Reality is preserved.
For now.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
T'maakva twists and shrinks and collapses, disintegrating along with the abnormal symptoms of the singularity. Koji slumps backwards in his seat, only now finally processing the horrors that had been crashing against his own storm.
"... So that's what it's like for her," he says, numbly, staring into the space where the Void Dragon vanished. "... Lisa," the girl is, he knows, much more sensitive to this than he or Sayaka, "are you okay?"
No response - he checks on her, and curses. "Sayaka - Lisa's out cold. We're coming back shortly." He starts tapping buttons to regain control of the rocket punches. One of Mazinger Z's detached forearms comes to rest alongside Sayla's almost-totalled Masquerion. "If your boosters aren't working, Sayla, I can give you a lift back."
"Liam. Lucine." He breathes out. "Good job. Make sure you get some rest when we get back."
"Banagher..." He watches the fuel-less Unicorn reaching out for the Banshee. "We'll save her." Mazinger Z's left arm comes alongside the Unicorn, now, to give the white RX-0 a lift back. "We have to."
So many others, here to fight the Void. "Thankyou, everyone."
He lets out another breath, leaning back into the seat. The tiredness he feels now is different to the frustrated fatigue he was feeling before the fight started - its combustion into rage has spent the emotional burden.
Mazinger Z begins to chart its withdrawal to the Ra Mari II, damaged but whole and ready to rest.
<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.
The Thing is gone.
Roux thinks, as she descends, about what the phoenix said to her: Was it vindicated here?
Or was it...
...
...
...
Roux forgets half of what just happened, shaking her head slightly. "-- I'll cover the, the recovery," Roux communicates to the Ra Mari II, because...
Everything worked, and nothing was hurt. Roux isn't sure if she even got dinged by debris. And somehow that's the eeriest thought of all.
<Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed.
"Annie!" Rena calls out.
She can still feel that woman that hates her, as if she can still see her. Maybe she can. Still, hearing Anita's voice has a way of pushing it back. "You--you saw all of that?" But, in a way, she doesn't need to ask.
She can tell by her voice.
She watches as the Dragon fades away -- into nothing -- and she slumps down in her seat, letting out a sigh she didn't know she had held in. "...I'm... a little worried, if they'll be back," she tells Annie. "But... we did good."
At the same time, she looks at the screen before her -- and where the Unicorn is -- and her brow furrows.
<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.
"...Yeah. I did." Anita replies with a nod. Rena doesn't need to ask, but the answer... it's good to know that she knows, too. The Svipul flies over next to the Gaia Gear.
"...We did. That's the important thing, for now." Anita offers. They did good, and they have things to talk about, now - but for now...
...For now, they need to focus on recuperating after this harrowing event.
<Pose Tracker> Lucine Azul has posed.
The dragon is destroyed. The Void is banished. Reality has resumed.
The eyes seen her(?) no more.
Koji's voice fills the cockpit, bringing with it a confidence that feels like a small ray of sunshine.
< ".... good, job...." > Lucine repeats. Liam, with his own experiences of such things, as well as having to witness it in others, may clue it very acutely to what's wrong, as everyone begins to gather around those who may still be shaken.
The adrenaline is leaking out, and Lucine sags in her chair, staring ahead. Rest.
The Dianthus hangs in space, drifting serenely, all fury and anger gone.
<Pose Tracker> Liam 7-020 has posed.
Liath Macha makes a little flourish with its glaive, and slots it into place to recharge. Liam grits his teeth as that horrid presence lets out its death rattle--
And then the Dragon is gone, and with it, the gateway to the Void. The adrenaline that was keeping Liam in the fight starts to fade, but not wholly.
"Understood," Liam says, to Koji. "Escorting the Dianthus." Liath Macha crosses the distance effortlessly. "Lucine. Lucine?" She repeats Koji's words, and Liam's stomach tightens. "Follow me." She might just be exhausted. She's probably just exhausted.
But given what they just saw, he can't take any chances.