---

The four-eyed demon stood his ground, glaring at Laharl, and not budging whatsoever from his threat. Overlord or not, Mao wasn't about to be afraid of some homeless-looking Demon tossing insults his way. Though, despite the threat, Laharl seemed to not advance towards violence, instead calming somewhat, to Mao's surprise. "Them?" Mao glanced at the Seekers for a moment, before looking back with an eyebrow raised, not sure what they had to do with their issue here.

Though as he continued, it became clear: He was with this group too. Yet he hadn't been brought to his senses. Which, upon reflection, he was able to now realize Band hadn't had his curse dispelled either before their fight. Mao perked up at Midna's voice, glancing back at his own shadow for a moment as he listened to her words, confirming Laharl's place and that they should probably go about lifting his curse. Offering a nod to this, Mao noted they had a big fight coming up, and maybe they could use this blazing-knucklehead to not only do some fighting, but maybe tire himself out enough to work their magic.

"Equals, huh..." He replied to Laharl's words with disdain, his laugh causing a drop of sweat to slide down Mao's forehead. Even if he bloated himself with smacktalk, that laugh was the real deal! Mao only wished he could be taking notes, but he'd just have to remember it for later. "Fine, if you're with them, I guess we'll have to cooperate." He gave in, shaking his head with mild annoyance.

Midna popping out of his shadow caused him to wonder just how she did that, though observing his teammate's abilities could wait. As annoying as it was to have her on his tail, she wasn't wrong that they needed to get going. "The exact business I was talking about!" Was his response, ready to en this petty discussion and get onto more important things. Though, Fox's own interjection left a sour taste in his mouth, whether Mao thought he was right or not didn't matter. Mao wasn't leading this operation, he was just the one that could get them there at a fair pace. Keh, what's this guy think I am, a hero? As if. If anything, at least Fox got acknowledgement he was heard clearly from the lack of amusement on the demon's face.

Thankfully distracting him from that annoyance, Primrose's own words towards Mao's fellow Overlord caught his attention. If this Laharl wanted to gain strength, then Mao had to do the same after that comment from before. He didn't want to be equals with this blue-haired guy, let alone inferior, so he'd search for whatever power boost he could get. Enough to crush this Galeem, which he thought would be more than enough to handle Laharl if the need was there.

One boost seemed to be these strange things in the new lady's possession. Items? Abilities? Mao sought these things like a kid looking for candy: He couldn't help but be intrigued. "Don't think I've seen anything like these around before. But if they're useful, I'll definitely take a look." He wasn't entirely sure of what these objects were yet, though he felt an essence from a few of them that gave him an odd hint of familiarity. Nothing of the same world, but the scent of a Demon nonetheless. Plucking one from Primrose's possession if not to just study it momentarily, he saw what almost resembled some sort of weird, red upside down teardrop.

"Fascinating..." Mao's glasses fogged up from his deep breaths, as he gripped the spirit tightly. "This isn't just any dumb item, it almost gives me the feeling it's alive. I can feel the aggression of this demon and it's delightful!" Lifting the Spirit, Mao was suddenly more obsessed than curious, his mind running to many places about what this could mean. But one thing was for sure; He was low on servants, and a demon like this one wasn't much, but it was a start.

Managing to return to normal before he started drooling on himself from the possibilities of these spirits, he decided to start bolstering his ranks. "Wake up, already! Your wild, untamed anger is exactly the kind of force I need! Gotta be better than what you're doing now, right?" His demand of the demon within the Spirit was clear, mentally noting it'd be good to finally have a servant again that was on the right track. If it'd actually work or not, he'd wait and see. It seemed to not respond in any way, though he could still feel the presence perfectly well.

Mao's gaze went to one of the stranger individuals in the group: She looked like a giant fancy bee, which was strange, though nothing that really shook him up much. Her royal complaints caused him to shift his gaze between her and Midna. Queen and Princess, huh? Not that either title meant much in the long run to an Overlord, who's job it was to dismantle such lower authorities, but they were still respectable levels of power. Something about the Bee in particular gave him a strange vibe. She wasn't an Overlord of course, but she rang as more dangerous than average fodder. He was a mixture of wary and intrigued, though wasn't going to follow up on his thoughts for now.

"I always thought the hard part was gaining control," Mao replied to the Queen's complaints, palm resting on his forehead. "Instead, there's backstabbers at every turn, and now this glowing jackass took my entire Netherworld! I'm keeping this in mind the next time someone tells me this 'ruling' crap is easy."

Done with his own complaints, Mao eyed the weird helmet the Queen presented. Wearing that thing gave you better quality items when you smashed these orbs? Sounded like a dead to him. "Heck, wearing it means I get better loot? I don't give a damn what it looks like." Whatever downside she saw, he couldn't be bothered to care about. He'd keep to himself that smashing the life essence of some other demons would be both good fun and an intriguing example of what these orbs could provide though.

He'd get to see this in action, once the Phantom Thieves put it to work. It was a small sample size, but Mao was impressed with the results. According to them, the weaponry suited each of them perfectly fine. He wasn't experienced with this method of looting, but seeing the weapons match the looters was promising. "Hoh... That thing does seem useful. I'll have to keep notes of it's results to see how consistent it continues to be!"

Through most of the group-talk, Mao simply rested with his sword planted in the ground, impatient with the waiting after Midna and Fox had already been rushing him prior. A plan was okay, probably how they rolled, considering how Band and the Seekers ran his group down before. They knew each-other pretty well, while he didn't, so once they made their choices, he was more than happy to pull his blade from the ground, sheathe it, and offer one last untrusting look towards Kan-Ra as he departed with the group that decided to follow after him to the business base.

---

Upon arriving at the already damaged hellhole of an office building, Mao smirked at the sight. "Looks like the fighting's already started!" Stating the obvious, though a curious mind wondered if a few spare spirits were laying about from victims of the battle. He'd have to worry about that later, though, as things were chaotic once they made their way inside. Water, bullets, explosions, Mao was expecting a warzone but the arsenal caused him to quickly dip behind cover as fast as his feet would take him; Unsheathing his sword to attempt to block a few of the oncoming bullets, a few passing through his jacket much to his annoyance, but thankfully missing his scrawny body.

"To hell with this! Let's see how they like being exposed!" Mao had charged his magic, preparing an attack, but as he dipped out of cover the Unrelenting Force of the shout sent him barreling back, only managing to stop himself by stabbing his blade into the ground. "What the hell kind of power is that...?!" He growled in annoyance and confusion, sword coming up to cut an office chair in half that came flying his way, unsure of how to approach the situation.

Until one of the grunts already in the battle gave them an opportunity: Water, so much water, in such a brutal fashion did she crash into the opposing force and scatter them, leaving an opening to try and pick fights. Recovering from the knockback, Mao charged in: "Only shouting that armored guy will be doing is from agony!" He called his mark, unsure of who would join him, if they did, but Mao wasn't overly worried about it. He needed to hold his own and get past these guys, he wanted to know who they had in the back; if anyone. Had to be more somewhere, possibly even his mark.

If he wants the blast all to himself, then I ain't gonna argue! Mao took initiative by throwing his sword at the Dragonborn, the blade spinning through the air as the demon approached while charging up a Star attack in his fist as a follow up strike towards the warrior.

"Thanks 'Captain Obvious'," Laharl snarkily remarked back to the other Overlord's observation "What else will you tell us that we alr-" his banter was cut short by the force of what sounded like a shout so strong it blew him back smacking him against a concrete wall, Laharl coughed up a bit of blood as he hit the building falling to his knees with the air knocked out of his lungs. Laharl managed to get up on one knee, breathing heavy through gritting teeth as he struggled to stand but his eyes were filled with burning determination as though he were unable to give up so soon.

So much malice and hatred burned within the boys heart all mounting to that moment, a terrible aura surrounded him as he stood up on both feet like he himself was the embodiment of that hatred and when he opened his mouth he let loose a roar of rage that he could no longer contain. "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" his fists erupted in flame as he yelled at the hedgehog and the warrior "I AM NOT SOMEONE EVERYONE CAN PUSH AROUND!" Laharl rushed towards the warrior who had sent him sprawling and gave him a dose of his own medicine, with a one-two punch to neck and gut with an enough force to throw him on his back. The damage wasn't severe but the burns on the warriors neck would need tending to if he was to properly use his voice.

---

Mirage, for once, found himself pretty quiet. He would've responded to Geralt's confusion, wondering how someone could forget something so simple, but Sakura's words seemed to have left him in a position where he wasn't quite sure what to say to just about anyone. Rika's attempt at helping not going anywhere while his own was just met with Sakura leaving the room he had visibility in. Followed by the high-pitched sounds of her retching. His real body winced as he tried to think of what to say, coming up with blanks.

This wasn't like him. He was Mirage, the witty Legend who always had a zinger lined up or something cool to pass down. Now, what? He was just the guy who helped make some girl upset and puke? He felt his own facade break as he stood on that shoe box, realizing his silence wasn't from a lack of knowing what he wanted to say, but because he was attempting to pull his front personality back into place before speaking to the others. And Elliot couldn't push past that long enough to try and comfort Sakura in a time of need further than he had prior, instead standing there as Nadia took the charge on that front.

It was brutal, but perhaps what she needed. He still didn't say anything, aside from hissing a little at some building pain in his head. The hell's that about...? He wondered, noting the conveyor started moving, and the BULL along with it. It allowed him to look at what the others were doing finally, rejoining them technically even though he'd been in here the entire time. As the machine moved along, he began noticing something aside from the headache; A bit of nausea, wanting to almost follow in Sakura's footsteps and throw up whatever was possibly in his stomach. He tried to keep his reaction to a minimum, though the giant robot gesturing as Mirage covered his mouth in an attempt not to vomit meant it was easy to tell he was moving around.

"N-Nice, the conveyor's working..." He said with a fair amount of delay, the weird sudden effects subsiding with no warning, just like how they arrived. He planted his feet, knees shaking a little but he kept up, noting that whatever the hell that was, it gave him more reason to want to be out of here. And if it was this device causing it, then he had to get out of here faster. They needed all the help they could get down there, and the BULL was a huge help, if he could get it down there. A simple thought about diagnostics was enough to pull up results of the working station's condition, which seemed in the green and functional. Was this normal? Christ, what horrible working conditions.

Before he could manage to comment on that, he caught something in the BULL's camera. One of the diving suits... Was moving? Panic took over before sensibilities did, or maybe panicking made the most sense? One of the BULL's arms came forward, providing a bit of a barrier between it and Bella, for her own safety as she scooted away, though this came to an end as the machine went further down the conveyor, camera still focused on the diving suit. Still scrambled from the effects of the headcase, Mirage didn't even really think about the familiarity of the voice, this individual feeling completely new to him. Though remembering his experience with Carl, he wondered if this was somehow similar, so he held back on being aggressive. "You, uh, okay?" He questioned, trying to stay peaceful, figuring if anything, at least they wouldn't have to fight this diving suit.

The suit pulled itself together somewhat, reacting to the BULL with surprise as it seemed utterly confused by the fact it was there. "Hold on a sec, I thought I was seeing through the BULL?" It voiced it's confusion, pulling itself up somewhat, though shaky and uncertain of what exactly the hell was happening here.

"What're you going on about? You were piloting a BULL?" Mirage questioned, but was met with a very quick response: "Is that me? Okay, okay, that's a REALLY good impression guys, I'm impressed. Who's doing that?"

"Impression?" Mirage had a sudden, horrible feeling. "You're saying this is your voice?"

"... Yeah? So unless you're a decoy, that must be some very talented voicework! But none of your mouths are moving, so what gives?"

There were a lot of problems with what was currently happening, for Mirage himself. The question of what was up with Carl before was strangely becoming more clear, though he couldn't quite put together what exactly he was supposed to do in this situation. His brain was still a bit scrambled, but that also seemed to be the case with this suit, both becoming a little aggressive, but mainly confused, at the situation presented to them.

"I appreciate a joke, guys, but you're creeping me out with this impression." The suit added, staring at the majority of the group with a bit of annoyance, since he'd been trying pretty hard to make stuff work to help them, and now after all that drama, he was getting pranked! Mood whiplash, much? If the suit had a face, it'd be squinting at the others to express that annoyance. And, to it's knowledge, it had a very handsome and beautiful face.

Through the residential district’s rows of housing Kan-Ra led his entourage in search of a particular temple. He moved with undeniable purpose, and it didn’t take him long to zero in on his target. Following him proved to be a little frustrating, if not difficult, since rather than slowly glide the whole way the sorcerer opted for a different approach. Instead he moved in bursts by placing a sand trap far ahead of him, which took the shape of a miniature cluster of sandy pyramids, and then exploding into sand to reappear from the trap. He repeated this process over and over again, fast enough to force everyone to hustle to keep up, including his acolytes. By the time everyone reached their destination more than a few were huffing and puffing, but there was no time to waste.



The temple in front of them lay comfortably nestled among a bunch of houses, and it seemed to be open. A number of Grimleal peacekeepers were already on site, loosely spread out around the building to avoid causing too much of a scene, but there was no sign of their commander. When Kan-Ra approached a couple underlings moved to greet him, exchanging a few quick words. The sorcerer bowed his head in thanks and turned to face the others. “The Obelisk of Khamoon,” he told them. “A local attraction, frequented by many for its serene beauty. Its lower levels are closed to the public for the sake of historical preservation, but some vermin have infested the place, regardless. Azwel has already begun his descent. Let us not delay.”

“Round two for pest control,” Tora joked. He and Poppi moved to the front of the group, Mech Arms ready for action, and Band stepped up right behind them. Kan-Ra joined him, and with their protectors in front, the heroes made their way up the stairs into the temple. It took the form of a single vaulted room rich in columns and archways, every inch of real estate covered by gorgeous carvings, patterns, and hieroglyphics. Reliefs of ancient beings, their animal heads almost lifelike in their detail, reached out from the walls in orderly rows. As fascinating as it all looked it seemed all too familiar to Kan-Ra, who pointed the way toward one of the temple’s two towers, the one in the bottom left. At one point a rope barred the way to a spiral staircase, but now it lay cleanly cut on the floor, the NO ENTRY sign on the wall discarded.

Tora stepped right over the rope and started down the stairs into the darkness; with Poppi by his side and a bunch of friends (and not-friends) behind him, he was practically fearless. The ice-blue glow of Poppi’s ether furnace lit the way as he followed the stairs to the bottom and started down a corner. Though this place seemed like the quintessential dungeon Tora didn’t really get the impression of a spooky derelict catacombs. “Temple remind Tora of oasis ruins,” he mentioned. “Stuff in good condition, not creepy. Like museum. If there no more icky-pooey deadypons to fight, Tora happy.” He looked sideways at Kan-Ra. “N-not that there, mehhh, anything wrong with undead.”

The sorcerer’s upper lip twitched. “Though I may not look it, I am alive. Clinging on to what little I have left, as it were. And I am not a mummy.”

Tora didn’t believe him one bit, but he wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead he led the way around a corner, and when he spotted some light up ahead, made a beeline in that direction. The echoes of some sort of clash hastened him on his way. He arrived at a three-way intersection, with the path straight ahead terminating in a balcony that looked out across a vast vertical space. The railing was tall enough that an adult woman could just barely peer out over it, so while Poppi picked up her Masterpon to give him a look, Band sidled up to the wall and leaned out to take the whole place in.

Decorated with massive hieroglyphics, the giant chamber extended a good five stories down, and at the very bottom a pool of bright blue water sat, still as the surface of a mirror. Up above a square hole covered by a grate let filtered sunlight shine down across the whole affair, and between the chamber’s depths and heights a massive monolith nearly spanned the whole space. Perhaps the temple’s titular Obelisk of Khamoon, it encapsulated the majesty of the place with the incredibly crafted birds and painstakingly etched runes across its shining surface, but Band could admire it later. As long as the Resistance was calling this place home, it was no more than a den of murderers and thieves. He busied himself searching for a lead, and by the time Poppi elevated Tora enough for him to see, Band found one.

“Down there.” He pointed down at a portion of the third floor, the first floor from the top to be open to the central atrium with the aid of supportive pillars and floor-to-ceiling tablets. He couldn’t make out exact details, but he could see bursts of blue and red light, either magic or enchanted weaponry. The flash and rattle of gunfire, however, was unmistakable. “Looks like your man Azwel already found himself some company. Let’s boogie.”

Poppi considered the problem before them. “Masterpon and Poppi can fly down, but not want leave friends. Or run right into trap.”

Since most of the group couldn’t fly or climb down, they needed to find a different way, and turned away from the balcony to consider the left and right halls. Skull looked between them but could find no difference. “Man, which way’s the right one?” he asked aloud, scratching at his dyed hair. “Man, I wish Oracle were here right about now!”

“We could try jumping down into the water,” Panther observed. “But that would make us sitting ducks if they’re all waiting down there.”

Kan-Ra’s brows furrowed over his glowing eyes. “We do not have time to waste. It may be wisest to-”

“Ether spike detected!” Poppi alerted the group, interrupting him. She looked up to see an orange magic building above the group. Grabbing Tora’s wing, she jetted backward out of the way. “Look out!”

A moment later the summoned meteor crashed down right where the team had been standing, splitting them four ways across the intersection. “Now!” a deep voice called out, and all at once the enemy appeared. Around the corners of both lateral hallways a pair of enemies appeared. From the left side a dragon mage appeared to start hurling fireballs that burned with the same flame that the meteor left behind. Beside him stood a surly-looking dwarf with a fearsome warhammer and a magic-looking shield.

Opposite them, a witch doctor in a horned mask threw pots that shattered to produce a swarm of corpse spiders that scuttled the intruders’ way. A gun-wielding punk had her back, but he seemed more eager to taunt than open fire. “Got your dumbasses! Any last words?”

His words proved closer to reality than one might hope as a secret door opened into the corridor Kan-Ra’s team entered by. It admitted a tough-looking woman with a hunting rifle who promptly started shooting down the hallway, while an ogre of a man almost big enough to scrape the edges of the hallway lumbered out behind her. After she fired her opening salvo, Earthquake stood ready to take on anyone who came toward them.

While Tora raised his Mech Arms toward the spiders, ready to get their attention and start squashing bugs, Band guarded against Fitzroy’s gunshots with his cymbal. “Bah! So much for gettin’ in n’ out.” He slid one foot backward, preparing to charge. “All we’ve got’s the spur of the moment, so unless y’all wanna paint the walls, we’ve gotta split and run ‘em down!” He narrowed his eyes at the enormous kusarigama-wielder downrange. “Watermelon Man’s mine, but I could use a hand with his friend.”

Bringing his metal fist down hard, Tora pancaked a corpse spider with a squelch that turned his stomach, but the two that leaped at him next kept him from losing his edge. “Tora and Poppi take on nastypons this way!”

Kan-Ra joined them, but Skull and Panther focused on the dwarf and the dragon the other way. “C’mon, Panth, let’s teach these jerks a thing or two!”

His friend stuck out her tongue cheekily as she turned to face them, her new submachine gun in hand. “Won’t know what hit ‘em!”

Sakura had coughed a few times over the railing, a few tears dripping into the pitch black water below. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and wrapped her fingers around her wrist. Her subconscious expected the comfort of her fighting glove to be there, and it wasn't. Someone was stabbing the inside of her stomach with a hot knife. Someone else was taking a jackhammer to her skull and her heart was drowning in an itchy abyss. What would her family think of her? Or Ryu? Could she ever get over this? She felt terrible about this whole thing.

Sakura was in for an awakening as a familiar voice shook her out of her thoughts. When Nadia span her around Sakura's eyes were wide, her mouth a small, surprised circle. No interruptions from the girl with the flower in her hair, that's for sure. When it was all over Sakura certainly seemed to be more present. Her gaze was fixed on Nadia, expression more cogent. The discordant actions earlier a result of her trying to hide her grief- to be tough, and to act like nothing was wrong.

"I...I'm sorry." Sakura said, voice broken. "I'm not tough. Not like you guys are." She bowed her head, eyes closing. "I just killed someone, Nadia. And now we're using him. There's no other way out but... I just- I just need a minute. I wanted to help, but I'm just making things worse and being a burden. Sorry." Sakura concluded, miserable.

"Since everyone can't fit in the sub, it makes sense that I'm one of the people that stay behind. Be careful." One hand clutching her arm, the other over her even more pained stomach, Sakura pulled away from Nadia's grasp. Head low, she found a corner to sit in. Once again she drew her knees against her and clutched them to her chest. Now she groaned slightly, tensing as a horrible pang of hunger ripped it's way through her insides.

Between the hunger, the manslaughter, her powerlessness, a removal of her identity, and the disturbing imagery of seeing "Carl" moving again, Sakura's mental health was drained. The Maw had defeated her, a casualty of stress.

Nadia was right in that it was only going to get worse. Sakura watched in horror as Bella was given a fright by a diving suit that just came to life. It sounded exactly like Mirage. And it acted like, him, too. Almost as if there were two Mirages in the room.

"Oh, no!" Sakura cried out, hiding her face and shrinking. "He's another ghost!"

After Mirage fit himself into the techno-chair-helmet contraption there was a brief, tense moment of waiting for the boy to "give the signal." No scream followed his connection to the device, so the Cadet turned a cheeky look Geralt's way and said, "Told ya it wouldn't kill him."

Whether it eventually would remained to be seen, so the Cadet kept an ear out for any shouts of pain while he wandered away. He went about inspecting the place, if a little lazily. There was metal, machines, and random junk that seemed to be in even worse shape than what was in the garbage heap they escaped from. The Cadet made his way over the diving suits, pulled one from where it hung and dragged it over to where the girls waited beside the water. It was heavier than it looked, and he deposited it with a thud a few feet from Peach and Bella. They'd mentioned dropping things into the water to draw attention away from the submarine, the diving suits among them, so might as well look them over. He stared through the helmet's glass, and it looked like the inside was stuffed with little machine parts stuck together with some kind of goo or... mold, bleh. Out of everything in the natural world, those kinds of dangerous bacteria or fungus probably disgusted him most. From effluvium to viral spores, it was all bad. If this gunk even is naturally occurring. It's weird looking, he thought. He spared the suits a couple more seconds of study before he looked at the girls.

"They're kinda gross," he told them, "but they'll definitely sink if we push them in as a distraction!"

A distraction strategy would probably only work once or twice if that man retained any of his intelligence after he transformed - and, yeah, the mini monster hunter was just taking his companion's word at the whole spooky transformation thing. He went to grab another suit just in case, rubbing his aching stomach as he did, and when he returned again Bowser was just getting back from his own investigation with a rod and bait. Although he was caught off guard by the koopa telling them not to look in the jar, the thought of fishing the threat out of the water actually sounded fun.

"Groovios idea. We'd probably have to set up some kind of weighted stand for the rod to make sure no one gets pulled in if it works." He glanced at the water, thinking. That might not be too difficult to do, since there was a lot of heavy looking stuff around. They could finagle something to hold the rod, and then they'd just have to hope the line didn't snap. Or the rod itself. Actually, looking it over again, the fishing pole seemed a little flimsy... but, the more options they had, the better! Now to figure out what the best way to go about making a sturdy stand would be.

Nadia's voice brought the Cadet's attention up to the submarine where she perched. He smiled at her. Had she climbed up there? She was really working those cat-like traits. Unfortunately she confirmed that the sub was as small as it looked, so they wouldn't all be able to go. Much like the future Witcher, Ace Cadet doubted he'd be much help inside of it. Especially because there was something lurking down in the water, whoever went in the sub would need to be as quick as possible - no time at all to try and teach someone to use it during. He followed the cable Nadia pointed out with his eyes, all the way to where the koopas and Rika were heading to try and find a release. With his gaze pointed back towards the ground, the Cadet noticed the Bowser left the bait jar with the rest of the things he'd brought back. Curious, he went over to look. He knelt down and took the jar in both hands, turning it over. The label meant nothing to him, maybe it was the kind of thing inside, or the name of the man who'd fallen into the water. As for what the thing actually was, the Cadet squinted his eyes and peered through the glass. It looked like some kind of underdeveloped creature. Actually without all the bits and bobbles coming out of it, it almost looked like it could be a human.

The thought unnerved him. Ace Cadet put the jar down and slid it over to where the two dive suits laid - the "creepy pile." Just what the hell kind of place was this? Thankfully, a distraction came in the form of the submarine being lowered. Seems like someone had figured it out. Cadet scooted closer to the fence, though he paused when he noticed Sakura walking quickly towards the water, her face pale. When she emptied the little contents of her stomach, he scrambled up to approach her. "Sakura!?"

Nadia made it to her first, catching the Cadet off guard with her words. The feral had been gentle with Sakura up until then, but obviously the situation was getting to both of the girls. He could tell it was meant to be a pep talk, so when Nadia looked for support he tried with an expression that came off more as a grimace than anything else. It didn't seem like it did much good though. What was Sakura talking about? Killed someone? Surely she couldn't mean that metal thing, the one that was currently being moved into the room? Though he couldn't understand her thought process, he tried his best to follow up what Nadia said.

"Hey, you are tough. You've bounced back from so many things! This isn't gonna break you!" The Cadet said, moving a little closer to Sakura and Ms. Fortune. "We don't know what really happened to that— guy, so..."

The crash of one of the diving suits that were still hanging up interrupted his words. He glanced at it, startling into a laughable battle pose with his little fists raised when Bella screamed and the suit's arm starting moving. His eyes snapped to the other diving suits laying on the ground, but they stayed right where they were, silent and still. It was just the one, and it had the same voice as Mirage?

"It's not a ghost! It's... Uh...?" He had no idea what was going on. He looked between the suit and the chair, slowly lowering his arms. If anything it would have been a ghost of Mirage, but he was still standing there and even speaking. Confused, the Cadet inched towards where the boy was connected to the headset, keeping an eye on the moving suit. "Are you alright Mirage?"

”Well, there’s your answer” Kamek said when they got a, ah, rather different kind of moogle than normal in response to Link’s call for one.

”Welcome to the Maw. It's, well it's rather terrible to be quite honest. It's taken the Blue team and turned us all into children” Kamek explained to the butt scratcher welding Moogle. Then he looked thoughtful for a moment, eyes fixed on the butt sctarcher as he did, before asking ”I don't suppose you can get us things from the outside of here? Tools, weapons, small portable allies. That kind of thing?”

---

”Yeah, cool, exactly what I was thinking” Bowser lied in response to Cadet’s suggestion of anchoring the fishing rod to make sure people didn't get pulled down if they got a bite. Then, when he was in the middle of trying to tip over the TV to use it as a climbing platform, Jr called out ”Oh wait, there it is!”, prompting the king to stop and look as his son ambled over to some kind of console or control panel that the cable they had been trying to follow looked like it terminated after exiting the wall again..

”Blech. Gross. It's covered in slime. ” Jr complained after he got a leg up from Rika to see what he was working with. With a disgusted look on his face he used his claws to scratch some of the disgusting ooze off of the labels on the control system to see what they were working with. Leaving the radio well alone (what was it going to do other than give away that they were climbing out of the depths to whoever was on the other end after all? Or that was his logic anyway. Trying to call for help certainly never did) the boy set to work wrenching the controls that related to the sub, using them to haul the little round submarine over the waterhole and then lowering it down into the water.

The entire process was entirely noisy, but at least it was quick and soon enough he’d dunked the sub into the water and they were ready to set sail.

”Ok, got it, you can let me do- wow” Jr began to say, and then was startled when Rika, who’s gauntlets he’d been standing on to get tall enough to even reach the console made for human sized adults, basically dropped him.

”Careful!” he complained to the ship girl.

“Sorry, but you're kinda heavy” Rika told him, shaking her now slightly sore limbs.

Them being over on the other side of the room meant that they’d missed most of what was going on with Sakura and the robot that had been Carl, but it was hard to miss what was more or less the girls profession of defeat that was the conclusion to.

Jr just kinda rolled his eyes at her horror, while Rika once again felt really bad for Sakura but, again, really had no idea what to say or do to help. She could relate to having been a burden and not wanting to kill though, but that didn't help, it mainly just made her feel bad too. Empathy, she was finding, was often a difficult thing to now have.

”Then take the time together and then help after. It's fine. It could be worse, you could be Kamek who I am literally having to carry around.” Bowser said, trying to lighten the mood at his absent mage’s expense. It was probably too late and, in the end, it likely wouldn't matter because they suddenly had other problems.

One of the suits, filled with the same goop that had been on Carl/the helper, suddenly woke up and started talking like Mirage and then getting confused and annoyed about Mirage being round the corner talking to him.

Jr had said the chair was a bad idea and here they were, being proved correct, because clearly they were related somehow. He didn't bother typing to figure out how though. He was hungry, and tired, and grossed out and just. He was done ”Nope. Nope nope nope. I am not dealing wiiiiiith this” Jrs declared as he marched his way over to the sub he’d lowered and got inside. This was going to have to be someone else’s problem. He was going to keep moving forwards, because that was his way of dealing with all of this. So rather than entangling himself in whatever the suit mess was, he instead sat himself in the pilot's seat and started fiddling with the interior of the sub to work out how it, well, worked, while Mimi sat on his shoulder and watched with 0 understanding as to what her trainer was doing but mildly amused by all the twiddly sticks and flashy lights none the less.

”Oh great its a doppl... derpl... dapl... It’s a copycat! Ok. Stand back, I have had so so so many of these before and they are always bad news,” Bowser said in response to the whole citation and then stomped over, grabbing his hammer head on the way over, and put himself in between where Mirage was and the room the suit was in ”Look, I don't know who you think you are, but we’re just kinda trying to leave. So if you want out too, you can work with us, or you can walk out that door and leave us alone. Or we can have a problem” Bowser, holding the hammerhead like a cudgel (using one of the teeth as a handle and the smacking end as the, well, smacking end), bapped the side of the round end of it into an open palm as a rather clear message of what being a problem would entail.

“So, um, can we maybe not fight the big robot suit? I’m sure they’re just confused.” Rika said to Bowser even as she edged over to stand alongside Bowser with her guns sort of half cocked and ready just in-case things got ugly. However, as she really, really, really did not want to find out how Sakura was feeling right now, she tried to de-escalate the situation by saying “Hi, um, no ones impersonating you, there's just someone who sounds very similar to you in the next room? Called Mirage. What’s your name?”

Many of the thieves took up Sectonia's offer to use her treasure helmet to get new gear from the crushed spirits. While some were apprehensive or even disliked the pain it caused them when they wore it, their amazement at the items they acquired overshadowed that. "Hm... Considering the quality and usefulness of the items you acquired, even I am tempted to use that thing for a mere moment even knowing how ugly it looked. That is incredibly useful." Sectonia said as she observed thief after thief getting new weapons they immediately put on to use for their upcoming fight. "A shame I can't wear it due to its size. But that is what minions are for!" Sectonia said, laughing lightly. Although seeing how this worked, only those who fought similar to herself would give her anything useful.

After the last person crushed their spirit and got their equipment, Sectonia took back the offered Symbol of Avarice. "Good work all of you! Enjoy your new equipment." Sectonia said, delighted at the results of the test of this magical item. Her regen aura slowly healed up the thieves who took damage from wearing the hat, so there wasn't any real lingering penalty for using it, at least not now, although the upcoming battle would probably leave a few wounds.

"I believe now that we have seen the power of this item, only my minions shall get use of it." The queen said, dismissing the item in a puff of smoke, putting it where her staves and swords went. "Sadly none of you fight like I do, but should you find spirits you wish to gain items from, just see me and I'll let you use this magical item again. As long as you're a loyal minion of course." The Queen concluded, stating the rules of how she would let people use the Symbol of Avarice. She wasn't a charity, and would be getting something out of this arrangement as well. But as long as people became her minions, she would promise them the power and rare items she always promised to new minions.

The newcomer, Mao, gave his own complaints about ruling, apparently he ruled a world as well. More royalty, but Seconia knew about vassilization, so she didn't keep the chance of him being a minion off the table. Although she figured it would be very doubtful, like that large koopa there. "The key to any successful kingdom is a proper hierarchy. Its easier to let others do the busywork as you make the large decisions. Just keep them under scrutiny if they aren't fully loyal." Sectonia's comment having a bit of a double sided edge to it.

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Eventually they made their way to the building in question, where more resistance members were saying. And they were not only waiting for the group, but were heavily armed pinning the group down almost instantly with gunfire, explosives, and water. Sectonia was one of the later ones to arrive to the fight, being a bit bigger and having a bit of trouble finding an entrance, needing to make her own after a bit of exploring. However, as she entered the room and fired off a globule of void at the enemies defensive wall, a tough shield weilder, one of the resistance members spoke some words and yelled, causing many things to fly about with the insane force and blowing the Queen back out of the hole she had just made, knocking her back a fair distance before she recovered.

"Well then..." she said with annoyance, only gaining slight injuries from scraping the wall on her way as the shout only seemed to push her back. She flew back to the hole she made, and cast her Slowing effect on the side of the room where the Resistance was set up, before summoning 3 fire antillions to advance on their position before finding some cover herself, staying out of the water. Her ice ones were still busy finding the lost mercs, and there was no way she was going to use the green ones with all the water about, unless her minions were out of the water themselves. This also meant she couldn't use her lightning which was one of her primary magical attacks she liked to use. At least her Rings of Light were still available to her, and considering the lineup of the resistance members, she had a feeling a few of them would be dangerous if she got up close.

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Blazermate was a bit too concerned with keeping an eye on the monster guy swimming underwater that she did miss a little bit of the shenanigans going around her, but not so much as to be oblivious. While still keeping an eye out for the aquatic monster man, who had seemed to be just sitting there, watching everyone, Blazermate noticed that Sakura had fallen. Getting closer, she found that Sakura was depressed, with a few people trying to cheer her up. Blazermate made note of that, hoping the others would help her out of her little funk, as she had a bit of a bigger issue with Mirage and the Koopa troop.

Mirage with the help of the ones that weren't comforting Sakura managed to get that thing that Sakura had healed with her friend heart, which on second examination apparently was the cause of her depression. However while Mirage could pilot that thing from the chair he was sitting in, it also had a side effect of making a large diving suit ALSO talk like Mirage. As Blazermate glided over, making sure to check that their aquatic monster buddy was still chill, she caught wind of the conversation. Apparently this was an exact clone of Mirage, although in robot form. While Blazermate didn't fully get it, as their was two Mirage, she did understand that somehow he got copied into that robot.

"So... Glad the chair worked Mirage. Although it made a clone of yourself in a diving suit." Blazermate said, landing and approaching the group, periodically turning her head to keep track of the soon-to-be monster should Bowser be right. "So... New Mirage in the diving suit. Wanna help us with the whole diving thing?" Blazermate said, trying to diffuse the tension as both Mirages were getting irritated with each of them copying each other. "Shame... I doubt that chair can copy Medabots. Imagine a ton of me running around! Not like that isn't uncommon where I come from. I AM a mass produced product after all..." Blazermate said.

---

Sakura's claims of a ghost caused the suit to dart it's view to the left and right, uncertain of what she was talking about, though he was a bit startled. "A ghost?!" It repeated, not seeing anything to particularly keep it in an alerted state. Though, usually, you couldn't see ghosts. So instead of outward panic, it resorted to a sort of inward, quiet paranoia. That was, at least until Cadet added that there was no ghost, which was a relief. It wasn't sure if the guy was an expert on the supernatural but it was better than nothing, right?

"Yeah, I'm okay."
"Yeah, I'm okay."
Both responded to Cadet's words of concern, though the suit seemed to not pick up on the second voice as well as Mirage had, not seeming to notice the differences where the smaller, human version could. Mirage decided enough was enough for the moment, removing himself from the headcase, causing a complete disconnection from the BULL, but he was feeling weak after whatever had happened prior. Sitting on the shoebox rather than stand, he eyed Cadet momentarily and almost looked sick. Though it was just him recovering from the sudden appearance and departure of a horrible headache, it didn't seem all that good. "Things got dizzy for a sec, I felt pretty sick to my stomach, and then all of a sudden he's here." Mirage spoke to Cadet quietly, glance going towards the suit. Not sure if he wanted to physically encounter this thing, didn't bad things usually happen when you met yourself?

Meanwhile, Bowser getting in the way of the suit and threatening it was an endeavor that left it even more confused. It easily stood taller than the Koopa King in his current state while looking down at him with it's emotionless helmet. "W-Woah, King Bowser! We're both trying to get out of here! Don't have to raise that thing at me!" It responded, voice carrying the emotion it's expression lacked as it's view focused on the hammerhead in his possession. Why the threats? Also, now that it's mind was becoming more clear, it really began to notice the height difference, wondering how he'd gotten taller.

Rika's words were less violent, but even more bewildering. "I'm Mirage!" It began to sound desperate, like a joke being taken too far at it's expense. It brought it's hands up to it's helmet, grabbing at goggles that weren't there causing it to scratch up it's helmet, bringing it's hands forward as if pulling them out and releasing them to slap against it's head. "See? The goggles. That's trademark stuff!" It's gaze went towards the next room, Rika giving it an idea as to the location of whatever was making them feel doubt about it's identity. With guns and a hammer in it's vicinity though, it didn't seem eager to move. If anything, the suit believing it was Mirage also meant it believed it was just a human. Hammers and bullets killed humans pretty good. Though it was still feeling pretty hurt being put in this situation by the guy that had been polite to them upon their first meeting. Bowser had more sides to him than it realized.

"So there IS two of me! I always thought it'd be cool, not get someone threatening me!" Regardless if it was a good or bad thing, it knew there were two Mirage's now from the reactions given to it. Blazermate asking if it'd want to help yielded a surprisingly positive response, a thumbs' up in her direction, though it's gaze still lingered towards the other room. He recalled the pain from earlier, while in the headcase. And then he suddenly ended up over here, only taller, instead of piloting the BULL...

"One problem I see with that is... I'm not in any 'diving suit'." It replied to Blazermate, before poking at itself as if to proof a point. "See? I look like good ol' Mirage! Flesh and clothes, A little more pale because of that Spirit, but, eh. It was for the best, I think." Whatever perception it had of itself, nobody else shared. It was either in extreme denial, or it just couldn't process itself not looking like Mirage. Which, one could argue was probably the same thing...

"So, other me? You gonna come out, or are you still plugged into the working station... Thing?" The suit asked, seeming intrigued and a little nervous about what it'd see as the others' had made it start feeling a bit doubtful about itself.

Mirage, not overly comfortable with this but willing to realize this was probably his fault, stumbled past Cadet and into view of the suited copy. Which recoiled at the sight of him, as if it'd seen a monster. "What're you flipping out about?"

"You!" It answered, pointing at Mirage. "You do look like me, but what's with those evil glowing red eyes? That's not normal!" The sight was discouraging to say the least, and made this smaller Mirage feel like less of a doppleganger and more of a strange threat that might've fooled them all. Mirage simply raised an eyebrow at this accusation, walking over to the water and trying to get a good look at his own reflection, not seeing any 'glowing red eyes'.

"My eyes are as blue as they come! You're broken or something, buddy." He retorted to the suit's claim, crossing his arms.

"You're just blind, obviously! Someone back me up here, he looks really shady, doesn't he?" The suit reached for support, growing concerned again. Only for Mirage to cross his arms in response, not understanding at all what the heck this diving suit was going on about. Despite it's seeming lack of motivation to be violent, it seemed to have a screw or two loose if it was seeing 'evil eyes' or whatever it was going on about. Mirage only hoped someone could work with this thing before it started having a genuine panic attack.

If it doesn't believe it's in a diving suit, then how could we convince it to go underwater...? Mirage pondered, starting to agree with Blazermate's idea of sending it down below, but having no idea of how to con it to go down there. His brain was blank, or cluttered by the confusing crap it'd already said.

Glenn bowed in greeting the Moogle with the strange accent "Our mage tis truthful good messenger," he straightened putting a hand upon his chest "Alas twas also why a frog am I no longer." Glenn added as though the Moogle would know who he is or what the boy was even talking about.

Instead of immediately making his own request Glenn waited expecting a reply from his steadfast companion Link, but the fair-haired adventurer seemed to be waiting to ask last so the boy who was once a frog continued with his own request to the surly little Moogle "I hath but a single request if thou whilst humor me?" giving the small creature another respectful bow "I beseech unto thee, find Fiendlord Magus." Glenn sounded spiteful as he spat out the name, a look of bitter contempt crossing his face "If thy search finds him, verily I say unto thee to make certain it be known..." pausing, Glenn looked pensive with only the sound of dripping water filling the gap "A frog sends his regards." it would certainly get the attention of the one he spoke of, but the question was what the likes of Magus do with the information?

---

---

---

Link looked surprised when the moogle appeared, leaning in to get a good look at it as it flitted around checking out the maw. It was so completely out of place it was laughable, with it's fat little doughy limbs, its red fruit like pom-pom, its sweet roll shaped nose...

Link had to pull back when he felt the drool start to leak out the side of his mouth, swallowing it in one go as he got a grip on himself. He couldn't help it. He had never noticed before, but objectively speaking moogles looked like they had been baked into existence.

He closed his eyes and focused, biting down on the hunger gnawing at his stomach like an apex predator out to show a rival who was boss. As he did his companions stepped forward. Kamek briefly explained the situation before turning his mind to practical concerns of supplies and possible reinforcements. Maybe even rescue, in the unlikly event it came to that.

Glenn, meanwhile, immediately put forth the request Link himself had been considering.

"To be more clear," he started, having beaten down the craving enough that he could look at the moogle again. "The Maw is a massive ship in the middle of the Bottomless Sea in the Edge of Blue. As far as we've been led to believe it's carrying us closer to the Edge of Blue's guardian, but we got ambushed by a monster in the foyer that did this to us. Then we all got dumped into the garbage. We're all all right, and right now we're trying to climb our way back up the ship."

He thought for a moment, then added. "Do you feel hungry at all?"

---

---

---

Linkle got up and followed the old father to the window. It turned out he knew exactly who she had been talking about. He hade been here before, searching like they were now. Searching for someone. Had he come here to find the same thing they had? He hadn't found them, though. Was that because they weren't here, or because he had been driven away before he could? From the way the father talked he was definitely another fighting priest.

The second thing the father reveled to them was the existence of something called the "internet." All you needed was some machine and you had access to all human knowledge? That was like magic, and if they found one of these computer things it wouldn't just be a help to them. She could take it back to Alchamoth and show everybody. That would be something to keep in mind.

The third, most mind blowing thing, was that there a god working in their kitchen. Not just one of them, but apparently three. Three actually walking talking physical deities were making their home at this monetary? How was this not a huge deal to this man. Sure his god might be big and powerful like the golden trinity, but there were always smaller ones around. Just because they had jobs didn't make them less important.

She took all this information in, mixed it around in her brain until it spit out a path going forward. "Well, first, what happened when the Stanger showed up? How did he act, what did he do while he was here exactly? Did he give you any clues about who he was looking for?"

"After that, heck yes I want to meet a god! I want to meet all these gods! I guess we should start with the closest one. Skadi, right? Is there anything I should do to be respectful? Does she have an offering that she likes?"

The plan was in motion, and people were handing out rewards. Everyone was getting upgrades and new gear, which was always fun. One of the better parts of the job was getting badass new abilities and weapons, though technically Jesse only ever used one. Back home it was incredibly versatile. Hopefully she could get that back up and running, too. That whole de-powerment fiasco really made her appreciate her abilities even more than she already did. They were the main source of her agency.

"Uh, thanks, Joker." Jesse was handed a little glass sphere (?) looking thing with the image of a Shambler on the inside. The ever curious director flipped it around in her hands and observed it from all sides, holding it up to the sunlight.

Following the others' lead, it seemed the thing to do was breaking the spirit. To get some cool kind of weapon. She had no idea what the Shambler would do. Would it be a gross looking gun? Or a sword? Or maybe some kind of magic grenade? Only one way to find out. Jesse placed it on the ground and crushed it underneath her boot heel.

Once she had her new loot, the only thing to do was keep moving forward. Follow this Mao kid and root out the rest of the resistance/cult/resonance affected persons. Jesse put away her Service Weapon and her new toy and drew the Tool Gun, ready to use it to incapacitate her enemies and protect her teammates.

"I'm with you, then, Joker." Jesse nodded to Braum and Fox and- there would be a time to get properly acquainted later, like she thought earlier. Eyes on the prize. Joker gave her and Laharl an interesting look. "Let's roll. I want one of those pink hearts. Seriously, just sucker punch me, I won't fight back. I trust you guys." She said.

"Hmm. Maybe I will fight back. That's what we're dealing with, right? People who are affected by something and become more violent? In which case, stay on the move and don't hide behind anything that weighs less than five thousand pounds. Okay, let's go."

The office building was being protected from the outside: No one in or out. Which meant they could get down to business without worrying about civvies. Jesse and the UFO girl made a good transport team, and once they were on the inside Jesse frantically re-enlarged everyone back to their full sizes.

The inside was pandemonium. Tool Gun in hand Jeses focused on the mini-gun wielding lunatic: she looked like she could cause some serious damage if left unattended. To get things started, she picked up a heavy piece of furniture and flung it at her. Halfway through it's intended arc of travel Jesse lined up a shot with her Tool Gun and enlarged the furniture so it was bigger and would do more damage. Then she took cover next to the wall, behind the architecture of the building.

Despite Midna’s agitation that they keep moving, there was more teaching to be done, as Prim gave the newbies a quick explanation of spirits, after which she dealt out some she’d acquired on her own adventure that were then used for item making. Midna’s growing impatience would have had her up and bailed to go on ahead if it hadn't been for Sectonia’s new hat, which she stayed to observe due to its rather remarkable effect on the item creation process; namely giving those that wore it something they wanted/needed/could use each and every time. A big step up from the haphazard if occasionally very interesting in an out of left field kind of way results they’d gotten before. It turned what would have been a gamble into a guaranteed good use of time up gearing some of their members for the coming fight. An excellent find by Sectonia, and well worth sticking around to learn about in the twilight princess’s opinion.

While they were at it the queen bee herself, who in a twist of irony couldn't use the hat herself, took a moment to complain about royalty having to do busywork to get by. ”You get used to it pretty quick, and if it has one upside it's definitely character building. I’m a better Princess now than I was before I had to retake my kingdom as a result of having a broader perspective. But going through all that two more times after that though? With first all of time and now all of reality being torn apart to set the stage? Can’t say I’m a fan.”

She wasn't exactly a fan of Fox’s negotiating strategy either. After she’d tried to be diplomatic and savvy with her dealing with the Grimleal Fox stepped up to drive a hard and sharp ultimatum about doing it their way or not at all. Weren't foxes supposed to be cunning, she thought with disapproval, though fortunately Fox’s method either worked or Kan-Ra wasn't put off by it enough to break off from her own deal of letting them help free the resistance to end this with less blood. Or less spirits technically. With that plan still on the table, what mattered now was planning and divvying up who was going where, though that had little impact on Midna. By the end of it she was still heading to the store with Mao and, a little later than she appreciated, they were soon off over there, Midna saving her energy by riding in the Demon Lord’s shadow once again.

By the time they arrived things were already in motion, though by the lack of spirits on the ground it looked like the stalemate they found just past the front door had established itself early on and had just kept holding on till they arrived to break it. Considering the invaders had consisted basically just of Ciella it was either a testament to her survival skills and sheer power, or an indication that those holding the door were better at laying waste to their own office space than they were at taking down to a single person.

Both turned out to be the case, though the resistance’s potency for collateral damage was far less of a flaw when there were now a dozen targets rather than one. Midna had popped herself out of Mao’s shadow to greet their rabbit-eared ‘ally’ but had to dive for cover almost immediately afterwards, hurling herself behind a nearby desk while fire pinged off her shield.

She made a quick tactical analysis from behind it and decided she did not like this venue. The large front windows and liberal lighting fixtures inside left far less shadows for her to work with. As did the sparks of gunfire, which could turn a dark spot to a light one in a, well, flash. Hiding was not an option like it had been the last two battles, an observation something a black and red furred thing decided to make conclusive but proceeding to use a new kind of gun to blow the ever living crap out of, well, everything.

”Goddesses!” Midna cursed as she scampered away on all fours from her desk just before it exploded, before bringing out her shadow hand and using it in conjunction with her shield to block gunfire when the palace she’d been aiming to go to also exploded. ”Since when could gun things do that! she barked in complaint from behind her self made barrier.

Then furniture started flying courtesy of one hell of a powerful armored yeller and, while Midna scratched a filing cabinet out of the air with her shadow hand and added it to her hunkered down position to weather the rest of the storm, it only added to the psychological onslaught of the fight. This was, as Mona yelled, insanity. The brain breaking noise and air full of death would have broken lesser mortals. Fortunately, they were heroes! (and villains) and through bravery or arrogance, when the call came to charge there was no hesitation to be found among them, Minda joining the frontal assault by calling out a sized up wolfos and then grabbing its tail to ride along behind it as it rushed forwards behind Ciella’s water wall.

Not that she exactly enjoyed charging under the battle-cry of “bring them despair!” so as they crashed towards the scattering gunners she cried out ”Cleanse them of the light!” to remind the others of their goal with what was in retrospect not a particularly heroic battle cry either.

She could workshop a better one later, for now her wolfos had born her to the very front of the front lines before disappearing. As both of the Overlords focused in on the shouty man and Sectonia warped time and sent out a swarm of buggy minions Midna brought out her own insect minion, hauling out her Twilight Vibrava from her home realm and sent it slamming forwards to land in between the blue haired girl and the Mustached man. Both of them had the heaviest looking guns, and as a result both where people she really did not want getting way to new cover form which they could open fire on them again. In their Galeeming state she did not put it past them to shoot into the melee that was forming, despite e the risks that would have for their friends.

The Vibrava buzzed forth, just barley able to fit inside the building due to it's souped up size, and then stomped the ground as it landed, letting rip a bulldoze that sent a shock-wave through the floor that shuddered bones and slowed the pair’s retreat. Then the bug lived up to its name, rapidly vibrating it wings and followed up its shaking of the ground with a shaking of the air, sonically bombarding them, and anyone else ahead or to the sides of it, with a Bug Buzz.

Midna hadn’t had an opportunity to bust a groove and empower herself with a dragon dance in the rapid fire carnage, and so, unable to speed blitz her foes as she had in her other mount-less fights, she followed up her pokemon’s aoe attacks by using her shadow hand to throw a wooden chair she’d grabbed on the way in at whoever looked like they were going to recover first. Then she grabbed whatever was nearby, likely the ruins of their defensive position, tossed it at the other. If they were hurt enough, or she got back up, she’d move in to try and restrain and disarm them. If neither of those happened, she was probably in trouble and due a retaliatory hail of lead.

To say Geralt was concerned and confused about the most recent turn of events was an understatement. Even Nadia's explanation of what the conveyor was didn't really help much. It was like a moving carpet used to transport objects, like some kind of extremely limited cart stuck on a single road, forever, in one direction.

That was about as close as he was gonna get to understanding it without really stopping to think on it, which was a luxury he didn't have at the moment.

Sakura's impending breakdown was, to him, probably the most important thing to deal with now. She wasn't going along with the others, and that meant the two of them could afford to sit and talk for a minute. Trusting the others to handle the....diving...suit....thing, he walked over to where Sakura had sat down and started having an existential crisis.

"Hey." He simply said, holding an arm out to offer a hug. "I...already mentioned I'm not good at this. But you look like you could use a friend. Not a pep talk, or a rousing speech, just...somebody who understands. I'm here for ya, k-Sakura. I'm not going anywhere. It's okay." Geralt thought back on some of the more...memorable people whose lives he'd ended.

Holy shit, that was a depressing line of thought to go down.

Shaking his head to physically clear away those musings, he sighed. "It's...not easy. Ever. Even now. I still think back to the first. A bandit on the side of the road, threatening a man and his daughter with his gang of pals. Her reaction was a lot like yours after I cut him down." He left out the...less pleasant implications of why he was threatening them, hoping Sakura wouldn't pick up on the omission. "All over me. And then passed out. Less than heroic start to my career, if I may say so." He shook his head again, this time with a hint of amusement.

"I'm telling you this because I want you to understand that you're not weak. There is a strength in compassion where others are callous. There's power in empathy and love that hate and anger can't match. It's what made me fight a war for Ciri. Not anger at the Wild Hunt for taking her. My love for her. My desire to see her free and happy to live the life she wants to. That's what drives me. They say a man with nothing to lose is scary, but a man with everything to lose can be just as terrifying."

Nodding, Geralt sighed once more. "You're not weak because you care Sakura. The rest of us are just...jaded, and maybe broken, and definitely tired. You don't have to be like that." He was exaggerating, of course, but the point was the same. They'd all been fighting for their lives for so long that things stopped phasing them like this. He was sure they'd all seen or come close to death enough times that it just felt normal for them, unlike the Street Fighter girl. She'd likely never forget this experience down here in the Maw, and Geralt was well aware of that.

"So remember Carl, and remember that when everybody else wanted to kill off that big guy in the water, you went out there and stopped them. Us. Despite what happened with that giant shark, you still put yourself out there and helped, because you have a strength that some of us have given up on. Sure, I'll let monsters go here and there, but I've never backed down from killing them if it felt necessary. And maybe it wasn't always. Maybe if I were calmer, maybe if I were less prone to drawing silver, there'd be a few more people, a few more monsters around."

Maybe if I were more like you, was left unsaid, but he hoped it came across.

This girl didn't deserve this shit, and for everything he said about love being stronger than hate, he was going to plunge his sword so far down Galeem's throat the fucker would be spewing bits and pieces of silver for what little bits of life he had left.

Like a cat at a mousehole, Nadia waited with bated breath. Seeing Sakura down in the dumps felt worse than nearly getting obliterated by the Abyssal onslaught out on Black Bay, and she hoped with all her heart that her wake-up call would jolt Sakura back to the irrepressible, never-say-die girl Nadia had come to know. Would that it were so easy.

The brave face Nadia put on for her friend fell as Sakura sputtered out more apologies. She wasn’t getting it. Maybe she wasn’t going to get it. Or maybe there wasn’t anything to get. “W-wait, hold on,” Nadia tried, “I’m sayin’ you didn’t kill him. It’s just a trick!” She let the weak declaration hang, unsupported. After all, she herself didn’t know for sure, other than the vague feeling that things couldn’t possibly be as messed up as they appeared. With no legs to stand on, how could she convince Sakura to accept such a different perspective? The Street Fighter probably saw right through her attempts to comfort her and explain things away, and shied away from the feral’s touch.

Nadia had failed, embarrassed herself probably, and in all likelihood made it worse. Her face burned and her guts twisted as she backed into the chain link fence. Stupid. Why’d I have to go and think I could help with stuff like this? She’d let this hero stuff go to her head. At the end of the day, all she was good for was fighting and stealing. She couldn’t be there for good people when bad things were happening to them. Dejected, the little feral looked away so that Geralt could do his thing.

Luckily, her inner turmoil got put on hold when she became aware of events unfolding over by the pilot seat. The diving suit that fell from the rack close by took on a life of its own, and as Sakura pointed out, not just any life, either. For a brief moment of near-absolute horror Nadia thought that Mirage’s soul had been sucked out by the machine and deposited into the diving suit, like an engine installed into another car. Worse still, that conclusion recontextualized the situation with Carl to be much worse than she desperately wanted it to be. Nadia stood, frozen, until she confirmed that it was Mirage’s voice still issuing from inside the techno-chair’s headcase, without any electronic interference. He hadn’t been soul-transferred; Mirage -the original Mirage- was still there.

She just about melted in relief, close to tearing up herself, but she managed to get a hold of herself. The team wasn’t out of the woods just yet. If Mirage still existed as a child, that meant somehow that this diving suit full of doodads and sludge was aping him with uncanny accuracy. It immediately started talking to the original, which Nadia realized in retrospect was probably a mistake, not that she or anyone else could have really stopped it. Made for a full-size human, the suit loomed larger than any of the heroes-turned-children, and as it grew more irate Nadia grew more uneasy.

At least Blazermate and Bowser diagnosed the problem quickly, the latter out of experience apparently and the first...because she was a robot? Nadia couldn’t say, but however the two managed to figure it out, she appreciated someone knowing what the heck was going on. It wasn’t the man she knew, but a machine mimicking him. Like a mockingbird. Somehow the chair copied Mirage’s mind and uploaded the copy into the nearest vessel, which would explain its behavior. Every response it gave made it clear that the suit thought itself the real deal, just like ‘Carl’ had. If it believed itself to be human to the point of seeing things that weren’t there, that dissonance could be a problem. Nadia remembered seeing enough sci-fi movies at the theater in Little Innsmouth to know that machines thinking for themselves was bad news for everyone.

At least this suit seemed to share Mirage’s helpful, obliging nature. If it had been Bowser in that chair they might have gotten an aggressive, assertive Mockingbird that wouldn’t cooperate to save its ‘life’, but luckily the pilot seat got one of the nicer bananas in the bunch. That gave Nadia a sliver of hope that the team could control or otherwise manage it somehow, but before they could do anything the real Mirage pulled himself out of the device to greet his Mockingbird face-to-face. Unfortunately they did not hit it off, and the subject of the real Mirage still being under Galeem’s influence came up instantly. “Aw, crud…” Nadia grimaced, rubbing her arm nervously. Maybe Junior had the right idea. Was puttering through the deep sea in a tin can surrounded by monsters and then drowning a horrible death really that bad compared to this?

Well, yes. Yes it was. But this wasn’t good either.

Behind her she heard the submarine hit the water, freed from the grasp of the ceiling arms, and though Nadia jumped she didn’t quite escape getting doused by the splash. “Yowch! That’s cold as hell!” she squealed as she dodged away, oblivious to the irony of her statement. As the submersible bobbed up and down she could see Junior inside, perfectly fine as he got the vehicle under control. Everything seemed pretty much operational on that front, but with nasty creatures on the prowl under there, would one manned vehicle really be enough?

Bella, meanwhile, had gone over to the console at the communications station that Junior used to maneuver the submarine into the water. As she examined it, Nadia watched her connect the dots. “Oh,” the teensy Abyssal observed. “We can use the arms to pick up the robot and put it into the water.” It seemed so obvious that Nadia might have beat herself up for not thinking of it sooner, if she were more self-conscious. Instead she felt a little more confident in the team’s odds. One more problem solved.

Her gaze diverted to Peach, who’d finished operating the conveyor belt to bring the BULL unit closer and followed in its footsteps(?) to rejoin everyone else in the Command Center. She arrived to find her group scattered and the walking, talking diving suit at the center of attention. “Eck-excuse me!?” she exclaimed, instantly on guard. Instinctively she raised her parasol like a sword. “What in the world is that thing!?”

The exclamation seemed to irritate the Mockingbird. ”Ugh, you too? You guys need to work on your comedic timing. Is this really the time for practical jokes?” In the silence that followed the red lights within its helmet swept over everyone present, their glow harsh. ”Hello? Did I forget to introduce myself? If so, then hi everyone, nice to meet ya, I’m Mirage. I like my Wingman, long walks on the beach, and not being called stuff like ‘copycat’ and ‘clone’ and ‘thing’. Again and again. Or being threatened all of a sudden. Is that too much to ask?”

Though wet and more than a little anxious, Nadia stepped up. “Hey, hey, hey, let’s take a deep breath here. I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say we’re sorry, alright? It’s just, the situation’s got us all a little, uh...frazzled. Its tough to tell what’s goin’ on exactly.”

”Yeah, I know.” The Mockingbird didn’t look convinced, although it didn’t look like much of anything, necessarily. ”Just...well, I know this is rich coming from me, but can we just take things a tiny bit more seriously?”

Bella cut the conversation short by activating the arm controls. It took her a little more experimentation than it did for Junior to make sense of it, but she managed to get the Universal Helper up and headed toward the drink, provided that Junior got the submarine out of the way and someone else got back behind the ‘wheel’ of the BULL. Considering their new company, however, Nadia wanted nothing to do with that contraption. She counted five more diving suits on the wall, and if that copying thing was a one-time deal, it would have ended with Carl. Then again, going down under with Junior sounded even worse.

Instead of moping, Nadia focused on what she could do to help. Something physical that made good use of her scrappy, alley-cat childhood. “So...since I’m sort of used to being hungry and I’m a good climber, I can go back up to the catwalks to try and distract the monsters and stuff.” She flicked her ears, the gears in her head turning. “There were some pinchers in the workshop I think. I might need some help to use them though. Ace, maybe?” The kitten implored her friend for aid.

Though still shaky, Peach focused on the task at hand rather than the Mockingbird. “Good idea. Once Junior gets going, we can put the robot in. The more stuff we have in the water, the better.” Her eyes landed on the life preserver stowed inside the submarine, in case of emergency, but she tried not to let them linger. “Then whoever gets clear can go for the controls. They’re at the very bottom, all the way to the right, going from the command center. Even someone walking along the bottom could get there.” This time she made a conscious effort not to look at either Blazermate or Mirage’s Mockingbird. She didn’t need to say anything about monsters, but everyone had good reason for not wanting to pile more lives into the submarine. “Good luck, Junior.”

Nadia knocked on the side of the submarine. “Here. Your biggest fan!” She offered Junior her precious tool. “If you have to get out of there, maybe it’ll work like a personal propeller.” With that, she made for the door, her own duty clear. After leaving the situation in the command center behind she made a quick detour back to Maintenance to grab a pair of bolt cutters from the table by the forge, then climbed back up the ladder to the web of hanging catwalks and bridges. Provided she got some help, she and her comrade could work the two handles of the cutters to shear right through the chain. One at a time they severed the chains, each snap echoing through the flooded factory and causing the weight of the attached bridge section to swing perilously. Once they separated the last one from the safety of a higher platform nearby, the whole thing plummeted downward. Its splash resounded through the whole area, but it was nothing compared to what came next.

From the water exploded a gigantic fish, more nightmarish even than the Megalodon from the open ocean, even if it wasn’t nearly as big. As it leaped toward the disturbance its mouth unfurled, a series of flaps studded with disgustingly human teeth, twisted and yellowed. More hideous by far was its back, covered in bulging, bloodshot eyeballs, with a handful of loose, wiggly tentacles poking out between them. Absolute terror possessed Nadia as the mutated monstrosity soared her way, and she turned tail to flee to the next platform, but the thing fell short and plunged back into the water. Its impact shook the Depths, and a few moments went by before Nadia dared to breathe again, but the first thing she did when she finally got her air moving was laugh. “Hah. Hah! Fishy bastard can’t reach us!” She turned to her partner in triumph. “As long as we don’t get too low, anyway. Let’s keep it up!” Bolt cutters in hand, she was ready for another round.

---

The stay-behinds’ new friend treated Kamek and Link to a look of mixed bewilderment and amusement as the Magikoopa explained Blue Team’s predicament, more as if he couldn’t believe that such a thing happened rather than how it happened. He didn’t spend too much time on exposition, though, and got down to business. Unfortunately, the Moogle wasn’t much help. “Agh, sorry, I can’t bring mucha anythin’ wit me. Just whatever li’l simple thing I got on hand.” After pausing to look at his back scratcher, the Moogle offered it to Kamek. “I got this though. Ya itchy or somethin’?”

When it came to the green-haired kid, the portly creature got a different request, along with a message to deliver. “Fiendlord...Magus?” he repeated. “Uh, sure thing pal, I’ll get right on that. Once I get back, I mean.” Warning an enemy that he was being pursued sounded like a bad idea, but hey, it wasn’t his place to ask questions.

Link then confronted the Moogle with another question, and he shook his head. “Nah, right before comin’ I scarfed down a whole bucket-a...uh, I mean, it ain’tcha business what I ate. But I’m good for a while.”



As one might expect, another flurry of questions flew from Linkle the moment Guerra went quiet. With a smile for the girl’s eager energy, he did his best to answer. “When he came, the Stranger was angry, rude, thuggish, even. It did not seem as though he were looking for a lost treasure or companion, no. More as if he was on the hunt. We didn’t anticipate his abilities, of course, and when our guards asked that he leave, he thrashed them. One he threw through a wall.” The Father’s features looked grim. Albedo felt no need to seek clarification on whether or not it had been an interior wall.

“The rest spent days in recovery, even with all the healers in this place,” Guerra continued. “Nobody could so much as scratch him. He could have taken this place apart plank by plank, sent it tumbling down into the misty valley, except he didn’t care to. Instead he combed the place, searching high and low for whoever it was he sought. Only the idols seemed to catch his attention. He intimidated them, but turned around and continued his search. Except for Skadi.” Rubbing his chin, Guerra looked out the window. “He questioned her, but even though she didn’t recognize him, something she said prompted him to attack anyway. The two fought, but he was much stronger, and afterward something broke in her. He never came back, but she changed. You’ll see for yourself what I mean,” he told Linkle.

Guerra sighed and clenched his fists. “I am no stranger to tyranny. To cruel people in power who treat the lives of good, ordinary folk like nothing. But until that day their power has been political, or that of numbers. To encounter a single, mighty being, whose raw strength there is no hope of opposing...a humbling, yet frustrating experience.”

He uncurled his hands and slapped his knees, getting to his feet. “Pardon me, you have no need for an old man’s complaining. I’d be happy to bring you to meet Skadi. It is good of you to concern yourself with respect, although if there is something this idol would like, I’m afraid I have no idea. She does not seem to have needs, other than followers perhaps, and she is not articulate enough to express wants. But it seems she busies herself with creating cryptic images and messages, so maybe she’d like drawing supplies.”

Albedo narrowed his eyes. “You keep saying things like that. Broken, changed, coherent. Do you mean to say she is mentally unwell?”

“It’s...difficult to describe,” Guerra admitted, the creases visible in his forehead. He rose. “Better to show you. This way.”

Guerra led his guests through the cozy halls of the third tower, exchanging greetings with other residents as he went. The sense of warmth in this place, Albedo realized, went well beyond its hearths and braziers. As he followed the Father he considered what the man said about gods and idols. In his home world, each nation dwelled under the auspice of an Archon, although the extent to which each Archon impacted day to day life differed. The Qixing of Liyue received intermittent guidance from their god, while the deity of Inazuma supposedly ruled the country as shogun. In Mondstadt, meanwhile, the God of Freedom never showed his face, and if he received the prayers of his church, never gave a sign. Seldom if ever did Mondstadt consider the Archons in his day to day life, not finding it a particularly interesting topic, but he guessed that if all a goddess did was stoke fires in a kitchen, he wouldn’t respect her much, either.

Shortly the trio descended some steps to enter the tower’s basement. Here the foundations mindled with the uneven surface of the mountain, so the area was neither ordlerly nor consistent, but what space was available appeared to be used for storage. Guerra strode past barrelled supplies and other goods toward an open area in the back. Neither lock nor key nor even door barred the way, so as soon as Linkle and Albedo followed the Father through the empty doorway, they could see the goddess for themselves.

Rendered speechless for a moment, Albedo could not in any sense say that what he saw was what he expected. Seated in the center of the floor was a woman in almost garishly colorful attire, striped pink and yellow and blue, with mint-green hair done up in pink-tipped pigtails, and a wealth of makeup and accessories. Seeing a grown woman decorated in a manner more fitting to a young child struck Albedo as more than a little strange. By her side lay a huge dog, but despite its size Albedo could not call the beast intimidating. It was pudgy and fluffy, with a chubby, comical face, giving him a look that the alchemist found resilient to classification. A creature more marshmallow than mongrel, he thought. The bizarre pair sat together in a mess of paper strewn across the floor, most of them bearing images of the dog along with a couple of inscriptions. Albedo couldn’t stop himself trying to read one, but the words didn’t make any sense, and the next few he attempted seemed no better.

Baffled, he looked to Father Guerra for explanation, but the priest could only shrug. Evidently this was what he’d been referring to earlier, and from the looks of it he could explain it about as well as the new arrivals. Guerra cleared his throat to get the attention of the goddess Skadi, who turned and brightened up to see her visitors. “Konnichiwa!” she sang. Her companion peered at Linkle and Albedo with a sidelong glance, and as Skadi realized she didn’t recognize either of them, she turned to her dog in excitement. “Here’s a treat: they are new! Oh, everyone is going to love you, Doge! You are just the cutest! Look at that silly face and them eyes!”

To Albedo’s further surprise her companion spoke, albeit in a dopey voice that sounded like someone pretending to be an idiot. “Much wow?”

“Yes, very much wow!” Skadi agreed. She glanced back at the newcomers, her eyes unfocused, then pulled out the picture she’d been working on and offered it to Linkle. Like the others it had a drawing of her dog, along with crayon scribblings that said very like such meme much laugh wow so doge. She beamed as she pushed it at the Skullgirl. “How kawaii is this?”

Guerra coughed. “Pardon us, miss Skadi. These two wanted to ask you something.” With the goddess more interested in sharing her images, however, his announcement received no response.

Though she was pleased that the two demons put their argument to the side, there was a tenseness hanging in the air that Primrose tried not to let get to her. Being tense was a detriment to dancers, after all. For the most part she was doing a good job. Though some in their group were all too eager to get moving, others appreciated her brief explanation and jumped at the chance for any new tools they could get. It was impressive how the people unfamiliar with the whole 'spirits' process just rolled with it. Jesse especially seemed to be taking everything in stride, even though Primrose hadn't gotten the chance to stop and try and explain more to her.

Primrose observed the spirit crushing with a raised eyebrow, as the Phantom Thieves took turns wearing the dubious looking... well, Primrose hesitated to call it either a hat or helmet. The thing was off-putting in an almost comical way, with it's needle-like teeth and huge lolling tongue. The results spoke for themselves though.

After Skull put on the strange headwear, Primrose glanced down at the two remaining spirits - make that one remaining, as Mao took the other just as she looked. She barely paid him attention as he talked with the spirit in his hand, instead studying the glowing sphere she held. It was a ghastly pale female demon, with dark claws and cloths covering parts of it's body. She shifted her eyes between the spirit and the other demon boy, looking at Laharl expectantly.

"AH!" upon stepping closer he yelped at the sight of the pale demoness, falling back slightly "YOU TRYING TO KILL ME OR SOMETHING?!" Laharl shook a fist at Primrose as he slowly got up, waving her away when she tried to help him "Of all the damn spirits you offer it had to be one without a flat chest!" dusting himself off as he complained Laharl made sure to stay far away from the spirit, before Primrose could even ask he put up a hand "Look I'm not sure why but women with large breasts...SCARE ME ALRIGHT THEY SCARE ME! HAPPY?!"

Needless to say Primrose was surprised. She'd known that Laharl had some kind of aversion but hadn't expected it to be to the well endowed. She blinked a few times, at a loss on what to say. He'd already spurned her help, and one look at the dancer's low cut top suggested that he was unlikely to accept any kind of console from her. At least, while she was dressed like this.

"Ah. Well." she started, trying to recover. She realized that the spirit was still held out in her hand a moment later, moving so that it was held behind her back before she went on, trying for a disarming smile. "That's... unexpected. My apologies, I didn't intend any harm."

He turned his back to Primrose with a little 'Hmph'' not giving her the time of day, but Laharl faltered as she apologized. Peeking back at the dancer with a sideways glance the demon sighed "No I... I know that. For what it's worth, your an... Exception." in truth he had grown attached to Primrose as she was the one person who seemed to treat him with an ounce of respect, it was annoying that she seemed to care so much at least from his perspective but deep down the impetuous boy respected and even admired her. Although he would die before he uttered such nonsense.

"Is that so?" she said, her smile growing marginally. If anything it was good to know her charm worked on even those repulsed by the female form. Though tempted to ruffle Laharl's hair she refrained, letting the prince have his space. "I'm flattered," she chuckled, "but I will keep that in mind. Otherwise what good is a team for if they don't cover each other?"

A small imperceptible smile tugged at the edges of his mouth as Laharl faced the dancer, taking a step towards her and giving her a sharp poke "D-Don't embarrass me okay," then he turned back to follow Mao and the others as they prepared to leave, hesitating a second to look back "Next time I'm going with you, okay? So don't..." he didn't finish simply faltering, but it was clear what he meant. Primrose nodded after him in understanding.

Left with the spirit, she decided to make use of it herself. She asked after the Symbol of Avarice and when it was passed in her waiting hands she couldn't help but grimace at it. May as well get this over with, she thought, putting the chest on her head and squeezing the spirit. As soon as she felt something manifest in her hands Primrose lifted the Symbol of Avarice off and returned it to it's owner (who was boasting about it and herself). Only after she let Panther heal her did Primrose look down at the item in her hand. It was a long, embroidered scarf. It was light and seemed to be floating gently as though blown by a breeze. It also thrummed with magic, though it's use wasn't immediately apparent to the dancer. She rubbed the fabric between her gloved fingers, then gently on the exposed skin of her upper arms. It's coarse, but weighs almost nothing. Interesting. Though it came from a demon's spirit the scarf didn't feel malevolent, so Primrose donned it. The tail end extended out from her hood and swayed there in the air behind her.

Once the spirits were settled, they moved on. Primrose was openly amused at the assignment discussion, with Joker and Fox trading them around like game pieces. She ended up going with Kan-Ra's group as she'd planned from the start so she with no complaints she went along with them once the Seekers split into their respective teams.

When they reached the temple, Primrose used the brief time that Kan-Ra was conferring with one of the Grimleal to catch her breath. Then, they wasted no time moving inside.

The interior of the temple housing "The Obelisk of Khamoon," as Kan-Ra had called it, was not unlike the catacombs under Sunshade. More well-preserved for certain, and it's patterns more intricate, but similar. Primrose didn't admire much of it, she kept her focus on sticking towards the center of their procession and moving on down the halls.

The amubush came when they reached an intersection, an explosion forcing them away from the ledge overlooking the obelisk itself and back into the branching hallway. Pressed into the center and surrounded, Primrose's mind raced even as her feet moved. She huddled between her companions, turning in a quick and efficient dance. While her performances were normally meant to be seen, this one was for herself. The Peacock Strut empowered her magic. With so many enemies it wouldn't be safe to just keep dancing - so she would have to help thin the Resistance's numbers a little before buffing her own group to finish them off.

"I'm with you," she said to Big Band, tapping her hand on his back. She'd been relying on his much larger frame to shield her while she finished up her dance, and now that it was done her eyes flashed, furthering strengthening her next spell with a Battle Point. Primrose ducked into a crouch and slammed her palm onto the stone floor, the space erupting with a surge of pitch dark flames. The fire traveled swiftly along the ground like a serpent, blazing the path ahead of Band's charge and headed right for the gun-wielding woman.

---

Though getting confused by the Mockingbird, Mirage was glad it at least wasn't focusing on him too much, taking the opportunity to glance about, noting Geralt over with Sakura. Well, everything else hadn't gone so well, so maybe that guy could manage it. He hoped, at least, because the girl deserved at least one person who could help her on some level. Looking away from that as the sub splashed into the water, he held back a small laugh at Nadia taking the blunt of the water, luckily not being one of the folks anywhere near that danger-filled pool. However, something that WAS close now was the BULL. The conveyor had did it's job, Bella found a way to get it in the water, and Peach was... Irritating that diving suit more.

"I guess my break's over," Mirage commented, figuring that dinky sub needed support, and the BULL was the perfect thing for the job. Before he went to get hooked up, he heard out Nadia's idea of what she could do to be helpful, and honestly didn't like the sound of it. Considering the sea-creatures they had seen before entering the Maw, and the wrath of Bongo Bongo in the last area, he wasn't very confident of anyone distracting or meeting face to face with the creatures of the deep. That wasn't even to mention the depressing argument she offered for why she was good for the job. He noted to owe her a meal after this was over, or considering how he was feeling, a whole damn buffet or something. "That sounds really dangerous." He noted, approaching the feline for a moment to focus his concern, though her mind seemed made up on the subject.

Hands on his hips as a reaction to her recruitment of Ace for this idea of hers, he looked down towards the metallic flooring. "Just... Be careful up there, yeah?" Was all he could really muster, tip of his shoe swiping across the floor as he kicked the air, worry obvious. But he offered a small thumbs' up as a sign of optimism for their success as he turned back towards the pilot seat. He nodded to Cadet too, the same thumbs' up gesture going towards him as well, not envying the task Nadia had in mind. Clone or not, sending Junior alone in that submarine wasn't ideal, and Mirage had to wonder if he had triggered that whole diving suit process somehow with his thoughts. A weak but grim look donned his features as he brought himself back to the chair and began to plug himself in again, not ready for a laugh at the moment.

He needed to just focus, get this done, then they'd be out of here. He was a little more worried this time given the effects he'd felt before, but that didn't stop the small determined gogglehead from regaining a connection to the BULL, working with Bella to get it lowered into the water. According to Peach, they'd have to scout towards the bottom to find the controls, which he had no fear of doing while piloting this robot. Once Junior was aside, the BULL made a hefty splash from it's entrance into the water, yielding a bigger splash zone than when the sub landed by a longshot.

Mirage smirked. "Well, if anything comes our way, I've got these!" The arms of the BULL emerged from the water momentarily, pinching the air, before Mirage actually decided to stop joking around and instead start descending into the murky depths, and whatever uncertain danger was there. Hopefully whatever they encountered wasn't as bad as Bongo Bongo, though that made him wonder how Nadia and Cadet's distraction was going, at least until he nearly fell from his shoebox from some sort of impact that shook the entire complex they were in. "What was that? This place just shook like it came under fire from outside or something!" His concern was met with frantic looking, the BULL's light not revealing any threats as of the moment, but that impact that lead Mirage to definitely feel like he wasn't alone.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself and kept diving. At the mere sight of trouble, Mirage had every intent to play distraction for the sake of Jr not getting into an issue: Sure, they didn't know each-other particularly well, (or at all, honestly) but he was a little dude in a submarine, and Mirage himself was in a fully disposable robot. It just made sense, right? He figured the BULL was slower anyways, but actually, to make sure, Mirage began trying to pull up any information on the vortex motor itself he could as they dived deeper. If this baby could move, then it might actually be good for ramming any threats that came their way, or something.

Ciella’s radial riptide scattered the entrenched rebels and allowed her newfound allies to surge forth in her wake. To prevent her enemies from regaining their foothold enough to punish the newcomers’ collective headlong sprint into the action, Sectonia unleashed magic of her own to trap the Resistance fighters in a field that cut their speed in half and left them sitting ducks for the greater numbers of her own team. Their attempts to counterattack despite the slow found further impediment from the Vibrava’s Bulldoze and Bug Buzz, and the Seekers could proceed unchallenged. Mao and Laharl bore down on the Dragonborn while Midna charged at Jinx and Fuse to split them up, with Jesse’s super-sized office desk aimed to help put the minigunner down for the count.

At the same time the Phantom Thieves rushed the last two rebels down, with Braum at their front to absorb incoming fire and Necronomicon at their back to propel the whole group onward. “Support incoming!” the Persona called. “Speed up!” At her command the prayer spell Masukukaja took hold, increasing the speed of all four. Though the gunners opened fire and the Dragonborn produced a bow, the combined efforts of Ciella, Sectonia, and Necronomicon allowed their team to score free hits on the opposition. Mao’s thrown sword might have ripped the Dragonborn a new one if not for his bow, which took the hit from Mao's weapon and split on Dragonborn's behalf. Brash as his maneuver was, Laharl managed to land both blazing strikes right afterward, dealing a chunk of damage with each that the final Star strike from Mao turned into a boatload. The swordsman flew backward, as burned as he was battered, and a moment later Jinx joined him, smashed by a chair and then Jesse’s desk in quick succession.

At the same time, a hailstorm of pain from Mona’s slingshot as he rode on Braum’s shoulder culminated in a heavy shield slam from the man himself, followed by a blast of Zorro’s gale winds for good measure. Shadow struck out at Fox but only managed to trigger the swordsman's counterattack, receiving a flurry of cuts from his colorful new katana before Joker followed up. He came down with a spinning overhead slash and an unceremonious kick to send Shadow on his way. The rebels slid to a stop against the back wall to see a wall of enemies advancing toward them, with Sectonia’s minions filling out their ranks.

Amara’s fist struck the ground in slow-motion rage. “We’re toast if this damn slow keeps up!” she belted out as quickly as she could.

Beside her, Shadow rose to his feet, glowering like his life depended on it. “I’ll handle this.” As the dark hedgehog rose into the air the energies of chaos itself swirled and pulsed around him. After one revolution he faced the incoming Seekers in defiance, and growled, “Chaos...control!”

A wave of crackling power expanded outward, Shadow at its epicenter. Unblockable, undodgeable, it washed over the invaders and twisted their time without mercy. The inexorable distortion bogged the Seekers and their allies down to a crawl, making the half-speed Resistance fast by comparison.

With the tables turned, the rebels rose to see their enemies barely moving. Shadow floated above them all, his concentration vital to the time-field's sustenance. “Remember, stasis,” he snarled. “So just patch yourselves up. Then we'll break it together and finish this.” Dutifully the Dragonborn put away his weapons and conjured restorative magic from the palms of his hands to restore his whole team to full, while the rest reloaded their weapons. As infuriating as that was, Joker at least figured that meant the jack-of-all-trades Dragonborn would be deprived of magic, but his hopes were dashed as the warrior pulled out a blue potion and chugged it.

Guns at the ready, the rebels sauntered right up to the Seekers, full of confidence. “Heeheehee,” Jinx giggled, a minigun in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other. “Didja think you were the only ones with some tricks up your sleeves? You jokers musta had it easy 'til now. Shame you'll be too busy paintin' the walls to learn your lesson!”

Amara lowered her own weapon and spread her arms. Magic welled up at her back and took on the form of six tough-looking, primed and ready to let loose one hell of a beatdown. She squared up against Ciella, took in the rabbit lady's enraged expression, and gave the sort of grin only one about to deliver long-awaited comeuppance could muster.. “You've been ridin' our asses long enough, mega-bitch. 'Bout time you took a nap. But you can rest easy knowin' that Spirit of yours is gonna look good on me.”

With a shrug and cocky smile Fuse unshouldered his rifle, then took aim at Midna's head. From his current position, a shot straight through her head would score a collateral shot on Jesse. Evidently he hadn't taken kindly to their thrown furniture. “Sorry, cuties. Them's the breaks.”

“I'll squash the bugs.” Shadow extended his open hand, then clenched it. “Time, resume your flow!”

Chaos Control ended with a bang. Streams of lightning from the hands of the Dragonborn joined the fusillade of gunfire from Jinx and Fuse, while Amara pummeled Ciella with a flurry of blows. Only Shadow acted on his own, teleporting to Sectonia and Necronomicon in quick succession and bringing them with him. A moment later the three floated above the building itself, with the hedgehog dealing his collected enemies a kick to disperse them. He smirked at them, crossing his arms. “Shoulda been more careful. Bad things happen to those who mess with time.”

Necronomicon reeled, taken totally by surprise. “Yipes! I'm not a combat Persona! Sectonia, can you cover me while I get away?”

“It's no use trying to escape.” Shadow pulled out twin pistols, holding them akimbo. “You lost the moment you challenged me.”

The Persona reeled. “Gahhh! He's so edgyyy! Change of plan, let's take him down!”

Down in the office building, things weren't quite as dire as Joker first thought. Unlucky for the local Legend, Fuse's first shot struck Midna's Fused Shadow right in the eye and failed to penetrate. Then she was free from the grip of distorted time, allowing Midna to move enough to stop subsequent shots being lethal. Everyone got a taste of Jinx's minigun barrage, and though the individual shots were by no means show-stoppers, the damage racked up quickly. The Dragonborn's lightning hurt a whole lot, but he couldn't keep it up for long. Knowing that her team's onslaught would peter out, Jinx elected to finish on a strong note and fired her rocket launcher to blow the Seekers to kingdom come. Yet despite all the punishment coming their way, the invaders were far from beaten. Braum's unfaltering shield helped his team weather the storm, and together the Phantom Thieves shadow-dashed back out from cover, ready to help the Seekers fight back.

And fight back they did, starting with Ciella. In the midst of Amara's barrage she brought up a leg as if to knee her attacker in the jaw, which the brawler deftly swerved to avoid. Ciella then brought the leg down in a water-infused stomp that swept Amara's feet out from under her while they weren't planted. The skillful Siren caught herself before she could hit the ground, but a moment's reprieve was all Ciella needed. She swung her longbow like a club, forcing her foe to catch it with her summoned arms, then blasted forward on another riptide that drove Amara before her. She continued until her torrent slammed the Siren against the back wall, smashing through the area an earlier impact had cracked, and both disappeared into the conference room.

With two detachments gone, eight marauders stood against three rebels. As Mao and Laharl rallied to go another round with the Dragonborn, the warrior unleashed another Shout, but the Heart of the Freljord laughed in the face of unrelenting force and planted his shield. With unyielding fortitude Braum withstood the dragon's fury, giving the little Overlords the chance to get past their enemy's magic and go toe-to-toe. Even when backed into a corner, however, the Dragonborn wielded a vast array of talents and weapons that would demand everything his opponents had.

That left five against two, and the Phantom Thieves had no intention of letting anyone else do their work for them. “The crazy lady's ours!” Mona declared as he, Joker, and Fox raced forward through a torrent of gunfire.

His announcement seemed to amuse his prospective opponent. “You wish!” she derided. As the Thieves dashed between cover she reduced the desks and tables to splinters one at a time, eyes and smile wide with livewire energy. A trio of shots rang out from Joker's new pistol and narrowly missed her spindly frame, eliciting another laugh. “Gotta get closer than that, boys! C'mere 'n get Jinxed!”

Meanwhile, Fuse looked uneasily between Midna and Jesse, an ordinary-looking man matched up against two supernatural powerhouses. “Now hold on a second ladies, I think we mighta got off on the wrong foot here...!” He broke off and performed a hero dive behind a row of mostly intact cubical dividers, moving quickly so that Jesse couldn't just snatch his cover away. When he got to his feet he held a futuristic pistol in his hands, apparently tucked away there for later, and he ran he wasted no time opening fire to get his opponents' heads down. Several shots struck Jesse, inflicting more than enough damage to get her below the threshold for a Friend Heart. Midna could free her now, but if she did Fuse might make it to a better position, and who knew how many more guns he had hidden around.



Scattered by a surprise explosion and assaulted on all sides, Kan-Ra's team needed to act fast to avoid getting crushed, but they had just the right people for the job. With the protection of Big Band to the north and Tora plus Poppi to the east, Primrose seized the opportunity to perform an empowering dance. Her new scarf fluttered behind her as she pivoted and swirled, filling with enchantment as she did, until every inch of the lovely dancer and her garb alike shone with mystic energy. At her touch Band nodded, readying himself, but even the storied detective didn't quite anticipate what the heroine behind him had in store. With a grace that belied her sheer power Primrose channeled her magnified magic through her pyromancy flame, and as she struck the ground a fount of primordial, oil-black flame burst forth. It lunged forward like a predator on the hunt, a riotous column of abyssal fire, and wound down the corridor toward the petrified rebels.

Understandably perhaps, the rebels wanted nothing to do with it, and as they felt the heat of the dark pyromancy they jolted into action. Daisy ceased fire and bolted through the hidden door, followed by Earthquake squeezing through as fast as his circumference allowed him to. Barely a second later the Stygian blaze careened by, like a subway train past the platform, and the Resistance fighters sighed in relief. Sickle in hand, Earthquake poked his head through the door, and for his troubles took a heaping portion of brass knuckles to the face. With a garbled cry and a bloody nose he tumbled backward, which in turn elicited a scream from the much smaller rebel behind him, and as the two rolled down the stairs Band in the doorway, silhouetted by the torchlight. As surprised as he'd been to see the team's unassuming dancer conjure such a terrifying spell, Band didn't let that opportunity go to waste, and he wouldn't allow this one to, either.

At the bottom of the stairs lay an open room on what must be the fourth floor, and there Earthquake's immense bulk came to a stop, his ally pinned beneath his weight. With a little mechanical arm Band straightened his hat, then stomped down the stairs to finish the job.

“Ughhhh...” the heavy ninja moaned, rubbing his head. As he shook the stars out he saw the trench-coated detective that decked him duck out of the stairway. “You...!”

Big Band deployed a giant pedal that flipped forward and smacked Earthquake right in the belly. “Getcho ass up,” he scolded, and with a growl his foe rolled over. Doing so revealed Daisy partially cratered in the masonry, as unconscious as one could get. Band shook his head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Little sister deserved a better shot than that.” He narrowed his eyes at Earthquake as the two giants squared off, a good old-fashioned showdown in the works. A grinding sound from behind him alerted him to a trick wall sliding shut to block the exit. “You gonna shoot yours?”

“Smug asshole!” the ninja growled. “I'll kill ya!” He hurled his chain-scythe at Band's legs, forcing a crouch-block, then jumped. With uncanny agility Earthquake took to the air, scraping up against the ceiling, then came down rear-first to squash Band the same way he'd done Daisy.

“Well, you needn't.” With Primrose powering him up as she planned, Band got ready to rumble. Earthquake's attack was so telegraphed that Band had no trouble parrying it for a little extra tension, but after hitting the ground the first time the ninja bounced back up for another slam, and if Primrose pelted him with magic she'd reveal a hidden trump card to Earthquake's ridiculous attack: normal attacks could not interrupt it. Armed with this new information along with his ally's buffs, Band opted to bide his time and parry the second butt-bounce. On his enemy's third and lowest bounce Band went in with Take the A Train anti-air command grabbed Earthquake right out of the air with a giant mechanical arm. Its trombone pounded twice for extra damage, then drove home a third impact like a pile bunker. The ninja bellowed in pain as he took another tumble, ripe for a follow-up attack from Primrose.

That extra punishment, however, pushed him over the edge, and with a shout of anger he threw down a smoke bomb. The next second he rolled forward from the smoke at high speed, a wrecking ball of destruction. Band raised his eyebrow, then stepped out of the way. Earthquake shot right by and into the solid stone wall behind him hard enough to send chunks of hieroglyphic-inscribed masonry flying. When the dust cleared he lay there, stunned, no extra work from either Band nor Primrose necessary. The detective sniffed and shook his head again. “Hmph. Jive-ass dude ain't got no brains, anyhow.”

He took a look around. This section of the temple's fourth floor didn’t seem adjacent to the central area, or very temple-like at all, for that matter. It was dark, undecorated, dingy even. It seemed a whole lot more like a dungeon, and since it could only be accessed by secret passageway, Band couldn’t help but wonder if this place harbored a dark history. His examination got interrupted by a sudden magic light and noise from Earthquake, and when he looked over he spotted a golden magic circle around the fallen man's body for a moment before both he and it disappeared. A second later Daisy followed suit. Band turned to the trick wall to go back, but it didn't budge, even when he punched it. “...Don't these usually open once the fight's over? Huh. Guess we'll get a move on and find some stairs deeper in.” He kept implicit his assumption that the other teams had things handled on their front as he turned back to head farther in.

What he found did not please him. The chamber’s solid construction gave way to a perilous bridge protected by nothing less than swinging axes. When he approached he discovered that the pit beneath went a long way down, though not so long that he couldn’t see the shine of mud at the bottom. He fixed the pit with an annoyed look, for all the good it did. “No way I'm gettin’ through that nonsense.” Even if his timpany boosters were working, he doubted he had enough room to rocket right over the hazards to the exit. To make matters worse, the only exit at the end of the bridge featured an honest-to-God spike ring, making the wall all but impassable to someone of his size and agility. He deployed a little arm to scratch his nose. “How'd those fools make it through...?”

---

While Band and Primrose attended to Earthquake and Daisy, the others had their own problems to deal with. After Yoshitsune's first attempt at a charge resulted in a sound pelting by red-hot rocks, Panther took the lead as she and Skull rushed down the west corridor, weathering Charnok's spells with ease thanks to her near-immunity to fire. Once Skull got in range he called forth his Persona to take over. “Captain Kidd! Run 'em over!” At his command the skeletal pirate hurtled the rest of the way atop his floating ship. Despite the rebels' best attempts to stop him Kidd dealt the pair a weighty slam. Charnok and Beast elected to retreat, hurried on their way by the rattle of Panther's new SMG. As their foes disappeared around the corner, the Phantom Thieves gave chase.

On the other side Tora and Poppi continued to mop up corpse spiders, smashing them to pulp one at a time. Kan-Ra lent them his aid by placing sand traps ahead of them, and when spiders scuttled by he called upon his sorcery to bring form scorpion tails and antlion jaws of sand from his traps. The magical constructs not only pierced and crushed the spiders but cursed them, making their jumps slower and floatier, which in turn made them easy pickings for Tora and Poppi. They made short work of the arachnid threat, but not short enough for someone's tastes.

A battle cry sounded out as Red leaped over Tora and Poppi's heads, landed on a spider, then jumped over Kan-Ra's sand traps to barrel down the corridor toward the rebels. Tora waved frantically to try and get her to stop, but the mercenary wasn't even looking his way. “ Meh, meh, meh! Wait, wait!” he implored her. “Didn't friend learn last time!? Let protectors go first!”

If Red heard she gave no sign, which Tora figured he should have expected. They'd worked together before, and it worked out well, but by now it was clear she didn't care much for his ideas of how teams should work—just the enemy before her. As she sprinted forward she fired her pistol again and again, her first shot putting a hole in the Witch Doctor's shoulder. The jar she held fell and cracked open at her feet, but before her spiders could cause any problems the young man behind her sliced through all four at once with a single sweep of his swordblade. “Step aside, old lady,” he told her as he brushed past. “This a job for Dante the Demon Killer.”

Beneath her mask the Witch Doctor must have looked affronted. “I am not so old, and don't you dare speak down to me! I know a thing or two that would leave you crying for mama, little boy.”

“Me?” Dante smirked. “Not in a million years.” As Red ran toward him he nonchalantly dodged out of the way of her shots, then squeezed off a few of his own. The twin handguns he manifested put out a boatload of bullets to soften Red up as she grew closer. He then switched back to his sword and swung it in a reverse grip, releasing waves of red energy that traveled across the ground. The mercenary dodged all three and came down on Dante with an overhead axe swing he only barely intercepted with his sword.

“Oooh,” he drawled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Nearly got me with-!” A headbutt from Red both threw and pissed him off, and with sudden strength Dante pushed her back. As he spun his sword morphed into a demonic axe, just in time for the two weapons to clash in a tremendous impact. Dante’s sheer strength won out, flung Red’s axe away, and followed through with an overhead swing strong enough to throw him into the air. The blow split the floor as a blade of demon energy carved forward, but Red twisted out of the way and leaped over. She grabbed Dante’s head and brought her pistol around to deliver a point-blank shot. As blood flew her wide-open eye blazed with victory, until Dante -very much still alive- grabbed by the hood, punched her in the guts, and hurled her back down the corridor.

Tora and Poppi ran as fast as they could, but in addition to corpse spiders the Witch Doctor invoked Grasp of the Dead to summon zombie hands. Their clawing grip seized hold of the protector’s limps and clothes, stalling until they could tear the hands off. As they struggled Dante jumped up and let loose Flush, bodily flinging Arbiter after the thrown mercenary. The axe’s weight buried it in Red’s chest in a spray of murky blood, provoking an anguished cry from Tora. “MEEEH!”

“Red!” Poppi cried, reaching out as Dante transformed his weapons into twin shuriken. In a sparking blaze that burned away her captors she transformed to QT Pi mode and rocketed forward, Variable Saber in hand. Tora grabbed hold of her scarf as she zoomed past and got yanked free. In the nick of time the two flew over Red and intercepted Dante’s Aquila, returning the cyclone blades to sender.

As Poppi stood in front to defend against incoming shots Tora bent over Red, and to his relief found her still breathing. “Meeeeh...she okay!” Nopon Rescue Service pulled her back from the brink, but she remained down for the count, and as long as Dante kept gunning for her, she wouldn’t be safe. Tora turned to join his blade on the offensive. “Alright Poppi, time for big revenge!”

“Easier said than done!” his companion warned. In front of her the Witch Doctor had conjured an entire household of horrible things to keep them at bay. Corpse spiders crawled across the walls and ceilings, undead hands reached out amid swarms of poisonous toads, and fire bats fluttered through the air alongside Dante’s gunfire. To say getting to them was a tall order would be putting it lightly.

Behind them, Kan-Ra’s smile did not fade. “I suppose I shall lend a hand.” Swirls of sand and blue magic danced around his hands as he raised them. Shadow seemed to fill the hall. “Mah...SU!” As he threw his hands up a wave of sand spikes sprouted before him, and much like Primrose’s pyromancy his magic raced down the hall towards his foes. The spikes skewered spider, toad, and hand alike in their relentless advance, and together Tora and Poppi charged down the opening they created. Their variable saber’s vibrant hum filled the air as it slashed again and again, dicing the pests Kan-Ra’s Shadow Spike missed. With a final blast they broke through and charged at Dante, but they hadn’t yet come to grips with Poppi’s new power. The swordsman countered with a well-timed upward slash that struck and carried both into the air. He pelted them with three air slashes, then brought them down with a drop slash. A ebony shotgun appeared in his hand and unleashed a series of blasts like fireworks, followed by a rising slash that popped them up for another brick-splitting swing from Arbiter.

At that moment Kan-Ra rose from the sand trap his Shadow Spike left behind and snatched Dante from behind with his bandages. He threw the swearing Nephilim against the wall, then as he bounced kicked him back into it, creating another sand trap as he did. The Witch Doctor leaped from behind, surrounded by minions, but Kan-Ra exploded in a burst of sand that blasted them apart and reappeared from his new trap only a little worse for wear. “Now,” he grinned as Tora and Poppi readied themselves with a switch to the blade’s Alpha form. “Let’s try this again.”

---

Mao had to have a double-take to realize what was going on. At first, his eyes had only been on his target, but Laharl darting past him was a surprise. "Just trying to take the glory." It was the only train of thought the demon could find reasonable, though it also seemed Laharl was throwing a hell of a tantrum to boot with how loud he was being. Mao noted to shake off whatever irritation he felt, knowing that they had to disable this group sooner than later and his help would probably make it go by faster.

The broken bow was a good enough result for the sword, Mao not hesitating in following up on Laharl's burning knuckle with his own blast, knuckles bleeding from the collision with the man's armor, but the pain being nothing like what he dished out. Without skipping a beat, he caught his sword before it even had a chance to fall into the waters below, smug as could be at the results of their assault on the Dragonborn. "If that's all you've got, might as well give up and become my servants now." Mao commented to the Resistance with a shrug, his blade elevating with his shoulder's movements.

Unfortunately, it seemed they had a few tricks up their sleeve. Though he had it in mind to approach them to finish the job, he found Shadow ascending above all of the combatants in the room, calling out an attack of sorts that sent out a wave that Mao himself thought would cause pain, the Overlord defending with his blade hoping it'd help, but then it turned out that the attack wasn't at all meant to harm them, but stop them.

Unable to even scowl at Shadow's move, Mao couldn't communicate either. Looks like they got us lined up for execution. He thought to himself, noting the mocking and general cockiness the Resistance members were now torturing them with. Noting his smacktalk from earlier, his gaze on the now healed Dragonborn was one of concern, knowing he'd be pretty pissed. And pissed didn't even mark the halfway point, as the control over them Shadow had ended.

Bullets deflected off of Mao's sword, though the half-hearted block attempting to protect against whatever Shadow had done prior wasn't exactly a stance to try and deal with bullets: Mao's body being larger than his blade meant the bullets could find their way skimming the edges of his body mostly, essentially carving small chunks of flesh out of the edges of his figure with every hit taken. To make matters worse, as Jinx let up on the bullet hail to target the others, Mao's sword was no longer a wall to protect him, but instead a perfect target for the Dragonborn's magic: The steel blade helping in turning him into a lightning rod that sent the painful shock coursing through his body, being unable to move or avoid such an assault in the extremely short window of time he was provided.

"Insolent..." A cough later and there was crimson in the water. Actually, that was just a little he coughed up stream. There was already a pretty nice mix in the waters from the bullets, too. The only reason he was still standing was because of innate magical resistance and his legs avoided the brunt of that gunfire, though he felt like a roasted piece of meat after the Dragonborn's assault. Unfortunately, Mao was already low on resources and he'd have to go even lower to survive here. Hand drifting into his coat pocket, he pulled out two Hard Candies, wrappers being thrown into the water/blood mixture as he popped them in his mouth, teeth crunching them down without hesitation. A real villain didn't care about something down the line as meaningless as cavities, after all.

They worked their magic, the healing properties of the items soothing Mao's injuries for the most part, so he was at least functional again. However, the feeling of mended wounds was ruined by being caught in the outer blast radius of a rocket, rolling a short distance through the water before hitting some filing cabinets, which promptly tried to crash on top of him, but were stopped by him simply lifting a hand and catching it.

"Artificial difficulty through the boss restoring health..." He muttered to himself, trying to catch his breath as he tossed the cabinet aside, rising to his feet. This was just like some of the devious bosses from the games he'd played during school hours! Without hesitation he was rushing in again; Damaged, yes, but at least not bleeding out. Clear exposed flesh on his torso where the bullets had torn through his clothing, feeble and exploitable if he was to be struck in those spots, but if he just stood back, then they'd lose their chance here. While that hedgehog was gone, they needed to knock down this competition and fast. And he had just the servant to help with that.

Mao clenched his fist, deciding to put his newest servant to use. With a call of "Weaken these peons, Ara Mitama!" The large red reversed-tear came to his side, circling around him as it unleashed it's Marakunda spell to debuff the defensive capabilities of the Resistance members still in the building. If they could heal, then that simply meant they had to hit them harder so they couldn't come back from the damn brink! Even a genius could see the results of brute force, if Mao was any self-acclaimed indication.

"Now that I've softened you up," Mao called to the Dragonborn, yet again planning to meet him face-to-face. "You won't be healing anyone else after I'm done with you!" The brunt of the Unrelenting Force being taken by their tanky ally helped Mao in his approach too, the remnant winds of Unrelenting Force blowing Mao's hair back to normal as he rushed the armored man, noting his hands seemed necessary for a whole lot of his arsenal. Sure, he could croak out power with his face, but that magic from earlier? His hands. His weapons? His hands.

Mao approached, sword's tipped skimming the top of the water as he prepared an upward slash to the Dragonborn's left arm, planning to shift his small frame to instantly bring himself into a secondary slash that'd aim for his right arm. Physical attacks weren't as much of a concern with Ara Mitama, it's Physical attack resist making it a notable enough temporary shield, even if it was for a single attack from the multi-talented warrior before them.

Things were going well, Midna was thinking as she reeled her chair back to throw at the mustachioed gunslinger, the crazy blue haired one having already been decked by the Thieves’ new friend's own size up chair. The shadow hand surged forwards but just before she let it fly the red and black furred one’s wave washed over her. Time for Minda slowed to a crawl and she was frozen mid toss, but from her perspective the rebels accelerated to a frightful speed she could barely track, their actions a becoming blur and their words meaningless high pitched noise for a few for a scant few rapid fire heartbeats.

Then time resumed. Midna's throw completed and the chair flew forth and missed the repositioned Fuse by a mile, while the man himself casually pulled the trigger of his rifle he’d lined up neatly with her head from his new firing spit. The only thing that saved her was that, through luck or arrogance, his shot struck her masked eye rather than the exposed one. The one fourth of combined magical might the interlopers had used to challenge the sacred realm shrugged off the mortal instrument’s attack without issue, but the rest princess had no such invulnerability to rely upon. Incredibly alarmed both by the burst of speed and far to close call she’s just had Midna reacted on instinct, bringing the Fused Shadow’s hand back and grabbing herself with it, wrapping her body in the giant glowing mass of orange power. The subsequent bullets from both Fuse and Jinx pierced but entirely failed to penetrate through the magical hand based cocoon she'd made for herself, with any ‘wounds’ in it closed up in close to an instant as power flowed into the gaps made and pushed out or vaporized the spent shots lodged within. While they did the princess levitated herself off the ground and floated backwards, trying to find safety.

Had she been content to hunker down inside the orange shell she’d made she would have been safe from the entirety of the barrage but, knowing blindness was its own danger, the princess cracked open a gap between the giant fingers to peer out of her magical barricade with her armored eye. She flinched when another shot pinged off it almost immediately, but it was the lightning arcing out that first gave her pause as an unexpected feeling of dreadful premonition struck her heart and then, when the dragonborn swept it towards her for a moment, the electrical discharge caused her shaken composure to break.

Lighting wracked at her magic and her mind, causing her to let herself go, drop to the ground and bolt for physical cover in a tactically ill advised flight. Despite trying to guard her rear with her hand still, the shocking power found her shield as it chased her, arching into it and her arm as she ran, while two of Jinx’s shots snuck through her rattled guard and nixed her side and shield arm. Then her retreat ended as Jinx’s rocket launcher started to blow the group to kingdom come, one near miss sending Minda sprawling and tumbling out of the drying up shocking power of the Dragonborn, before the princess scrambled behind a pillar like the one Ciella had been using when they came in, though this one was further into the building.

”Goddesses that was stupid” she chastised herself through clenched teeth, not knowing where the bout of dread that had broken her guard had come from and still suffering from the stress of it, as she tried to get her electrocuted arm to stop shaking while, again, bleeding from bullet wounds. She was really, really, really starting to hate guns.

Still, as she caught her breath and tried to steady herself, the princess was given time to do so by the turning back of the tide towards the favor of the invaders. Two of the resistance abandoned the battlefield entirely to fight select members of the seekers own in the sky and deeper into the facility, leaving the remaining three deeply outnumbered.

Jinx was stormed by the thieves who’d been hiding in the shadows far better than she had the skill too, while Braun and the overlords bore down on the dragonborn once more (and goddesses was she happy to leave them to it), leaving Midna and the new, still Gleeming, Jesse to deal with the the mostly mundane Fuse. Unfortunately for them, while they where both supernaturally gifted one woman army destroyers, Midna was already hurt and stressed from the previous barrage, while Fuse managed to get some close to deadly looking shots off on Jesse after faking a surrender/attempt to de-escalate.

”Moblin wretch!” she shouted at the dishonorable bastard while ducking back behind her cover as further wingman shots pinged off it. Midna, having no conception for how many shots different kinds of guns could fire before reloading, or how reloading even really worked in general, was in no position to make a guess on when Fuse would run out of ammo and be in the middle of reloading when she moved out. The idea that he’d be running around looking for yet more preloaded guns instead of doing so didn't even cross her mind. As much as her vindictive spirit demanded she repaid the asshole for trying to blow her brains out and for his trickery with gratuitous violence, caution raised by that inexperienced and compassion for the dangerously injured Jesse won out. For the moment.

She tapped her chest, pulled out a friend-heart and hurled it across the room with her shadow hand while shouting ”Jesse! Healing! Catch!” at the woman.

Then she dropped Koga's smgs (which she’d taken predominantly to disarm him but where coming in handy now) out of the twilight relam and blindly (and incredibly poorly because she was basically using them based on observation of the weapons and nothing else) emptied each of their remaining clips around the corner of her pillar in Fuse’s very general direction to try and keep his head down for long enough for Jesse to get her own head back in the game.

Whatever she did afterwards, Midna would assist however she could.