[center][h3]A Shot in the Dark[/h3]
Lvl 8 Zenkichi (29/80) and Lvl 7 Sandalphon (26/70) 
[b]Word Count: 2,549[/b] [/center]

With Zenkichi at her side, his physical presence and support helping to set her beleaguered mind at ease, Sandalphon continued alongside the rest of the Seekers on their grim trek. Huddled around their beacon of safety that was the Stable Field Emitter, its eerily spectral electric white glow the only illumination in this gloomy deluge, other than the archangel’s halo and and the lights on the odradeks’ fingers. They trudged on, more or less united, until they reached an impasse at the precipice of a deep, lava-filled crevasse. Standing at this impasse, they could consider multiple options, but none looked good until Sectonia conjured a means of spanning the gorge to get the team to the other side.

Thanks to that airborne crystal, smaller than usual but miraculously stable even within the bounds of the SFE’s anomaly-quelling field, anyone could make the short jumps needed to get across the ravine, but not everyone did. The crashed ship over to the left, loosely canvassed by a BB and determined relatively safe for lack of detected BTs, proved to be too tantalizing a prospect for several of the more adventurous Seekers to let alone. At the same time, Therion favored another route, and his friend Primrose took the initiative to enable an alternate path down into and along the sheltered ledges of the ravine itself. While splitting the party was a risky move, Sandalphon knew that in a situation like this, there was no such thing as safety in numbers. As long as different divisions of the team each possessed a BB, and could find some way to avoid overexposure to the timefall, they could lessen the possibility of one error spelling doom for the whole team. As a few frontrunners took to the giant gemstone stepping-stone to pave the way for Ace and his all-important emitter, Sandalphon made a choice of her own. She moved to follow Primrose and Therion as they dropped into the ravine, the motion of her telltale halo’s glow making her decision apparent without the need for words.

Keeping Sandalphon in good pace with the rest of the Seekers had required a bit of careful maneuvering. Zenkichi had to watch the Odradeks of the four BB carriers to know when he could pick up the pace a little, and when they had to keep it slow. At least Sandalphon was pretty light, and more than willing to make up whatever pace they needed to when they had the chance. Watching the others jump onto the platform that Sectonia conjured, Zenkichi’s mouth thinned into a line. That was a lot of people in one small area. Thankfully, Sandalphon decided that it might be wise not to group up too heavily, especially when they now had the risk, however small, of falling into a ravine with a freakin’ river of lava at the bottom! Without even a second thought, he followed after the Archangel.

As soon as she alighted upon the ledge that ran along the gorge’s right wall, Sandalphon followed the Octopath Travelers beneath an overhang. Not a moment later, the rear edge of the SFE’s safe zone passed them by. For the rest of the way, it would be up to the protruding lip above them to keep them safe from the timefall. Though mercifully smooth for the most part, this makeshift walkway was only a couple feet wide, so the four Seekers would need to advance in single file. Only another foot or two farther to the left, a sheet of rain poured down, practically a wall of water all the way to the lava below where the droplets sizzled and evaporated into steam. As a result, the depths of the ravine were very misty. Given Ms. Fortune’s warning about demons, and how much the quartet needed to look out for already, that haze would only make this harder.

Zenkichi kept himself fairly close to the wall of the ravine walkway, not willing to risk slipping and falling into a chasm with inevitable fiery doom at the bottom if he somehow survived the drop. No, that felt like a bad idea for some reason.

For a short time, Primrose blazed a trial without trouble, but the denizens of this hellish chasm reared their ugly heads before long. Several rose up to oppose the main group as they crossed up above, and from the back of her group Sandalphon lent a hand with a salvo of ether shots from below. For the most part, though, that storm would be the others’ to weather, for the archangel couldn’t turn her attention from her own predicament for long. Keen as ever, Sandalphon spotted a number of demonic eyes gleaming in the dark recesses of the gorge, mostly further down and half-illuminated by the infernal glow of the lava. She used her screens to discreetly point out where they lurked, but when the BB detected a BT, Sandalphon gave the travelers her full, undivided attention. When the Prowler sprung its ambush, she stopped, her pupils empty rings as she realized what the unchanged direction of the odradek must mean. On high alert, she quietly slipped the Eye of Sol from her back and took aim at the Prowler, even as the disturbed BT began to descend along the wall. To her horror, however, she could not stop her hands from shaking. She could not get a sure shot on the demon as it tangled with Therion; if she tried to silence the offending monster from afar, there was a very real chance of shooting an ally instead. But wasn’t anything preferable to getting caught by a BT?

Zenkichi, meanwhile, was watching the rear, trusting the three to take care of the Prowler themselves. He wasn’t planning to risk shooting into that melee, and of his weapons, he didn’t have much that he could swing here without hitting the wall or someone else.

All these thoughts made it impossible for Sandalphon to steady her aim, and after a moment, she realized that she had no choice but to trust in her comrades. Much to her relief, her faith paid off. Once Primrose skewered the Prowler with her striker, Therion managed to hurl it over the edge, and the pitch-black handprints -mere inches away from the travelers- pursued its howls instead. After a few more moments of tense, stock-still waiting, the threat had passed. Once the odradek’s frantic whirling quieted down back to periodic clicks, and Primrose signaled the all-clear, the four began again. Sandalphon passed the handprints left on the stone with an involuntary shudder, armed with the knowledge that attack could come from any angle. Zenkichi gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder, offering a smile for reassurance. He caught a brief glimpse of caret-shaped pupils for his efforts.

The four continued a few hundred feet, sometimes clambering over rubble on the ledges or hopping small gaps. Just after the path began to widen, however, disaster struck once more. A flurry of plasma bolts flew toward Primrose and Therion from the opposite side of the gorge, fired by warped, [url=https://i.imgur.com/0Soyke1.png]demon-possessed soldiers[/url] from a ledge on the far side, half-hidden by the rain. The bolts crashed against both the surrounding walls and the travelers’ bubble shields, hard enough to crack rock and barrier alike. To punctuate the salvo, a lone [url=https://i.imgur.com/0vJAEVz.png]demon in craggy gray armor[/url] fired a beam of raw hell energy from its mutated claw, raking across Primrose’s shield inches from her BB’s pod. Her barrier shattered, and the gunners lined up their next shots.

“Take cover!” Sandalphon urged them. The group darted into an [url=https://i.imgur.com/i4jkpNT.png]alcove[/url] just up ahead and dove behind cover. Sandalphon sunk down onto her knees behind a waist-high outcrop, while the others sheltered behind the walls. Plasma pounded the rock, kicking up sprays of dust and stony shards, but Sandalphon’s face remained placid. “Stay back,” she advised Primrose and Therion, her pupils becoming crosshairs. She cast a mirage at her current position, prompting a reactive salvo from the demons, then dispelled it to turn a tile ground beneath her blue. “We’ll handle this.”

[color=BFBFBF]”You got that right!’[/color] Zenkichi reassured, dual revolvers at the ready as he kept in cover behind the wall. As the firing slowed, he watched to make sure that he wasn’t in Sandalphon’s line of fire before stepping out and peppering one of the possessed soldiers with bullets, easily felling it. [color=BFBFBF]”Alright, that’s one down already!”[/color] He whooped, even as more fire crashed into the wall he was hiding behind. 

As the barrage of plasma bolts petered out, Sandalphon arose suddenly from behind her cover to return fire. Before she could even get her rifle into position the Hell Reaver’s energy beam slammed into her head, or more accurately, her personal shield at head level. It took only a moment’s exposure to destroy the barrier, but the archangel ducked back down into hiding just as fast as she arose. Fortunately, her forehead and hair were only lightly singed. “Hmph,” she grumbled, annoyed that she’d taken such a clean shot, and that her assailant seemed to have anticipated her emergence. When she glanced up, however, she quickly realized the problem. “...My halo,” she stated. “It’s a dead giveaway.” As plasma bolts from the possessed spattered the area, she looked over her shoulder at Zenkichi, her pupils still shaped like crosshairs. Evidently she had a plan in mind. “Can you suppress them?”

[color=BFBFBF]”No problem!”[/color] Zenkichi replied, having reloaded his revolvers during the last volley of return fire. He popped out from behind cover, a barrage of fire slamming into him, but he grit his teeth and returned fire, even as his own personal shield broke. As his revolvers clicked dry, Zenkichi grunted and called out to Valjean, [color=BFBFBF]”Triple Down!”[/color] The timely usage of his attack gave Zenkichi a boost to his defense from Preservation Protocol, blunting the damage from the last few hits he took before returning to cover.

The moment after the Persona fired off his skill, Sandalphon popped up again. In an instant she observed that the Triple Down had nailed one of the three Possessed and forced the other two into hiding alongside the troublesome Hell Reaver. For warped corpses they wielded surprising tactical intelligence, but this wouldn’t be a problem. Her unholy foes might have taken cover, but by now Sandalphon had abilities to solve problems that bullets could not.

She thrust her left hand out, and a Cerulean Mirage manifested among the demons. Her hologram appeared to be her spitting image, albeit in shimmering blue, but this mirage was much more than a pretty face. While it surprised and distracted the demons, Sandalphon took aim and fired the Eye of Sol at her distant doppelganger. When her bullet struck the mirage, it burst in a diamond-shaped blast of blue flame that withered the demons with double the damage of an ordinary bodyshot. It bowled the last two Possessed over their outcrops and sent them flailing down toward the lava below, and with the subtlest of smiles Sandalphon ducked back down into cover to return fire.

The Hell Reaver endured, however, and it returned fire with a cunning that the archangel did not anticipate. It unleashed its beam, aimed at the rocky overhang above the opposite ledge. As the stream of hell energy swept across the brittle, rain-worn stone, it shattered and fell in huge, deadly chunks straight toward Sandalphon below.

[color=BFBFBF]”Shit!”[/color] Zenkichi grunted out as he saw the beam of energy sweep overtop the Seekers, crumbling and destroying the overhang above them. He ran out of cover and dove at Sandalphon, pushing the Archangel out of the way just in time for a chunk to land where she had been standing. [color=BFBFBF]”I got you.”[/color] He reassured Sandalphon as he stood up, glaring at the Hell Reaver. Ragnell appeared in his hands, and Zenkichi swept the blade through the air, launching an energy blast at the demon. However, in his haste, Zenkichi’s lack of familiarity with the holy blade resulted in the blast detonating just shy of its target, and Zenkichi clicked his tongue in disappointment as the Hell Reaver spooled up to fire again.

It was then that a spine-chilling noise resounded through the chasm, a product of no living thing. Within the span of a second, a black wave expanded from the demon’s position, spreading across the ground and the walls alike. From the way it glinted and glistened in the light of the lava below, it could only be tar, and the Hell Reaver started thrashing around as if gripped by unseen assailants. In this wounded state, though, its movements were clumsy, and it began to sink into the once solid ground beneath it.

Judging by the state of Sandalphon’s rapidly-shifting pupils, her mind had been scrambled somewhat Zenkichi’s body atop hers, but at that horrible sound she rebooted with haste. She rose in a hurry, stopping only to plant her hand to create a blue tile beneath her, then to scoop up the Eye of Sol from where it had fallen. She knelt and assumed a firing position, her face deadly serious. Once again she took aim at the demon’s head as it bucked and struggled, firing only to melt a hole in the wall behind it as the invisible hands yanked the Hell Raiser off its feet. The next moment it began to slide, first toward the tarry wall and then up it. Sandalphon’s barrel traced the demon’s impossible path, but it shook ever-so-slightly, even as the archangel held her breath. In another second, the demon would be dragged over the lip and out of sight.

Zenkichi rushed ahead, getting as close as he could as the demon was being yanked around by the BT. He dismissed Ragnell and drew a single revolver, reloading a pair of bullets into it with a shaky hand. Lifting the weapon to aim at the demon, Zenkichi breathed out, lining up the iron sight carefully. As the demon reached the corner, Zenkichi fired his revolver, the bullet striking the Hell Reaver in the head and reducing it to dust. The tension in his body almost immediately released, and he let out a heavy sigh, slumping down a bit. [color=BFBFBF]”That was too close…”[/color] He muttered, shaking his head.

After a moment, Sandalphon lowered her rifle, her finger easing off the trigger. She watched as the demon’s ash dispersed and the tar pool faded, her face grim. Then she stood, her only sign of emotion the T-symbols in her eyes. Without looking back, she motioned for Primrose and Therion to emerge from the alcove. The odradek’s inactivity confirmed no BTs in the area, so the team could proceed, watchful for more demonic activity. While the threat had passed, this episode was not something that the archangel would soon forget.

Zenkichi dismissed his weapons and wiped a beat of sweat off his brow. The grim look on Sandalphon's face gave him pause. They'd nearly died. They'd all nearly died, because a bunch of monsters tried to attack them. He'd come close to death a few times in his life, but rarely had the difference been made by a single shot. He gave the others what he hoped was a reassuring smile before gesturing to them that it was time to go.