Downward Spiral

Previous Episodes: http://mgcyoa.wikia.com/wiki/Amelia
Cleaning House:

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. . . dim light flickered through the derelict hall, casting long, dancing shadows between what used to be floor tiles, benches, and tables... plant pots and booths, thick dust peppering the remains of a large rotting carpet, amidst the chaos of broken paintings, unlit fireplace, and ceiling's roofbeams, old and heavy, lying on top of a smashed counter and racks of bottles... Cold wind breezed through the building, filling it up with the atmosphere of abandonment and disuse, making yellowing pages on the wall flutter and shiver, pages filled with old text... writings... and...

 * * *
Target: Unknown creature that lurks around the cityblock;
Powers and Specializations: The upsurge of recently turned monster girls casts a shadow of corruption on this entity. No presence of distinct magical use have been found.
Information: The unknown individual or a creature is terrorizing the city block around Wand and Circlet, snatching and killing its victims. The entity is known to prey on lone individuals, capturing them offguard and leaving their lifeless bodies intact, with a minimal bodily harm.
Risk Measurement: Unknown. Potentially lethal if faced alone.
Conditions: Destroyed or brought to the brink of death.

Reward: A minor wish. No strings attached.

===

Warm, and comforting light was a'washin' the hall, brightening up the lively atmosphere of the pub as a lone girl was standing in front of the board, waiting and staring at the bounty board. Her eyes glowed with light radiance, gaze staring at the piece of paper as she waited for the time to come, her lean form sporting a dark scarf slightly glowing eyes staring at the entry, as she waited for others...

Amelia's a slight, pale girl whose black hair is tied back in a simple ponytail. Her intense blue eyes are set in a face that seems accustomed to frowning. She's wearing a sleek blue-gray uniform, complete with gloves and boots, and offset with a crimson mantle clasped around her shoulders. A long, basket-hilted sword is sheathed at her waist.

She looks to her companion as they walk down the street back to the Wand and Circlet. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asks again. "I mean...if you want to take a break or something...you don't need to worry..." She bites her lip, remembering how their last Overcity hunt went before forcing that thought down. This'll be different. Part of her's just afraid of screwing up in front of Alexa...or things going worse.

"A-absolutely sure," Alexa nods emphatically, the wide-brimmed red hat on her head nearly slipping off from the force of it. She uses her black, wooden staff like a fancy cane as she walks, clutching it tightly. "I-- This could be dangerous. C-can't let you do it alone."

There's a mix of nervousness and anticipation to her posture that comes over as a tension in her slight frame- she's only slightly taller than her younger friend, even transformed. She puts one hand on her sword hilt as she walks alongside Alexa. She nods. "...I...Alright. Then I won't let you down either." Her frown fades and she smiles at Alexa. "And thanks. Let's beat this thing. Wonder if it'll just be us two hunting it?

Alexa laughs nervously, the almost inaudible titter wracking her shoulders. She shakes her head as they come upon the pub, her nut brown hair swishing against her shoulders. "Ah... I hope not. B-but if so -- Well, there's nothing we can't handle together!"

Though she's nervous, at this point the girl is experienced in hiding it. In a corner booth of the establishment, awaiting the arrival of others, a teen girl with long red hair sits in relative silence, twirling a spoon between her fingers and occasionally muttering a small curse when it falls. Her figure is largely obscured between a loose fitting pair of jeans and hoodie, but even with its hood pulled up and over her head, she's still recognizable to those who know her as Nadia. A glance to the bulletin board and then another down at her phone. It was almost time to get started...

The pub's felt welcoming as always with little flickers of light jumping between polished tables, waitresses and staff members alike taking orders from different patrons... In comparison to wintery, snow filled streets outside, the warmness that emanated from the boiler and the crackling flames in the fireplace were ready to comfort and serve any weary traveler: a nice meal, a sturdy roof and a fierce barman ready to slap any and all who dared to trespass in his safe and humble abode... was there anything more one would've wanted?...

Still...hunting down something causing trouble and killing people...That matters. That's the sort of thing Amelia tells herself she signed up to do. It needs to die, and she- they'll- kill it. She pauses at the door. "Ready?" She asks Alexa. "Let's do this."

She pushes the door open and steps inside. The pub's still much the same as it ever was. Amelia takes a moment to glance around, relaxing slightly.

Kyrie sat beside them somewhat, poking a bit at the gauntlet she had. Something strikingly similar to Agatha's... minus, you know, a lot of fancy bells and whistles, lacking antimagic and whatnot. Still... this thing was ridiculous, even moreso after some minor programming optimizations she applied. And to test it out on a job would be best... even if she couldn't do too much, letting Nadia run off on her own in something that, well, seemed to be that of Razum's job... didn't sit well with her.

"Well, it literally says you could die if you went alone... So yes, it probably is rather dangerous. So lets make sure everyone stays alive I guess..." Kyrie remarked with a small nod, checking her tool, and occasionally pulling out a gun to check it's ammo, before it vanished again... The 'no screwing up' thing on her mind too. Mostly, in that she hoped nobody would have to die on this trip, compared to... every... other time she did something...

Focus, positive thoughts and hope and stuff like that, Kyrie... as she looked up to notice the others coming in, the black hair and dressed mahou shrugging as she got back to tinkering a bit and fiddling with the settings... "...Remind me to make a quick zoom in and out button, I set the values too low..." she muttered quietly to Nadia as she fiddled with it. Sure, it was a fancy map in the end, but fancy maps help! At least, she uses the minimap in video games quite a lot...

Alexa follows Amelia with a silent nod, glancing around the bar curiously. She examines the other girls hanging around the place, doddering just in front of the door.

"Um..." Amelia hesitates. "I guess we're supposed to wait." And with that she marches over to the board, for lack of a better idea. She's...never actually met the other person who signed the bounty posting. Or this "Razum" for that matter.

"You worry too much, Kyrie." She stares listlessly at the wall, going over some unknown topic in her mind. "We fought Ain's harem. We can fight this."

The listing doesn't seem to have changed since when she signed it...Her scrawled note's still there under the information, and so's Bernice's reply.

Alexa hurries after her, nodding. "Ah yes, yes. Of course. That, ah... that would make sense. Well! At least it's warm in here..."

The spoon drops from Nadia's hand again. "Fuck." She whispers softly, glancing down and picking it up again to repeat the process once more. Her hands were shaking, even as she tried to force them to cooperate. If she had nothing to lose, it would have been different, but failing this time would be far more disastrous than any other task before.

 "...True, but I still don't want to leave things to chance..." she muttered back with a sigh. "Besides, optimizing this is important, I can 't help as much if I don't... screw it, I can quickly add some copy paste and edited values real quick..." she muttered, pulling out a tiny rasberry pi keyboard input to plug in and type at it.

"Mmm..." Amelia replies distractedly, turning away from the board. She blinks. "Oh. Right. Sorry...I um, forgot to, you know..." She waves her hand vaguely as she looks to Alexa, looking sheepish. She probably should've summoned up a fire or something- sometimes, she doesn't even notice when it's supposed to be cold, when she's transformed...or that Alexa doesn't have that luxury.

Odile had waited to gather up those who had signed for the task (and perhaps one or two that had been given... prompting... from their certain favorite shadowy patron, and fulfilled of the bounty) and rendezvous. She almost had to double check if she was still invisible or not - but alas, her presence was just small. This plot resumed from whence she had sighted Darcie, the girl corrupted and looking near death, and had been given insight she could reasonably lead the party and begin their search there. "... ... A-ah... Razum... Is. Not ... Here to, guide, but.. ... .. .. " she gestures to follow herself, leading the path for the small gathering of girls + 1, into the horrors unknown. "... ... I-it's. A. Priority.. .. To. Take care of the ... Monster. S-so. Try. Your best... ... W-we - um. He... I... Have a lead.. ... ... " without further adieu, she turns on her heel, bidding the others to follow her lead. "I-it's killed... Before. So. Be on your guard."

Amelia glances at the girl- she's never seen her before, but her words are all she needs to hear. A glance to Alexa, then she takes a breath and follows their...guide.

Bernice slams the door open and runs in, panting. His long, brown hair is completely un-braided and messy, and he hadn't even bothered to summon his gun. "Guhhh, I'm here. Sorry I'm late," Bern pants.

Alexa shakes her head at Amelia, clearly not exceptionally inconvenienced. She may have been about to say as much when the strange girl speaks, jolting sharply in place in surprise. She seems a little embarrassed to have not noticed her, but far more nervous about the task at hand. Still, she nods shortly and follows after her.

"Well, it's not killing again." Amelia comments, earlier tensions seemingly slipping away. In fact, she seems to practically be bouncing from foot to foot in anticipation. She glances at the newest arrival, a young girl. "Hey. You're here for the hunt too? I think you're just in time, not late." She looks at the newcomer again, then glances to the others.

Nadia glances over as the other girl speaks. What, was Razum not going to make an appearance? Like its schedule was that busy. She sighs and tosses the spoon back down to the table with a light clack, rising from the chair and stretching lightly. The girl makes a point to reach up to her hood and make sure it stays tightly fixed to her head. "Ready, Kyrie?" A few steps forward as she approaches the timid girl. "Killer or not it's not like we haven't dealt with worse."

Odile looks at Bernice, and the seated Nadia and Kyrie with a flat expression, her large pink eyes not blinking, and - politely holds the door open with a last bid. "P... Please, let us.. ... .." While those internal twinges would already begin to point the way to the path needed.

Nadia paints on a small, cocky grin, trying to muster up her hero's persona. "And either way, if it's got an ass, I'll kick it. Let's go."

"Oh, ah, yes. Um. What she said," Alexa nods at Amelia, casting Bernice a crooked, awkward grin. Then she turns back to their apparent guide, nodding jerkily.

Catching her breath, Bernice glances at Amelia and Alexa and smiles before walking over to Odile, "So, how do you girls normally fight?"

"Huh? A lead... eh scrw it, closer than before." she sighed, nodding and scooting out from there... "Kinda strange that Razum isn't here but... eh, yea, we'd need to deal with the monster one way or another before it harms anyone else." she nodded, following with a slight smile, following along with Nadia, checking her gauntelt as it pulled up a map... one that hardly extended even down the street of the overcity. "Stupid multiversal technology and changing landscapes..." she muttered under her breath.

Bernice speaks. "I've rarely had the... /privilege/ of fighting alongside other Magical Girls. Only a few bank heists were ever that bad. How do Razum's girls normally handle combat?"

Amelia blinks, distracted from the other two. "Um...well, I just use my sword most of the time...and if that doesn't work, I set it on fire." She explains. "Um, hey, do you guys know who Razum is?"

...Bank heists?

Nadia blinks and looks to Bernice. "... Razum's 'girls'?" There's an expression on her face that seems to make it obvious she wasn't aware Razum had multiple thralls. That cat slut was sleeping around! She shakes her head and keeps her grin. "I can't speak for any others but I normally just swing until its dead." Her expression perks up, two fingers snapping together as she points to Amelia, almost bouncing as she keeps walking forward. "Yeah, that's it! Just use the sword and win."

"Hey, if it works..." Amelia grins back at Nadia. This girl gets it. "I'm Amelia, by the way. You?"

Odile, with the others in tow, picks a path out of the pub towards a path illuminated with a small curve of moonlight, artificial? Maybe - but the path seemed to contrast against the looming darkness of the Overcity's surrounding night. The aloof, distant girl does not seem very inclined to talk much judging by her stutter, but by the set of her body is not threatening or reluctant in the least. "... ...... I'm. Sure. All of you w-will be.. Able.. To take care of it..." As the surroundings would shift from the relatively non-threatening, semi-occupied region immediately surrounding the pub, to more derelict - empty, abandoned windows soon coming in to sight as the noises of their chatter became, in fact, the only noise to hear.

"A-ha. Well, um... there are quite a few of us," Alexa bobs her head again, looking at the group as if to do a quick headcount. Her staff trembles in her gloved hands. She sticks behind Amelia as if using her as a walking sandbag.

"Interesting," Bernice replies to Nadia, "So you don't /have/ any tactics? No wonder Shekelstein never has any problem getting what he wants."

Amelia glances to Alexa. "Yep. This thing won't stand a chance." She replies, missing the exchange between Bernice and Nadia.

Bernice turns her attention to Odile, "Very well. Just lead the way, we shouldn't have any trouble dealing with this thing."

"Well, usually I'm the one to end up figuring tactics out for us... Nadia's strong enough to keep up in terms of sheer strength though." Kyrie shrugged gently towards them. "Also, I'm Kyrie, if we're doing introductions still. Basically can heal and... n-not much else besides take a hit." she added with a mutter, looking aside.

Amelia's still a bit nervous about embarassing herself again, like that time...but it's not much of a concern. Instead, she's mostly just looking forward to the hunt. This'll be different from the last time. She has a good feeling about it. "Hey." She waves at Kyrie. "Well, healing's pretty useful. Right, Alexa?" She nudges her friend.

Nadia shuts her eyes and wags a finger at the younger... giiiiiiirl? Bbbbboy? ... Meguca. "There's a lot of nuance that can go into swinging a blade. Mix-ups, reads, spacing, all that good stuff. Blind violence has its place too, though." She opens her eyes widely and fiercely, flashing teeth with her next grin. "And that's where Sparkling Hero Nadia shines her brightest, you know!"

 "A-ha. Ah... That makes two of us!" Alexa brings her crooked, awkward looking smile to bear at Kyrie, bouncing on her heels. She nods again. "A-Alexa. Alexa Aldrich, at your service."

"You do tactics? Good, glad to hear I won't be on my own in that department. My name's Bernice, I usually operate ranged weaponry of all kinds. Shekelstein trusts me with all of the most expensive gear; I keep it in my hammerspace," Bernice reports. "Healing /is/ very useful, especially in the hands of a skilled tactician, and I won't lie, a heavy-hitter will be invaluable to our group. As long as we're all thinking tactics, we'll get along just fine," the soldier-girl explains blankly.

Nadia folds her arms across her chest and nods in affirmation, apparently continuing the conversation with herself, under her breath. "Shines like a star. Shines like a Fox! That's what a hero does." Nod nod. It was certainly at least one way to keep herself from crumbling under pressure.

"Sparkling...hero..." Amelia blinks at Nadia. "Ah...Well, I guess that's a pretty neat name. Gets right to the point." She's still not sure why she decided to add "Flaming Ace" to her own, back when she started... "So, um..."how long have you been hunting? You...seem to know what you're talking about." Nadia seems distracted...

"Odile, you're in charge here, right? Why are we just sitting here?" Bernice interrogates her teammate. Why was everyone just sitting here and talking? They had work to do! If she'd acted like this in the barracks...

The merry band of magical girls... and Bernie, venture deeper into the more abandoned part of the safe cityblock, leaving the couple of establishments that were refurbished and set up for travelers and a handful of residents alike... behind, soon leaving only empty towering blocks of ruined residential towers in their wake, their facades cracked, disused, walls and sections collapsed down on the snowy pavement...Soon, only the chilly winter wind and their voices accompanied the group.

"Uuuh, close to about eight months now, I think." She estimates, turning to Amelia and flashing a small smile. She lifts her arms up and behind her hooded-head as she talks, but almost as soon as she turns her attention to Amelia, she's forced to look to her surroundings once again. If the Overcity had a downtown, this looks like it would be it.

"I-is that so?" Alexa takes one look at the decidedly frightening state of the locale and decides she'd rather see who Amelia has taken an interest in, looking up at the girl with her ever-present nervous smile. "Y-you m-must know a lot. I-I've only been doing this for, um... a month now."

Kyrie poked a bit at the gauntlet, trying to fiddle with a small map that seems to be mapping out the area around them for now, poking at certain dots to mark them and put names to them, following simply and looking around... keeping an eye on the map. "Lets see if this thing can ping out the enemies this time on this..." she mused.

Amelia bites her lip, remembering the last time she was in a place like this. With Alexa. The Wendigo. Being helpless. She shakes her head. They'd won that one and this is different. "Um...twoweeks..." She mumbles.

"M... Me? Oh.. .... " her eyes stare at Bernice, lingering and freezing up; ".... .... I. Am.. .. Just to help... Lead... ... Since. Razum. Is on.... B. Business," she mumbles out, turning her head back to the part of Overcity they'd begun to shift into. "... .. W... We're. Looking for... ... Inside. The border. Of the r-rift in the city," she murmurs flatly though her voice raised in volume just a touch to be heard. Her hand also raises in gesture towards the general direction of it. With certain residential towers, barricades up, and other unsettling features, the place looked less than hospitable to their company. Especially in the darkness.

"Just a lot about hitting things and getting hit." She smiles warmly. "It gets easier. Don't sweat it."

"A-ah. Well, um... You must be good at that," Alexa nods, snickering under her breath. Her shoulders bunch up. "I-if you say so. I-I, um... I'm not so good at, ah, hurting much of anything. I just help Amelia with that."

"You shouldn't be so shy. A weak-point in our communications could mean the defeat of our... fire-team. Speak up," Bernice offers sternly. Were all magical girls this... flawed? Surely their patron should have hammered this kind of weakness out of them years ago?

Amelia hesitates in thought for a moment, then just nods wordlessly. "Hey, don't say that!" She replies quickly to Alexa. "What about that goblin? Or the...the banshee." She glances to Nadia. "Don't let her fool you. She's brilliant with her barriers, and that goblin never knew what hit it."

"A-ha. Far darrig, actually," Alexa corrects, pushing her glasses up her nose. "Um. I seem to recall *you* did most of the work with him. I-I just, you know. Kept him in place, and, ah... put him out of his misery."

Minutes turned into 10, as the alleyways everyone was taking opened up into a yet another, albeit bigger street... the number of debris and ruined sights increasing proportionally to the distance they were walking. Broken windows, heavily rusted lamp posts, some collapsed, some bent lying on the street... several metal carcasses of what looked like vehicles stayed buried under the snow next to buildings, looking completely rusted and unusable. Parts of the buildings on the side of the road were collapsed, apartment complexes, towers and three story brick and mortar buildings with discolored, rusted signs with unintelligible pictures and letters, all alike in their grey undertones, but different in architecture... one of the brick-layed residential buildings seemed to have been tipped towards the street to the point that half of it collapsed to the road, forming a snow covered brick pile and a dissected slice of the still standing half. The right 'border' side was seemingly abstructed by said buildings and while alleyways on the left of their block were open, leading deeper into the sprawl -- same passages on the right were blocked off by walls of garbage, debris, fences and sandbags, some of the barricades seemingly jury rigged while others were bolted, sometimes even cemented in a more professional manner.

All in all, the streets felt empty and mostly devoid of life, the outskirts of the spacially stable cityblock, one of the so called 'safe havens', being nothing less, but empty... at least at this late time of the day. No animals, birds, stray cats or alike traversed the urban locale with the most remotely lively thing around the pair being the wind itself...

And the fact seemed to be well reflected in the magical map that the smaller girl was wielding, many blinking dots remaining behind, closer to the safe haven's center, while the outer rim they were moving through, stable as it is, were nearly empty... except...

"Hmm? Well... wish I could say the same here." Kyrie sighed, shrugging to them as she looked up for now... "My magic's not that strong... nor is much else I got." she remarked flatly, eyeing around towards the busted up landscape... "Possibly some things at the center of the area...?" she muttered, eyeing her map again at this, somewhat not seeming all in on the conversation right now.

"Nah, I mostly just got myself hit on the head. You actually killed it." Amelia says encouragingly. "Far darrig, right." Amelia keeps walking.

"Oh yeah? Kyrie here has some barrier tricks of her own." She grins and reaches a gloved hand out to pat the other girl's head. "She's really good with them." The girl's eyes look to Kyrie, indicating that the compliment was more for her than the others.

"Nonono, that's now how it happened. You struck him down, I just finished things," Alexa shakes her head as she glances around them again, noting the continually decaying state of the city. She shudders, turning back to Nadia. "A-ha. So she's said. I, um, believe we're of the same, ah, what's the word? Discipline."

"...God damn overcity world warping... hang on." she muttered, fiddling with it some more, a slight blush at the complement from Nadia and the headpat as she leaned in a little, her unsure look fading quickly as she tapped at it. "...Okay I can't even tell... four maybe at most? Expect a fifth just incase... wandering where I assume our guide is taking us." she nodded, looking up from the console for now.

Bernice listens intently to the other girls' conversation. Interesting. They seem to be discussing their past combat experiences. How very logical. Perhaps she'd misjudged them?

"Four what?" Bernice asks as, almost immediately, a gust of wind brushes past Kyrie's face and the soldier appears standing in front of her.

Amelia blinks. "Four...what, exactly? Can you tell with that thing?" She asks, hand on her sword hilt. She's just realized what's been making her uneasy- it's like that park all over again, with how quiet things suddenly are. She glances to Alexa.

Alexa meets Amelia's gaze, swallowing. The red crystal ball at the end of her staff glows faintly.

That's all the prompting she needs. She reaches across for her sword's basket hilt and draw the silvery blade in a smooth gesture.

"...Hell if I know. This map is kinda useful... kinda not." she sighed towards Bernice. "Can't determine what they are, weapons, combat methods, anything. Just that they're wandering, and the mapping is too inconsistant to even keep a solid line on them to properly gauge speed or numbers..." she muttered to them all. "Agatha added a power scanner but... it doesn't work on non-transformed, nor without basically being in physical contact. I know, basically, it's useless for that stuff." she muttered. "They aren't stopping, so it's somewhat assumable they won't take up coherant formations or firing positions on us... but that's still just a guess."

The group began to approach two derelict looking skyscrapers on the edge of the cityblock, the lonely, rusty strip of a barbed wire stretching between them, many of its ledges, poles and sections destroyed, fallen - a relic of the past, it seemed - now covered in snow and icy frost... What remained around, though were the signs...

////  ! ! ! WARNING ! ! ! ////
/// Leaving the safe zone! ///

... and other signs were drawn in orange and yellow colors... something that looked overly akin what a police force would've used to barricade and control civilian traffic - now rusted , battered and crumbled from years? Decades? Ages of disuse?

On the other side of the street, rows upon rows of signs, some jury rigged from wooden planks and bright, white paint, some written neatly on now rusting metal plates - dozes of them spreading over the side of the left skyscraper, written in many languages - English, French, Italian... heck, some signs were even bearing incomprehensible symbols made out of large dots that looked like braille... but who would've read it when it was hanging multiple yards away, over their heads.

Hollow wind brushed through the wide, crumbling street, some of the skyscrapers and buildings around eliciting creaking, metalish noises...

Nadia nods. "Lifting the weight of darkness, my soul is light." The girl begins to glow brightly, floating off the ground and curling into a ball as she transforms. She emerges in what most would consider a stylized adventurer's unifrom, armor plate on her legs and forearms while the rest of her body is protected solely with a bright red cloth. A large cloak unfurls from her shoulders, billowing in a nonexistant breeze for the briefest of moments before settling down. As the glow begins to fade, Nadia steps lightly on the ground, reaching a hand up to cover her head for a moment until visibility fades once again in the darkness of their surroundings.

Keen eyes may note her silhouette has changed, strange protrusions outlined on her head and waist.

The closer proximity was clearing the map's picture up, the overlapping fluctuations from the nearby, bordering rift in front of the group stepping away...

A strange, glowing rectangle of turqoise light materialises in Bernice's hands and disappears seconds later, a silver, gold-etched and bejeweled assault rifle appearing in its place. She stays silent, her eyes trained on Kyrie and her map.

Odile mutely nods to Bernice as she continues to drift along, feeling both somewhat relieved that she was not pressured to speak in such company, but worried at the same time; well, if Razum put faith in them, she would... ... Hope for the best. "W-we're. V... Very close now," she says softly to whoever is closest in earshot, her near constantly on third eye/s gazing uneasily upon the landscape. "... ... P...please, um. Ready yourselves... All... Are transformed..?"

Amelia blinks away the afterimage. "Nice outfit..." She says distractedly, already looking from sign to sign and just in front of Alexa as the group moves. Her gloved grip on her sword tightens slightly. It's the waiting that gets to her. She wants to do something- to let that rush of adreneline out...but there's nothing to do yet. "Yep, ready..." She looks to Alexa. "We've got this..." She repeats.

"...Nevermind, seems this map is just laggy. That, or they are hiding better. One target, upstairs... I think fleeing or advancing up. Still no sight of the others, and I have no idea if those were false positives or not." she muttered... "And I'm transformed whenever I can, the benefit of having low magical power but high sustainability I guess." she added, looking up with a nod.

"Ready as I-I'll ever be," Alexa's crooked grin widens like a fissure, her teeth flashing. Every so often she adjusts her glasses, or her hat, or her mantle -- anything to keep her hands busy. She nods at Kyrie. "A-ah, well, that's... that's what we want, right? One monster. That's what it said."

She's not nervous, she tells herself. This isn't the Wendigo. "Let's go after the one we have, then." She suggests, nerves making her suggestion sharper than she meant it to be.

"Which way? Point and I'll fire," Bernice orders Kyrie sternly.

The map seemed to indicate that the entry way to the derelict skyscraper... was quite in front of them? Though judging by the walls that were leading into a spacious lobby with elevator shafts and staircases -- doors seemed to be barred by one of the bigger, bolted metalish plates that sported warning signs.

"I guess they don't want visitors..." Amelia comments.

Frankly, the entire perimeter of the first floor seemed to have been barricades, with planks, metal sheets and garbage, surrounding the skyscraper-turned-billboard

"Make that REALLY don't want visitors..." Amelia amends as she takes a closer look. "Well...I could see how much of this stuff burns?" She suggests.

"...I have explosive charges, if we're not in any rush, but that's going to ruin the element of surprise if we blwo up, kick, or break the door in most any way. Not that I expect us to surprise a single thing just... there." Kyrie muttered.

"Ah, well, um..." Alexa tries to peek over the first floor, up at the second or even third stories, to see how intact their windows were.

She raises her sword slightly. Her magic flickers a little higher. All but asking to be used. "Well, we're going to stop them anyway, right? So what if they know we're coming?"

"W- Well, too bad. Knock knock." The silhouette of whatever appendage was protruding from Nadia's waist disappears as it curls around her body. Soemthing was making her hair stand on end, but the mission had to go on. The wish was too valuable... "I'm with her. Break it down and break some bones. Doesn't need to be complicated."

"Fair enough, if any of you are barging through the door, that'll put you inside quicker... otherwise you'll need to wait for the explosion to, you know, finish before we go in."

Bernice sighs, "At this point, we should split up and investigate the perimeter. I normally wouldn't suggest attempting such a task individually, but since we're all magical girls here, this situation is an exception." She turns her attention to the last three girls to speak, "Surprise is not an advantage we should be so eager to squander."

"Let's split up, gang?" Amelia shakes her head. "Bad idea. They probably know we're here anyway. Sneaking around won't help."

Odile hovers by the entrance, holding her hands to her chest and giving a look towards the party and back to the building. "... I.. .. There. Is.. Some sort of... Tunnel between the t-two skyscrapers. S..sewers maybe... If you w-want to go quietly.... A-and ... The tower on the. Right. Seemed... Easier. To. Enter," she addresses primarily Bernice, but probably everyone could hear.

"Wouldn't it take longer though?" Amelia seems reluctant to change her mind. "What if they already know we're here? That just gives them more time to get away."

Second, third, forth, fifth, dozens of floors up sported shattered glass, and while the side of the building they were facing was thoroughly covered in many planks and metal sheets, the building's sides seemed more open... Anyone with the wings, agility or magic to scale the building could've entered the building from above, though the glass shards in the smaller windows throughout first 10 floors looked less than savoury...

"Safety in numbers, not that I couldn't solo these guys." Nadia nods her head as she reaches a hand out to her side and emits a gentle glow from it. Those watching her could see the light reveal a pair of red cat ears on the girl's head. "Talking about it is wasting time. No more debate, take a vote or I'm going to bust down the door myself."

"...We could just shoot the second floor with a rocket launcher and climb or jump up." Kyrie said somewhat flatly... "Can everyone besides me get up there quick enough?"

Amelia blinks at the car ears. That's...different. She shakes her head. "I agree. I say we bust it."

"...Well, screw it, guess we're busting into the front door." she shrugged, nodding.

"Uh-- Um! P-please don't do that," Alexa turns from the building, wringing her hands at the more experienced girl. Looking at Amelia, however, she finds herself nodding. "A-alright, i-if you all say s-so. I suppose there are more of us than there are of it, right?"

The light in her hand twists and molds itself into the silhouette of an enormous full blade, and as the light fades, the sound of metal meeting metal clanks through the air as she hefts it onto her shoulders.

"I- I, um..." Alexa glances back up at the skyscraper, frowning. "I think I s-saw something on the second... no, the third... both. I saw a light, I think."

Amelia pauses. "Two lights?" she asks.

... as the girls were conversing, another chilly gust of wind sweeped through the lonely street, ruffling everyone's hair, sprinkling some with falling snowflakes.

Kyrie kept an eye on the map. "I'll tell you if this thing moves I guess." She nodded, ready to follow the team as it stood.

Amelia freezes up for a moment. It's not the Wendigo. It's not. "Okay." She says flatly. "Seriously, I'm pretty sure it knows we're here."

"I- I... think so. It must have been. It was definitely up there, though," Alexa nods confidently.

"Almost certainly. It's probably a trap no matter which way we go."

Amelia has to consciously relax her grip on her sword a bit. "Hmm...I...I haven't really tried jumping like this before...First time for everything..." She's babbling.

"Very well then. We might as well deal with it now," Bernice offers.

"If you jump up, mind the glass. Hence the reason I suggest a rocket launcher for no-" she started, before seeing Bernice beat her to it. "...Oh you have one too."

The soldier girl pulls a massive missile launcher seemingly from thin air and aims it at the building.

"...A-anyway, shoot it to clear the glass and debris somewhat so we have a landing spot up there."

"Where exactly do you want me to fire? At the top, on the second floor, or what?"

"Oh... oh my," Alexa adjusts her glasses, staring at the launcher. She steps back, away from the wielder. "I- I hope you know what you're doing."

"My suggestion is somewhere it'll blow up the glass, unless anyone feels like getting cut up by possibly magic glass on the way in. Which, for the record, is not fun. Alternatively just shoot the door and we go in the 'expected' front door."

Odile bows her head and quietly slinks away while the girls were talking; "I-I'll be watching... ... I-if... T-things go wrong.... I'll. tell. Razum.... A-and.. .. See about... R-reinforcements." With that, her presence becomes harder and harder to detect, though she was easily ignorable to begin with, until she disappears entirely to leave the heroes to do their thing.

"Very well,"

Nadia 's eyes follow Odile as she leaves. Was she not going to help? Huh.

"...Um." Amelia glances around. "I...guess that's...up to you?" She sighs, shaking her head. Fine. There are still five of them anyway.

"...Incoming, it's noticed us and is approaching the wall or windows... It's going slow, lets get moving BEFORE that thing opens fire at us." Kyrie suggested a bit, sighing and looking around... "And watch out for traps in there, of course."

Nadia forces another cocky smirk on her face as she begins to dash forward, recklessly approaching the now-damaged door.

With a missile launcher materializing in Bernice's hands, and the trigger getting pulled, the rocket gets propelled right at the barricaded entry!

Bernice hurries off quietly, preferring to watch from a safe distance, and well-hidden.

The missile effortlessly slams head first into barricaded sectio-- *BAM* sending out a blast wave of sound and force through the quiet street's air, the explosive rocketing the derelict building, making entire building wail with a metalish screech. The explosion sends out a shrapnel of wood and metal bits flying into the building's interior as well as outside.. with some of them unfortunately flying back, scraping Bernice and Amelia.

Several signs collapse down with the new, albeit crude hole creating an opening into the lobby... as the air around girls started to become increasingly chillier.

"Ah!" Amelia yelps in pain, blinking away wood dust and smoke. She touches her forehead, and her glove's bloody when she pulls it away. There's an ache in her side and arm that betrays where shrapnel's hit her. "Goddamnit! Hey, mind letting the bad guys do that?" She starts, then blinks. That girl's run off. She looks to Alexa. "Hey, you didn't get hit, right?" She asks, concerned.

"O-oh my!" Alexa cringes, ducking away from the shrapnel and only uncurling a good quarter of a minute after the blast. Looking at Amelia, she starts, hurrying over to her. Her staff glows brightly as healing magic washes over Amelia. "I-I'm f-fine! Look at you!"

"Uh, guys, the thing is doing something I think, there's a magic field seeming to expand from it... It's starting to come out." She called simply.

Nadia dashes in without a second thought, blade drawn and combat on her mind. Whatever the target was, Kyrie said it was going for the windows, so the fast she could get up there, the better.

There are brief flickers of blue fire, and her cuts fade away, leaving only smears and tears in her uniform. "I'm fine too." She reassures Alexa then whirls around. "Okay, let's do this!" She grips her sword.

"If we're gonna take cover inside, we better do it fas-" she started, seeing Nadia charge in. "Well that answers that!" Kyrie nodded, hurrying after Nadia.

"Oh dear, oh dear," Alexa mutters to herself, looking at Kyrie in dread and then Nadia's charging form with nothing short of horror. Jolting, she rushes after them.

Amelia's sprinting already as well. She doesn't want to be the last one to the fight- definitely not after Alexa!

Seconds later as the rocket exploded into the lobby and bottom floor of the skyscraper... the exterior sheathes off in long chunks of concrete, cement, and largely - dust, clouding outwards from the blast zone Bernice had struck accompanied by an avalanche of sound, the explosion by far the loudest noise - echoing out into the great, desolate land our heroes had found themselves in.

Suddenly, another explosion rockets the building, as the second and third floor's walls explode! Chunks of concrete and metal flying out as landings are exposed, the foundation stripped away, steel wires and other intact remnants of construction spiking out wards with broken glass littering and catching what little moonlight there was in this dark evening...

It only seemed to further the contrast between the gaping cavern the party had just created, like a maw of some great beast waiting to devour them.

A figure is hunched over in the suddenly created cavity in the second floor at Far range, a dark and shadowed being about the same size as the others, though with two paralleled forms to either side. Its features are difficult to make out, but less so was the arrow it had notched, the silver of the tipped head catching the light as it makes an attack!

With a tougher explosion blasting the wall section out, another barrage of shrapnel, concrete and chunks got slugged right at the dashing group, the flying pieces catching everyone, but Amelia by surprise!

"Gah! Okay then, basically gets to control the building, right, fun, owch!" Kyrie muttered, wincing as she sprinted to keep up, looking to the map to notice the figure... Probably not in time to notice or react as all it showed was an enemy dot.

Amelia scrambles back off the ground, still not sure how she'd avoided getting hit. There's concrete dust everywhere. "What the hell?!" Her gaze darts around, looking for the others. They'd been right in front of her...

Nadia is knocked violently off her path by a chunk of the wall, the collision with her knees forcing them to buckle as she collapses and tumbles to the ground. She's back on her feet in a moment, but the pain in her legs is noticeable. "Non-tanks get back! Ambush!"

Ameli shakes her head. Like hell she's runn-

Not giving the team a time to catch their bearings, the barrage of bullets starts to rain down on entire group, raining on Nadia, Alexa, Amelia and Kyrie!

Alexa panics as shrapnel skids through her mantle, nearly toppling over on her ungainly legs. Cringing in pain, she tries to pick herself up, but doesn't even have time to get on her feet before she has to try to scramble away.

"Alexa!" Amelia looks horrified, but doesn't have time to do anything.

The volley of arrows slam true into their chosen targets.

That isn't how it works. They don't hurt her. They don't go after Alexa, that's why Amelia's there what good is she if-

Dozens upon dozens of shadowy arrows rain over everyone's heads hitting and trying to stab through everyone's defenses, their sharp tips lodging into outfits, some repelled by protective magic that the girls had...

Following the impact wit the wall, the shadowy arrows effortlessly barrage Nadia's defenses, straining her outfit's ability to keep the injured girl alive.

... unlike in Amelia's case who was dodging and parrying the arrow tips rather well, with only a couple of them grazing the protective layer... staying on par with the map wielder who cautiously followed the group, behind!

... however Alexa's case wasn't the prettiest one, the magical arrows overpowering her outfit, penetrating through the defenses and stabbing the girl through her flesh, the injuring arrows staying like that for a couple of seconds before vanishing into thin air, leaving bleeding wounds.

Bernice 's head popped out from behind a pile of rubble outside the building. "Those idiots! Just charging right into the trap. Who taught them how to fight? I suppose I'd better go in and save them..." she moaned.

Alexa screams like a banshee the second the first arrow thuds into her, and it only intensifies as the others lodge inside of her. She collapses back to the ground, whimpering and blinking tears from her eyes as she drags herself along the ground.

The thing- Darcie- looms over the avant-grade created balcony, her features coming into view. A slightly shiny figure of a girl, melded and seeming to ooze at places as if partially boneless, with a large sphere on its back and two outstretched tendrils of wings, frilled and oozing with moistness. The damp sheen of the figure catches the waning light, and a distorted cry comes out of it causing the slightly gelatinous figure to ripple. It looks humanoid, and taking another step you can make out a secondary sphere, looking like a lump of child's head sized lump coal, attached to the girl's weapon, a curved great bow with dark swirls at either end. After the cry, it is silent, but you can feel it staring down at all of you.

Bernice's bullets scatter into Darcie's form, the holes they created as they pass through her body mirroring the ones on her porous snail. The wounds gape and clench, the darkness from within seeming to pour out from her form. As the vaguely girl-like form gets injured, dark misty smoke begins to thicken around her, darkening around the wounds.

Bernice stays silent as her bullets rip through the monster's body, simply maintaining her fire in controlled bursts. No emotion involved, no holding back, just as she'd been trained.

Amelia bashes the last arrow aside with an almost contemptuous swing, her sword blazing with intense blue-white light. Then she hears an all too familiar scream, and whirls to see Alexa fall. "No. Nonono..." She's gone very pale, sword almost slipping from nerveless fingers and the monster completely forgotten as she dashes over to kneel by Alexa. "Oh god...Alexa...Please, please be okay..."

Blood. A lot of it. She forces herself to stand, raising her sword and standing between Alexa and the...thing, her features twisted into a mask of fear and rage. "It's okay, it'll be okay..." She whispers over and over, voice shaking.

The paladin girl holds her ground between the emerged monstrocity and the injured girl on the ground, holding her weapon and resolve high, ready to sacrifice herself for her friend.

Alexa stops crawling when she realizes the cover has come to her, looking up at Amelia through watery eyes. She rolls onto her back, screwing her eyes shut in an attempt to stem the tears before raising her staff above her, muttering as the crystal ball glows.

The healing energy surges through the injured girl, stopping the bleeding and closing some of her wounds.

Kyrie moves over towards Nadia, holding her hands out as her staff comes out and magical circles form behind Nadia, "Ready for a boost, Nadia?"

Nadia cries out as she's hit, more in frustration than pain. To have so much of her protection eaten away before she could even react was... Well, it doesn't matter. Just focus on what's ahead. The sound of Alexa's cries and Amelia's desperate pleas meets her ears, and the girl's desire to be the hero grows. She isnt' the only one with loved ones to lose here. The girl nods resolutely, swallowing the lump in her throat and forcing that cocky smirk on her face, convincing herself. "Damn right! Let's go!"

Kyrie releases the circles as they fling her forwards to meet them at a closer range combat.

Amelia looks down to her friend when she notices the glow, still wild-eyed and her face a canvas for fear and worry. "A-Alexa?"

With a sigh of relief, the worst of the pain abates. Alexa offers Amelia a shaky, silent thumbs-up and an even more crooked grin than usual.

In a quick, dashing move, both Kyrie and Nadia fling forth towards the mounstrous girl on the second floor, the pair closing in on her, together.

Tendrils of slime-dripping appendages seem to shift with a mind of their own to regard Nadia, the girl's corrupted appearance becoming more apparent in closer proximity. You can see pale blue scraps of color beneath the dark black ooze, though with what was being emitted from the pitted sores in her body, the vision fades with the passing moment. Her greatbow's shape also becomes more clear; the black lump of a snail shell attached to the bow's shaft, mirroring the heavy shell on the monstrous form. It's face looks barely human, lips cleft and fused unnaturally into two damp flaps with dark eyes, which palpitate as if in breath. You can see something red between it's 'mouth'.

"HaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" The girl screams as mighty a roar as her lungs can summon, her blade flying forward and arching above her head as if made of foam rather than solid metal. The blade falls, and crashes down with the weight of an object ten times its size.

===

"Y-you..." Amelia remembers to breathe. "Y-you...scared me there. I...Never mind." She laughs. Actually laughs, a half-hysterical note. She's still standing over Alexa. Her expression hardens. "Be right back. Going to kill this thing."

The corrupted girl is favored by murk continuing to sift from her body, the striated wounds seeming to breath out the darkness as her body shifts. Whatever faint color remained to her body was being amalgamated into the pure pitch blackness, as she readies her bow at the party again, the arrows no longer silver-tipped but made from the same voidal substance as herself.

The barrage of void arrows slam forward out of the snail-girl, making her form shudder as more of the voidal ports in her body - rip apart, exposing the darkness inside. The snail-shaped shell on her bow falls off the curve of the weapon, to be absorbed into one of the yawning holes populating the monstergirl's body. She gives a raw cry as her arrows fly...

As Nadia attempts to hack through the monstrous girl, the darkness around her figure thickens, taking a menacing, sharp appearance, stretching out like appendages forth out of her 'chest', blocking out Nadia's attack with a loud clang--- as the monster prepares her bow for another barrange,  the spikes brocking out the gravity...

Dozens upon dozens of shadowy arrows stretched through the bow's sling, aiming right at Nadia's face, ready to puncture the gravity girl into swiss cheese!! But seeing how the odd shadow blocked her blow, the adrenalin pumped girl immediately dodges away from the array as it gets unleashed at others, down on the snowy debris filled concrete....

While only one arrow grazes Kyrie who was standing at the back of the group, and some of the arrows ricochet and hit Bernice in the distance... most of them start pounding the tall and proud defender, Amelia, who definitely was ready to sacrifice herself for the friend.... perhaps seeing Alexa regenerate her wounds made the girl too relax, less vigilant... a tiny lapse, but at what price?

 Arrow upon arrow bounds her outfit's defenses, shattering the magical energy that was protecting her, only to slam, stab, pierce through her outfit, chest, legs, arms, one of them luckily ricocheting from her skull without instantly killing the girl! The paladin turns into a literal pin-cushion made out of dark arrows as her right, sword wielding arm gets severed, first at her elbow and then off her shoulder by multiple projectiles, covering Alexa whom the girl was trying to defend in blood and gore, the severed bits of the limb hitting Alexa in her face.

For one moment Amelia totters, her uniform and small body covered in so many arrows she barely looks human anymore. Wisps of blue flame leak from her body, uncontrolled and useless. She can't even scream- the arrows punctured her lungs. Then she falls.

The shadowy projectiles stay put in the paladin's body for a couple of seconds, before poofing and vanishing into the night's air, leaving the snow underneath, behind, around stained in crimson...though not as much as a natural body would've produced.

That sound, the seizing gasp of someone who had been stabbed. Nadia tried to make it a point to keep up her shonen appearances, but she recognized that the natural response to being mortally wounded wasn't an agonizing wail, but rather a stuttered gasp as your body desperately conserves its energy to hold on to every last bit of life. The sound of splitting flesh, a labored gasp, and of a body hitting the floor are all too apparent to the girl's now-acute hearing. Despite herself, she has to glance back for a brief moment, and the sight of gore nearly sickens her. Two weeks. She'd been on the job for two weeks, probably transformed against her will and trying to do her best...

The same lucky arrow that ricocheted away from Amelia's head, stabbed through Bern's weakened defenses, leaving a bleeding wound after it disappeared.

"Dammit...! Too much for rookies... Kyrie!" She yells to the other girl, the only one she trusted in this situation. "Get them out! I can tank until they're safe!"

"Less tank more make them non-issue! That thing's range is probably far enough to bombard us if we only run!"

"I can do both, so just get them out! Put up a shield and run, come back later!"

Bernice ducks behind her pile of rubble as Darcy fires her volley of arrows, reloading her assault rifle just as she has been taught for all those years despite the deafening clangs of ricocheting arrows and even as a few of them tear into her magical combat suit. Press the button on the side, remove the magazine, hold it in front of your face with both hands and blow. Her lungs' enchanted air blows past the silver magazine, and a *click* can be heard as it's restocked with magical ammunition.

The soldier-girl quickly reinserts the magazine, breathes a sigh to calm herself, and takes aim once again, laying down bursts of magical fire with eerie, unnatural calm. It's not until she half-empties her magazine again that she notices her ally's near-mortally wounded body lying on the ground.

Amelia is in too much pain for coherent thought. It's cold. How is it cold? She clutches her magic, what's left of it, like a blanket, surrounded by the rags of her uniform. Wisps of smoke hiss up from the snow as the remnants of her magic try and do the impossible, blue flames weakly licking at horrific injuries.

The sharp edged shadow that blocked out Nadia began to dissipate, the dark contour vanishing just at the time when the ex-PMC opened the fire back at the monster!

The snail girl begins to melt more into the floor, the bullets hissing as they riddle her form; Nadia would be able to see through her, now, before the newly created holes were quickly caulked up with the impenetrably dark ether. It seemed the only way the hunched figure was able to support itself now was with the aid of the shadows, the way the tentacles pierced through sockets in her bloodied body pupetting her form. In vain she attempts to swivel from the second volley, but they catch her as well, causing the great shell on her back to break apart with a crack. Still... She stands. The flaps at her mouth move, stringy strands of fluid dripping from her mouth as she tries to address Nadia - but no comprehensible words come out, only a drawn out moan.

The shadowy amalgamation grows and swirls around the moaning, monstrous girl, forming an ethereal, smoke-ring around.

Alexa isn't exactly sure how it happened. One second Amelia was there, standing over there, and then the next her red mantle was even redder, and warmer, and wetter. Amelia dropped, and there was something on her face -- it was hard for her to put the pieces together in the first instant. Then she begins to rise and she sees what fell on her. She screams, scrambling for her staff, crystal ball aglow as she hovers it over Amelia, trembling.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God please, I-I-I c-can f-fix this..." she feverishly repeats, casting her spell.

The healing energy pours straight into the bleeding girl as panicking Alexa was trying to clog the excessive bleeding and... and whatever remained of shattered remains, flesh and bone, in the girl's shoulder! The quick surge of energy manages to form a thin layers of skin, growing increasingly over amputated and stabbed regions alike, stabilizing the girl just a tiny bit, but still nowhere near to cover and stop the bleeding completely.

Bernice stops firing for a few moments and simply stares at the horrifically wounded girl and her crying friend. For once, she actually lets her emotions show on her face. Shock. Rage. She'd never had to watch a team-mate die before, their tactics had always been perfect. Their equipment, flawless. She'd fought so many enemies over the
decades, but she'd never been in any real danger. How could she have let this happen?

Kyrie looked down to them... crap. No... this wasn't good. On one hand, she could hinder it, make it's shots worse... but those two were in NO position to hold their own as it is. And she.... "Screw it, if nothing else I can take hits." she said with a slight wince, knowing full well this was an absolutly retarded idea as she stood in place to protect them from bolts now, despite how that ended for the last one. "Stabilize her and get to some cover they won't be able to hit you two at!" Kyrie ordered to the two, pulling her headband-mask down over her eyes as she gritted her teeth.

Kyrie stands her ground in front of shocked Alexa and the downed paladin, taking Amelia's place and trying to buy some time for the desperate healer who was trying her best 't regenerate her friend.

If she hadn't been as close as she was, Nadia would never have seen Darcie's desperate attempts to communicate. But she was. And she did. She hesitates slightly, memories of Ain's harem flashing through her mind. She knew the secret behind monster girls, but... No, she couldn't hesitate. This was a monster. Heroes killed monsters. The girl screws up her face as her blade bounces off of the ooze's defense, and as she spins around, she hammers the blade forward in a wide vertical arc yet again, bringing it down with all the force of a guillotine. "I'm SORRY!" She screams an apology with her attack, the only condolence she can give to whatever person this thing had been before.

Nadia's oversized blade cleaves through the oozing scalp of the creature, splitting her brains and skull to make her eyes burst out of their sockets, much like how a snail would push their eyestalks forth, grayed flecks of her mind covering the metal. The weapon cleaves through her head, vertically, like butter but at the current state of her body, it seemed more like putting the creature out of it's misery. It's form relapses in on itself, dead...

 But as the monstrous girl dies, sark shadows exploded out of the body, streaming up, over Nadia's head, the spirals growing and forming a floating, black viscous mass... the mass levitating in the air for a couple of seconds... but suddenly the mass contracted, shifting into a spear like shape, the tip pointing straight at Nadia's head.

Bright, burning flame enveloped the tip of the dark spike as it tried to ram through Nadia - only for it to be thwarted by a timely, well placed block!

The spear's shape flickers several times as it starts to grow into a shadowy amalgamation, the burning glow shaping into two orbs, the large human-sized blob of mass flickering with distortions in air!

===

A girl with short, fluffy faun colored hair pops up in Amelia's closed eyes when she blinks from the pain, small and no older looking than a ten year old in the same moment that the creature on the balcony died. Her lower half swirls outward like a traditional ghost. "Hi... ... I'm really sorry. I have so much I want to say... But my time is over," she swallows, wiping at her eyes with a blue sleeve as she begins to cry. "I'm so sorry... The monsters, they made me... Can you please kill Trenza, I don't want to die alone,.. You won't come with me..! This time, I know..."

The last of her words are hazy, her form getting more transparent as her soul speaks to Amelia with the last of her power. She seems not to be able to communicate more, as, tear-stained, the darkness takes her form out of sight.

Amelia gasps. "N-N..w-wait..." She reaches feebly for something that isn't there with shaking fingers.

Bernice finally snaps out of it and gets behind cover once again. She crosses her arms and begins to glow a strange turquoise colour. The magical energy of the Overcity streams down into Bernice as the ex-PMC tries to concentrate the oh so needed mana!

Alexa is barely even cognizant of Kyrie's helpful cover; all her attention is on Amelia, who has stubbornly refused to stop bleeding. She mutters under her breath as her staff continues to glow.

"TheLordismercifulandgracious, slowtoanger..."

... catching up with her senses... sort of - the healer continues to channel the healing energy through Amelia's body, stopping the bleeding and thickening the skin over most grevious wounds, hiding the exposed shard of shoulder-bone under the tissue... At least Amelia wasn't bleeding!

Kyrie blinks.... looking around, orbs? Spears? Something, but she couldn't tell... she stood defensively ready, as much as she still wanted to help more than standing as a potential wall to defend... if she didn't, the girls might get killed, as she clenched her gauntleted fist... Time to perhaps see if Agatha was right on how ridiculously durable a molecularly printed arm piece was. Hopefully not getting her arm broken or severed before it would get broken... no, okay, that might be better, this was a gift.

The girl stands her ground, maintaining her vigilance and control over the situation 'n self!

A... spear, now? Whatever, a target was still a target. Nadia twirls her blade around so that the edge faces up, and in an exact reversal, the blade "falls" toward the ceiling, toward the spear. She grits her teeth and loudly grunts, twisting her body to accomodate the strange motion.

The gravity girl shifts the force around her, charging upwards towards the shadowy amalgamation of growing spikes, ready to cleave right through it.... but moment before she approaches it, the gravitational pull begins to fade as the creature flickers and twitches, two burning orbs appearing inches away from her face, the girl stopping mid-flight, "Y o u ' r e...", the girl could feel the gravity around her fluctuate in a wave like fashion as the creature spoke in a deep, emotionless monotone... somewhat reminding her about her own patron and how it talked sometimes, sans the deeper voice and flame-like, orange orbs, ".... n e x t!" --- the gravity snaps, changing its momentum as the girl gets slammed back down against the floor, though not nearly as hard enough for her to lose the footing.

The large, smoking amalgamation swirling around itself and immediately propels itself straight down at Nadia.

It... canceled her magic?! "Ah, shit!" The girl is ungracefully ripped to the side, violently thrown out of the way by a last minute magical dodge, the shadow falling just short of piercing her as she rolls. The girl tumbles for a few feet before springing back up to her feet. A hand immediately reaches down to grip up the blade that she'd dropped in the process.

The shadow beast misses the dodging girl, flying past her in an arc like trajectory, outside the jury rigged 'balcony', its burning orbs flickering, switching their attention between other girls, "S o  m a n y.", its shape flickered in a distorted manner, the creature floating next to the second floor's, exploded ledge, close to Nadia, "A n d  a l l  s h e  w a n t e d  w a s  t o  w a k e  u p  f r o m  h e r  n i g h t m a r e  a n d  p u t  h e r  w o r t h l e s s  p e t  o u t  o f  i t ' s  m i s e r y."

Soothed by the magic of the Overcity gathering around her, Bernice smiles for the first time in months. She takes aim once again and resumes the fire patterns drilled into her long ago.

Nadia's facade cracks for a brief moment before she fires back. "If you're trying to make me feel bad..." Well, 'fires back' is a strong term. She did feel bad. Righting the wrong she'd committed apparently meant committing more wrongs... Was this worth it?

====
On the last episode... Our valiant heroines (and one hero) have taken up arms to take down a monster with confirmed kills under its belt. The promise of a minor wish to be granted for its death adding a more lucrative tone to the offer, for some of the party. After a short rendezvous with a girl who was apparently an agent of Razum, the group departed from The Wand & Circlet into the Overcity landscape.

In next to no time at all, the party was able to discover towers which were apparently the residency of their target, and rather than taking the stealthy approach, decided to go loud - which the guiding girl took as her chance to leave.

With a handy rocket launcher to the door, the first tower was breached with an unforeseen consequence of drawing attention from one of it's residents, who fired a volley onto the girls below. Our favorite tacticool agent, Bernice, managed to avoid the damage - but some of the others were not so lucky.

Nevertheless the enemy - a corrupted, mollusk humanoid was cleaved apart, but not before managing to take off Amelia's arm as she had protected Alexa. One target down - but another seemed to be released from the shell of the downed figure, a shapeshifting darkness which was just as vicious.

With Nadia preoccupying the shade in melee, Kyrie and Alexa helping to stabilize Amelia, it was Bernice who took the chance to take aim at the figure, and... Fire.

Soothed by the magic of the Overcity gathering around her, Bernice smiles for the first time in months. She takes aim once again and resumes the fire patterns drilled into her long ago.

The amorphous shadowy beast with burning, fiery eyes was floating in the air, a couple of meters away from the explosion-made balcony's ledge, booming with its monotonous voice and watching the trio of girl's right beneath it --- only to be hailed by a barrage of bullets, heated metal sinking into its shape-- only to phass through its body, behind, hitting the derelict skyscraper's wall, next to Nadia... The shade's body flickers like a visual distortion, the burning orbs raising up to stare right at the raining barrage in the direction of Bernice -- only for the last couple of bullets to shatter against the building behind it into ricocheting chunks, tiny bits and pieces flying all around the place, with one little piece returning back right at Bernice - chipping her across the face.

"O-ow!"

As Alexa works on Amelia's wounds, the young-looking paladin's consciousness slowly cracks from its shellshocked state... not enough to grasp herself up, yet... but maybe... maybe--

"Wewillnotfearthoughtheearthshouldchange, thoughthemountainsshakeintheheartofthesea..." Alexa feverishly mutters to herself. She dares to hope as she sees the bleeding begin to stop; her staff glows brighter.

For Amelia, everything hurts. It hurts so much. Except her arm. That's just...numb except for constant spikes of agony from her shoulder. She wants to scream, but it comes out as a thready, hoarse moan. She's not sure where she is for a moment- after the girl she just glimpsed faded from view. But...the last thing she remembers before that was trying to protect... "A-Al..."

Kyrie frowns at this... continuing to stand ready to intercept attacks at the mahou duo behind her. Still holding up the gauntlet from Agatha and praying that molecular-level printing really was as durable as advertised. And that she would block just so conveniently where the arrows would hit.

Bern's attack brought the shadow right to Nadia? Purrfect. She forces a small smirk on her face, content in fighting a true monster rather than a corrupted girl, and hoists her blade high above her head as if it were made of plastic rather than steel. With almost no grace, the gravity of the blade increases until it falls as a guillotine toward the shadow.

The shapeless blob of darkness switches its attention back down again after Bernice yelped and hunkered down into her hole again, its attention switching down towards the group below... just at the time when Nadia's came down on it from behind... The thick blade slices the creature into two halves, leaving its form smokily drifting where it was, while the gravity girl lands on the snowy, debris-filled street below - as ungracefully as her gravity-enhanced hit.

". . .", two slices of the larger shade, detached at they were, flickered a couple of times, before they started to take on a more menacing, sharp appearance, "... e n t e r t a i n i n g  a  c h a l l e n g e? W e  c a n  o n l y  o b l i g e."

The second half began to spin in the air, swirling and taking a vortex like shape, before jolting down right at Nadia, going straight after her back the moment th'girl landed!

While the first half, eyeing the crowd in front of it, went straight after Kyrie, trying to jam the girl through with the sharp, blade-like body.

... both stabbing through the girls, one through gravity girl's back, and the other one though the smaller defender's chest, their ethereal shapes phasing through them, filling their body with chiliness and the sense of emptines--- "! ! !", suddenly, the shard in Nadia's chest elicits an echoing shriek as the swirling vortex gets blasted out of Nadia's body in a large, smoking barrage of shapes and licking shadowy flames, right into the snow -- landing between herself and the trio... while a sense of depressing dread and shivering cold spreads through Kyrie's, the impaling shadow staying jammed through her.

Bernice hides behind her pile of rubble and holds her soul gem. Turquoise magic fills the air and appears to be drawn into the little gem, as her body glows the same colour.

The fire in her soul, maybe a literal fire if the sudden surge of warmth in her chest was considered, keeps her strong as the girl staggers. She stumbles for a few steps before righting herself, raising her blade and forcing a cocky hero's grin on her face, although in her heart the guilt of her actions, of what she'd made happen and let happen, kept eating away at her... No, now wasn't the time for regret. Keep being Nadia. She could be him, the person she was before, when no one else was watching.

"Pretty lame attack for talking so much shit." She lets her mouth speak for her, barely screening the words. The important part is that she's convincing, both to herself and the others. With Amelia out of action and Alexa tending to her wounds, Kyrie defending the each of them, it didn't leave the girl much room for error as one of their only lines of defense.

Through pain and misery, more and more consciousness returns back to Amelia... what will the girl do?

"-lexa?" Amelia croaks as she forces open blood-crusted eyes, trying to see if her...her friend is really there. If she's okay and...her plan had worked, partially. Or if she'd failed at that too. Her arm's in agony. So's the rest of her. It hurts to move. To think. She stirs feebly in the mud, half-raising her head. Her braid's come undone, blood-matted hair over her face.

She bites down on her lip hard enough to tear it, writhing in agony as another lightning bolt of pain shoots up her shoulder. She's never been hurt this badly before. Right then, she'd do anything just to make it stop hurting- and she feels a surge of fear...buried by guilty anger and.../need/ a moment later.

The second shard's shriek subsided as fast as it appeared, its mass taking on a ball-like shape resembling that of a pufferfish, "Y o u ! ? . . ." the monotone cracked up a little bit, gaining a tinge of emotion as it stared at Nadia, letting a pause settle as Amelia brought her sword off the ground,  ". . . a h . . . s o  t h a t  i s  t h e  g a m e  y o u ' r e  p l a y i n g? F e i s t y.", the menacing monotone return back to its coldness, ". . .  a h-... h a. Y o u ' v e  e v e n  b r o u g h t  t h e  u s e l e s s  w e a k l i n g? A  g i f t?"

". . . m a y b e  y o u ' l l  l o v e  t o  h a c k. H e r. O p e n. T o o?"

Get up. Get up and fight. Amelia has to fight that thing. It's why she's here. It's what she has to do. Her dormant magic flickers, almost hopefully, and she all but scrambles to clutch at it. It licks at her, pouring through her flesh and veins...And just like that, the pain fades slightly, as her magic flows through her.

Alexa almost cries to see Amelia awaken, though she's not sure if it's in relief or fear. She stares at the stump of Amelia's arm, feeling her throat constrict. Now that Amelia is safe, the fear begins to abate, replaced by a burning, painful feeling in her gut. She stares up at the shard embedded in Kyrie through tear-clogged eyes.

"... BeholdtheworksoftheLord," Alexa continues to mutter as she rises. "Howhehaswrought DESOLATIONS IN THE EARTH!" Her staff's crystal shines intensely as bright red chains of light materialize out of thin air to constrict the shard [Chains of Titan Binding, 4 Mana, burning Fortune Point]

Amelia reaches for her sword. It doesn't work. She looks down. She wishes she hadn't. Her arm...It's gone. just gone. She looks up to Alexa. She's healing someone Amelia can't see. "Ah...You...You're okay..." Amelia makes a noise between somewhere between a whimper and a laugh. If asked, she wouldn't know which. She...She doesn't have her sword arm. Her arm's GONE.  "S-sorry..."

Amelia's scared and disgusted by her own fear. The fighting's still going on. What good is she? They're fighting and she...she couldn't even keep Alexa safe right and she's still fighting without her. She's still a useless, irrelevant failure. Why does she even have these powers if she doesn't fight with them, whimpering in the dirt? She still has another arm, doesn't she?

As Alexa heals, Amelia clutches the sword clumsily in a shaky, unfamiliar grasp and pulls herself to her feet.

With the magical circle surrounding both Kyrie and the shard that was stabbing through her, the magical energy surges inside, binding the two entities inside.

Kyrie winced, a cold, shooting sort of pain... or... sensation. Something. It was horrid, she didn't like it, and tried to yank and tug the shadow from herself meekly... keeping an eye out. She couldn't much get distracted, no, not right now, block the attacks, keep the others alive. As much as... she should die and wasn't worth going at this. She could die on her own time, not while others were at risk or something... Analyze it, figure out what's going on with it, it's tactics, techniques... But all she got was... familiarity. Something familiar... Like what she's seen with Razum so often. And yet... that didnt' help, not quite yet. It seemed to recognize people Was it talking about her? She felt it must have been, who else would fall under 'useless weakling', as she gritted her teeth behind closed lips, staying... stationary for now. Nadia still seemed mostly fine, and until the ones behind her were safe, she couldn't risk it.

"Hey, get her and probably yourself to somewhere safe." she called to them. That thing would probably aim for them. On purpose, to get them to rush, to mess up, and otherwise. And the worst part was, the alternative was letting people die, so they would have to take it...

A call out towards the orb. "If you're wanting to try to swing at me, take your best shot." she said somewhat tauntingly. Stupidly. Any, no matter how petty or worthless attempt to goad it into ignoring their wounded and for the only expendable person in the group. The chains that shot out to constrict her... well, whatever. It doesn't really matter, she'll stand and take the hits.

The ejected, echoing shard was floating between stabbed Kyrie 'n the bundeled up ground and herself, eyeing the girl and speaking those words in a cold monotone... just when the binding circle grew around Kyrie and the other shard.

"I'm just here for justice." Yeah. That sounded good. The girl twirls her blade around in a huge circle before settling back into a stance, her feet planted as firmly as gravity would allow. She takes a step forward, but in a strange bit of precision, seems to fake her advance. A step right and a dash left as the huge blade comes in horizontally, 'falling' sideways directly into the being.

"Challenges only exist for the hero to overcome!"

The gravity assisted sword slams right on the ground, one inch away from the pufferfish-like shade as it levitates back, letting the gravity girl have a go at the snow covered concrete, "J u s t i c e?  H o w  c u t e. . .  s t i l l  b e l i e v i n g  i n  y o u r  u s e l e s s  f a i r y t a l e s?", the shade's form began to melt into amorphous mass again, "I  h o p e  t h a t m a k e s  y o u  f e e l  v e r y  s p e c i a l. U n i q u e." suddenly the shade jumped back, frying straight in Kyrie's and the second shard's direction, "W h a t.  A.  J o ke."

The shade slams right into its cousin, darkness bloating, growing, increasing in a swirling motion around the smaller girl, forming a coil around her torso, until sharply sinking in and disappearing inside of her! Coldness and the sense of inevitability starts to spread through Kyrie.... only to be followed by whispers and voices in her mind, the already bound girl's muscles contracting and going stiff.

If she wasn't already beet red from the pure rush of addrenaline, she'd have blushed slightly in embarassment and rage. "A- And like you're not a walking cliché! You talk like a middle schooler who just discovered Nietzsche!"

But her banter is cut short as the wisp disappears into her teammate, her friend, her... Partner. It's gone in a blink, and although the threat has shrunk and disappeared, her panic only grows. She could only fight a target she could hit, and if it somehow ended up inside of Kyrie... Or, worse, if it was somehow able to control her and hide in her, then... What could she even do...

Bernice takes up her firing position once again. Why were her allies so stupid? One of them gets her arm perforated to the point where it /falls off/, and she just charges back into the fray! How dangerous is that?? Well, whatever. She has a job to do.

Bernice looks out from behind her rubble pile. Strange, is the fighting over already? She emerges from her cover and walks over to join the others, "Hey, great job guys? When do we get our wish?"

Amelia has to do something. She has to help. This thing's a monster. It's hurting the others. It hurt Alexa. She needs to kill it.  But she only has one arm. She channels her need, her urgency through her magic, and the sword flares bright white in her grasp, the blade melting and reforming...until she's holding a blazing, metal torch with a crown of crackling blue flames.

These girls kept her alive when she was supposed to be helping them. Time to lend a hand back.   And then the other girl- Kyrie...gets...attacked. And Amelia just stood there and let it happen. Another person she's let down. She has to try something. ANYTHING.

"It's not over!" Nadia throws out a hand, though her feet refuse to move as they stay frozen in place. "Get back in cover!"

The searing light of Amelia's newest tactic catches her gaze, and her eyes flit over for just a moment before she's forced to turn away, bringing a hand up to shield her face. "Y- You too! You're missing an arm, you can't fight right now! Let me-" Could she even do anything? "L- Let me handle it!"

And like always, Amelia's magic's there for her to call on- a warm flame, glowing in her psyche like the last ember of a fireplace. Unlike her, it's reliable. Comforting. Cleansing. Purifying.  She knows, somehow, what it might be able to do. Amelia rushes forward.

"I have to try!" she screams back at Nadia.

"Oh god, oh god..." She runs forward, wild-eyed- her gait's closer to that of a cripple or hunchback than a warrior of justice.

"Please let this work please let this work..." She tries to put her hand on Kyrie's shoulder...then realizes she's missing an arm to make that work. "Please work!" She cries, hesitating for one vital second, then...jabs her torch forwards towards where the shade disappeared like it's a branding iron.

Bernice runs to hide behind the nearest pile of rubble. She is not one to disobey orders.

That's not the only issue here! If she attacks, Kyrie will-!

Alexa is momentarily startled out of her reverie by the sight of Amelia rising. She gapes at her in horror, shaking her head. "W-wait, no, don't, please it's okay don't...!"

With a hard touch and a powerful surge of fiery magic, the one-armed paladin begins to 'cleanse' the smaller, dazed girl, her remaining palm pressing against Kyrie's chest --- the temperature in the palm spiking up to huge levels, the close contact bypassing outfit's defenses!

Amelia feels sick. It didn't work. It didn't work she's killing her oh god what did she do why did she think she could help?

Alexa screams, rearing back from the flames. Her chains flicker and weaken in time with the pulsing light of her staff as her concentration is momentarily broken. Shaking her head hard enough to nearly send her glasses flying, the crystal ball at the tip shines again.

...the purifying circle began to grow around Kyrie's body, almost linking to its completion--- as dark mist started to pour out of Kyrie's body, surrounding the girl's body with a thin veering layer of smoke. The circle's light stops growing -- only to crackle, flicker and shatter.

"You fucking moron!" She screams in desperation at Amelia, her curses a way for her to cope more than berate the girl. She can't restrain herself. Her legs dash forward, carrying her toward the younger girl (when she's able). "Kyrie!"

"... Dammit dammit dammit no I was so close it's not fair!" Alexa whines almost under her breath, her staff's light flickering as the circle breaks. She bunches up her shoulders, cowering as she takes a step backwards.

"I-" Amelia stares in horror at her own handiwork, shaking in a way that has nothing to do with blood loss or pain. What did she DO? Why did she think that would HELP? She's just burned the girl who might have saved her life. She's barely paying attention to anything else. She just made things worse.

Bernice pops her head out of the rubble. "I-is it safe now?" she climbs out, walking over to Kyrie, the confusion visible on her face.

The burning fires hit Kyrie, a searing pain mixed with the cold numbness, like dieing twice over... or, the sensation she imagined dieing would be like. If she ever let herself give up in the face of such things towards friends as the chains upon her burn and shatter from it's effect, and as her regenerative powers kick in, her tenacity continuing to flare up... thoughts. Taking things.

The voice in her head... told her things. Like she was too weak, pathetic, self loathing and more. A joke... to which she could only somewhat smile, even as her body felt cold, numb, paralyzed, or well, the sensations fading. Fading to rage. Those two idiots, they are why she's getting hit and only hurting her more, no. No, that was right, of course it was, she was too weak to keep at it. Focus, analysis. She had more details, but the BURNING SENSATION kind of made her opt for the short version.

"The fucking bounty said it left minimaly body damage. This probably is how it does it, but it picked a really shitty target that's too weak to hurt you folks like the last one, and too suicidal to CARE if I die." Kyrie shouted, gritting her teeth. "Either kill it from inside me even if it kills me, or use me as a shell for it, whatever." she said coldly and cruelly. "After all, I'm just a worthless damsel in distress that only causes MORE problems. Better off I fucking die over anything else! That would probably have less people die due to my shitty mistakes anyway!" she shouted, a look of slight insanity creeping onto her face, as well as... tears. Slightly, was it fear? Why the hell was she feeling that. She wanted to die. She HAD to die. So nobody else would. So she wouldn't be fucking worthless for once in her god damn life!

The girl's arms begin to tremble on their own as the mist thickens, the shade attempting to pick the slack, but with Amelia's purifying fire still resonating strong, the mist swirls out of Kyrie's burned body, rematerializing right in front of her, burning orbs leveled with the girl's eyes, "M y. A n d  s o m e o n e  c a l l e d  m e  a  m i d d l e  s c h o o l e r."

"Wh... n-no, damnit wait...." Kyrie muttered at this sight. Was she going to even fuck up and fail at dieing so others don't have to?!

Nadia drops her facade. Desperation fuels her now. Her hands shake. Her focus wavers. Kyrie. Shade. Amelia. Which one? How? She barely makes up her mind as her feet bring her closer, a desperate, flailing swing of her blade flying through the air at the shade as she comes into range.

The panicky girl dashes towards everyone, and especially the shade, as fast as possible, but with the all debris lying around it was easy to mistep, stumble!

". . . w h o  s a y s  t h a t  W e ' r e  l e a v i n g?", the creature uttered as spikes upon spikes grew in front of its amorphous body

... step and another step, lifting the sword.

"A t  l e a s t  y o u  w e r e  u s e f u l  f o r  s o m e t h i n g.", as suddenly the ethereal looking spikes darkened, thickened, sharpening up to the point of pushing the air away from their solidifying form.

The menacing spikes stab Kyrie right in the face, bypassing the magical defenses in a flurry of blows.

As solid shards detached off its body and stabbed the girl, the shade visibly became smaller, its form lifting up, above Kyrie's head, just when Nadia would've reached them.

Bernice freaks out. What the hell is she supposed to do? These enemies aren't... solid! She can't just shoot them! She has to try another tactic... Of course!

Rats! She crouches down and rummages through her hammerspace. Where are they?

Bernice tries to pull out the satchel, just when she needed it, but alas, the pocket realm doesn't budges in!

Amelia's gotten herself skewered with arrows. She's failed at being a magical girl on every level possible this fight. She even hurt her own teammate in her stupidity. But if there's one thing Amelia CAN do, it's make fire. "Die!" Amelia screams, flames flaring up around her as she throws a fireball at the shade.

The sphere of fire hits the shade, face-on, making it shriek and wriggle in the air, away from the fire that continued to flying towards the building. The shade's body flickers, sharp edges of its body becoming more ethereal.

Alexa takes another step back, shielding her face from the flames. Her staff trembles as the glow re-suffuses throughout it. She returns to furtively mumbling to herself.

"VindicatemeohLordmyGodaccordingtothyrighteousness..." The chains spring into existence again, weaker this time but still wrapping around the shade.

The magical shackles bind the shade in their grip!

Kyrie gets up, a hand to her face as she rips out any shards still stuck in her face, part of her cheek coming off or not it'll grow back. A glance, as she looks to Nadia. "That thing probably is removable by magic, I tried surpressing it and it instead got forced out, so if we need that should work, try not to hinder eachother's magical power." she remarked simply as a warning, focusing her sight to the orb as magical boosting flowed onto Nadia and her gear. "...So, orb, going to come and get me, or too weak to even kill worthless little old me?" she called  as she dropped the shards that were stuck to her face.

Direct magical attacks? If that was the case then she didn't even have the means... Nonetheless, she soldiers on. "Kyrie! Help yourself, I'm not even hurt!" The girl skids to a halt after her stumble, nearly tripping again as the weight of her blade puts her off-balance. Another haphazard swing at the newly bound entity. She only hoped her blade could actually do something.

The ground's speckled with blood. Some of it's Amelia's. A painful heat rises up inside her...and then the spillled blood catches fire.

It doesn't matter anymore. She's been a failure and this thing'll kill them all, including Alexa. If she can do SOMETHING right, no matter what she has to throw onto the fire to do it...

Then maybe she'll have been less of a failure. She'll have done something that mattered.

The gravity girl manages to reach the wriggling ball of darkness with the tip of her sword, slicing through the increasingly ethreal entity who's burning eyes were staring at the cocky girl, its body shifting and materializing into a sharp disk like shape... just when the paladin girl's blood began to boil, the residue making the creature flicker and visibly weaken, but it maintains the sharp looking, materialized form...

Without further adeiu, the shade dived down at Kyrie, the blade going right after her head.

The burning disk slices through the magical aura, phasing through the outfit, its edge phasing through the flesh only to expand in a burst-like fashion, spilling blood and causing internal damage.

Bernice notices her friend's fiery attack. Perhaps just shooting it /is/ an option!

Another hail of bullets perforates the materialized disk-like shape, chipping away the bladed edge and covering the skyscraper's walls with more shrapnel!

Some of the bullets glance away at Kyrie from the shade's blade -- only to be stopped by the magical defenses of her outfit.

Another ball of fire from Amelia flies past the dark disk, landing meters away on the street and melting the snow. She'd have laughed if her veins didn't feel like they were on fire. Probably because from the way her blood's bubbling inside them, they might be. She's seen Kyrie get skewered...and all she can think is that at least it isn't Alexa. At least she can try to slow it down before she gets killed too.

The aura that was trying to keep the shade magically constricted cracks and breaks, the shade's sharp, disk-like body growing in size!

Cursing under her breath, Alexa's eye twitches erratically as her chains once again fail. Her staff shakes in her hands as the light first dims, then intensifies as the last of her magic bursts out of it. "OhLordthouGodofvengeance, SHINE FORTH!" A second runic circle forms underneath the shade.

Kyrie just somehat... dangles there. Skewered and with her insides seeming as if liquified... She's had wor... okay no. No this, THIS was a new pain that she'd yet to go through, a feeling that she was now 'alive' only through sheer magic and tenacity... no. She had to keep going. She had to do something. Keep it's atteniton on what was basically a corpse... an attempt to raise her hand to, well, flip it off... it didn't move much.

None of her moved, save the blood leaving her person, and feeble attempts to talk spitting out splurts of blood and internal organs... save for a few small motions which could be mistaken for her just dangling off the spike, she didn't seem to move nor seem alive for now... Well, except one other point, that was, the charge of magical energy that seemed to be building up for her. Feeble attempts to try speaking were... hard when your lungs were officially turned into a mahou flavored smoothie.

As Kyrie was doing that, Alexa's purifying circle appeared around the shade, growing and growing and growing--- until--- success!! The circle links up with the magical seal striking the creature in the middle, its solid-like shape immediately exploding into the ethereal cloud of smoke as it thrashed, trying to get out of it with its shrieks echoing through the streets.

The sword isn't working the sword isn't working THE SWORD ISN'T WORKING. No matter how many times she's cleaved it in half, it always immediately reforms, coalescing together like the miasma it was. Nadia couldn't cut through this thing any more than she could cut through smog. With this realization, the girl's hand loosens, her enormous blade falling to the ground with a deafening clang.

She couldn't do anything. Nothing except act like the tank she never seemed able to be. With a desperate action, thoughts absent from her mind, Nadia dives onto Kyrie, tackling her out of the way of harm and holding her tightly to her torso. Kyrie was barely holding on, but the older girl had barely been touched. Even if she could only save one, even if it meant sacrificing the rookies, as much as she... No, they could... They would... They would beat it. She just had to stall.

If Kyrie could speak, she'd tell Nadia not to. Unfortunatly all the comes out is a gargled bloody splatter gurgle.

The swirling creature thrashed and Reeee'd, the purifying circle seemingly beating it up from inside out, its glowing burning eyes running in circles, switching their attention at Amelia and the Kyrie... The shade in the fit of desperation considered both Kyrie... Amelia... the brat on the ground... but then, she was covered by 'that' swordless thing. In a swirling fashion, the cloud of smoke spirals upwards, arcing its way through the air, with its sharp edge steering right at Amelia!

The swirling column of smoke pierces the one armed paladin through her head-down-the-torso, flying in a shapely arc around and around as tired and heavily injured girl could feel... something bad. Something terribly bad happening with the magic inside of her twisting, morphing, unshackling-- only to burst out in an uncontrollable fashion, the paladin's body beginning to crack, grow and transform...

Amelia's scream of pain warps into a noise that couldn't have come from a human throat.

As the transformation process continues to grasp and corrupt the girl, the arcing shadow sinks down into the ground, leaving Amelia's body in its shifting, increasingly corrupting state.

=====

Previously on Darcie's Wild Ride, after the snail girl got slaughtered in cold blood, the team finally went face to face against the volatile, sadistic sounding shadow - which was trying to find new hosts to possess and corrupt, its presence focusing attention on Kyrie who tried to defend the injured paladin and her cleric friend, while being thrown out of Nadia.

After wearing down the crew and going on a rampage, the shade was becoming weaker and weaker. Bound in magical chains, cleansing fire and purification circle, the shade was seemingly losing its edge, having to resort to more direct ways of harming others... or so it seemed, indeed. Locked in Alexa's purifying energy and thrashing desperately, the shade went after the second weakened member of the company - Amelia - piercing through it and triggering something... unspeakable...

The swirling column of smoke pierces the one armed paladin through her head-down-the-torso, flying in a shapely arc around and around as tired and heavily injured girl could feel... something bad. Something terribly bad happening with the magic inside of her twisting, morphing, unshackling-- only to burst out in an uncontrollable fashion, the paladin's body beginning to crack, grow and transform...

As the transformation process continues to grasp and corrupt the girl, the arcing shadow sinks down into the ground, leaving Amelia's body in its shifting, increasingly corrupting state.

Amelia screams and collapses, blinding clouds of blue flame and smoke flaring up around her. Blinding. Choking. Inside, she writhes on the ground, helpless and in agony as her own magic burns through every vein and part of her.

She's failed- again. She did all this to do something that mattered- to be someone better- but she can't even defend herself. It's almost a good thing that she's hurting too much for much rational thought right now.

She's dimly aware that she's still screaming- and that the noise sounds wrong. Warped. Too loud. She can feel every moment of it as her bones snap and reform and her flesh flows like hot wax into new forms. She'd thought her injuries in fights had been painful enough- but this was on a different level.

She feels something tear free from one shoulder then another, like another pair of arms. She can feel them. Move them. At the same time, her hand and feet are warping into new strange shapes- like plastic in a fire. Then her face...

Her screaming become screeching.

Bernice screams, firing a few rounds around Amelia, desperate to hit the spirit before it possesses her ally, but to no avail. As smoke from the flames fills the room, the ex-guard starts to cough for a few seconds before she her air magic kicks in, purifying the air as it enters her lungs. Still, the smoke obscures her eyes. She realises that this is a very bad place to be.

The ex-corp merc potshots at the gruesomely transforming paladin, before trying to retreat away and gain some distance!

The smoke fades, somewhat and the fires die down. There's a smell of cinders and burnt feathers in the air and its hard to make anything out through the clouds of smoke and crackling flames. Amelia had been a small girl- short and slight for her apparent age, something her form-fitting uniform and drive had only partially made up for.

The thing she's turned into now is anything but. Scraps of burned cloth and flakes of ash drift through the air around it along with clouds of smoke and blue flame. It- she- takes deep, ragged breaths- she's finally stopped screaming. It's shaking uncontrollably, seemingly in intense pain and dead to the world.

At a glance, Amelia's new form gives an impression of gangliness- she's clearly much taller than she was, even as she hunches over on the ground in pain. A pair of short wings- at least relative to the rest of her- extend from her back. She's unconsciously wrapped them and her arm protectively around herself. Her once-pristine outfit's a tattered, singed mess, missing entirely below the knees and from her shoulders. The metal of her kneepads is warped and blackened, the braids and trim have burned away, and the cloth's charred.

A mantle of mockingly-bright blue feathers sprouts from her bare arms, back, and legs- with a scattering of red feathers around her neck. Her legs now end in scales and clawed toes and her fingers have warped into claws. Her one remaining arm's digging into her side hard enough to tear outfit and skin, leaving a trail of blood that smolders as it hits the ground.

Her face's changed too- already sharp features have been drawn out on top of a long neck, a beak dominates her face and a v-shaped scattering of blue feathers stretches up her forehead to vanish into glossy, almost-feather like black hair. Only her eyes are unchanged- darting about and staring wildly in pain.

The new phoenix-girl gasps for air with pained breaths. Her flesh seems to...ripple, either from heat, or like a half-finished waxwork. Streamers of corrupted, blue-black flames ripples around her limbs and body.

Something slips from her taloned grasp and shatters on the floor- the crystal token Alexa'd given her before- the once pure gem is charred and useless. At the same time, Alexa feels Amelia's own gift of an ember flare up with painful, burning heat. The blue-white gem's darkening to almost black.

Amelia's fingers grasp at thin air as she writhes in a heap...and her weapon's there. Just like always. But even that feels- and looks wrong. The silver is tarnished. It's as drawn out as the rest of her- a blackened and charred blade that feels heavy in her grip.

She has to fight- fight something. This thing. Monsters. Anything. It hurts so much. She has to stop it from hurting, but...She shakes her head as strange urges wash through her thoughts. Her courage, her drive...It's gone. Like it was never there. Was it ever really hers to begin with? And what's replaced it...

She lets out a sob that comes out as a caw, shaking uncontrollably as she sees her own arm. That's her arm. Her wings. Whatever's happened...it feels wrong. It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was useless and whatever she's now...She's worthless. A monster. Even through the pain, she feels unreasoning, instinctive outrage. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

She was supposed to become someone better- instead, none of it's mattered. She's a failure. She hurt that girl. She got Alexa hurt. She couldn't kill the monster. Nothing she did mattered at all. She lashes out, blindly flailing at thin air with her sword. Whatever happene...it still hurts, like acid inside her, and she can't get rid of it- it's like her own magic's warring against itself.

She barely manages to resist the urge to hack away at her own body with her sword, still shaking in a heap and clawed fingers almost digging into the blade's hilt. The air becomes hotter with Amelia's agitation- her frenzy. Painfully so. It ripples with searing heat that leaves the ground charred and blackenned.

Nadia's grip on Kyrie holds fast, and though her back remains turned to the rookie Paladin, the sickening sound of molding flesh and inhuman cries tells her everything she needs to know. Amelia had been corrupted, tarnished, transformed like fire transforms wood. It blackens and burns as its consumed, pieces and particles drifting away as it eventually becomes something it's not, but can never escape from again. She tightly shuts her eyes, holding back tears. It could've been Kyrie. It could've been her. But it wasn't. Thank God it wasn't. The hero fails again.

With shaking resolve, she hesitantly lets go of Kyrie and rises to her feet, turning. She didn't deserve to be here, she didn't deserve to play hero, but no one else could right now, but even this resolve is nearly broken as she faces the beast. It's disgusting. A mockery of what she had once been. An abomination that... God help her, one that may need to be put down.

With corruptive transformation having its toll at the girl... it's starting to get hot around her and everyone could feel it! The shade, in the meantime was nowhere to be seen!

Amelia rises to her feet, stumbling and collapsing more than once. Her wings shake, flames still licking away at her malformed body and everything around her. It becomes apparent just how tall the formerly petite ex-paladin is now- even hunched and staggering, she's more than a head taller than the others. "WHY?!" She screams, more fleeing than attacking as she swings her sword around in wild arcs, leaving a trail of ash and fire.

Amelia sees a small figure. Swings at it, uncaring. She needs to hit something, anything- anything else to blame for what's happened. Monster or otherwise. Anything to make it just stop.

It’s the first time the bauble has ever been triggered. Alexa wasn’t prepared for the feeling of whiplash – like some crucial synapse in her head just snapped in half. Or perhaps that’s just the feeling of seeing her best friend turned into a horrifying abomination. She doesn’t even have it in her to scream; she stares up, up, up at her. She can hear her breath coming in ragged gasps and the thudding of her heart.

It’s happening to someone else. No, there’s the bauble’s effect; the drive to help her friend, to rush to her aid. But she can’t. She’s out of magic. She knows that empty feeling in her gut. And she’s useless without it – not that she was much good with it.

Nadia reacts on instinct, tossing a hand blindly into the air to defend. Luckily it finds its target, a single spark briefly lighting up the room as the sound of her metal blade meeting Nadia's metal gauntlet clashes throughout the room. A switch flips in her mind as she's attacked, the girl adjusting her stance and taking a step between blows to maneuver more completely between Amelia and Kyrie, though the intensity of her stance is contrasted by the fear on her face. She had killed before. She had killed tonight. She just kept killing. Constantly ending lives as the only means to succeed, to fulfill her own selfish fantasy.

...But that fantasy wasn't over yet. The only thing she could afford to consider was the situation at hand. A blade-wielding monster wanted her dead. Protecting Amelia was... Secondary.

Alexa barely has enough to stop Amelia's wild flames -- she doesn't even realize she's doing it. There’s a pain in her jaw she knows too well, and her vision swims. Her staff slides from limp fingers, clattering on the floor with the sharp thunk of glass hitting the ground. Her pupils are dilating into sharp, narrow ovals, the iris tearing her eyes apart as it follows suit. Her canine is growing fast enough to nick her lip as she draws it back in a snarl.

No, no, she can’t, not now she has to keep her head it’s not fair not now –

A mane bursts out of her neck as she doubles over; fur the colour of dried blood tearing apart her mantle and sending it to the ground in a heap. Her pink blouse rips as her torso elongates and thickens, and her legs change shape, the joint shifting upward and twisting with a sickening crack. Her boots burst apart as jagged claws tear through the brown leather. Her hands follow suit, claws tearing into the floor as if in supplication. What was a girl looks like an emaciated lion; her ribs are visible even through the matted fur the colour of burnt gold. For a moment, she is still.

Amelia's screaming in worldless frustration as her blade's batted casually aside.The noise is a screech that could break glass. The arm waving the blade shifts and warps, not one thing nor the other.

All she sees is red right now. Kill it. Whatever it is, just kill it. She can't even do that right?!

Then Alexa looks up. There is a monster in front of her. She has her claws. She knows all she needs to know.  With an inhuman yowl, the beast charges, claws slashing.

Under the bright streamers of flame, Amelia almost seems to be lit from within- more noticeable in the dim overcity. The flames are...seeping from her. Pouring out as she's stopped in her tracks.

Amelia sees something come flying at her...and bashes it aside with instinctive, almost compemptuous ease- even on fire from within, the motion's practiced as she carves into it.

The lion feels something slam into her like a wrecking ball, stopping her charge short. She goes sliding across the floor on her side with an undignified, high-pitched, beastial yelp. But already, she's climbing back to her paws. She has only one directive.

Kyrie weakly, barely looked up, finding her surrounding suddenly from impalement and her innards turned to a fine puree of organs and bone, to Nadia who grasped at her then stood there. Protecting her. As she saw the wisp change it's targets, no, she had to distract it. An attempt to talk, only causing more spit up blood, hurry up regeneration. Lungs. She needed lungs, as those somewhat reformed and some of her rib cage. Enough to breathe in and out a gargled mess. Enough to tell the others, though, her hurt and battered voice probably not traveling far. "No... I... I should've been hit, I'm not helping otherwh-ghuhk!" she started, before choking and spitting out another chunk of organs that happened to be in her lungs when regeneration happened, wincing.

She looked up helplessly, as she watched instead the dark... thing target Amelia. Failing to protect them in the end, just another insult was all it probably needed to keep it distracted, keep it busy. Watching, as the girl was shaped, reformed, changed... how Kyrie deserved to be instead of them, the dead weight of the group. How she only got in the way. No, enough complaining for now, orders, analysis.

"That thing didn't seem to get hurt when she hit me, and it didn't on the last one they...  'had'. Hurting her won't hit the thing..." she said loud as she could. Which wasn't very loud, probably just Nadia at best, channeling her meager energy she might have left towards putting together the worthless body that she had to stand. "...We need to subdue her.  Not kill. I'll be fine Nadi-" she started, before a wave of heat started to eminate out and Nadia was stuck there defending them... too weak. She was... just too weak. "I'm only in the way... just leave me." she muttered, clenching the ground... Healing. She had to put herself together, so Nadia could focus on other things.

Nadia's frozen, standing between Kyrie and the things that would hurt her. She tells herself it's to protect her, to keep her from being hurt, but she knows that it's out of fear. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of ending another life that shouldn't be lost. Knowing that the snail girl from earlier was just as likely to have been someone just like Amelia was... As much as she tried to rationalize it, as much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, the ember of fire in her heart began to be snuffed out by self-doubt. She wasn't qualified. She had done nothing right. Everyone around her was dead or dying while she herself was unharmed. "Dammit... Dammit dammit dammit..." She knows she needs to move, but for once, she can't summon the courage.

The shadow was nowhere in sight... or so it seemed? With the monstrous chain reaction triggering amidst magical girls... the cloud of smoke errupted out of the ground in front of disengaging Bernice, its weakened body seemingly regaining some of its thickness after corrupting Amelia, only to sling at Bern!

The magical being pierces the cautious ex-corp with its tentacle shaped body phasing through he-- only for it to screech out loudly as if it was in pain and snap away from Bernice, "Y o u  t o o!?!"

Bernice shrinks back in terror, emptying her magazine into the tentacle creature!

"W h y  w o u l d  y o u  w a n t  t h i s  d r y  t h i n g?!?", the shade boomed with its monotone, chilling voice right at Bernice's face, its body and space around it flickering with distortions

Le happy merc goes full trigger happy on the booming shade, sending the hail of bullets right at its face, the first round of them bursting through the incorporeal, phased through her body moments ago, the exploding metal bits exiting through its back, covering the street and buildings with ricocheting bits...while the second round of fire snapped froze in the air, right in front of the burning orange orbs -- only to get propelled back at Bernice~

As the shade's eyes burn with hatred and desperation, the girl's own bullets recoil and slap her in the face... luckily the residual energy in her suit protects her from being turned into swiss cheese!

Amelia's still lost in her own private haze of pain and rage. It hurts why does it hurt so much why can't anything go right why can't that thing just die? In her frenzy, she doesn't even watch where she's swinging her blade. The sword comes crashing down on the ground...and fire flares up from the point of impact.

Amelia herself's a walking torch- an inhumanly proportioned mix between girl- if she's still that- and bird, her body still warping in the intense heat and literally bleeding flames as she staggers forwards in blind rage.

Streamers of warped blue fire lick at her body and feet, trailing behind her like strips of paper.

Amelia screams again, her fire seeming to burn her from the inside out as it pours out across the battlefield.

The air continues to heat up, but not to the face melting extremes -- yet -- as the monstrous girl focuses her attention on something more... igniting...

The flames scorch Alexa's flesh and burn her fur, but she pays them no need. She has her target. That's all she needs. The foul, disgusting, repulsive abomination that dares to stand where her friend stood -- the lion can't even think. She just charges again, claws slashing and teeth gnashing.

Even through a haze of pain, rage, and despair, Amelia brings her sword around as the creature lunges at her. A noise between a snarl and a screech. She's not going down...without...a...fight? The bird-girl staggers unsteadily, flames flaring up again.

"Damn...damnit..." Her voice's warped, and her beak makes the words thick...or is that from her injuries? Viscous blood's leaking freely from her, soaking into her ruined outfit and flaring up in puffs of flame as they hit the ground. "Why c-couldn't I..couldn't even...I'll kill you! I'll kill you! " She screams, slipping back into incoherent screeches.

She doesn't seem to be addressing anyone. Her wings beat wildly, fanning the flames.

Kyrie trembled, looking to the scene. Two allies killing each other, one corrupted the other turned itnoa  monster themselves. Bernie is fighting on their own. She's just weighing down Nadia. Too weak. Far too weak.

"I'm too weak to stop eitehr of them, I'm just getting in the way. C'mon, something, anything... something to be stronger, even if I..." she muttered. Right, there was... one moment. Against the odds, those two. The two that... basically killed all of Alfa's family. "...H-hey, Nadia. Bad time to ask but do you remember what that chain girl and her shadow friend did...?" Kyrie asked, sounding... desperate. This was crazy, and stupid and they had NO idea how it even worked... but at this rate everyone else was going to die, god knows, Nadia even... Even if this might end in her dieing like that shadow girl did, the risk was worth the possible result. They had to do SOMETHING to help...

"Is now the time?" She speaks tersely, but there's a noticeable relief in her voice. Kyrie was healing. She was still alive. Even still, bringing something like that up at a time like this was barely productive. "Shouldn't we b- be... I dunno, thinking about the task at hand?" Fuck, with the shadow thing returning too, things were quickly going down hill. She could defend Kyrie, help Bernice, or subdue Amelia. There was no way she could do all three, which meant failure was unavoidable. There was only so much she could do, so why do anything...?

"I don't know if it'll even work. I don't know HOW it works but... I don't care if it ends with me dieing. I'm just getting you hurt, I can't let that happen. And I... can't help anyone otherwise." she added, a worried or frightened look at the prospect...

While the girls were considering their options, the dark shade in front of Bernice thickened, "W e  c a n  t a k e  i t  a w a y  t h e  o t h e r  w a y.", as its body sharpened and became pitch black, aiming its shards at her.

"How what wor- Wait, you mean when they fused?" She rapidly flips her head around, the frightened expression on her face as obvious as the cat-ears now flat against her skull. "We can't do that! How would we even do that?" But... If they could, then maybe...

The beast flings its spiky body at Bernice, but the trained girl reacts and dodges it!

"Lets just try to copy the two, think about how they did it. Probably... I dunno. Think similar. Be similar, be in the 'same place' as eachother and think as one. Their chant went something like 'we are sisters, we are one' or something... So should we mimic that and hope for the best?" she asked, looking to the side and seeing Bernice barely dodging an attack. "...We need to do it fast or else." she said deliberatly, quickly taking Nadia's hand, awaiting them to start the chant.

Bernice dodges faster than humanly possible, aided by her air magic, and fires another volley from a different angle, desperate to defeat this... thing!

... only to be met by a blasting wave of metal, the hail of bullets making contact with sharp, black patches of the shade's body, cracking, piercing and making the materialized, attacking parts of its body explode into a smokey mush -- with the rest of the bullets phasing through its body. The shade's body flickered as its appendages becan to solidify again.

Nadia calms herself. Kyrie was right. If they could do it, that was the answer. "... Okay." As Kyrie takes one hand, Nadia takes the other. "I trust you."

Kyrie sighed with a slight smile, calming at Nadia's expression. "And I trust in you... We are sisters..." she said, starting the chant off for them, envisioning... how it went for the other two. If two people so differnt and apart could do it, surely her and Nadia could now...

Mindless rage only goes so far. Sooner or later, the reality of the situation had to kick in. The pain's fading- leaving behind only an aching absence where the fire's carved its way through her. Amelia's thoughts are a jumbled mess as she forces herself to slow down, to think about what she's down. She was fighting- she's sure of that much- she was attacking something, something she was sure needed to die and...

Oh god. What happened? What was she doing? She remembers it all- the shade, the...the change, and then...

Is that Nadia?

She drops her sword with a clatter from her shaking, still-clawed fingers, staggering back on feet that seem to be shrinking back into human-like form. She's slightly shorter but still almost 7 feet tall, now, and her beak makes a cracking noise as it shrinks back into her face. A chirping, soft noise forces itself out of reforming lips as an increasingly human Amelia staggers back.

Something drips from her eyes, leaving puffs of smoke as it trickles down her face. She's crying.

Nadia screws her eyes shut and tries to recite the next line. "We are one." It's... Odd. Kyrie didn't feel like a sister to her so much as a close friend, a very close friend, but if that was the chant, then it couldn't be helped. Despite her hesitation, even holding Kyrie's hand calmed her, at least enough to crack a joke. She could feel it. This would work. Everything would be okay.

"Oh god. Oh god. No, no, no..." Amelia whimpers. "I...I...didn't...I..."

She's a monster. She was...she was attacking her own teammates. She...she could have hurt them. She casts her gaze around, horrified and heedless to the battle. The flames flicker and die out as she drops to her knees.

Amelia's still freakishly tall, and there's more than a little of the bird left in her face, her clawed fingers and toes...and her two wings, but she's closer to the girl she was before. A sister or cousin, maybe.

She stares, eyes wide and horrified at her own smoldering handiwork. The urge to fight- to attack- is still there but it's weak enough that she can force it down. Ignore it. The push. Not so different from the urges she hadn't even realized she'd been following before. She'd just followed them before, and that's exactly what she'd done now. Burn things.

People that'd trusted her. People who'd saved her worthless life. And...

She couldn't have. Not Alexa. She WOULDN'T have. Would she? The thought fills her with an emotion as her gaze darts around- dreading what she might see.

Alexa remains in control of her monstrous, ferocity filled self! What will she do?

Alexa stares at Amelia, confusion somewhat visible on her strange, feline face. Her snout scrunches up as she sniffs sharply. Padding forward, her claws clink on the floor. She doesn't understand. The monster is there, but not there. Her slit-eyes narrow. Why does it hesitate? She comes right up to it, close enough to rake her claws across her face, rip it open like ripe fruit. Her lip curls back, the lion's large yellow teeth visible. Her eyes flash red [Recharge]. But she refrains. For the moment. Despite the burning urge that says the threat is not done, it's right there in front of her she can't stop now.

Amelia hears a growl. Sees the monster looming over her. Some part of her wants to fight. To kill it. To hack away at it. She forces that down. She's done enough damage already. Whatever that thing is...it can't do any worse than what Amelia herself's done. She can't even call herself a Paladin. She stares up at the thing's face, hopelessly, waiting for the thing to strike. It's between her and her sword anyway, not that it matters.

Maybe it'd have been better if that hound had bitten her throat out in that alley, in her first fight. She slumps, her long neck exposed. Even on the ground, she's almost as tall as Alexa is.

She just hopes Alexa's okay. That she didn't...hurt her. That for once, she did SOMETHING right.

... meanwhile, the shade flickered and continued to combat Bernice, "I t ' s  u s e l e s s  t o  f i g h t  b a c k.", the creature's eyes burned brighter as spikes quickly reformed, becoming longer than they were before, the reprieve from the group's pressure letting the shade concentrate its efforts on Bernice, "C o m e  c l o s e r."

The methodical shade hacks through Bernice's defenses head on, first, negating her suit's magic, stabbing the girl through with a more solid and definitely painful spike that expands inside of her for additional damage!

Despite her feelings, Nadia hesitates. Opening up like that, letting Kyrie protect her as much as she had Kyrie was counter to the image she had for herself. The comforting feelings stay, but the telltale glow of fusion never appears. She screws up her eyes in frustration. Somehow she knows its her fault. After a few moments, she speaks. "... I- I'm sorry."

From the second story above the fray, the unheeded - unfulfilled - subject of the wish... Of the now dead girl... Succumbs in full to the forces that be...

...Aaaaand nothing happened. Perhaps it was the distractions, perhaps they weren't feeling it... Kyrie blushed and let go first as she saw the two stop attacking. "S-screw it. Nadia, go cover Bernie there, I'll do what I can here, Bernie, just keep away from it best you can if you have to!" she called out, focusing on the situation. Seems like Amelia has 'given up' but Alexa is still mindless, an aimed intent to calm them down as she, well, basically plants herself onto a hug to the beast, to go do a purifying sort of action. Rather, less purify, more 'cleanse', as this is more returning them to theirselves...

Bernice shrieks in pain, before shouting to her comrades, "H-hey guys! A little help??" and firing dep

Another round of bullets smash into materialized spikes, cracking and 'poofing' them into shadowy smoke as the burning-eyed creature flickered in a distortion... but otherwise looked relentless at what it was planning to do... Bernice's small arms didn't seemed to do much against the mostly incorporeal beast!

Amelia's snapped out of her growing hopelessness and resignation by a call for help...her head snaps back up as she sees...Bernice? And...THAT THING.

THAT THING. THAT MONSTER. THE ONE THAT HURT ALEXA, THE OTHERS. THE ONE THAT DID THIS TO HER.

"R- Right." Nadia's ashamed. They could have solved the entire situation, but her own insecurities meant that they would all have to suffer a little longer. Still, seeing Kyrie healthy and able to fight fills her with enough resolve to continue on. Her fear and shame choked back, she nods resolutely and resummons her blade to her hand. "I'll do my best."

... or would she... as something moved on the second floor of the skyscraper!

Pain, fear, regret. The emotions that had came through on their now severed link were too much for the mute, horrifically mutated creature. The severance of their souls itself filling the creature with a tenacity allowing it to persist in an unnatural limbo, the balance swaying from passing on - like her master - and protecting the corpse... Just in case.... The pendulum swung while the husk of a being swung between the two extremes--- but. But, but.

The blood of Darcie spools outward from her cleaved body, void touched blood ebbing from the corpse and surrounding the withered creature - allowing another of the Void to take control over its fading will... And with it, the last feelings of Trenza - directed the shade...

The black mass of ethereal, ever shifting shadows doubles, then doubles again in size as it brings itself to the ledge of the broken building, a harsh shrieking accompanying it. The shadows vibrate, extending outward in a ripple of pure blackness as it channels her former master's speciality, sending a volley outward!

The corrupted, shredded soul of the familiar is burning with hatred!

The negative edged magic ripples at the edges as the abyssal volley rebounds outward, as the darkness completely overlays the small being, pulsating with a life of its own. Only Bernice lay untouched, seemingly unnoticed.. For the time being... By the Void walker. As the bolts of void fly truly the last remnants of Trenza's memories are absorbed by the creature, leaving only the emotions and desire to hurt those before it and attain revenge. Unlike Darcie's bolts tangible bolts, these seem to shudder through the bodies of the girls they hit, passing through their armor like a knife through butter and striking fear and pure pain into their hearts as they strike.

The charged up projectiles stab the girls in their backs, the red aura penetrating through their suits, leaving ripped chunks of cloth in their wake... with the blunt of the damage being taken by Alexa and Nadia, the rest of the spikes grazing by Kyrie and Amelia.

Pain. The first real pain Nadia'd experienced this fight. Somehow the guilt took a back seat to her own sense of survival.

Amelia knows she's a worthless monster...but that thing needs to die. Her fire flares up, in full force, she lets out a scream of rage, sword rematerializing in her hand. This is different from her earlier haze- right now, she doesn't care what happens to her as long as she takes that thing down with her. Stops it. Kills it.

"You! You did this to me! DIE DIE DIE DIE!"

Amelia feels the hits, but shrugs them off- and the magical doubt- the sudden feeling of dread, that she's failed, that it's her fault Alexa's been hurt, that she's a monster that hurt her own, better teammates- as she charges right at the monster. She may be a failure...but she's taking this thing with her.

The monstrous ex-paladin rushes at the thing that transformed her, relentlessly, closing her distance in within seconds!

Amelia charges in, her swing wild and expression twisted into a snarl of self-righteous fury. "You're not hurting anyone else! YOU HEAR ME? YOU'RE DONE! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU!"

The lion -- Alexa lays on the ground, her fur matted with her own blood. She's not sure how exactly it happened, but one second she was standing and the next she was in a pool of her own blood. The monster -- no, not the monster, the girl standing where the monster was, but who smelled like the monster -- was running off, screaming, but all she wanted to do was put herself back together. The lion closes her eyes, softly glowing red.

The heavily injured lion channels the tricklets of magical energy through herself, the haze of pain and her monstrous form disturbing her focus. The bleeding closes off, if only for a lil' bit.

Kyrie looked up at what she just got shot from, wincing... no, crap, that was still up?! Even if they were 'alive' now was NOT the time...

"No.... no I- I don't know what to do..." she said, nearly frozen by indecision, looking around worriedly... before wincing a bit, and going over to the injured lion, hands glowing gently as she tried to heal them.

This was a mostly bad idea but... she was lost. Her expression showed it, one of despair... she was a worthless 'tactician', getting everyone killed and otherwise...

Blade in hand, Nadia springs forward toward the shade, following Amelia's example. Though Darcie's familiar was a new threat, she couldn't hesitate any longer with failed fusions or self-doubt.

Nadia follows Amelia's lead, quickly shortening the distance between herself and the shade that seemed diehard and focused on turning Bernice into magical girl slush... or worse?

... shredded flesh? Who cares with that training~! The ex-merc maintains her pace, trying to keep the shade preoccupied with her as reinforcements close in!

Bernice considers her orders from Kyrie, but decides that following them would be impractical at this point. It would be far better to simply hold the shad off, for the time being. She fires another volley, uncertain how long she has before she runs out of ammo.

All that close call dodging was making the girl's aim suffer with bullets flying all around while the beast continued to slash and hack the air in front of itself, trying to get a killing blow on her!

The blob of shadow was seemingly too 'into it', ignoring the heavy hitting cavalery that was approaching it.

"Die! Die! Die!" Amelia screeches as she carves away at the creature, blade burning bright with warped blue light.

Her wings beat away furiously at the air as she swings her broadsword onehanded.

... perhaps that was one of the monster's mistakes, or maybe it was just used to prey, one-on-one, but it barely reacts to the sword that slams through its materialized appendages, having the bits and pieces off itself, the brutal slam making the incorporeal part of its body recoil away as it considered the girl, "A h, o u r  h o s t  i s  b a c k. Y o u  w i l l  d o  u s  w e l l."

"The only thing I'm doing is burning you away!" Amelia screams at it. "Here! N-"

Gashes of the umbra whip across the cold open air as the shadow of the former familiar rends the sky, the form swelling and undulating in a dance of agony. The girls still stood - its purpose was unfulfilled. It needed, it had to... This pain was unbearable. They needed to pay, and It was so hungry... Another harsh shriek rends through the ears of the small party below, the warning they had before another volley of shaped-suffering explodes outward in a dark wave! This time around, the explosive wave covering a wider area, reaching everything that was below, including the shade!

However unlike the previous projectiles, these shards weren't glowing with the crimson radiance, dark spikes slapping all around and glancing against everyone's defenses, but the shade's.

The shade screeched at the grotesque familiar in the sky, its own shape distorting and flickering from sudden spikes landing down its body!

The lion jolts awake, her wounds beginning to seal themselves together. She looks back at Kyrie, her unnatural, slitted eyes batting at her curiously. Then she leans over and licks her with a large, sandpapery tongue. This is the only gesture of affection she spares friend-girl -- as she is now named in her eyes -- as monster-not-monster-girl is engaged with definitely-monster. Alexa closes her eyes again, letting her magic rebuild.