Abandon

Seeing the darkness wipe her beacon away, siren is shocked. How is everyone supposed to find each other now? She doesn't have too much longer to stand there however. The hands are closing in.
"EVERYONE, WATCH OUT! WE'VE GOT DANGER COMING!"
siren, only armed with her basic leg, tries to dodge the encroaching hands threatening to stab into her. She tries to stay near Clear, perhaps trying to attract more attention in her evasive maneuvers. It doesn't look like her tactics will work for too long however...

---

Meanwhile, the black mage laughs from the pitcher's mound as the hands begin appearing around them.

Dylan picks up his slugger once more to fend off the dexterous menaces that have descended upon everyone. Maybe before he didn't have much to fight for, but now he has so much more. He has something to be hopeful about. He's not sure exactly why, but it feels as if there's something better beyond this dark place.

The black mage does nothing but laugh and laugh and laugh until getting cut short-- by fingers striking straight through him.
He looks down at the oddly familiar wound, photonegative blood gushing out.
There is no pain.
There are no thoughts.
There are no words.
The black mage falls to his knees in shock as he continues to bleed out.

His hat falls off his head as he hits the ground, revealing the mirror man dying underneath.

It's Ikin.

He doesn't have much time left.

---

Charlotte, just about to make headway into an even darker area to go after a baseball, stops as the voice begins to berate and break the sky.
She's stuck in place with fear, until something begins approaching them!
Charlotte reaches for her rubber mallet and initiates battle!

Before she can make her move however, her friend, Lambda, tries to run away, and is hit!

Now she's angry.
Nobody hits her friend and gets away with it!

Charlotte takes a running start and leaps into the air with her powerful legs, aiming to strike the hands down in front of her!

---

Somewhere unknown, Jessica is surrounded by the hands. All she has is a plastic frisbee. Having nothing else to do, she tries to use the frisbee as a shield as she moves around out of the way.
There's a high chance she's not going to be able to make it out of this alive, but she has to fight. It's her only option.

"Show yourself, you fucking coward!" Thoren yells out to the sneering voice.

And then, the hands come crawling in.

Seth and Thoren immediately go into full alert, readying some fireballs to throw.

"It looks like we've found our target!"

Seth looks over towards Kat. Thankfully, it seems she and Raine can hold their own for a little while. He returns his focus to fighting off the hands getting ready to strike.

"In case you were wondering, we DO think we can defeat you! All of us can! We don't care who the fuck you think you are!"

Kusari is tackled down by his victim! He just lies there and waits for her to strike the final blow, but she isn't attacking him.

The hand coming closer to him, however plans on doing so.
Faced with the menacing fingers of imminent oblivion, what is he to do?
Will he accept the end he deserves?
Or will he selfishly try to cling to his terribly destructive existence?

The chained scythe lays upon the ground right next to him. He could probably pick it up and use it.
At least he'd be doing something he's good at.

But wait. What exactly is she doing? Isn't she in danger?
Fuck, Kusari may not be worth saving, but she definitely is!

Kusari slides out from under her, grabs his scythe, and gets back up.
"STAY AWAY, YOU DEXTEROUS PIECES OF SHIT!"
And with that, he charges forwards to slash away at the hands in front of him!

---

Chronos dodges and parries the strikes by the hands, pausing only to strike back with his own dark appendages. He smiles as he sees his daughter picking up the slack on the defense. That's definitely his little girl. They seem to be handling themselves quite well, almost as if in a choreographed dance routine.

---

Raphael loses grip from the wall as the darkness begins to fight back. He falls back for what seems like an hour.
It only takes three seconds for him to hit the ground, crashing into a disorganized pile of bones.

All the other seths, psychically unguarded without their trenchcoats, have begun to get nervous.
Hypnos and Rid both hold onto Medi closely, afraid of the much stronger nightmare that has replaced the one from before.
"What the fuck is going on?"
"I don't fucking know!"

Theta has taken to hiding behind them with his hood up. He wasn't prepared for this.

The gashes, revealing the hands that could destroy them, begin to slink out menacingly.

Schrodinger and Rudolph, seeing their group in peril, decide to take action.
"Everyone, guys, get up! We've got one more thing to fight here!"
They pull out their scythes, and let out a mighty battle cry as they rush into the fray!
Some of the cowering seths, some sooner than others, take their lead and pick up their own weapons.
They can't let these hands take them out without a fight! A vast majority of the seths in the nightmare pit begin attacking the numerous hands trying to stab at them!

Rid, watching them fight it off, looks over to the others nearby. While some of the fighting seths are occasionally blocking hands from getting to Medi's party, they can't hold them off forever. One with particularly long stabby fingers is getting closer to them.
"...guys, w-we gotta do something!"
"what can we do?!"
"we can't just stand here! we have to fight too!"
"this is the worst... at this rate we're never gonna find chronos before we're doublekilled..."
"there's more important shit here! Get the fuck up, Formaldehyde!"
Theta stands up, triggered.
"I told you! my name is THANATOS!"
And with that, he gets stabbed by the five finger blades of a deadly hand.

His form begins to waver as the hand pulls out its daggers.

"wh...whats happening to me...?" Theta asks as the series of hole has not only started bleeding (though not very accurately depicted), but a light mist has begun dispersing from him as he begins fading.
"Th-theta!" Hypnos calls out to him, stuck mostly in place while trying to keep Medi upright. Rid decides to be the one to defend them with his halfscythe. He begins fending of the hand from their group as Theta continues leaking.
"...Hypnos... please... watch over the other seths for me...."
"Theta, no! I don't want you to go!"
"it's too late for me.... i.... never wanted this to happen.... i'm...... afraid...... but.... somehow.... its gonna be okay....."
"Theta! there isn't anything past this state! You're not gonna exist anymore!"
"......I think.... my purpose has been fulfilled enough..... I am...... finished....goodbye, everyone....."

and with that, Theta's soul dispersed into the ether, never to reform ever again.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Hypnos cries into Medi's side, still holding onto her. Rid continues to keep them safe with his one handed halfscythe.
Somehow something about that Thanatos seth seemed different than the Theta he had met before. He has a feeling that may have been a different one than he met upon the beginning of his afterlife, but it's still hard to ignore the very clear anguish of seeing another get completely destroyed.
It's something that makes him want to fight harder.
For the sake of those who cannot fend for themselves.
For the sake of those lost in the crossfire.

Despite only having use of one arm, Rid skillfully appears to be protecting Medi and Hypnos from harm.
But for how long?

The ghost girl snaps back up and tries to fend off against the appendages. While she does hate fighting, she feels like she can't reason with the darkness in this state. Besides, this is self defense.

She has to make sure that she has her friend's back. They'll surely straighten things out when this is over, she hopes...

---

Medi goes into a state of shock as she witnesses Thanatos being wiped from existence. Her mouth is agape as the endless sound of static grows louder. She does nothing but stare at the spot where the young ghost used to be.

They were going to die here, aren't they...?
Just when she almost feels like maybe embracing oblivion wasn't a wise option. Fate seems to decide that they were going to be obliterated anyway.

A cold despair emanates from her.

---

As Lycoris continues to fight, the dapper fellow accompanying her senses something.
Medi was in a greater danger than he had anticipated.

"I must go...! My sweet poppy flower...she's in grave danger! I am sure you can handle yourselves...!"

Hypnos bolts toward the direction he senses her peril in.

---

Despite the pain, Lambda struggles up amd starts to defend herself using her pistols.
While she has not been hit anywhere vital, she's still badly wounded. If she suffers any more injuries to these things, her grain of sand will surely fall into the abyss...

---

Eniar spots the elusive little shitstain known as Ikin and starts to give chase as he continues to fend off against the dark hands that aim to tear him apart.

Danger or no, he can't let this fucker get away again.

Jessie dives to the ground, narrowly dodging a strike from the fingers coming out of the cracks. She leaps over a chasm, before sliding under a swinging finger, getting as far away from them as possible.

But a large chasm opened up in front of her, and she comes skidding to a stop, but not fast enough, as she slides over the edge, hand gripping on for dear life. She tries to scramble her way back on up, but notices several fingers clawing their way up from under her. Her grip slips, as she resigns herself to her fate.

But something catches her. She is yanked up by her arm, and pulled back to the surface. She turns her head to see a familiar face. "Don't worry about me, just go." They say, her nodding and sprinting off.

The man stands up, facing off against the wall of death. His words are loud and booming, echoing out into the abyss.
"You said that you were going to end this suffering. What you are doing now, this isn't what I signed up for. All you are doing is making their suffering worse. You give them shit about them licking their wounds, but right now? You are just a mother fucking hypocrite."

"So come at me! "End my suffering", You son of a bitch!"

After a long period of time sinking into the darkness, the ball finally breaks through the barrier, dropping on the Other's head.

"...what the..."

This momentary distraction is all it takes for a hand to slip through the barrier, taking him out. He sputters out, before laughing manically, melting into a puddle that flows into the ravine.

The barrier drops, and Sam and Charles spot each other. And the hands.

"Charl-?"

"NO TIME FOR TALKING JUST RUN!"

Sam is yanked up off the ground by Charles, who is sprinting like a madman away from the hands. It only takes a moment for him to recover enough to catch his step, and they flee.

"What a crock of shit!"

---

Raz's grip on Ophelia tightens as he swerves out of the way of an incoming hand, banking a quick turn to avoid another in front of him before skating and weaving his way through the thicket of death with one thought eclipsing most others in his head. He'll probably be fine even if he dies here, he'll wake up back on Pasral the odds say. But Ophelia... If this thing can kill ghosts. If it kills her...

No. No that's absolutely not something he'll allow. If he's here maybe it's for a reason. To have made this resolution and reconciliation, and to see her through this crisis unharmed. This isn't his fight but he won't lose her again. And, he looks down to catch her eye and flash her a reassuring smile.

"...We made a promise, right? To meet again? So, don't worry even a little about this, hang on, and try not to get your mind blown by the sick shredding we're about to engage in."

The board at his feet reconfigures, and with one more kick and look upward he rockets forward with a burst of speed, moving through the incoming attack pattern with practiced precision and kickflipping only one near-miss to grind the elongated arm with a wild smile.

"It's the moments like this, finding the fun even in the most dire situations! Cause life can be a real mixed bag but at the end of the day its about rolling with the punches, and taking the good with the bad! Because there's joy even in life and death and in life and death situations and there's even more joy in the moments you fight through them for! So choke on THAT, you disembodied creep!"

---

Wayland moves like water, a flowing series of steps and twist of the body bringing him back-to back to Zwei in no time at all as his hands tighten around his blade's hilt and sheath. She's not alone, and he's not alone either, the slash he unsheathes his blade into dividing an incoming hand before cutting through another, and another, the strikes from behind warded off with precision he makes look effortless as he holds that line. In front her magic knocks away their attackers, the pair forming an impregnable barrier in the form of two-pronged assault.

"I made mistakes in life, and I made mistakes in death. But that death was not a mistake. That sacrifice ensured a future even if I couldn't stay around to enjoy it, and it set me on the path that ended right here, exactly where I belong. The suffering I endured... We, endured," he says, sparing a glance back to Zwei before returning it to his innumerable opponents and attack. "brought us here, enabled us to help at least some people we cared for. And after this, many more! So I take great umbrage with the idea that death and sacrifice and sadness have no purpose but to beget more! That's defeatest thinking and... to be frank, a bullshit philosophy!"


---

Dashing onto the scene the Knight calls his spear and uses the flat of it for a vault just below the falling cluster, driving it upward in a rapid flurry of jabs meant to offset the rain of blades aiming to skewer Seth and Thoren.

"You sit here indulging in your self-assured crusade, championing negativity and acting like existence is nothing but it, and in the same breath brush off the good as meaningless because it's suffered for? Life is black and white, and life is striving and fighting for the next step. And you're whining that life isn't perfect so it isn't worth a damn? Yeah, all you're /really/ doing here is trying to suck everyone into your sad little pity party because you're too busy honing in on the bad with your tunnel vision to see all the good things in the world. It's all starting to come together now..."

The Knight's fists tighten around his spear as he looks to the cracked red sky, eyes narrowing as his outfit begins to glow.

"The whispering and everything we've been facing. That's you, isn't it? The monster we fought, you too. A niggling voice in your ear whispering the darkest most depressing things... That's been you for all those ghosts, hasn't it. And all this time, you were a voice in that guy's head too weren't you. Stoking that anger you were born from, whispering the futility of the universe every step of the way..."

One hand clutches his chest, pink and green light spilling from it as his cape flutters behind him. Tears in it repair as fabric glowing bright forms around his head into a long hood fluttering above his cape, as the symbol on his chest, that familiar Mind symbol, begins to turn and shift.

"The hate that drove him. And eventually when enough of his mind was around to process it, he could only cling to the most twisted of beliefs to avoid being swallowed up by that reality you believed in, the reality you never let him forget. And then the ghosts he had along for the ride, and now us... Insisting the worst and trying to drag us and everything down into that muck. But to hell with that, to hell with your pity party, and to hell with you."

When the symbol comes to rest it's a new beast, three segments of a heart on an angle, arranged in an upside-down triangle formation, with one segment filled in and the other two hollow.

"What's left of him... is done listening to you. And I never started. So get ready for us to show you just how the world with all of us in it really works!"