Hope, all ye who enter here

Fingers curled inward, twitching with the effort as he holds his hand close to his chest, is how Raz takes the latest attack, warding as much of it off as he can to the point that it only knocks him back a step. It's not just him he has to defend so he can't falter... the shields he creates for the others, don't manage to completely defend them but they do manage to block the worst of it.

Holy hell does it hurt. But the defiant glare he directs toward Malice stays resolute.

"In a way... We'll be fighting you for the rest of our lives. Fighting meaningless despair and stagnant hopelessness... That's just the decision we made. You might think its selfish. You might think its stupid. You might think there's no meaning of worth behind it. But, the people we press on for, and the things we seek to accomplish--"

Incomprehensible howling as another destructive wave engulfs the area, Raz's expression staying steady as he throws up a shield to ward off the worst of each one. And even as the attacks break through a little further with each subsequent wave he stands, digging his feet in.

"...They're all we need. Doesn't have to make sense it just, is."

Niki conjures a wall of plexiglass to protect her and those nearby from the oncoming blasts. While it's easily melted away, Raz's own sheilds manage to make up a fair amount of the difference. At least enough to avoid being obliterated.

She stands, barely, gripping her cornstaff to keep herself upright. It seems their efforts are paying off... to some degree.

"...THEN WE'LL DO THAT! AND, AND YOU CAN'T STOP US FROM TRYING!"

The next waves of fire threaten to wash over them, all of them weathered by some miraculous measure of strength, blocking, or whatever.

Upon their apparent end, somehow, Niki is still standing. He standsona, Gamebirb, can be seen behind her. In addition to wearing an e-reader, it also has a mini-lamp hanging above it from a bendy pole of some sort, illuminating itself in that manner. The blood bonds Niki has with the others are mirrored by the myriads of oversized link cables hooked up from it towards others.

a Kirby sliding block puzzle card has been swiped, causing a stack of blocks to appear in front of them, arranging themselves to show the image of an angry north american kirby.

This seems to be holding as an effective barrier, for a moment at least.

It's unknown how she can even continue talking between bouts of heavy breathing. But she keeps going.

"And you know what? Do you know why you're angry? Because you know we're in this fight for the long haul. We're gonna be bothering you for as long as we have to!"

Gamebirb flaps its wings gracefully as Niki equips her L.E.G.G (Liquid Extremity Gushing Gadget). It gets hooked up to a comically huge tank of liquid nitrogen. She conjures a bunch of neat little breathing devices for everyone just in case.

"And you know what? Seeing the rage and confusion it inflicts upon you as we keep fighting? It makes it all worth it."

And with that, she pulls the trigger on the LEGG and blasts Malice with an icy-cold spray of pure liquid nitrogen, filling the battlefield with its cold rolling fog, smothering the oncoming flames in its wake.

Kalmaro decides not to question the sudden existence of Gamebirb, and just starts firing Inkzooka blasts at Malice, thinking that the liquid nitrogen fog combined with the lowered flames should help his attack to actually connect.

Her descent down, at first, gave her a slight sense of fear, heightened by Malice's intense black flames that threatened to immolate her. But as she starts to feel that maybe regret doing something as incredibly risky as what she did, the feeling disappears as she notices the support given to her by Raz. While the flames may still burn her, her resolve and determination burned ever brighter.

That flame in her heart only intensified as the mechanical knight that was summoned assists her into driving herself down into her target.

Her attack had hit it's mark, with a devestating blow that had shaken the area.

But she knew that it wasn't over.

She had leapt a small distance backward moments before Malice had recovered and started another onslaught of flames and explosions. The pain she felt, however diminished by her friends' assistance, was still intense...
But she marches on.

"Irrational, yes. But that's how life is...Our feelings, our emotions, our drive, it doesn't have to make sense...!"

She notices the black flame among the blasts.

"All life yearns to live, to keep living! So we'll endure! We'll endure whatever you'll throw at us!"

And endure she does, as she braves through the blasts with mace in hand, launching flurry upon flurry of blows, along with her friends' attacks.

The rushing waters buffet Malice, the creature digging it's heels into the ground as it clenches it's oversized fist. The frost comes shortly after, freeze crawling up its form as the area fogs over and flames turn to frost. Raine's blows batter it relentlessly, chipping it away before Clear's strike, and subsequently sheath, divide it and shatter it completely.

Almost too easy.

On closer inspection, dead center the space that figure used to inhabit, is a flame. Curling inward now, spinning rapidly, and expanding outward as the ice shards on the ground shatter, small embers at the center of each flickering. All around they come into visibility, some floating beside the Lost Pawns at eye level, others higher still, everywhere around them. But only that swirling flame expands and forms into Malice, curling outward to stand at some 8 feet in full height.

"That way of living is just self-gratification! It's what happens when you give a bunch of children indomitable power, and sell them dreams of a fantasy universe, of a story catered to telling them that they're heroes!”

Malice throws a blast of concentrated flame out, the likes of which drives through the burst of liquid nitrogen Niki's firing with ease as it carries on set to deal hit her weapon and her alike.

"That they're not just worth something but worth a universe!"

A swing of its other arm knocks FLord's dice and the wall of water they call on back his way, before parrying every incoming blow Raine delivers with almost insulting ease before fighting back, unleashing a rapid series of blows meant to break through and impact her.

"This arrogance, all built on a lie! But it's the insidious kind, the lie that seems like it might be out of reach but the lie you can chase after, the lie you can eventually catch and hold in your hands! And you think you're SPECIAL , you think you're the first or the most important to think this is the value life holds?!"

Malice stomps the ground harshly, those black flames all around swirling inward now. Embers converging on the Lost Pawns that erupt into vicious wildfires, the black flames they burn them with causing no external injuries or burns but a vicious pain nonetheless. The likes of which they can feel burning at something more insubstantial... As if it's burning their very souls.

"That's why you piss me off so much! You rush forward recklessly with your played-out hope and your self-gratifying belief, all the while trampling on everyone that's come before you! YOU THINK YOU'RE SO MUCH MORE SPECIAL THAN THE REST AND YOU THINK YOUR STUPID CHILDISH PHILOSOPHY IS A BUFFER AGAINST REALITY! HOW MANY TIMES?! HOW MANY TIME DO YOU NEED TO SEE FUTILITY PLAYED OUT BEFORE YOUR EYES, BEFORE IT SINKS IN?! WOULD IT EVEN MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO YOU SELFISH CHILDREN?!"

Malice swings both it's arms with absolutely rage in its eyes, another rushing wall of flames engulfing the area in another explosive strikes. The floating shapes in the void surrounding them seem to shifting, static over taking them like displays before they seem to tune in to...

Failures. Players on the ending stages of Sburb, squared off against one-another. Unrecognizable lands, dimming as the spark of life in the eyes of a god tier dies for the last time. Player killers standing over their kills, any number of emotions clear in their eyes. Regret, sadness, cold certainty, jubilation. A web of red that lays waste to all it touches. Some scenes some pawns night recognize, some their friends might. All so numerous, and shifting every so often, but all critical moments of sadness in the stories of at least one of the ghosts of the void or gathered reinforcements or Lost Pawns.

"HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU HAVE TO SEE THE SAME MISTAKES PLAYED OUT BEFORE YOU REALIZE YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL? YOU'RE NOT THE FIRST ONES REBEL AGAINST CRUEL REALITY, AND YOU'RE NOT THE FIRST OR SECOND OR EVEN MILLIONTH TO FAIL? HOW MANY TIMES WILL BR ENOUGH TO SATISFY YOUR SELF-IMPORTANCE?!

ALL OF YOU, YOU DISGUSTING, SELF-IMPORTANT, C H I L D R E N!! YOU THINK YOU KNOW BETTER?! YOU THINK YOU CHICKEN SHITS MATTER IN EVERYTHING?! THAT PRESUMPTION PISSES ME OFF! NOT YOUR FUTILE STRUGGLES BUT THE BANAL THINGS YOU PROP THEM ON!!"

Clear raises her head and turns back to Malice's form of flame.

"Do you really think we think that? That we are somehow the first and only people to do this? Your naivete is astounding..."

Clear transmutes the ring into gold, metal pole with the gem on the end.

"Heroes of ages past have come and gone like grains of sand. Much like your malice, there is plenty of emotions that swirl in the grand scheme of the universe. The game was created as a cycle that fuels the creation of universes by destroying old ones. In a way this nature is like that akin to a Family. With a Parent Universe giving offspring to several timelines and eventually universes that become different things. These Child Gods... they grow up one way or another not simply based of the 'design' of this 'lie'. There is also those around them that affect this outcome."

The girl in white raises her staff and swirls it around, leaving behind a trail of light.

"You continue to show us the horrible end of many players and universes... but why not show the whole picture? I understand your methods are to demoralize us... but there is so much more you've forgotten."

Clear casts her magic, making a Cloud of Skaia appear in the air. In it's fluffy frame, it begins to depict all the universes and god tiers that were successful in their runs... including some familiar faces that managed to beat a dark, inky menace and create a new home for themselves.

"Not all victories are without a price to be paid... not all heroes make it to the end of the story and see the fruits of their labors. Its a bittersweet ending... but it sure as hell beats a sour one."

Clear's face is filled with a look of determination as she expands the cloud upwards, showing even more and more of the victories of Infinite Universes.

Kalmaro just stares at Malice regenerating like it's nothing. "3Э That's cheating... 3Э" He then looks at the projected images. Failed sessions, all over the place. A few he immediately recognizes as STURF sessions, failing in a similar way to his own. The attempt to fight the Black King. The seeming victory, followed shortly by a world-erasing explosion. The attempts to escape the session, some successful, others not.

Then he hears the responses of the others around him. That loss is a necessary part of the process toward ultimate victory. That not everyone can make it to the ending of a story. That a "happy ending" is still possible in spite of the loss, and that said loss doesn't invalidate the happy ending.

And then he remembers the thing Azure reported who knows how long ago. That there were survivors of the Reckoning on Inkling Planet, a statistical rarity of the game's process. That society was already being slowly rebuilt. And that even though none of the STURF sessions could be won due to the "Ectoobiooloogy Glitch", the home planet hadn't been completely lost.

"3Э If yoou oonly looook at the bad parts oof things, oof coourse yoou're gooing too think it's meaningless... Yoou're picking and choooosing the facts too suit yoour ideas oof what reality is! 3Э" He looks at Malice, ignoring the screens that are currently showing a lime-green Team Derse being permanently splatted by an Orbital Mute Laser. "3Э But that dooesn't change what reality actually is. Reality is booth gooood and bad, and yoou can't have oone withoout the oother. That's a phioosoophical, and physical, fact. Withoout booth poositive and negative charges oof atooms, matter coouldn't exist. Withoout the bad, yoou'd have noothing to define the gooood by, as it woould all just seem the same. 3Э"

"3Э And that coomparisoon goes booth ways. Withoout the gooood, the bad coouldn't exist because yoou woouldn't have a reference pooint too coompare too. 3Э" Okay, logic starting to fall apart a bit, but whatever. "3Э And that means... withoout gooood, YOOU can't exist. Soo yoour very existence refutes everything yoou've said, because there has too be gooood in the woorld foor yoou too even be here trying too tell us ootherwise! 3Э"