[Area] Seth's Dream dome

Above, Solaris’ blast rips through the air on a collision course with the Mind/Time hand, Thoren’s additional attacks another hazard but a hazard it deals with by skillfully twisting out of the way of his heavily telegraphed strikes to backhand him directly into the path of the laser, avoiding it with the movement. The figure of Light spasms as Solaris’ wings dig into it, movements jerky but to an end. The Hope hand over its own glows more brightly, something forming in it before the figure manages to spin around, splitting the ribbons with the object that’s formed in its hand and freeing itself as it backs away, twitching unnaturally. That object revealed as a massive blade, larger than the figure by one and a half times, it’s put to use quickly in an overhead swing meant to cleave Solaris in half.

Meanwhile, Nora's brows furrow as she drains the hand, it was becoming harder for her to drain energy. She looks at Raz, "What are you going to do?" She asks him. She wasn't particularly eager to hear this.

"Bring her back to her senses." Cupping his free hand Raz focuses intently, a faint pinkish glow surrounding it as a small ember appears in his palm. Vanishing in a small puff of smoke it makes way for arcs of redish lightning to bounce between his finger tips, and he turns his attention to the prone hand as it flips to a ready position and steels itself to the ground, forcing the tug of war for Blood in its favor slowly but steadily.

"Whatever that Omega prick did to her to make this happen... If we can remind her of herself, maybe she can shake it off. It might be selfish of me... But I'm not letting her last thoughts and her remnant's actions be simple despair and destruction." Moving to stand back-to-back with Nora he outstretches his arm alongside hers, red lightning surging forward and trying to link up with Nora's lightning.

"But this aspect of Heart isn't mine natively. Even this much is barely anything and I'm going to need a lot more juice for this kind of thing. So, sync up with me."

"Fine." Nora agrees, joining Raz in the attack. She sync's with Raz and he can feel a great deal of power coursing between them. Much greater than she had previously demonstrated. "Just remember that she's not a tool. She's one of us."

"Stating the obvious huh? If I was content with using her as a tool and simple winning, I wouldn't be going through all this. But for better or worse..." A surge of power as he steels his backfoot, his and Nora's combined drain overpowering and drawing out the hand's aspect powers, Blood into Nora, Heart into Raz.

"We're going for broke!"

The hand digs its fingers into the ground as it tries to resist the drain, red and pinkish lightning crackling in the air around it to match the arcs linking it to the attacking pair. Dashing up alongside the bolts four silhouettes close in on them, two converging on Nora with simultaneous slashes of bladed weapons in a bid to interrupt.

Nora smiles. Even as she drains the hand, she is able to erect a shield around her and pull out her scythe, deflecting the attacks on her. She digs her feet into the ground while she pushes forth and tries to keep up her attack. Nora takes a deep breath. "To be clear, I could do this without you. This just speeds things up. Kidding." It didn't seem like Nora was straining particularly hard, but her focus was now diverted a bit, having to defend now too. But she kept smiling.

“‘Course you are.” Bringing his spear up in a block of one silhouette’s strike Raz calls a barrier to deflect the other’s, spinning his weapon to disengage before running the attacker through and dragging the weapon out roughly enough to send it reeling.

“Your trash talk needs work but I respect the attempt. That’s good though, practice on me, so when you’ve gotta talk smack to someone tryin’ ta kill you, you got it down.” Stabbing his spear into the ground he draws an umbrella from seemingly nowhere and jabs it through the barrier, into the gut of the other silhouette. A tug of something at the handle sends a leaden projectile from the unorthodox weapon’s tip, driving the silhouette far away as Raz does his best to keep their combo move steady.

Elsewhere, the storm around the Breath/Life hand rages as a burst of wind rushes toward Raph to impede his advance. The packed snow forms an odd, but somewhat effective shield against the raging hail and snow at least, the determination-fueled Seth backing him up managing to weave through that storm and avoid the brunt of the wind pushing Raph back to land a solid hit that knocks the hand back a little. The hand zooms elsewhere in the storm to evade, chaotic wind swirling in new ways as the snow and hail and razor wind combine to make it even more of a deathtrap, and harder to see it in to boot.

And the Scourge...

Solaris' body doesn't even react. The beam from Solaris cuts through the air and changes course, exploding out into 62 seperate smaller lasers that hone in on the Mind/Time Hand from all sides and closing any escape, missing Thoren and Raine completely.

Solaris' wings appeared to be cut from the light figure at first, but as the Hope figure swings it's blade, it finds that the Wings have wrapped around the blade when it came by. Solaris' wings pull the blade through it's arc, missing Solaris' main body. The wings turn the blade back around and plunge it at the hope figure to impale it on it's own blade.



The pure energy of the wings and lasers heat the air and crackle with electricity. Sparks flying as the energy beams speed up on their target.



Solaris turns her head, looking through the battlefield. Her wings break away from the laser and 2 spike up into the ceiling, and two down into the floor below. Upon impact, the bright glow surges through the cracks in the ground, seeking out the other hands with exploding ferocity. As the ground cracks and splits, the material surrounding these static filled 'pipelines' begin to vaporize and get sucked into the stream.

Jessica walks through the door, very confused. There's hundreds of players fighting and defending against various silhouettes and arms in a massive blue lobby with various scenes being played back on the walls.
There's also a naked light lady shooting lasers everywhere, a girl being held by a horned robot on the ground, THAT GIRL that once slept on her couch that one time, an army of ghosts rushing through a storm, led by a skeleton and a ...vampire waluigi?, a ragged edgelord with a limp arm and a three bladed... spinny thing? (It at least looks like it should be able to be used as a handheld propeller. ), and, a mysteriously difficult to examine area with a bunch of silhouettes guarding a dark blue hand...
Wait.

That baseball cap...
Is that... Dylan over there?!

"✧ DYLAN! ✧" Jessica yells out from across the large room.

Dylan immediately recognizes her voice.
"JESSICA!"
the Rudolph bat still in his hands feels a little jealous.

She dashes across the room, skillfully avoiding any obstacles in her way.
Dylan departs from Mimi's side to go after Jessica. He winds up phasing through whatever might be blocking his way and meets her in the middle.
upon meeting, they hug each other tightly for a couple long seconds.
"Jessica... you made it..."
"✧ Yeah... You have no idea how much I missed you... ✧"
"I'm willing to bet I missed you more."

The festive baseball bat still being held by Dylan is beginning to feel kinda awkward in this situation. Both parties can get a slight hint of it, though it seems to baffle Jessica a bit.
"✧ ...why do you have a Christmas bat and why is it giving me some weird vibes? ✧"

Dylan unhugs and shows off the bat. "Oh, this is no ordinary bat. It's endowed with the spirit of a young man who saved Christmas. He calls himself Rudolph. He wanted to help me fight here to avenge his best friend who got lost forever."

"✧ wait, that bat is ...possessed? ✧"

"yep!"

"✧ and you're okay with that? are you sure he isn't going to like, take you over and... ✧"

"Yeah, I trust him. he says his days as a killer are over, though might make exceptions for actual threats."

Jessica takes a step back, and then continues with business. "✧ ...right. Now that we're here though, what exactly are you fighting here? does it have anything to do with the huge expanding bubble space that's outside? ✧"

"...huge bubble? no idea about that one. That guy over there is giving the pawns a lot of grief and wants to destroy everything. He's bad news and has an arm for every occasion, including a broken arm. we could really use your tactical skills right about now. these guys are amateurs!"

Jessica pauses to think for a moment, scanning the area once again. She smiles slyly. "✧ I think this is a worthy challenge. ✧"

"Great! Awesome! Let's play ball!" they exchange high fives.

"✧ Dylan, cover for me while I take notes. It's getting pretty hairy with all the lasers around here. ✧" Jessica pulls out a spiral notebook and a chess table from her... maidmobile modus?
"what happened to using the chess modus? that was your thing, right?" Dylan has made the two of them invisible for the time being.

"✧ listen: when you're tasked with the upkeep of a historic hotel for room and board, you don't really have time to play chess to get out your supplies. ✧"
she pulls out the chess pieces from the drawers and begins placing them in spots appropriate for the current situation.

---

Meanwhile, Jake seems to be seeing quite a bit of progress on the heart/blood arm, seeing as its on the ground as this point, though still trying to put up a fight. He and Jasper continue to strike at it near the base with their knives.

Eileen tries to do what she can to assist with her blood witch abilities, attempting to make the blood/heart hand slam itself into the ground repeatedly.

---

Niki continues to charge her lunar cornstaff. a rather large harvest moon has appeared in the sky, visible simply by looking up.

---

Mimi consults Mac for guidance, who has taken a break from trying to slow his target down. He recognizes something about the space/void hand's defensive strategy.
"chop one head off, two appear in its place... it's a fucking hydra!"

"then what do we do? I don't get what you're talking about." Mimi blinks a couple times.

"We need to stop it from regenerating it's defenses. It doesn't look like fire or falling rocks will be enough for this case... at very least, we need to stop focusing on the silhouettes until we know how to get rid of them permanently."
They focus mostly on defending the other combatants that have joined them this turn.

---

The seagull changes back into a young woman upon reaching the steps of gospel castle.
It is Marin.
Bow-wow hops up towards her and licks her face.
"hehehe, that tickles..."
"ARF ARF!" Bow-wow bounces up and down, putting a dent in the ground. she calms the wrecking ball down and pets him a little.
"how about we see what's going on up there?" she grabs the end of Bow-wow's chain and walks up the stairs. Bow-wow easily keeps up.

upon entering the castle, they discover what a mess everything is.
"oh my..."
"ARF ARF ARF!" continued barking and bouncing, a little bit of growling at the storm over there.
"there's something in there?"
"ARF!"
"be careful, bow-wow..." Marin lets the chain go and watches Bow-wow charge into the storm from the outside, barking and bouncing all the way.
she has no idea what to do aside from stay out of the way of the action.

Thoren feels a slight tug, a call to action. Raine can likely feel it too. He attempts to get the both of them sat back up.
[ 80% hull integrity ]
Thoren tries his best to ignore the pain and damage messages, focusing on helping Raine stand on her feet. After finally getting situated, he makes his best effort to call out for Micha.
"MICHA! GET YOUR ASS BACK TO THE SURFACE! I MAY NOT HAVE KNOWN YOU AS WELL AS ALPHA SETH, BUT I KNOW HOW MUCH HE RESPECTED YOU AS A FRIEND! YOU CAN'T JUST LET THAT... THING TAKE OVER LIKE THAT! I DON'T WANT YOU TO TURN out how... I did..."
Thoren stands there in shock over the weight of the epiphany he just stumbled upon.

we really aren't so different... we're really two sides of the same fucking coin...

Thoren tries to get some sort of leverage from Raine. How is he supposed to get Micha back if she may have turned into something at the same level as Chronos?
Then again, Thoren got kicked out when that happened... or did he? Was there ever a small part of himself that was left behind?
Is he even the real Thoren?
Is Chronos the actual Thoren and he's just some... shitty savestate copy?

Thoren's eyes blue-screen and he physically locks up. He can still accept input and respond to Raine directly, but don't expect his robotic body to function until this is sorted out.

Niki, who has been charging her lunar cornstaff for a while, continues to do so, but also tries to take a shot at calling out for Micha. While Thoren's attempt ended in giving him a bsod, she's pretty sure that she won't end up like that. Besides, she cares too much about Micha to just let her go like that.

"Micha! It's me, Niki! Listen: we've been in some pretty tough jams together, and you've been through a lot, but we're almost out of here! You don't have to mess with that null stuff ever again! You don't have to complete any more timeloops! You have a chance to finally settle down and be happy! We just need to earn it! I know you can hear me! We need to work together here to stop the heir! We're making actual progress here! Half of the hands are getting clobbered and I have something that can do a ton of damage! And you know what? It's all thanks to you! You were always there for me when I needed you! You were one of the few friends that never left me! You convinced me to keep living after I caused the attack on the mirror meteor! You've shown me just how important my contributions have been! And now, it's my turn to return the favor! I don't care if you were a mewtwo ripoff carved out of crystals by a weirdo megalomaniac. You're still my friend, and you still have an unwritten future ahead of you! Your girlfriends are here for you too! I know how dear you are to Nora and I hope you two can be good for each other! So let's keep going on towards that finish line! I know you can do it!"

Raine seems a little out of it.
It seems the fraymotif she engaged with the Kat ghosts may be sapping a bit of her energy, considering it's been active for a long while. In an attempt to not pass out from lack of energy, she finally cancels the spell.

What was this about Micha...? Trying to call out to her?
There's also that feeling of distress coming from her connection with her partner.

This is giving her quite the headache.
She has a hard time putting things into words...What could she even say that hasn't already been said?
She was never really that good of a communicator.

She stumbles a little, looking toward the strange being that was once a friend.

"So...So what if you were made as a tool...? Sure, y-you've been duped so many times, and practically got killed twice..."

An awkward cough.

"To hell with whatever fate or destiny this existence has...or had in store for you...! Can't you just be selfish for once and go wherever you want to go?! Be whoever the hell you want to be!? And I know, no way in hell that you'd want to be this way!!"

Well, it was something.