[X] Start gushing about how she's your hero
-[X] What will you try to negotiate for? (write-in)
--[X] Ask why she should't touch the blades.
--[X] Weren't both Solid Core and Goddess Grey supposed to be in the prison with everyone else?
--[X] Try and convince her to let you break the prison since Goddess White should still trapped in it and you're sure despite everything else Goddess Grey still cares for her sister
+--[X] Your sister looked for a specialist to release your sister from the trap they are in, which currently had no known key because the inventor of said trap died. Well then, here I am! Trap defuser Magical Girl Lockpick! Paid by your sister to release your sister from the trap thingy! Now take me to the trap thingy.
(it amused me)
----
Your Panoply limply falls as you stand up straighter. The desolation around you doesn't match Grey's style, but she's well capable of flattening her surroundings. Yet she led with a demand instead of a weapon.
Think, think quickly.
When Goddess Grey touches the ground her skin sparkles with light and a sword longer than she is tall appears in her right hand. Even with her entrance holding all of your focus and attention the weapon just appeared from nowhere as soon as Grey prepared to hold it.
Could she create a weapon that bisected you upon its creation? You don't think so, but also don't want to try to find out.
"Yes, not touching!" you declare.
Grey throws herself between you and the remains of Solid Core, fixing you with a glare.
Steady, try not to act like she's going to cut you. You try to recall if any of the social seminars from your time in the hospital covered situations like this.
"Excuse me, why shouldn't they be touched? Are they yours?"
Goddess Grey relaxes, her gaze softening and the sword dropping from her hand, "What it is, is a disaster. Why are you here?"
"I heard that Goddess White was trapped and thought I could help you by setting her free. You've been my hero for years."
Too much? You tried to be just a bit over exuberant. Could she tell that you were nervous or were you clamping down on your face too hard?
"You must be Summit." Grey frowns slightly and sighs, "I have to apologize for your treatment by the UD."
Your blood turns to ice. It feels like your heart has stopped even as Grey runs a hand over her scalp. Energy pulses through your Panoply as you start a teleport to escape.
Grey's free hand flicks a few caltrops at you, local space ripples as they move and your bubble destabilizes. You try to spear out at her legs, perhaps to knock her off her feet, but she kicks a small bulldozer blade that blocks direct attacks from your weapon.
What follows is the whistle of steel slamming into you as you try to scramble back. Scythe leads to spear, leads to sword, leads to darts. Each blow pushing your closer to your limits in a calculated fashion. Grey pushes her arms and legs at nearly a hundred meters per second, switching gracefully between weapon stances and conjuring the appropriate weapons an instant before the blow lands.
A reprieve gives just enough time to cover yourself with your weapon and attempt to escape again. She fills the air and ground around you with swords, letting the weight of their magic pull the bubble apart.
"Why?" you bark.
Grey blinks at you, her slight frown of concentration steady, "Because Ni will make certain."
She shrieks out a kiai and your perception is filled with the purest force of destruction you've seen.
(Trump Card
Echo
Echo
Echo
55000 Base Damage, +2358 Dice, +15500 ??? +22000 Mercy Kill +400 Epic Power = 95258 Damage
55000 Base Damage, +2358 Dice, +15500 ??? +22000 Mercy Kill +400 Epic Power = 95258 Damage
55000 Base Damage, +2358 Dice, +15500 ??? +22000 Mercy Kill +400 Epic Power = 95258 Damage
55000 Base Damage, +2358 Dice, +15500 ??? +22000 Mercy Kill +400 Epic Power = 95258 Damage
381,032 Unified Damage
To Defy the Gods Triggers!
95258 Total Damage
Magical Girl Summit : 1000 Resilience, +448 Dice, +19051 Reactive Field, +200 Hunkered Down, -400 Armor Damage, -400 Hostile Epic Effect = 19899 Damage Reduction
75359 End Damage
60% Ceaseless Warrior
30144 Final End Damage
Magical Girl Summit: 14500 - 30144 = -15,644 Health
Half the woman she used to be…)
[CASCADE]
"Don't touch that!"
You scream and your Panoply spikes every which way as you process the sensation of being cut in half!
By the time you gather your wits Goddess Grey has dived at you. You try to slow her down, or at least slip away, but she methodically breaks your Panoply apart with her weapons and trips you with an excessive number of chains.
Heat blossoms over your face, you should have done better than this! This is humiliating.
"What do you have to say for yourself?" Grey interrogates.
"Whoops?"
She pinches the bridge of her nose, "Ugh. I apologize in advance for this. Ni will have to fix you."
"Wait!"
A huge axe descends…
[CCASCADE]
"Don't touch that!"
"Sorry!" you shout.
You forcibly detach the reaching part of your Panoply and carefully arrange the mass around you. No sharp corners that invite stabs and hold everything compactly so you aren't unbalancing yourself as much when the blows alternate from side to side.
Grey bolts with inhuman speed to interpose herself between you and Solid Core's body. The glare she wears is familiar. As is the large sword in her hand.
Keep talking, that seemed to get you somewhere, "I thought you were trapped in some kind of prison! I wanted to free you!"
Grey opens her mouth, then closes it and blinks a couple times, "Me? Where did you hear that?"
"Zoe." She was supposed to be important, you think.
Grey relaxes and lets her weapon drop, "Good, she can learn. Stabbing her would have caused such a hassle. That makes you Summit, right?"
You nod. "Yes, what happened?"
"My little sister pulled a dirty trick and I very nearly got her and myself killed." Grey does a head tilt to indicate the swords, "This is some sort of shadow of that potential death. Then Zoe started pulling them into the box when I opened the effect."
She sighs and steps closer to put a hand on your Panoply, near the shoulder, "I'm sorry about this, but could you detransform? I need you to be just a little bit expired so Red can bring you back without Zoe's brainwashing."
"Zoe wanted to deliver me to you dead! She never got to do any brainwashing!" you plead.
Grey shakes her head slightly and the next fifteen seconds are full of bladed weapons.
[CAASCADE]
"Don't touch that!"
You spin to face her, "Goddess Grey!"
She lunges and shears off part of your Panoply, you pay it no mind. If you're going to sort this out you need to figure out what she's after, other than rendering you dead to make sure of something.
"I didn't expect to see you here, or her." you continue, gesturing at Solid Core's body.
Grey settles into an aggressive posture and puts the point of her sword close to your neck, "Have we met?"
"Yes! You helped me out years ago when I was a young Magical Girl."
She pulls the point back and raises an eyebrow.
Your face feels a bit numb as you sort through your own thoughts. Is this going to give you bad habits in the future? You need more information now, even if it is already starting to feel less like you are talking to a real person.
"Did you kill her?"
"Almost." she steps towards you, "I don't know your face, and something is odd about you. Who are you?"
Oh! There is something you can use here, something you tucked away long ago. With a thought you extrude the broken hilt into your hand to display.
"You gave me this when we were in Toronto." you exclaim.
Goddess Grey gasps, "That's-What happened to you?"
"A horrible demon locked me up for years." you point towards the prison artifact, "I didn't want to leave you or anyone trapped in there. Do you?"
She shifts from her posturing stance into a more flexible one. All the authority appears to drop out of her face, replaced with an empty look.
"No. I don't want to leave her there Summit."
You start accelerating backwards, this is the part where she kills you.
Grey grits her teeth, "I don't want to do any of this, but I don't have a better option right now!"
A stream of bladed death rushes at you, you weave and duck away from the brunt of it and batter away the largest parts with your Panoply. This action, or rather the awkward configuration it forces your Panoply to assume, slows your flight to a crawl. Goddess Grey adjusts her attacks to push you further down, lunges at you when you dive, and catches you with a long whip-like sword to pull you into the ground.
You hadn't even worked yourself free when she bisects you with an especially potent conjured weapon.
[CCAASCADE]
"Don't touch that!"
The swords puncturing Solid Core's corpse are different. The last time you recall taking them in they felt like a connection to a vast realm of power. Now the dark purple edges, almost black really, echo the pain of death when you look at them. Are the swords laughing at you?
You let your Panoply fall apart around you, "Ah!"
As usual Goddess Grey moves between you and Solid Core's macabre pincushion. This time she keeps hold of her large sword.
"Who are you and why are you here." Grey punctuates her words by poking the blade closer to you with each syllable.
"Sorry! I'm Magical Girl Lockpick, I often get into odd places. Goddess Red found me and wanted me to help fix Zoe's mess?"
She pulls back her weapon, then squints at you, "That doesn't seem right, haven't we met before?"
Something non-committal would be good, "I'm surprised you'd remember me."
"Toronto, before the fall of Hope." Goddess Grey says quietly, an odd polearm with a long spike appearing in her left hand, "Now you're just another Magical Girl who had her heroics shattered by this war. That's why Lockpick didn't appear when we scryed."
You dart your Panoply away from her first stab, catch the next swing away from the point, now crackling with electricity, but she cuts her own weapon with another sword and flicks the spearhead into your Panoply. Contact makes your weapons shatter into harmless dust as it releases a charge. Then Grey conjures a bear trap on a chain to trap a leg while you try to scramble away.
"I don't know what you're doing-" she says while dragging you off your feet, "But stop it, I won't leave you dead for long."
You try to kick away in defiance, but she's much stronger than she looks, "I haven't done anything. Just stop trying to kill me!"
"Do you see anyone else?"
As a matter of fact, you can see a lesser demon running where the ground should have been. The sides of the blasted crater contain only three points of interest, as her gesture demonstrates.
"Solid Core and those blades." you answer.
"I see."
Goddess Grey pulls back on the chain and twirls you through the air by the bear trap around your leg. A tightened loop and release sends you clipping the lip of the crater and bouncing on the ground outside of it. With a sharp tug Grey pulls herself towards you.
"Wait! What do you want? Do I have to die for it!" you shout.
She waits for you to finish talking while looming above you.
"I want people to keep their promises. And there's more going on than you know."
A human-like demon with fierce claws on his left hand points at you, "Just kill her!"
"This is about my satisfaction, not yours!" Grey shouts back.
She's holding a dreadfully familiar, dreadfully powerful sword in her right hand. You start to crawl back while she talks.
It doesn't make a difference. Grey snaps the sword to just above your head.
"You'll be happier this way, I was."
[CAASSCADE]
"Give up Summit!"
That sounds like a cue to re-think your approach. You try to glare at her while thinking as quickly as you can manage about what to do. It appears your glare is not effective.
[CASSCCADE]
"Give up Summit!"
----
[X] [Gehaburn]
-[X] Collect and Fuse
-[X] Don't Touch (1.2x)
[X] Go on the offensive, you badly want to smack a Goddess right now
-[X] Battle tactics? (write-in, feel free to be vague about this)
She knows enough to try breaking your Panoply, but isn't focusing on your teleportation as much.
[X] Keep talking. Something is starting to stick, maybe you can find a working approach.
-[X] Ideas? (write-in)
[X] Teleport away
-[X] To the prison artifact
-[X] Anywhere but here!
[Please refer to Crossworlds 19 for an explanation of what's happening (one threadmark back)]
----
Status of Combatants:
Magical Girl Summit: Reset
Magical Girl Juggernaut Drive: Unaware, waiting ~300 meters away
Magical Girl Judgement Drive: Unaware, waiting ~320 meters away
Magical Girl Goddess Grey: Unharmed, out to get you
----
+30 EXP I Face Death With Renewed Strength!
+20 EXP A Reunion of Sorts
+1 EXP Will You Stop With the Head Slicing Thing!
345 + 51 = 396 EXP
EXP cannot be spent at this time!
