altimit | 10/29 --- Δ Haggard Traveler’s Reprieve?????

[ While people are distracted with healing Michel, Memoir will glance over at the nearest Zelkova member – Swallow! – and beckon her to follow his lead.

He swoops in and grabs Macha (no roll needed per Tuesday), and sprints away from the rest of the group, carrying him like a sack of potatoes.

Then, he'll (surprisingly gently) place Macha down on the nearest mass. This is alone status, right...! But he'll also go down with Macha to make sure the guy doesn't try to crawl away. ]

Keep Tarvos at bay!

[ He'll yell it to people from across the way, then to Macha: ]

Give him back.

[ Take it away, Shoka! ]

Edited 2023-10-31 20:19 (UTC)

Stop—

( JUST AS NOE THINKS THAT he can see Macha trying to dig his fingers into the meat to crawl back to Tarvos!!!

He only uses one hand, though. The other still cradles his abdomen, trying not just to keep it together, but to keep the insides (even though there's surely nothing inside) from falling out. )

I am . . . I am . . . Macha—?

( But as you've dragged him further away, and as he tries to pull himself against the slick-meat ground, his form begins to drip and drag and slip from his body, leaving his mass less, and less, and less . . .

But as this happens too, the crack split across him only grows wider, and it's a struggle to try to pull himself back to the person waiting for him, and to keep himself together. )

NO!

[ His grip on Macha tightens, and he pushes him further into the ground. His voice is raised significantly, and his determination is clear. There's fire behind his words, a desire to end this once and for all: ]

YOU ARE MITHRUN!!

( He yells at Macha with such clarity and intensity that it seems to still him, wide-eyed and broken as he is, his dark visage parted by his bleeding crevice, and it feels at once like the voice of every person who's tried to tape him by the shoulders and tell him who he is— not Lily's pet, not Lily's toy, not the professor's little diversion.

He is Mithrun, and maybe that has worth.

A sudden, anguished scream from the caverns of Macha's split chest cuts through the battlefield with a chill that rushes down your spine— It's reflex, the way everyone's heads snap up toward the source, your skin pale, sweat clung to the curve of your jaw, as if haunted by some phantom. The beginning of another Suspicious Seduction; the program reiterating, unable to stop—

And then it snuffs out.

The passion passes, the chill seeps into the dark. All that's left is a small, inky black figure in the rain, no horns, no halo, no eyes left. Just that bleeding crevice that threatens to undo him. There is nothing left he can do to save himself. He must certainly be hollow, and he must certainly be alone. And here, at the end of all things, he should find relief in all this— that he can finally depart, empty as he'd always wanted to be.

Is he, though? He wonders.

His voice is soft, but sure. )

. . . I don't . . . want to die.

( Macha is cornered and alone. He can now be Data Drained. )

You won't. You won't...Mithrun1. I want to meet you, the real you. The one who's in front of us now.

[ And if he ends up departing, at least Memoir will have caught a glimpse of who Mithrun1 was. ... Is. ]

You have people who love you, and you don't have to hurt anyone else to be loved. I promise.

[She'd followed when gestured to, but...

Oh... well, of course. Cubia must have targeted these people for a reason.

There's surprising smile on her face as she reaches out her arm to Mithrun, the green glow of the bracelet beginning to form around her wrist.]

Then c'mon and join us already.

All of us are just trying to live too - we'll have your back.

[Gentle words for a less than gentle data drain, streams of data shooting out to latch onto Macha-Mithrun. But she hopes and prays that it will clear out the infection, leave behind a man--

Leave behind the one who wants to live and be loved.]

Then don't die.

[ Oria finally caught up to see what was happening here and found Mithrun with others. ]

So that we can go take a picture with all of us together as we said. I'm tired of making candles with paper boats, so you better not make me craft another one for you. One was enough.

[ two loves and both of them are actively dying at the moment. still, hani believes: this beautiful world was never made to hurt them - surely, surely. if they could learn to be human here, if uta can live in one world if not the other, miracles can happen born from their human hearts.

they stay by michel's side, strength exhausted at the moment, but when macha becomes mithrun, they look over across the battlefield at him and mouth two names, three words. they promised.

they promise. ]

[ When Michel is steadied by Ganymede, Miharu, Hani and Nanashi, Sinclair moves across the field, panting with exertion as he closes the distance]

...we have stories to write together. So you can't die.

[ He had dragged himself here, barely upright for a reason]

Edited 2023-10-31 21:54 (UTC)

( Macha is fragile.

The Data Drain peels back the bloody exterior that makes up Macha, the blood coagulating and dissipating, the meat coming by chunks apart. Data Drain, in itself, is not necessarily meant to kill.

But Macha is fragile.

The layers come undone, revealing scarlet strings of code. Macha's HP plummets. Those crack and corrupt and flick away too; digits and letters altering, semicolons gone, lines run on, overflow, overflow, overflow,

—the form in Noé's grip loses shape—

—Macha's HP in critical—

—the crevice splits the bloody, fleshy mess of his body clean in two—

—Macha's HP hits zero—

In Noé's hands are two split masses of blood, and the rain beats them down into the heart-flesh ocean. His blood bubbles into foam, seeping into the meat, until there's nothing left. As if come from the sea and returned to it again, he had walked upon land and found it like glass to his feet, he had found a broken heart.

Maybe that's not how this story should fairly end. He is more loved than any tale promised. But this surely is Macha; this is not Mithrun. He is, as Lily designed him to be, nothing more than a program that exists in heartbreak.

But.

Somewhere there, somewhere left where that bloody foam had been, you see a paper. The chaos of Tarvos still about you, it's hard to get a proper look, but the details matter very little; it's plain what it is at a glance.

It's a photograph, though soaked now in blood in the Area's industrial rain. Inspecting it tells you the item's name is Portrait of Heaven. It cannot be placed in your inventory, but it can be held, left alone, or put in a pocket. It will persist, regardless.

The photograph is a shot set in Twilight Shoreline, from a gathering that never occurred. Mithrun toward the bottom near the center, partly cut off by virtue of his height, and then, around him, his friends closest to him, and then people he's spoken to, and then people he's just known in passing. ("Am I there?"— yes, you are.) Convinced as Mithrun and Macha were that they were empty, they—ah, no, Mithrun—had recognized finally that there was one piece of requited affection in him worth protecting. A shame it took him so long.

Macha is dead. )

[It's an eerie quiet that settles over the arena as one third of the party tends to their fallen, one third tracks a rampaging brute, and the remaining gather around the quickly disintegrating form. Kind words of love that only speak so loud, that do not reach across the spaces. Tarvos follows Tylor, brandished and lured, even as the hits start to stack, as flame once again burns and drain after drain reach into his coding and pull him hollower and hollower. His HP sits at 30%.

It's an eerie, eerie quiet.

And yet, the second that Macha vanishes into nothing but foam, everyone around Tarvos will feel a chill that goes down to their bones as his attention immediately snaps off of Tylor, eyes towards nothing.

Nothing.

The sound of nails on a chalkboard screech through everyone's ears - of metal against metal and bone crushing under force. The entire arena shakes.

And Tarvos HOWLS.

Tylor is immediately charged at, and though Tarvos's hands miss (4), the spear that equips back into his hand does not (10), slicing at the Partizan's legs. He doesn't bother to stay to see if his prey is downed. He's aimless. Howling, Howling and howling as black streaks down his face, his mask, down every crack of his body.

NOT AGAIN. NOT AGAIN.

Dehya is the next one closest who he grabs for and misses (1), earning an almost agonized sound from the beast. He tries again for Oria, with another long swipe of his spear that connects just enough to burn, to leave behind a feeling that you deserve this, you should have done better, you SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER. (12)

And finally, to Ganymede. To Michel. Vengeance asks why. Why didn't he die instead? Why didn't either of them? Why did THEY get to live????

In one smooth motion, Ganymede is picked up with one enormous hand, clenched by the neck, as Tarvos pivots his entire weight to slam the Macabre Dancer into the shattered ground of the arena. Over and over and over, until the body goes limp, where he tosses it bodily to hit Ramiel.]

[ He's here late (and I got permission) and observing everything from afar, far away in the same area. Pretend he isn't here, because I won't be replying to any comments since I'm just here to drop him off and leave. ]

[Tarvos in on a rampage. She a bit occupied with that to see what's up on Macha's side of things, other than that he... dissolved? In a desperate mid to stop him before he smashes anyone else to paste (oh god) Dehya targets him with Data Drain Type D: Stun] Stop!

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ROUND 10 (1/2)

ROUND 10 2/2

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Core Use 2/3

PARTY MEMBER DOWN

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