Welcome to Gaia! ::

((HA! Praise Jesus! They took the phone, the computer, and sent me to my amish relatives for the weekend. They called it a 'family visit', but it was code for hellish punishment.))

Out of the corner of her eye, Danni saw Ialo. He was losing it, she realized, turning her head to look at him more. It was then she remembered the way Lazareth's claws had scraped along Ialo's stomach. Poison, she thought, and felt the fear, not for herself, but for the others, seep through.

And she knew it was now or never.

She paused in the air then, her hands falling to her sides. In that moment, she did something she'd refrained from doing since this had all started. She took the power of the Ancients into her, felt it seep through her skin.

'Go on, take it,' The voices of the Ancients echoed in her head, as they had once before. 'Take it, and make it yours. Take all you can, and then take more. It's yours.'

"Oh, hell yes." The magic had a wave of giddiness coming over her, and she felt a grin coming to her face as the power spread through her.

The words, ancient and long forgotten, sprang from her lips, carrying on the breeze.

And as they echoed above the sound of thunder, Lazareth froze, suspended in the air, mesmerized.

"What is this? You cursed hell dragon, move your fat a**!" Satan himself had had to shake off the shock when the words had first filled his mind.

It was a forbidden art, barred even to him. She, this small female with no more than a handful of years to her name, had access to such magic. Well, s**t.

Ophiuchus flinched as Athena's magic increased - he was still practically right next to her. "Do you have any idea what just happened?" he hissed at her worriedly. "Or how you're going to control it?" There were dark winds across the battlefield, and then much of the loose magic began to converge to the center, to where Danni was. "Someone is going to have to up the curriculum," he muttered.

Ialo, his mind clouding from the magic, was forced to land - it was a lot less painful for a dragon to land on four feet, than on its spine at terminal velocity. The dark blue dragon landed across from the others, from Lin and Danni's family, and James - a quiet student, Ialo noted, proud that he knew the names of all the students and staff at his school.

His tail twitched, and swung back and forth, as the dragon took a stepped forward, and knelt. His eyes were completely black, with a think red slitted pupil - he was drawing power from what Riser had given him five years ago.

To hell with this. Ialo could feel himself going, but he ignored it. The dragon flicked his wings, and took off again, a beeline for Lazareth.

He was going to get one last parting shot, for pride's sake.

For this, he needed no magic. Danni could take it, if she needed it. But all he needed was a clear shot at Lazareth. Ialo pumped his wings as fast and as powerfully as he could, and shot up past Danni, past Lazareth and Satan, and high above every one else. He circled once, feeling the cold biting air slide against his scales.

Ialo looked down at Lazareth. He folded his wings in tightly, like a blue cocoon, and dove. He added a slight spin. That would change the terminal velocity, and alow him to reach a speed he had only ever reached once before, while training with Kai.

Like a blue bullet, Ialo charged the Hell Dragon from above, horns aimed right at the ********. There was no sound, only wind, as Ialo rammed into Lazareth, grabbing him and pulling him down. Even a dragon of Lazareth's size would not be able to completely resist the force of Ialo's tackle - because only then, several seconds later, was there a sonic boom.

Science, b***h, Ialo thought proudly, even in pain.

((Ok, no more Satan. I'm tired of his face.))

Danni strode forward through the air, using magic to keep her up. Her eyes were white and glassy now, glowing like the rest of her with the white magic that had engulfed her body. It blended with the black, giving her a grayish aura that still managed to sparkle.

"No more. No more games." Her voice seemed to echo, though she barely murmured the words, and Satan had no time to prepare before pure white chains popped out of voids in the sky, tethering him in place while he cursed and shouted, trying to pit his magic out of the combined power of the Ancients, the sorcerers and sorceresses below, and any other she'd decided to take from.

"You'll burn for this, Shadow Runner! Burn!" He shouted, and she stood in front of him, saw him for what he was. A dark smudge amidst a wall of white.

"No...But you will." She drew her hand back, let the magic ball in her palm, filled with the tears of the damned, the light of the innocents. And it was that magic she thrust into the devil's chest. And it was that magic that had him screaming in agony as it ate at him, searing flesh, the pure white flames devouring him.

And when it was over, when the last ash had fallen to the ground below, sucked up in the Ancients' vortex, the light faded from her eyes, replaced by a bright blue, the storm clouds cleared, and a rainbow, in the most cheesiet of endings, arced across Death Valley.

Drawing in a deep breath, she let herself drop onto a soft cloud of magic, facefirst so she saw everything below her. Her big brother, clutching the girl he loved and the sister he spoiled, reaching out for a boy wielding a scythe.

She saw Ialo, good, dependable, amazing Ialo, floating in the sky, wounds paritally healed by the magic in the air. She saw Athena and Adolf, still looking ready to pounce, and a sea of dementors and angels sealing the gates of hell where the demons had been coming from. She saw Ophi, bless him, there among the others, and her fathers, both of them, grinning up at her in their blood drenched clothes.

Arzol and the others were nowhere to be found, but Lazareth was there, having landed and curled up on the ground, looking like a disgruntled house cat ad he flicked his tail and grumbled about disrespecting your elders. And there, in the midst of it all, the Ancients, all of them, kneeled amidst the blood and blessed God knew what, sending their prayers to some invisible deity that, for some unknown reason, had decided she was the best candidate for killing Satan of all people.

((Aw, no more badies. That mean James not going to have to keep using powers....

And I wanted to have him do this: http://www.onemanga.com/Shaman_King/46/16/ ))

James felt the skeletons fighting more of the lesser demons that were arising around him, feeling the power flowing through him. And there was one thing that he could say with 100% certainty; he was completely terrified. His normal powers scared him... this was a lot more power than he'd ever felt before... and it was a lot more dangerous and terrifying than his normal powers... just controlling one of the spirits that killed his mother's boyfriend had been terrifying for him... and he was that little boy again, standing there, alone and terrified as he felt his powers kill.

He started rocking back and forth as he stood, putting both hands to his head as he felt the souls fighting, felt them killing the demons. He dropped his scythe, which clattered loudly to the ground next to him, the band of light that had been glowing fading entirely, leaving no mark that it had been there at all. James continued to rock, imagining that he was once again that little kid on the streets of New York City, alone in the darkness with the knowledge that he'd killed someone, and what his lights really were. He looked up, unable to see or hear anyone else as he stood there, tears streaming down his face... he was truly terrified of himself.

"STOP!" he shouted, his voice reverberating with what little power he had left in his body. It wasn't meant to destroy anything really, well... it was and it wasn't. It wasn't meant to destroy any of the enemy, it was meant to destroy his 'army.' And it did, the skeletons, or whatever they had possessed, instantly breaking apart or collapsing the different colored lights vanishing from everyone's sight but his once more. He laughed nervously... his terror coming out in the laughter as his eyes faded back to their usual color.

No longer sure where he was, he stumbled two steps forward, and felt the extreme backlash from his powers come back at him. His powers put an incredible strain on his untrained body since he rarely used them, and he stumbled to the right, before managing to stand up straight. "Night..." he said to no one in particular, before promptly passing out and falling onto the ground in front of him, coming dangerously close to hitting his head on a sharp rock. Instead, he hit a small round one and broke his nose.

Ophiuchus kept himself suspended in the air, his long hair and robes fluttering slightly in the wind. He was mouthing something to himself, counting on his fingers, surveying the group.

"James, and Athena, Ialo is going to go soon..." Three fingers. He scanned the area again. Even the demigod healer was visibly shaken by even a short while in this battle. It was sheer audacity, that a young girl could destroy Satan, that Ialo would so recklessly charge... no, wait, that was normal for that bone-headed descendant.

"And how are the rest of you doing?" Ophi's cordial tone was contextually sarcastic, although he wasn't being mean to those who had somehow heeded the call of a battle.

Adolf blinked slowly at Ophiuchus before taking James in his front teeth and placing the boy on his back as well. He might as well carry all who fell. He was the largest one who was still conscious, after all, and he'd heard it said that his fur was soft. He looked over to the dragon who was on the ground, now human. A bit of a stretch... He leaned forward and gently took the Headmaster as well, making for a little group of three on his back. His fur would probably be bloody, but that was easy to wash.