Welcome to Gaia! ::

Merope had been hurt -- for real, this time. He'd gone and done his water attack when it was well below freezing outside, and had ended himself up stuck to the side of the very foe everyone was trying to defeat. And in the scenario of having to choose between joining the fight and ensuring the safety of his friend... Atlas chose the safety of his friend, and miraculously managed to dash out and catch him before he could get a concussion on top of cold he would definitely be suffering from later. The next few minutes had been spent trying to help his teammate free his arm, carefully chipping away at the ice with bricks and icicles.

They'd made some progress. Hopefully enough that he could still fight... and that he wouldn't lose his arm in the process. It had gotten incredibly, ridiculously cold. Atlas had thought that earning pants would do something to help him endure winter a little better. He had been terribly, disastrously wrong. He could not feel his fingers or his face at all. Other extremities would be left to the imagination, but he was probably at least a little bit better off than the male half of the Gemini duo.

Of course, wave after wave of people who didn't currently care what side they were on running past them and towards the witch's throne had a way of catching one's attention. Atlas rose from where he'd been kneeling on the ground, and watched in no shortage of awe as everyone wailed on her throne -- she was actually taking damage.

He could help, he knew it. And if he aimed at the center of where the fountain was, it would be at no risk to anybody.

Without a second thought Atlas leapt back onto the scene, dashing into the fray himself. He threw out his arm as he ran, the throne directly in his sights, and the words came to his lips before he even had to think them.

"Crushing Force, Gravitation!"

Gunn saw the crumbling ice queen from her place behind Euterpe. She saw the way each hit to the throne was causing the queen to collapse. And more than that, she understood what she had to do to get that Crystal. It was obvious, wasn't it? Take out the throne, from up close. When the ice woman fell, get there first and run like hell.

She straightened up, threw herself towards Kaguya--shoving Euterpe aside as she barreled through the crowd to deliver a blow that she hoped would contribute to the invader's downfall.

(Rolling for Gunn!)

---

Virgo made it to the Princess a few moments behind Gemini; she looked at his horse, then up to him, with an expression of disbelief. A good Captain would... what would a good Captain do? Would she chase the Crystal--because the whispers were overwhelming now--or protect the Princess?

In the end, a Crystal was never going to equal up to the power of the Opal. And the only one who could use that Crystal was Chronos. So she'd stay with her princess. "Virgo Exquisite Refraction," she incanted, throwing her veil high over all of them. The gossamer fabric spread, settling her protective magic over Chronos, Flora and Gemini. No matter what, none of them would be getting hurt!

Castor was down. Linarite had paused again in her attack as the ice b***h had crumbled beneath the attacks of the assorted populace. Senshi, Negaverse, civilian, what did it matter when they were all hoping to keep this planet for themselves? She was obviously the greater threat but Linarite's particular help was no longer required. The bluenette had stood unflinching as shards of glass were flung back and forth between the two powered souls that meant the most to her outside of her own blood, but now Tanzanite was on to greater prey.

Lina didn't blame her. Castor was nothing compared to greater power, and with that power he was so much more easily eliminated. He'd been abandoned by Tanz so that now Lina could have stepped up and taken the prize of his star seed for herself the way that she'd been tasked so many months ago. The wind was not howling so greatly that she could not teleport the scant yards required.

But she had promised, hadn't she?

So Linarite simply stood where both of the fighters could see her, leaning again against the staff that'd been driven again into the ground. It gave her purchase against the wind and she watched. And she waited. The moment would come, eventually.

Andeon sat on his horse.

"Virgo, hey Virgo. Stop casting s**t and look. Look. Hey Virgo. Hey, hey Virgo?"

Only when he was certain that he had her attention did he grin like an idiot, "I'm on a horse."

No, really. That's all he cared about. Snow princess? Crystal?

He was on a horse.

"And I got two tickets to that thing you love."

-A swift nod was offered, along with her arm as a crutch, though in the end it was mostly Chibimoon's own powers that got her to the requested senshi. If things weren't so crazy there might have been a twinge of jealousy in the senshi of the Canopy. But for now the 'how' they won carried little importance to the actual fact that they could and would win. If she needed the help of Pegasus then Juno wouldn't argue it. Her hands balled to fists, taking place near Pegasus and her princess as the attack flew once again. She'd need protecting once she was drained of energy and Juno was ready to play the shield if it came down to it.-

"A crystal?" -Her eyes shot up. She'd never seen one super close, at the Halloween battle it'd always been way out of reach to her, but it was easy enough to spot.-

"We should split up to try and end up where we think it will fall. Eventually one of these attacks is going to knock it loose."

Large chunks of ice limbs thudded to the ground, the clatter forcing Sinon to look up and spot the glowing crystal embedded in the woman’s face. Of course, the talking ice statue had a freaking crystal. That explained so many things, but also brewed more questions. Yet most importantly, who was going to get that crystal? The Negaverse had managed to claim the last two and Sinon be damned if she let them snatch a third one.

She squirmed through the crowd, her eyes constantly focused on Princess Kaguya and the glowing crystal. Out of the corner of her eye Sinon spotted a Negaverse agent—oh my god what was that arm holy crap—reaching for the crystal as well. The arm terrified her like hell, but she swallowed her fear and also reached for the crystal anyways. I-It’d be fine, right?

With the problem of keeping the Princess safe solved for the moment, she turned to her teammate to give him and his horse a skeptical look. Virgo gingerly patted the horse's neck, more puzzled than anything. "Yes," she said, more confused than anything, "you are."

There was a momentary pause as she turned to watch the progress of the snow queen's destruction. He was on a horse. The problem was addressed. She was incredibly tempted to ask if she could sit with him but she was pretty sure there were rules about sitting on horses with boys. Like you only sat on horses with boys you wanted to marry. She did not want to marry Andeon, so she did not want to sit on his horse, no matter how amazing it was. Not even if it could take her around the universe and to all the other places.

She was still thinking about the horse when he started talking about tickets. Then she turned back to Andeon, and told him very sternly, "You don't need tickets to go to the ice cream parlor, Andeon. Not even if you're only getting hot cocoa."

Then she smiled and patted Andeon's knee.