Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Hey, careful. Don't overexert yourself right now." Gianfar warned him gently, though his voice was muffled by the sleeve of his coat. Damn! Even with the sleeve he could smell that smoke. It was stuck in his nose. Ugh. As Atlas tried to get up Gianfar did his best to help him with the hand that wasn't protecting his face. "Good, don't worry. I won't ditch you or anything." He frowned and looked to Ganymede when it seemed he had hit his final straw.

Welp! This seemed as good a time as any to start moving to the top! Especially when things seemed to be getting worse. Were they really attacking Leopard's Eye now? How stupid! "He's right, we can't just give up even if we're sick of this. It actually looks like those who aren't senshi or negaverse are...okay-ish." From what little Gianfar could see, anyway. "Come on, let's get up there and kick the negaverse off this volcano, yeah?"

By that logic, "We should probably stick closer to the ground," Sheldon replied with a bit of a cough, his hand instinctively rising to cover his mouth. God, the years of smoking was so not paying off!

Or. Wait. Sheldon's eyebrows suddenly twitched as his eyes widened with an actual omg, hey that might work idea! Fingering the hem of his beat to s**t shirt, he pulled it up and over his head with a mouth full of hisses and swears as it slid over bruises and cuts (and a little bit of a sad moan over how really beat to s**t it was).

"How would you find us again?" He asked Ever, as he tore his shirt into large strips of cloth. "Not like we have signal flares or anything." It was a decent idea, but probably not in these conditions, his opinion anywho.

With his work done, and maybe six decent sized pieces of cloth in his hands, the slacker held them out to his civilian companions. "Ahaaa, filters."

Alumo made his way over to Lieutenant Moonstone and she felt herself nearly leaning toward him in gratitude. Until he'd made it to her, she'd felt very alone and very small in the wake of Leopard Eye's wrath. She pulled it together though and nodded so that he would know that she would do as he had pressed her to do.

Moonstone moved, sluggishly, out of the direct line from the top of the volcano; she nearly slipped several times but with the Captain's aid she would make it to air that was slightly less acrid, a little easier to breathe...something that she could breathe in and not feel as though invisible hands were grasping around her neck. "How can we get to him?"

"I don't know," he replied to Ganymede. "Probably. I think everyone's still trying to figure out what this all means... if it means anything." Atlas's voice was raspy from dehydration and quiet from not wanting to disturb his lungs too much -- the occasional bouts of coughing were doing that for him. "But I think it does. Maybe."

He didn't sound very convincing.

"Right now all everyone really knows is that the Negaverse kills people and wants to take over the world, and we're supposed to do something about it. So your life might have ended up getting worse anyway." Or you could be dead.

Alumo shook his head, keeping himself low to the ground, kneeling by Moonstone. "I'm not sure, just yet," he admitted rather mournfully. Let's face it — he didn't exactly like not knowing what to do, especially when not only were their lives in danger, but the success of the mission was dependent on what they could figure out to do. Sitting there and doing nothing was really all they could do until they figured out a better plan.

He kept the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth and painfully broken nose, sweat pouring down from his temple and mixing in with the dried blood on his face. It was miserable so high up on the volcano. If it erupted, they would surely be first to die. But they couldn't let that happen. They had to finish what they were sent there to do. They had to defeat the Guardian and take the field for the Negaverse.

"I could distract him and you can go aroun' him?" he threw out, not knowing what she was up for doing. She'd done so much already, it was no wonder why she looked like she was being worn down. He didn't want to push her to much. They would just have to do what they could and wait for backup.

((Gigi is still in Zone 5, but I don't think I can be online for the ending.))

Gigi was losing her grip on the situation. Up until the other girl asked, she’d assumed everyone was human (except the cat, of course) but now that she thought about it, some of the things she had heard being screamed across the battlefield suggested otherwise. She shrugged helplessly. ‘Normal’ seemed a little hazy right now.

The cat’s explanation helped a bit. Her ‘tapdancers’ seemed to be the ones that had weapons, and it would make sense that the lovely cat was with the light-coloured ‘ballerinas’. But then whose side were the lava-monsters on? She was mildly offended when Cora asked Castille to take care of her – hadn’t she been the one doing the protecting here? But more so when the cat slipped out of her arms.

“Wait…” she called, but it was clear the cat had a higher purpose here.

Castille took off too, in another direction. Gigi tried to follow the other girl, but first a thunderous bowling boulder, then a lava flow blocked her path, forcing her to backtrack, losing her way on the uneven ground. There was so much smoke.

Gigi dropped to her knees again as another fissure started to open, coughing and choking on the volcanic ash and gas. Her head hurt, and in her own little world, that meant she needed a coffee. Iced coffee would be *really* good right now. Another large piece of debris slammed into her and she rolled with it until it wedged up against a rock ridge and trapped her there, in a smoky triangular gap. The bruises and little bright-hot ash burns covering her were minor annoyances, but she couldn’t move and she couldn’t *breathe*. She closed her eyes.

The civilian was down for the count.

Azzo nodded, "Hope so, this seems to start getting to the part where normally you wake up and realize it was a bad dream...." He muttered coughing as well.

Azzo nodded at the there's no need to be fighting here, "Where is here anyways?" He asked curiously. "Do you know?"

"Polaris you're prolly not gunna like this, but rip off some of my pants leg and make us masks." He said without a second thought, however something seemed lacking, "Please." He added, yeah it was weird enough to request someone to rip his pants muchless having to use them as masks. He was sliding down closer to the ground so he could try to find a place to sit and let her have some room to work and maybe some more breathing space.

"It's best thing we have. Since there's nothing else to use." He was hoping that was true. "I'd do it myself but with a broken arm I don't think I could."

In Zone 9, Ares found herself near two of the season senshi. One she recognized well, and the other she remembered only vaguely from a previous battle in Elysion. Were they... holding hands? Before she could approach them, they were on the move again and rocks were flying toward her like sharpnel. Ares took a cut across her cheek, a nast gash to her left arm, and a cut to her thigh that tore through the pink lace of her stockings. For a 'Guardian,' Leopard's Eye was totally being a douche.

The sudden emergence of familiar tentacles shooting through the ground brought a confident grin to Ares' face. Scylla was here! Good! Out of the corner of her eye, though, she saw Sailor Leto walking over lava -- and then collapsing on a rock? "Leto," she murmured.

No way would Ares leave the girl alone to be picked off by a Nega. Billowing smoke poured out from where Leopard's Eye stood. Ares ripped her sash free from her waist and tied it thickly across her mouth. She did the same with the more gossamer ribbon over her eyes. It wouldn't be much protection, but it would help.

Taking off into the smoke, Ares came upon Sailor Leto. She had thought the girl had collapsed into unconscious, but it appeared that she was still awake. "Cadet," Ares shouted, though it was muffled. Without asking, she looped one arm under the girl and began shepherding her out of the thickness part of the smoke toward the edges of the battlefield, toward Zone 6. Part of her wanted to scold the girl for lying down on the job, but Leto had the power of lavawalking and too much talking would mean breathing in the smoke.

Ares settled for a steely gaze instead.