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Palatine, Squire of Venus – around Valhalla, Gev, Scholomance, Alexandria, etc.

Palatine eyed Scholomance. His magic would have been extremely useful against the General Queen if a large dragon hadn't flown into their midst.

“I don't suppose you can do anything about that, can you?”

It was a monstrosity of fire, teeth, claws, and a spiked tail. It's scales flew off in every direction. Conscious of Scholomance's existing injuries, Palatine did her best to shield him from whatever scales flew their way. Luckily, they did not have any of the larger ones to contend with, but the shrapnel of smaller chips tore gashes in her uniform and scraped little cuts along her face.

Worse than that, the youma was now a large ball of fire streaking through the sky.

“s**t.”

Palatine couldn't see how they were going to make it out of there with that thing swooping along the battlefield, cutting people down in its wake. A ring of fire surrounded them, and that wasn't counting the golems that blocked their path to the portal.

And Scholomance was right. Either their hour had already passed, or they were well on their way to reaching the end of it.

Then the hail started. It didn't seem to harm anyone in their little group, but all around agents of Chaos were being bombarded with it. She looked up to see how it might affect the dragon. Ultimately, Palatine could not be sure if it would do them any good. Even if the General Queen, the agents, and the youma on the group might be kept down by such an immense attack, the dragon could easily escape the area of attack, and right now that posed the biggest problem in their effort to escape.

“This isn't normal magic,” she observed. From her position, it was hard to see just how far it extended, but by the amount of agents and youma being affected, she could assume it spread over a pretty large portion of the battle field. “I've never seen any magic extend this far or last so long.”

Not that she'd noticed, at least. Ganymede's crystal magic seemed to have a pretty big range, but it puttered out far more quickly than this. Palatine looked around the area to see who might have been responsible for casting it. One of their strongest, obviously. She could still feel the aura of a Prince or Princess on the battlefield, and it was obviously not coming from Ganymede. Soon she spied another winged figure holding a glimmering crystal aloft. His wings were as expansive as Ganymede's, but not the silvery white she was used to. She could not tell their exact color, but from this distance they almost looked like they could be black.

It hardly mattered right then. What mattered was that they might have a slim chance of moving forward.

“Let's go,” she said, and motioned for Valhalla, the Knight of Ganymede (Gevaudan), Scholomance, and the newly arrived Squire of Mercury (Alexandria) to begin making their way toward the location of the portal. Even if they didn't get very far, they'd at least be closer to it than they were now. Alexandria carried the other unconscious Senshi (Harmonia), so there was no other reason for them to linger around any longer.

"There's nothing we can do about the General Queen, unless you decide to stay and help the ones still fighting her," Palatine said, looking to Scholomance again. "If feel like, with the dragon around, the chance of getting rid of her is lost to us."

The moment she was alone she knew that it wasn't a good idea. Running towards anyone- running away, for that matter, running at all was out at this point, even breathing made the world spin, and that was before the area started to fill up with smoke.

Cybele coughed. Her eyes had already been watering, but now it was so bad that she couldn't see. Not really, anyway. The world was a blur. Just staying conscious was a struggle. Why did these things always end in fire? And... ice? She wasn't sure, but she thought she could see ice, falling from above. That was new.

There was still a fairly large cluster of spiked crystals next to her, which was really the only thing she could clearly see. She broke another off in case something decided to get to close to her...

And then, as if breathing fire wasn't enough, the dragon decided to ignite.
Well... at least that meant she could see it through the smoke? Cybele threw the crystal in its direction with all her remaining strength.

[Non-rolling posts here... Heap of rolling posts coming after.]

Glitnir, Knight of Mars - vs. Aurostibite

Two headshots in a row was no small feat, but the wounds Glitnir sustained on his legs earlier still smarted and were definitely still bleeding. Treating those discreetly was probably going to be difficult. He figured that the lack of immediate counter meant that he'd managed to rattle the General a bit, but he still held the chain of his scale tightly, ready to bonk him again if he could. Maybe the third time would be the charm.

The General asked an interesting question. Did he feel strong? What did it matter? "I don't know. Do you?"



Kitalpha - vs. Alsafi

What the hell? It got COLD. And there was hail falling all around Kitalpha and her crazed dragon-loving adversary (the fact that there was a White Moon senshi directly on top of her was probably what spared her from being directly nailed by the hail). This situation was not helping her recover from being toasted from the inside out earlier, leaving her plenty vulnerable to Alsafi just wailing on her like a punching bag. Screeching like a banshee, Kitalpha continued to flail and grab for anything she could: hair, face, maybe she could grab her neck and strangle her a bit... mostly all that got through was her usual foul speech spew. "Get OFF of me! There's a big-a** dragon over there, why don't you go over there and put your head up its a** if you love dragons so much?"



Lt. Paracelsian - Running around towards the back and having a godawful time

Paracelsian was rudely awoken from his spontaneous human combustion-induced slump by a sudden chill and the feeling of ice plonking all over him. Even if he still felt kind of woozy from being set on metaphorical fire, that was enough to make him pull himself up. Given what was going on, he felt perfectly justified in losing his cool for a hot second (or several). "What is WRONG with you people?!" he hollered out, scrambling to his feet to find a place to hide from the hail and the goddamn dragon. Yes, it would not be the finest moment of his Negaverse career, but discretion was the better part of valor sometimes.

Falias, Squire of Earth

Whilst the shard of crystal that he threw appeared to have landed a direct hit on the dragon, Falias wasn't sure if it had had much effect on the thing.

At any rate it didn't seem like the youma had slowed down any, even though he didn't appear to have been the only one to have come up with the idea to try throwing bits of crystal.

And at least one attack appeared to have caused it to bellow.

Green eyes peered at the youma puzzled as it suddenly drew its legs up and then widened as the thing suddenly shook - causing some of what was left of its scales to come tumbling down.

Falias cursed as the implication of the falling scales sunk in and did his best to dodge - because some of the scales were big and looked heavy and he did not much fancy his chances if he ended up getting struck by any of them.

Perhaps his luck was finally deciding that now was a good time to start giving him a break again because somehow Falias managed to escape the worst of the impromptu 'scale shower' and then he saw the dragon and found himself wondering if he'd thought too soon because somehow the damned thing had managed to light itself on freaking fire.

He did his best not to get too close as he picked up another shard of crystal and did his best to once again fling it as hard as he could in the direction of the dragon youma.

It was only after he had flung the shard that he spotted the red-haired senshi (Sabine) garbed in red and gold, it taking a few moments to recall the young senshi who had been by Kairatos before he had ended up getting separated from that particular group.

The thought that she might know where the Mars Knight and the others were had him moving towards the senshi, as he did his best to try not to stumble over bits of the larger scales from the dragon youma as he tried to called out to her "Hey!".

And then to add to the screwed-up-ness of his current situation, it suddenly started to hail.

Perhaps it was one more thing on top of a whole lot of things, but it took a good few moments before Falias realised that for whatever the reason none of the hail was hitting him.

Eternal Sailor Megrez - vs. Dragon

Megrez felt a pang of dismay when she saw how woefully little Sadachbia's bricks did. Hopefully she would have more luck. Sadachbia's bricks were lightweight, while Megrez's ostrich eggs were... ostrich eggs. Big, hard, heavy, generally capable of putting people in bad places and dusting bigger youma. For a moment, she wondered if an omelet would pop into existence briefly once the egg hit the beast, but she quickly pushed aside the notion for more important things.

When she called the ostrich egg into existence and hurled it at the dragon, it seemed to land a solid hit, though maybe it could have done more.

Super Sailor Cor Caroli - Vs. Dragon

There was not a single thing about this situation that didn't suck.

Everything was on fire, everything that wasn't on fire was getting hit with ice, and generally everything was a mess. Cor Caroli was not handling the chaos well; if he felt phenomenally useless before, this incident was just grinding it in. He couldn't snipe the youma from afar like some could, and he couldn't directly heal people that had gotten injured in the whole fiasco. All he could do was keep them fighting, and there were just too many of them for him to even pick a target.

Some people were lobbing the crystal spikes at the creature; that was something, but he didn't feel confident about his chances of doing much.

...Actually, he managed to get a fairly direct hit in. Maybe his lack of confidence was misplaced.

Super Sailor Thrymr, Senshi of the Southern Lights - with Labyrinthite, away from everyone else


The press of the general's thumb against the cut on his cheek made Thrymr drag in a sharp breath - but the sting of that pressure was nothing like the one around his starseed, Labyrinthite's grasp tightening; and Thrymr let out a cry this time, his entire body trembling, pain ricocheting up and down his spine.

His cheeks were hot, damp with the tears that kept falling, and everywhere around them was fire, scorching its way across the ground. The air felt thick with it, and the smoke that was almost suffocating in its potency; Thrymr's lungs felt as though they were burning with each breath.

His gaze was fixed on Labyrinthite, some terrible, twisted force making him unable to pull away. The grasp that was around his starseed was reason enough to remain entirely still, but Thrymr's heart was erratic in his chest, pounding hard enough that he thought it might burst out entirely.

Did he fear death? He had told Mont Blonc, told Aegir, that he didn't want to be alone; that being alone was more painful than anything else, that being lost without a purpose was like trying to breathe through a wall of sandpaper. He feared that, most of all.

Slowly, Thrymr shook his head. "No," he said hoarsely, and then, painfully honest to a fault, "Just life."

His lips pressed together. One hand twitched and then rose, away from where it lay on Labyrinthite's wrist, and trembling fingers pressed against the side of the general's face. Thrymr's hand slid across cheek and he felt heat beneath his palm, from the fire and from the man himself, shaking with a mixture of emotions that he could not separate from one another.

"Kindness means the most for men like you," Thrymr whispered.