interstellar5555 | ☆TRACK XIII: HIT THE BOTTOM PT 2

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☆TRACK XIII: HIT THE BOTTOM PT 2

It’s almost the very end of the Tokyo tour when it happens. There was no way for anyone to be sure when exactly Gold would strike, but at least with the information gained from Silver and their dreams, the rebels have been able to prepare and lay in wait. Despite some effort, contact with Gold has been impossible.

It isn’t until Lesedi has presented herself on stage that Gold comes out of hiding. It’s a special occasion, presumably. Maybe our of arrogance, or maybe as some key feature of her plan, one of the final performances is Lesedi Santiago herself singing. The crowd loves it, irrationally so – it’s clear to anyone that knows what’s going on that by this point Lesedi could be making fart sounds into a microphone and the audience would swoon.

The magic is thick, and the civilians are all but zombies in its wake. So much, so, that they don’t even seem to notice when Gold drops the entire metal lighting structure right onto the stage, on top of Santiago, mid performance. Gold rides the structure down, and metal bends and grinds, screeching as lights explode and sparks fly.

It’s so brazen that even Lesedi doesn’t seem to be expecting it. That becomes all too obvious when the nebulae emerges from the wreckage, furious and literally glowing with astral energy. Her song and its momentum has been cut like a rope, and the stage has fallen down like the figurative piano.

“What is this?!” she screeches, indignant beyond words but ostensibly not actually hurt. Metal shrapnel bursts into the air as Gold emerges as well, a powerful aura surging around their masked form as well. The remaining musicians that were dosed with Gold’s powder some months ago will feel a strange pull against their spirits.

“You.”

The word is cold, in contrast to Lesedi’s fury only a moment before. Gold only offers a theatrical shrug as they tight rope walk across twisted metal scaffolding. The crowd roars in appreciate for a performance that only they seem to understand.

“This is where you swear you’re going to destroy me, right?” Gold says, with antagonizing ambivalence. “Well, here’s your chance, princess.”

Yet, in this moment, Silver is nowhere to be seen.

[This is mostly going to be one, big free for all log, though you can make separate top levels if they aren’t going to be related to the main fight. Remember, your actions here matter! What players characters do or don’t do will heavily affect the outcome.]

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With Connie and Lion's unexpected entrance an idea hits Amethyst. And Pearl claims I don't think enough. Meh. Out of habit she turns to Garnet for confirmation.

"Hey Garnet, what do you say we take the Scary Boss Lady's second potential power snack somewhere far far away?"

What weapon? How...how do we even--

Garnet's attention is brought back as Amethyst asks the question. Oh, yes, right. That.

"Yes? That...might be an idea!"

An injury like the one Gold just got isn't much better than what Santiago was aiming to do. Hopefully someone has a healing trick up their sleeve. Either way, Roy decides he's not going to wait to find out. If Santiago doesn't go after Gold again she'll likely go after 3 or the unexpected girl and lion duo that just dropped in.

"We need help," he says as he fishes the boon he had received from the ghosts from his pocket and crushes it in his palm. Time to call in that favor.

This is getting bad. This is going bad so fast, and he can't--he can't let this happen, he can't let it all fall apart here, but so much is happening and there's too many people and he can't think fast enough, he can barely think at all but if they don't do something she's going to--

Lion's roar cuts through the cacophony, and Multiverse jerks to attention as the beast and his furious rider come bursting through to join the fray.

"Connie--?!"

The sight of her pushes away some of the suffocating crowd of thoughts. He can't lose track of what's in front of him, what they need. They've come too far to lose their rhythm now. Multiverse takes a deep breath, steadying his hands before playing again.

Artolo Apemis has been trying to stay the fuck out of the procedings going on thus far. Part of this is because there's way too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak- even from the distance he's been keeping, first at the local booze station and then in the crowds, that much has been obvious to him. Everyone has been focused on the showdown taking place, but who's been taking care of all the dumb idiot bewitched civilians?

..As it turns out, him. That's what he's been doing.

But at some point, forcefully pushing people to the exits, he looks back and something about the scene strikes him. Is he really going to do nothing? Just going to run away?

Man, fuck that.

Pushing back into the fray, Artolo looks around and spots a certain musically powerful boyband loser who's going to get his name called in a hot minute. "YO, JAMIE!" Is that a bottle of cheap beer getting thrown his way with unnatural accuracy? Absolutely. From across the way, Artolo is grinning as he slides the shades from his face.... and reveals bright glowing eyes.

"Wanna be drunk dumb assholes?"

There's too many people around in this clusterfuck for him to just... he doesn't know. Drop all the speakers on her? Yeah, can't do that. So Artolo tries to do the next best thing: raising one hand surrounded by a fluctuating red-blue glow, he tries to pour all his telekinetic energy into trapping Lesedi Santiago where she is.

Hopefully someone can do something with that, even if he only holds her for a second, because he's got nothing. That's why he's using his other hand to drink from another beer bottle.

Oh Jesus shit.

Jamie was just going to keep urging the concertgoers away from the venue, trying to deprive Santiago of their energy - it's a solid plan and someone has to keep it up, after Terry ran off to throw himself into the jaws of death - but then Lesedi stabs Cass in the torso, and after that Jamie's distracted by a bottle coming straight at his face.

Bottle-throwing might be a normal occupational hazard for some acts, but boyband audiences don't generally throw liquor containers at the stage, so Jamie is actually a little surprised, even as he uses his magic to arrest the bottle's flight a couple inches from his face.

He's less surprised when he figures out who threw it. Kind of horrified, though, when Artolo proceeds to show off his glowy eyes and use some kind of magic mojo on Santiago.

For whatever reason, this is the final straw. Maybe it's Art calling him out by name, maybe it's seeing Cass mortally wounded by their shitty boss, maybe it's just everything that's at stake right now, but Jamie decides that now is when he needs to do something really, really stupid.

"You dumbass," he says, probably directed at Artolo. (In response to this utterance, someone in the crowd screams "WE LOVE YOU, FLASHSTEP!") Jamie bounds off the stage, parting the crowd before him almost as an afterthought, and charges toward the altercation surrounding Santiago. He's still hanging onto the beer bottle. What if he can use it? A thrown object won't have any effect, obviously, and it's too risky to turn it into something flamey or spatter-y like acid, but what if...

He pounds across the concert grounds, leaps onto the backs of some enraptured fans ("'scuse me sorry," he says distractedly as he does so) and uses them as a platform to launch himself into the air. It's almost all natural athleticism; he's a runt, but he's a runt who's in particularly good shape.

With a sort of snarly grunt he flings the bottle at Lesedi, only instead of a bottle it's now a pointy metal spike, aimed right at her head and propelled by sheer fury.

Squalo's thought process is similar to Art's by the time he finally manages to get to the stage. Bailing and leaving feels really damn tempting right now. His people got what they came for, and none of them exactly cared what happened to this world. But he's never run away from a fight in his life, and he's not about to start now.

He doesn't have a sword, which sucks. He managed to pick up a relatively straight, arm-long piece of pipe, either on the way or from whatever stash the rebels allowed him near, and that sort of sucks too but it's the best he's got. The little shark disappears, letting him focus better on his makeshift weapon, and it flares blue, covered in his nullifying flame.

He moves fast, though he's not quite back to top shape yet. He tries to time it just as a bunch of others seem to be throwing everything at Lesedi. She can't possibly bitchslap all of them at the same time, and if she can, hey. The next wave of attackers will have something to learn from.

(If he does manage to reach her, he'll be trying to shove that magic chloroform covered stick into whatever part of her he can reach. If she's still huge, it's... probably up her ass? Leg? In normal size, he'll just try to go for the obvious middle of the chest. At the very least, maybe taking care of this painfully blatant charge will take her attention away from Boyband Lightweight's headshot.)

~~(Oh yeah. He does supposedly also have ghost protection connected to him.)~~

Edited (idk if it's relevant but here we go. ) 2016-09-02 08:46 (UTC)

Fucking christ. There's so much happening at once and now Jamie's here too? There's a split second panic-- he can't protect Jamie from Lesedi if she turns on him, he's not strong enough, and now Gold's coughing up blood, and this is all just getting so fucked up so fast. You know, from a starting place of "extremely fucked up."

There's a lot of people focusing on Lesedi, so Terry opts for the next dumbest thing he's done since joining the fray to begin with. Using a burst of magic to hurl himself across the stage and grab Gold in some attempt to pull her off that hand and away from Lesedi.

There's so much going on, from so many direction, that it's hard to track of his own rhythm let alone anybody else's. Yet, the weight of necessity has grounded Multiverse, at least for now, and even though the memories from Steven's side are still unclear, he knows he can't risk letting Connie getting hurt.

She tried to save him. He remembered her. He remembered them dancing on the beach, and everything that it meant to him. If he's every going to get to be that person again, he can't give up.

"Let's do this!" Multiverse yells, and maybe it's just sheer blind positivity for the sake of it. But that's how showmanship works, right? You make yourself believe it so everybody else can.

His bass rhythm falls back into sync, pushing back against Lesedi's own flickering control.

The ink is passe by now - things are too far gone for Lesedi to be very concerned about embarrassment or indignanty. They are a bit of a distraction, though - which is enough for Lion and Connie to make their move, almost bowling the nebulae over with a surprise teleporting leap.

She's forced to wrench her hand out of Gold without being able to inflict much more damage. One of her hands swings up to clutch Lion's paw, the other pressing against his sternum, as she pushes back against the beast and his mount, the remains of her high heels digging into the floor. Vicious, she's sure, but lions are nothing but her mascots. This is nothing. Nothing.

She manages to hurl Lion and Connie away from her, and is just about to turn to finish the job when more comes along.

Somewhere inside of her, Lesedi Santiago has started to become afraid. This isn't going how she wanted, and even her vast storage of musical energy is failing her. This isn't how things should go, and it's an outcome she had never considered.

And then Artolo attacks, and she can tell exactly where it's coming from. Just one more betrayal. Again, and again, and again-

She's hard to keep a hold of. Telekinesis affects physical matter, and she's only partly that. She jerks back and forth, parts of her body fragmenting and becoming mist-like to accommodate. She tried to teleport, but something else is holding her now - magic coming from somewhere else. Somewhere near-

Jamie's pierces her straight through the head.

She yelps out her hurt, a hand going up to seize the thing and to try to wrench it out of what should have been her brain. There's no blood - just the image of the spike going cleanly through her skull. And then Squalo jumps her with the pipe, and something about it is far more draining than any mundane object should be.

Gold staggers back with Terry's arms around her, blood gushing from the wound in her chest. Fingers don't make that clean of a wound, do they?

For a moment, Anansi's heart stops, the familiar sight nearly wrenching her from her spell. That stupid alien bitch - their deaths have always just been so simple to her, hadn't they? Just one moment, one touch of that spacial rift, and they're gone. Even for the best of them. At least, it had been, until the likes of Anansi had come around.

She jumps the gun, the moment she sees Gold's blood. She launches the spell that her and Juno were preparing with a lyricless incantation - making her stay still, for just a little longer.

Juno watches in confusion, effortlessly shifting her tune to match Anansi's derailment of their plan. With their tunes so intermingled, she's noticed something awry - but neither of them can risk taking a moment away from their casting in order to acknowledge it.

"Thanks, buddy," Gold slurs as Terry pulls her back, cupping the spot on her chest where Lesedi's fingers had been emerging from only a few moments ago. This is so shit, she can't help but think. She's going to lose her rhythm at this rate, and then what? "C'mon, Gold, walk it off..."

Her magic could heal this sort of thing, but it would take more focus than she can dedicate. She'd have to break this spell to start one so completely different, and then everything would just be fucked. She can deal with a sucking chest wound for a few minutes if that's the alternative, right? Haha...

She feels the moment that the spirit of Arpegius appears. It's such a sad familiar presence, she can't help but almost laugh. She doesn't know how he knew this was happening, or how he knew this was just the moment they needed. But, hey. She'll take it.

Arpegius appears near Roy, called by his summons. It doesn't take long for him to clue into what's happening either.

"We're going to fix this," he'll say to Roy, before flying off to where Gold and Terry are standing. He doesn't spare a moment to dally or ask for permission - he leaps straight into Gold's body, and she seems to accept it without qualm.

She stands back onto her own feet, the bloodflow slowing as she clenches her fists, her power mingling with the spirit's.

"Hey man," she says, quietly. "It's been a while."

Last chance. Better make it count. Arpegius agrees.

Lesedi too distracted to see it coming. Gold is out for the count, as far as she's concerned. Down and bleeding. But no, not yet. Not until this is done.

Syncing with the music of the other musicians, Gold reclaims her song. She moves so quickly, she almost puts Lesedi to shame.

Music magic has always been the bending of reality through spiritual energy. Most people don't have enough to create much tangible effect - a little bit of well wishing, maybe, or enough spite to give someone a stomach ache. A crowd, though - there isn't much a crowd can't do if they were all in unison. Something that never really happens outside of the craft.

That's the magic of it. Making things happen that shouldn't. Things like shattering a nebulae's spirit.

Gold reaches her hands into Lesedi, grasping for that spirit like something physical. The will of her magic makes it so. She takes one half in each hand and then rips-

The sound it makes is nothing human, and the release of force is enough to blow everyone surrounding Lesedi back like a bomb detonation. Gold never claimed it to be elegant. But hey, sometimes that works.

Edited 2016-09-05 03:22 (UTC)

Lesedi vanishes, but not to anywhere else. Its like her physicality has just been torn away, like she's been ripped in half and left to blow away in the wind. It seems like that, anyway, but these things are rarely that simple.

Left in her place is what can only be described as some kind of spacial rift - like a shattered place between reality and space-time that is impossible to describe or even look at. The pieces one can see are like a vaporous cloud of starlight and lightning. There is a scream, but its not something you hear so much as you feel.

The rift flickers in place, tendrils of space reaching out as if trying to take form and then failing. The energy moves towards Jenny's fallen form, but Gold is already staggering to her feet and moving herself in the way.

The light flair and then start to fade, rushing from the dimension as if sucked into another by sheer pressure.

They only get a few moments of warning. Those from Pride that still have their chips in will feel the tingling of something pulling at them, too - the feeling of being teleported, but with much greater effort than it ever took Lesedi before. She's leaving, and she's taking them with her.

Steven can feel what's coming, and he knows there's only one thing he can do. In a burst of fear and determination intermingled, he forces Multiverse back apart - if they stay together, he knows she'll just take Greg with him. That's not something he can let happen.

He tumbles back into his regular form, the shield aspects of the guitar poofing. He looks at the rift with hunted eyes, and then quickly looks back to Greg. The stress is evident, but it comes a certain confidence in the necessity of this.

"It's okay!" he says to Greg, and Connie, and the Crystal Gems that he barely remembers. "We'll figure it out!"

Jamie hits the ground in an ungainly sprawl, rolls into a sitting position and sort of clambers his way up the nearest person to stand upright, gawping at the stage. He wasn't sure what he was expecting when he lobbed the transformed beer bottle at Lesedi's head, but when he sees her lurching around with the spike penetrating her skull he feels unexpectedly sick to his stomach. Had he actually done that? She was a monster, yes, but was it really okay to try to straight-up murder her like that?

He doesn't have a lot of time to contemplate it before the situation reaches its apparent climax.

The sound of Santiago's core being ripped apart sets his teeth on edge, and he cringes, horrified but unable to tear his eyes away, even as she disintegrates into something he can't begin to comprehend. Coupled with the scream that ripples seemingly through his entire being, it makes Jamie feel as though he's on the precipice of complete insanity, witnessing something a normal human was never meant to see.

The pull catches him by surprise, and he's seized by utter panic. The thing that was Lesedi Santiago is trying to drag him with it into wherever it's going, and that terrifies him more than anything else. He can't manage much more beyond an inarticulate screech of fear before he vanishes.

Well. That actually ended better than he'd expected. Guess this Gold person was fairly competent after all. Or that's what he'll think once he's done seeing green stars. The force of the blast throws him back pretty hard and he hits one of the constructs of the stage - people without built up tolerance for cranial trauma would probably get knocked out, he's just really disoriented for a moment.

Before he can do much else or even get to his feet, Lesedi is blowing away. Is it... over? It feels somewhat final, but also... anticlimatic. Well. Good enough for him, at any rate. He's getting the fuck outta here.

The magical backlash of the assault is the cherry on top of a sundae of chaos and trauma. Greg likely couldn't have held onto Multiverse's form much longer even if Steven hadn't pushed him away. He falls out of the fusion, his ordinary guitar digging uncomfortably into his ribs.

In the instant it takes Greg to get back to his feet, he can already feel it's too late. In his disorientation, his fear and his weakness, there's nothing he can do to stop Lesedi's throes of desperate power from latching onto Steven and Garnet again.

But they've hurt her. She can't hold onto them long like this, can they? This is--it's going to work out. Sick, hopeless fear pools in Greg's gut, and he struggles to see past it. They're so close. They're going to figure this out, fear and pain and misery or no.

"If every pork chop were perfect, we wouldn't have hot dogs."

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☆TRACK XIII: HIT THE BOTTOM PT 2

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#yolo

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