He's going to do something disruptive. Something that may as well show the woeful uselessness of this whole endeavor, and maybe get me towards a research position. On the other side, someone may get hurt.
Salvia looks Maseyo in the eye for a fraction of a second before making her decision. Then, she waves goodbye to him and moves to a reserved spot, taking out the magatama and an array of precision tools. Among the list is sure to be something she can use to discern its properties.
"With gusto!"
Putting words into actions, Aina bounces up the steps whistling tunelessly. She keeps an eye out for more cultists and where they might be hiding while trying not to get distracted by any machinery unless it leads to secret doors.
"This is actually kind of fun, even if I didn't get to pick who or what I am," she admits quietly to herself after she's down the hall and out of earshot.
"I-I'm sorry. I g-g-got lost," Aila lies as she reaches for the door to find it locked. Something about the voice made the back of her neck prickle and her fingers tingle unpleasantly. With no other option, she carefully walks towards the door haloed in the comparatively bright light.
"M-may I go this way? The other door is locked."
As Chessa begins to realize that she overshot, she twists her body and begins to shrink back down to cute-form to limit the damage... though the force of impact would be less for her target, all of it had to go somewhere...
Returning to your table, and the tools you brought, you set to work examining the stone.
The cultist by the door shakes their head. "All clear, not so much as torch light. I think they took the detour. I don't know how, that secret door is so obvious..."
Phil clambers off the cultist, uneasy. The group is less divided, and you broke the tension expertly. He's no longer being actively pushed past the edge, but he still has unresolved feelings.
Aina flinches away from the errant missile, but it does little to dampen her enthusiasm. She catches up to the cultist and tumbles past them to stand between them and the exit with her "sword" pointed at their chest.
"Aw. You're not even going to say 'Hi' before running off? That's just mean," she coos before tapping the cultist on the chest with the tip of the boffer. "And that's two for me!"
Aila finds the acrid smell overwhelming and starts coughing as she backs away from the door and whatever it was that was so close to her. She stumbles and hits the floor with a yelp as she nears the wall. She tries to see through the gloom, but her eyes haven't adjusted to the dim lighting.
"C-can you open the door I came in through, please," she asks once the coughing fit has died down. The tremulous note in her voice betrays the fear she's feeling, a fear that went beyond the fear of just getting in trouble. Something about this room and its occupant made her hair stand on end and gave her chills.
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"Good." Chessa says, running her tail under her victim's chin, "Now that you're all on the same team, you'll make fur an epic final encounter. Are you ready to practice, Phil?" Chessa asks, being gentle with one of her paws as she plops onto the ground between herself and Phil, still in kitten form.
"I think we'll know when they're coming, 'cause no way my Meowster won't call out for me when they know the final encounter is just ahead." Chessa states, matter-of-factly as her tail dances.
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Steel and silver flashed under Salvia's hands, not as deadly blades but as delicate tools, prodding and poking at the ornament as she lost herself in her own focus.
The assassin jams a painter into the back of Aina’s original target hard enough to make them shout. A murmur among the cultists indicates indicates they’ll stop pulling punches.
Then, Brilliance’s voice rings out over the scuffle: “Daedel Faroth!”
Everyone stops, and an eerie silence falls over the dungeon as the assassin, two of the cultists, and Hiro double over. The shadows of the four humans peel off of the ground and stand upright, moving in halting, stiff motions like shadow puppets.
“Briliance, what is this?” Conquest collects their javelin and prepares to fight. The cutlists have backed up against the walls as the shadows close in on the party members nearest to them.
“Daedel Faroth!” Brilliance’s voice echoes down the halls, and everyone freezes. Some of the cultists clutch at their stomachs. A chill runs up Chessa’s spine as the shadows of Phil and two of the cultists begin to peel up from the ground and separate from their hosts.
Phil’s shadow seems substantially more corporeal than the two human shadows, eyes glowing red in the pits of his eye sockets. Worse yet, it immediately begins to swell to his combat form, tail lashing.
The cultists fall back, forming a line together with Chessa and Phil.
Aina has a moment of clarity as she feels the two coming up behind her. She can feel the flow of movement around her. With surprising speed, she ducks down and spins between them as she gets behind them. A grin spreads on her face that disappears in a look of shock as she hears one of the ones playing the cultists shout in pain.
"HEY! Stop trying to hurt people! We're here to..." she begins to shout before Brilliance's voice rings out and cuts across her anger at the brutality of one of her comrades. Some of their shadows come to life, peeling off the floor and separating themselves from their owners.
Aina's face turns bone white as she looks around, scared, and confused. Her mind buzzes as she tries to formulate a plan, but there's only one thing she can do.
Run.
She grabs anyone who looks like they aren't affected by Brilliance's words and tries to lead them out, bullying her way past the bottlenecks and trying her best to save who she can. What had been something that is supposed to be fun has turned into a nightmare.
Aina prays that Aila is safe and away from all of this.
"W-w-who are you?"
Aila's voice is barely a whisper as she asks her question and curls up in the corner of the room.
"W-w-what do you want from me?"
Aina feels her feet leave the ground as two of the cultists grab her and start hauling her off by the arms. More annoyed than anything, she's about to make a sarcastic remark when she sees one of her comrades hurt one of the cultists.
"Hey!" she shouts at the maniac, "Stop hurting people! we're here to have fun, you idiot!"
No sooner than the words leaving her mouth, however, Brilliance's voice rings out and turns everything into a nightmare. Aina watches in shock as shadows rise up off the ground like balloons being inflated and separate from their owners. Then she watches in horror as her own shadow joins the growing horde.
"Run. Run!" Her voice quavers in fear as her feet flail uselessly to propel her away.
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"Really now," Tracy chastens the two sticks-in-mud, "and you wonder why you remain a deputy..." Her gaze locks particularly with Niji-tan's. "You've made your point, though I can assure you, this one," her hand languidly flows towards the quite martially postured guitarist, "bears no taint of the adversary's touch. As Loki can attest, I have become uncomfortably well acquainted with the idiosyncrasies & dangers inherent."
"Come, sway me with your words." She reaches out, clasping both Niji-tan & Takara about the shoulders before winsomely leading them back to their table, beaming coquettishly at them encouragingly once there.
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"Phil, get back to the other cultists nearer to Conquest, purrlease. Tell Conquest that there are shadows awake further in, too. I'll hold these guys off long enough for you to do that. It's suppurr important. Other Cultists... take any shortcut you can, let the LARP Leader, Junpurrei know that the Darkness is here. He's with the Purrity Council's inner circle." Chessa says quickly to her new-found furriends as she begins to grow larger, into her 'war form'.
Her curiosity satisfied for the moment, Salvia starts thinking of the best way to use the stone. Handing it over to the Erohin would be the professional thing to do, but to what merit? Being complimented and sent back to the job she hates?
No, she needed leverage. Perhaps there was a way she could use the Darkness-addled boy to her advantage?
"Don't worry, I've got this." Chessa says, giving Phil a big blue-eyed wink. He could probably see that she totally didn't 'have this', but that was beside the point! Right next to it! None of them had it, and they needed help... or at least some measure of safety. This was gonna hurt... but also be fun! If it didn't really, really hurt...
One of the humanoid shadows leaps forward, head opening like a cracked egg as it snaps at Chessa's shoulder.
Brilliance steps aside, and Conquest lunges forward, grabbing the assassin by the collar and throwing them back into the foam and cardboard padded wall. Hiro's shout causes the Erohin to turn, and one of the shadows catches them in the leg, jagged shadowy teeth digging into their leather greave.
The cultists inside the room with Aina back up against the wall, checking the 'secret' one-way entry and finding it locked.
The bulk of the party returns to the first floor, and Tracy, Niji, and Takara take a seat at a table near the stairs.
One of the unnamed committee members retrieves the guitar and returns it to the guitarist, who nods wordlessly.
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With a deft swoop and bared fangs, Chessa narrowly avoids the creature's attempt to bite her... she couldn't allow them to land a hit until... Yata! Her furriends had gotten away! Now it was time to get... dangerous.
She doublechecks her surroundings, making sure that only the darkness remained. How strange... her Meowster's words had ripped the evil away from them - very different from Petrichor's transformation. Would that be a way to 'fix' her? By ripping the darkness out and defeating it? No, that'd be stupid. Pulling the emotions out of people didn't remove darkness, it just created more! Stupid Brilliance. But how do you tell an Erohin they're stupid without getting turned into so many eggs...
And just like that, Chessa's transformation shifted, her face became softer, fur receding, as she retained her blue eyes. The blue stripes and lines folded neatly into a jean jacket and pants, blonde hair spilling out and over, as her white underbody became a white tank top under the jacket. Without the ability to raid her goodies backpack, she couldn't put on a stylish tshirt pilfered from the Sora Collection™, so this would just have to do. Her collar becomes a cute little silver necklace, from which she unclips her magatama. Her tail wraps around her waist through the forming jeans and makes a nice black belt.
Reaching back into the darkness behind her, and up over her head, she simultaneously pulls down her magatama-mask and pulls out her Hermit's Trickhammer. Grinning at the shades, she offers them the same wink she'd offered the real Phil. "Hey, maybe we can talk this out... like, not try to kill each other talk. Nobody has to get hurt. Ugh. Bad word choice."
For the first time in years, Aina begins to whimper in terror. She has no clue what is happening, and her ignorance of what is going on only makes her fear more terrible still. She's trapped. She can't see any escape, so she curls up against the wall and cries with her eyes screwed shut in a vain, fleeting hope that this is all just a nightmare.
"Have you reconsidered? It hasn't been the same without you or Benji. Talkin' about foresight. Haven't seen DK since, ah... You know." Both of you avoid saying trussed_in_me, or his real name, Shuji.
"The boss has been quiet too. It's like they know something is coming, and they're choking."
Salvia raised her eyes, only just noticing that some commotion had happened. Feeling the boredom of being trapped in this situation, without a book or a task, she instead resolved to approach the girl who had spurred a dancing revelry earlier .
"You seem to be at ease in these surroundings." she asks her, her expression blank. "Why?"
Looking up from her 'conversation' with the two 'moral guardians', Tracy smiles slightly. "In the time before, in the USA, there was a phrase; 'Fake it 'til you make it'"
Shrugging slightly, she confesses, "It helps if you have survived chastisement from an Erohin in person. Little else can quite shake you at that point..."
Turning her attention back to her previous conversation partners, Tracy inclines her head to an empty chair as if in invitation.
"The time before? I have no memories of that! How was it?"
For the first time in a while, Salvia is genuinely interested in something.
"Different" Tracy replies, only a quicksilver flicker of her gaze from Salvia across both Niji & Takara then back to hint that her reply might be more substantive under circumstances with less...
judgmental
listeners.
"Of course," she adds, "I was only about your age when it, the awakening, happened"
Turning to Takara, Tracy adds, "What do you recall most regarding then?"
"Doubt" Takara interjects. "I remember contradiction. I remember glass ceilings. I remember gaslighting, and unemployment, and processed foods. I remember walking alone on a dark street to get to the door only I have a key to so I can close my eyes. I remember the expectation to find a privileged guardian to carry my interests. At least these guardians have claimed us, and are way more capable than a chromosome could make someone."
Niji looks aghast, but bites their tongue.
"It's not ever going to be perfect." Takara looks grimly into a stranger's abandoned drink before taking a deep drink from it. "You don't think I get that I just got a golden ticket? I see that. I'm the furious potato man screaming about men's rights. I am legend. No, I get that." The energy drains out of the knight. "I don't have to give up the things some of you do to be left alone. But it'll just change again!- turned on its side by someone with a say. Maybe I think I should enjoy privilege while it's my turn? Sorry, kid. Don't meet your heroes."
The junior "I'm still reporting them."
"Oh, we're definitely both still reporting everything. If we're lucky, they won't cancel these things over your... protest."
"I DO miss the world itself." Tracy interjects, as if in her own reverie, unconscious of Takara & Niji's inherent threat.
Equally unconscious of that fact that, during Takara's revelation, Tracy's hand had slid across that table, as though to offer consolation.
"SO many wonders to be found..."
"Now I just wonder where they are..."
"If they are...
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"Opposites. Disparity, gradient, above all, difference. Blood high in oxygen is drained of it and filled by carbon dioxyde, electrons flow to a positive charge to summon a spark." muses Salvia, half to herself and half to those nearby. Perhaps there was a point to this silly activity. Perhaps she just needed some perspective. "The Erohin force a stable world, with uniformity and order. But humans are thermodinamic machines, degrading the universe's energy through entropy, as everything does. We are stable and ordered only in death. Gradients create forces as they seek to become equal, and that force is the motor of everything. So, if differences between people pushed the old world into this one, one is left wondering: what will the difference between worlds push towards?"
Takara is about to respond to Tracy, but they seem to reconsider Salvia's words. "That's... an interesting thought. From what I've heard, the Erohin's world was desolate, almost uniform. Nothing did anything without one of them magic-ing it. They wouldn't be able to understand how our world pushes toward entropy. I got my position early on after things fell apart, and I can recall a particularly frustrating conversation about un-baking a cake. That was back before they had the gardens, so they were rationing out their magic for the war."
Yuki takes the book smoothly, and unbuckles the strap holding it closed. The prop opens more like a suitcase than a book, revealing an array of beanbags. Replaceable placards label each prepared spell, and there is a compartment with extra labels and streamers. Yuki shifts the hand holding the book, dry-scrubbing calloused fingers on a pant leg, before taking out one of the beanbags. It’s as if the flash drive never was. You’re considerably more perceptive than you once were (no internet will do that) but Yuki was always very good at espionage.
“You read out the name of the spell here, then touch the target with the bag, usually that means throwing it at them or at their feet-”
The front doors burst open, and a human in occult robes stumbles in. A few of the committee members stand and draw weapons, but the cultist catches their breath in time. “Craetures of Darkness! In the dungeon! The others need help!”
Takara’s mouth opens, then closes, the muscles in her jaw clenching. Niji stands to grab their elbow, but they reach out and tear the foam off of their wooden sword. “Evacuation.” She swallows. “There are Erohin in that building. They’ll contain the creatures if that’s even... We need to evacuate the area.”
A few of the committee members dart for the door as another cultist runs in. “They’re all over the dungeon! Brilliance did a spell, and everyone’s shadows came to life.” Those of you who look notice that this cultist is lacking a shadow.
The panic is breaking out across the room.
A shadow crosses the tables as Yuki leaps down from the balcony. They come up from a three-point landing brandishing a pearl-handled revolver. “Anyone stupid enough to follow me into the Darkness, your time is now.”
“What do... I want from you?” The gelatinous cube bubbles in contemplation. The skull seems to lean in to scrutinize the human. “You’re the one that’s… wandered in where you aren’t… invited.” Without a sound, the creature returns to the corner where it was sitting before. “Come here, I… have something for you.”
The path to the doorway is clear except for the trail of slime left by the cube.
The pile of treasure and the eggs atop it are on the other side of the shadows.
The cultist in the doorway stumbles in, clutching a wide gash in his neck. In the hall beyond, two shadow cultists face off against Conquest. The Erohin roars, driving their padded stick through one of the creatures. There is a rush of sound and light, like lightning channeling from the childlike god’s veins into the shadow, and it ceases to be, leaving a purplish afterimage in your retinas.
The cultist who saved you falls to his knees and clutches at their shadow’s robes. A substance like thick, black tar clings to their hands and begins to spread.
The cultist still standing beside you bolts for the door, his fate uncertain.
You’re crouching at the base of the wall of a circular room. A cultist lays dying between you and a shadow intent on murdering you. Another cultist is running for the door, where two shadows are being wiped out by the spartan (Conquest).
Aila doesn't want to get any closer to the thing than she has to, but she's too afraid of staying. Her only way out is the door it had blocked her from going through, but she might be able to make it if she was sneaky. She stands and tries to calm herself. The slime sends a shudder up her spine as she steps in it, but she forces herself to remain calm. She hid the fear as she did with many other things, burying it deep. She moved with purpose, seeming to approach the cube. Then she was out the door and running down the passage.
Aina knew that to stay was to to die. There was nothing she could do for the cultist that had his throat slashed. She barrels through, trying to find safety in this madness. Dread washes over her as she passes through the door.
"We need to leave. H-how are we supposed to get out of here," she asks the others.
Nobody slips from in between the two human cultists, focusing on the more 'pure' and 'powerful' darkness that had sprung from Phil. The Manticore shadow was surely stronger than the meager human shadows, right? It was certainly more... likely to be. But maybe only on the surface. As the denim daredevil darts into the dark denizen's devious dominion, a grin flickers across her face. The trick part of her trickhammer was in that it wasn't a hammer, it was a lantern and a staff.
With a heavy swipe that had no possible way of striking the creature of darkness, Chessa steps swiftly to the side, dips under a claw, and dives backwards, putting her weight into the motion - just as she lets the chain unwind from the staff to turn the lantern into a projectile weapon. The trick of her Trickhammer was that it was actually a flail.
Salvia cocked her head and watched what Tracy would do. She was not exactly eager to head into danger, but the chance to actually learn something about the Darkness was tempting her.
The rest of the shadows are watching the exits: a low drain to the north, a corridor to the north-east, a wide inflow to the east, a door in the south wall, and the doorway you've just stumbled through. You practically plow into this one. It silently recoils, and you have a moment to choose where to run.
Hiro practically squeaks an objection: "But the giant manticore!"
"Hiro, you idiot," the assassin collects themselves off the floor, rubbing a shoulder, "the yokai are allies. The shadows are the monsters."
Conquest strikes another Dark cultist, filling the room with light and the smell of ozone. "We can't turn back, friends. There are humans and yokai further in! They'll be torn apart." Conquest grabs you by the collar and heaves you back into the room with the rest of the sheeple. They are too short to set you down on your feet, so you find yourself kneeling. They pat you on the shoulder, reassuringly. "You are going to need real weapons." Striking their pool noodle spear on the ground, and light traverses its length, forming it into a real partisan. A zweihander, morning star, and pair of katar rise up out of the floor. "These are for self-defense. Do not get outnumbered."
Turning, Conquest prepares to remove the last Dark cultist in the circular room.
As Chessa dips backwards, bringing the Hermit's Trickstaff with her, the Tricklantern is dragged by the chain, the brilliant blue and white glow of her hammer catching shadow-Phil offguard, and lifting him from his feet...
While the Bedenimmed Heroine knew her own strength - she'd already tested it on the wall back home, and found her skills... lacking... she did not know how strong the walls here, were.
* * *
Dark Phil sails through the cardboard and plywood divider that served as the far wall, taking one of the Dark cultists with him. An entire room full of Dark cultists turn toward Aila and the massive shadow now pulling itself out of the rubble at the base of the support beam he collided with. The Dark cultist in front of Aila lunges forward to grab the engineer.
Following on the heels of a distant crash, Aina is pulled from her immediate conflict by a horrific scream. she clears the distance to the door and kicks it open. She's now standing on the other side of the room full of Dark cultists. She would have to get past the one guarding her door before dealing with the one accosting Aila, not to mention the injured behemoth.
Likewise, Aila would need to avoid the cultist lunging at them and get through the cultist at the other door before reaching Aina.
Fortunately, a masked heroine is now aware of the issue. Nobody is in the room with the one remaining Dark cultist, but looking in the direction of the scream, Nobody sees a gelatinous cube squeeze its way out of a doorway. The eggs are only a few feet away, laying on a pillow. A normal person would not have the time to stow the eggs and effectively address the threats descending on the screaming human.
Eyes going from the nearby clutch of eggs... so close... to the girl who she'd nearly walloped with her wall smashing, Chessa can't help but recognize that she'd done screwed up. So much for a clean smash and grab. What was one person against the need of someone she didn't really know? Ugh... having a conscience was annoying. Dipping away from the shadow with all the contempt it deserved, Chessa slinks into adjacency with the young engineer. "You look familiar. Have we met?" Chessa says with a lop-sided grin that you're perfectly positive you'd remember if you'd seen it. Granted, it was mostly lopsided because you could only see half of her face, blue Magatama mask like the one you'd found - of a different color of course - and a magic denim suit. She seemed to be winding a chain around a lantern for some reason. The chain was also attached to a rather large stick.
"Exit's over..." she looks to the gelatinous cube, deadpan... and sighs. While the irony was completely lost on her, that of course after defeating the manticore and collecting the treasure, there'd be something waiting at the back door to eat the party, the fact that there was a yokai in the way wasn't really much of a surprise, though.
With an equal amount of contempt for the shadows out here as she'd had in the room, Chessa calmly intervenes on the local Rhode's behalf.
One Dark cultist catches Aina's zweihander between two long daggers. The steel blade's sudden stop strikes her dominant arm numb. Is it broken? Dislocated? The cultist of Darkness doesn't even flinch, and a the shadow by the south door fires a bow. The arrow sinks into the wall behind Aina.
Nobody comes to Aila's aid with the other cultist, which snatches them up in a fold of umbral cloak. With a twist, it hauls them backwards, the dead silent cultist attempting to suplex Aila into the struggling manticore.
The gelatinous cube grows thin and tall, a number of stray objects swirling in the substance as if to lean in. "A new hunter? How desperate Vitality has grown." The bones and trinkets cast their own knife-like shadows, but the translucent cube does not.
A shadowless person with mousy hair slips in through the door the cube entered, stopping short when faced with the mess beyond. The person speaks to the cube almost fearfully. "I'm late, aren't I?"
"Hey, hey, not fair!" Nobody says as she brings her hammer closer to the shadowless creature creature, making it more clear where the real-fake-cloak of shadows is and the fake-fake just shadows parts are, before lunging in and grabbing Aila's hand just before the thing could snap shut and fully throw her. "Not alone!" she yells at the hapless... ally..?
Oh, and of course another shadowless person joins the fray.
"Talk later, busy preventing murders here. Help, or get out!" Nobody calls to the pair behind her, in a strange mixture of terse and cheery.
Nobody manages to put some distance between Aila and the growing collection of adversaries.
The human struggling against the two Dark cultists in the middle of the room is lifted by their arms and legs and hauled toward the manticore.
Aila shudders in Nobody's arms as she's pulled from danger. Tears stream down her face, but she seems whole for the most part. Wisely, perhaps, she keeps silent, not wanting to distract the girl who saved her from the monster just bare yards away.
Aina watches, helpless, as it seems her sister is going to die horribly before her eyes, before she can do anything to help. She barely has time to feel any relief at her timely rescue as the shade counters her clumsy attack, injuring her shoulder. With a snarl, Aina slams the thing into the pillar hard enough to stun it and runs for her sister.
Her cry draws the attention of everything in the large chamber as she runs towards her twin. Aila reaches out, both fearful for what is to become of the two of them and elated that her sister is still alive. The grab each other's wrists, and their eyes go wide as they begin to glow, Aila blue and Aina Red. A flash of white light fills the chamber and beyond as pure desperation drives them to Transcend.
Everything stands still. Time, it seems, is frozen. The twins kneel where they had been standing just a moment ago as they hold each other in a tight embrace. Around them, everything is white with outlines of black. There are no shadows or colors to tell them what shape everything has, only the grid of thin, black, lines. The only exceptions are the girl that glows in shades of purple, her denim outfit replaced by a version that appears to be made of black silk and trimmed in glowing purple lines of light and themselves. Aila glows blue, her clothing replaced by a bodysuit of a darker blue and trimmed with lines of white light. Aina is much the same, save she and her suit are red.
"Wha- What's going on," Aina asks as she looks about, then looks down. She and Aila both have a Metagama, now glowing green, about their necks.
"I- I don't know," Aila half-sobs, almost terrified beyond reason. Images of memories appear around the trio showing from the time Aila arrived at the Tavern to when the twins had touched. Aila recoils in fear from the images showing her time in the room she'd run form into this mess, but Aina glares at the images before glaring at the cube, More images appear as feelings of anger, guilt, and love mingle with those of fear and helplessness as they all swirl around the twins.
"It doesn't matter, right now. We're together again, aren't we," Aina says in a soft soothing voice. [smaller]"We can figure out the rest as long as we have each other."[/smaller
Looking up, Aina locks eyes with Nobody. The images disappear as quickly as they had appeared and the chaos of emotions slowly resolves into three feelings, love, gratitude, and raw, boiling fury.
"Thank you for saving my sister," Aina says, her voice calm. "I just ask that you leave the bastard that was planning on eating her to me."
Everything goes black. For a single moment of eternity there is no light, no sound, nothing.
Then there's a spark of ominous red.
Lines of light, red and angry flow out from that single mote in the chest of this new figure. In the dim glow, it's clear to see the twins are gone. In their place, there's a figure of about the same height and dressed in black armor that does little to hide the feminine figure beneath. A skirt of some thick, tough material swirls about her legs while plates of armor hang from her waist. Behind her are six objects of similar shape to the plates over her skirt arranged like wings. A helmet with a flat, featureless faceplate covers her head and hides her features. An evil smirk emoji appears just behind the glassy surface of the faceplate as everything returns to normal.
"Let's clear the board of the pawns shall we," she asks in a voice that has an electronic edge to it. She raises a hand and snaps her fingers.