Femtite bends her fingers into a fist, which is suddenly engulfed in flame. She says to the stick (which is in her other hand, which is NOT on fire), ”Really stick? Not enough Percy for you???”
Realizing the wet spot could be melted ice from Percy’s cold magic, Fem smears the stick all over the wet spot the melted carpet.
”Is this Percy enough?!”
She points the stick out the window.
”You have one job. One job!”
"Max must have been teleported away or... let's hope that is not the case, being binded or trapped somewhere." Caio replies to Femtite and after Horizon suggests using the rod to find Percy, he adds some more. "I'm not sure that will work. I don't think the rod can be attuned to another person."
”Oh. It can’t?”
Femtite thinks the stick is useless, but keeps it anyway.
She asks the others, ”Where are you? If you name a location I’ll fly over. I’ll be easy to spot!”
Femtite takes on a form much like Iris the nymph-demigoddess of rainbows! (Greek mythology has proven to be an excellent source regarding human standards of beauty.)
As she soars across the sky, she leaves a rainbow trail like that obsolete spam cat.
The elevator opens to a high-rise apartment with a dizzying view of midtown Halcyon. The air reeks of magic, with multiple spells going on -- one of them being an elaborate containment spell surrounding a clearly weakened Indarius.
Connie sees her father standing close to the circle, working on an even more complex spell which is manifesting as a swirling vortex of orange-red energies. Percy's spellbook appears to be a key component of that ritual.
She sees Quincy in one corner sullenly working his own spell.
"You got my note, yet you still chose to come. What shall I do with you?"
You can't see anything to "disarm" Mathers. He's in his own territory, so he probably has contingencies in place, so the beat way would be to get him away from this apartment. Quincy would be the most vulnerable to you.
You see Connie in normal-colored hair step into the apartment.
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Then he realizes it's just her and a pit forms in his stomach as he worries that Quincy might actually have been right.
Femtite soars toward Horizon. She has the useless stick in one hand, and in the other hand—
—she’s holding a pinkish-purplish device that is exceptionally good at detecting Violet energy.
She swoops down, not voicing the thought that may be apparent from her expression: Are we there yet?
"We're close. I haven't yet been able to get a visual on Conflux, but I can determine she's in one of these buildings," Horizon says, standing on a rooftop across from several towering skyscrapers. "Unfortunately this tracker doesn't exactly give altitude and it's not accurate on the longs and lats either. I don't want to move in until we're able to fully gauge the situation."
He sighs. "She went off on her own because she thinks she can handle this. I'm going to respect that until something else tells me otherwise - or if we can get confirmation that Max or Percy might be in the building." He looks back at the dousing rod. "You said it led back to the dorms, right? But maybe that's a proximity thing. Maybe if you use it now and they're closer, we can track them."
Femtite shows her pinkish-purplish device. ”This detects Violet energy.” She holds up the rod and points it at the building. ”This… I don’t really want to hold it anymore.”
She tries to pawn off the dousing rod to Shin or Caio.
”I could just teleport us to Connie, but… maybe she isn’t trying to go on her own. Maybe she expects us to trail.” Bitterly, she adds, ”She knows what buttons to push.”
"And hey, the request was for non-interference, which I've been very conscientious about. Judging by the looks of Indarius there, more conscientious than you were about your promise that he'd be unharmed.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk. As you so memorably reminded me, isn't it beneath a Mathers to lie?"
"Given she herself installed the app in my phone and then left us the dowsing rod, I'm pretty sure she wanted us to follow her." Caio says, over the comms as he finally reaches a building that he believes Connie has entered.
"Yeah, it is definitely this one." He says, looking at the place and wondering how they should invade it. "The obvious way would be to enter from the bottom and make our way through the place, but we do not know the floor or the room... assuming Connie took an elevator, I'd have to stop at each floor to look for her."
"I don't believe we can also just fly around and hope to see the inside, since it would be a simple work of illusion magic to cover that..."
Femtite says, ”The right floor might be a high or middle floor, but why guess?”
Femite flies and looks into windows, though they are tinted and curtains are drawn—
—she ‘throws’ rays of sunshine into the building, effectively projecting her glow to light rooms with dazzling brilliance. Extreme light won’t harm pixite eyes. Humans may find it annoying, like looking at the sun itself, which is such a pretty ball.
"I have not harmed him. He looks the worse for wear because he continues to test the barrier. The equivalent of a trapped animal trying to chew its own leg off. I can hardly be blamed for that."
A bright light nearly as strong as the sun suddenly is visible outside the windows. "Your 'non-interference' wouldn't have included making sure your teammates couldn't track you here? I told you, the consequences will be on your head."
Mathers activates a rune on the floor and several hell hounds appear surrounding him. "Or on the heads of your team."
On the ground floor, Caio can definitely tell that Connie went inside, but didn't stick around. She's probably on an upper floor.
Femtite lights up the sky and circles the building. Both she and Horizon are getting the sense of a buildup of energy. It feels just out of perception, like there's a slowly growing pressure like you're going deep underwater. It's growing almost painful as you get closer.
Assuming this buildup is where Connie is, moving towards it could help zero in on which floor she's on. But with this amount of power, there's likely going to be danger.
As fast as he can, Caio goes for the stairs. While it would be foolish for a normal human to climb each floor, for Caio it was barely nothing with his inhuman stamina.
At each floor, he sniffs to check for Connie's scent. As he goes up and up, however, he begins to feel the energy pressure building up, he stops worrying about Connie's scent, figuring that the center of the energy would be where Connie, and hopefully Percy and Max were as well.
"There is some massive magic energy building up... can you guys feel it?" He asks over the comms.
Femtite replies ”I feel it alright. Gonna try and pinpoint the floor. Horizon, be ready to catch me—“
Femtite flies the path of most resistance!
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"Please tell me you didn't actually know about this Connie."
"Be ready to catch you?" Horizon asks incredulously as he flies close to the building, trying to determine a good point of access for himself. At the very least if he could determine which floor she was on, he could cut through the window and get to her in time...for figuring out why she was here.
Well why would she avoid directly team, Shin? Almost like it's personal to her.
Eighty-first floor!
"Caio, we're heading to the eighty-first floor. That's where Conflux is!" Horizon calls back to him as he flies up, caution thrown to the wind. If Connie was suddenly communicating with them now, it meant that she might be in trouble. Or that she just wanted back up. Or for them to cause a distraction.
He really had to talk to her about giving some clearer signals next time this happened. As it was, he flew up and counted the floors, looking for a good window to use his powers to cut open.
"...Screw it," He said, jamming his blade through the first window that looked right and carving as much as he could. Ignorant of any potentially supernatural barriers...
Mathers gives an exasperated look at Conflux. "'Evil ritual'? You have no idea what I'm trying to accomplish, do you? Don't talk to me about things of which you know nothing. This will be the achievement of a lifetime -- finally undoing Doctor Infinity's great betrayal!"
Horizon slices into one of the windows, thinking this one would be a good entry point. However, he doesn't spot the runes etched into the glass in time. His blade sinks into the glass, but it bubbles and warps instead of shattering. When he tries to draw back his fist, the glass is stuck to his arm like taffy. It flows over him more and more, until it's covering almost all of his body like a bug trapped in a clear amber prison!
Mathers looks at a glyph that flares near him. "That's one down."
Femtite crashes into another section of the building, her divine armor avoiding or countering whatever magical defenses have been erected. She finds herself in a hallway, where a panting Caio comes bursting out of the stairwell.
Caio can sense the magic pressing on him, its source somewhere on this floor. He also catches the scent of something foul and sulfuric that makes his hackles rise.
What do you do??
”Looks like I’m the one catching you!”
Femtite defends Horizon by grabbing him and barreling through!
"De... demon." He says, catching his breath as he sees Femtite, even if she soon leaves him to help Horizon. Caio extends his senses, trying to find the demon.
Connie frowned involuntarily. I don't see how that links up to the others... does he have these wards running on entirely separate circuits?
"See that's your mistake, Dad. Advising, not disrespecting." She held up her hands disarmingly. "You think that because you took a few of us off the board one by one when we were careless, when we weren't ready to protect ourselves, that it'll be just as easy now. Well guess what: you might have just gotten one more, but I'll bet sure as, uh, shooting that they'll be freed any second now. So c'mon, use me. I'm here to help family after all, and someone like me couldn't damage your Great Work or stop you from allying with Sally the Succubus or anything, right?"
Horizon looks more than a little upset at having gotten himself caught, and pulls free of Femtite's grip as soon as she's rescued him.
"Well, great. Demons here, Conflux is here, and I feel like I should have gone to school for magic all summer to prepare myself for all of the nonsense, non-scientific ways that can apparently trap me," He says, his irritation showing as he looks around the hallway. "Femtite, take lead and let's forget stealth. They probably already know we're here. Push forward and break through anything that tries to get in front of you."
Femtite says to Horizon, ”I don’t get magic either. But… Caio DID sense a demon. Which means—“
She activates her device to locate Violet energy, and hopes her aura will help make DD visible is she’s here.
She starts by leading Horizon toward Caio.
Mathers sighs exasperatedly as he continues working. "If you wanted to make yourself useful, you could call your little 'team' off. Or are they as stubborn and full of self-righteousness as you?"
Conflux doesn't get a chance to respond, because the door smashes inward to the apartment. Femtite, Horizon and Wolf are there in a classic hero pose!
The heroes enter a gorgeous, expansive high-rise apartment with modern furnishings and a wide-open layout. They see Indarius, looking weak and sickly, surrounded by spinning runes and arcane glyphs. Quincy is off in one corner, working on some kind of spell of his own. Conflux is standing before a tall man in late middle-age but showing no signs of frailty whatsoever. That man is in a well-tailored suit with his sleeves rolled up as he is waving his hands in complex gestures while Percy's magic book floats nearby.
Caio and the others quickly see the source of the sulfur. Four powerfully-muscled dog-slash-wolf creatures with glowing red eyes and patchy fur growl menacingly, standing in defense of the ritual going on.
There is no trail of Violet energy. Your device cannot find any track or path, though there is the tiniest blip coming from the older man, though it's weird. The energy is like behind a screen or window. You'd only be able to spot it because of its close proximity to you.
The man's voice is rich and cultured. He sounds bored when he says, "Conflux, disabuse your teammates of their planned actions. Remember, what I'm doing is for the family."
What do you do???
Femtite shouts, ”I can see Violet energy coming from Dear Old Dad!” Femtite warns the others.
To Connie’s dad, she says, ”I don’t know what you’ve done with my friends, but what’s with the Devil Dogs? Have you not seen the Earth movie All Dogs Go To Heaven?”
Femtite taps a code onto her bracer, hoping that guard dogs are useless when they helplessly float to the ceiling. (Fliers like Horizon and herself should be unaffected.)
"So your entire family will be charged with accessory to kidnapping? Good to know," Horizon shouts across the room. "Not that I think you care about something as mundane as the law, but you've taken our people against their will and I won't sit by while some evil wizard tries that garbage," He finishes, looking over at Conflux and trying to figure out the plan.
Of course he can't get a read on her. He's too emotional. Angry at himself, guilty he couldn't prevent this. But when the gravity changes suddenly from Femtite's powers, he's rocketing forward and calling out plays. "Wolf, get Indarius! Femtite, dear old dad!" He shouts, hoping he's making the right calls here.
Caio nods to Horizon and moves swiftly towards Indarius, not actually eager to fight the demons... both because he can't fly and fight around Femtite's gravity zone, but also that he was unwilling to let the wolf out.
In the rush of the moment, there wasn't much time to figure out what was the best way to disable the magical runes around Percy, so Caio's first attempt was to simply overpower them with his the energy stored inside his own magic circles. "Hang on..."
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"Sure thing, scoot over so I can use the best wards."
The hellhounds' snarls turn to grunts of confusion as the gravity suddenly shuts off. They're strong and agile, however, and they kick off the ceiling hard, causing the entire roof of the skyscraper to shudder and crack! Compounded with the sudden reversed gravity, the ceiling starts to lift away entirely, exposing the 81st floor to open air!
"I'll never get my deposit back now," Mathers mutters. "Quincy?" he shouts.
"Yes, Father," the young man in the corner says as he snaps an ink pen over the arcane sigils he was drawing. The inky blackness suddenly animates and streaks at Femtite. Before she can react, the Outsider is covered in a tar-like goo that smothers her light entirely!
Caio barrels his way through the barriers which collapse around him, until he reaches the final one surrounding Indarius. A silver light flares up, that burns the werewolf's flesh!
Horizon's inability to scrutinize Conflux's plans causes him to hesitate, making him an easy target for the hellhounds as their claws dig deep into the hardwood flooring to stay upright and maneuver out of the zero gravity zone. They fling themselves at him with fiery jaws snapping!
Conflux recognizes that one as a moon-ward and realizes that if Caio stays in contact with it for much longer it will form a collar much like the one she designed for her own use against him. Finding the keys to all his wards would be a lengthy exercise deciphering each one and locating the focus -- something that Dear Old Dad never makes easy. He is simply too meticulous to link all his wards to one control. The best course would be to pick one or two wards and work on those.
"Constance, use your words, not my wards!" Mathers says, not budging. "You are a colossal disappointment. And not to me. To them. You've deliberately led your team here against my wishes and despite my warnings. What happens to them is. Your. Fault."
Indarius's words fall on deaf ears as Mathers has other things he's dealing with. This gives him a chance to really look at what this ritual is going to do.
It's glorious.
Magic, something rare and tenuous, that only the truly dedicated or gifted can use and then only at a fraction of its true potential, will be returned to the world. The book is the key -- except it's not just that. It's also the lock. And the prison. The barrier between magical powers locked away within parchment and ink. And Mathers is turning the tumblers and gears within!
What do you do??
Horizon looks like a perfect target - until he uses his Whippoorwill trained agility to fly right between, their bites chomping on nothing but thin air as to their eyes, he probably seemed to disappear completely!
"Conflux, don't listen to that blowhard!" He calls out to her. "You're not a disappointment - he's the disappointment!" He tells her encouragingly as he seeks to aid Caio and stop him from getting zapped by what seems like bad magic!
He has zero context for what it was, how it worked, why it interacted with Caio like it was - it was light though, so he was able to break it away from Caio before it could do any lasting damage! "You're good! Take some hellhounds off my back?" He requests.
Caio falls on his knees as the moon ward flashes around him and burn his skin, but thanks to Horizon he doesn't have to endure the pain for much time. Caio looks at the weakened Percy and the last ward keeping him from freeing the mage. While he feels he could eventually break the ward, even if it would be an extremely painful thing to do, there were better ways to deal with it.
Getting to his feet, he speaks to the others. "You guys remember out last hero class?" He asks, referring to the class where they worked in pairs against bots that could become resistant to their blows. "You are up, Connie!"
Caio then looks at Fems, trying to figure out a way to help her, but unsure how he could free her from the ink... however his attention is soon brought to the very angry hellhounds. "I hope you are seeing this, angel sword..." While Caio doesn't shift, he pounces at the demons, punching them as hard as he can.
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Percy's wyes go wide as he finally realizes what's happening with Caio and Horizon trying to feee him Mathers has all the time in the world to continue his work. He's brilliant, crazy, but f&+#ing brilliant. The more Percy thinks on it though the more he comes to the realization that Dr. Infinity sealed magic away for a reason, he had to have had a damn good one.
He spins to face Caio and Horizon, "Stop wait no.. get my book get it away! It's the lock and the key holding back all magic from our world. It's the final lock in the grand barrier and he's clicking through the tumblers right now. I'll be fine whatever he can do to me I can take it. He can't do this though, he can't make that choice for everyone! I can't let him hurt people if it means i'm safe!"
Femtite cannot see, but she certainly hears the get-my-book comment.
Femtite phases through the inky barrier. She jets toward the book!
”Show your daughter some respect, Dear Old Dad! Connie’s brilliant, independent, and you’d know that if you didn’t waste her childhood underestimating her. If you want to chide someone as a disappointment, look in a mirror!”
Turning her gaze to the Mathers Bro who failed to trap her, Fem points to him and adds, ”Or at that guy.”
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"Thanks Horizon, inspiring stuff. As for ordering them away, I'm not the team leader; sorry for any misunderstanding there. Any thoughts on how to reason with 'em? Gravitas has never really been my strong suit, y'know? I usually have to try to persuade people with facts etc., so the fact that they seem to be just tearing their way through the defenses you specifically designed for them? Not really setting me up for success, but I'll try:
she shouted from right next to her father,
Horizon pulls Caio away from the painful ward around Indarius, and switches targets with him. He engages the hellhounds, smashing through them as they snap at him but remains unscathed.
Indarius calls out the warnings to the team even as he sees the pages of the book start to unravel and fade! The magic is returning, and is coursing through Mathers -- he's channeling it!
Femtite phases with the last device she brought from Nanometeor, but the stygian blackness stays with her! Her planned quips and insults die on her tongue, because even as her essence separates at the picometric scale to become intangible, the magical blackness remains surrounding her! As the blackness starts to become chillingly cold, she suddenly realizes that her abilities cannot overcome this! She's all alone! She's helpless!
The magic courses through Mathers as Conflux continues to try to annoy Dear Old Dad. He snaps at her, "I'm already triumphant, you prattling child! Can't you see that?"
Suddenly, there's a resounding as the top of the building lifts away from the earlier zero-gravity! The roof, ceiling, and sixteen floors above the 81st floats ten, twenty, then thirty feet in the air, before pitching to the side and falling out of sight!!!
Then, a bright fiery-red glow appears in the air as the wind whips through the exposed apartment. A pair of flying figures swoop in -- Feya Firestorm and Whippoorwill! Then dropping out of a hovercar, Foray and Yeoman land lightly at the corner of the building. The Alliance has arrived!!
"William!?!?" the fire mage shouts as she recognizes the man at the center of the magical confluence. "What are you doing?"
"You know this guy?" Whippoorwill asks.
"You should understand, Myridia! Magic was returning to this world, and Doctor Infinity locked it away again! He had no right!"
"What makes you think you have the right now?" she shouts back.
"Talk to me, what are looking at?" Whip says as she assesses the situation.
Mathers seethes. "It's done Myridia! I can't allow you to interfere!" He reaches into his jacket and produces a bottle, which he uncorks. Then he throws what looks like a Magic card onto the ground. Smoke rises from the bottle which coalesces into a massive demonic shape, male and with horns and a pig-shaped snout! From the card springs up a female demon -- Max!!
"Deal with the Alliance."
You're suddenly free from your confinement, but the binding is still in place. You're compelled to do as this man tells you -- fight the Alliance. You instinctively know that once this is completed you're free to turn on him and rend him limb from limb -- or flee if you think he's strong enough to bind you again. That's probably why he first sought to bargain with you rather than bind you.
Max blinks as her card prison finally disgorges her back into the real world. How long has it been? Hours? Days? Longer?
She has little time to consider the answer or take stock of the situation, though, as she feels the magical compulsion to attack the Alliance. She grits her teeth as she reluctantly charges at Foray, slashing with her claws!
Femtite can’t get out of this mess. She has to face the fact that her planet’s tech is no match for Earth magic. The truth hurts, but her only obstacle left to overcome is her pride.
”Umm… little help?” she asks, feeling completely hopeless.
Thinking things through she asks, ”Horizon, can your power absorb this?”
(Femtite is prepared to render her phasing active or inactive, adjusting so the blackness is absorbed but she is not.)
"Max!!!" Caio exclaims with joy and relief as his friend appears... just as she jumps at Foray. "What? Oh, you f~!&er. You'll pay for that." He threatens, emptily for now.
There was just so much going on... the magic ritual, the hellhounds, Fems being trapped, the falling building, Max being bounded, Percy still trapped, the new and far larger demon... They were way over their head, but perhaps with the help of the Alliance they'd be able to pull it off. Reasoning that he couldn't do anything about the falling building and that Mathers have prepared for their team, Caio turns his attention to the large demon... he needed to give the Alliance the opportunity to help them.
Moving around, Caio interposes himself between the large demon and the Alliance members. "I'll take this guy to give you time. Now come demon... I have to prove myself and you need to go!"
Ugh, annoying.
"Okay whatever, good job blocking her light, Q, someone else will have to take care of the fire."
Connie takes out a red and white marker to quickly infuse into a solution of Isopropyl alcohol, then soaks Femtite with it.
C'mon Quincy, there's other practitioners on the field. If you're gonna use household products as the focus for your ink bomb...
"Oh no! I think that Tide Pen channeled cleaning instead of the watery tides! What a nearly unforeseeable outcome!"
"Okay, here's what we've gotta do next, Quincy! Catch! This is totally harmless if you catch it!"
Taking a totally safe, non-magical quarter out of her pocket, she flips it in a long high arc straight at him.
When Connie frees Femtite, it’s apparent to her that helping each other is the only way to beat the Evil Dad.
And seeing how magical ink phases with her, so might another person! She flies to Percy, hoping against hopelessness that she can phase to him and phase him out of Magic Jail!
Horizon is a little bit stunned by the fact that the entirely top half of the building was now apparently free-floating in the air above them. There was some panic about it suddenly falling, crushing all of them to death and then collapsing the building onto thousands of civilians below. He hoped the alarms were going off and people were evacuating-
Oh, no. Anyone on the top floors would be trapped. And the worst part was that they still had to deal with Percy's magic book, and Max appearing only to start fighting Foray. Conflux had gotten to Femtite and she was flying over to help Indarius, so he had to...
"Dammit," He swore, as he flew after the falling building. Even as Whippoorwill and the Alliance arrived, he was already dive-bombing to try and get under it. "I NEED SOME HELP HERE!"
This was insane. He could fly, sure, he could safe maybe the odd person falling out. He didn't have super strength. What he had was a bag of tricks and the ability to densify light. How did he use that to stop this?
He had to try it. Putting his back to the plummeting building falling towards the ground, he tried to tap deeper into his power. He launched several cable lines below him to try and slow its descent, every fraction of a second it bought giving him more of an opportunity to succeed. And he tried to keep it from falling by anchoring himself in place. Using his powers to try and be as dense and unyielding as a sigularity without destroying everything around him. His whole body was enveloped in his power as he tried it. Just to stop it long enough that maybe someone else could get there in time...
Devil Diva throws herself at Foray, who is hard-pressed to defend himself against the assault. He blocks her claws with parries from his swords, but falls back to the edge of the building and teeters precariously against the deadly fall!
Yeoman starts to intercept, but with no one minding the hellhounds, they leap on the archaic robot! Snarling and snapping, they come at him from all sides. One clamps a jaw down upon his gangly arm while another comes in low at his legs!
Conflux throws something to dissolve Quincy's spell, freeing Femtite. Mathers looks at his child in disgust. "You colossal waste of space! You're not going to work against me any more!" he shouts at her, and with a flick of a wrist golden bands fly out and wrap around her arms and legs! They lift her into the air and hang her suspended in the air helpless!
Meanwhile, Quincy ignores the quarter she flicked -- the high winds of the 81st floor makes it hard to accurately toss anything of light weight. He works another spell and goes invisible!!
Femtite phases into the runes surrounding Indarius. She passes through effortlessly, but triggers another one of Mathers' failsafes! Suddenly, Fems and Percy see time speed up around them both, but they quickly realize that they're the ones who have slowed down!!
The giant demon threatening Whippoorwill and Feya rises up like a horned King Kong, taking massive swipes at the two Alliance members that they dodge nimbly out of the way. To take on the demon, Caio has to jump into the zone of null-gravity and float up in order to take its attention away from the two fliers. Feya looks impressed at the valiant effort, but Whippoorwill looks irked. "What are you doing? We've got this!" she shouts.
Horizon dives off the side of the building in a desperate attempt to save the people below and whoever might still be in the piece of the skyscraper. But as soon as he clears the side of the building, he sees the techno-being Ordnance latched on with heavy cables and his thrusters at maximum. Then he catches sight of a gold-and-blue blur flying underneath the building. Captain Stalwart is here.
"This is incredible! I've never seen such power!" Feya tells Whippoorwill, her eyes glowing red. Then she calls down to Mathers, "This much magic in the world will fundamentally change society!"
"Exactly! Science has ruled the day for too long! Doctor Infinity sacrificed himself, and for what? A poisoned, overheating world!" More of the pages in the book begin dissolving. A shape that looks like a dragon escapes the book and flies off into the night.
"Mathers, you're not the altruistic type. How much of this power are you claiming?"
Mathers rises up into the air effortlessly. "Only my fair share. You think it should be left in the hands of that boy?"
Whippoorwill dodges another swipe from the demon and flings a trio of quills at Mathers. The edged weapons pass through an invisible barrier and turn into doves that flutter away in panic. "Horizon, get your team together and figure out how to stop this guy!" she shouts into her comm.
What do you do??
Horizon feels like a damned fool for trying to bite off more than he could chew - especially with other heroes on the scene that could accomplish what he couldn't. His racing mind, giving himself the crazy and unpracticed ideas, dispelled those fantasies seeing Ordinance and Captain Stalwart on the job.
But that also left them to deal with Connie's dad before things could get any worse. He pivoted as his mentor called out to him, flying towards Mathers and looking at everyone. Femtite and Indarius looked like they were suddenly stuck in a pocket of slowed time - Max was being controlled to fight the Alliance. Connie was currently captured. Caio was the only one who was free.
"Wolf, I need you to get a read on the situation," He informs him as Horizon looks towards the floating book. "The Alliance can take care of themselves. We have to take care of things here. Trust me," He tells Caio, before flying off to try and disrupt Mathers.
"You talk about magic like it'll fix everyone's problems! But there's no panacea for society you can easily conjure up! You're just another hypocritical power-hungry would-be demogogue with delusions of grandeur. Trust me, I know one when I see one!" He shouts as he lances his powers at him. He wants the focus on him, with the wizard's eyes off of the book just long enough...
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Percy watches as Femtite phases through the barrier and is now trapped in the net with him as a draconic shape flies away from 'His' book.
"No! We have to stop it frooooooooooooo---" Time slows for everyone outside the bubble and Percy's speech is drawn into a long phrase and his eyes blink slowly as time mostly pauses. From his spot inside the damned rune barrier he couldn't do much, but maybe... Just maybe he could redirect one of the leylines to overload the barrier while also disrupting the time dilation spell.
In painfully slow motion does Percy start to kneel down to place his fingers at the very edge of the barrier nearest to Super-Matthers and his book, trying to use his natural affinity for drawing from the massive wellspring of the world to pull the meta-physical energy towards him and Femtite's location.
"Femtite I know s#~*'s weird between us all right now, but I need you to use your powers to sever Max's connection to Mathers. I don't know how he's got control but it's likely something on his person. And... I don't know if all this goes up in smoke tell everyone I'm sorry I-he swallowed-I failed you all."
Despite everything that should hurt, from the sickness, to being literally drained of aether, and what was being said around the room. The only thing Percy could feel was an immense sense of failure. He didn't even notice the excessive aetherical energy causing the scales under his robes to bloom up his arms, his hands becoming covered with silvery-gray scales and dangerous black claws at the ends of his fingers.
This was the one thing he was tasked to do, the job he didn't even know about. Protect the book, keep all the unstable dangerous magic away from everyone. How in the world was he supposed to call himself a hero when he couldn't protect himself. How was he going to protect the world if he couldn't protect one little book, to safeguard the one precious sliver of real magic in the world from falling into the hands of some megalomaniacal douchebag. He dreaded what Dr. Infinity would think if he were here right now watching his former apprentice gorging on aether and becoming some abomination, his chosen successor trapped behind a complex runic barrier because he hadn't put enough time into studying magic, but instead poured all his time into school and trying to help his friends. Something that upon seeing Max in her current state showed he hadn't even made a lick of progress there either. Hell Connie was probably closer to a real breakthrough there.
"I was trying to free you up to fight him..." Caio says just as her quills turn into doves. "Right... I'll do my best."
As Horizon reappears and pushes him into assessing the situation, Caio nods. Quincy was gone and while Caio could probably find him through his scent, he wasn't the immediate threat; Connie, Percy and Fems were all trapped, but he could not break the wards to free the later two, and to reach Connie he'd have to float his way towards her; Max was fighting Foray and was winning; Mathers was apparently being able to do what he wanted to and bring magic back into...
Why not give it another go? He thinks to himself before extending two fingers from his right hand and moving them around as if he was trying to write in the air... and is honestly surprised when a flickering and unsteady light begins to form! In hoping of understanding his own magic runes and the complex theory of abjurative magic, Caio has studied quite a lot, even if he never was able to actually do magic. It was like baking a cake without an oven, as he knew the recipe and how to make it, but without the oven he could never turn the dough into an actual cake... but now with the magic juice flowing around...
Caio turns to Max first because if he could free her, then there would be two more fighting Mathers.
Abjuration magic is all about protection and countering, so Caio tries to focus on the spell or binding that is forcing Max to obey Mathers. Gathering as much of the flowing magic as he can while trying to concentrate at the matters at hand, Caio weaves a large magical circle into thin air, before extending his fingers and causing it to fly, piece by piece, towards and around Max. "I'm trying to free you, Max... trust me and do not fight it, ok?"
As Percy works his magic to break the time-slow, Femtite already knows who she’s going to protect. I owe her…
She prepares to fling her armored body into the path of the golden bands—shrinking as they wrap her—then growing back to bust free!
”Connie had to fight for freedom against my parents—no way is she getting trapped by her own!”