After the water exploded on them again, Zephine still felt right as rain as the attack basically just sort of was brushed off of her. As she kept her scythe at the ready, she could the see that the angel wasn't doing so hot right now and that they were making good progress. So, Zephine figured if it wasn't broke, to not fix it, and just went along with her same scythe slash again.
Having seen that the bomb was primed to explode once more, Zephine wasn't all that concerned with it. It wasn't really that bad of an attack to deal with, just a bit annoying. Though she while she looked at the fuse, she thought there might be a way to diffuse it...but nah, that probably wouldn't work. Thinking of another idea, she thought that wouldn't work either...and then think of another one she unfortunately couldn't do because she lacked a towel. Man, the amount of times a towel would have helped here was absolutely astonishing. Whatevs. Zephine just went to basic repeat the same action she had done this entire fight thus far.
After watching Star get struck by a water blast, it seemed to be quite the hefty attack, but she seemed fine enough. There was probably a bit more of a threshold that she could pass before it became imperative for Zephine to block attacks. And not having Renju here was a bit of a downer to just alternate blocking duties, but ah well, they'd have to make due. She had repeated the same scythe exceed attack that she had done this entire fight thus far and hit at Aqua with it.
Zephine charged forward and had continued doing what she had been doing this entire fight. That is to say, after getting soaked once more, Zephine had launched herself at Aqua once more, sweeping at her with her scythe alongside the exceed once more in an effort to continually bring this angel down.
"Please, is that all, you can't even fight right now?" Zephine continued to taunt the angel as she fought. There was no real reason, though she felt like just provoking this angel for funsies and to get her on her tail rather than everyone else. "I mean come on, Ignis's servant was way better than you on your own. And here I thought water was always better than fire." With that, with her smirk still on her face, she went into just attack alongside the exceed again.
Zephine felt the water bomb explode on her, and felt little more than like she was just hit by a bucket of water. Annoying, sure, but not really anything that was cause for concern. Then she seemed to be the target of another of the angel's attacks, as she was hit by some sort of geyser of water. However, it still felt pretty insignificant, and so Zephine a smirk appeared on her face and she decided to start taunting foe saying, "ha, and you're supposed to be what we're all afraid of? Please, a dumb giant was more threatning than you." With that done, she flew at the girl again and struck at her with her scythe just as she had before.
Zephine wasn't entirely sure what these water bomb thingamajiggers were doing, but it was just enforcing the need for a towel. Which she would totally have to take care of after this battle, but that was for later. Now, there was an angel to bring down. Kicking off of the air, flying towards her, Zephine struck forward with her scythe once more alongside the exceed helper to give her attack a little more power behind it.
Zephine had followed the others down into the area below with the same air of tension that her two teammates had had on them. There was something definitely off about this entire world, and something as well with all of the water that was flowing around here. The only sort of water here was a lake, so where the hell was all this water even coming from? As they finally got to the end of the room, it had appeared they had duped. Bamboozled. In fact, they had been down right smeckledorfed. As they got there, the two people that they had been following all of this time, had actually been working with the angel. Who, despite the situation, was adorable. Then she turned the two people into water as they were elated at their supposed freedom. Okay, she was less adorable then she had initially thought she was. However, putting on her game face, Zephine had brought out her scythe and decided to charge alongside the other two of her compatriots. There was a bit of an awkward problem though. She was considerably slower than the both of them. Legging it a bit more, she had simply brought her scythe down in a quick clean sweep after Star and Alkes had let loose their strongest attacks.
Lucia was a bit confused by the entire conversation that was going on between Aidan and Annika as time was moving on. This was mostly because she had absolutely no idea who the hell this Aidan person even was, or why there seemed to be some inherent animosity between him and the others. But hey, if he could forge this wand o'light then there was no real problem with him, right? Really her interest was turned more towards Scarlett and Thomas. And how he immediately went to go hit on her and act if he had just cleared the Scarlett route. Of course, being the ever understanding person she was, Scarlett had walked over to him and yelled at him followed by a swift blow to where the sun didn't shine. While Lucia was not too much of a fan of Scarlett, there was only one thing that could describe the quick blow that Thomas had just received. Deserved. As the group was getting ready to move on, Lucia started to go forward and take note of her surroundings, only to stop when she heard something from behind her. Turning back, she saw Thomas, still on the ground, as he seemed to have some sort of pitiful dejected look on his face. Sighing, she walked over to the boy and said, "yo, I know that blow was one to both you and your pride, but we're going now." Extending out a hand to hoist him up, she said, "besides, I doubt you're going to be impressing any girls any time soon from down there."
Lucien Phantom Stratos "So not even he can stay down when he dies either huh?" Lucien said to no one in particular. It was obvious what he was talking about, though. It was obvious to all with the connection. The powers that be had seen fit to not let his life end just yet, and instead had kept him. A smirk spread across his face with this realization. "Well, that's alright then. That means I can just take you on later myself." While the thought of that sort of confrontation was getting him a bit pumped up, there the was matter of the current enemy. The ice griffon that was sent to defeat them. Lucien had to pummel this thing into the ground, after all, you needed to deal with the enemy in front of you before going to the enemy above. As the spikes were coming at him, Lucien's face seemed more focused than usual as he started bobbing and weaving through them, only letting them graze him at the very best. When a delay had come in between the spike shots, Lucien bolted away from the griffon. He could most likely take it on with just his fists, in fact he definitely could, but there was a much less risky way of dealing with this beast. Running over to where Sherridan was, without looking at him, he said, "borrowing this for a bit." His hand shot out and grabbed something that Sherridan had been using this entire time. It was the tree he had used for cover. With the tree basically weak in foundation right now, it was easy enough for Lucien tear it in half and toss the tree half at the griffon. Before the griffon time to respond, Lucien was already running back to its location, as it tried to valiantly get away from the thrown tree. Lifting itself that only its legs were caught by the tree, a cracking and shattering noise could be heard as the griffon no longer hand legs to stand on. Trying to fly higher so that it would get time to reform new ones, when it looked up there was a shadow being cast on it. From above, it saw an airborne Lucien, fists clenched and poised to attack. Yelling, "it's over!" Lucien brought his fist to the griffons face in one punch, the force of it causing the iced griffon to shatter, and fade away. After Phantom had fired his bullets at the respective targets, he was glad to see that, for the most part, they had hit their mark. Sure, the ranger got off probably the easiest of them, and the girl had managed to just cure her wounds off anyway, but at least the scarecrow was on fire, so one good thing came out of it. However, as the white haired girl came over to, seemingly attack Phantom, he tried to actually bring out his blade, Kaminari. There was only one problem. It was sheathed. And it was really difficult to get out a sword and then place it in your hand properly with one hand. However, she just seemed to be spewing more hatefulness towards the goddess and walked away from him without doing much else. He didn't really get what everyone's problem with the goddess was, after all, she seemed like an alright person. She didn't even really have that much of a ruler type vibe to her, let alone tyrant of the universe that people seemed to get in her heads. Nevertheless, he was thankful for her walking away as that just left him one less opponent to deal with, granted, it gave Avi one more. Sherridan seemed poised to attack Phantom again, however, being alert of the rangers presence, he was able to dodge the arrow this time, avoiding it digging into skin and giving him another useless body part. However, he was not expecting the explosion to appear from the arrow that had lodged itself behind him, and thus he was forced forward and onto the ground. As he used his one good arm to pick himself up, he saw that Bartholomew was already healed up completely and no longer on fire. Phantom could only think that he found another source to feed off of, and so he was going to be a problem once more. Though Phantom was starting to think of pulling out regardless, as there was no way he could deal with these people in three versus five...Phantom then saw Lucien break the griffon and realized it was now a two versus five. At that moment, Bartholomew was upon him with a flock of crows swarming at him, tearing at him with their talons every which way. While the flock was tearing at him, his eyes widened, his breathing hastened and sweat started to come out more profusely, as he realized that the opponents he was against right now were absolutely terrifying. In a scared panic, Phantom turned away from the group and ran as fast as he could, going into the shadows of the forest and disappearing from the world completely. Back at Riel, he stood in the palace of the goddess. He had absolutely no idea what that was about, or why he suddenly felt absolutely terrified that he had to leave in a panic. Regardless, as things stood, he hadn't just been beaten. He had been absolutely destroyed. He thought back to everyone there, and realized that even if it were just a one on one, he would have most likely lost. Which just meant that he was weak. And so he had to go and get stronger. Walking out of the palace, Phantom decided to go to the one place where he would figure out how to get stronger. That place, being something called, his workshop. After Stratos had managed to use his magic to knock Hunter off of himself, he sprung back up onto his feet. Stratos then saw that Gwen had begun firing bullets at him, to which Stratos could only started spinning his keyblade around to creating a wind current along it to deflect any sort of bullet that came at him. Of course, this only partially worked, as someone were still able to get through and hit him, though their course was significantly altered due to the current they passed through, so only one of them had actually managed to score a direct hit on his torso, while the others had grazed his shoulder. Quickly reaching into the wound, Stratos managed to pull the bullet out while casting a cure spell at the same time. The would had closed, for the most part, though it would be a bit before it was fully back to normal...and it still hurt really bad. As Hunter tried to convince Stratos to join them, in a conversation Stratos could barely keep up with and was only getting more and more confused at, Hunter went to go attack Beuce, who had seemingly finished his duel, as Gwen fired more shots from her cannon at Stratos himself. With the first shot being wind, Stratos was able to simply hit it away with hand, essentially dispelling the wind strike, however the ice one took him by surprise as it hit him in the gut. Getting ready to launch a counter assault, it was then that Beuce had seemingly been struck down by Hunter. With Stratos somehow suddenly right beside him, he listened intently to Beuce's last message to him. How a real man talks? Stratos thought about it, until a wave of recollections had hit him in just what the words behind that meant. He nodded and said softly, "yeah, I will." And then Beuce had been gone. Disappeared from the world and nothing more than dust in the wind. He turned to face his two opponents now. There was no sorrow on his face, only a strange concentration and focus that seemed to come alongside the man's death. This was not the time to be mourning or being depressed over a lost one, not when he had their last request to fulfill first. Stratos seemed to have a wind flowing out from him, a mighty dramatic wind, as his hair and jacket seemed to flow effortlessly in them. With the wind gathering towards him, he went into cast a spell, one that was already seen in this fight. "Tornado!" Moving his hands in a circular formation, wind started flow around the two opponents as it seemingly started to create a wall around them. Where as Beuce's tornado wall had formed around both him and his opponent in a sort of arena type fashion, Stratos's variation on it had formed walls above and to the side of the opponents, making it more of a tunnel with the only entrance and exit to this tunnel being right where Stratos was standing. Stratos then swiped his hand in the air again, once to the left, once to the right, one away from himself, and once towards himself. This created wind around the two opponents that pushed them in all directions, essentially greatly in inhibiting any of their movements and trying to keep them in place. Stratos pointed at the two of them and shouted, "you two! Do you know the real way a man verbalizes his words to others?" Without waiting for their response he yelled, "a real man," he then turned around by one hundred eighty degrees, and tearing off his jacket, throwing it into the air so that he was no longer facing them any longer. "Speaks with his back!" Out from Stratos's back a giant laser had fired out of it and had traveled through the entirety of the narrow space that was the tornado wall. When it was over and done with, Stratos had thrust both of his arms through his jacket as it was falling down, properly putting it back, with sunglasses falling from the sky and landing perfectly on his face. Arms crossed, he faced the other two and said, "so deal with it."
As Aoki was standing there, a bit on the nervous side given just what she was doing, it was then that a crazy pink haired maid had just sort of popped out of the ground and looked straight at Aoki. She was a bit taken a back by the large woman's appearance but simply nodded her head when the maid asked if she was here because of the job application. It was then that the master of the house had appeared and decided to size the blue haired girl up...only for her to be immediately rejected. She froze in place and was slightly in disbelief as she was called ugly and she saw some of the other more, "beautiful" maids. She twitched in anger for just a moment, as she was ready to absolutely murder the man and all that he had stood for at that very moment...but murder was a crime...and jail wasn't a nice place to be. Despite the internal rage equivalent to the fury of four stars exploding in perfect synchronization, her face had become one that seemed saddened as she bowed to the man before her and said, "please, I may not be up to your standards in appearance," no matter how absolutely garbage they happened to be, "but I have no where else to go to acquire work," literally picking any other job on the mission board would have been better. "Besides, who wouldn't want to work under the esteemed and well renowned Sir Everlue?" most likely anyone with more than a few brain cells. "So please, would you allow me to be a part of your workforce and learn the ways to make myself more desirable from your already lovely maids?" It was going to be a long time before she had any semblance of something known as "shame" after this.
Zephine let out a sigh of relief after they had put the giant down into a nice slumber. Flying back with rest of the group, she then fasted on that sweet ring that she just got, which complimented the other accessory that she had, being the crown. Granted, there were times where she kind of just forgot that the crown was even there to begin with. Regardless, now was the break time of theirs before going on the next excursion, so she couldn't help but walk over to both of her teammates a put up both of her hands towards the others for high fives. "Way to go team! We're banging through this orb finding quest like nobodies business." Her cheery grin then started to fade as a more serious expression appeared on her face as she said, "but other than those weird water demons, we haven't seen hide nor hair of this angel yet, so I got a bad feeling we're about to see them pretty soon since they won't like us just doing as we please."
Equip Dat Ring. I don't know what EX does...but if I can equip it anyway!
Zephine continued to fly over and away from the giant and was trying to kite the being so that she took as little damage as possible. Thankfully, her strategy of simply continually moving was working wonders, as Star had then come in for a good follow up and struck straight at the things neck as had Alkes his full body combat style. Seeing that they had done a good job in a follow up attack, Zephine still needed to keep the aggro on her so that the more heavy hitting fighters of her team would be able to attack unimpeded. Flying forward towards the creature, she slashed at it quickly with her scythe, and then followed up with a few more slashes. She was swiftly flicked off of the creature's body and was sent hurtling into the wall. The giant then, being slightly annoyed with the white haired girl's antics, the giant then revved up his fist and punched straight a Zephine, which caused her to react quickly by putting her scythe in between it and the fist. This caused the blade to lodge in its fist, and lowered the impact, though she was still hit hard, and fell to the ground alongside her scythe. Picking herself up, she got ready to keep it up against this Giant. 6/9
Once the group had gotten to where the giant was, Zephine nodded at the groups encouraging words and started walking towards the giant. When she was far enough away from the group she pointed at the giant and started shouting, "you there! Yes, you!" She made sure to capture the giant's attention. She continued yelling saying, "you are going down here and now. Right today. Because, being a giant and stuff, I am here to thwart you- OH SHIT!" She quickly flew out of the way as the giant punched where she was. Bringing out her scythe she yelled at the thing and said, "bring it on giant!" and started flying around trying to act as the perfect bait for her teammates. 4/9
After the lot of them had managed to take on the group of the umbra, Zephine had turned her scythe back into an orb as she turned back to face the others. Giving a thumbs up to both Alkes and Star, she saw that Star had decided to just go balls deep and reach into the water that may or may not have been acid. When she had pulled her hand out of the water, it was then that she saw that it was another of the orange star orbs they were trying to look for. Awesome! "Way to go Star. Don't worry, we'll get all the towels we could manage to use once we get back." It was then that the group had to go and start fighting a giant, in order to find the sixth orb that they were getting these strange green men that they knew next to nothing about. Taking off with the others, they eventually got to the area where the giant was. A giant castle no less. Well, that was not too unfamiliar than the sight that they had when they first entered the world. Getting to the entrance, Zephine turned to the rest of the group and said, "alright guys, don't worry. When we get in there we'll just use the same strategy we used against the tornado. I'll serve as a distraction, and then the rest of you go boom bam kajoop whip whamy yo! And it'll be beautiful." With that, Zephine entered the castle to start looking for the room where the giant was. 1/9
As Lucia was waiting for an answer from someone about Thomas, the ever so kind and nurturing being that was Scarlett, had decided to fill them in on what had just happened. While she was ranting and raving at Thomas about how much of a stupid idiot he was being, Lucia started to notice that something was shining on his person as it grew into a large wand. Apparently that was the measure of courage they were looking for. So, that was pretty dang swell. Scarlett however, didn't really seem to appreciate Thomas's actions still, and was still acting like one of the most obnoxious people she had ever met. Lucia looked back to Thomas, who seemed both happy and smug, and Annika, the kissed, who seemed relatively unfazed by the whole thing. Lucia looked at Scarlett with a bit of a questioning look on her face and said, "listen, no harm was done to anyone and in fact, we're way better off than before he did anything. I mean, I know it must be hard seeing as you seem to just have the worst bed ever that you just keep waking up on the wrong side of it, but could you quit being such a snarky prick to him?" She then turned to Thomas and walked over to him. Giving a hefty congratulatory pat on the back to the young magical gunslinger, she said, "way to go Thomas, your overzealous antics have finally done something. So congrats on your courage. Put 'em here!" with a grin on her face she held out her hand to the boy for a high five. After that was done with, she then exclaimed out, "alright. Time to go get some ice and fire!" She bet there was also an awesome song about them too.
Zephine was still completely revved up to be fighting these water umbra. Having lost no steam, and only sort of growing in momentum as the fight went on, she continued to fly onward to fight the last remaining few of these demons sent by angels. Bending down, Zephine launched herself forward to go and strike at one that seemed pretty far away. She passed by it, hooking the blade on to the torso of the demon, and cutting off her forward momentum. Dislodging the scythe from the body, she quickly swiped forward at the beasty, killing the water umbra pretty easily and then launched herself back at one of the other stragglers. Flying at the creature, she then stopped short this time, bringing her blade down directly on to the head of the water umbra. Killing it instantly as well. She then looked at the last one that was near her, and rocketed forward at it. Deciding be a bit flashier here, she turned her scythe into an orb and punched, it sending it forward at the demon at high velocity. Pegging it in the brain, she caught up with the orb, and then punched the rebounding orb back into the umbra's skull. It then turned into a scythe as she spun around and decapitated her stunned foe with the blade. With that over and done with, there was only a few of these creatures left. 3/24
Zephine was continuing on her killing spree, as one umbra tried to get the jump on her after she lobbed an enemy for Alkes to defeat. Getting bear hugged by the thing, she let out a mighty warrior yell and elbowed the thing in the gut, causing it to be knocked off of her. She then followed this up by striking at it with her scythe, lodging it into its skull, and causing the watery demon to be felled. It was then that she heard Star yell something out to them about how the acid was probably not acid. Interesting. "Yeah but, water doesn't bubble like an acid lake does, and I don't really see why they'd lie to us about something that would debilitate in our search for the orbs." She then thought about it a bit more and realized, that she probably would have been killed right then and there from the bear hug, were the water umbra actually acid umbra. "Let's look more into it after these things are dealt with!" She called back to Star. Zephine then turned her attention to the fact that there were two umbra approaching from either side of her. Using a quick spin attack with her scythe, she managed to lop off both of their heads in one clean swipe. 9/24
Zephine had continued on her fighting rampage against the water umbras and was really feeling it when it came to bringing them down. She looked over and saw Alkes going into some sort of balistic anger fueled one as well, but was happy to see that her teammate was beating shit up alongside her. Flying down, she looked at another of the umbra, as it simply as it tried to claw at her, to which she just tauntingly backstepped away from the creature. After doing that, she used her scythe to strike forward at the creature, getting the blade caught in the neck but not quite decapitating it. Nevertheless, she simply pulled her blade and went in for another swipe with her scythe to fully kill it. She looked towards the next two that seemed to be approaching her, but not really wanting to fight two at once, she threw her scythe forward, so that it lodged itself clean in the skull of one of the umbras, with the other looking a bit stunned at what had just happened. In that moment of confusion, the impaled was hit by a fire ball, blowing up into watery dust, and then Zephine was already next to the third one. Grabbing her falling scythe, she did a quick slash to lop off a limb, followed by a few more for the remaining limbs until the creature was dead. Wanting to be a bit of a helper for her teammate, she screamed out, "hey Alkes, I think this one is just begging to be smashed in." The one in question, was one that Zephine had caught with her scythe, and then hurled towards Alkes. 15/24
