Lucia spending a good old stat point on Erza (+3 speed ) Buying and equipping Titan Chain. Equipping Wand of Light. AS is now as follows. -Blitz -Strike Raid -Stop -Sliding Dash -Cure
And as it had turned out, all's well had ended well. Wenlock had been locked away for all eternity, Aidan had met with his father whom they had been separated from due to extenuating circumstances, the two of them had been given a job as royal blacksmiths, Annika and Aidan were totally into each other now, Brietta and Scarlett were no longer horses, Annika and her parents were on better terms now, the kingdom was no longer stone, and Lucia was in a bitchingly awesome outfit. Things probably couldn't have ended any better if they had actively tried to make them that way. Which they kind have been, but that was besides the point. After reciprocating Hasu's high five, Lucia then bowed to the royal family and said, "it was a pleasure working with your daughter. Be happy to take on any sort of work from you guys in the future." She then turned back to Annika and said, "and you, make sure to visit Ollie sometime. We kind of left him high and dry and I feel pretty bad about it. Unfortunately we've got a mission to report back, so, can't do it at this time." She then patted Johanna on the back as she said, "well, boy do we got a lot to catch you up on. There giant trolls, and flying horses, Annika's sister turned out to be one of them, and Scarlett turned into one at one point. It was pretty awesome." With that, Lucia was all set and ready to go back to the guild hall. RANDOM NUMBER GODS BE PRAISED THAT AOKI WASN'T DEAD! HOPEFULLY THEY WOULD BE MERCIFUL UPON HER SOUL AND SHE WOULD LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO DO SOMETHING!! AOKI USED CURE ON HER SELF GOD SPEED YOU KEYBLADE WIELDER YOU OH MAN OH GOD OH MAN OH GOD AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
So, it had turned out that everything sort of worked out completely alright. She had used the wand of light for its correct purpose and she had managed to turn Wenlock into probably one of the least threatening people she had seen in awhile. Something weirder was that her clothes had completely changed. That was a bit weird. Sure the new outfit was pretty pretty, and damn did she look good in it, however it felt a bit uncomfortable seeing as it was completely different from what she had usually worn. After having dealt with Wenlock their next order of business was going to save the town's people who had been turned to stone. And so they did...only they were already freed from that curse. Damn, this wand's power had reach. After all was said and done, Scarlett had still remained as a pegasus, and wanted to be turned back into a regular human. Lucia cracked a smile and said, "you sure, you look way more gallant and majestic in this form?" After her short little joke, Lucia used the wand of light's power to break the curse over Scarlett, turning her back into a human, and said, "nice work there Scar. Couldn't have saved everyone without you," with that, she held out her fist towards Scarlett, prompting a fist bump between the two. Then Thomas seemed to come over to her and seemed to start hitting on her as well. Chuckling a bit at his attempt, Lucia gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder while smiling saying, "you can get me a drink only if the offer still stands when I get back into my regular clothes." She then looked at Johanna, giving her a thumbs up, saying, "don't worry there Jo, we're all totally fine and completely saved the day."
Man, these maids hurt. Well, that sucked. Also, Rho had this odd feeling that things were falling apart elsewhere. Ah well, it was probably completely right. Regardless, he had a maid before him that he needed to finish off. Granted, his damage thus far had been ****, and would probably continue to be so, but the dice would land where they may and he would just have to accept that. So, Rho just used Blitz against the maid. Weeeeeee.
Well, this fight seemed to be going nowhere really in their favor. The group collectively didn't have the damage they needed to defeat him soundly, and he himself seemed to be really strong. Sure, the first few attacks he sent weren't really too much to deal with, but now that he had frozen Hasu and brought down Amanda, it was quite clear how bad things were going to turn out if they continued on the way they were. Not to mention that Annika was going to freeze to death under that ice and snow if something didn't save her soon. Lucia wasn't sure what to do, except for throwing more knives, when something occurred to her. The wand of light was still just sort of floating there in the air, just waiting to be grabbed. However it was obviously way too high for her to just jump there and reach it. If only she could fly. No, that would have been impossible. If only she had some magical creature that could get her that high. If only. IF ONLY- Wait a second. Moving at top speed, Lucia jumped on top of Pegasus Scarlett's back and said, "listen, I know this is really awkward for both of us, but just trust me for a second and FLYYYYYYYYYYY!" Seeing as , the most likely confused and aggravated, Scarlett had actually agreed to this, Lucia and the horse had taken off straight towards the wand of light. Lucia grabbed the magical thing right out of the air and responded with, "Got it!" She then looked at the object and realized something. She had no idea how to use it. It didn't seem to work when Annika tried it, and there was probably a good reason for it. She kept thinking on it and then realized something. She vehemently ordered this thing to destroy Wenlock. The wand, made from love and courage, forged in the fires of hope. This hardly seemed like a tool of destruction. Besides, Lucia didn't really want to kill Wenlock or anything. After what had happened with Ezekiel, the thought of anyone trying to play judge jury and executioner towards a generally terrible person was a terrifying thought. It really wasn't something she was in a hurry to experience again. All she wanted now was for everyone to be alright. For all of her friends to be completely fine and not frozen, freezing or passed out on the ground. She wanted everyone in the kingdom to be perfectly fine again, and not stone sculptures. She just wanted all of the guild members of Sapphire Eclipse to get out of this ordeal alright, and Johanna was currently not amongst them to make that a reality at present. So, point the wand at Wenlock, Lucia asked of it, "so that I can protect my friends. So that I can save everyone who's in dire straights. So that this kingdom's days of peace can return. Wand of Light, stop Wenlock's spells and break his curses...please." And with that, their fate was left in the hands of what happened next.
Oh man, the mouse king died and the nutcracker, well something happened to him. Oh god reactions. Reacting.
And then Rho, having been hit by an iron, just sort of shrugged it off. Didn't really seem to do all that much to him. So he, as well, used blitz on this maid because hey, she wasn't currently in the kitchen. Needed to change that. Or maybe it was because she was trying to kill him. One of the two really. Maybe both. I dunno. You decide. And then you can make the wrong decision. Unless it's the right one. So meta, I know. Aoki was still really annoyed with this maid, and wanted to give her a piece of her mind. And so that's what she did. Okay. No she didn't. She did not remove part of her brain and throw it at this maid. But what she did do, was throw wind at the maid. That was like a piece of grey matter, right? No? Didn't think so. But even still, Aoki used Aero, which I suppose what represent a piece of the metaphysical concept known as one's mind.
As Charlotte had blocked the large ice barrage from Boreal's onslaught, including a large spear that seemed to be directed towards Dale, the young guardian couldn't help but start to get angered by this man's absolute arrogance. "You call yourself justice! You call this act justice! Justice is not some pretty word you can throw around to justify this level of ignorance. This level of absolute disregard for anything and everything around you. All this will turn out to be is genocide, with a frighteningly strong demon on the loose. When that happens, where will your justice be?!" With that, Charlotte charged at Boreal and used blitz on him, still going to shield for Dale after her attacks hit true.
The fateful showdown between the guild of Sapphire Eclipse and the madman Boreal was finally upon them. Feeling an icy armor envelop Charlotte, she noticed that Dale had provided for them an icy barrier to shield them from a slew of Boreal's attacks. Gripping her blade tightly, the time for talk was over and fighting was all that was left for them. She yelled out to her guildmates, "let us show this man of ice the fires of Sapphire Eclipse!" With that, Charlotte barrier surged Boreal and went to go shield for Dale. She figured that he would be the target of aggression given who the opponent was.
As Aoki had continued looking through all the books, because gosh darn there were a lot of books, when suddenly a maid just kind of appeared. Out of nowhere. Damn, these maids were ninjas that they were. Calling out her keyblade to her side, Aoki pointed it towards the maid saying, "alright beautiful, let's see how well you dance with this ugly girl." With that, Aoki flung an aero spell at the maid. -Meanwhile- As Rho and the others had left the quarters that Vance and Conrad were in, they were suddenly assailed by the maids. He wasn't quite sure why they were so quick to attack, but seeing as the battle screen had already appeared, it had seemed diplomacy was quite out of the question. And as such, Rho was simply forced to draw his blade, and got ready to take on the maid who was barring his path. Rho had used Blitz.
After Lucia had struck with her knives, not dealing the best amount of damage that she could have but not doing too bad with it, she watched as Wenlock did something that could only be described as absolutely horrifying and hilarious all at once. Turning Scarlett into a winged pony of sorts, quite like Brietta had been beforehand, Lucia couldn't help but crack a smile at the event. Sure, it was awful that she got turned into a horse...but Scarlett had turned into a horse. Lucia could only think there was some sort of of cosmic irony behind this sort of event, and shook off her amused smile as she turned back to Wenlock. "Well, we'll just see about your horsing around, once we knock you off your high horse and into the colt snow." With that, Lucia used quick blitz on Wenlock.
After Charlotte had delivered a swift punch of justice to the young miss's face, she walked back and picked her sword up and watched as Dale had gone on healing and encouraging the others for the fight ahead. Despite the journey not being so long, Charlotte could see that she was most likely mistaken in her original assessment of him. While he was a tad caustic towards others and not an overall pleasant person to be around, he was most definitely a reliable person when it came down to it. Soon after Ander had walked over to her and said something about how she had wished Thomas was here instead of him, and it was entirely his own fault things went as badly as they did against Cal. She was extremely confused by this statement and didn't understand what prompted it, as Ander, along with everyone else had done admirably against the suspiciously strong Calxiyn. Not to mention he, unlike Thomas, had cure equipped. Still confused by the boy's dejected behavior as he walked away, Charlotte turned back towards the rest of the group to see that they were ready to take on Boreal. Once they had approached him, he seemed to be all too confident in his own abilities to take on the entirety of their team. And so, he offered them a proposal. An offer to take on Deliora alongside him and rid the world of the demon. However, the demon was already taken care of. He was not going to escape his icy confines unless someone freed him. And thus, that was what brought them to this. "You seem to be mistaken horribly about something Boreal. Mindless puppets are something we aren't. We fight with Dale because he is our comrade, our guild mate, a member of the Sapphire Eclipse family. We fight alongside him because we chose to, we stand against you now because we choose to, not because a man who has far too many insecurities and delusions propped a mask on our face and brainwashed us into fighting our own." Pointing her sword at him she said, "and so we refuse. You believe yourself comparable to the strength of the demon your own father, a man who was leagues above you could not take down? You expect to take us on, a team who has the heat of the sun to melt your ice, and the force of the moon to pull the remaining water away? We will stand against you here and now and break the illusion you have that you are going to free Deliora. So if you will not stand down, prepare yourself!" Rho had simply nodded his head as the nobles had dismissed them from their posts here. And so, Rho motioned to the tambourine woman and the man of stone, as if to tell them to start their walk away from the discussion that was to go on. As he began his own walk to the servants quarters, he had briefly wondered about how well the duo was doing in their search for the book. -Meanwhile in the Library- Aoki was still just looking at the books. Wondering if Daybreak was anywhere nearby. Yup, these sure were some great books to be looking at. All kinds really. Ones with hard covers, ones with pages, ones with covers with color. The possibilities were endless with the books they could find. Just, books books books. Man, this place was pretty big. But ya know, computers aren't a thing, and this wasn't your public library. No digital catalogs to sift through and find your book with relative ease. No desk attendants or random people walking shelving books that you could just ask and be like, "hey, do you know where I can find this book?" and they can be "why certainly. It's right over in this section over here." Then you stop the conversation there because they don't need to know that you're stealing a book. After all, they don't have a library card, so they can't even effectively rent it. Nor can they have the max amount of fun. They can't even take the book forever and accrue an eternal late fee. Nope. This is just straight up stealing. Anyway, long story short, Aoki was still looking for that book. Since I'm posting as everyone else, might as well post as Lucia. Yeah, she's still attacking. That hasn't really changed at all. Good times, good times.
Charlotte had tried to do as much as she could, but her strike was merely a glancing blow that didn't do quite as much as it should have. And with that, Cal had gone back on the offensive once more, and let loose a barrage of attacks. Bracing herself from the large dark blast that had come towards both her and Dale, she managed to mitigate the grand majority of the damage that came from the magic. Looking around, she had seen that both Ander and Ra had gone down as well, and Cal had let out all of the taunts she could towards them. Pointing her blade at Calxiyn, Charlotte had begun, "foul wielder of corrupt darkness, that which would assist in releasing a blight upon the world in helping fulfill some crazed fool's delusions. You who would swear fealty to a lunatic among lunatics, you will be brought down by justice here and now. No matter how many storms you send at us, there will be those who weather it and stand tall. No matter how many times we may fall in the face of adversity, we will always be willing to stand back up and there will always be those willing to an extend out a hand to bring us back to our feet. That is the spirit of a true team member! That is the spirit of a guild!" She then let the blade she was holding fall out of her hand as she then used the now free hand to point at Cal. "Know that as you fall, that power you hold in such esteem will have failed you. Know that in your final act of desperation, it will have been all for naught. For we, Sapphire Eclipse, will not falter. We will succeed in stopping Boreal and Deliora! Now," pulling her hand back and clenching her fist, Charlotte started to charge at Calxiyn yelling, "let me see you grit those teeth!" With that, upon coming in striking of distance of Cal, she punched her. Right in the face. Bitch.
Having just blocked for Dale once more, it seemed that Therity was now being singled out and targeted by Cal's relentless attacks. However that couldn't be helped. There was only one thing to do now. This was the best opportunity to beat their opponent back and win the fight. Getting ready, Charlotte had jumped forward towards her opponent and used blitz against her, getting ready to block for Dale if need be. Oh no Annika was thrown into a snow bank, oh god, oh man, oh lordy, oh scheisser. Lucia used blitz. Wee.
Yeah yeah, platitudes and all that sort of stuff. Oh no rotting in hell. Such terror. Regardless, in order to circumvent all the one shotting and the next AOE, Charlotte used barrier surge on cal and body blocked for Dale. Exciting stuff I know. Really on the edge of your seat.
After having used her body to shield Ra from the dark energy that was flowing from Cal, she noticed that the girl had gone and seemingly let loose the attacks that she had been using to single out targets this entire time twice upon Dale. Watching him fall to ground, Charlotte knew where her duty to defend would take her next. Cloaking herself in a shielding light, she proclaimed to Cal, "We each are one of a whole, a whole much larger than any of us on our own. Your power is all you have with you, and when you fall beneath the strength of our bonds, your power will abandon you." With that, Charlotte flung herself at Cal using barrier surge, afterwards going to block Dale's, currently unconscious, body. Rho had continued to stand there, quite bemused by everything that was going on here. It had seemed that Everlue and Zephryine weren't exactly hitting it off, and the latter seemed to take offense at just about literally anything the former had said. It was an understandable reaction, but not one befitting her position, and her continued ever apparent anger was probably not going to do them any favors. Seeing her very telegraphed death stare, Rho simply patted her on the shoulder and with a calm look on his face shook his head as if to tell her her behavior was still unbecoming. As the duo had entered the room, it revealed itself to be a pretty sprawling library room. Well, that was pretty convenient. This was a pretty promising place if ever there was one to find a book, and so they had to get to searching. She wasn't entirely sure if they were sorted in any specific order, but, they'd have probably have an easy enough time finding it here. As Zephyr suggested splitting up, Aoki nodded her head and said, "sounds good. Let's get to searching!" There wasn't really any danger to splitting up here, as the room wasn't big enough for them not to signal to each other if things got hairy for the other. So with that, Aoki went to searching. With the wand now finally formed, Brietta freed from her nonsensical curse, and Hasu yelling at a rainbow in the sky, things were looking up for the group. Speaking of looking up, she could see something really ugly and deformed in the sk- oh it was Wenlock. Well that made sense then. Wait. It was Wenlock. Fuck. After that, Annika tried to use her wand of light extremely aggressively to basically murderstomp Wenlock with it...and it turned out to dud out. It was at that point that Wenlock then seemed to switch his gaze not from marrying Annika, but to Scarlett instead. Lucia couldn't help but chuckle a little at this turn of events at the proclamation, and then thinking of Wenlock and Scarlett in wedding attire together only made her start to laugh a little harder than she was. She pointed to Thomas and said to Wenlock, "the dude's totally spot on. I mean, if you don't want to marry Annika because of this one little transgression with her trying to kill you, that'd probably be your entire marriage right there." As everyone else had start to ready themselves for combat, Lucia said, "but seriously we're going to have to kick your ass." She then put on a more serious face and said, "after all, we're here to save our friend and clients who got turned to stone and protect everyone from ever having to deal with you ever again. And that right there," she pointed to the wand of light saying, "is complete proof of how far we're willing to go to save everyone. So after all, it's the perfect thing to protect us from whatever harm you throw our way." With that, she drew out her knives and got ready to tango with this Wenlock dude.
After Charlotte had blocked all the damage coming forth towards her teammate once more, Cal seemed to be none too pleased with her words. Throwing her own ones of superiority and quite the insult towards Charlotte, which caused her to grip her blade tighter than before. Pointing it at the girl she said, "vulgar girl, we will continue to stand no matter how many attacks you throw at us. No matter how much power you posses, you are solely alone in this fight. When we fall, we have someone to catch us and to keep ourselves standing. When you fall there is nothing but the floor behind you to break your fall. So allow us to continue in breaking this false delusion of your own power!" With that, Charlotte jumped at Cal and used blitz. Afterwards, she then went to go block for Ra.
As Aoki had opened up the door to see what was inside there, she saw there was nothing really of note...except for world's ugliest of golden statues that existed. Which meant, she would definitely not take them. Having a statue like that on her person was not something she wanted to have at all. Turning to Zephyr she simply said, "nothing but some gold statues of the man of the house himself. Let's just keep going onward," after Zephyr did or did not take a statuette for himself, Aoki continued down the hallway as silently as she could until she got to the next closest door. At that point, she checked for any locks with her keyblade again, and then opened the door in the same manner as she had last time.
After having broken the window down, Aoki looked around and saw that there was absolutely nothing of note in here. She had just entered into a run of the mill blank boring hallway. Regardless, they were in the building now, and were just that much closer to finding the book then they were with the whole maid plan. She looked and saw there was a giant statue of Everlue himself, and the urge to throw spell after spell at it was tempting, but overall not worth it. Adding to their vandalism charges as it was was probably not the greatest of plans, and putting theft on top of that, well, it was not something she nor probably any other member of the guild wanted to deal with. Walking over to the closest door, she pointed at it and said, "might as well just check these one at a time." She first put her magical object of ultimate unlocking potential against the door and used its magicalness to check if there were any locks, were there, there wouldn't be anymore. She then slowly and cautiously opened the door so as not to disturb or alert anything in there. Basically Aoki went to open the red line closest to the red arrow. Lucia had just sort of said, "alright then," to Amanda as she "left her to her thoughts." Lucia wasn't really thinking in depth about really anything at the moment, but hey, if she were, it was awfully considerate of Amanda. Thomas had also replied to her, telling her to leave him alone at the moment, and she just sort of obliged to it as he seemed to be in a serious mood. So with that done, she just sort of waited around for the ring to be forged and the wand to be ready for use for their showdown with Wenlock.
Lucia turned back to Amanda as she asked her a fair amount more questions. Lucia shrugged at the first one saying, "there isn't really much more to talk about them. They were a gift and that's about it. As for my friend," she chuckled a bit as she thought about her joining a guild and said, "nah, she's not really the guild type. She just goes on adventures for the sake of adventuring. She just hears about something fun and goes to do it, dropping everything. So yeah, she probably wouldn't ever join a guild." She then thought more on how to respond to the next one and said, "well, I don't know. I think everyone here's alright. Scarlett's a bit of a bitch, but otherwise fine. Hasu's nice, but scary when angry." She then shuttered at the thought of being the receiving end of what he had yelled at the king earlier. "Thomas is pretty alright, just gets a bit too mopey about rejection, but otherwise he seems like a good guy. Zwei is..." she thought about it for a moment and then just came up with, "well he's Zwei. And you seem like a pretty good person. Don't really know much about, well, anyone here, but you all seem like good people." Charlotte had watched as Cal had gone on the offensive and went onto on an onslaught against Ra. She swore under her breath as she seemed to fail at protecting the man, but would make up for it with this strike. She had to make the sure that he didn't sustain any more damage while he was down, and so she went into using Barrier Surge against Cal. As her barriered body slammed against the girl she said, "you'll find that the "bird" you so callously mock will be a part of your ultimate undoing. As we continue, you'll had wish you were fighting the frozen demon instead of us!" After that, she went to go intercept any counter attack against Ra.
