World Tree MUSH

"The truth of thine allegiance waxeth clear--thou art of the godless Blessed's number." Ifrit continues his tirade as he glares upon Temulin and Yumi, the Au Ra holding her blade firmly as she stares at the infernal primal before her. The immortal flames turn to help the kidnapped, doing their best to keep their distance from the Primal; for they know full well what threat it poses. "The Paragons warned of thine abhorrent kind. Thine existence is not to be suffered."

Temulin barks out a laugh at that line, "Really, them? They're that scared of little old me? Next time you see them, tell them I appreciate the compliment." She offers defiantly, "But for now, it's time for you to be torn asunder. You will not expand your cult today, Ifrit."

Finally, Ifrit's forepaws smite the ground, creating a ... fiery barrier that prevents movement in all ways but one, but leads to a path in the last and Ifrit states next. "My loyal minions, I shall strike asunder this monstrosity. Run, the path leads to Zan'rak." The Amal'jaa follow this command, fleeing in that direction.

    "I can feel my followers... They know I'm in trouble." Uni muses to herself briefly. "I'll have to thank them later." The CPU Candidate steps forth, letting the Immortal Flames take over with the hostages, and stepping forth into the open. "Heed me, false one. You stand before a true Goddess. Prostrate thyself before me and I may show mercy to thee and thine. Resist, and all shall be ground into dust before me." she speaks as she walks, a slender, tiny thing before the demonic hellbeast. "What say thee?" She lifts her rifle, racking the slide and adjusting the selector, causing the piping of light around the frame to switch from white, to a pale blue, frost forming along the barrel.

    "We're not the abhorrent ones here," Yumi replies, shifting her grip on Prominence. She slides one foot back, and holds the blade back behind herself, pointed upward at an angle. The runes along the weapon light up with golden-white radiance. "You rob your followers of their very will, and send them out to steal and kidnap. I don't care how divine you think you are, that's not acceptable from anyone. Not even a god. Taking away someone's free will is destroying them as a person, in a way that's so horrifying I can't even put it into words."

    The senshi's front foot shifts slightly, and her shoulder drops, squaring her stance and leaning her weight forward in readiness. Her eyes take on a grim cast, her face thoroughly serious. "So, how about it? Want to see who burns hotter?"

    Rydia... Rydia stares in abject horror as the Lord of the Inferno is called into the world. It is a terrible moment. A moment in which everything has gone wrong and come crashing down all around her. All the efforts to rescue the prisoners amount to nothing now that the raging ruler of fire has been called into the world, the last Summoner of Mist can do little more than look on with a distant look of terror to her eyes, jaw slack as her breath catches in her throat.
    Ifrit has been called.
    The world will burn.
    All will burn.
    There will be no stopping it.
    To Rydia's credit she does not simply collapse to the ground and devolve into hysterics then and there. She is beyond histerics.

>> SUMMARY[Rydia] >> [Your Summoner has encountered a fatal error and must shut down.]

    Sure, Dante's late, but sometimes it fits to be fashionably late! From out of the flames, he practically leaps right in as the Ul'dahn soldiers join the fray, brandishing his greatsword. "Who ordered the asskicking primo del-Oh shit, that actually looks pretty bad."

    He stares, trying to get a good look at Ifrit through the haze of flames all over the place. "...righty then. Time to get paid."

Duncan had just got back in the area and dismounted when that fire barrier went up. Nemesis squawks angrily -- yes, when threatened with fire, she's angrier than she is afraid -- at being separated from her master. However, Duncan himself merely faces the summoned beast silently. He's no hero, so he's not going to give any heroic speeches. He pauses first to size up the situation, wondering if it's worth it to go after the fleeing Amal'jaa. Ifrit is certainly the greater threat, but that leaves them free to cause other problems...

    Emily steps forward. She's wearing a black trench coat and a matching wide-brimmed hat, which casts her face into more shadow than you might expect, and she has dark gray hair and four arms. She nods in greeting to Dante. "Just in time!" In a swirl of silvery nanomachines, a blindfold appears over Rydia's eyes. It looks like YoRHa's, but it's actually a blindfold.

    She smirks up at Ifrit and tips her hat, revealing her glowing purple eyes. "Y'know, I've been wanting to punch a god for a while now," she says dryly, "and Uni, I'm sorry to say, you're not as punchable as this guy is."

    In another swirl of nanomachines, her outfit turns green, and her hair becomes the same shade of silver as Dante's. "... Damn, I already have all of my Capacitor Seals turned off," she says. "Should've put 'em back on so I could take them off now. Well, Ifrit ..." She holds out her hands, and four falchion swords appear in her hands. "Ready for your worst afternoon?"

"Thou hath thine own followers to guide, leave me and mine be and I shall grant the same to thee and thine." Ifrit answers Uni. Yumi doesn't even get a verbal answer, and the primal begins his onslaught of attacks, the first is a breath of fire at Temulin and those behind her; she's positioned herself to try to make that be no-one else; and soon after the ground begins to crack before fire bursts forth. There's safe spots, but the focus is on all but Uni and Rydia; who are in safe spots.

    "Dust it is, then." Uni glances toward Emily at her comment, she just gives a little smirk, before leveling her rifle and bracing. The barrel unfolds, and a blue beam builds up within, before lancing out at Ifrit. It's a regular XMB beam, but tinted a paler blue and causing frost to form in the air, despite the inferno of flames surrounding the Lord of Inferno. "EX Multi Blaster. Mode Shiva!" She announces after the beam's already in flight, holding her ground as it's not currently exploding fire at her.

Dante does chipperly point at Emily when she mimics his hairdo. "I was dealing with some stuff at home, glad I'm not too late." Giving her the fingerguns, he then dashes off towards the Primal at high speed.

    He propels himself towards Ifrit's chest, mantling up the Primal's legs before he buries his sword in Ifrit's chest, before drawing his pistols. He unloads his guns into Ifrit, trying to make as big of holes as possible.

Duncan is not behind Temulin -- he's a tank, he's going to be somewhere next to her, since he too is a decent meat shield. That doesn't mean he doesn't feel the heat off that fire breath, though... He does not want to get caught in that. He actually uses maneuvering around to get a better angle to attack from to dodge the fire coming out of the ground, aiming to swing his sword at the Primal. Yes, that's about all he's got at this point; the only magic he has is fire, and that's clearly not going to do him any good here!

    Once again Yumi moves right beside Temulin; she heaves her huge sword right around in front of herself, using it to shield her from the worst of the fire breath - and herself to shield everyone behind. The very instant it's stopped, the magical girl hefts her blade up and takes a leap straight towards Ifrit's head. Around comes Prominence, but rather than a proper slash, she swings the weapon's flat into the Primal's head, like a great big paddle. The strike is meant to be jarring, painful, and most of all distracting. It's meant to put her high up the Lord of the Inferno's priority list. It's only when she lands and moves to flank that a second strike comes, a quick slash at Ifrit's side.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> /ac "Provoke" Ifrit

    Safe spot or not, Rydia quakes where she stands. The heat of the flames, the roar of the fire, and the acrid smell of everything turning to ash all around her leave the girl stunned to inaction.
    It's all too much like the memory of a small village in the valley of Mist burning to the ground.
    The screams, the chaos, the horror of it all have Rydia finally collapsing to her knees in the ash, one hand clutching her chest as she looks on, distantly, while the others leap into action. She remains rooted in place where she is, breath hard and ragged as she struggles back to her feet, sweat beading at her brow. It takes her a long moment; lips fluttering, but no words come out, not at first. But soon enough words of power begin to flutter haltingly from the last Summoner's lips as she stumbles on a spell, casting in a haze as she holds out trembling hands.
    "B... Blizzard...!" She finally rallies enough to complete the casting, hurling a frigid blast of cold air, snow, and weaponized ice at the flaming primal before dropping to her knees once more.

    Emily smirks, and shoots up into the air above that fire. "Ayoop!" She snickers. "Not today, Satan!"

    She glances over the battlefield. Well, there's not much she can do to gain a tactical advantage at this point, so .... she just sticks with the classics. She conjures up several dozen golden bolts of light, then swoops around behind the fiery Primal. She slashes at Ifrit's back with her four swords -- directly across from Dante's sword -- as the golden bolts fly forward, carefully avoiding all allies in melee range, to strike Ifrit from the front!

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Emily Nyx: one-woman pincer attack.

Uni's frozen beam hits Ifrit straight on, the primal recoils at the hit. Dante's acrobatics get him up on Ifrit, though that chest proves a little more resiliant to stabbings than anticipated. Still, there is a solid scratch and fire leaks from the holes made by his gunshots. Duncan's blade chips away at the primal's limbs, and Yumi's strike forces the Amal'jaa deity to recoil.

Rydia's spell might be nervous, but Ifrit had discounted the girl as a threat and was unprepared for the cold to stifle his flames. This provides a great opportunity for Emily's blades to dig deeper than they otherwise might have, and the golden bolts hit him in the face.

The Amal'jaa are gone, the ring of fire closes, and the primal leaps up into the sky. Wounded but healing, a being of aether can restore any wounds so long as there's aether yet to sustain him after all. He lands on the opposite end of the ring of fire, and creates two clones of himself, each of which charging towards the heroes, forming a blazing great trail as they pass. The clones vanish as he lands, and breathes heavy fire towards Yumi.

Temulin attacks with her blade, while glancing to Duncan, "You can fight fire with fire, you know."

    Stowing his guns, Dante notices the lava coming his way. "Okay...so that's gonna be a problem." He pries his sword free before kicking off of Ifrit, then...he focuses.

    He focuses on that same power that he felt when Vergil impaled him during their first fight, all the way atop Temin Ni Gru. That same awakened power that gave him...

    WINGS.

    https://youtu.be/Y5z0Ibj1Hvk WINGS.

    His entire body is enveloped in demonic energies as flesh and clothing are warped beyond human recognition. Horns sprout from what used to be Dante's head, wings emerging from his back in bloody chunks, his hands becoming clawed and chitin-covered...Devil Trigger is activated, and the crimson devil takes flight.

    "I got wings now? SWEET." Dante says, voice turning echoy and garbled as electricity and fire arc from his body. Drawing Rebellion, he charges towards Ifrit, making multiple passes with a sword strike on each.

>> GAME >> Dante spends an Edge for: Dante is helping fight Ifrit, he needs the firepower.

>> SUMMARY[Dante] >> LIFELESS CORPSES FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEEEEEEEEEEE /o~

    He's healing. That's not good. This fight will be a lot longer if they have to exhaust Ifrit's healing ability - or if it's inexhaustible, they might be in trouble, Yumi realizes. But she'll cross that bridge if they come to it. For now, she'll focus on the fight.

    Down the Primal comes, and then dashing across the arena, thrice over. The redhead's evasion is haphazard, one of the sudden dashes scorching her on the way by, but when he comes at her again with fire, she's privately pleased; even if it means another set of burns, a searing pain through her body, it means he's focusing on her rather than someone else. Like Rydia.

    A frown flickers across Yumi's face. She can see from here how bad off the little summoner is, but the best thing the senshi can do is keep Ifrit's attention away from the girl. So as soon as the fiery breath ceases, she's already countering, lunging forward with a one-handed sweep of her blade - and following up by bringing her left hand forward and pointing it at Ifrit's face. There's a sudden burst of light and heat, a blast of solar flames exploding outward in a sudden surprise burst to complement her already-powerful slash.

Charging Primal clones! Aside from being a killer name for a band, that is a very dangerous thing in actuality. Duncan's fully armored, so he doesn't quite get out of the way in time, and gets winged by one of the clones. He gives a grunt, spun around and taken off-guard for a moment. Though as he gets his bearings again, he hears Temulin's words. "What?" he intones, pausing to look at her. "Using fire against Ifrit actually works?" It does seem pretty strange. But hey, if he can use another weapon in this fight, why wouldn't he?

Ifrit jumping into the air gives him the time he needs to give it a shot, though. He pauses, raising his free hand and pointing to the sky as he speaks the words of the spell. A small flame leaps to life above his index finger, and then he touches that finger to his blade. The fire seems to spread along the edges of the blade until it's alight, though stays away from the handle or anywhere he could potentially burn himself. And then as Ifrit lands, Duncan lunges to attack again, this time with his blade alight.

He catches sight of Dante's transformation and frowns slightly. He hopes that's not a sign of one of their allies picking up Ifrit's influence. But since the transformed man is still fighting Ifrit, Duncan leaves him be for now.

    Uni huffs. She was hoping that first barrage would have done the trick, but the Lord of Inferno is tougher than he looks. The clone charging gets her attention, and she switches tack, running toward Rydia and bodily picking the Summoner up if she's in the danger zone. "On your feet Summoner. We've got a god to kill." she says. At the same time, she summons her power-symbol, and presses it into her chest. "ACCESS!"

    Transforming, she lifts into the air, carrying Rydia out of harms way. "We're here with you, Rydia." Black Sister says her voice just that little deeper, more authoratative. "Lets finish this together."

>> GAME >> Uni spends an Edge for: Transforming to Black Sister, rescuing a Summoner.

>> SUMMARY[Uni] >> Allez oop. Lets get you out of the fire there, little mist.

    Rydia's fingers curl into the ground as she pants for breath. With that great ring of fire closed all around her and the others, there is nowhere to go... Nowhere to go but through Ifrit himself. Tears well in Rydia's eyes, leaving streaks down sooty cheeks as the worst of her fears is given life and charging right for her.
    She almost doesn't register when she's scooped right up. Almost.
    Black Sister's voice cuts through the haze and the heat, and Rydia realizes that, in her hand, she's holding something. Something she had pulled out of her robes without thinking.
    It is the ice rod that her mother bequeathed her.
    "Y-yeah... I'm... I'm fine."
    Rydia of Mist is not fine. But she can rally enough to put that wand to use, peppering Ifrit with blasts of cold and ice while Uni ferries her away through the air.

    While floating up to avoid the Triple-Primal Smackdown, Emily is startled by Dante's transformation! (She's more-or-less used to Uni's, for that matter.) But she breaks into a grin; she seems to have a similar train of thought to Duncan, and Dante doesn't look 'corrupted' or anything like that. "Nice, D!"

    She pauses. "I don't have elemental abilities," she says as Duncan goes for the fire at Temulin's instruction. "I should figure out writing spell-software sometime ..." She shrugs. "Still. I can tranform, too! It's just, y'know, I'm already at maximum output." She grins. "But not at maximum outfit.

    As Ifrit launches himself into the air, Emily changes in a swirl of nanomachines into a form wearing an elegant rainbow-colored ballgown, and her body turns so black it looks like a rip in space or a graphical glitch. She lets out an oddly-echoing cackle, and shadows lance out from her, stabbing at Ifrit as he lands. She's trying to unleash as many stabs as she can, doing what she can to outpace the Primal's regeneration! This is followed up by a great big Vantablack fist, aimed directly at Ifrit's face!

Dante's passes strike deep, cutting into the primal's body and tearing through it. Duncan's fire lights brightly as his fire digs into Ifrit's, the conflagration chewing through Ifrit's aether. With Uni's aid, Rydia's ice can further hamper the primal. The black of Emily's attacks contrasts with Yumi's light, every blow further consuming Ifrit's aether.

The heat of the ring of fire is growing, however, and four large spikes sprout from the ground, each of them aflame and clearly amassing energy. "Surrender thyself to the fires of judgment." Ifrit demands, as the ground at the edges of the ring of fire melts and turns to lava, all the while his claws try to render Yumi asunder.

    "I know, right? It's rad!" Dante calls out to Emily when he's close enough to be in earshot. "Man this makes transport so much easier!" He gleefully says, before going back to jousting with Ifrit. He lunges deep, cuts deeper, to make sure Ifrit suffers as much damage as possible for the others to whittle him down. The heat turns up, but Dante shows no signs of slowing down as he slashes at Ifrit's heel. "C'mon, you big bastard, fall already!"

    The heat rises at the same time as those spkies shoot up from the ground. Yumi grimaces; she can't do anything about them with Ifrit keeping her busy (and her keeping Ifrit busy), but even without magical senses, her instincts are screaming at her that those are bad news. "Those spikes, something's up with them! Someone try to take them down!" It's the best she can do for now.

    Past that, her only option is to press the attack. The senshi proves adept at using her huge blade as much for defense as attack; shifting the face of it so one claw swipe bounces off, stepping back to turn a second into a glancing hit... she came into this injured to begin with, and the burns and gashes are slowly building up, but she's leaning fully into her toughness to weather Ifrit's attacks until she can find an opportunity to strike.

    And when she spots it, Prominence lashes out without warning, the blade aglow with solar magic - one, two swipes... and then her left hand sweeps upward, calling a small solar blast into being directly below Ifrit. Fwoom.

    Black Sister nods to Rydia, holding the Summoner steady above the burning arena. She spots those spikes, and narrows her eyes... "We should destroy those, quickly." she muses, then communicates that exact thought to the rest of the team. "Destroy the spikes! He's planning something big!" One handed, Uni adjusts her railgun, and aims at one of the spikes. "EX Multi Blaster. Mode Empress!" She squeezes the trigger, and a golden beam of energy lances out, aimed at one of those spikes.

    Spikes gathering energy. That doesn't look good. "On it, coach!" Emily answers Yumi. There's a swirl of silvery nanomachines as she transforms into ...

    ... a twenty-foot-long black metal sword, pointed straight up.

    The hilt is a stylized bust of an auburn-haired woman in a midnight blue business suit and glowing purple eyes with a ":3"-face, currently upside-down. It doesn't really look that sharp; it's designed to deal with stuff that you need a 20-foot-long sword for, not to do surgery. Ponderously, the sword tips over using only gravity, and comes crashing down at another spike with a mighty CLANG.

    It misses.

    "Whoops, hang on," says the hilt in Emily's voice. "Stand back, everyone, deal with the other two!" The sword then begins slashing at the spike -- slowly, ponderously, and above all, inexorably.

    Holding on tightly as she's ferried over the flames, Rydia squeezes her eyes shut. Those stone spikes are a problem, but all she can do is pepper Ifrit with ice from her wand.
    Until something clicks.
    "U... Uni. Put me down." She says after a moment, grim and serious, amid flinging more ice from her wand at Ifrit.

Dncan gets well out of the way of the Primal before he pauses to marvel at the realization that fire worked against a fire-elemental enemy of this size. Though he's not given much time to consider it, as those spikes start coming up, gathering energy, and... yeah, no, that's not good.

But with Yumi directly engaging Ifrit, he heads for one of those spikes and attacks, trying to break it as quickly as he can. If the fire one his blade appears to not be doing any damage, or if the spike appears to be getting stronger, he will extinguish the flames and attack the spike that way.

There's still multiple people going straight after Ifrit, between Dante striking at the primal's heels; or Yumi trying to force the Primal's attention on her; and Rydia's ice there's a lot of attacks that could've helped deal with the spikes. Sure, Uni and Duncan together stike one down, and Emily manages to destroy one, but there's still two left and their gathering of aether reaches a peak despite Temulin having done a fair chunk of damage to a third.

Ifrit leaps into the sky, and calls out, "Thy soul shall burn for eternity." The remaining spikes loosen from the ground, their gathered aether flowing towards Ifrit, who gathers the aether into his hands as massive balls of flame, enough to thoroughly incinerate the entire arena.

"Pray come to me!" Temulin yells, as she reaches upwards with her blade, darkness flowing from it to form a shield for herself and those near her, to help protect people from the coming inferno.

>> GAME >> Temulin Dotharl spends an Edge for: Limit Break: Dark Force.

Duncan doesn't need to be told twice -- once the energy starts flowing to Ifrit, he head for where Temulin is. Though he's not getting behind her, no. He's going to provide a second defense area, bolstered by both Temulin's shield and his own just being a big guy. He places his blade before him too, bracing it wth his other arm, and waits for the attack.

    Oh no. Oh that's bad. The pit drops out of Yumi's stomach. That gathering fire is far, far more than she can even protect herself from, let alone everyone here. She's not entirely sure what to do - but someone else is. Temulin yells out to them, and without an ounce of hesitation, Yumi turns and runs. All that flowing darkness might be their only shot against whatever Ifrit is winding up. It's a much greater defense than she could ever conjure herself.

    Uni drops quickly, not exactly landing, but hovering about a foot off the ground. She lets Rydia down, and hunkers under Temulin's defense until the inferno passes. After it does, she pops out, and snaps her fingers. "Let me show you the fruits of my training. Ultimate Combination, DOLCE VIDA!"

    Black Sister fires /past/ Ifrit, as if missing her shots, but each bolt pauses in the air, the bullet-like bolts turning inward, aiming at the Primal like a swarm of angry bees. A spell seal works its way into being beneath Ifrit, and as it finishes, the bolts lance out, striking through the Primal, and into the seal.

    The seal glows bright white, then turns pale blue, before erupting in a giant, short-lived ice crystal. "I learned that from Rom and Ram."

    "-- Shit." Emily flashes back to Van Patisserie ... but no. There's two tanks protecting people right now; there's no need for Emily to add to the tanking.

    And so Emily does a somersault into the women-in-a-business-suit form -- sans ":3"-face now, but still with four arms -- and dives towards the darkness, unleashing a couple dozen glittering blue orbs of light which shoot up towards Ifrit from below before she gets there. Once under Temulin and Duncan's defense, she curls up into a ball and materializes ... a bubble ... around herself.

    No sooner than Uni sets her down, Rydia rushes to Temulin's side, hunkering down behind the Dark Knight's armored body as the Au Ra manifests her darkness into a shield.
    The heat is intense.
    The flames are roaring.
    Sweat beads on the child's brow.
    ... Yet the earth remains solid beneath her feet.
    Like a bolstering, quiet, presence, it's there, and Rydia can't help but fall to her hands and knees once again, fingers brushing away the pattina of ash and soot to feel the dirt and soil beneath.
    The Lord of the Inferno is vast... Powerful. Monstrous and raging... But... There is no way he can truly be unstoppable.
    From the protection of Temulin and Duncan's layered defenses, Rydia closes her eyes. She closes her eyes and she reaches out, feeling through the earth itself, to call out to something equally vast and just as potent as the Primal.
    Somewhere...
    Somewhere deep, deep, below the earth...
    Something listens...
    And something hears Rydia's call.
    "You want us to burn..." She whispers. "But... But that's not what's going to happen..." The child murmurs as the earth begins to shake, the Last Summoner's body aglow with power. At first it's light... A soft rattle of pebbles clattering in the dust. But then... In no time, the earth is shaking- shaking with the force of a mighty and thundrous force as though the party were standing in the epicenter of a great quake as the child's voice can barely be heard over the chaos of roiling flames and shifting stone.
    "... Bow down, overdweller... I call upon TITAN!"
    And then the earth splits.
    From the great tear that forms, a hand reaches out- pulling a vast body of muscle and stone free of the rift, pulling himself free with enough force to launch himself free of the earth, the great and mighty Titan reels his fist back-- to deliver the most monstrous of earth-quaking haymakers to the flaming primal.

>> GAME >> Rydia spends an Edge for: Summon: Titan - Gaia's Wrath

    Dante can feel the big guns cocking as the horn falls to bits. He notices a spike being destroyed, that's a target alright. "Eyes on the spiky things!" He calls out. Before he can propel himself at the third spike, he hears Temulin call out to regroup. He begins moving that way, stopping by Temulin and bracing himself. "Get the feeling even I couldn't take a hit like that. Guess it's all up to Rydia now." He says, watching as Rydia summons Titan, and two giants face off.

Ifrit is the Lord of the Inferno, and the conflagration that follows is a clear demonstration of why he bears that name. Behind the shields provided, the heat is still more than enough to burn, and outside it the ground is evaporating under the heat. It is nigh impossible to survive this without adequate protection. Temulin looks winded when she's done, but so does Ifrit; and from the darkness comes another summoned entity.

Titan's punch is devastating to Ifrit at this point, the Primal having spent most of its aether trying to win this fight. The ring of fire fades, and the heat begins to cool back down as the primal falls to the ground and what remains of his aether dissipates. All, except for one crystal, glowing red. Temulin walks up to it, and picks it up. Then, it vanishes.

The Immortal Flames, who had chased the Amal'jaa, return right after. "The Amal'jaa have returned to Eorzea, it seems there's a reasonably stable portal leading straight to Zan'rak. Unfortunately, it's not safe for us to take." He reports, and Temulin just quietly nods.

    Black Sister's transformation dissolves away after Ifrit is beaten, the black-haired goddess looking winded, and more than a little singed.

    Emily winces at the heat; silvery scars start to form all over her clothing and on bits of her exposed skin. She stands up once the danger has passed, wobbling slightly.

    A faint smirk crosses her face. "So what the hell's that crystal?" she asks Temulin.

Duncan tries to stand strong through the intense heat, but even he buckles under it, falling to a knee. Thankfully not until the fiery blast begins to calm. He tilts his head up, to see Rydia's summoned Titan deliver a punch that quite literally knocks the aether out of Ifrit!

He breathes a sigh of relief once he notices the Primal disappearing. He pushes himself to his feet slowly... with another question. "Did that stop it permanently?"

    As the inferno rages around them, Yumi can do nothing but brace and wince, shifting closer to Rydia for even the smallest amount of protection she might be able to provide. At first, she thinks the rumble of the ground could just be the aftereffects of such a monumental work of elemental fire, but when it keeps happening, keeps intensifying, the senshi turns to look down at Rydia, with eyes wide.

    Oh.

    Oh, this is about to get... big.

    Yumi can only watch in quiet awe as the eidolon tears himself free of the stone and delivers a furious blow to the Primal. And... it's over. The power of a summon proves great enough to end the Primal's existence.

    For a few seconds, Yumi remains tense, forcing herself to stand, forcing herself to be ready for any further threat... but none comes. It's over. And so, she finally relaxes. She drops to her knees, and tries to catch her breath. And one gauntleted arm reaches around to gently rest across Rydia's shoulders.

    Dante watches, his Devil Trigger form dissipating as he takes a knee. Panting, exhausted, he fights to get to his feet with his sword, then stows Rebellion to his back. "Damn, well that takes care of that." He says, dusting soot and embers from his coat.

    No sooner than he had come, once that monstrous blow is dealt and Ifrit is no more... Titan recedes back into the earth from whence he came, the last tremors of the earth being the only sign that the great eidolon had even been here as the ground returns to its original form without even so much as a misplaced pebble.
    But this leaves Rydia pale... Sweat runs down the child's brow as she pants for breath and trembles, quaking where she struggles to stand. No sooner than Yumi's arm drapes her shoulder, Rydia near collapses against the magical girl, winded and wholly spent.

"A crystal of light." Temulin answers Emily, thinking about it some more before adding. "I think I'm supposed to collect them, not sure why." The dark knight shrugs in mild uncertainty, "From what I can tell, there's one for each element. This one's fire, and it's my second. I found the water one earlier, when I was dealing with one of these self-proclaimed Paragons." There's a shrug, "What I find more curious is the notion of a stable vine to Eorzea, even if it leads straight into Amal'jaa territory." She glances towards the others, "Thanks guys." Then she approaches Rydia, and kneels nearby. "Especially you. Thank you so much. I know how hard this must've been for you."

Duncan's not about to give any suggestions for what those crystal are. "Either way, leaving a piece of something like Ifrit laying around is probably a bad idea, so collecting them would probably be best," is all he comments about it. As for the Vine being stable in the Amal'jaa territory? "That just means that, if it's found, larger weapons can be sent through it directly into their laps." There's a silver lining to every cloud, after all!

    "We'll have to be careful about visiting, if we find a safer way through," Yumi replies to Temulin, her voice a bit tense. She's definitely feeling the hurt by now, but she's still supporting the summoner as best she can. "...Especially Rydia. A whole world full of people having the same misunderstanding you did..."

    Emily nods curiously. "Yeah ..." She considers this a moment. "Reapplying ... heh, all capacitor seals. Wow I'm spent." The gold, silver, and pearlescent auras of her capacitor seals rebuild themselves and then fade away, she rearranges her nanomachines so that the damaged ones are hidden, and then she just sits down heavily. "Did I say I'm spent? Because I'm spent."

    She looks over at Rydia. "Yeah, you said it, Tachibana," she says. Something like concern crosses her face, but she really doesn't know what to do with it, and she doesn't have the energy to try to figure out what.

    "Phew." Dante says, mourning his charred coat. Oh well, he's got more of these. "I'll have to schedule a vacation when there aren't horrible fire demons roaming the place." He says cheekily to Temulin.

    A few labored breaths and Rydia's breathing calms after a moment. Though she wobbles against Yumi, somehow, she manages to remain standing as Temulin kneels before her. "Um... I said I'd help, didn't I?" She says, voice quaking despite her usual sass. "S-so here I am."
    Though she trails off quietly at the thought of a visit to Eorzea. That would certainly be... Interesting. She remembers when Temulin nearly killed Whyt. Though she knows now the Dark Knight means her no harm, there's no telling how other people of that world would react but...
    Oh. Oh there she goes. She's starting to collapse right against Yumi.

    Smoothly, Yumi catches Rydia; there's a soft wince at the pain from her myriad wounds and burns, but her arms don't falter.