World Tree MUSH

    Just as The Armorer had said, taking the descending tunnel from from her forge led to the lava river. Once the group had resupplied and re-stocked weaponry and equipment as they so please from the remainin Mandalorian supplies, all that was left was to take the tunnel.
    The first thing everyone will notice is that it's hot. It's almost unreasonably hot, as they approach the lava river. ... And the boat is stuck to the edge of the wharf by cooled lava that has accumulated over time.
    It's not too hard to dislodge the boat, it just takes some extra elbow grease to do it, and in no time, everyone is on a boat, in a tunnel, heading downstream on a river of molten rock.
    It's not until the end of the tunnel approaches that Mando seems... Tense. Flipping a few buttons on his gauntlet his helmet switches to thermal mode and he can now see what has him on edge.
    "... Stormtroopers. Waiting for us at the tunnel mouth. There's at least a platoon of them, maybe more."

    "It's a wonder some of the members of our little entourage aren't catching fire," DARGN muses as the boat floats its way down the river of lava. Hyouka has little to say on that, even her tail falling relatively still, aside from the occasional, restless twitch. But the Mando's warning puts a certain amount of tension in her form as well - her fingers curl against the side of the boat, and a low, dangerous rumble starts somewhere in her throat. "They're standing between me and two girls who are very precious to me. A platoon won't be enough."

    Piera didn't see much to replenish her throwing knives with. The vibroblades were too large and heavy to throw, and small fragments of metal were unbalanced and dangerous to try, so instead, she grabbed one of the small hand-blasters, a lightweight model used for last-stand defense. She adjusts her bandolier and slips the blaster into a makeshift holster she can draw it from easily and settles into the boat once they arrive at it.

    "Agreed. They know not what forces they meddle with." she says in response to Hyouka's assertion. The Assassin is largely useless confined to the boat, but she readies the borrowed blaster to provide covering fire for those who can withstand the heat of the lava long enough to deal with the troopers.

  Juno proceeded to take her place in the back of the boat, hunkering down and not being particularly social. It's hot, she's miserable, and she's remained as silent as ever since they were routed by Gideon. Partly because her side is screaming at her, partly because all she wants to do is lie down and sleep for two days.

  She's watching the others as the boat proceeds, though, and Mando's tension prompts her to draw both her blaster and the replacement blaster from The Armourer. A platoon of stormtroopers at the tunnel's mouth.

  The scarred old campaigner heaves an exhausted, resigned sigh and braces herself for an extended firefight, sinking down a little lower into the aft of the boat.

%T"That's one weird lookin' robot." Dante muses to the ferrydroid, a bizzare hybrid between a dome-shaped astromech's head and a very tall, mishapen droid of various different parts that just do not -go together-. He keeps the baby from being too close to the lava as they set sail across the molten river.

    Once they see signs of hostiles ahead, Dante without hesitation hands Greef the child, drawing his pistols. "Let's hope they're outta those spec ops guys." Dante says, cocking Ebony and Ivory's hammers back.

"Not surprising. Why waste the effort in searching when they have the ways out known to them?" Sonia mutters with a small sigh, her gaze having steadily been affixed to the lava around them, the sulfuric heat being not entirely unfamiliar to her. Certain peculiarities in Castle Dracula, after all. 

She had taken a single, smaller blade--less length than the short sword she normally carried solely to make due down here if need be. Which, that seemed more likely than anything, truth be told. Her gaze shifted further down--mostly looking for a possible outcropping because if nothing else, she had it in mind to, once they were closer to a point they could get off via a whip-assisted leap towards that tunnel mouth in order to do a bit of disruption from close range. 

But, then again, there might not be that option for her.

    A short trek and then... "Hells. I haven't felt heat like this since..." Li-Ming opts to leave that off. Bringing up things that could turn into time consuming expositions at this time seems unwise. "I'm impressed, nevertheless. Every one of your worlds that I've been to thus far has featured extreme environments where people thrive in spite of nature."

    Defying higher powers, even if it's simply nature, just seems to be the kind of thing she enjoys. Also, she seems so comfortable that she's not even sweating. What...! It might become clear to anyone who passes within an arm's reach of her or simply looks down might notice the chilled mist pooling around her feet or simply feel the cooler air surrounding her. Magic is absolutely cheating and she'll be damned when she starts playing fair. She will linger nearer to Dante, casting a smug look Hyouka's way while she does her best to ensure the child doesn't have to suffer the heat so much.

    "Ah, there they are. Ah, please, hold onto something to be certain you're stable." While maintaining her magic air conditioning, she cups a hand and swipes it down sharply. Outside the tunnel, the lava bulges and what appears to be a fiery serpent bursts forth with a roar. 

    Should there be any hapless hostiles within reach it'll happily if somewhat singlemindedly begin spraying streams of lava from it's maw.

    It's about now that IG-11 speaks up.
    "With out current firepower, chances of survival have risen to 74.3 percent." The former assassin and hunter droid speaks up, with a blaster in each hand. Greef Karga takes The Child when Dante hands him over and the boat slowwwwly makes its way for the end of the tunnel...
    For Sonias's sake, there's a rocky outcropping just to the side of the cave mouth she can use.
    The stormtroopers waiting for the group... Needless to say they are quite surprised. They had been expecting a boat full of people to mow down with blaster fire, not a lava monster. Plastoid armor does not protect them from flying magma in the least and the sound of screams can be heard as the boat exits the cave mouth. The stormtroopers are flailingly shooting at the lava hydra, but when the boat does become visible the squad of black armored troopers shift their unerring aim and start shooting for the boat!
    Mando and IG-11 reply in kind, blasters roaring, but there sure are a lot of guys again.

    Piera spots the black-armoured SpecFor troops, and gives Dante a /look/, before she joins IG and Mando with her hold-out blaster, the soft 'bwak bwak' of the weapon joining the more deep and throaty standard blasters as thin blue-white bolts lash out at the more dangerous black troopers.

    "We need to get off this boat, we're helpless out in the open here." she says, ducking behind the rim of the boat as a blaster shot scores into the metal.

    Everyone seems to be in agreement - that's all Hyouka needs.

    She hurls herself off the boat, blazing wings of blue flame erupting from her back again and allowing her to glide straight down the tunnel. As she comes out, the woman turns a corkscrew - unleashing a blazing torrent of dragonbreath in a spiral around her. Anyone dumb enough to still be close by despite the magma serpent is going to fall under a torrent of magical flames. As she hurtles out of the tunnel, though, the cyborg quickly banks upward, hoping to claim the advantage of altitude.

And as they get closer--relatively speaking, two things happen--one, Sonia throws that sword she'd picked up, and in that same motion, snaps the long cord of her Vampire Killer whip out. It takes a split second for it to coil, but she grabs part of the whip to tighten it up, and with it, leaning back in order to effectively sling herself over with the help of a short, running leap. 

The sword arrives long before her, but when she arrives, a quick flick of her wrist and she snaps her whip in a long arc to wrap at the sword, yanking it--and the trooper forward, using him as cover in order to close the distance as she bounds forward in the hail of blaster fire--seeming to sense and react where /not/ to be to avoid hindering blasterfire from the likes of the Mandalorian, Juno, and others. 

Nonetheless, she rather deliberately charges into the midst, yanking the sword clean and alternating between it and quick snapping strikes of her whip--sometimes swinging the sword *with* the whip in a rather elegant dance of violence--she's pushing up *fast* because whilst it might be bad to get in the midst of them--it might *also* force them to turn their backs to the others back on the boat, plus she can use her proximity to force a path open. 

  The closer they get, the more Juno sinks down into the boat. She thumbs the safeties of both blasters just to be sure they're ready, and then... stares, as Li-Ming unleashes draconic hell on the hapless stormtroopers. She almost feels sorry for them, but... they're Imperials. Her sympathy only goes so far.

  Juno leans over the side and starts shooting.

  Her shots are measured, careful; methodical. She's too tired for a wild volley of blaster bolts; and one of her blasters only has a minimal charge left in it. Waste not, want not. All she can do is her best to pick off what she can, whenever targets of opportunity present themselves. Maybe with everyone else doing such unexpected things, they won't notice the scarred old campaigner huddled in the back of the boat.

    "Shit." Dante sighs, as he's jinxed the party. As the blasters begin to open fire on the group, Dante returns fire with the bark of .45 caliber rage. He punches holes in Stormtrooper armor, only stopping when he sees Li summon up a lava hydra thing! He gets back to shooting, laying down cover fire for the much squishier elements of the gang while they try and get some accurate shots and nail these Stormies.

    Despite the initial fury presented by the lone hydra head, the conjuration was never really meant to endure sustained abuse such as concentrated blaster fire. With one last defiant wail it sends a guttering stream of lava before withdrawing into the lava with nary a ripple or splash.

    Opting for precision with so many allies so near and even charging forth into the fray, she exends her pointer finger and a beam jumps from just past her fingertip toward the troopers. It hisses as it steals the heat of the air and leaves a sickly yellowish rime wherever it strikes, freezing solid the ground, lava or any plastoid armor it happens to play across. Of course, she's very careful of Sonia's advance and Hyouka's flight..

    Once the exchange of fire seems to balance itself out a little, she turns her ray upon the lava, staining it black as a crust starts to form. Hopefully, it can become a useful path. Provided the volume of fire shifts more in favor of the lava river boat's passengers.

    The hydra sure was helpful. It put the stormtroopers in a panic, and that makes the more numerous troopers in white almost easy pickings for the party. But as the hydra sinks beneath the lava again, they begin to rally, turning their attention and fire back on the boat in angry reprisal.
    It's a heated and vicious firefight, IG-11 jerks as it takes several laser bolts, Mando grunts as bolts spang and ricochet off his heavy beskar. Sonia steals a trooper as her personal shield, and attention turns on her briefly, while Hyouka engulfs more troopers in dragonflame. Mando, Dante, Juno, and Piera pick off troopers left and right, but it's a good thing Li-Ming freezes a path on the lava because something makes Mando glance upwards.
    "--Everyone off the boat!" He shouts...
    As the shriek of a TIE fighter streaks overhead, opening fire onto the river, the boat, the group, and any stormtroopers in the line of fire with its heavier laser cannons.
    Mando doesn't want to test his beskar against that as the TIE zips off into the distance, starting to swerve back around to begin a second attack run.

  Everyone off the boat! No sooner does Mando shout than Juno is lunging forward for the icy path, scrabbling to get off the boat. Why? Because she is intimately familiar with the strange, electrical scream of those engines.

  The TIE pilot will be following standard strafing tactics, which means that the zippy little starfighter isn't going to stop firing on them until it guns them all down or it explodes.

  Juno likes the second option much better.

  She might advise the others on structural weak points, but it's a TIE fighter. They're practically welded together from tin. Even a moderate blow against some exposed part of its cockpit or the paneling on its 'wings' ought to shred it apart. And with the firepower this group has... she's not actually as concerned as she could be about the mission survivability of this newest wrench in the works.

  So she focuses her fire on the cockpit.

    That screaming engine is all the Assassin needs to bail out of the boat onto the path made by Li-Ming. Flying machines aren't a thing in her world yet, outside of a little glider Da Vinci made, but even she knows that that thing is dangerous. The plumes of dislodged lava, and vaporized Stormtroopers only reinforces that fact as she charges straight across the bridge.

    She's not privvy to the lack of durability of the TIE fighter, but does take a shot or two at it with her blaster, before swapping to melee and launching herself into the middle of a group of the black-armoured troopers, her sword flashing from its scabbard and striking at plastoid armour, aiming for the joints and any perceived weak spots to keep the special forces off balance.

    This is her element.

    Dante is pretty confident they can handle more Stormtroopers, even if they're going to be swarmed in bodies by the end of this. A Starfire? Not so much.

    Dante dives off of the boat once they reach the end of the lava river, and he jumps behind cover as the starfighter opens fire on them from the sky. "Gideon KNEW we'd use this tunnel!" He barks, trying to keep an eye on the ship's trajectory as he opens fire on it. Diving from cover, he stands up and tries to make himself a target, so that cockpit can be hit easier, Patton style. "C'mon you fascist son of a bitch, how about you try and get me on the nose!" He calls out, opening fire on the TIE.

    Hyouka finds herself under fire from a TIE fighter, and while she's maneuverable, she can't nearly match it for speed. So she's forced to bank and dive, sweeping down to skim the ground until she can skid herself behind a rock.

    Likewise, she doesn't have nearly the range such a machine can wield - but she does have muscles. Superhuman, techno-magical artificial muscles. Which are currently being flooded with draconic mana.

    She can most certainly plant her feet, curl her clawed hands around the bottom of a boulder, and heft it over her head. And she can absolutely put her back into the subsequent throw, aiming to put the boulder in the TIE's flight path just as it's coming in low.

    That boulder's got to weigh at least a good ton. Hitting that won't be pretty.

Well, this ... both worked, and did not in fact, worked. Worked, in that there was some cover to be used by the trooper she had manhandled with the thrown sword to cleave her way through along with Hyouka. Again, a callous disregard for even their own men, which should be surprising but it has not. 

If nothing else, it makes her even more furious as she hurls herself out of the line of explosive firepower from where she's at. Coiling her whip up with one hand, she brings both hands together with a small murmur. Normally she prefers to channel her magical abilities through her whip, but there is little chance to actually *do* that. Fire gathers in front of her in a small orb--one that rapidly grows for a moment, before she breaks that gesture, her hand pulling back, then planting her palm just behind it, the gesture and movement completing the spell--something drawn upon from her Speaker knowledge--

--which results in a tight column of intense fire raging upward and towards the TIE itself--aiming for the central area of that TIE fighter, aiming in the general area she saw Juno leveling her shots at. 

    Ah, perfect. With timing that she couldn't beat even deliberately, the path is formed and fully able to support Mando's or even the IG's mass. She breaks into a run, having only ever dealt with winged threats that happened to also be living.

    The airship from before doesn't count.

    It presents it's threat admirably, though mutters a curse. She'll need a moment to truly strike at the thing. Instead, she turns her fury onto the troopers. "Indeed. He knew. He even arrived in such a vehicle, did he not?" Oh. Right. "Then perhaps the fool will enjoy watching as his fodder is destroyed." Moving to back Piera up, she fires a blast of lightning into the midst of the dark troopers being assailed by the assassin. The arcs leap from body to body as able, delivering injury, death or even setting one of the black-armored soldiers up for a killing blow from Piera's devious killing spike.

    She bulls through, relying almost entirely on her defensive mantle to stop any blaster fire coming her way. Though even she is pressed enough that cover must eventually be sought after a bolt smacks into her outstretched palm, leaving her armor smoking. "Hell's festering sh-" The rest of her swearing is drowned out by (in)convenient blaster fire and explosions. Probably.

    Just as predicted, the TIE is making a swing back around for another run. Though the pilot had missed the first time, given a second chance he probably won't miss again. And once the TIE swerves around fully, there's no missing who's in the cockpit.
    It's Gideon himself.
    And the fighter comes screaming back at top speed.
    There's still a few beats before it arrives to make that second run, which means in the meantime Piera will have her hands full in melee; though the white troopers go down in droves, one SpecFor trooper pulls a vibroblade and starts matching the assassina for blows. In a prolonged fight though she'll have the upper hand. All while lightning chains from Li-Ming to trooper to trooper to trooper
    Juno and Dante open fire on Gideon's TIE, blaster bolts and bullets deflecting off the light armor, and with the speed that ship is going it's going to be hard to hit by small arms fire.
    It's a good thing Hyouka throws a boulder. Swerving to dodge that shows that Gideon is no slouch in the pilot seat as the massive stone glances across the TIE's wing and forces Gideon to adjust his course, throwing him off his second run entirely.
    He's probably not happy about that, especially as Sonia's sudden column of light and fire bear down on the fighter, forcing Gideon to juke aside.
    "Hyouka!" Mando calls from where he hunkers behind a rock while taking shots at troopers in both white and black.
    "The jetpack!"

  There's an aggravated sigh as Juno stops firing. There's not much point in trying to take potshots at a starfighter screaming along at terminal velocity. Instead, she's going to have to trust in her allies to take care of the threat. She'll just take over watching over The Child, sidling up to the pram and keeping both her blasters at the ready. Any stormtroopers that get too close are ruthlessly picked off. Besides, that leaves Dante free to concentrate on the TIE fighter, too. Win-win!

    When Mando calls her name, Hyouka's head snaps up. The jetpack. With no better options, she's essentially hung it from her belt by one strap; she'd have put it on her back, but then it would be in the way of her wings. It's awkward as it is, but she's managed well enough without smashing it against anything (or scorching it on the lava). But he wants it now, and she'll be glad not to have it smacking into her leg.

    The cyborg stretches her blazing wings again, and takes off in a plume of dust and blue fire. As she flies towards him, Hyouka unleashes a plume of flames on the troopers, her own strafing run to keep their heads down. "Catch!" she calls as she glides over his head - and reaches down to unhook the strap from her belt, letting the jetpack drop down to the Mandalorian below.

    Dante finds little luck in actually hitting the TIE fighter. He rolls his eyes and begins to channel demonic energy again, charging up his energies. If Gideon's gonna bring a starfighter to a fight, then Dante's gonna have to adapt his tactics accordingly.

    He activates Devil Trigger once more, skin becoming chitin and leathery flesh, his hair becoming a crown of sorts, and his coat forming into insectoid wings. His red electric aura covers his body as he shapeshifts, and Dante takes off.

    Using his wings, the Half-Demon takes off towards the TIE fighter, opening fire on Gideon's fighter, buzzing past and shooting at the wings with charged up gunfire.

>> GAME >> Dante spends an Edge for: Fighting a TIE fighter requires WINGS!

From the first fire blast, comes a second. And a third. But not necessarily aimed directly at the TIE fighter--in a few ways, they're designed to force the pilot off course. Avoiding one, may well lead the pilot into another's attack. 

Plus, Sonia can also use some of her efforts to actually clear out what stormtroopers remain, bringing not just normal fire, but damn near holy fire to bear on others. Hyouka, Dante, Juno are among those who can actually bring proper tools to bear. 

    It's enough. Hyouka's boulder and Sonia's attacks have the effect of forcing the fighter into a defensive posture. Awesome. Li-Ming can play that game as well now that she can feel the burn of arcane power in her hands again. So, she breaks cover and risks drawing fire toward herself as she sweeps both of her hands up. Hyouka's literal covering fire is perfect.

    There's a pause as she tries to predict a path the TIE might take. Her robes blow around her and the ground at her feet freezes, then seemingly from nowhere, she adds her own boulders to the mix. First one, though it's not well aimed as she notices Dante and tries to avoid hitting him. Then a second, then a third hurtling chunk of- not stone but ice.

    How do you slow a charge? Force a turn. Even if she doesn't hit, her efforts should help delay that damnable craft and the pilot long enough for Mando and Dante to effect some action to neutralize the threat.

    After that, though, she braces against her cover and sinks to a knee; she'll need time again to let fly with anything else that's quite so potent.

    The fight with the flying machine falls out of Piera's notice. She's found a warrior to test her limits. The Vibroblade sheers clean through the Assassin's regular metal sword, but she shifts and steps under the strike and grabs the trooper's wrist, shouldering into his chest and pushing to haul him over her shoulder and slam him into the basalt ground, disarming him of the vibroblade. She drops on him the next moment, and slips her Hidden Blade into the gap between the helmet and breastplate. "Requiescat en pace." she intones, before moving on to another target.

    She moves to back-up Li-Ming, much like the sorceress did for her. Remaining throwing knives are flung to fend off encroaching Troopers, and her blaster comes back out once she's spent the knives.

    Juno may leave Dante to engage the TIE, but that only causes more of the remaining stormtroopers to go for her and the pram! Thankfully though, the Imperials are running out of those troopers in the black armor, especially as Piera finishes off the last of them. All that's left is to mop up the troopers.
    ... And deal with Gideon's TIE.
    In the face of Dante now flying up to meet him, the Moff opens fire, the TIE's powerful laser cannons intending to punch the half-demon out of the sky before Gideon is forced to evade, the agile craft swerving hard and fast. But a TIE can only move so fast and avoid so much, as Li-Ming's boulders and ice chunks score off a wing and Sonia's fiery bombardment starts superheating the armor plating a bright red.
    Then. Hyouka drops off Mando's new jetpack.
    Strapping it onto the back of his armor, there's a jerky moment of not quite lift as he jolts up and back down, boots scuffing the ground... Before he gets control over the thing and goes launching skyward.
    A grapple hook launches from his wrist launcher and tethers him to the TIE, before he manages to get on the strut that connects it to the wing.
    Gideon swerves violently, almost throwing him off--
    But not before Mando attaches an explosive chage to the strut and lets himself fall.
    Briefly. Every so briefly. Everyone gets to see Gideon's angry and surprised face in the cockpit as the explosive charge goes off, blowing one wing off the TIE and sending it spiralling off towards the horizon where it lands with an earth-shaking impact.
    There's no way he could have survived that.

    Dante, before he backs off to let Mando handle the jetpacking, flips off Gideon and gives him a smug grin. "Adios, douchebag." He says mockingly, looking TERRIFYING with his fanged maw as he soars through the air. He watches Gideon's TIE fighter crash into the earth, satisfied. No way would anybody survive that landing.

    He returns to help mop up the Elite troopers, opening fire on them like an A-10 on a gunrun, blazing away with demon-enhanced bullets, but there's likely not many left alive.

    With the pack delivered, Hyouka has little left to do but rain fire down on the Stormtroopers; but there's not many of those left, and very soon, she has nothing to do but land and watch the Mandalorian fly. It's quite something. The moment when he's thrown clear of the TIE fighter is heartstopping, but when it suddenly explodes along one wing, and flies into a death spiral shortly thereafter, the brief hint of concern turns to fierce triumph in her heart. She blows out a brief, exultant plume of fire into the air, then turns herself around and swoops down to the ground to land.

    It is at that point, with the man who threatened Leene and Alty shot down, that her ire finally wavers - DARGN's voice chimes in, "DraCor output has dropped below activation threshold. Dragonheart Mode will be disengaged." The glow fades from Hyouka's eyes, and her pupils return to normal. All the excess armor scaling on her body reverts, either retracting back into her body, or folding itself back into the shape of the massive FISTEAU gauntlets... which themselves rapidly disassemble and deactivate.

    She's left standing there in her completely normal base state, and about two seconds after that, she very nearly slumps over where she stands, as the exhaustion hits her like a wave. "Nnnh... the kid. It's... it's safe, right?"

It's a bit of grim satisfaction, such as it were, to see that expression, after the combination of attacks. Knocking one last stormtrooper to the ground, Sonia exhales slightly. Least it's over, for now. Yeah, she's... she's going to need a fair amount of rest after expending the energy she did to throw those magical attacks out--full glad of some of the training she had in those arts that she kept it going as much as she did! 

"... We should make sure he doesn't crawl out of that machine, but..." Sonia trails off for a moment. Even if he died, she has a suspicion what remains of these so-called Imperials would probably beat most of them to that punch. Still, they need to see to everyone else--much as Hyouka says, her own attention turning to that topic. 

    Piera jams her stolen vibroblade into the neck of one stormtrooper, kicking the body away into one of his friends before firing point-blank into the faceplate of the living trooper's helmet... that's when the powerpack of the blaster runs dry and the weapon lets out a pitiful little bwee-bwee-bwoo-oo. She hurls the spent weapon at another trooper, pulling her own dagger to go to town on a third. She weeps his legs, jams both weapons through his chestplate, then yanks them free before lifting her left arm. Hand open, fingers spread... she braces her arm and seems to be aiming something.

    BLAM

    Piera uses her Hidden Pistol to finish off a fourth trooper, the old fashioned miniature slug-thrower aimed for the head, though it's not accurate enough to be perfectly aligned to go through any weakpoints, like the eye covers without being supremely lucky.

  Since the others seem to have everything so well in hand, Juno settles for hanging back, ensuring that The Child has some kind of bodyguard through all of this. When her own blaster's charge finally fails, she jams it into its holster, using a two-handed grip on the blaster from The Armourer. It lends her a little more stability, and lets her choose her shots a lot more carefully.

  She's watching what the others are doing, but only in fits and spurts. Most of her attention is spent making sure that the stormtroopers don't get close to her position, and therefore The Child's.

  Juno does remember to reach up and slap at her earpiece.

  "PROXY, would you--"

  Mando launches into the sky and leaves a present for Gideon. The afflicted TIE fighter erupts, debris spinning away as the main body of the starfighter is flung into the far horizon. Even from here, Juno winces as the ground shudders underfoot.

  BOOM.

  <<--Oh, dear, what was that?>> PROXY sounds somewhat alarmed. <<General Eclipse, are you quite alright?>>

  "I'm fine. Just bring the ship down. I'm ready for extraction."

  Juno's brows arch as she waits, guarding The Child. Okay, that stunt... was actually pretty impressive.

Tipping her head to Piera in silent salute rather than shouting over the shriek of TIE engines and the general din of battle, the wizard rises. The fighter craft's challenge has been met and she turns away, reckoning that those with wings - whatever form they may take - can handle the rest.

    Mopping up the hapless stormtroopers? Oh dear yes. So, she attacks rather indecisively. Troopers that run, troopers behind cover - certainly any foolish enough to keep trying for the child's hovering pram and Juno's position with it. Lightning, angry red beams that leave behind nothing but a brief scream and motes of scattering light, blasts of deathly cold and the odd conjured meteor for any that prove to be particularly determined to flee.

    Is she a bully or just being brutally thorough? Yes.

    The distant impact of the crashing TIE is noted and that's when it's clear that the fight is prettymuch over. Her companions made this far easier than she would have imagined and so, satisfied, she casts a look backward. Toward the pram, Juno and anyone else gathering around. "..."

    Call her paranoid but she has a bad feeling about not at least inspecting the wreck. The truly wicked are far too often notoriously difficult to destroy. Conscious of the way she seems to make people a little squeamish with her brutality, though, she doesn't set off to gather the man's head.

    With Gideon's TIE going down, the stormtroopers are in a rout. Dante and Piera-- and especially Li-Ming mopping up the troopers too dumb to not go running.
    Mando touches down and heaves an exhausted sigh of his own.
    "Safe? The little womprat is just fine. Juuuust fine." Greef Karga assures Hyouka.
    "We're done here." Mando says holstering his blaster.
    "I'll reinstate you with the Guild first thing back in the city." Karga notes, earning a nod.
    Briefly, The Mandalorian looks off into the distance in the direction of the crash.
    "Mm..."
    Nah. There's no way Gideon could have survived that.
    "I have to get back to the Razor Crest." Mando says simply. He has a quest to embark on. And he should also bury Kuiil.

    Piera lets out a huff, exhausted but undefeated... she approaches Din and says. "Can youtake me to the nearest vine? I must report back to the Brotherhood." her tone is quiet, introspective, and her demeanor is one of someone thoroughly spent, physically, mentally and emotionally. It's been a rough day... week? Month? it feels longer.