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Owner	Pose
Emi Hoshino	It's a late and quite rainy evening when Amy, Ikiko, Hinoiri and Mamoru's phones light up with a message from one Emi Hoshino. It's a map location with a single sentence, typed hastily judging by the typos that make it a little harder to initially parse. Amanohara Tower 3-15-1 Minamisuna, Koto-ku top floors go as soon as you see this big trouble bring anyone who can help She doesn't respond to any follow-up questions. She doesn't have time. Amanohara Tower is a modern skyscraper, at least fifty stories of apartments, luxury and otherwise, near to the heart of the Koto-ku waterfront district. The deeply unpleasant weather and the hour has left the streets quiet but for the distant sounds of cars on wet asphalt. The parking structure for residents As they arrive, they find that Amanohara Tower is a modern construction and one of the taller towers in Tokyo. Fifty stories of apartments, many of which are ... very expensive. It's even got its own independent parking structure -- the kind of place that you would get valet service for during operating hours. It's probably a bit late for that. The large glass doors are fogged with rain, but give the impression of an almost cavernously large lobby, curiously darkened. This is not the sort of place that would be without security at the desk and yet, it doesn't look like anyone's inside at all, and no lights? As they approach, they find that the doors are at least automated and slide open. ... but they probably shouldn't be. Not this late. And weather and hour aside, why -is- the street so empty? This is Tokyo on the waterfront, there should be at least more pedestrians than just a bunch of school-age students. But there isn't. At all.
Mamoru Chiba	Mamoru, in his hangout with the evil girls on the evil spaceship, after having gotten evil marshmallow fluff out of very very long evil hair, got Emi's message and immediately asked Wicked Lady and New Moon if he could go help, and they were like yeah sure, go have fun, at which point he immediately texted Riventon and Nephrite: Mamoru TXT: everyone's kind of ticked at me for some reason Mamoru TXT: but like emi is having a massive dark energy nightmare problem and im going to help Mamoru TXT: can you come help too Mamoru TXT: ?? Mamoru TXT: also here is the address He knows how to get help he's great at it. So it is that Mamoru's finally in henshin, in the rain, ''getting rained on'' when he could be cuddling his evil fiance, looking up at the top of the tower. "Great," he says. The doors slide open in front of him, then slide closed again when he doesn't complete his approach.
Ikiko Hisakata	Well, Ikiko hadn't been ''planning'' on patrolling in the rain, but when someone asks for backup, '''especially''' emergency backup, well... And so, Cute Wolf Tsukiko is there, visible ears flattened at the weather, staring up at the skyscraper with a facial expression that strongly suggests that she is going to save up her frustrations to unleash upon the Nightmare behind this trouble, quite possibly with compound interest. "...for obvious reasons, I'd suggest not standing ''too'' close to me once we get inside," the wolfgirl soggily sighs to the others.
Hinoiri Kirara	Hinoiri Kirara had been, well... Was now experiencing the Usagi/Mamoru effect. Earlier that evening. Text Catra: Hey, Catra. I'm single, you're single. I don't think either of us are really in a state right now for a super serious relationship, but you interested in something casual? And, wellllll... Now? "... Oh for buck's sake..." Hinoiri muttered, glowering at her phone. "Does it still count as a good first date if we go commit girevous violence upon something that decided to attack one of our sparkles? Might be the idiots who kidnapped me. Or maybe the psychopath who was all 'oh, lets make everyone smiiiiiiile'. Ugh. Gag me with a spoon." Pause. "If it comes down to it, we can try and pull off a combination attack? I mean, we are both semi-fire themed now," she offered with a smile. And that was why Cure La Licorne was drivin on her motorcycle through the city with Catra, her date delayed (NOT RUINED YET, BUCK YOU YOUMA, SHE DIDN'T GIVE UP THAT EASY! SHE! DIDN'T! LOSE!)
Amy Faust	After a ''very long de-marshmallow-fluff-ing'' shower Amy is relaxing in her dorm room when the message comes in. Well that's... concerning. Amy forwards the message, but Emi already messaged the friends of hers who are available. She does text Emi's group chat "On my way."     She parks her rocket on a nearby rooftop, and drops down to the street, using a midair explosion from her launcher to slow her fall if needed.     "Hmm? Why not?" Amy actually can't immediately think of why. She hasn't had a pet dog in decades.     At least she can easily conjure an umbrella while they make their way to the door.
Catra	Catra got asked on... a date. And Hinoiri was right, she is single (right?) and it wouldn't hurt (right?) and she likes Hinoiri (she does) and so there's absolutely no reason to be super conflicted at all (right?) and so she went and she was completely not conflicted about it in any way (right???) Except she was. Which makes no sense at all. (It doesn't.) But then there was the call to go and do something probably dangerous and violent, which is Catra's home territory and possibly the only thing she ''does'' feel comfortable with at any given time. "Still counts!" she affirms, sounding a good deal more certain than she feels, as she gets on her bike and races along with Hioniri. Through the rain. Except, this time she does it in Henshin and is low-key glowing -- or more accurately, low key on fire as she rides, keeping herself hot enough to vaporize any rain droplets that get close to her; so when she arrives she's a smoldering hot feline with wisps of smoke and steam rising off of her.
Takashi Agera	Takashi TXT: I can't imagine WHY everyone's mad at you. Could it be the same reason I'm kind of annoyed. And worried.     Takashi TXT: Nightmare problems? The Dreamscape stuff? I admit, I'm at least a little curious about it.     Takashi TXT: Fine, I'll be there.     Riventon is probably the sort of person the mostly-assembled cast of characters would expect to be inside the building causing the problem, not outside the building, showing up in his Barrier Lab Coat, hands in his cavernous lab coat pockets, looking up at the top of the tower. "Well, that's a mess." Riventon remarks. "Not on the approved schedule that I saw." he adds. "That's a pretty big energy burn for unsanctioned use."     "Something's wrong and I'm here to help." He says, pre-emptively to the first person (probably Hinoiri) who gives him a 'what are YOU doing here' look. He regards Catra in a confusing sort of way - he doesn't say anything to her. He looks at her in a sort of almost pity way. Which is something she'll surely appreciate.     "Energy aura around this place is ''completely'' messed up..." he notes.
Nephrite	There's texts-- uninformative, brief, ominous texts-- blowing up the notifications on his phone, and Masato is so tempted to ignore it. So very tempted. Texting and driving is bad, anyway. But Mamoru is asking him to be there, and that's a different kind of trap. That's something that, deep within him, Masato has trouble ignoring. Mamoru dragged him into things when it was Hinoiri and the corporate terrible, and the Dreamscape had those awful cameras watching their battles. He knew that had potential to come back and bite them. It was there in the back of his head. Quiet dread. So, when the Ferrari pulls up, and he sees others milling about, just a vague headcount tells him this is going to be a long night. Nevermind the rest. Soon enough, he's approaching behind Riventon in a designer coat to contrast lab coat. "Well, this looks promising." It is sarcasm.
Emi Hoshino	The moment the sliding glass doors close behind them, the noise of the city falls away but for the sound of rain hitting the huge windows behind them and the wind's caress against the same. The lobby of Amanohara Tower is best described as a cavernous with a vaulted ceiling that itself is three stories above them. It is cool, here, scented faintly of smoked wood despite. A broad, black reception desk stretches across one side. Behind it, a wall of etched stone displays some kind of abstract mural that's somehow suggestive of a cloud over fields. The desk is the kind of thing you'd expect to be staffed by some uniformed concierge or at least a security guard, but there's ... nothing. No one. The floor is a seamless expanse of basalt veined with jagged lines of silver, like lightning. there are a huge number of plants rising along one wall in a recessed planter with seats underneath the shade they provide against the pleasent lighting. There are security cameras, unfortunately. Vents seem to be the source of a carefully choreographed artificial breeze, all designed to create a calming, soothing experience separate from the difficulties, dirt, and stress of daily city life. The rich really do live differently.
Ikiko Hisakata	The corner of Tsukiko's mouth quirks up in a hint of an impish grin at Red's question. Instead of answering immediately, the wolfgirl waits until they're all inside, then steps to where Amy is between her and as many people as she can manage the angle for without stepping too far away from the group...     ...and then proceeds to SHAKESHAKESHAKE the water off of her. "''That's'' why," Tsukiko replies with a slight giggle, semi-apologetically patting Red on the shoulder. Well, she ''did'' ask... The wolfgirl glances around, trying to figure out if anything in particular seems to be specifically 'off' about the place, asides from the lack of front desk staffing. The basalt-and-silver flooring is pretty neat, but as long as the lightning-like veins don't start moving -- ''or'' turn into '''actual''' lightning -- she's not overly worried about it.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne just gave Riventon a *look* that screamed 'sure it is'. She even lowered her sunglasses a bit, narrowing her eyes on him. Eying him. But didn't say a word. But you could almost FEEL her judgment. But she didn't say a word. Yet. "... Well... text said top floors... not in the mood for a big ol' gauntlet brawl so... anyone want a lift?" she asked. "One advantage of the pretty cure power arsenal is I jump real good. Catra, you've got priority. Riventon, you're excluded, I know you can fly." Of course, once she got whoever DID want to come with her? She'd hunch down and... LEEEEEEEAP! Planning to LEAP up onto the roof! Fifty stories, eh, that wasn't THAT high. And she swore if she found Emi up there with a bat SOMEONE up there was going to be in danger and Emi better HOPE it wasn't just her. A moment later, Cure La Licorne came back down, her eyes wide, hair standing on end, and stormed into the lobby. "NEVERMIND, ROOF'S CLOSED!" And if someone asked? "ROOF'S! CLOSED!" She did NOT go into detail.
Mamoru Chiba	Catra is ... steaming. Catra has probably not gotten the updates on Chibiusa and Usagi. Mamoru grimaces. One more person to be ticked at him, probably. Tuxedo Kamen, the second he's out of the rain, steps forward and dehenshin-rehenshins with a spin, and suddenly only his hair is wet. He notably does this on the opposite side from where the Cute Wolf has gone to dry off. This is ''great'' because nothing cramps one's style like a dripping clingy wet cape. He also leans to *hug* around Riventon's shoulders with one arm, with a shiteating grin, and then when Neph steps up he does it to him too. "Thank you guys. Riv-kun-- what kind of energy does it register as? Or is that the messed up part...? Oh wait." He looks behind them out at the rainy street on the other side of the doors. If there's no one around, we might already be in the spilled nightmare space creeping out into the waking world. But--" He grimly heads toward the banks of elevators. "Top floor. Stairs are probably closed too." If he finds the elevators? He pushes a button.
Takashi Agera	"A core of Dark Energy with Bonus Weird." Riventon replies to Mamoru. "Dimensional energy is all forked, too." he says. "Long story short, no teleporting. I might be able to step into the Dusk Zone from here but otherwise..."     And then LaLicorne comes down and announces the roof is closed. "Well, I kinda hope the stairs are blocked off because that is a lot of stairs for you guys to climb." For you guys. He's not even touching the ground right now, it is quite literally beneath him.     "Well, fancy place like this has to have elevators - even if they don't work we can open the hatch and use the elevator shaft." he suggests.     He is glad to not be the target of Tsukiko's water torrent. "All of this energy is weird. Like it's clearly admixed in with Dark Energy but the wavelengths and style is new to me. So that means this situation is new to me. Anything in ''particular'' I should be on guard for?" that question is not directed at anyone in particular, but the group.
Catra	Catra looks back at Riventon, and her lips press into a thin line. Her ears twitch, and she arches an eyebrow. Hey, look, no sign of Obsidian assassins so far, which means I'm in the clear, her expression seems to say. She's fairly sure they both know she's not. She's just been good at being hard to find so far. "Uhm, I'll... take the second trip," she answers Hinoiri. Glimmer's teleportation makes her vomit, there's no telling what sudden rapid verticle ascension would do. Best not to find out quite yet. Or at all, as it turns out, the roof is closed. Catra has a low-key resting state of being ticked at everyone, and of course Mamoru is no exception to the rules there, but if there's an update she's supposed to have gotten about Chibiusa and usagi, and she hasn't gotten it, that really just means she's going to be extra ticked later. But she isn't right now. So, that's fortunate-ish. "So, elevator or stairs?" she grumbles, ears flattening out again. "Stairs mean we're tired when we get there. Elevator means we're easily ambushed. Which way do we want it?" As she speaks, her hand rests on the hilt for Powersend, the Dark Katana she's still making use of in spite of everything. (Or maybe because of everything it's familiar and hasn't changed, afterall. Unlike basically everything and everyone else.)
Nephrite	"Last time, once we were in the thick of things, the elevators opened up into entire other messes. I'm fairly sure I saw a kraken in one of them." Masato notes dryly, evidently favouring the stairs. Not that he entirely trusted them. "At least in the stairwell, we can control our movements better." He withdraws his hands from his pockets, a small tug at the coat letting it shimmer away. A prismatic display replaces it with the uniform of his henshin, Knightly, caped, and sword-bearing. To Riventon, he simply notes, "Non-euclidian nonsense may occur." Should remind him of certain offices, really.
Amy Faust	Amy just gives Tsukiko a curious look at that smile, and walks inside, unsummoning her umbrella and helmet... and then she sees Tsukiko start to shake and conjures an umbrella in front of her but still gets splattered, "Ackpth!" But she can't help laughing. If she'd ended up as a werewolf instead of a ... biomagic weapon-lich, she'd probably do the same!     ...But after pretending to look put-out and soaked for a few seconds, she smiles and twirls the umbrella around her and Cutes herself dry as she shifts outfit to something looking more magical girl-y, and then dismisses the umbrella again.     When Tuxedo Mask asks if they're already in the nightmare space, she looks back toward the front doors, and then pulls her phone out of one of her pouches. "...Nope. We're still in, uh, the waking world."     She puts the phone away and walks after him. "Why would the elevator be open but not the stairs? Isn't it usually the opposite? Because if there's any kind of issue, an elevator can break but stairs can't." Admittedly, she's ''less'' concerned about getting trapped in an elevator than normal, since she's confident she can blast her way out and make her way up and down the shaft manually. She nods at Riventon as he seems to be thinking the same thing.     "It's... if Emi called us, it's probably a Nightmare bleeding into reality. We're not asleep, but reality becomes kinda dreamlike. Beyond that though..." She shrugs. "Could be anything. There's all sorts of nightmares, right? We've had a maze and a party, a chase to fight someone's fear of becoming like their dad, and collecting items like in a 3D platformer to get access to a subway with a ''helluva'' hard monster."     She looks up. "That one required me and Sailor Moon and everyone blasting it for a solid minute."
Emi Hoshino	The stair access is bound to be somewhere around here, probably through one of those doors that lead somewhere. The elevator doors, however, do open with a soft chime and allow any and all who do want to take the elevator up to dso so. The building is fifty stories, yes, but there are 54 buttons for floors, indicating that there is at least roof access -- though probably not generally accessible -- and some basement levels. Unsurprising, that. Probably a tunnel of some kind to the parking garage to avoid having to go out *onto the street* like the plebs. Elevator music starts to play. It's K-Pop.
Takashi Agera	Riventon turns to listen to Nephrite. "Oh excellent. So on a scale of Obsidian After Hours Office Party to Witch Labyrnth..." he asks, but then a little more context comes from Amy. "Oh, delightful." he says, sarcasm dripping from his voice.     "Anyways. Elevator ambush would probably be easier for us to deal with - I can put up a shield before we open the door." Riventon comments. "But I wasn't assuming the elevators were working, just that it had elevators, and therefore, elevator shafts - if the stairs are blocked."     "It's annoying not being able to teleport." he says, about at the time that the elevator dings politely. "Huh. Or, the elevator could work." he says, shrugging. "As long as everyone's in henshin we should be fine." he notes. He puts his hands back into his lab coat pockets and walks into the elevator.     "Hey, I know this one." he muses about the k-pop. Korean is 'not' one of the many languages Riventon speaks, but English is and most songs have a fair smattering of it, resulting in everyone in the elevator getting to notice Riventon singing, lowly, humming the Korean parts and singing along to the English. 'Let's kill this love!' 'yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah' 'We must kill this love, yeah it's sad but true, gotta kill this love before it kills you too.'     He should probably avoid working for Easter as an idol. At any point.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne sighed as she wrapped her arms around herself, making an annoyed grunt when she started towards the stairs... but... if everyone was going for the elevator... "Ah, joy. Elevator. Great..." she muttered. "We'd probably best stay together." She tapped her foot a little, leaning back against the wall, sunglasses on and... leaning a bit against Catra... And Catra might be able to realize. She was tense. When they were on the elevator. Hinoiri didn't LIKE elevators. It wasn't that she was SCARED of elevators. That'd be silly. That'd be ridiculous. She just... found them unnatural. They were just... rooms. That moved. Without magic. They moved with machines. Giant machines. Moving entire rooms. And now they were trapped in one. Without the ability to teleport out. And it made her... agitated. It made her uncomfortable. ... But she did kind of side eye Riventon poorly singing with k-pop. He sung better as a kirin. ... Though... at one point... if the elevator jerked... her hand might reach out and grip Catra's a little nervously...
Mamoru Chiba	"Red, keep your phone out," Tuxedo Kamen says the second the k-pop starts up. "We are absolutely walking into a trap. But Emi needs us and that's a totally unauthorized unscheduled fried energy burn going on upstairs and there's no way there but through." He frowns and glances at Nephrite and Riventon, adding, "Yeah it's a little like a Witch in that each one is different and doesn't make sense, or uses internally consistent but nonsensical dream logic, or... the usual actual nightmare stuff. Including cyberbullying." He pauses, stepping in and keeping the doors open with one arm, and adds, "If the party's gonna split, Riventon, can you do a telepathy spell? Or is that restricted to like... friendlies with dark energy, or whatever. Anyway agreed, we should be fine in henshin." Once everyone who's getting on the surprisingly big elevator is in, Mamoru lets the doors shut and punches the 54 button. He glances up to the digital display to make sure it doesn't say EEBY-DEEBY. He also takes this moment to calmly put his red rose-shaped earplugs in.
Catra	"Don't quit your day job." Catra's flat reaction to Riventon's singing might seem a bit rich given her own overall situation, but she voices it anyway. As elevators go, this one is... fine, really, but the K-Pop is actually awful. She's just going to stick her hand in her pocket for her phone so she can listen to something that doesn't suck, when Hinoiri is... suddently leaning up against her. And the look on her face basically reads as           help The feline is visibly unable to decide what to do. Her ears flatten out and she bites her bottom lip, but she can detect how tense Hioniri is... so she doesn't move. Gotta be... what's that thing Rashmi does. Supportive? Yeah, that's the one. "Should be almost there," she mumbles. "The building's not ''that'' big."
Amy Faust	Amy doesn't put her phone away, then.     Calibrating to Riventon's suggested scale, Amy replies, "Maybe not quite as ''weird'' as some Witches, and sometimes weaker, but... like, still weird? Just like, weird in ''dream'' ways more than weird in whothefuckknows ways." She furrows her brow as she remembers Hinoiri's report of her own Labyrinth, wondering where she fits on this scale. She'd consider it not very ''weird'', but her Witch's gimmick sounds troublesome.     They get in the elevator, and... Riventon's singing. Amy winces. "You um. You're not hitting the pitches. I'm not sure how to teach that, but you can take chorus elective at school."     And then she sings along because hearing something done wrong makes her feel compelled to demonstrate how to do it ''right''. Although, in the tenseness of the moment and without warming up, she's not exactly perfect herself either. Lazy vowel shape and breathing in the wrong places, sort of things.     It's only after she's gone through an entire verse that she remembers to look at her phone again. "Everyone here knows how to do reality checks, right?"
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko isn't particularly thrilled about having to travel in an enclosed space in a hostile area, but given the nature of the dreamscape, she's even ''more'' against splitting up the party. So the wolfgirl enters the elevator without a complaint, gripping onto one of the bumper rails for good measure. She doesn't particularly trust the middle of the floor, nor the actual walls -- depending on the mood of the dream, either one could vanish into nothingness or open up to a secondary dimension, so having a grip on something unlikely to lose tangibility is ''probably'' a good thing. Riventon's singing warrants a slight twitch of the ears, but at least he can manage being vaguely in tune, so it's not ''too'' bad.
Nephrite	Nephrite is a child of not insignificant wealth and the K-pop in the elevator of a building like this feels off to him, immediately. In one of those subtle ways, in which it could be a reasonable attempt to modernise or appeal to youth, but still stands as a point of not being smooth jazz or classical orchestral pieces in a lobby that screams old money. It's not worth dwelling on, however. Things will only get increasingly weird. If he didn't know better, he'd be tempted to count Riventon's singing as nightmare territory. He moves into the elevator with some measure of reluctance and takes stock of Hinoiri's tension and general nearness to Catra. Likewise, he stands very near Mamoru, hand resting on the pommel of his sword-- near enough to Riventon too, he supposes. He wonders if people will start to think he's weighing his options on sparkle-benefits, too. Sometimes, he does, privately.
Emi Hoshino	Safely ensconced in the elevator (such as it is given that they are heading towards the upper floors if a building possessed with dark energy at this exact moment in time), the music only continues and they feel that jerk of the motion starting to carry them up. Flower 2, 3, 4... on and on. It's painstakingly, excruciatingly slow, accompanied by the rythmic chime of each floor sounding off. Floor 7, floor 8, 9... The music keeps playing. Floor 10, 11, 12, 14. It starts to pick up the pace, at least... And then a button lights up, one that wasn't pressed by anyone in the elevator, it starts to slow back down towards floor 18. The elevator doors slide open, revealing ... a hallway. Plenty of doors, no one visible. It's an apartment building. It's late. People are sleeping... but it's ominously quiet anyway. Ducking out and looking up and down reveals no one at all. Just silence. Then again, buildings like these, sometim4es entire floors don't even have anyone on them -- and the phones still read fine, anyway. No sign of anything wrong. Yet. Floor 19, 20, 21. All the way to twenty-five, where it again stops again. The doors, however, do not open. It's just stopped. For just a moment. That's when things change. That's when it feels like the floor drops out from beneath them as the elevator starts *plummeting*. It lasts all of a second, two, three, before suddenly the doors open and the digital display says: Floor 26. Yep, now they're getting close.
Mamoru Chiba	It's an elevator. People don't talk in elevators. Especially elevators this full, even if the elevator is full of people who know each other. Mamoru closes his eyes and leans against the wall, probably between Riventon and Nephrite, and the interminably long and begrudging progress of the tin box they're all in-- --"We're in henshin it's FINE!" yelps Tuxedo Kamen as they're all suddenly weightless, and then-- Ding, swooosh. "What? Gods damn it. Can we do some property damage and kill the elevator ourselves and just, I dunno, do the fly-or-platformer-jump up after all? Emi-chan is going to be ninety-seven by the time we get there."
Takashi Agera	The moment the floor starts dropping out from under him, Riventon starts floating again almost reflexively; this is a pretty good response when your footing is unstable in combat or similar things happen, precluding you from falling victim to sudden surprises or trapdoors and the like. The problem in this case is that means he's no longer falling with the elevator or the people within it - and this is an issue when the place you are in also has a roof that is falling, in some spatial-related way, downward.     So while everyone else has the feeling of the loss of their footing and the downward fall, Riventon floats in place... and smacks against the falling ceiling.     This cuts off his singing and replaces it with a stream of vowels that sound vaguely like profanity. When the elevator stops again Riventon is discomfortably rubbing the back of his head with his left hand, but he does have his right hand pointed towards the door opening to shield people if needed, like he said he would.     "Officially do not like it here. I like Kamen's plan because the sooner we can stop whatever this is the sooner I can go home and get some ibuprofin."     The k-pop starts another song and Riventon suddenly blasts the speaker with a bolt of energy. His tolerance for k-pop is inversely proportional to his headache status.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne hated this. WHY. WAS. IT. SO. SLOW! "Okay. Yeah. let out a sharp hiss of air when the elevator dropped and her hand squeezed Catra's tighter when the elevator free falled for a secodn and... you kniow what? "R-right, let's do that, killing the elevator," she said. And if nobody stopped her? She was going to punch through the elevator control panel. With fire. Her free fist already winding back and preparing to launch...
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko yelps at the sudden drop, but the railing grip ''does'' help somewhat with crouching to brace for landing. "Guess the 'floor' just indicates time," she sighs, then cautiously looks from the doors to the side walls and back again. "So, if progress isn't just linearly going up..." She quickly moves to a side wall, gripping a new section of railing in the process. "What do you think the chances of the elevator going ''sideways'' are?" the wolfgirl asks with serious concern. "And if we ''do'' try trashing the elevator car and try ascending manually, what are the odds that we'll encounter a ''different'' elevator car coming down '''at speed?'''"
Nephrite	Reflexively, and firstly, the free hand not on Nephrite's sword reaches for Mamoru. It's a jerk that consumes his entirely body, not unlike the classic 'soccer-mom arm'. It's seconded by the same thought as Riventon's, though Nephrite is still processing things-- thankfully a second or two afterwards, more information comes. Riventon hits the ceiling with a satisfying result. Nephrite refrains from hovering until the elevator stops again. "There's no guarantee the elevator shaft is any less weird or even a singluar path," he notes, glancing up, "But... we could check."
Catra	"I think the chances of the elevator going sideways are greater than zero," Catra grumbles. Also, Hinoiri is holding her hand. She allows it. Hinoiri is one of like, two people she'd allow to do that. Maybe three. And the third person is... you know what, no, it's actually just two. Right? Right. This elevator sucks," she agrees, and is not about to stop Hioniri from 'killing it'. It's a bad elevator and it deserves to die, so that'll be someone else's duty if they want the elevator to continue working, or... whatever it is that it's doing. "Hey, Amy," she adds. "You said something about 'reality check' or whatever. Kindly explain what the hell that's all about before I set fire to something I shouldn't." Like someone who's ostensibly on her side. "And, y'know, assume you've only got twenty seconds to make me understand it fully 'cause who knows what's happening next."
Amy Faust	"Why is it so ''slow''? Is it ''broken?'' Maybe we should've taken the stairs..." Amy wonders, but she's not going to go alone, not even when the elevator stops on floor 18.     And then it stops. And drops. Amy has only begun to start thinking of countermeasures when it halts and she grunts as she hits the floor.     "I... also agree with Riventon." Amy says, looking a bit astounded at what just came out of her mouth. "There are dozens more floors to go." She looks up at the roof for a hatch.     If she finds one that takes tools to open, she curses. "F--. I always ''used'' to carry a multitool..." But now a belt with pouches wouldn't look right with her clothes most of the time. "I shoulda put it with the binoculars."     "Anyway-- Hinoiri!" She stares at the smashed control panel. "That doesn't help, we were gonna just bust out the roof... I wouldn't be surprised if Riventon's device coulda made it think we had a fireman's key, too..."     "...But yeah, remember how subverting the dream's expectations worked in training? So this is probably a good idea."     She looks to Catra while others work on opening the roof ''without'' explosives. "We're in a dream. Or, well, near a dream. Some stuff is unreliable in dreams, because... the dream doesn't track the state of the world you're not paying attention to. Look at a clock, look away, look back at it. The time may change dramatically, or the numbers may be wrong, especially on a digital display. Attempt to read a book -- sometimes reading doesn't work ''at all''."     She taps her phone. "Smartphones not only have clocks on them, but... I mean, all the stuff they have to do? Navigating apps and bringing up different screens and stuff? Unless your brain's perfectly memorized what those look like..."     Amy blinks. "Oh! I learned another good one recently. Although I've forgotten to try it. Pinch your nose and see if you can breathe anyway. 'Cuz when you're asleep in bed, like... obviously you're still breathing." She frowns. "I'm not sure if breathing-based tests work in these nightmares, though. Haven't tried. Emi said that logic would ''not'' protect us from a dream of drowning."     "...Obviously, this nightmare is... like it's not being made by ''our'' brains I think? But somehow, dreamspace leaking out into reality works a lot of the same, anyway. ...I don't think trying to fly will work here either, even though it ''might'' in a dream."
Emi Hoshino	There's a spray of sparks as the elevator's control panel is smashed. Then the doors *slam* shut. Can elevator doors even slam? If you didn't think they could, you know they can in fact do so, now. At least nightmare elevators. Arms suddenly emerge from the walls, grabbing and yanking, trying to slam people against them. The arms are ghostly, phantasmal, and nightmarish in cold of their touch. As the elevator suddenly accelerates, skyrocketing, the very floor of it seerms to follow away to reveal a bottomless pit of swirling, seething clouds 'below' them, as if they're suddenly farther into the sky than they thought possible. it feels like the air is starting to get thin. Can you even breathe? It sure doesn't feel like it, even as the franatic fight begins. A digital voice over the loudspeakers. "NOW. REACHING. FLOOR. HELL."
Takashi Agera	"THIS IS A REALLY BAD ELEVATOR." Riventon says, in his first real full reaction after La Licorne smashes the elevator (trust a Pretty Cure to think with her fists) and everything goes up in chaos.     Riventon has an easier time fighting off the arms than probably others do - Dark Energy strength is a helluva drug and he's mainlining it right now in response to this situation, trying to match the resonance of the energy of the arms with the Dark Energy in his own hands now, so that he can RIP THEM OUT OF THE WALL. "HELL IS TRADITIONALLY DOWNWARDS YOU STUPID MACHINE."     This lasts for a little bit, but suddenly ''air'' is becoming a problem... a problem Riventon actually has a solution for. Thanks, Gaito! Now he just has to get the arms away long enough to pull the oxygen mask out of his Device.     Oh, there's other people here, and he actually cares about some of them. Well, he's only got one mask. Maybe after he gets it on he'll blast this elevator to the actual floor hell.     He'll try to arrest the fall of anyone who doesn't get caught, but this mostly comes in the form of shadowy Devicer Binds that try to grab a hand or leg and might leave them both uncomfortably stopped and dangling.
Mamoru Chiba	"NOPE!" yells Tuxedo Kamen, suddenly dangling from Neph's grip and taking out his cane to whack at arms and hands-- And then remembering, duh. The air's getting thin. Damnit. He whips out a rose and stabs! the! wall! Possibly unfortunately close to Hinoiri but what're a few thorns between friends?
Hinoiri Kirara	"You are the WORST elevator! But you know what? If we're going to be falling? You're just a BOX made of metal and I can *break* you to *pieces!*" La Licorne yelled. That. THAT she could do. THAT sounded a LOT easier to deal with than a box that she had to trust to not break on its own. "Because you know what? I'm a Goddess of FIRE and my girlfriend has a FIRE SWORD and BUCK YOU!" she yelled. Before she pulled a foot back and then she KICKED one of the hands trying to grav her, flame erupting around said foot as she tried to just blow that wall out! Never letting Catra's hand go the entire time. ... Also, she was likely not handling this trip at *all* well. Or the lack of air. Or the fact she was bouncing around at all. Also she and Catra were kind of maybe dating now a bit and now you all kind of knew so uhhhhh... There was that.
Ikiko Hisakata	"Expect the unexpected," Tsukiko sighs as the elevator rockets upward (instead of plummeting downward). The arms are persistent in their efforts to keep people against the walls, but that ''does'' mean a certain amount of grip -- in the ''traction'' sense of the term. "'Scuse me, pardon me, just need to head over--" the wolfgirl apologizes to the various arms as she tries clambering along, getting briefly interrupted with a yelp from an unexpected grab. "HEY!" she shouts, kicking at the offending arm before wriggling onward. "DO YOU HUG YOUR MOTHER WITH THAT HAND?!?" Once she gets within reach of the floor display, Tsukiko tries prying it open and rearranging the pixels into a certain order. "This building has fifty floors, right?" she calls to the others, herding the LEDs to spell out 'Floor 50'.
Nephrite	Nephrite says something that isn't PG 13+ in the slightest, and Riventon is correct-- Hell is traditionally down. He catches Mamoru readily, at least, because in all of this, truly, Mamoru is his focus. It is fortunate that Nephrite possesses powers of transvection, but as crowded as the elevator is and as sudden as everything becomes, it doesn't much help against the hands. What he does utter is a wind spell-- the doors slammed? That's fine. Air pressure can force them open again.
Catra	'WHAT DO YOU MEAN FLOOR HELL?!" When the floor falls away Catra's reaction is instant. Her free hand whips Powersend out of its scabbard and the blade flashes in a swift arc in front of her before she slams it through the wall behind her (sharp side pointing up), now keeping a very tight grip on Hinoiri just in case, 'cause she doesn't want to end up staying up here and watching the Unicorn plummet. Like how she let Adora plummet once, back on Etheria, into a dark, yawning abyss. Back when shew as angry. Justifiably angry. Seriously, it was-- This is not the time to be thinking about that. The feline grits her teeth as she's being grabbed by all sorts of hands, but she's still at least reaosnably resistant to dark energy and what else is she gonna do, really? Fall? No thanks. This is fine. Sort of fine. Fine-ish. "Girl if that doesn't work I'm cutting the doors open!" she warns Tsukiko.
Amy Faust	Amy cheerfully exposits most of what she knows about reality checks, and then the elevator falls ''up'' and the floor falls ''out'' and they're in the sky and she can't breathe "Hey, leggo!" She smacks the arms and then realizes they'll drop her to who knows where and pink sparkles change her outfit to flight mode ''with'' an air supply and gasps and remembers to slip her phone back into a pouch and tries to hang on to ''one'' of the arms even if she got them to let go. "Emmiiiiiii! Fuck..." Can Emi even hear her in the thin air if she ''were'' nearby? Wait, Amy hears everyone else fine.     And in the chaos, ''some'' people are fiddling with the door. "Good idea!"     "Stoppit!" She still has to bat and kick at the hands other than the one she's hanging onto. Thank goodness for mahou strength.     She's thinking about ways to try and blow the door open but a lot of them would catch everyone in the blast, so. Not doing that yet!
Emi Hoshino	You know, Riventon should not have mentioned down. It's about a second after he says that and the agreement is sounded that the elevator starts *descending* towards that pit of ABYSSAL BLACKNESS. There is lightning storms in there, crackling with energy that spiderwebs and causes purple sparkles behind in the eyes when it lights up. Those grasping hands are yanking, pulling, punching. Their grasp is tigght, painful, but not invulnerable. Clinging to each other, fighting, desperately to not fall as the wind howls in their ears with growing strength. Faster. FASTER. Ikiko messes with the control panel. Nephrite opens the door. It fights him, OH it fights. Tries to slam shut on his fingers. Eyes open up all along the interior, a baleful *rage* pouring out towards them, a hostile energy that just screams 'NO". It doesn't want to let you go. And then the elevator is forced to slow. Slow down. Slow to a halt as the abominable spirit of nightmare possessing it oozes through the gaps in the panels of the ceiling that remain, descending in disgusting, oozing tendrils that slash out at Nephrite, trying to yank him back in, keep him from escaping. Wait, is the floor back? Yes. Yes it is. It never went away, really, or at least it was only temporary. More tendrils, trying to grasp each of the others, to slam them against the wall. This blob of slime opens up its eyes all along its form, dripping, raining protoplasm on everyone. It smels like oil and ... sewer grease. Good thing its such a large elevator, right? But wouldja look at that? The door is now open to floor fifty, a blackened hallway covered in pink spiderwebs even as they fight inside the elevator. The intensity of the dark energy here is high, much higher than it was below. You're near the source, it seems.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne absolutely HATED everything ABOUT all of this. Just. ALL OF IT! It sucked and they were in a BIG METAL BOX and it SUCKED and GAH! And then-- Oh, FINALLY the elevator TOOK THE HINT and doors opened and there were... pink spiderwebs? "Okay, I need everyone back towards-- ACTUALLY, Riventon, just you, get towards the door for a moment!" she said, before turning towards the back of the elevator! "Stellar aspirational EXPLOSION!" And she held up her hand before spiking a setting sun of fire into the BACK of the elevator! The fireball exploding into purifying flames that erupted like... well, a setting sun. Luckily, it was just purifying magic. Likely not so bad for most of them. Not so lucky for, well... Riventon. Trying to clean out the elevator so they had some space to work with.
Amy Faust	They're falling. Into that. "AAAAH!" Amy objects, and then there are ''eyes'' near her so she pokes them and she's falling and despite being a Rocket Girl she is not ''used'' to freefall and it kinda makes her nauseous and ''IT'S OOZING THROUGH THE WALLS'' and she     BANG     conjures and insta-detonates a shaped charge to pierce the thing behind the wall because she doesn't have a slashing weapon, and then the floor is back and a tentacle (''why'') tries to grab her and she doesn't have room to dodge so she     BANG     tries to blow it apart and then YANKS on it as she tries to get through the door -- not to abandon others, but maybe from the hallway she can better help if she's ''not'' being grabbed!
Takashi Agera	Riventon probably not end up with mentioning down in some sort of haunted nightmare elevator being the most ill-advised thing he did today. He can feel the Dark Energy - and there's a lot of it. But it's... mixed in with other stuff, with nightmares, with less sensible things and collective conscious and the connections to otherworldly dreamlines.     But to Riventon, this source of power is both ''trying to kill him'' and some people he's fond of, AND is not something he risks downsides from Obsidian itself for taking from. And it's powerful, and it ''needs to'' be less powerful.     "I'm going to weaken it, do whatever you can to get out and maybe attack it a bit on the way!" Cloaked in Dark Energy himself now, letting some of his actual full power bleed out (probably to the more-than-mild disturbance of the mahoujin here, if they weren't already disturbed) he reaches out with his hand and tries to draw that energy INTO HIMSELF. Tugging at the tentacles, at the ooze, at whatever is beyond the door, like a magnet, his own Dark Energy trying to call to that in the mess in front of him, to absorb it.     It's... actually very telling that Riventon doesn't seem particularly phased by Hinoiri's purifying attack - Axion puts up a circular Midchildan runic shield between him and the purification, but with Riventon going 'gloves off' on his own power now, the Pretty Cure's explosion isn't the threat to him personally; but it might mess with his attempt to inhale the dream-entity. Or perhaps... it might help it by weakening it.
Mamoru Chiba	There's a lovely skreeee sound as the rose acts like awful brakes and helps slow the elevator, and Mamoru would rather not have that stuff dripping into his hair and down the collar of his tuxedo, so he produces his hat from nowhere and jams it on his head. It makes him slightly too tall for the elevator doors and he has to duck with his adjusted clearance. It also doesn't help that the hands keep trying to TAKE his hat, too-- --but he grabs for Neph's arm on him and tugs Neph along with as he fights to get them out and away from the Box of Bad Ideas. Into the pink dark energy spiderwebs in a place that's sick with, swimming with, dark energy, and HINOIRI IS THROWING FIRE right next to him and a tiny dissociated part of him thinks, is this payback for the rose stab, because if so it's disproportionate, and the rest of him is frozen in Neph's grip. So soon after Nemesis, so close to his future wife and daughter so full of dark energy, and now swimming in it with fire below Cure La Licorne's face-- and with Riventon right there-- ''with Neph right there''-- in his panic he very very nearly reaches for it. He doesn't, but Neph is going to have to move him for a hot second.
Catra	Ramming her sword through the wall was a great idea. Well. Aside form the fact that the hole she made spews slime out from around the sword sticking through it, and now in addition to everything else gooping up the contents of the elevator, Catra is now covered in that too. And then she just stands there. Covered in slime and ectoplasm and looking like she's officially done with this. "So hold up," she grates flatly, "This is actually a dream, somehow, even though I was awake when I got here, and now I'm dreaming about being covered in nasty goo that smells like the Fright Zone sewer system? Fantastic. How is this in any sort of dream I'm participating in?" And then there are pink spiderwebs. "This is completely awful and I hate it," she snaps. And then as Hinoiri decides to just solve her problems by burning them, the feline just... shrugs. "Yeah that's not a bad idea actually," she comments, as she lifts her hand and summons up the power of the Spirit Ember. Which, actually works now, since she did that thing with the dragon fire, and while her attack isn't purifying by any stretch it is extremely hot. "Are we on the roof yet? she asks, still in that flat tone of voice. "Because if we're not I'm cutting holes in the ceiling until we are."
Nephrite	Between the ghostly hands grabbing and punching and pulling, and the very angry--disgusting-- tendrils that lash out at him, Nephrite is open and subject to quite a number of abuses. His spell seemed to make some headway, and the doors fought him all the way. Slippery oiliness and the pull of the other forces tears him away. The doors may now be opened, but Nephrite is entangled in tendrils and hands and in need of assistance as he fights to be free of them. He twists, a gloved hand loosing a burst of bright light and heat against whatever still assails him. It is Mamoru that pulls him clear, finally. But only into more problems. Now it is his turn to pull at Mamoru, to tell him to keep moving, and to ensure that ''he does''. He grabs at him, fully intent on getting distance between him and the fire, first.
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko keeps a tight grip on the control panel as the elevator reverses direction, shoving it from side to side to bludgeon any grasping hands that come within reach, and even ''biting'' any near her face. She does free up one hand to jab any monstrous eyes that open up near her, but her other arm is still cradling the control panel, even as it becomes less a piece of the wall and more a wire-tethered piece of electronics. But the display edit appears to have done its work, and now they can all disembark on the floor that they were trying to get to. The wolfgirl is the last to leave the elevator, basking a bit in the purifying blaze as the Nightmare is blasted, keeping a grip on the control panel until the last moment to keep it under her, well, ''control''. And as she steps out of the elevator, she tosses a small horizontal line of lit LEDs at the still-exposed floor display, making one final, small, but ''major'' edit:     Floor '''negative''' 50. "Going down," Tsukiko grins viciously at the Nightmare from the hallway as she pushes the door closed.
Emi Hoshino	Cleverness wins the day. Cleverness and fire. Cleverness, fire, and a sword wins the day. Cleverness, fire, swords, and fast feet and faster thinking. It all combines to momentarily win the day. The purifying blaze tears through the elevator, shredding the beast that emerged. Immediately, purifying flame or no, the smell is devastatingly bad. Just *awful*. Like ... smoked oil, grease, and machinery. Just incredibly unpleasent and acrid to inhale. It flails, reaching out with tendrils to try to drag the others back in, but Tsukiko's cleverness sends the elevator plummeting again based on dream logic. A quiet hallway. Behind them, the elevator ... dings. And opens. Ahead of them, the sounds of battle, screaming. A door slams open. Slams shut. A girl in a flowing gothic dress wielding a parasol wrapped in thorny spider-webs emerges from a room, a wide-brimmed hat on top her head. It's Emi, of course, for those who knows her. Oh so goth. She blinks her mismatched eyes at them. "Wait, how did you get h--- you didn't. wait, oh no. This is very bad."
Amy Faust	Oh yes there is awful goo everywhere too ;_; Amy ''just got clean'' hours ago, too. The marshmallow was better than this, at least it didn't stink!     "It's not the kinda dream we ''want'' to have... Well, it's not ''our'' dream at all! It's a nightmare hurting people!" Amy explains to Catra.     And then what everyone does to get them out of these is frankly pretty cool, ''especially'' Ikiko's reversal hoisting the nightmare by its own petard! Or plummeting it by its own petard.     "Is everyone alright? Oh, Emi, thank goodness we found you, are you o--"     She stops and blinks. "What do you mean this is very bad?! We beat the hellevator and came all this way to help you! What-- What's wrong?!"
Mamoru Chiba	"Yeah," says Tuxedo Mask a little faintly, gripping Neph's sleeve. "Shit. Emi-chan you're elected Oneiropope. Pomp. Whatever. Tell us how to help. Riventon's eating a bunch of dark energy. That's... surprisingly not a problem at all right this minute. But he's also eating Nightmare energy." He shivers, pretending he's fine. "That might be a problem right now this minute though." He does not go near the elevator again.
Takashi Agera	Riventon, on the other hand, somewhat staggers out of the elevator, the last to step off it. "Not eaten, ate." he corrects, and for people who have seen Riventon it's notable how much less confident he is right now than in pretty much any moment before.     "The Dark Energy wasn't the problem, but it was all mixed up with this other stuff." he mumbles.     "Still... weakened it enough we were able to get off the elevator before anybody died, right?" he asks, hopefully, and his eyes roam over everyone, counting them.     "And hey, we got one more! Now that's effective save-ing." he says. But then has to stagger to a nearby wall and grip it. "I think I'm going to be sick. In my soul." He looks like he's about to be sick in his stomach, too. Might not want to be too close.     "Who is this girl and most importantly... has Hotaru met her?" he asks, too out of it to not mention Hotaru by name, plus, she's safe now.
Nephrite	"This is Emi Hoshino, and apparently this is bad, Riv." Nephrite offers, subtly bringing a hand behind Mamoru to rub at his shoulder. Friction, contact, something a little grounding. He whispers, leaning closer, "It's alright, we'll find some stairs when we kill whatever needs killing."
Ikiko Hisakata	"Well, going ''directly'' to the roof apparently wasn't an option, and the stairs didn't seem like a particularly good idea for most of us," Tsukiko shrugs to Emi. "Although, if that was the ''center'' of the Nightmare..." The wolfgirl thinks for a moment. "It's probably on its way to the basement," she adds sheepishly. "Or the sub-basement. Or maybe even the sub-sub-sub-... uh, ''how'' far up are we, here?"
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Gosh... darn it. Does this mean we all fell asleep? Was it the elevator?" She glanced to Riventon and... yeah. OF course he ate it. He always eats it. She'd comment, but well... Captain crunch witch. She had no room to talk. "So, does this mean we're asleep now? Or can you henshin outside of dreams now? Or... Am I passed out on the roof? Cause oh wow the roof was... creepy..." "... Wait. Does this mean this interrupted before we even got here possibly? Oh man! Did I not even GET here?! Did I knocked out before I even asked you out?! CATRA?! You better not have been just in my dreams! It took me like, an hour to work up the nerve to ask you out. And like, you have *no* idea how weird that is for me. I don't usually think through *anything* like that when I want it. I usually just go for it. Ugh. I swear, when I wake up, I'm just going to have to ask you out again and you *better* say yes. And may Kamiko have mercy on any youma that interferes in that date, for I shall not." "... Riventon, you need a bucket?"
Catra	"I'm real," Catra replies with deep exasperation to Hinoiri, "You did ask, and I did go, and then we turned up here and it's been weird ever since. And I guess we ''are'' asleep but I have no idea when that happened. And I'd offer ot pinch you but you do not want to get pinched by my claws, I pomise." And there's Emi, and she says this is very bad. Catra just sighs, violently exhaling her soul out through her nose, and shifts Powersend to rest on her shoulder as she finally disentangles herself from... basically everything and walks out of the elevator, still covered in slime and goo and somehow managing to ignore it and walk like she's a total badass. Regardless of the condition of her attire. "If you're gonna be sick don't get it on my shoes," she comments to Riventon. "Everyone's fine, Amy. And, nice moves kid," she acknowledges Tsukiko, who's name she still doesn't actually know but kid probably suffices. Right? Right? Yeah sure good enough. "So I guess the only real question is... who do we have to beat up to get out of this?"
Emi Hoshino	"Are we just giving out my real name to people I don't know?!" Emi asks, though it's clear she's moving past it by the time it's out of her mouth. Whoever's here is someone that is trusted by the others, after all. She takes a breath, then moves towards Hinoiri (and Catra). "If you can see me, that must mean the blurring between dream and reality is really severe here for the moment. I'm not 'actually' here, I'm in the nightmare -- but we're still able to 'connect'. KenKen, what do you think?" Crawling out of the folds of her dress, an adorable and multicolored jumping spider stares unblinkingly at them -- particularly Riventon. "I think he's going to be sick." "We'll tap the nightmare off him later." Emi twirls the parasol in her hands once as KenKen speaks, her voice a wavering thing. "I saw disturbances in the dreamscape and traced them back to the dreams of people in this building. A whole bunch of nightmares inspired by a single source until it's become something wholly on its own." She fixes her eyes on them and then utters a name for its nature that everyone is sure to hate. "The Landlord." Then she pokes at Hinoiri and her hand simply passes through her like she's not even there."... well this is good, at least. I engaged with it and it fled into the real world, which is why I called you all in the hopes that you could force it back into the dream so I can finish killing it. It looks like it's still out there. I'm going to get back to work in here, breaking up these clusters of nightmare energy. Keep pushing. I'll see you all soon, eh?"
Takashi Agera	"No, no, it's fine, I'll be fine, everything's fine." Says the tall bishonen Dark Energy user who looks anything but. "Don't worry about me for now. I'm already filtering out the stuff internally... I have control over my energy and a Device. And... hey, I've had worse." he notes.     "I just may need some time. The only thing that's important is stopping this entity, this disruption, this connection."     Riventon pauses and leans his head against the wall and mumbles something about 'glimpses of somewhere else' as his hand on the wall clenches slowly and chunks of wall come out with it. He certainly doesn't look fine.     "Let's all just solve what we're here to solve. That thing should be weaker now, I pulled a lot of energy out of it." he suggests.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne blinked a few times, eye twitching. "I mean... not... intentionally? You kind of *called us* here. Under that name. You didn't..." Well, this was kind of awkward. She, admittedly, had a strict 'never out someone' policy. And she wouldn't, ever, do that to someone. But, unfortunately, due to Emi's methods of magic, it seemed Emi's kind of required it? ... Magic was weird sometimes. She glanced towards Riventon. Oh, he... Nope. Keeping her mouth shut. Captain crunch witch. Not a single leg to stand on even if she had allllll four. Dark energy cookies. Three witches. Dark energy water. That time she ate from Obsidian's cafeteria. She couldn't say a word. "Right, let's go beat up a landlord and... wow, that felt oddly really good to say." Weird, that.
Mamoru Chiba	Briefly leaning back against the slightly taller Nephrite, Mamoru focuses on the grounding and on his breathing, even while he's letting everyone's speech play into his buffer. A few seconds later and he's got a nice teacup of copium borrowed against tomorrow's. "We're teleporting, fuck stairs," he mutters then takes a deep breath. He definitely skirts Takashi's splash zone once they're moving again. "You've had different, you don't know if this is creeper," he tells Riventon as they pass. "Every, um, every landlord I know lives in a penthouse," he says as he watches Emi, then warily watches Hinoiri. "So let's start opening doors." Everything will be fine. He tries the first apartment-looking door he can see on that floor, opening it while standing to one side of it.
Catra	Catra positions the tip of her sword at the top of her scabbard and slides it in, nice and smooth like she was born a Samurai or something. (She wasn't but who's keeping track anyway?) With both hands free, she tilts her head until her neck cracks, and straightens her jacket, just to complete the motion (seriously, it was already straight enough). "Alright, sure, let's go beat up a Landlord." She folds her arms in front of her chest, and taps her foot, looking back and forth between everyone as she waits for those gathered to generally be ready to go get on with it. "One question, though," she mumbles. "What exactly ''is'' a Landlord, anyway?"
Nephrite	"A special kind of bastard that buys up properties and leases them back out to people, while refusing to allow pets or fix leaky faucets, Catra." After this succinct explanation, he follows Mamoru, drawing his sword now and peering over his shoulder to see if there's anything behind door number one.
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko follows the other, keeping an eye on the hallway while the others peek in through the doors. Given how this night has been going, a would-be surprise from an unexpected direction would not seem too far out of the ordinary.
Amy Faust	Amy blinks at Hinoiri as she starts ranting on tangents about what if we're already asleep -- she explained earlier they weren't asleep right now -- she ''thinks?'' -- but... "Damn. Is ''that'' what I sound like to everyone else?"     And then she startles as Emi catches her on letting the real name slip. "I'm sorry! Uh... you could be ''any'' gothically-dressed Emi with heterochromia...?" If this were drawn as an anime she'd be sweating nervously.     But Emi's over it. (And Amy realizes she ''should'' have suspected she's in a dream after all since she ''sees Emi henshined''. Emi's on to mentioning the source of the nightmare:     The Landlord.     Amy's grunt of 'Hmmh.' when Emi says that has some amount of 'ah yes of course that is bad' in it. Needless to say as she is 'a gay communist, that's like the opposite of a cop!' she does not hold the Landlording profession in high esteem.     When Hinoiri comments, she smiles, "Right?"     When Catra comments, she opens her mouth but Nephrite gets it out first, and she nods, deciding now is not the time for an anticapitalist explanation.     But there's one problem with the plan of 'find the Landlord': "Wait... so it's 'out here' but the world is already dreamlike? How do we drive it back 'into' the dream, what ''direction'' is the dream in?!"
Emi Hoshino	"I dunno. We'll figure it out by employing the same solution as we do to every other evil problem: prodigious amounts of violence." Clearly, Emi has spent too much time with Hinoiri. "Good luck," she adds, and then she darts off down the hallway and then ... ... passes through the wall. It is clear that the geography she was in does not match the one the others are in. Their last glimpse of her is KenKen waving her legs at them in farewell on her shoulder. rImmediately, the doors are a problem. Most of them are locked. Most. One opens. When they step through that threhhold, it looks like they're transitioning to another realm. Suddenly, they're in verdant courtyard, lined with shade-casting trees, the sound of birds chirping, the gentle sounds of a fountain. Stone trails split into every direction.
Takashi Agera	Riventon looks up from his obviouslyt in-a-bad-way state to listen to Emi in particular, and the rest about their opinions, but in this stater, Riventon is more focused on ending the dream-threat than discussing anything about the real world. "This 'landlord' and the nightmares he's created are what's most important, and even if he's an absolute tool, what we're really here to solve is whatever's left of that thing I ate so it doesn't bleed into our world anymore than it already has." he says.     Riventon looks at the open door, then looks at one of the locked doors, and collects a orb of Dark Energy in his hand - but it's unstable, shaky, literally wobbling like a discordant sphere, and it discorporates before he can turn it into a proper blast - what he puts out is still sort of a gushing spray of Dark energy, but it fails to punch the expected hole in the landscape. "Ughhhhhh." he complains. "Now ''my'' resonance is all twisted till I get this stuff sorted. Dimensional stability is also totally shot here, in case you weren't aware considering we just opened a door to a landscaped courtyard."     "Probably have to keep moving till the dream gets tired or we reach the center of it. Whatever. It'll give me time to recover so I can properly blast whatever's responsible into a very, VERY deep crater." he says. "Come on, let's go get in a fight with the killer topiary or whatever." he says, moving in that direction, every bit of him radiating either 'quite ill' or 'done with this situation' or 'both'.
Nephrite	Somehow, the vision of a verdant courtyard is, by contrast, intensely more terrifying than anything beforehand. False security and all. And the trails that seem to encourage them to split up. Absolutely not. Nephrite keeps his sword readied at the scene, stepping out to at least peer down one of the stone pathways. And down another. He feels like if he runs down one, he might end up coming out of another like Benny Hill. Though it's probably much worse than that. At random, he picks one to bolt down.
Mamoru Chiba	The moment they step through the door into this... courtyard... Tuxedo Mask steps to one side of the door and takes off a glove, then crouches to touch the ground. "Yo!" he calls. "We're in an apartment. We didn't step into a dream, this is an illusion." He gets up and takes off his slimy hat, vanishing it, then calmly takes off his shoes and socks and sets them down next to the door politely. No slippers, though. Just walking with his eyes closed. "Someone tell me if I'm going to walk into something, okay?"
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne blinked a few times... and then grinned. Punching a fist into her OTHER fist. "THAT I can do. Happily! Okay! Violence on violence! Woo! Happy I can help!" she called after her. "Good luck on your end, stay safe!" she yelled. Then looked to Catra and winked. "At least I don't take you to somewhere boring on the first date?" she offered with a wink. "Can't get much more casual and open than this, right?" she asked with a smirk. Then glanced back at the elevator annnnd... it was gone. Woo! "Wait, your landlords can do WHAT here?! You can't DISALLOW pets?! That's torture! What kind of monsters do you have here?!" she asked, sounding horrified. "Right, though, ummmm, so we need to find the landlord... and like... drive him back into dreams... so I guess... we should like... try to find a place and like... do property damage? Would that drive the landlord off?" she asked, sounding, admittedly, unsure. ... She'd never actually had a landlord, all she knew about them was from like... jokes and shows.
Ikiko Hisakata	"D'you want me to guide you?" Tsukiko deadpan-quips to Tuxedo Kamen, glancing around at the visible scenery. Nephrite's dash into the maze is met with a certain amount of disbelieving blinks, but the wolfgirl shrugs -- if ''he'' has an idea in mind that he doesn't want to explain first, she's going to let him put it into action...     ...and if he's trying to be bait, well, that's certainly ''one'' way of drawing the attention of whatever they're trying to hunt!
Catra	Catra looks like a bubbling crockpot of emotions, overspiced and with the temperature turned up to high, right about to boil over in some sort of unpredictable fashion. Which emotion will win? Who knows? Right now all of them are vying for attention, like literally all of them. "HRRRAAAAGH!!" The cat draws her sword and stabs it into the wall; and from there her entire form becomes wreathed in flame, eyes glowing brightly as she channels it all into the sword and walks forwards, rending as significant a hole in the wall as she can while setting everyhthing on fire. And she keeps the heat up on herself just in case the sprinkler system starts up -- and also because it's making some of the slime covering her melt away, which is nice. Very nice actually. "LANDLORD!!" she snarls, ears flattening and lips pulling back to bare her feral teeth, "COME OUT AND LET ME SHOW YOU WHY I'M TH EBEST FIGHTER FROM ETHERIA!"
Amy Faust	What kind of monsters do you have here?!     "Capitalists." answers Amy, deadpan.     Emi goes through a wall like they're not in the same geometry. "Huh."     A door opens, but... "I thought he said we'd probably find the landlord in the penthouse?" She looks through the door and then ''is transported elsewhere, gosh dang it.'' "Well, ''this'' is giving me creepy fae forest vibes. Anyone else? I ''don't'' think we should split up."     Riventon comments about dimensional stability. 'Man,' Amy mutters. 'Witches get Labyrinths, Madoka and Moon get Labyrinths, ''Nightmares'' get Labyrinths, how come I only get to warp space if I die first?' If there's a stray small rock or stick nearby she kicks it.     Then Mamoru explains they're not in warped space, it's just an illusion. "Oh, okay--"     He's... actually taking his shoes off for the forest Should she do that? She supposes they ''are'' technically dripping ooze in some random apartment. "Wait, is the slimy stuff an illusion too?"     Briefly considering how to manage this with her powers, she wipes off her face, forms her bodysuit ''under'' the magical girl outfit, vanishes her pouches, tosses the magical girl outfit ''off'' (it suddenly became tear-away?) as pink sparkles change the bodysuit into-- hmm, being dressed as Rocket Red with bare feet just seems weird, so her mind drifts to the 'cute' magical girl outfit they've seen a few times before. She removes the shoes and walks on the 'stone' and 'grass' in stocking-feet, and if it ''feels'' like stone and grass to her, she tells Mamoru so before starting to follow him.     "Well... you're the only one who can sense what's really here, so... lead the w--"     She jumps, a bit taken aback at Catra. Then looks around, wondering if that will work.
Nephrite	From one of the many paths on the other side, Nephrite reappears-- still seemingly fine, and slows to a halt.
Emi Hoshino	There are going to be some serious questions from the maintenance crews if the damage persists. Catra renders a hole in the wall. The hole bleeds. First a a little, then a lot, and then a torent of it spraying out and evaporating instantly due to the nimbus of heat surrounding Catra. It sure generates some mist, but it doesn't appear to solve the problem beyond that there is now a hole in the wall thanks to he. She finds herself looking into a recursive situation. She can see herself, looking into a hole, looking at her own backside, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over -- right up until the Catra in the mirrored vision of herself that she is seeing looks over her shoulder independently of the Catra that did the smashing and then clambers through the hole, disappearing into it. ... Catra will sense something coming at her from behind herself. It's her -- a madly grinning, twisted phantasmal visage of herself that aims to shove her into the hole. Its efforts are immediately interrupted as Hinoiri is in prime position to shatter it with her fist; and does so. This other Catra explodes, shattering into ... smaller Catras, which then dissolve into the floor behind her. Meanwhile, Mamoru and the others are further into the courtyard with Mamoru guiding them. Things don't make sense here. Everyone saw Nephrite's reappearance like he didn't just dash off the opposite direction. And Mamoru? Mamoru has guided them towards a wall of tightly packed shrubs. And he is able to just ... pass ... through, as will the others. It's all illusory, after all, like Emi running through a wall earlier. They find themselves now in what appears to be ... a throne room? They're ... standing in line? It's all very palatial, lordly. There are statues of armor lining the walls, holding crossed axes, tapestries on the walls with writhing text that doesn't want to sit still, and ... people? Ahead of them in line? In the time it takes for them to get their bearings, the line moves ahead a step with them in it, carrying them along by monetum more than anything else. IT seems to extend 'forever' into the distance. At its front, however, they can see the great golden throne, and a man seated upon it who is clearly a storybook 'lord'. He's even got the little crown on the top of his head. and long golden hair. Beside him, standing, is a man who looks every little bit the Grima Wormtongue cosplay, who greets each person at the front of the line, and tells them to 'pay the lord their due'. A few scattered coins are put into a cup. It's all illusory, but one gets the sense that this scenario is playing out because *someone* has taken the idea of 'landlord' are far too literally. But here, the dark energy is entirely focused around the pair at the head of the line, and they're illusion of fealty and manoralism.
Catra	Catra has made a hole in the wall. Of coruse she did; and of course ''she'' did. Well, what? Someone said something about property damage, so they got property damage. What exactly else were they anticipating? The problem is that Catra certainly wasn't anticipating that she'd be staring at herself from behind, in an endless line of Catras. Her ears twitch, and she narrows her eyes, staring at it all and entirely heedless of the moisture that's getting vaporized before it reaches her. But then something else happens that she ''can't'' ignore. Her ears pick up on whta's coming from behind her and she turns just in time to face a crazed version of herself, rushing in to shove her through the hole. "What th--!!" Catra raises her sword to block the one her enraged double is holding, and there follow a seris of ringing impacts, steel against steel as a pair of flaiming swords clash against each other. With the final kiss of blades the angry Catra shoulders in, punching the real Catra in the face and succeeding in knocking her backwards. Catra, the feline, the one with perfect balance who always lands on her feet and can never be knocked off kilter (or so she brags often enough) is sent stumbling backwards through the gaping hole of her own making, tumbling wordlessly into... whatever it is that happens to be on the other side. Wait -- Four fingertips, still visible, as the cat digs her claws in and hangs on, a snarling ball of terror and rage on the other side of the wall.
Mamoru Chiba	"Are you ''serious??''" Mamoru gapes, opening his eyes to this line they've been shuffled into, this slowly progressing line, and he looks at the pair at the head of the line. Tuxedo Kamen ''scowls'' and strides out of the line, his profile changing to armored, his mask and gloves vanishing and his cape billowing back over filigreed metal pauldrons. Prince Endymion draws his sword with a ''schinnnnnng'', his steps quickening, and he calls out, "By my hand--" He jogs the last few feet as he raises the sword, then lunges to cut the tax table in half, "--your license is revoked!"
Takashi Agera	Riventon just grits his teeth and presses on. It's only occasionally that he has to grasp onto a wall that may or may not be there (almost, but not quite falling) to brace himself as his vision and stomach decide to both do weird things. Even still he'll stubbornly move away from offered help, trying to push on forward on his own, even if sometimes that means solemnly floating slowly forward.     "Look, with all of the Dark Energy floating around here, unless the place gets ''really'' cleansed by whatever caused this, Obsidian is about to become the owners of this apartment building on the flipside of all of this anyways, if only to do the cleanup." he says, calmly. "So if you think about it that way it's practically already mine." The number of things that are, in Riventon's mind, practically already his, is just slightly beneath 'the whole universe'.     Riventon is about to move forward, but there's nonsense going on behind him - and Catra is, despite Catra's best half-assing, ''still'' Riventon's employee - to him, anyways.     So he moves fast - in a way that there's a facial expression of future Riventon's regret/problem on his face as he does so, reaching out for the still outstretched hand of Catra to pull her out of... wherever... so she doesn't fall into whatever it is that's giving him super-spirit-stomach-upset.     "You're not authorized to fall into an unending spooky nightmare abyss on the clock, Catra!" Riventon half-chides as his hand wraps around her wrist to pull her back.
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko glances at the shape of the dream with a dubious eye, then turns towards the others. "I'd complain to the local management, but the complaint I have is ''about'' the local management," she sighs loudly, side-eyeing the manoral pair. Endy's swordwork draws a cheer, and Riventon's declaration about Obsidian's probable future ownership draws an eyeroll... and a fragmented memory of an old English-language rock & roll song.     (something about new bosses, old bosses, and their similarities?)
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne did NOT like suddenly someone trying to spring up and drop on her friend and when that false jerk tried to drop on Catra, well... she did something that someone else hadn't done for Catra for a while... she'd been there for her. A flaming fist SLAMMED into the other Catra and, as Catra started to fall in, her hand was already reaching for hers and-- RIVENTON?! Well, okay, fair. It was better than a rock. So she-- Wait. And her hand gripped Catra's... Wrapping just below the wrist on the other side. Just a little further up than his was. Mayyyybe a hint possessively. And mayyyyyyybe she was giving him a bit of a glare behind her sunglasses. "You better be giving her *hella* hazard pay for this then, Riv-en-ton," Cure La Licorne said. "I'll make sure that she submits a DE-283 later for damages," she snapped. Pulling her back and, once her upper torso was out... she'd totally lean forward to put the other arm around her in a kind of supporting hug/hold to support her as she helped pull her out. Not at all possessive/protective/jealous of Riventon trying to rescue her rescuee. nope. Not at allllll.
Nephrite	Nephrite follows suit after his Prince. But he rises, hovering above the line and aiming his sword towards the Lord and, in particular, the crown. A slash through the air gathers a cosmic gale, and with it, a beheading motion bursts forth at about head height. Symbolic, maybe. Mostly, he wonders if the crown can be knocked free or interfered with-- maybe even grabbed and worn by somebody else.
Amy Faust	(Amy struggles a bit with removing the costume's mary-janes. She acts like she's never dealt with shoes with a belt-fastener on them before.)     The wall is bleeding. "Uhhh, is that real?" Amy asks Mamoru. After a second, she clarifies, "The wall is bleeding."     And then an evil...er? Catra comes from behind them, attacks, and is exploded into chibis by Hinoiri. "Ohhhh ''that's'' not good. This is gonna be trippy..." She trusts that Hinoiri's got this now, she daren't lose track of Mamoru, who's--     He's walking into a hedge. She can... reach through it? She still finds herself tilting her head forward and closing her eyes as she steps through, reflex and instinct not allowing her to walk eyes right into pokey shrubs.     They got through the fairy maze into the throne room. What kind of monarch do you find in such a place? "I don't like the feel of this..." she notes to the others nearby, softly.     Prince Endymion, as actual royalty, can revoke the Landlord's charter, or license, apparently? She wonders if landlords ''have'' licenses then remembers Mamoru owns a building and very ''memorably'' dealt with all the involved paperwork. She hopes he doesn't think she assumes ''he's'' capitalist...     She steps out of line to run up beside Endymion. "You heard the Prince. You're out!" She levels her wand at the Lord and his Vizier.     Wait, does this mean she's enforcing the order of the ruling class?     Does that make her a...     "This is a, um, um..." Amy fumbles for something else to say, "...he's revoking your license and I'm seizing the property in the name of the proletariat!"     Yes that is absolutely fine and not awkward at all :|
Emi Hoshino	Riventon and Hinoiri are able to haul Catra back thorugh the hole, but in time for there to be rustling behind them. They turn to find... ... Crisis of ininite Catras?! There's hole, now, on the OTHER side of the room like the one that Catra punched the one they're at -- and there are CATRAS pouring out through it. Dozens of them. And they're coming straight for the three of them. It's a Catrarmy. Smiling Catra. Angry Catra. Hateful Catra. All of them are Sword Catras. And they intend to do them harm. Nightmares, after all, are very good at finding a little chink in the armor, a vulnerability to exploit ... ...such as someone who doesn't like themselves very much. All of those Catras are a little more muscled, a little prettier, a little sleeker. A little faster. A little *more* perfect. Uncannily so. Just enough to suggest to Catra that she's the worst one of them all. A way in for a nightmare. In the meantime, the crowd falls silent before the arrival of true and proper royalty, like the return of the Lionheart to the Nightmare's greedy prince John, except no one's a lion or a fox, or played by Sean Connery. The Lord pauses, eyes wide. He can sense that this is True, and a level of Truth that assaults the nightmare's narrative. The ground seems to shake, to shift, but then the cosplayer of Grim Wormtongue whispers something in his ear and the lordling sits up. "That's right! You're like ... OLD royalty, aren't you! Well, that's just now how things work anymore. I'm the wave of the future, the return to a NEW tradition," that's not how tradition works, man, "I'm the wave of the future! I catch the trends early. That's why they call me ..." He rises uip, throwing his arms wide. "BITCOIN BULL! BITKNIGHTS! ATTACK!" The armored statues start stepping off the walls -- because of course they do. But they're hesitating. "... I'll double your bitcoin rations! ATTACK!" That does it.
Emi Hoshino	And then his crown is ... knocked off. "... my crown?!" he yelps as it hits the ground in front of him. Bitcoin Bull is horrified. That was his FAVORITE. It makes his knights hesitate a little further. The cosplayer seems to withdrawing into the darkness.
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko stares at the flood of copyCatras, then at the bitknights... and then she narrows her eyes at the retreating 'advisor'. "''That'' one is probably the most dangerous one here," the wolfgirl growls, sizing things up for an opening...     Which Nepherite deftly provides. While Bitcoin Bull is looking ''absolutely'' horrified, Tsukiko takes advantage of his distraction to dart past him in pursuit of the Grim cosplayer. Nothing too outlandish, no pithy one-liners; just the chase and the '''hunt''' and tackling the Evil Advisor who goads the techbro jerk into being even ''more'' of a jerk, so that the others can determine who (or, given the nature of this place, ''what'') this entity is.
Mamoru Chiba	"You are NOT," Endymion whips out a hand and sends a rose toward the crown without looking, because he's pointing his sword at Ex-Lord Techbro, "a remotely adequate civil servant, you don't have anyone's better interests at heart but your own! You are NOT a just steward!" He points rose-throwing hand at the Bitknights, and he jerks it toward the lordling, then sheathes his sword and reaches out to put a hand on Nephrite's shoulder. "Empty knights of empty coin, remember what chivalry ''should'' be and fill yourselves with that!" the Prince calls out. "Turn on the false lord!" He elbows Amy, leans down to whisper to her while still hanging on to Nephrite's shoulder, "Do you really hate all landlords?"
Catra	Catra sprawls on the floor after getting pulled back through the hole by Riventon and Hinoiri, and for a moment it looks like ''she'' is going to throw up. ...But only for a moment, and she doesnt throw up. "What was that," she gasps, rolling off of her back and onto all fours, and reclaiming her sword where it fell during the whole debacle. She stays like that, breathing heavily as... an army of Catras start on their way in. Her eyes go wide, and she springs back to her feet as the first one reaches her and they cross swords, steel ringing argainst steel once again. The second one joins, and the third, and Catra is working overtime to keep three swords at bay. It's enough that she's focused wholly on defense. But then there's a fourth and a fifth and a sixth and a seventh and Catra is getting driven back by her own copies, who are all sleeker and faster and stronger and just... better than her, just that little bit but better nonetheless. "You're an idiot," one of them snarls, "Nobody likes you," another one chimes in. "You're an evil little monster who deserves to be alone." "All you do is hurt people." "You're the best fighter who's ever lost every fight that ever mattered." "All you do is lose." "There's nobody in the entire universe who cares about you." "You hurt everyone and anyone who ever cared about you." "You push everyone away." "YOU DESERVE TO BE ALONE." "Stop it!!" Catra retreats, the fire around her slowly dieing out and her blade returning to its more normal appearace, while the army of Catras summon their own fire; a dark, purplish-blackish flame that shines with their cruel eyes, their voices sounding like hollow echoes of Catra's own. "ADORA HATES YOU AND YOU DESERVE IT BEC--" "STOP STOP STOP IT STOP IT STOP!!" Catra sceams, taking a cut across the shoulder, a jab to the thigh and a slash across her back as she drops to one knee, ears flat and still defiantly doing her best to hold back the tide of blade aimed at her, even while her blood flows. "SHE WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!" Screams another one "AND EVERYONE ELSE WILL HATE YOU TOO WHEN THEY LEARN THE TRUTH!" "Stop!" cries Catra, taking another slash across the chest and almost dropping Powersend. "That's not true! It's not true it's not... It's not..." But she knows it is. It is true.
Nephrite	Nephrite, menacing his sword as it starts to glow with starlight, leans a step forward past Prince Endymion, like a *true* Knight. "Yeah," he growls, adding to the chastising, "Why don't you fuck off back to legoland, you blockchain bastards!" From the tip of the sword, a beam shoots forth-- like a falling star streaking across the night sky-- towards the Bitcoin Bull.
Takashi Agera	It's all very fast - Catra is fast enough on her own, but the versions of her enhanced by her nightmares the dreams are pulling forth from her are even faster, and Riventon is... okay, he might begrudgingly admit he's not exactly 100 percent.     So they are able to weave around, insult Catra, pressure her as Riventon has to pull away after helping her to finally retch a bit in the corner; it's dry heaving since the illness he's suffering isn't physical, but spiritual, energy-ill, but that doesn't mean his body knows another way to react.     So for a moment, while this is going on, it just sucks for him. But as he recovers, he sees Catra get injured. And when he does, he has memories; memories of another Obsidian employee falling in front of him, an orange mermaid, felled by the Black Moon Clan; another case of Obsidian being harassed by someone external to it. And the memory of carrying a fallen orange mermaid back to her Director, and he is pretty sure, her lover. Catra's not his beloved, but the orange feline is still someone he recruited into Obsidian, someone he took responsibility for.     He clenches his left hand, the hand that the Panthalassan Staff was incoporated into. The clear gems on the knuckles glimmer and turn pitch-black. On the other gauntlet, the red gem on his right inner arm - the gem that once belonged to Queen Beryl - gleams a brilliant, bloody red. "Not. One. Of. Mine!".     <<Safety limiters, disengaged.>> reports Riventon's Device in its male, Midchildan English voice.
Takashi Agera	"Not in front of me." Riventon snarls as his eyes glow a bright green. "Never."     <<PROTOTYP-LAUFWERK. AKTIVIEREN>> (Prototype Drive. Activate.) reports his device in the female Belkan voice.     There's a truly ferocious surge of Dark Energy, along with some of the nightmare, before Riventon rips forward like a shadowy blur, left hand a claw of black ice ripping and clawing through the false Catras, while his right hand is ablaze with purple flame that rips through the air and sear into more of the false ones.     Belkan and Midchildan circles continue to erupts underneath Riventon's form as he continues to move through the horde, each one heralding a german-named Dark Energy device blast.     "I'll rip this whole BUILDING down. I'll come right to wherever you are AND ATOMICALLY DISASSMBLE YOU AND PUT THE ATOMS YOU WERE MADE OF THROUGH COLD FUSION. DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE SCREWING WITH?!" Riventon yells, looking not at the Catras but beyond them, sometimes to the ceiling, sometimes to what seems like a wall, but it's like he can see something the others can't. "THIS IS MY PLANET AND THIS IS MY EMPLOYEE AND YOU DON'T GET TO HARM EITHER." In the blur, he's expecting La Licorne to save Hinoiri. Saving people is what the Mahoujin do. Annhilate threats and things who've pissed him off - thats what a Vice-Director does.
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne barely had time to help pull Catra out from the portal before suddenly EVIL CATRA'S! "Do you MIND?!" she asked, before catching some swords on the sleeves of her jacket. Gotta love henshin outfits. "I'm trying to have a moment with my--" And then one of them kicked her in the gut, knocking her back. She stumbled. Damn it, Catra. Could you fight like SLIGHTLY less of a BITCH, please?! No, right. Okay, Fine. Time to put Fuyuko's lessons to work. At least Fuyuko knew how to fight a bitch. As one of the Catra's tried to stab her, she stepped to the right, stepped in and gripped the wrist, twisting it and ramming a knew up while twisting an elbow into THAT Catra's jaw. Okay, one down and-- WHAT THE BUCK DID THEY JUST DO AND SAY TO HER GIRLFRIEND?! OH SHE WAS GOING TO HAVE WORDS! The ones jumping her had a whole new set of problems as righteous FIRE, I mean fury, erupted from her. And as Riventon's purple flames washed over some of the Catra's around Catra... Cure La Licorne's purifying flames washed over *Catra* herself. They didn't burn, though. They were like Sora's. Warm, comforting, like a hug. The gentle, soft, loving hug of a sunkissed day, laying on the patio... As a cat, she likely could understand it. But it was NOT gentle to THOSE Catras. To the others? To them it was a blaze, inferno, rage, anger. Burning. Dangerous. And they'd better move. And Then La Licorne was at her side, one hand around her, looking... pissed. One hand moving to grip her hand, the one holding the hand holding Powersend. "News flash, you uptight, catty BITCH! I *already know* about what Catra has done. I *like her anyway*. Because *people fuck up* all the time. It's not about what they did in the past, it's what they try to do in the future. Her past is *not today*." Her sunglasses were off, and she smiled to Catra. "None of us hate you... and we won't. Because we know who you are. And we'll be with you, helping you be the person you want to be all the way as long as you'll let us." And then those purifying flames of hers would go down her hand, over Catra's hand and over Powersend. "Now, why don't we show those catty bitch's just how much 'nobody' cares about you. I did promise you a combination attack, after all," she said, giving her an affectionate grin.
Amy Faust	Bitcoin Bull starts a medieval throwdown. Amy supposes she should look the part. What does a magical girl knight wear?     A white poofy-shouldered dress, tan over the chest, with (costume) armor plates (dark brown with gold trim) below the shoulders, as vambraces, a too-narrow plate over the belly, and 'skirt' plates on both sides of the hips -- the dress is open in front with almost no skirt for movement, over an underlayer consisting of a dark blue-grey leotard-with-arms, with matching underknee stockings that, with armored kneepads and (short) boots, ''resembles'' longer boots. Also her hair is pinned up in braided side-buns save the locks in front, and she has narrow gray horns and a golden dragon tail and ''cat eyes''? Is that all costume? Is it a dream? Also, perhaps most importantly:     She has a giant sword suitable to one Cloud Strife or any Disgaea warrior, although that cosplay weapon seems like it can't work as she braces in a defensive stance--     And Mamoru elbows her and she looks at him, startled. and then worry that she's ''hurt'' him shows on her face, "Y, you don't count! You don't take rent for profit, and--"     A bitknight cleaves through her sword, hits her in the belly-plate, and knocks her on her butt, tail between her legs. She looks surprised, then glares up at the offending tool of the techbro. "I was ''talking'' to my ''friend!''" She quick-stands, cross legs stand hop-uncross, and the broken sword vanishes as a new one appears in her hands.     And then the 'edge' on one side widens and rocket thrusters appear in the side, as she charges in with a rocket-powered swing! (The edge is blunt, it's basically a novelty-shaped rocket-club)     "Double of nothing is still ''nothing'', you idiots!" She turns and swings at another. "It's ''just a ledger''! That's all the blockchain is! It's a ledger that gets harder and harder to add to the bigger it gets, and now you're burning rainforests just to write some numbers!"     The rocket-sword lets her fly across the room to engage another bitknight, moving a little bit like another smol redhead that hasn't appeared in this timeline."And for what? A ''pyramid scheme!'' You use more and more and more and when you can't add anymore, you can't sell your coins and whoever cashed out last wins! You idiots!"     "And ''you!''" She levels the sword at the false Lord. "Is ''this'' how you got rich? By ''gambling'' and pyramid schemes? By destroying the environment so that computers can crunch more and more complex ways to say how much of a number is ''yours''? And you think that makes you ''better'' than people?"     Amy shakes her head. "No, you're not the wave of the future. Crypto is the ''past'', old man, and the world's already realized it. ''We're'' the future. Helping everyone live better lives, because that's ''way'' cooler than seeing who can steal the most from the world. Bitcoin Bull has no place there... But you'll get what you need to live as yourself, ''just like everyone else.''     The rockets start up again, not enough to move her at first and then there's a sudden, dramatic increase of thrust sending her zooming forward -- replicating, somewhat decently, the effect of an anime swordsman flash-step-charging past someone and stopping on the other side... except instead of cleaving through him, she hit him really hard to knock him way the hell over there!
Emi Hoshino	"Chivalry? Who gives a shit about chivalry?" says Bitcoin Bull with a proud and derisive snort, with the same kind of tone as Bruce Willis declaring 'who gives a shit about glass?' in Diehard and to the same effect in it absolutely ruining his day. He stares as his knights turn against him, his wealth no match a true and proper royal's narrative power in the realm of dreams. Technofeudalism is no match -- not yet -- for old power when it comes to stories. There are rockets. There are blasts. There are wolf girls dangerously close cauisng him to help. "You're supposed to bend the knee! I have the money! Mine!" He grabs the cup in front of him and raises it and jerks it so the coins rocket up above and rain down on everyone. BITCOIN RAIN. Physical manifestation of digital currency rocket down like digital shooting stars to hurt people. "ALL OR NOTHING," he yells. Yes, Amy, you know what game he plays. The knights start getting scattered those they haven't turned on him, but they still have a little fight left in them. Meanwhile, the cute wolf finds herself grabbed by the dark-cloaked-cosplayer, who whirled to nab her, "Look at you, girl," it says, "look at them. You're here, chasing me -- pointless I should add," his voice is a honeyed whisper and pure poison. Magic. Gnawing at Ikiko. "... and they're over there. Look at them! Having *fun*, and expecting you to just carry the load quietly. Are THEY ever team players? No. Always with the grandstanding. Always the teamplayer, never the leader, girl, isn't that right?" The worm is turning, or at least its magically trying to. "I AM BETTER," yells Bitcoin Bull at Amy.
Catra	Catra is barely holding her own clones off and is losing that battle, when Riventon steps in and blasts a number of them with his dark magics; and she watches as he charges forwards, dealing destruction to clone after clone, nightmare after nightmare. Well of course he is, he wants to win the day and they're an impediment to that. Keeping her in the fight is just good tactics, you don't let one of your soldiers die ifi you can avoid it, that only diminishes your own chances of winning. "Leave me alone," she whispers, and is about to give up on bothering to defend against all the assault being so viciously prosecuted against her; and it's in that moment, Hinoiri's purrifying fire dances over her, bringing warmth where she had only felt cold and alone. Maybe she doesn't have to be entirely alone. Maybe Rashmi was right. ''Maybe.'' Catra rises back to her feet. Riventon has given her time. Hinoiri has given her strength. She clenches her fist and her eyes blaze as she adds her own inferno to the purifying fires; she can't create purification on her own, certainly, she just burns stuff, but someone else's fire... well she can add to that. This is the point where you're supposed to say something inspiring, right? Or at least something unbearably corny. That's what the heroes always do, isn't it? But Catra honest to goodness can't think of a word t osay. So, instead, she just steps forwards; and then there are two Catras, and she leaves one of her own illusions behind as she steps forwards and then there are three Catras, the first two frozen mid-step with fire wreathed aound them, as the feline rushes forward and Powersend cuts through the illusory clones as she just suddenly arrives, like she skipped moving into range and just decided that the universe would work her way this time and attacked. She lashes out, swinging the enflamed Powersend through a couple of clones, and then yells as she swings it in a wide arc, unleashing a wave of flame to wash over the remaining army of evil Catras coming for her. Afterwards, she stands there, breathing hard. "Is that all of it?" she asks, quietly. "Is it over?" Will it ever, truely, be over?
Emi Hoshino	A particularly falling beam has smashed Bitboin Bull right through the throne, sending it shattering and leaving him strewn in its rubble. Soon, he's picking himself up and groaning, and looking deeply unhappy. And half... asleep? Awake? It's hard to tell. Thanks to Nephrite, though, the rest of the knights are slowly stopping their fighting.
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko yelps as the cosplayer grabs her, and tries to squirm, but the nature of his voice means that those who are being spoken to have to actually ''listen'' to what he is saying. And yes, the others ''do'' seem to be having fun, while she's the only one chasing after him. Always carrying the load while others grandstand. Always the teamplayer, never the leader...     ...but shouldn't a leader be someone who knows ''which way'' they want to lead their pack ''towards?'' The wolfgirl's head sags. "You are right: I am not a leader," she sighs to the cosplayer... ...and then she glares at him with a savage grin. "And right now, ''I am just '''fine''' with that!" Tsukiko growls defiantly, counter-grabbing his arm as her fanglies grow with a flash of silver, and--     '''''*C*H*O*M*P*!*''''' --bites him ''hard'' on the arm! "Nt ''rdy'' t' b' l'dr," she explains, her enunciation an absolute ''mess''.     (And this is why you're not supposed to talk with your mouth full!)
Mamoru Chiba	"Uhh-- let's get out of here," the prince says, half turning to look back at the throne and the Bitcoin Bull and Nephrite, and then he frowns and flicks his cape back, to loose a spray of roses, petals-first, at the half-asleep lordling. "Elysian Glittering Rose Bomber!" They explode into petals and glitter and the death of enchantment. "Where did the Igor go?" Endymion asks, looking away from the Bull again and starting to edge back toward the door.
Takashi Agera	Riventon pulverizes the last fake Catra that stands in front of him, and turns on Catra and La Licorne, eyes flaring brilliant green like emeralds, Dark Energy practically radiating off of him, and for a second it looks very much like he might turn on them, too.     "It won't be over until you can accept that you have value beyond whatever messed up ideas in your head caused you to listen to those fakes." He snarls. It's still Riventon under there, but with this much power coursing through him, even his uplifting attempt is a little mean.     "Why the hell would I have put you on my team if any of that crap had an iota of truth to it? Your worst enemy is you, you damn cat. If you'd apply yourself and figure out what you actually wanted I have no doubt you'd get it, but instead you're wallowing. I ''hand-picked'' you for my group. I ''forged that blade'' specifically for you. The one who holds you back is you - that's why the enemy you fought in here was you."     "And you need to GET. OVER. IT." he says, each word louder than the last. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I don't know where we are, but I'm about to get us out. And quite possibly. slightly comprimise the structural integrity of the building, but I can fix that."     Another surge of Dark Energy collects in his outstretched hands, becoming a black sphere of crackling energy, which suddenly roars to life like the surface of a greyscale sun. La Licorne has seen this, once before, as equivalence.     A midchildan circle erupts underneath him, glowing a purple-blue, as focusing bands encircle his outstretched right arm, the miniature sun now floating just in front of it.     <<STRAHL DER SCHWARZEN SONNE>> call Axion and Riventon together, as a terrifyingly brutal and overwhelmingly vile-feeling blast of burning darkness roars out of his hands into the wall of whatever subspace place they were in, and ripping and tearing at any structure, any wall, any barrier, any entity it contacts with black-hot flame.
Nephrite	The crown that was knocked loose is picked up by the tip of Nephrite's sword, and in a moment of curiosity and wondering of the dream logic, he takes it. Places it atop his head. Will it do anything? He has no idea. Even so-- "Bitknights," He announces loudly, and waves his sword at the remaining minions, "Find and attack that shifty Igor!"
Amy Faust	"Supposed to? ''Supposed to?'' According to ''what?''" Amy asks, annoyed. "Even without magic, I'd never serve you; though you'd grind me to dust--"     Coins rain down -- Amy can't dodge them all, though at least the rocket sword is good for blocking ''some''.     She steps towards him after that attack. "The truth is? If I could, I ''would'', just like everyone else people like you have bent and broken and beaten to do what you want. I'd give in just to make it stop."     "But I ''can't''. I'm no good at it, and so breaking me gets you ''NOTHING!!!'' You made a world with no place for me in it!"     Her throat, and her grip on her sword, tighten. "And they'll fix it. One day after I'm gone, they'll ''fix'' it," her eyes tear up, "and then people who would've had no place like me can live and be happy! And you, ''you'', people like you get to ''live and be happy too'' instead of making everything about greed! I don't ''want'' you to suffer, I don't ''want'' to rule over you, I just want you to     STOP!     She screams, and launches herself at Bitcoin Bull again, swinging and smashing with the sword, all she wants is im to stop     HURTING!     smash smash smash     PEOPLE!     Somewhere in there were roses, and glitter, and the end of dark magic, and Amy's left standing over what's left of the Bull with tears streaming down her face.
Emi Hoshino	The last of the catras are extinguished. That's good, at least, now Hinoiri and Catra and Riventon are able to do as they please, free of the Many Catras. Meanwhile, in the 'throne room', the bitknights that are still resisting are demolished, and the rest are turned when Nephrite puts the crown on and declares himself the new Lord, it would appear. Some people are loyal to coin, some to ideals, and others, it seems, to the symbol. As Ikiko mauls the nightmare (nom nom), it vainly seems to realize that it can't quite turn her and its magical enticements have not had the desired effect. She's just too darn innocent. And violent. The nightmare screams in frustration and ... pain, perhaps, or something akin to it. It yanks itself back through the veil to the dreamscape. Everything is suddenly quite back to normal here. In fact, all of them are ... in an apartment room with copious damage done to the interior. Outside in the hallway, an elevator door opens. DING. Meanwhile, in the Dreamscape...The Nightmare turns, rushing through the a twisting hallway, a liminal space between dreams, its mass of energy shaplelssly flooding through it before snaking around a corner to find itself ... caught. Swiftly, Emi Hoshino dashes around it, pulling her trap tight, webbing as thin as piano wire. "Got you. No more hurting people. Especially not my friends." "Your /friends/? It won't be long before they flinch when they hear your name." It's realized it's defeated, but it's going to offer some last words to cut the Guardian as deeply as it can. "The web isn't for me, Guardian! You're the one who's caught!" It's laughter ends abruptly as Emi tightens her grasp. "Shut up."
Hinoiri Kirara	Cure La Licorne was panting as well, standing behind Catra, a small grin on her lips, nodding along. Well, that went well, all things considered. She wasn't sure that'd entirely work. But. Well. Magic was BS. It just did what it wanted. And in that moment? That meant magic fire sword. And it worked, woo! And lucky for her, it didn't end up destroying Riventon, so that was kind of nice, too. Of course, Riventon started waxing on like he was a drama student at a shakespearian buffet practicing for regionals, making her roll her eyes. She reached out and gripped his hand. "What he means to say, when he's not coursing with dark energy and being a jerk, is that those voices in your head aren't true. You're pretty awesome and we wouldn't like you so much if it wasn't true. You just need to try believing us and stop being so scared we're going to suddenly 'figure out' that we've, somehow, been wrong all along and find out that, oh no, you're super lame or something," she said with a teasing tone. She focused, entirely, on Catra. Entirely. ONLY. ON. CATRA. EVERY. BIT. OF. CATRA. Nothing. But Catra. Nothing but her. Just her eyes. When she said that. NOT. The incant that Riventon said. And her hand was squeezing hers VERY hard. And her fire had gotten a LITTLE more intense for a moment. And she was NOT remembering the time she got thrown almost THREW a bus and almost died or anything. NOT AT ALL. "... Also, after this... I know we were just gonna do a like, movie. But how about sushi? Cause frankly? Tonight definitely feels like a 'sushi' night." Well. Sushi for Catra. She usually for the more 'meatless' options there. But, you know. Treats. Cause oh my gosh. This. Sucked. Meh, at least it'd probably only be a one time thing, what were the chances her dates would ever get messed up like this again?
Catra	Catra weathers the onslaught of words from Riventon stoicly -- well as stoicly as you can with your ears flat against your head, anyway. But he's right. Sort of. About like... a third of it. Maybe almost half. But that defintely counts for something. He is right about at least some of it and there is absolutely no way Catra is going to admit that but she's not going to argue with it either. The same as she's not going to argue with Hinoiri, either. Even if she's only partly right. Well maybe she's a bit more than partly right. But not entirely right! Nobody's ever entirely right. Or at least if they are Catra will never admit it. Even if she probably should admit it. And then there's that offer. "Yeah," she mumbles, and scratches the back of her head, and looking off t othe side. "Yeah, uhm. Yes. Sushi would be great right now."
Ikiko Hisakata	Tsukiko doesn't stop chewing until the Nightmare has finished flowing back through the veil of the dreamscape, then spits off to the side. "Blegh," the wolfgirl grimaces. "Greasy ''and'' cloying? I think I'm gonna need to gargle rainwater once we're back outside and in the real world." And besides, a bit of mundane weather should definitely help wash away the general ick from the corners of her mind.
Nephrite	Boots crunching the shattered glass of a broken coffee table, Nephrite surveys the damages-- with a fairly good eyes for expenses-- and slowly moves to sheathe his sword. As if this will privately signal that he's washing his hands of any responsibility. Catra is not the only one in the 'Samurai-vibe' club, it seems. He clears his throat. He ineffectually rights an upturned (crooked) floorlamp. His tongue clicks, and sapphire eyes squint as he gestures to the vaguely towards a window, indicating the relative normalcy of the rain beyond. "I'll be getting back in my Ferrari, now." He teleports away.
Usagi Tsukino	Everyone was sent back into the real world - into an apartment building that now has a great deal of interior damage, on a stormy night. The chaos of the Dreamscape, the horrific nightmare of capitalism and bitcoin - there's no evidence of that in the real world. But into the mess, conveniently once most have departed, appears New Moon, duskporting in with a look of worry and extreme queasiness on her face. "Mamoru, when we let you loose to play with bad dreams, it wasn't so you could get ''unhappy''," she scolds - but her voice is gentler than it has been thus far, and as she crosses the room, she hops up into the air ''and stays there'', patting his head. The joy of flight is something Dark Generals apparently get to take advantage of for free. "Did you get to learn any good gossip for our Lady, anything that will make this a good story?"
Mamoru Chiba	Endymion whirls around, face startled and then relieved, and prince's armor and cape melting into Mamoru with pink-tip frosting in his hair, wearing a dark yukata with grey and white cats and 'nyan' and 'neko' written all over it in gold. He reaches up to hug at New Moon's, like, knee or something. Waist maybe. Depends on how high she's sitting to pat his head. "It was just fire problems. La Licorne and Catra were here at the same time. They're ''dating'' by the way." He looks around her toward the door, then at the remaining people. "We can get out. You better quick. I'll text you later, Red."
Usagi Tsukino	"Fire problems," New Moon huffs. "Wicked Lady should make fire illegal. As a species, we've evolved past fire! There's no need for it anymore." Once he hugs up against her waist - it is her waist, she hadn't felt a need to quite ''tower'' over him, she dips down, swift and casual, and scoops him up into a princess carry. "I'm taking you back now. I wish I could say they should know better by now, but if there's one thing I know about our friends it's that they don't learn fast." This is dismissive of their mutual acquaintances, but at the same time - a reveal that they ''are'' mutual acquaintances, though there's only one person left to hear, and New Moon doubts it will be observed. "Did you say Hinoiri and Catra are dating now? ''Really?'' I wonder if that means Adora's -" They teleport out before the sentence is finished.
Amy Faust	Amy got a little mono-focused there.     The nightmare goes away, and she's left standing in a ruined apartment, still in her 'knight'(?) get-up.     Everyone's leaving. It sounds like a big thing happened with Catra and Hinoiri? And did Tsukiko ''bite'' a nightmare?     Suddenly another voice is there, and she whirls, tear-streaked face looking up in alarm at New Moon. The oversized rocket sword is in one hand with its tip against the ground, though, she doesn't look ready to fight.     Of course, New Moon isn't here to fight ''her'', she's here for ''Mamoru'', her best friend's father-slash-favorite-toy. Seeing them interact like that...     When Amy daydreams of security, sometimes it looks not so far from that. There's ''got'' to be a cost, a downside, in return for a wish, after all.     For Mamoru it's gotta be hella awkward, though. And it's awkwardness she can't save him from.     "See you l--" She wipes her face on her sleeve, such as it is, and tries to compose herself and steady her voice after earlier. "See you later." She assumes the texting is an update about this whole Wicked Lady + Missing Usagi + Mamoru having to do this to be with his daughter situation, good news towards a purifying resolution, perhaps... but right now she just feels worn-out and wants to go home and can't really feel excited for that.     As she walks towards the convenient hole Riventon left in the side of the building, she dismisses the sword and replaces the knight outfit with her usual one, and leaps out across the street.