Bay 12 Games Forum

((Yuri confirmed for god.

For one second.

He made Jerry compliment something. Jerry.

Truly, Yuri is the finest waifu.))
Kina, for her part, is.....not really shocked. Perhaps she's used to people claiming they could do better than her boss.

And pretty confident they'd be hard-pressed.

---

"My......acquaintance."

The meal for his information, is delicious. Pretty high quality, for a place like this.

((Kina is talking to Alan.))

She waits patiently for everyone to make their choices.

((Clarification of all the canon characters I just used because why the fuck not and also woo crossover ideas:
Group 1: Ruby, Kamen Rider Kuuga, Pyrrha
Group 2: Lucina, Saber, Robin, Kamen Rider Blade
Group 3: Mami, Lee Sin, Kayle, Madoka))
Mio merely nods.
"....I can't back down, either. To retreat now would be cowardice. I will stay."

The woman takes a moment to cough. And another cough. With every hacking deep cough, she seems to hack up some sort of golden ichor.

"I.....am but an avatar of existence. I'm essentially what you may refer to as the face of the multiverse.

You have done well, children of the world, to slay such a powerful Trespasser. That one.....had destroyed many worlds before attempting to feed upon this one. To stop it was....no small feat, and yet that is what you did.

You are all now part of a war that rages throughout all of existence. You have stopped but one soldier, in an infinite war spanning endless worlds. Throughout existence, many like yourselves march across to stop the threat that endangers us."
She extends her hand to form a pool of light in front of her, allowing the party to see the extent of the conflict.

A girl in red impales her scythe into a vast, tentacled creature raging upon a stormy sea off a rocky cliff, wrenching it out to allow a person in blue armour with a golden-horned helmet to impale it with a golden lance. The armoured warrior wrenches his weapon out and changes to a warrior in red in a blink of an eye, kicking aside another tentacle. Behind them, a girl in bronze fires upon the creature's eyes, using her shield to protect herself from debris flying from above. With a flick of her hand, her rifle becomes a spear, as she leaps upwards to join her allies in the assault, her crimson hair blowing in the wind behind her.

A masked warrior in blue with a sword that Eirika recognises fights back to back with a girl in blue and white armour with an invisible sword, throwing back a horde of black, tar-like slimes upon a burned, desolate plain. A white-haired man with a red book runs towards them, blasting orbs of flame into the horde in an attempt to lighten the weight upon them. Behind him rides another masked warrior on a motorcycle, his armour silver rather than blue, with a single horn and red eyes upon his helmet, lifting his bike upwards to drive directly onto the teeming mass.

A girl in white and gold blasts aside a horde of batlike creatures with equally numerous muskets, swatting one away with an unloaded one and jumping back to allow her ally, a man clad in only shoes and long pants with a blindfold, to unleash a kick into the largest creature, sending it into the weapon of a flying warrior in golden armour with a large sword, who sears the creature alive before casting off the husk onto the city road below. A girl dressed in pink sends a volley of arrows into the bat-creatures, but it seems this group cannot hold out much longer.

The pool of light disappears.
"This conflict reaches us all, whether we want it or not.

I have attempted to summon the best of the warriors I could find throughout this existence, in an attempt to preserve all that is. However.....with the Trespassers eating away at my being....my power wanes, and some can manipulate the process of selection, should they possess enough power.

That is, I fear, the only explanation I have for some of you being here.

Yet, regardless of any tampering, you have slain a Trespasser. Many, even. All the same......it is not my right to force you to stay."
Another pool of light appears, this time large enough for anyone to walk through.
"That portal will take you back home. If you wish for your participation in this war, the war that has engulfed all worlds, to end, and to return to a brief bliss before your world is thrown into turmoil, there is your way out. That is all I can offer by way of apology for the manipulation of your selection.

However.....should you choose to stay.....you accept the risk and the burden. This war will take much from us all, and even if you were never meant to be chosen, you accept the burden regardless and so must bear as those who were meant to be.

I will leave it to you, to choose. Will you leave, return home, and live in peace until the Trespassers arrive, hoping that the rest of existence will stop them in their tracks, or will you stay, knowing the risk, and fight on, keeping all that exists alive?"

They all have signal. Huh. The provider's not familiar, however.

---

So Alan's does. Lieselotte, being in the kitchen, doesn't notice.

The other waitress who tripped pulls herself up and runs into the kitchen, embarrassed.

Meanwhile, Mio....

She'd been through a lot in this life.

She lost her parents, at a time when she was left to raise her sister and baby brother alone, having to grow up faster than most; her riches helped, but not by much. She lost her sister, fighting the Vertex, and she had to explain to her brother why Sachi would no longer be coming home or spending time with him or her, blinking back tears and holding back the choking gasps in her voice. She had spent many days fighting eldritch abominations, the likes of which any other person would and logically should shy away from. She had the world's weight upon her shoulder every time she fought, the last remainder of humanity's hopes and dreams resting on her and her friends' backs. When she was pushed to fight the Trespassers, now she had the weight of existence itself on her back.

Each time, she would rise to the challenge.

Despair would not confine her, fear would not break her, terror would not cow her. Determination burned in her heart through it all.

It was perhaps the one thing that kept her through all this; through her parents' loss, through the training to become a Hero, through all the battles she fought as her friends, inherently gifted with the potential of Heroes, fell back and she refused to give in to hopelessness and defeat.

But this.....this was different.

Mio shrank back from the soul-crushing influence. Her determination had failed her.
"....n-no....."
She shrank back. She tried to muster the determination to throw up a cool-headed facade like she always had, to subsume her emotion and to use her reason to fight. Overwhelming fear, however, seemed to encompass every fiber of her being, eating at her very essence, biting bitterly like a cold winter wind. For a moment....

For a moment, Mio nearly gives in.

Nearly.

But, with the same dogged resolution that allows a cornered rat to stand up to its predators, knowing full well that they will lose, the Hero stands back up.

Though clearly shivering, though clearly afraid for her life......the Hero stands against that which wishes to destroy all that she holds dear.
"I.....won't surrender. No."
She clenches her gauntleted fists. Despite herself, a fire seems to kindle itself in her eyes.
"I.....will not SUBMIT!"
With her roar, the influence begins to draw back, her will forcing it back from her. Her aura, her soul seems to blossom in this moment, a violet flower blossoming from her very presence within the darkness.

---

With the resistance of its victims, with the power of resistance within all who it attempted to subsume....

The Trespasser barely has a moment to retaliate before their combined wills shatter it. The ever-changing creature in front of them simply splinters, fractures and cracks into nothingness, disappearing into the black void with an agonised shriek.

You barely have a moment to savour your victory before a light fills your entire line of sight.

The Trespasser has been truly slain and utterly destroyed.

---

Unknown
Unknown Phase
You find yourselves....floating, but not in a void.

Around you float the stars; countless, numberless and nameless, sparkling in the darkness of space, swirling around you as you float-
"Ah. Hello".

A sickly-looking robed woman appears to them, her skin pallid with illness and her posture bent with the effort of standing to the extent of using a cane. Her clothes seem to reflect the stars and the void they float in, seeming to mesh perfectly with the background.