"I've done it once already - albeit accidentallly." says Alexis. "I'm not sure it'lll work for anyone else, because it uses my Shift. What I do is, I create a Dopppelganger, and I use the Ether through the Dopppelganger. The crystal strikes back against the Dopppelganger instead of me. This dispels the Dopppelganger, without afffecting me. I'd have to recreate the Dopppelganger every time, so it's kind of slow. The only reason I know it works, is because it worked once already."

He continues to push forward, as fast as Serpico's slowdown will allow.

"There are lines," he adds, "which should not be crosssed. Lines that I willl not cross. One does not killl a hundred innocents to save one person. And one does not killl one innocent to save a hundred people. The ends do not justify the means; the means must justify themselves."

"I don't hate him. But I willl not work with him."

"Once is happenstance." Chandi says, her voice stolid. "Once, my eye opened, and we beat Athena. Once, my eye opened, and it stopped a fire. Once, my eye opened, and I nearly killed all seven of us. Once means nothing. You are using a single instance to decide your entire course of action, action that could get you killed, or worse." Chandi's fist squeezes tight, the rope in her hand feeling heavy in her grasp. "Alexis, please, this is my last peaceful request. Work with us, and work with him. You say the end doesn't justify the means, but how can you justify flying blindly at a foe you know nothing about?" She pauses for a moment. "What if you're being tricked like Tornal?"

"Strong Tornal was fooled." says Alexis, "by a faked voice. He rushed off in anger and jealousy."

Alexis is silent for almost a minute, during which time he moves almost four centimetres forward in slow motion.

"It is posssible," he concedes eventually, "that some complicated mix of illlusion is being used to trick me. Whether that is the case or not, I must stilll folllow my conscience. I must do, always, what is right, to the best of my ability. And that is why. I. Willl. Not. Work. With. Him."

He spreads his Arbiter wings, and comes to a very slow halt.

"If there is some other way you can see to deal with this Crystal, I'll give it a try. But I will not work with him."

"And young Alexis was fooled by his own shadow, and rushed off in anger and self-righteousness." Chandi bites her lip, and sighs. "I'm sorry, but I can think of nothing else. Not with what little information we have." Chandi looks to Shin, a strange mix of anger and exhausting flickering in her eyes. "Please do not kill him." She says simply, before wrapping up her Shift and approaching the cave.

Ashley snickers at the nickname "switch-witch", and bursts in to laughter as Alexis and Chandi argue. "AHAHAHHAHAHA! Stubborn little batbrain, you really need to loosen up. You remind me of a certain detective. 'Do what's right'? What utter nonsense!!!" She does a little spin in the air and continues. "You're just being a selfish little hypocrite and disguising your lack of understanding in a sense of smug moral superiority. You don't want to hear what Shin has to say? Fine, get the hell out of here. See how far your idea of 'doing what's right' gets you. Meanwhile, we have a world to save, by whatever means necessary."

The fact that she's 'blighted' hasn't really seemed to bother her much. She turns to Shin and says, "Speak up, then. Where do we go from here."

Alexis turns, and begins to head towards the crystal again, as fast as Serpico's rune will allow. He glances back over his shoulder - Chandi heads for the cave, Ashley turns to Shin - and sighs. He reaches to his back with his tail, grabs something there - tapping into his Dark Rune as he does so - and throws it at Lumina.

Then he turns away, and keeps moving towards the crystal.

Dark Rune: Aura of Safety: Recenter Aura of Safety on Lumina

As Alexis fires his darkness at Shin, some sort of runic counter-spell fires from his Sunglasses and keeps his vision entirely clear. "Really? Are we really doing this?"

He waits as Alexis' team tries to keep him from taking off, just watching the encounter with a look of mild annoyance on his face. He looks at Chandi, "I really don't give a rats ass what your names are. As for my wounds..." he pulls apart the glowing bandages for a moment, revealing the same blight marks on Awakener up to his thighs, much thicker, "There's no healing this." He glances over his Sunglasses at Chandi, "I won't kill him, because I can't. If I do, he turns into one of them."

He grins at Ashley, "Now you? I like. I'd be all for letting that little flapping idiot go if he wouldn't get himself turned and bring the entire damned planet down on our heads." As Alexis begins to fly off again he sighs, "How do some of you get past school and still be this stupid? I don't have the time or the energy for this, excuse me..." A screen just like the one Shin summoned before appears behind Alexis - the very next second Shin fires; the bolt tears through Alexis' left wing, bounces off the screen which turns in perfect precision with the shot and blasts through Alexis' right wing. As he begins to fall Shin walks towards him and puts his gun back at his hip, "I will not have a little blind idiot bring down the entire horde on us; you all have a problem with this, take it up with me after we get out of here." He snaps his fingers and a glowing green rune appears at the tip, unraveling into a long green bandage that quickly wraps around the slow-motion falling Alexis, clamping his tail to his spine, his wings to his sides, and wrapping his mouth shut. A single long strand of bandage hangs down that Shin walks over and tugs hard, pulling Alexis from the field and slamming him into the ground.

Shin kneels over Alexis, "You don't like me? Fine. I don't like you. We're not required to like each other. You wanna fly off and get yourself killed? Do so after I've briefed you on what I know - otherwise you're not only dooming yourself to become one of these mindless bastards, but you'd probably end up getting us ALL killed and making us ALL into Hive-Minded Gods. The three Gods that own this world have already fallen and are extremely powerful - I'm not letting you into their ranks." He lifts Alexis up as if the bat is weightless and leads the team to his cave, waving his hand to split the waterfall along one of his screens to let them all in.

Once inside, he throws Alexis hard against the back wall. "Sit there, keep quiet, and listen." Then he smiles, "Be happy little bat! I just saved your bloody life." Alexis cannot move and cannot break the binding. As the others enter, Shin speaks with his back to them, "You let him loose before we're done, you join him." There's the sound of screaming outside as Shin feeds his Ether into the illusion around the cave, making it seem, sound, and smell like an ordinary waterfall. He slumps down against the back wall, sweating. "I won't apologize for shooting that idiot." He glances at Alexis, "A few seconds more and that horde would have been back, gunshot or no. I will let him up after I have my say."

He slides his Sunglasses off and places them in his front shirt pocket, "Know this. I am blighted, tired, and running out of time. If you all want a piece, go right ahead. I'll cut the bloody Leyline of this damned world faster than any of you can react and be done with it. The only reason I haven't done so yet is because there's a damned barrier around the planet that won't let me out, and it's hanging too low to escape the pull of the collapse. Cutting the Leyline is a last ditch effort here... I'd rather risk getting caught in a collapse than becoming one of THEM." He pulls out a gun and leans his forehead against it, cooling himself. "Now we got ourselves two choices here kiddies. You listen to me and decide if you're gonna work with me or not. Or you decide I'm too much of a bastard for you and attack me and we really have some fireworks." He glares at the group, "You all gonna play nice, or are we doing this the rough and fast way?"

He waits to see what everyone decides to do. "By the way." He grins, "If you all want to duke it out, heed some advice. Don't use all of your Ether... the moment you empty out this damned Blight takes a huge part of your soul. Even if you aren't showing yet - you've all been infected. You have been since you set foot on the ground."

((OOC - CCC, all you can do is speak using the Sonic Rune. He's sapped most of your Ether, so unless he lets you up or someone frees you, you're stuck.))

The shot tears through Alexis' natural wings, leaving holes in them. As he drops, he unfurls his spare Arbiter wings instead - but they get tangled up in Shin's ribbon.

Alexis is a creature who lives in the air; and, like many creatures that live in the air, Alexis has certain natural adaptations. He's light, for example; surprisingly light. This is partially because he has hollow bones. But while this makes him lighter, it also has its downsides; being slammed into the ground, and then thrown into a wall, is not a situation that hollow bones are good for.

He closes his eyes. With his mouth covered, he can't echolocate. He takes a deep breath. He draws the Dark to him; restful, healing. And he lets his Shift slide down his tail, and flow like water out of the cave.

He pointedly ignores anything and everything around him.

He has nothing more to say.

Recover EP
Dark Rune: Attempt to heal Self
Shift: Try to sneak out of the cave

Alexis finds his Runes won't respond, nor will his Shift. It's locked down in whatever Shin did to him - the only thing he has active right now is his Sonic Rune to speak with should he wish.

Alexis goes completely limp. He casts his mind back, to before the first time he died - the village he grew up in. They moved, every now and again, to a new set of trees - when the fishing got too sparse, when the tribal leaders wanted a change of scenery, when a stronger tribe moved in and pushed them out.

He tries to ignore the pain in his shoulder, in his wings. He's only partially successful.

Serpico crouches down next to Alexis and whispers something for a moment. Then he stands up, and his grin is shaky for a moment, irritation flashing. "Yeah, that's about what I thought would happen."

He stands, calmly, not making a move to leave, his eyes clearly watching the others more than Shin.

"Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm willing to listen."

Aside from the slight twitch of an ear, Alexis makes no response to Serpico's words.

Ashley takes a moment to land in the cave and starts focusing to recharge her ether. As she does, she continues to cackle to herself. "Quit beating around the bush already. Some of us want to find a way to beat this thing."

"Agreed. Tell us everything you know about the situation. And about the gods who you mentioned turning." Chandi says, focusing on her own ether as she stares at Alexis' prone form. "Ashley, could you strengthen Shin's illusion? I just want to be certain we won't be detected. If you have enough Ether to spare." Chandi rubs the back of her neck and tilts her head to the side, a loud popping noise coming from her spine. She turns her head to the rest of the group, and smiles, ever so slightly. "I wonder if the other Arbiters in training deal with missions like ours."

Harmony is very noticeably not saying a word, but her expression at the very least speaks volumes. To condense, her current expression is You are a complete and utter ***. I don't care if you're injured, tired, blighted, and desperate. You just shot a little girl in front of me when you could have just as easily asked one of us to put her to sleep, or prevent her from sensing anything for a while. I don't doubt that a lot of those other corpses on the ground were caused by you as well. You also just shot one of my teammates - admittedly what he was doing was stupid, but we were convincing him quite nicely to at least stop and listen. However, you know things that I don't, and I can use that, and I can use you. So I'm willing to hear what you have to say, for now. Just don't expect me to like you, or to help you if you get into trouble. There will be a reckoning later. Years later. Centuries later. One day, you will be in a position of weakness, and will come to me for help. Begging for my help. I'll ask you if you remember this planet, this day. If you remember that little girl. When the confusion crosses your face as you rummage through your little brain for that memory, then finally look at me with a dawning realization... I'll already by gone. And you'll be left to fend for yourself.

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How do women DO that?

/Practice. Why do you think we spend so much time in front of a mirror?/

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