Krylo was a bit system shocked for a moment, delaying his response to POS's plan, and rightly so--he had never shed his physical shell before, much less only to have it replaced again moments later. For that matter, he had never actually seen his own soul, much less the writhing black twisted mass of soul sludge that was a gaian.

So, understandably, it took him a moment to refocus his eyes onto Pedro and speak up. "Well, as that I don't get tired or injured, I think I'll be going on ahead."

Then Phoenix's ship landed and the woman stepped out, asking her one question.

Krylo answered by simply pointing at DB. "I think it was him... but I WAS in soul vision at the time, so I can't be sure."

POS stopped his ascent up the ramp and turned around to face the mod and nodded in recognition. He started to turn back around but a thought occured to him. He addressed Krylo.

"I was wondering," Pedro asked, "if I could borrow that energy relay you used for the mass banning a little bit ago. There's something I want to throw together and I thought that I might be able to use it."

He then turned to face Fenris, who was laying on the ground, a bit dazed and still wearing the plushie armor. "Also," he said, "I'd like to make use of the hobo, if no one minds..."

OOC: Well, with a new incarnation, I went off to consult my dice. They seem to like girl Arhras. I'll have to do a tiny bit of time regression to fit this in.

Having been incinerated by an atomic dragon fart in the middle of her rampage, it was fortunate for Arhra that she was capable of self-ressurection. It was unfortunate for the teeming hordes of the Gaians that had already begun to fill in the gap in their innumerable ranks left by Rhiya's... blast, that Arhra's reincarnation was explosive in nature.

A few seconds of incendiary conflaguration later, a new Arhra stood in the middle of a moderate sized blast crater. Somehow, despite having being burned to little more than ash and cinders, she was still clad in Ecurt's special 'armour' - the sailor fuku and the cat ears (plus tail). She had a marked resemblace to her previous incarnation, strong echos in the facial features, but it seemed as though she'd invested more points in her appearance score. She also was shorter. Much shorter.

To say Arhra was angry would be like saying the sun was bright. Being killed in the middle of a murderous rage tended to make one angry after all. Angrier rather. Even if death was practically instanteous and thus painless. Arhra looked around the desolated area, took a step and promptly fell over. Although she looked great, she had all the grace and dexterity of a deckchair.

She slowly rose to her feet, trembling from the effort and also with rage. What was wrong with this new body? Clumsy, pathetically weak and she felt like a strong breeze could take her down. She was Arhra damnit! This wasn't just the normal weakness after reincarnating. All things considered, decided to make the best of a bad situation and kill people. Doctoers practically said she should - repressing rage is apparently bad for your health and that was all the flimsy justification she needed. Despite her new body's physical crappitude (Arhra could also invent words), chaos magic would work no matter what form she had.

She saw movement near a massive forum troll carcass and headed towards it, stepping carefully and wary of any sudden changes in wind direction. There she found Yuri partially pinned beneath the charred troll, badly injured. Although Arhra had no way of knowing it, the girl had followed her and been caught outnumbered by a number of enemies. Rhiya's unconventional attack had then gone off, the large troll's bulk fortunately mostly sheltering Yuri from the worse of the blast but in the process it had fallen on her, crushing her.

There was a brief mental struggle between the desire to find people then kill them and the desire to save Yuri. Arhra won. She tried to drag Yuri out of the position, feeling her heart pounding painfully hard from the effort. She'd been complaining about her previous form's lack of muscle, but this was ridiculous. She seemed to have the approximate power and endurance of wet tissue paper. Arhra moved her aout an inch and then was forced to rest. Yuri's eyes flickered open, filled with bleary pain and focused dimly on Arhra's face, "Arhra-chan?"

With Yuri's extensive injuries and Arhra total physical ineptitude, the outlook was bleak. Arhra tried to devise what to do next when she saw the troll shift slightly, not quite dead yet. Her red eyes brightened as an idea struck her. She reeled from the impact, almost falling over despite the stability of her kneeling position.

Calling up her chaos magic, she placed a hand on the troll and the other on Yuri's body. "Transfer," she whispered, temporally making the troll's regeneration ability migrate into Yuri. It died as the one thing keeping it alive disappeared but Yuri seemed to be beginning to show small signs of improvement immediately. Arhra stood up, almost fell and then righted herself. Lucky - a fall from that height could probably kill her.

Arhra took a few steps and then felt the light breeze lessening. She muttered to herself, "Right... About... NOW!" and changed her stance. The wind shifted and Arhra rode it out. Another breeze successfully avoided. Unfortunately, some newbs and a few flamers were coming her way. They looked like they would prove an even more challenging foe than the breeze.

The foremost of the newbs, who seemed to be trying to suck up to the flamers, saw her and filled with images of raven haired beauty, said, "A gurl! She a smoking hot hottie! LOL! Get it,? smoking. Hot! YOu're on fire! Cos' your flamers! <3 Flamers!" It was pitiful to see his toadying.

"U R TEH GH4Y!" was the flamers reply as they gave him a contemptuous look. Now determined to prove his worth to them and the rest of the newbs pushing him forwards, he waddled towards Arhra.

It was almost depressing. Before dying, Arhra would have taken out this inferior newb with just a sucker punch. Now she was concerned doing so would snap her fragile bones like twigs. To stop accidently killing herself, it looked like she'd have to rely on seduction again.

She shot him a smouldering look, dark hair framing her pale, lovely features. Unfortunately, it didn't give the newb a heart attack as she'd hoped. Arhra didn't have any weapons on her aside from magic, so she'd just have to let him get close and sneak a spell out. Taking his hand, she discovered something very fortunate.

A wave of vitality washed through her. It was more a tiny ripple than a wave by most standards, but with Arhra's possibly negative vitality, it felt like a tidal wave. As the newb's face paled, Arhra figured out what was going on. Seemed she did have at least one useful power in this form. Her smile was downright scary as she siphoned off the newb's life-force and let the withered husk fall to the ground.

Arhra learned new ability: Drain

Feeling slightly strengthened, she looked at the Gaians in front of her. This would still be a tricky battle, but in her eyes they had shifted from dangerous enemies to dangerous food. The greatest kind of food too - stat increasing food. Wiht this kind of power-up, she might actually be able to get her physical abilities to the point it would take at least atomic flatulance to kill her. This lofty goal in mind, she attacked.

A few minutes later, the last of her enemy's corpses dropped in front of her. Arhra had made the handy discovery that she could absorb energy too, rendering the flamers' fiery aura ineffective against her. That could have been very painful otherwise. With a quick glance backwards to see that Yuri seemed to be healing fine, she moved through the fairly depopulated region quickly, eyes on the last remaining Gaian portal.

Arhra had three important reasons for going there. Firstly, it would stop the last point of reinforcement for the Gaian hordes here. Secondly, there were a multitude of Gaians to kill there and thus she could work off her pent up agression. Finally and most importantly of all, it looked tasty.

By cunningly saying, "Durr." a lot, she infiltrated right into the midst of the horrible horde. Unfortunately, whatever force seemed that seemed to hate Arhra had made her respawn looking great but virtually useless. Overcoming the second part was happening, but the first, which she'd looked on as an upside, was now becoming problematic. She managed to solve the problem of unwanted attention through violence, the additional energy making her feel as though any prolopnged physical exertion on her part would now merely almost kill her.

Close to the portal, she simply leapt at it, laughing hysterically as she began to draw off its power. It was a poorly built gate unfortunately for Arhra, the sudden fluctuation in its energy flow making it explode. Dazed, she clambered to her feet, surprised to find herself not dead. She plucked a piece of metal stuck in her arm out with a wince and was surprised to find that the wound begin to close up.

Arhra learned new ability: Ability Theft (aka I Can't Believe It's Not Blue Magic)

It seemed she also possessed the ability to gain some of the qualities of the creatures she killed. Those trolls she'd killed on the way to the portal must have given her some limited powers of regeneration. She was beginning to feel better about this new incarnation.

The only problem now was she had hordes of angry food... enemies charging at her. They hurled poorly aimed projectiles, gibbered profanities and yelled crude, poorly speelt insults. One of their attacks hit home.

"Short!? Who are you calling short?!" Arhra roared. Well, it was more of a raised whisper, Arhra finding it difficult to speak at loud volumes, but the sheer venom in it made up for this. People were going to die for this. Well they were going to die anyway, but now they would, only moreso. She lashed out and grabbed hold of a particularly large troll, focusing on stealing its strength. It's brawn withered while she felt the joy of growing something that, if not examined too closely, passed for muscles.

Knee-deep in the dead (well, her knee-deep, some of those flamers and trolls were huge and that would mean a much higher level of carcasses as compared to the much lower amount needed to reach Arhra's knee), Arhra began to feel overwhelmed. Certainly the foo... enemies were individually no match for her and certainly quite tasty, but there were just too many of them to drain them all. They piled on top of her, crushing her beneath a heap of Gaian forumites. Things looked bad.

Then DB's absurdly over the top magic o' death struck. In the aftermath of the crimson lightning, Arhra pulled herself out of the remains of the corpse pile that had shielded her, finishing off those few Gaians who had also been protected. Using her natural inventiveness, she quickly rigged up a raft made of Gaian corpses and started paddling it across the sea of blood. First she'd pick up Yuri and then find the others.

"It wouldn't really be safe, Pedro. The power relay is part of the mod bracelet... and you saw what it did to me when it lost power... if an unauthorized user attempted to access it... well, let's just say you shouldn't," Krylo responded to Pedro's question.

"Besides, if we get close enough to the Kurosen, it should reactivate... and I should be able to end this rather quickly. I'd rather you not take it apart before then."

OOC: Giant post, part two!

Emerging out of the bloody mists like some crimson spectre, Arhra beached her corpse-ship. On the shoreline, she found Yuri waiting for her. The girl was fully healed and currently happy eating a kebab of what looked like troll flesh that it appeared she'd cooked over the flaming corpse of a particularly hot flamer. Other bone skewers hinted it wasn't her first meal. Regenerating made you hungry after all. Yuri waved.

"Hello Arhra-chan! You look different. But it's a good look for you, except for all the blood you're covered in."

"I died." Arhra replied, choosing to be succinct.

"That's not good." Yuri seemed downcast to hear it.

"I got better. You look like you've recovered." Arhra looked a little more closely at Yuri. She was a little different. Arhra tried to figure it out, looking over the sketch-like girl's well drawn figure. Then it hit her. More curves.

Arhra's somewhat random mind took in the evidence and spat out two possible reasons. Either the tendency of the forum troll to grow when it was fed had transmigrated over to Yuri as well and taken a deviant direction in its effect on the former hentai girl, or she was somehow able to direct the regenerative powers selectively.

Yuri took in Arhra's frank gaze and blushed, "What is it Arhra-chan?"

Arhra's voice had a strange tone to it, "You know."

Yuri seemed deeply concerned about this line, expression brimming with upset, "Arhra-chan, what's wrong? Are you angry with me? You can't be jealous. Yours are -"

"I don't care!!" Arhra cut her off. Seeing Yuri looking like she was about to burst into tears, she abruptly changed the subject, "Anyway, it doesn't matter. Let's get out of here and catch up with the others. I saw a ship putting down nearby."

She walked off, headed for Phoenix's ship. Yuri's face settled back into a sunny smile and she paused to nibble on the last of her troll-kebab before tossing the skewer behind her and then setting off after Arhra. Minutes later, they were at the airhsip, and tried to find out what they'd missed.

POS turned back to Krylo. "Well, I don't actually need the bracelet itself. I just need a good idea of how it's put together in order to reverse-engineer the design into something else that might be useful to us."

He glanced at the PhoenixBot next to him and then back to the mod. "Actually.... is it scannable?"

Asheth decided to use this time to return to kitty Pyros form and take a nap. DB had managed to elude her gaze so far, and Asheth cared little over which team she was in. The final fight with Raiden was inevitable, so why bother how you got there?

And when Pyros did get there, he needed to be in top shape. Pyros might as well take the nap now, and when the time came, Raiden would be fighting against Pyros in his prime....

The creator. What a being. He was one of many, of many different universes and realms. And someone who made mistakes, and was angry with the mistakes of others. Raiden's origins were certainly new to Pyros, as was this strange "Raiden jr."

Pyros had assumed Raiden had been made the same way as himself, but no. A being that could destroy galaxies and universes....sought to create order with Chaos.... It sounded familiar. Pyros was not one to boast an ability to destroy galaxies, because he would never concieve of doing it. But...there was something to it. Did he not do the same thing, use destructive chaos to create order?

Perhaps there was a reason the creator was so antagonistic to Pyros. Perhaps, with Raiden as his first failure, he didn't want another one. So he had to be extra hard on Pyros...

Of course, There was no similarity between Raiden and Pyros. Raiden had started off as transdimensional being with the very fabric of reality in his hands, then was sealed into lesser deity body. Pyros was born into a lesser deity body, but from his experiences came to see so much more. Raiden was something greater, trapped in a small container. Pyros was always so small...

Had his second childhood changed any of that?

"I'll go with the PhoenixCorp group," Mauve volunteered, carefully stepping around a pool of cooling flamer blood. Through some bizarre twist of fate, Mauve had remained oddly bloodstain-free through DB's entire doomsday spell. Perhaps DB's villainy was so great that it counteracted the workings of Fate herself...? Oh well, Mauve certainly wasn't complaining. She enjoyed the break.

She stopped as she neared Pyros' sleeping form. It didn't matter that Pyros was experiencing one of those Inner Monologues That Add to Character Development at the moment; Mauve couldn't hear his thoughts (thankfully) and only saw a sleeping cat. Firekitty Pyros fell asleep a lot on these missions, she thought, remembering Christmastime.

"Maybe we should take him with us," Mauve said, nudging him with the toe of her boot. "Unless one of you Team Ass-Kicking folks needs a cat-flail or a kitty meatshield."

Thankfully, by the time he had found his way back to the others, Asheth had once again turned back to Pyros. While the former caused in the name of love, the latter caused destruction in the name of madness. The second was a lot less scary than the first.

Apparently, they were splitting up into two groups-one to go after Raiden, and the other group to go back to Phoenixcorp. Both teams had their advantages and disadvantages. However, knowing that Pyros would probably yell at him if he tried to escape, he had resigned himself to following him to fight Raiden.

Still, when he actually found Pyros, he was a little bit disappointed to see the kitty with the same expression Pyros always had when he thought nobody was looking. For Pyros to look that way in public...well, something must have hit him particularly hard. "Oi, Pyros. You of all people should know that angst power brings nothing but trouble. Snap out of it!"

Raiden made his way through the series of tunnels into the main hall of the hideout. Though there were many tunnels, he had only gone down this one weaving path. There was no reason for him to go down the other hallways.

The Mashirosen was tucked gently under his arm, the glowing blue light flashing out against the darkness.

"The Kurosen, and now the Mashirosen......"

What had he done to get these artifacts? He wasn't entirely sure. He remembered the basics of the events, but not the finite details. It was as if he was simply watching a movie in front of his eyes, and parts were fast forwarded through against his will. He did know enough. More than enough to hate what he was doing.

He eventually entered the giant hall. Most of the room was shrouded in darkness. The glow from the Mashirosen and Raiden's aura flooded the area he was in. It mattered not. The master loved the darkness. The master rarely left it. It's why Raiden was used.

In a dark corner of the room was a chair with a computer screen. Raiden walked slowly up to the chair, and almost begrudgingly kneeled down. He placed the Mashirosen down upon the ground.

"I have recovered the Mashirosen."

The figure turned in the chair. An emblem on the master's right shoulder had a giant 'G' on it. A strangely shaped mask rested on the master's face. Resting in the master's hand was a small glowing sphere. When the master spoke, it was in a quiet whisper. It almost seemed as if Raiden was talking to himself.

"Yes, the NPFers interfered. They were handled."

A tiny whisper was heard from behind the mask.

"No, I did not eliminate them. I subdued them using the computer systems of the tower."

The master squeezed the sphere. Raiden clutched at his head as an incredibly tense pain ripped through his mind. After a moment of the pain, the master released the squeeze, and the pain went away. Raiden lowered down more into an apologetic bow.

"I'm sorry. I...I couldn't do it. I couldn't eliminate them. I know that after you broke my Seal of Compassion, I shouldn't care for them. And in honesty, I don't. But....I just can't. Something inside me just won't let me hurt them."

The master squeezed the sphere again, but this time held it tighter and longer. Raiden's fingers squeezed into his skull as the pain tore him apart. He was writhing on the ground for five minutes before the master released the hold.

Another nearly silent voice came through the mask. Raiden looked down at the ground with an angry stare.

"No. I won't kill them. Don't make me do it. You can't make me do it!"

Yet again, the sphere was clenched, and the pain tore through Raiden's body. When the pain dispersed, Raiden merely laid there. He knew the truth. He had no say in the matter. If it was simply the pain that made him do what he did, he could get past that. Pain was no stranger to him. But no, it wasn't that. The pain was like a whip on a slave. The slave had to follow the orders anyway; the whip was just there to remind them who was in charge. And Raiden knew that no matter what he said or did, he couldn't escape this figure.

His fingers had dug rivets into the stone ground from the clenching of his fists. He looked up, and the energy in his eyes flared.

"Fine. I'll do what you say. But you don't know these people. They'll figure out some way to stop me. And whether it's death or merely restraint, they'll stop me. Then they'll come after you. And the MOMENT that damn device is out of your hands.....I'll kill you."

A small chuckle came through the mask. The figure turned back to the computer where the Kurosen sat waiting. It was stuck in a small case that kept its energy inside the contained area. Now it had the pieces. All the master had to do now was figure out the puzzle.