[Intermission, Part 2] Gorbachev Raving

It was high noon in the real world, and so the barrier emulated the sunshine that now illuminated the rubble on which Gorbachev stood. The hole she blasted was as wide enough to collapse the roof in either classroom where it wasn't launched to siege the far-end of the building, and so she was flanked by the ruins of the southern half of the Academy and a hallway that barely maintained its shape. Before her, to the east, the top of the building had come to rest as a slope, engulfing her laboratory of choice for lunch. That offending Eye of hers, no longer on her forehead, blinked away from her belly and re-opened on the back of her left shoulder, peering all about with its menacing red iris. It blinked again, reappearing somewhere new on her body each time, surveying all the damage she didn't want to see. Her latex suit, now the only bit of clothing still sticking to her, was streaked with glowing red lines and a number of symbols that would indicate, to her drones if they still existed, her present level of stress. Tricia clenched her teeth as she fought the new waves of emotions, a coil of snakes that could kill what she considered her true self at any time. She looked down at her fists, and unclenched them... and watched as more Eyes began to open on her palms, a single large one on each, tiny ones on her fingers, thumb-sized irises crawling up her arms. Their awareness washed over her, threatened to overwhelm her ability to process reality, reminded her of those damnable smugglers, and how dare they attack a Gorbachev, and how her miserable life could never be her own because of people like-

She screwed her eyes shut. "No... No." She needed control. She needed the limiters.

LIMITER MANUAL OVERRIDE ACCESSED. LIMITERS EPSILON THROUGH NU RE-ENGAGED.

She dared another look... and only the single Eye peered back on her wrist before vanishing to her back. She exhaled, and the Eye only stopped its journey on her left thigh when it found one of the newer enemies. The pink-haired girl rose from the ashes as she shoved a bit of ceiling tile frame and ventilation off of her body. With a cough, the punk looked about and past Tricia, seeking her real enemies. "State your purpose," Tricia managed with only a slight tremble. The tanktop-wearing man, another unknown, made his appearance from under a massive slab of roof with a groaning effort.

She smirked at Tricia from her over shoulder, but kept her eyes on the collapsed laboratory. "For real'zies? You're welcome, by the way. We had them dead to rights even without... whatever just happened."

"Rave, you're kicking a pretty big dog right now," the man muttered. He gave his tank top, ripped up as it was, a few pats to earn a cloud of dust for his trouble.

"Thanks for the protip, Baldy." Rave turned back to Tricia, looking her up and down as she spoke. "Listen, we're here on our own business, and that business ain't to help those losers that I think you just buried. That enough for you?"

Baldy nearly spoke up at that when another explosion made the three of them get down. The section of roof just before the opening the swordsman made was launched into the sky, arcing over their heads and then smashing into the western perimeter of the barrier. The Gorbachev was the first to stand and regard the one responsible: that same, gently-smiling Yarrick, his hands still at his side, his swords sheathed. Rave looked up fast enough to spot the pale blood mage ever so briefly touched by the light of the sun as a bit more of his cave came down, only to hiss and skulk back into the shadows the cavern. His face briefly revealed its true nature: a monstrous visage of fear and rage, an elongated mouth under eyes vanishing into sunken, black sockets, and a nose that briefly shrunk into the face. In the darkness, his alluring features returned, though he seemed no less bitter. "Yarrick, you wretch! What if it all came down?!"

"Then you'd be in a nice, dark pile of rubble."

"Jesus..." A flickering light emanated from under the diagonally collapsed ceiling to Yarrick's right as the third appeared, her flickering right arm brushing through (or mixing with, truly) the flames on her head. "Why the Hell did you even do th-?" She froze as she saw Tricia standing upright... and when the eye appeared on the target's left breast, staring at her. "That... that wasn't her, right?"

"This does not need to escalate," Tricia slowly declared. "We can all walk away from this, and survive."

"No chance, Latex," Rave muttered, "not when we've got this bunch cornered."

"Oh?" Yarrick chuckled. "I'm curious about how cornered we are, here in our trap barrier... with a distinct advantage over two ruffians and one ill-trained Gorbachev."

"That's not exactly true," Baldy declared, taking his cellular out to check it.

"Dell, you finally ready to actually give a damn about this job? You can get your cut back."

"An interesting choice of words, Tara," Yarrick whispered. His thumb fell on the roughly-hewn hilt once more, and Desden chuckled from the shadows where he cowered. "But which of the two interlopers should be the first to perish: the one named Baldy, or-"

CHIKIA!

Yarrick blinked at the male enemy... and at the camera phone sound effect that sharply spat out of his phone. "Perfect," the latter declared. "Now, Jimmie!"

Yarrick narrowed his eyes, unsure of his meaning. "Nevermind, I've made my ch... oice..." The swordsman's words trailed off as he narrowed his eyes at Baldy. The man seemed... brighter. In fact, all the scenery around Yarrick seemed saturated in color, and a bit out of focus. He could suddenly hear nothing save his own foot steps... and stopped those when he found the rounded bottom of a narrow bubble of **** that engulfed him, and his sheathes tapped an invisible, physical perimeter. "What?" His voice vibrated inside of it. He moved quickly to check the perimeter of this unseen cage, hands groping at its dimensions. It was barely enough to even surround him... and far too narrow to effectively swing a full sword. He stared out at the chuckling bastard he was about to cut down. The way everything looked outside, the way it was divorced from reality... he knew the sensation too well from their trade. He was in a barrier. "A barrier... inside another barrier?!"

Yarrick's words were silent. Even the image of him was a bit blurred, and Tara looked on with growing concern. "An inner-barrier." Tara raised an eyebrow at Desden, who nearly muttered his words in wonder. Yarrick kneeled inside the bubble, staring hate into his opponent. Even his slow movements seemed intensely fast. "It's... it's an inner-barrier. It takes on the properties of the containing barrier, but stops just short of creating a new reality within since it can't actually do that. No one can... but that's almost worst: time is dilated inside atop the regular dilation we're experiencing, the properties within are even more warped than the initial barrier... and he probably only has that bubble's worth of air."

"... Which means he's a rat caught in a trap," Rave summarized. She raised her hands with a shrug as the Hellbat flared up. "Sure, a trap that'll suffocate him to ****... but you should've thought of that before you pissed off the wrong people."

Yarrick couldn't follow their conversation, nor did he know the Fateweaver ways as intimately as a mage. But he had the basics. Realizing how precious air would be until he was freed, he kept his thoughts to himself. Desden must be able to tell that neither of these two are the caster, and that this 'Jimmie' they called to is the culprit... so since the enemy must be inside our trap to spring this one... Yarrick looked to the blurred image of Desden. He leaned forward, allowing his hand to be as distinct from his body as he could manage it... and slowly pointed down.

For Desden, the swordsman's movements were almost at a normal speed, despite the bubble's effect. "Down...?" Desden's eyes widened, and a grumbling chuckle followed. "Of course."

Baldy's eyes went wide as he realized how quickly the two worked it out, even a reality apart. "Wait-"

Desden suddenly sank into the debris-strewn floor, and vanished into a puddle of blood that then shrunk into nothing. Baldy knew it for what it was: the vampire-like mage had either teleported or truly seeped himself into the next floor, away from the sun... and close enough to Jimmie's secret hiding place to make his heart sink. "Rave-"

"I've got 'im!" she declared as she sprinted towards the staircase.

"You ain't got anything, bitch!" Tara's arm coalesced anew and cradled a bead of fire before she tossed it like a grenade at Rave's feet... only to spot a twinkle in the Eye of the silent Gorbachev. The hellfire grenade, only a bead of light smaller than a fingernail, barely got two feet from Tara before the enemy detonated it, bathing Yarrick's barrier and Tara herself in vicious, all-consuming flames. Her leather straps could barely survive being worn; they could only disintegrate under such a direct ****. Rave steeled her nerves as she kept running, and the remnants of the hallway wall just barely shielded her as the fire made her back sweat and her dyed hair singe at the ends. She jumped down the first flight of stairs, hoping she could get to Jimmie before the bloodsucker had his way.

The flames evaporated a few seconds after burning, leaving melted stone everywhere it touched. Baldy wiped sweat from his brow as he looked on at the unharmed barrier holding the swordsman prisoner... and to the Hellbat, now naked in her curvy, monstrous form. She would be beautiful if not for the hideous fusion of flesh and energy, or for that expression of pride and righteous anger. Her fingers shaped into claws, and her hair became a towering pyre, yet for all her anger and how it alarmed Baldy... she seemed squarely focused on Tricia. "Yeah... yeah, so you Gorbachevs do have some fight in you, huh? Good... GOOD!" Tricia braced herself, her eye returning to her forehead as she tried to guess at the next projectile. Baldy, meanwhile, looked around for any way down to the fight Rave had run off to, finding no alternative staircase not buried in rubble or likely to cross the Hellbat's path. He was a martial artist, and a damn good one... but he wasn't about to get in a fistfight with a living bonfire.

Yarrick Dell kept his fingers wrapped firmly on the ugly hilt of his sword, as if he could draw it in this constricting space. He slowed his breath; calm would buy him the time he needed. If he guessed right, based on how slow everything outside transpired, he actually had more time to escape than they did to thwart him... the only limit therein being the few hours of oxygen. I don't need hours. He just needed to remain calm... and see it. His eyes unfocused, and he meditated on nothing save his prison. Baldy, Rave, Tara, the wreck of the school, the unseen enemy responsible for his jail, the slowly approaching explosion of fire... it all fell to a darkness of his inner-mind, and he saw only the invisible barrier before him.

Outside of it, a stomp of Tara's bare foot on the ground seemed to raise her spirits. Her soot-stained grin seemed mad, and all of Tricia's eyes scanned her surroundings for wherever the next attack would come. She couldn't see anything, any attack spell worming its way to her from the ground or any gaze attack.

BETA LEVEL SUMMONING DETECTED.

But where? "Have you ever been in a fire, Gorbachev? It gets everywhere, you know... travels with speed you wouldn't believe, burns materials you'd never know were in the walls of a nice little school like this one. It eats you alive if you're not ready to eat it... just like... THIS!" Tricia and Baldy both reacted too slowly: small fire sprites, vaguely humanoid with glowing red beads for eyes, erupted from fissures in the laminated floor of the hall, each one no larger than a human fist but still made from Abyssal flame. One fell upon the tank top of the man only to see him fling it to the ground, his bare fist slamming down on the smoking lump of his clothing just before the entire thing burst into flames. The creature was snuffed out... and Baldy did his best to not react to the redness on his fingers as a result.

But Tara's rage had a very specific target, and the other four she summoned all leapt for Tricia. Her eye flickered once in a controlled burst, annihilating only one of the lunging sprites (and not the wall behind it), but the others clenched onto her, crawling over her body with vaguely humanoid shapes. The crackling of their bodies sounded too much like sadistic giggles, and her suit dazzled her HUD with alarms about sustained damage. "I'd love to know what that suit's made out of girl," Tara taunted as her arm began to unfurl into a whip of flames, "but I'm more interested in burning it off!" Tricia opened the Eye onto her head, hoping to blast Tara, only to have one of the fiends leap onto her face. The suit reacted with a careful, translucent layer of itself over her openings, protecting her real eyes from the grabby paws of the creature... but it's burning touch dismissed the Eye before she could fire at Tara.

The fire witch was distracted... and Rave was going to need backup now. The shirtless man ran towards Tricia, intent on passing her by as she struggled to summon an Eye that wouldn't be threatened by the sprites. Tara spotted his ploy, but she didn't care anymore; he proved his capabilities, and only the Gorbachev mattered now. Her arm flicked forward, and the rising bend of its arc snapped across Tricia's breasts, cutting hellfire with enough intensity to temporarily strip her of the protection there, revealing her left nipple to the air and the heat... and firing unprotecting stimulation into Tricia. "Aaaoooh!" Tricia covered her mouth, nearly smothering the sprite that leapt down from her face to try and reach for the bared flesh, only to curse in its odd tongue as the second skin there closed anew. But even that proximity was too much: the odd pleasure was replaced with an unbearable pain that only briefly existed before her suit integrity numbed her anew.

FIRST DEGREE BURNS DETECTED. ADMINISTERING HEALING GELS. DEFENSE MATRIX AT 78%.

The Eye appeared on the back of her hand, and blasted the groping creature, leaving only two to torment her. "Oh? Felt that one, huh?!" Tara had no idea what had transpired, taking the errant moan as a sign of pain, and raised her arm to continue the ****.