"Ahuh." Meta let out as Awai indeed gave her an affirmative reply. As the Light Balance put her down on the ground she stepped away from him and looked around. It appeared a little... dark, for a place a Light Balance would choose to bring her to. The place felt rather strange as well, like the City of White Metal had when she had it partially ripped out of the dimensional folds that tied it to the Nightmare Realm.

The woman who came floating down before her then and greeted her undoubtedly was the Serenade person that Awai had been speaking of. The blue-haired woman appeared to be dressed simply, and Meta figured that there hardly could be any greater difference between the two of them. She clearly noted what the woman called her. "So, you know I'm a Balance like Awai, huh? You knew I was comin'?" She said to Serenade, her chin held a little high.

"I will be fine," Seril assured the Ancient. "I am a dragon, and I have been exposed to my share of danger over the course of two hundred years."

Matt's arm had transformed again. Now it flowed slender, covered in thin red plates that trailed off into green wing-like structures across the forearm. A replica of Pizza's helmet protruded from the shoulder, empty eyes staring at nothing in particular.

"Genesis Arm," Matt said, clenching his fingers. "Sonic Ace."

Dash attacks buffeted R.D. from all sides, hinted by whispers of smoke.

"Agh!"

R.D. could feel his armor stressing to absorb the impacts of the Zonderian's attacks. More than once, Polonaise's charging strikes knocking down onto the ground, forcing him to get back up only to be struck again.

"That's it," he muttered after the fourteenth strike. "I've had enough! Earth...!"

His hand reared back, charged with flows of Earth energy. He sent it hurtling into the ground.

"Gaizer!"

The entire chamber shook as the Earth Gaizer erupted into the ground, creating an intense earthquake around him to trip the Machine King up.

As the ground shook up above, Pizza stared down imperiously at the boy with the arm mimicking his own appearance.

"Hmph."

With a push from his feet, Pizza darted off of the outcropping at Matt, his hands out from his sides. Flexing his fingers, they became deadly sharp claws, which he struck out at Matt furiously.

Caught by surprise, Polonaise was thrown up a great distance, hitting the ground again with a solid impact and a clattering of metal.

Just as Pizza slashed, Matt vanished with a blur, and the Machine King carved empty air.

"Seems like whoever gave you the Omega Essence didn't take the time to brief you on my capabilities," Matt remarked, suddenly leaning agains the wall as he floated in midair. "Here-lemme give you a crash course!" He shot out at astonishing speeds-almost as fast as Pizza himself-and unloaded a high-speed cross punch.

With sound as his guide, R.D. quickly pinpointed Polonaise's location by the sound of his metal body striking the rails and the ground. "Got you!" he shouted as he armed his weapon, firing a wave of plasma at the Zonderian.

Caught by surprise, Pizza was struck across the jaw by Matt's punch, and the velocity of it threw the Machine King into the wall. He exploded out of it at rapid speeds, attacking like a bullet with a flying kick at Matt's side, intending to slam him into the wall.

Tossed toward the wall, Matt rebounded with a high-speed swinging kick.

Polonaise pushed himself up just as R.D. fired, and with a dash, slid past the blast. He continued his run, charging at R.D. head on.

R.D. pushed off to the side, narrowly avoiding Polonaise's tackle. As he did, he came out of the smog, and used his thrusters to back up even further in the tunnel. Now that he had some distance between him, he could better react to the next attack the Machine King threw at him.

Pizza darted in almost as soon as Matt touched the wall, chambering back with his fists. Then, in an instant, he struck, lashing out with a furious flurry of jabs aimed at the boys upper torso. "Oraoraoraoraoraoraora~"

Matt returned Pizza's rapid-fire volley of fists with one of his own. "Two can play at THAT game!"

A huge boulder of rubble carved through the smog, flew at R.D..

Matt and the Zonderian continued to trade blows for a bit before Pizza disengaged, soaring upwards. "You are good! Almost as good as that cyborg!" he said with a hint of amusement. "But you're still no match for me!"

Swinging open his cape once more, Pizza unleashed a veritable hurricane within the shaft, sending baleful winds down at Matt.

"Oh, hell no," R.D. growled, lashing out with Godhand. His blazing fist smashed into the boulder, crushing it with ease and sending shrapnel of rock everywhere. But unfortunately, more dirt and dust from the detonating rock obscured his vision for the moment, forcing him to try and back up.

Lance gritted his teeth; he knew it was coming, and he had good reason to receive it. Perhaps if she just hit him things could be cooled down before it got too out of hand. A moment later the fist came smashing into his face, spinning his body and throwing him toward a chair. His head hit the side while his body attempted to keep going down, pushing it to an angle before he slid down the side a moment later.

Shakily, he grasped for support around him, pulling himself up with one hand and wiping the blood from a new wound that had just been opened, "You happy yet?" He asked simply, "you can hit me again if it makes you feel better, I don't know how much it'll help though."

Bryant looked to the side a bit gazing lazily about. He wondered what the girl looked like, he couldn't remember if Alasea told them or not. With a bit of a frustrated grunt, Bryant turned to Veronica to ask. However he saw the crowd parting in the distance as a small figure shoved her way through. Bryant got a good feeling.

"This way." Bryant said and ran in the direction the Daughter of Dawn was coming from. Without questioning him, Brandon and Veronica followed. In and through the crowd they went.

Edited by Blazen on March 29, 2009 at 19:21:59.

It didn't take long for Tomoko to reach the three Hartnetts. As she stopped in front of them, while the crowds continued on with their daily lives, the girl stopped to pant a bit, catching her breath.

The Hartnetts got a good look at who she was: a fifteen-year-old girl of short stature, with brown-blond hair tied into twin pigtails, small glasses in front of hazel-colored eyes. She was clad in jeans, a t-shirt, and sandals, and had a satchel slung over one shoulder. Quickly, she stood up and looked at them. "You're Bryant, Veronica, and Brandon, right?" she asked.

She already knew it was them, thanks to their auras. She merely asked just so they'd have confirmation that she was the one they were looking for.

===Argentina, South America===

As the resounding sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed in the room, Audrey's actions came to a halt. Her arm was still outstretched from where she had struck Lance, her hair covering her eyes. She was breathing heavily from the exertion, her knuckles throbbing from the small pain caused by her punch, and after a little bit, as Lance spoke to her, she stood up straight, looking down at Lance.

She was not happy. Not in the least. This boy had helped throw the entire town into chaos, then decided to break into her house in the dead of night, and scare the living daylights out of her. And then he had to nerve to go and use his twisted magic on her, preventing her from leaving her own home and calling the authorities.

"Why are you here?" she demanded coldly in her native tongue.

"You must be, Tomoko then." Veronica said stepping towards her and bent down a bit. "Yeah, we're them." Veronica then confirmed. Bryant's eyes looked around a bit, Brandon kept looking at the girl. It was hard for him to believe she had such power, she seemed so...fragile.

Matt became a jagged rush of color, bouncing across the walls of the abandoned station. Even as the hurricane swirled he was moving-maybe too fast for the wind to even catch up. As he tapped the wall with his shoes, he pushed off, entering a lightspeed dash so fast that it cut the wind as he went.

From the dust, Polonaise lurched foward with a powerful dash attack to catch R.D. by surprise.

Caught by surprise, Matt's struck felled the Machine King from the air, who was clutching his gut where he had been struck. Gritting his teeth, Pizza reoriented himself and pressed on with the attack.

Pizza reenacted Matt's movements, and soon both of them were rapid blurs that ricocheted around the old shaft, the metal of their armor and bodies clashing as each one connected in their speedy duel.

R.D.'s eyes widened in surprise as Polonaise attacked, smashing hard into R.D.'s chest and fracturing the armor there. Pieces of it flew haphazardly through the air as he was thrown back down the hall. He dug his feet into the ground and came to a skidding halt, where he snapped his head back up to glare at the Machine King. Taking the Phase Scythe in hand, R.D. began to ran forward to make his counterattack.

===Kattelox Island===

Tomoko nodded. "Okay, let's go somewhere a little less private. I don't want to expose this," she said, patting the satchel with one hand, "in the wrong place."

Right. He was getting sick of this. Time to wrap things up. During his latest pass, Matt swung around, unfolding into an overhead kick to knock Pizza back to the concrete.

As R.D. rushed in, Polonaise blew through his pipe again, releasing another blast of thick, black smoke into R.D.'s face.

Veronica nodded, putting a hand on the satchel. She was carrying it so she hid it slightly.

"Your home gonna work?" Bryant asked stepping up. He looked to the left for a second then back to Tomoko, never can be too careful.

Matt's blow struck true, sending the Machine King careening downwards into the shaft, towards one of the walls. Quickly righting himself, Pizza landed against it and pushed off, soaring right at Matt with a single claw outstretched in a stabbing motion.

As R.D. saw Polonaise make his move, he made his own.

"Raikousen!"

Bringing the Phase Blade forward into a thrust, he pushed off, and light bent around him, making him appear almost invisible except for a distortion around him. He seemed to phase past the Machine King, stabbing his sword forward once he was past, almost ineffectually--except as he did, his form reappeared, and bluish-white light glowed from the weapon for a moment. And then suddenly, potent lightning exploded backwards from the blade, shooting past R.D. towards Polonaise's back.

===Kattelox Island===

Tomoko shook her head. "No, I don't think so," she explained. "My parents don't know yet that I'm a Daughter of Dawn, and they're not gonna be happy with me as it is for giving something of theirs away."

Turning, she surveyed the area. "Hmm. The museum might be out of the question," she thought aloud. "They might think I stole one of their pieces. We should find a café."

Matt flew down to meet Pizza and seized his arm. "Nope!" He flipped the Machine King around and tossed him down the shaft, pursuing closely.

The bolt of lightning crashed into Polonaise, and he let out a horrendous yell of pain. It was finally enough-he fell to the floor with a thud.

R.D. spun his weapon in his hand before bringing it in front of him, and slowly approached Polonaise's form. Didn't hurt to make sure he was out of the fight.

Pizza watched in surprise as Matt closed the distance with Sonic Ace, and grabbed his arm. Before he could do anything, the momentum of his speed combined with the flip sent him hurtling into the wall with crushing force. Even as it broke apart around him, the rocky outcropping below broke away and collapsed, sending Pizza plummeting into the depths.

"I may be a child by your kind's standards, yes," Seril said as she made her way further into the Main Gate with Gatz, "But I have only recently attained adulthood amongst my kind."

When the karubun Reaverbot attacked, Seril quickly deflected some of the energy rounds away using her Dragonblade as she ran. She dove and slid underneath the mechanical creature between its left-side legs as Gatz jumped onto its head, and was out by the time he struck. She ran side by side with Gatz as they escaped the stunned Reaverbot.

Seril took Gatz's advice to stay off of the ground quite literally--within a few moments, her wings had returned, spreading out from her back, as if warped out from her clothing. Using the wings and conjured wind magic, she flew across the rooms, easily avoiding the gurugurus and expertly rushing through the foo-roo that went after the Ancient ahead of her. When she landed, she wrapped her wings around her, folding them up and latching the vestigial fingers at the joints together in front her collar.

Dammit. Meta thought to herself as Serenade addressed her and spoke of what she had seen. Foreseeing, great, now some clairvoyancy is coming into the equation. This might really screw up the future if I'm really in the past. She looked around at the gathered Balances around her, Lament who apparantly was also a Dark Balance, and from Awai's reaction she judged he was a pretty high-ranking one too, like Serenade was a high-ranking Light Balance. This is rather different from what I have learned... She could not help but think.

"Um, you know," She slowly started right after Awai had spoken up to disallow a quick answer of his question. "Won't knowledge of the future kind of screw it up? If things would happen differently from how they went according to the history books in my time, I'd think we'd end up with a wholly different future. I'm not well-versed with the nature of time, so it may be so that for some reason the timestream will correct itself to a degree to still create the same result, but..." She sighed and looked at the Supreme Balances--though she did not know what they were exactly--her eyes sorrowful and filled with frustration and above all confusion. "I think it would be safe not to make any assumptions."

Upon seeing the creature, Seril unfurled her wings and took her Dragonblade in both hands, holding it in front of her. "What is that?" she asked quietly. "It doesn't look like a Reaverbot."

Bryant nodded.

"Gotcha." So they moved, weaving through the crowds and masses of people. The city was large, almost endless to the Hartnetts. After some frustrating pushing and shoving and almost getting into a fight with some hung over drunk, they were able to finally reach somewhere. 'BlueBomber Blues' it was called. Inside was the strong scent of coffee and beatniks. A slow bluesy tune was playing in the background. Brandon had stopped at the door.

"I'll keep watch in case something comes along. You guys can handle it without me." Once inside they'd find a seat, in a booth and get to business.