"Aww, come on! I know what I'm doing!" the teenager pouted, puffing out her cheeks in a childish manner. "Well--still, opening! Let's get in there before they do!"

She flexed her right hand into a sign and started to ascend. "I'll cover you! Get going, Max!"

Max bolted up the steps of the library, sweeping past traditional bronze lion statues perched on the stone railings. Pulling open a glass door, he ran down the foyer. Up ahead, the doors leading into the library proper were closed, with older ladies and one burlier man pushing furniture in front of it to assemble a blockade.

"Get out of here!" the man shouted. "They're coming this way!"

"They've been taken care of!" Max shouted back. He held up the paper he got from the shop. "I think they're looking for what's on this paper! Can someone help me translate?"

Some of the gladiators who escaped their attacks began to rush after Max as he retreated into the library, and Ileyna knew that searching the old-fashioned way took time.

Ileyna dropped down between them and the entrance, drawing out all of her power and making her form shine brilliantly. Standing tall in mid-air, she shouted across the pavillion.

"This is the impenetrable wall of Jericho!" she exclaimed. She swept her arm out in a dramatic motion. "And the first one of you who mentions a trumpet is the first to get pummeled!"

(Reduced Undead Gladiator Unit 14 [roll: 5 - Success] )

Defying Ileyna's declaration, or maybe failing to recognize it, the remaining warriors hefted their spears and threw them towards the girl.

(Ileyna - ? <14> [Roll: - 12, Success]
Low roll wins)

Ileyna yelped at the sudden attack, crossing her arms over her face. Though she couldn't see, she felt as something familiar and comforting materialized before her--a spectral entity of a brute, all white angles and plated in armor of orange and black.

Like Ileyna, the specter crossed its arms over before its body in a defensive move. The spears impacted against its body, biting into the thick orange plate on its left arm. The strike was powerful, and both it and Ileyna found themselves skidding backwards, until the girl impacted roughly with the library's entryway.

She groaned and shoved herself forward off of it, rubbing at her tailbone where the door handle had jabbed her. "Now why'd you go and do that?" she demanded, as if expecting an answer from the zombie-looking soldiers. "Now I have to pummel you."

She lifted up her right arm again, and Ileyna opened fire with her lance of light.

(Ileyna - Omega Ray <15> [Roll: 10, Success])

(Undead Gladiator Unit 14 [roll: 11 - Success]
Low roll wins)

The blast exploded within the enemy ranks, scattering them to the ground, even tearing a few of them apart.

"Hey, all right! Did I put a rank into explosions without realizing it?" Ileyna wondered aloud, looking at her hand.

Never mind. She put her hand up and kept firing at the undead.

"Max, I hope you've found something!" she called back into the library. "These guys are really angry!"

Soon enough, Max scrambled back down the foyer of the library as Ileyna was just about done mopping up the group of gladiators before her. "We found something. Come on. If you really are a dimension-hopper, maybe you can add on to it."

"Sure! Where do we need to go?" Ileyna asked, turning to the man just as she finished beating up one of the gladiators with a telekinetic car bumper.

Max pointed down the street, towards the deeper part of downtown. "In the old district there's an antique shop which might have the artifact these guys are looking for. We need to get it first, fast."

"Great!" she exclaimed, shading her eyes to look in that direction, never mind the fact she was still glowing blue. She turned back to Max and held out her hand expectantly. "We'll fly there," she said, as if that was the mundane thing in the world.

Max grabbed her hand without hesitation. "Top speed," he said. "Keep it over the rooftops, we don't want to draw attention from any stragglers."

"Top speed?" Ileyna's eyes widened in delight. "Really?"

The wide grin that broke out on the teenage girl's face would be enough for anyone to try and take back what they said.

Max didn't have such time.

Ileyna exploded into the air at a rapid pace, using her hand and her telekinesis to keep Max latched on as she arced through the air. "Lemme know when you see it!" she called out to him over the rushing wind in their ears.

Max grimaced, his eyes practically glued shut by the whooshing wind as they blue-streaked over Silverton with a thunderclap. "I didn't mean so fast that I can't even see where I am!"

"Whoops!" Ileyna yelped as he heard what Max shouted, and immediately halted her advance, grabbing onto Max's arm with both hands to make sure he didn't go flying off into the distance.

Now hovering in the air, she was looking about. "I hadn't been to the old district yet," she said in a more conversational tone. Ileyna looked back at her new companion. "Where'd you say it was at?"

Max groaned, and smacked his forehead with his free hand. "Just look for a white sign that says Checkmate Antiques," he said. "Near some coffee shop on the curb. And don't pop my eardrums while we're at it."

Ileyna grumbled. "No one ever lets me go at top speed."

With the new information, she concentrated her search, bringing a couple fingers up to the glowing crystal hanging around her neck. Then, after a few moments...

"Got it. Right there," she said, removing her hand from the necklace and pointing at a specific building. "Let's go."

She took off again with Max in tow, this time at a more reasonable pace.

They landed in front of an older building, make of stacked grey stone and wedged between two more modern buildings. A white sign with a black rook tipping over a white pawn dangled above the doorway, reading "Checkmate Antiques". Max dusted off the breast of his coat, and glanced across the street towards the coffee shop he had mentioned. "A coffee sounds pretty good right now, actually," he said. "Maybe later."

As Ileyna alighted onto the sidewalk, she stepped down from the air gingerly, and the aura around her winked out. Her wings faded into nothingness, and the symbols that could be seen on her forehead and her necklace faded away. She straightened out her skirt and adjusted her beret, and in moments looked like she'd never been airborne in the first place.

"Now that we're here, we don't have a lot of time," she said, turning to Max. "You can bet what's left of those guys will have saw us."

Because a bright blue ball hurtling across the sky wasn't conspicuous at all.

"I wonder what we'll find in these supposed ruins," she wondered, looking down at the ground, as if lost in thought.

[Victor: 4dF = 1 + 3 Fight = 4
Max: 4dF = 0 + 4 Guardian = 4]

"It's probably the standard artifact of great power or prophecy or something predictable like that," Max remarked. "You'd be surprised how often those show up."

"Rrrrargh!"

Max looked up as the familiar silhouette of the armored warrior they fought earlier descended upon him, blotting out the sun. The guardian manifested with a spin, its fist smashing into the centurion's bracer and shoving him back. The armor was strong enough to absorb the blow, and the centurion landed on the pavement, quickly drawing his gun.

"The artifact is mine!" the centurion said.

"This again?" Max snapped. "I don't have time for this crap."

"Didn't I tell you to throw him off the roof?" Ileyna asked, glancing at the revived centurion. "I mean, really, it would've saved us a whole lot of trouble if you did."

Even as she continued to chastise Max, her hand came up and she opened her mind up again, grabbing a hold of the centurion's sidearm and attempting to yank it out of his hands.

[Ileyna: 4dF = 0 + 4 Telekinesis = 4]

[Victor: 4dF = 2 + 3 Physique = 5]

The centurion's eyes widened as Ileyna's power tugged hard at his pistol. Bracing himself with another hand, he tightened his grip, grimacing, but ultimately keeping the gun in place. With effort, he aimed the gun towards Max, firing.

[Victor: 0 + 4 Shoot = 4 (Weapon:+1)
Max: 0 + 2 Athletics = 2 (1 Fate Point spent for reroll)
3 stress dealt]

"Crap!" The guardian manifested and threw one of its orbs down, where it popped, throwing out another repulsion field. Max was flung off the sidewalk to the street, where he landed with a smack on his shoulder. The guardian swung back around and flung another orb.

[Max: 3 + 2 Shoot = 5
Victor: 1 + 2 Athletics = 3 (Armor:-2)
0 stress dealt]

The orb smacked against the centurion's chest and blew apart, throwing the warrior back to the brick wall of the adjacent building.

Ileyna yelped and cringed as the gun went off, and she threw herself to the side away from Max and the centurion. "See? This is why we can't have nice things!" she yelled as the opening blows of round two began.

"Man, this guy's way too tough," she noted as she saw their opponent get thrown back into a wall. She pushed herself up off the ground and strode over to him, lifting up a hand to her side. Her grin wasn't very welcoming. "Why don't we change that?"

[Ileyna: 1 + 3 Specter = 4]

The being carved of white and orange suddenly appeared alongside Ileyna once more, in front of their attacker. It swung its left arm out, and the big diamond-shaped plate on its arms burst open like a pincer that warped the light around it like a heat mirage, and stabbed it right at the centurion.

[Victor: 0 + 2 Athletics = 2 (Defend)]

The specter's blow struck the centurion directly in the chestplate. He visibly shivered, and glanced down at his armor. "What the - what did you DO?"

[Max: 4 + 4 Guardian = 8 (Attack)
Victor: 0 + 2 Athletics = 0 (Defend)
8 stress dealt]

Max dogpiled on the opening - his own guardian launched forward, unloading a powerful punch on his opponent. The centurion's chestplate sagged to flow around the specter's fist, and the solder took the blow full force. He rocketed backwards and landed on his back, sprawled wide, flopped over the sidewalk.

The guardian vanished as Max looked at Ileyna. "...what DID you do?"

"Oh, just gave his armor the consistency of microwaved bread," Ileyna said with a grin.

She suddenly flowed backwards away from Max and the centurion, her body becoming alight in the blue aura, her wings and halo materializing around her once more. "It won't last long, and it'll be tougher afterwards," she said in a sing-song voice. "I'd finish him off quickly if I were you!"

Max jogged over to their persistent pest, slowing to an inching walk, expecting him to leap back up. When the centurion didn't immediately twitch, Max bent down, and put two fingers to the other man's neck. "I think I did," Max said. "Thank God he's still breathing. I didn't pull that punch as much as I could've." He looked up. "Maybe you should tell me about any extra powers you have next time BEFORE I almost kill a man."

He stood up, dusted his knees off. "So...you've got one like me too, huh? One of those silent guardian types?"

Hmm, not the type for bloodshed, looks like, she thought as she examined the interloper. She grinned at Max's question. "Well, yes," she said. "I too have a Stand."

Max arched an eyebrow. "A Stand? Is that what you call it?"

"That's what they've always been called," she told him. She shifted about, until she was sitting. On absolutely nothing, of course, but she made it look like she was sitting atop an invisible ledge of some sort.

"I told you, I'm old hat at dimension travel," she said. "I've... been to a lot of worlds, and seen a lot of Origins."

The Stand appeared beside her once more, standing imperiously next to her as she shifted her gaze to it. The specter was staring ahead, over Max's head with soulless-looking eyes. "I was at the Origin world of the Stands, as well. It's where I got Mass Effect. Maybe you're from there as well?"

Max eyed the Stand. "Not really. Unless someone's been hiding the big secret from me. Which wouldn't be the first time."

Suddenly curious about the direction Mass Effect was looking in, Max turned around to glance that way as well. Police cars with flashing lights were approaching their position, their sirens blaring from the distance. "Ugh. It's been a long day. What do you say we get what we came for and then get a coffee?"