[Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

[PhoeKun]

She's caught off guard as much as anybody else here, but Errant doesn't waste the opportunity to throw down. By the end of 'young ladies', she's already gone from her nice safe sitting position on the middle of Princess Adila's back to a narrow boxer's stance somewhere nearer her tail. Which... you know, honestly, this would've been a lot easier if Adila had been one of those "blot out the sky" kinds of dragons and not a large, scaly horse with wings. Not a lot of space to move up here. Not great footing, either.

But she's not AEGIS' Corporate Champion for nothing, you know. There's a billion dollars worth of combat tech inside her, and if it couldn't handle this much then AEGIS wouldn't be worth anything as a protection agency. It's just, none of it matters. Her punches are blindingly fast, her footwork is good enough that every single one of them has power behind them even through needing to adjust to her ride's constant shifting and swerving and general trying to shake this unshakable opponent. The problem is, nothing's connecting. She throws knockout blow after knockout blow, and at the last second his torso or his chest or his shoulder just sort of stretch or warp away from her fist. It's worse for her because he's not using any kind of technique she can trace or a power her visor is designed to recognize. It's not like Big Show's size shifting or even tracking an invisible opponent like Sabrem. Everything his body is doing is happening entirely inside of one dimension and according to one set of rules. It's just not a set that particularly cares about anybody else's. In one especially disturbing moment she goes straight for his face and he does that incredibly stupid cartoony thing where his neck and head just kind of disappear into his body. He doesn't even seem to notice! Open a button or two on his shirt, and hey! There's his head inside of his chest. After that, she stops trying to hit him altogether, and just watches with a mixture of caution and horror while he talks and gestures and makes everything worse. Not that he notices her stopping any more than he paid attention to her attacks.

In the end, she's holding the dumbest business card she's ever seen (and again! she attended Argossa Con!) and left to watch helplessly as the completely nonsensical architecture of Devilhome rises up out of the... everything. It smothers the light and obliterates the sight of Euna's favorite fantasy world with giant pagodas, towers, and Old-English Style Tea Houses stacked on top of umbrellas and kitchen chairs and, in one especially bizarre case, a pile of sewing needles. She grits her teeth. It's true that this is also a part of Hyperborea, but it's also the only part of it Euna doesn't really like. The Devil Princesses are all big jerks with no respect for the rest of the world, and... listen. Listen, ok? The rest of Hyperborea might be a bunch of stitched together pastiches that a lot of people deride for being "cliches", but every Kingdom follows its own very carefully cultivated aesthetic with highly specific fashions, names, and colorful expressions. And it's... it's not that Devilhome doesn't have that it's just. Well, you see it here. The aesthetic is "make no sense, obey no rules". Fans love drawing Devilhome. Loooooooove it. But for Euna it feels like it comes at the expense of loving the rest of it. Like people just want an excuse to make things that can't exist, to draw lines that don't connect and not get told off for doing it. And then that spins around and starts mocking Illumina and Jedad and Feloria because everyone's too busy being edgy. The promise of a character like Princess Iron Star Crushes the Strong is that someday, all of these beautiful, vibrant characters will become irrelevant. The promise of the Grandmothers is that the world doesn't matter. And that just can't be true.

Euna's face suddenly twitches. She squeezes the card into an illegible lump in her fist.

"HEY! HEY GET BACK HERE YOU DISFLIX REJECT! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING A CARTOON????"

Her fists clench. Her face burns. She's not going to let this happen. She's not. And when she gets back she's going to walk straight up to the Commander and tear into him for lazy briefing until he can't walk straight. He'll wish he was in a staring contest with Nobunaga.

"So, um," she starts in some vain attempt to recover composure in front of a bunch of horrified princesses, "N-now you, uh, now you see why we're so guarded about dimensional travel. I'm sorry this happened. I promise you the people responsible are already in jail."