44 seconds for weapons range, which is still a ways off but is enough for a surprise attack. (She kept some of her additional bodies fairly close.) And then since sonics seem to be working she'll see if her own sonic weapons can clobber Vulture, since going after him is clearly her comparative advantage.

Bull would like to BREAK THAT ARMOR. The armor is BAD. It is LOUD. However, Musoka's right here, so what he's going to do is grab the line connecting Raven and Musoka that she tried to clothesline him with and use it to slam Musoka directly into the ground.

Vulture is having trouble with Minerva's focused attack! She looks pretty sick, but that's not stopping her from trying to claw her way out of the trap Minerva's got her in.

And Spider is throwing more strands of fire at Musoka, to try to trap her where she can't fight back -

- Ceru notices Bull grab the line and realizes -

<Musoka let go of Raven now!>

- that he's about to crush Raven's skull into the ground!

<... And dodge! Up!> she adds hastily.

<Wh->

It's easy to drop a construct, and she trusts Ceru.

It dissolves as Bull starts his downward movement, dropping Raven on his head. 

Musoka isn't paying attention to that, though; she's jetting upward to dodge the blast of fire from Spider.

Once she's above the two, she projects a solid dome construct around them both, channeling how much she really hopes they can resolve this without anyone getting seriously hurt. 

Inside the construct, Bull ignores Raven (who does not... appear... to be dead? But isn't moving) and attempts to smash his way out of the construct! Whether or not he can succeed depends on just how much Hope she put into it, but he's not reacting now.

Under the pressure of Minerva's concentrated attacks (force-fields to trap her, sonic to disable her) Vulture is... mostly screaming... and then mostly whimpering... and then mostly unconscious.

Spider's still throwing flame at Musoka, though, trying to catch her or box her in with horrorfire that is now really difficult to avoid being near -

That horrorfire is really becoming a problem!  With Vulture out of the picture and the knowledge that she just needs to hang on until Minerva can deal with Spider, Musoka decides to hunker down.

She lands and drops into a crouch on the far side of her dome construct, so Spider doesn't can't take direct shots at her, and hopehopehopes that she can keep Bull and Raven inside for just a bit longer (that they can end this without anyone dying), thickening the shell with the strength of her feelings.

They will try to break out! They will fail to break out!

And Minerva's presently-here body will continue trying to use her own force-fields to keep Spider off - 

And then Ceru can see through the images Minerva is sending her Spider swearing, pausing, and - drawing a match from her pocket and breaking it? - and she vanishes in a puff of brimstone.

All the horrorfire winks out. (Though there's some perfectly conventional fire that is going to continue to burn until someone deprives it of air, which Minerva, after a moment to survey the situation, begins doing.)

Once the horrorfire stops, and it's obvious Minerva has stuff under control, she starts healing the rest of the damage she took from Rat's decay ability.

(It's... slow going. She's shaking, badly, and hugging her knees; her thoughts are a jumbled mess.)

Ceru... doesn't know what she should say to Musoka, if anything, so for now she says nothing.

(She turns the incredibly loud power armor siren off, and tells Minerva that Musoka is going to be physically fine shortly, but is not doing amazingly well mentally, and would benefit from being able to hand off Bull and Raven once Minerva's taken care of more pressing matters.)

Minerva can reinforce Musoka's force-field! Then three of her duplicates arrive (canceling cloaking at this point to save on power) and while Minerva and Minerva restrain them, Minerva and Minerva can sonic the two of them unconscious.

She will, however, follow her traditional strategy of dealing with direct physical and supernatural threats before she starts to pay much of her attention to social things like "a teenage girl is traumatized by a battle to the death," which has served her "well" in the sense that the world has not been destroyed yet, so she'll just put together an "It is good she isn't dead" message for Ceru and leave it at that until the supervillains are dealt with.

Once it becomes clear that Musoka can drop her dome construct around Raven and Bull, she does so. When the Minervas start sonic'ing them unconscious, she... floats herself over to her power armor, and uncurls herself enough to climb in and close the hatch.

"Musoka," she'll say softly over the speakers. "It's over. Good work."

There's a small sob from inside the armor. 

"S-sorry", she says, quietly. "I should have been more careful."

(Mostly on autopilot, she attempts to open the garage door.)

The garage door can be opened!

"Musoka," Minerva says calmly, "You have no need to apologize. As far as I can tell, you made no significant errors. You were ambushed by five supervillains specifically empowered and chosen to murder you and, in spite of being outnumbered five bodies to one, successfully defended yourself until reinforcements arrived, when, despite being outnumbered five bodies to two, you defeated them."

She sniffles, then shrugs halfheartedly.

"...okay. Thanks for saving me."

She trundles into the garage, brain still whirling. 

<...She's just saying that, right?>

oh no... 

<I would be extremely surprised if she was! You did fine, Musoka. This world is a lot more dangerous than we're used to, and it's not fair to expect yourself to adjust right away. This was scary, and it's good to think about what we could do better next time, but it's unhelpful and... unfair, to you, to frame those possible improvements as mistakes you made this time.

We kept you safe, didn't consume more of Minerva's resources than she wanted to spend, and avoided needing to escalate to lethal force. I'm sorry it was so terrifying and I'll work with you to improve your skills, but you won. Please don't beat yourself up for not doing good enough?>

"You are welcome to it, Musoka, but you mostly saved yourself."

... She will say while Musoka wanders off.

... Honestly this was a pretty good day for her? She has much more information about her enemy's plans, she's fairly confident it's either Magister or the woman she's in the habit of not naming framing Magister, and she's compelled her opposition to spend noticeable resources on minions he largely cannot re-use, and he got nothing out of it. (It is almost certainly Magister.)

Now, she still has the problem that Magister is exceptionally invincible, but...

Musoka is trying to process Ceru's response, she really is. But it feels like there's a gaping hole inside her, and she can't stop thinking about -

- her armor dings at her, disrupting her thought process. 

...her game finished downloading? 

...her game finished downloading!!!!! 

Awww. Ceru leaves her to it; Musoka absolutely deserves some fun downtime, and none of what they were just talking about was time-sensitive.

Ceru has her own processing to do, but first she'll review her files on Magister and then reach out to Minerva.

...his primary M/O appears to be to grant other people weak superpowers as part of a contract, with the combination of contract and superpower designed to ruin the life of whoever he contracts with and often those they hold dear as well...

...he has a 96% success rate...

...though his existence was confirmed only 40 years ago, inconclusive records consistent with his pattern of activity stretch back almost a millennium...

...his defensive capabilities include being almost totally immune to almost all known forms of attack, being absurdly resilient and having incredibly rapid regeneration...

...he has been known to teleport rapidly when in danger, sometimes at cross-continental distances... 

...though he has never actually attacked anyone except in self-defense, his actions are expected to have caused absurd amounts of harm over the time period he's been active... 

... right, the immortal asshole who makes everything worse.

Also, this file seems... incomplete, relative to her gauge on the Atlantic Six's capabilities... 

Minerva, can I have access to  confidential files on Magister?

Also, do you think he was also responsible for the massive bounty? 

<Hey Ceru, is anything permanently missable in Stargunner: Revelations?

...and how do I unlock the level-N versions of my abilities?>

Awww. Let's see... 

<... Nothing permanently missable. Some things are missable until postgame, and some things are differently available depending on playthrough choices, but the game is very explicit when it comes up. 

Play the game for 15 to 25 more hours; they unlock in a later chapter.>

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