Jack's plan didn't end up going that well. He got his barricades up in time to keep Vieri from dodging the fireball, sure, but after that everything went wrong. Tristan's piercing cold left forced him to climb out of the wall, but even once he was back in his own body, he still felt his movements being hindered for some unknown reason. That meant that he wasn't able to get to safety before Vieri's counterattack went off. The blast wasn't even aimed at Jack, but it was strong enough to send him flying.

He tumbled to a stop several yards away, his vision swimming with stars. He couldn't quite follow what was happening, but he was able to prop himself upright and make out Tristan's words.

"A... time out...? Yeah... Yeah, that sounds pretty nice right about now..."

It wasn't the fire itself that hurt Vieri - if experiments in Kyoto had come up with any even slightly useful information, it was that he could plunge his hands in lava and come out fine - but it wasn't just a ball of fire. The thing was coming at him with hefty force - and he realized a moment too late, mid side strife, that his exits had been cut off by spontaneous walls. The force threw him backwards into the final wall behind him, hard. Impacts were another thing he was supposed to be good at handling, but this one knocked the wind out of his lungs, dropped him to the ground, and had him gasping to get air back into him.

That staffy and his aggressive walls- no matter how many times he beat that kid, he never seemed to give up. If anything, it was getting worse. It sounded like he'd joined the fire guy just because it meant opposing him. It was annoying as all hell, and what was he supposed to do? Hit harder? And that wasn't even to begin on this guy who was standing there all smug with his smug fire sword and blood on his hands-

He was about to open his mouth and get to shouting how he felt about all this when one of their apparent tag-alongs beat him to it. Vieri was caught mid-breath and outright paused, looking over in the direction past the spontaneous walls where the voice was coming from. A part of him wanted to yell back not to talk to Jennifer like that, but another part of him was somewhat taken aback to hear someone shouting louder than him at all. It felt unnatural.

It wasn't until Red Head started talking that the anger was stirred again and he had ammo to speak up. He yelled over the walls, "Oi! Don't just attack me and then ignore me, you fire-spitting ass!"

At first, the scary fire guy getting close to her was no comfort at all. Jennifer leaned away like there was some kind of invisible barrier around him and let out a soft, barely audible 'eeehh' as he knelt down. But his voice was soft and his words weren't very scary, he was even apologizing, so it got her to relax for a moment. Not enough to actually open her eyes and see what he was pointing to, but she had enough idea from the context.

"But won't they have trouble breathing if they're put in trash bags?" Her voice was still soft and weak because of everything going on. "Besides, couldn't they help to--uwah!"

Before she could finish, she was suddenly scooped off the ground. It wasn't too difficult considering she was just a squatting lump on the ground and her eyes were closed. It was surprising enough that she didn't really fight back, laying there stunned as she, once again tried to figure out what was going on.

Jennifer was realizing that was probably never going to happen. She never seemed to understand what was going on in mage situations.

All this meant was that she went from being near scary fire guy to being carried around by scary lightning guy. It seriously seemed like there were almost no mages that weren't scary. Jennifer stiffened to prevent herself from squirming too much. She just went from one situation she didn't know how to get out of to another. She hesitated for a moment, trying to think of the least confrontational way to phrase this. The last thing she wanted was for scary lightning guy to get mad while he was holding her.

"W-Wait, where are we going?"

---

Tristan Carter takes the CONFUSE opening against Jennifer Kayne at a cost of 5% combat advantage, preventing her from taking openings for the rest of the battle!

Jack Mason takes the RESET opening at a cost of 20% combat advantage, removing all current opening effects from the battle!

Interference (Obstruction) by maran against Jennifer Kayne results in SUCCESS, +10% combat advantage

Interference (Illusion) by Tristan Carter against Karma results in SUCCESS, +10% combat advantage

Maneuver (Field) by Jack Mason for Karma results in SUCCESS, +15% combat advantage

Maneuver (Protection) by Jennifer Kayne for Jack Mason results in FAILURE due to suppression by the equal-or-greater Interference (Obstruction) maran used

Maneuver (Protection) by Karma for Jennifer Kayne results in FAILURE due to suppression by the equal-or-greater Interference (Illusion) Tristan Carter used

Aggression (Force) by Vieri di Adatto Isabello against Jack Mason results in SUCCESS, +30% combat advantage

---

Current conditions:

None.

Current advantage:

maran Tristan Carter and Vieri di Adatto Isabello have 85%
Jack Mason Jennifer Kayne and Karma have 50%

Current openings:

maran can ISOLATE Jennifer Kayne at a cost of 10% combat advantage, preventing her from targeting or being targeted by her allies for the rest of the battle!

Tristan Carter can CONFUSE Karma at a cost of 5% combat advantage, preventing him from taking openings for the rest of the battle!

Jack Mason can RESET the battlefield at a cost of 20% combat advantage, removing all opening effects from all combatants, including those that would be imposed this turn!

Vieri di Adatto Isabello can PRESSURE Jack Mason at a cost of 15% combat advantage, preventing his powers from generating combat advantage for the rest of the battle!

(Click here to send in your next round's actions! The next round's deadline is in 48 hours!)

Her attempt to grab Vieri's ankles were blocked by a piece of debris showing up out of nowhere. Jennifer deflated in Vieri's arms as her attempt to escape failed so thoroughly. She could probably try again, but if people were using magic to stop it then they were probably watching well enough to stop it again. This plan wasn't going to work, she needed a new one.

"I-I was just walking to the place with all the refugees, and then I went around this corner, and got hit in the head..." Jennifer rubbed her forehead and pouted. She wasn't sure how to answer anything else he asked; she wasn't even aware this place was dangerous, just full of scary people.

Then she was unceremoniously plopped onto someone else. Jennifer yelped again as she hoped she was caught. She took some precautions and spawned some more arms to catch herself just in case, but she worried about how well they'd hold. She wasn't exactly very strong.

"What am I, a ball?" she pouted before turning to Jack. "If this place really is dangerous, maybe I should just get to the place with all the refugees..." she furrowed her brow and sighed. "I don't remember where it is. Do you know where it is?"

After seeing the glob of lava solidify over Vieri's functional eye, Tristan decided it'd be best to lead Vieri with his actual presence. Sure, Static had some sort of telepathy and it might've been unnecessary, but Tristan still hadn't really had opportunity to mess with figuring out how well it worked. Even if it seemed to work well enough for "kidnapping" Sparkles, various reasons left the shadowmancer suspicious that it may have been a relatively new ability. The fact that he even knew about it at all suggested that Sparks still hadn't figured out how to use it effectively.

So, Tristan was walking alongside the boss and the hostage, providing mental assistance and path finding abilities thanks to talking being unnecessary effort. Apparently simply walking was enough to land him in hot water, though. Tristan had been barely paying attention to Prince Pogrom, thinking the angry chick had probably been holding his attention, when he was proven wrong by walking face first into a ball of fire and an accompanying blast of weaponized heat. The running man was almost instantly being surrounded by constructs doing everything in their power to keep him from making any forward progress

He clutched his face in pain, then turned towards Radical Religion. The side of his face where he caught the blast was badly burnt, one eye was gone, and the side of his jaw had been completely blasted away. What was left of his mouth hung open limply as he gurgled out an attempt at speech and raised his arms in what was clearly annoyance. After quickly sinking into his shadow and emerging from the nearest one on the path to Living Tetris, he turned back towards Karma with no sign of ever being damaged in the first place, save for him stretching out his jaw as if it was stiff.

"Fucking fire mages," he muttered to himself before starting to shout at Red. "What the hell is wrong with you, you dumb fuck? Had that hit 9-Volt here, Sparkles would've been caught in that! Do none of you children understand the concept of collateral damage? And I don't give a rat's ass if you're some ancient fuck, given you seem to have the situational awareness of a damn five year old! You're even more of a child than these actual kids, and the Great Wall over there was going to help you murder unknown amounts of people just because he doesn't like the cool kids club! I swear, Karma, you try and pull another dangerous stunt like that around me again, and I'll do everything in my power to put you in the ground myself. Fuck mind wipes, it probably won't stick anyway. Now, get the fuck out of my city before I start removing you in pieces."

Maran raced towards the self proclaimed holy man, free running across the treacherous terrain and launching debris for her to use to get past the more dangerous spots. Honestly, it wasn't all that hard given that now Karma didn't have his groupies right with him getting in the way.

She lightly landed behind him and snuck up before kicking his knee out from under him and putting the killer in a choke hold, "Let's see you stay awake when I crush you in your armor." She let her power flow, primarily focused on the man in front of her she was planning to kill...well, no, that was against the rules. So she was trying to choke him out and maybe draw dicks on his face after dismembering him. Aaaannnddd.... if he just so happened to die in the process, she wouldn't have shed a tear. And she highly doubted she would get punished for putting an end to someone who had chosen to abuse their powers and weaken the multiverse with stagnation.

For added measure, she wrapped her legs around his torso and locked her ankles together and squeezed, her  absurd strengthhelping to crush the air out of his lungs with every breath he took. If the man remained conscious for more than a few minutes, she'd be surprised, "do yourself a favor already and go to sleep, unless you want your ribs to puncture your lungs."