Free Falling

Free Falling is the second round of The Grand Battle.

Description
The contestants are falling through the air in an infinite loop. Around them are buildings also falling in the air. There is also a bomb, which sticks to whoever touches it and will detonate 30 minutes after being activated.

Summary
The bomb was passed around a lot. The fabric of reality was in danger of breaking due to gravity devices in the buildings, and people had to do various things in each of them to keep things stable. Amethyst thinks a lot about escaping. Eximo built a lot of vacuum cleaner soldiers and Nathan played some pinball. There were some mechs and Aeon stuck the bomb on Alcarith's mech which then exploded and killed her.

Significant NPCs
Fate: Alcarith's sponsor. He reveals that the Director's Gentlemen whose contestants are eliminated lose their memories of the battle after being dismissed.

Events
Warning: Significant Spoilers

Unlike many rounds, the contestants are not introduced to the setting upon their transportation. Emily views Lutherion from a distance, wondering if he is perhaps possessed and startled that he can capture souls; she resolves to free Dokuromets as soon as possible. Aeon forms his adaptive tool into a sail and rises above the others, once again simply watching. Alcarith turns into a dragon and enters the barn. Lutherion flails for a bit before using his bone shards to grow a pair of skeletal wings, then heads into the general store. Emily discovers the looping nature of the round, then enters a pizza joint. Eximo scans the buildings to determine which is in greatest need of cleaning and picks an appliance store; it discovers a number of vacuum cleaners and begins converting them into vacuumbots. Nathan panics, then flails his way over towards the restaurant and joins Emily inside. She senses a strange aura in the building, but can't place it. Alcarith discovers that the barn is more of a garage or hangar than a barn, and it has three vehicles inside. Emily and Nathan rummage around the restaurant, becoming more unnerved. She discovers that it is a pinball machine that is the source of her unease, after asking Nathan what a pinball machine is. Eximo's first robot activates and begins cleaning, doing well enough that Eximo decides to simply repeat the process. Nathan plays a game of pinball, thinking something might happen if he does, but loses quickly and is disappointed. Lutherion makes himself comfortable in the store, drinking soda and pretending it's his favorite brand. Amethyst joins him, asking about his fear of blood; he refuses to tell her anything, and she drinks some milk and leaves after stealthily planting the bomb on his side. Lutherion realizes it won't come off and decides to make his foes pay if he's going to be killed; he seeks out Eximo first, but discovers a dozen vacuumbots. He decides it's not worth the time to find the real one and runs off to find another target. Amethyst enters the restaurant and Emily enlists her aid in determining the aura's nature, although hating to work with someone she suspects is a demon. Amethyst explains that the machine controls the effective gravity of the restaurant as well as the round's nature, then asks for Nathan's help in escaping. She doesn't think her abilities are sufficient to break free of the loop, but believes Aeon or Dokuromets may have abilities that will allow her to travel in four dimensions. Emily is disgusted by Amethyst's suggestion that Dokuromets's remains might be useful as spell components. Amethyst explains the bomb as well, and tells the others that it is attached to Lutherion and will explode in less than 25 minutes. She tells Nathan that her own power levels are too low to destroy Lutherion's Wightmaw Arm and retrieve Dokuromets's shard, and that his knife is the only thing with enough magical potential to overcome Lutherion's chaos barriers. She wants Nathan to give her the knife so she can use its power to destroy the Wightmaw Arm and obtain Dokuromets, then tells Emily that she'll free all the other souls. She goes on to explain that she's tracking the bomb, and that it and Lutherion are approaching. Lutherion busts in dramatically, then lops off the chunk of his flesh that the bomb is stuck to; Nathan chops off his arm before he can throw it at anyone, and Amethyst tells him he has no chance against the three of them. Lutherion summons a shade wight, which binds the others in place with their own shadows. Nathan screams in pain from using his knife, and develops a large wound on his arm; Emily tells him she can heal it, and Nathan continues to attack the wight, progressively injuring himself more. Aeon watches the battle, but decides not to get involved. Emily frees Nathan from the shadow wight by surrounding him with a shield of light. Alcarith explores the barn, determining the vehicles are military, then finds a cubicle farm upstairs and fails to log into the computers. Emily and Nathan finish off the wight while Lutherion taunts them. Amethyst picks up the bomb and uses a levitation spell to hold Lutherion in place so the restaurant can loop around him and let her stick the bomb to his head. She breaks off a chunk of the restaurant for the two of them to fight in, but he summons several bone dragons to harass her as well as Emily and Nathan. Lutherion discovers he can move the bomb around his own body, and attaches it to a bone splinter which he launches at Amethyst. Amethyst barely dodges, having been using most of her concentration to bring the barn over to her chunk of the restaurant, and proceeds to pummel Lutherion with the entire building. She enters the barn as well and attempts to hack through Lutherion's chaos barrier; she fails spectacularly and the spell backfires. Aeon decides to approach Alcarith and discovers that the refrigerator in the house he was occupying was somehow controlling the gravity inside that house. Emily heals Nathan's wounds, realizes that the seal on his knife will likely fail soon and that she thinks she knew his father. She asks if he ever passed through dimensions; Nathan tells her he didn't know much, but probably he did. Eximo monitors its creations and discovers that a cash register is controlling the store's gravity, although it doesn't understand the discovery. Emily casts a good luck spell on Nathan and heads towards the barn. Lutherion seems to finally take things seriously and summons Dokuromets to fight Amethyst; Dokuromets is revived rather than ghostly. One of Eximo's robots knocks over the cash register, stopping the store's falling and causing the barn to crash through its ceiling; Eximo decides to clean the barn, and enters it with its 40 vacuumbots. Alcarith finds a computer she can access and discovers a text file on it (the contents of which are sadly lost as the file Fait uploaded has since expired). Aeon approaches the barn, since everyone else seems to be there, and talks to Alcarith, who isn't very interested. Dokuromets struggles to resist Lutherion's domination while Amethyst is paralyzed nearby; when he finally manages to throw it off, Lutherion reverts him to a bone shard and decides to finish Amethyst off with the bomb instead. Eximo and his vacuums bust in, and Lutherion summons skeletons to fight them, ordering the skeletons to focus on Eximo. Nathan air-swims over to the barn while several skeletons pin Eximo. Lutherion decides to kill Amethyst first, but Emily arrives to stop him; he turns to face her, and Aeon and Alcarith descend from above, Alcarith shooting him with a burgund shard. Lutherion notes everyone is here but Nathan, at which point Nathan appears and stabs him and Aeon tackles him. Emily heals Amethyst, who suggests they help Eximo; Emily says Eximo is both demonic and unalive, telling Amethyst she doesn't care what happens to it. Between Eximo, Amethyst, and Emily, the skeletons are destroyed. The restaurant then collides with the store and Amethyst realizes the fields that control the buildings' gravity are beginning to interfere with each other. She tells everyone this may cause an explosion large enough that it would kill everyone, regardless of where they were in the setting, which effectively stops all combat. Alcarith enters one of the vehicles, deciding it will be difficult for anyone to harm her in it; Lutherion turns to splinters and flees the barn into the restaurant. Aeon asks Amethyst how to prevent the explosion, and she tells him of her idea to use his tool. Alcarith encourages the others to get in the vehicles and discovers they can be used to fly; Nathan rides in the second one, and Alcarith flies away. Aeon and Amethyst talk, and she realizes Aeon's tool can't be used for what she hoped; her only plans to prevent the explosion either require Lutherion to cooperate or for all the gravity devices to be destroyed, and she suspects neither is possible. Aeon suggests that perhaps the best way to save everyone is to kill one person and hope the survivors end up somewhere better, and takes the third machine and flies it off. Nathan accidentally walks his machine out of the barn, but figures out how to fly it and approaches the restaurant to destroy the pinball machine; Emily follows him. Amethyst talks to Eximo, considering killing it to save the others but also feeling grateful to it for saving her. She examines the cash register from the store, discovering that it has been tampered with and deciding it must be the Director that sabotaged it; she worries that the sabotage and solution to simply kill Eximo was too obvious to her, and thinks the Director may have set a trap for her specifically. Aeon begins scouting around, and discovers that a sofa in the back of the general store controls its gravity, then returns to his vehicle after preventing another building collision. He finds the restaurant, with Nathan inside trying to beat the high score on the pinball game to change its gravity; Aeon takes the bomb with his tool, and the pair of them exchange warnings about the knife and the bomb. He leaves the restaurant and finds Alcarith's vehicle, attaching the now-disguised bomb to it. Emily joins Nathan, intent on protecting him, and Alcarith flies away from the appliance store. Eximo notices her flying past and detects the bomb; it concludes that its vacuumbots can complete its secondary objective (cleaning) without it, and that Alcarith is more capable of completing its primary objective (ensuring that a place remains to clean) than it is. Therefore, it decides to take the bomb for itself and ensure that it dies rather than Alcarith. Amethyst goes to the restaurant to check on the pinball machine, and realizes it can lower the gravity if its score loops around to 0; she sends Emily to find the gravity device in the barn, since Amethyst herself couldn't, and promises to protect Nathan in the meantime. On her way to the barn, Emily sees Eximo chasing Alcarith's vehicle; thinking it is attacking Alcarith, she traps it in a barrier and attempts to drain its life. Eximo partially resists the life draining spell due to its half-mechanical nature, but despairs of its ability to ever complete the cleansing. Amethyst and Nathan fail to reset the pinball game's score, but Amethyst explains that the bomb is attached to Alcarith now and will likely detonate before the big gravity explosion. Emily, thinking she has saved Alcarith, enters her barrier and begins healing Eximo, hoping to give it its last rites and finish it off. Dying, Eximo explains it was trying to save Alcarith, and Emily stops heal-killing it, instead intent on saving Alcarith somehow. As Nathan and Amethyst try again to loop the pinball's score, Lutherion sends duplicates of Eximo and Emily to attack them; the Eximo is easily killed, but Amethyst believes the Emily is real and it gets close to her and pins her. Alcarith lands near Aeon, which surprises and worries him; they talk a bit about the nature of the battle and Alcarith reveals she knew it was Aeon who was controlling the Mutewood, then Aeon suggests Alcarith go aid her allies. She reenters her vehicle and flies away. Emily attempts to surround the bomb with a barrier, which removes its disguise and alerts Alcarith to its presence. Alcarith knows the bomb is everyone else's best chance to survive, and with only seconds remaining before detonation, she grabs it. She uses her body to shield the others from the blast, and it explodes, killing her. As she dies, the loop ends and the buildings begin crashing to the ground. Immediately before the contestants fall to their deaths, the disappear again. Alcarith's sponsor, Fate, leaves the group, asking to be informed who the winner is when the time comes; it is heavily implied that former Gentlemen have no recollection of the Grand Battles after their dismissal.