OT: I forgot about Ishtar’s collection.
The explosion is contained, for sure, a shaped charge almost directed right at Midori. Ishtar will eat some of it, but the majority is taken right at Midori’s face.
For a third time the facility is rocked, the explosion not quite on par with Charco or her earlier blast, but close. A massive hole firms and the two fall into it, plunging into the depths of the facility a few hundred feet below, ending in another space dock with a few ancient shuttles still inside.
Ishtar, you’ve been hurt, bad. Surprisingly all your limbs are intact, but overall you’ve been burned bruised and battered by the explosion and everything hurts. In fact, if you did t know better, you would almost think Midori had helped protect you somehow.
As to Midori.........
The woman rises up and smiles at the wounded Oni, no visual damage done. She walks over and shakes her head over Ishtar, flipping her hair back she leans over and sighs.
“That was close, silly fool. Be glad I helped you survive. Maybe now you can understand.”
She bends down and kisses Ishtar’s forehead, grinning into her eyes completely unharmed save her clothes are gone. Body wise Midori is quite beautiful, but the look in her eyes and her smile belay that beauty.
“The truth is I’m Time Locked, Ishtar. I cannot age. I do not need to eat or drink. This physical vessel before you literally is locked in time, little love. And when something is locked in time, well, that means you cannot damage it, you cannot alter it, you cannot destroy it. Not even your pretty Hakai energy can beat time. Blow me into space, toss me into the sun, try to transmute me, nothing works. In all my vast travels I made myself truely, and utterly, immortal. And even if you somehow did, well....that’s what my new heart and the nanites are far. Contingencies within contingencies.”
She bops Ishtar’s nose with a finger and then gestures.
“Farewell.”
Midori jumps upwards, and after a moment lands back in the same ruined lab Charco destroyed as before, eyeing the rest of the group with glee. Completely nude and unharmed, she gestures down to the hole.
“Might want to get her. She’s a bit banged up, and it’s time for me to go. My villainous monologue distracted you all long enough for Plan B to finish. I was worried there for a bit when Charco blasted everything, but you were all too eager to sit and listen to me gloat and draw upon righteous indignation. Idiots. Make them look one way, so they don’t see another.”
From within the computer she had been using, the one protected by a Dreadnaught Heart (the barrier had withdrawn, but still protected the computer behind her) seven glowing objects emerge from a tray under the computer and float to her.