"You won't be able to do this twice, trust me."

Strix grinned as he found himself suddenly on the ground with a gun to his head. He really should have expected a sneak attack but planning for the others had made him lose focus on his tactics on a personal level. Still, it was typical of Pariah to have planned for his meddling, and an invisible assassin was just classy enough to work.He'd have to make adjustments to his HUD's sensors later. Not that any of that mattered now. In fact, surveying what he could of the situation from here, he found himself chuckling.

"It hardly matters if you take me out of play now, I've already shaped this stage of the game into a virtual checkmate and there's no real way for you to counter things in time Not while you're keeping me here."

The main thing that had him immensely pleased was that the strategy the team was winning with all hinged on generating a large amount of heat, and one of the only two trainers left was generating a massive amount of ambient heat to help them along. The fire surrounding Morph, the giant smoldering bonfire that was the bramble wall, the fact that Ember had turned into a woman [i]made[/i] of fire and was throwing yet more around played right into his hands. What's more, the two people most capable of quickly reversing the situation were trapped both in Morph's slime and his heat-and-cold resistant adhesive. At this rate, the barrier would be broken even faster, along with the heat even more affecting the trainers inside such an enclosed space.

Now all he needed was for the invisible trainer to suffer just a moment's distraction to break free, or else hope his talking or inaction on the ground attracted someone's attention. For all his talk of not even being needed, he still wanted to participate.