[b]Foxpearl![/b]

[i]Zoooooooooooop![/i]

That's the sound of a foxgirl getting sucked into a suit of armor. Your energy courses through the armor, which is [i]handmade[/i], which [i]was made with the money of another[/i], which is [i]very frighteningly powerful now that you're powering it[/i], which is [i]like tumbling down a flight of stairs and then being sucked right back up the stairs[/i], which is [i]Xingtian's middle finger to everyone who doubted them[/i], which is [i]The Inexorable March Of The Past Against The Moral Dissolution Of The Future[/i]...

And then you manage to pull yourself into the backup capacitor to hide while the rest of your glorious fire is unleashed upon a Flower Mountain enforcer who is frantically running and leaping and trying not to get turned into barbecue by a villain who very much wants them to become said barbecue. The roof is starting to cave in, which would be really bad for everybody who lives here, and also everybody on the floor above. Not the whole building unless the outer and inner supports get melted. Well, a majority of the supports. Well, enough supports that the rest can't handle the strain. But that's probably a good 60%, what kind of idiot civic planner would let a skyscraper collapse into some sort of skyscraper graveyard with less than half of its support gone? It's not like there's 60+ floors above this one are weighing it down too much, after all.

Mentally, the backup capacitor is a prison defined by too much light, potential building up, ghosts stacked on top of ghosts stacked on top of ghosts like green-grey wailing lasagna. Presumably, you're the one who is making it such, using your incredible brilliant mind to turn this into something you can interact with; presumably, you're also the one who put yourself in the mandatory genie outfit and chained yourself to the walls. And, tragically, there's nobody here to leer at you and how hot you look right now.

This is the bit where Empress should show up and pull Xingtian out of the building, toss them up in the air, reinforce the support beams, and catch Xingtian on their way down. But instead, outside, a familiar cinnabar-red scarf wraps around Xingtian's head, and the Vermillion Princess makes a valiant but doomed attempt at pulling Xingtian off their feet, instead just sending herself scrabbling for footing. "Stop this, malefactor," she squeaks. "Innocent people are going to get hurt!" (On one level, you're aware of this because of Xingtian's excellent sensory array in the helmet. On another, it's a TV flatscreen outside your cell.)

[hr]

[b]Rain![/b]

At that very moment, the sun drops behind the mountains, and night descends upon Sky Gate City.

You plummet right through the floor. And the one beneath that. And the one beneath that. And these skyscrapers have decent amounts of space! Finally, you manage to time going unspectral just close enough to the floor that you're able to roll with the chair, absorbing most of the landing on yourself, and neither of you sustain serious injuries.

Still, that's got to sting, right? If you'd panicked and just zapped right back into existence at the top of a floor, you might have sustained serious injuries, not to mention the guy in the chair probably would have gotten a concussion or worse. Your adrenaline is spiked, your heart is racing, and for a minute all you can do is cling to the chair and try to regain control of your body.

[Mark a Condition.]

There's a glow outside. Probably the fires, all weirdly green, because of the ghosts. The lights are off in the private office you've tumbled into, and you have no idea if you are once again on camera or not. If you're lucky, there's just an alarm on the front door, wherever that is. But take a moment and just... celebrate not being dead. More dead, that is.