The world had ended. Worlds, plural, had ended, and there was a war on, a war to save all of existence. It was a war Harry'd been recruited for, apparently, just when he'd finished fighting the last one.

It was quite a bit to take in, and Harry Potter wasn't exactly taking it well. It certainly helped that some of the people he knew were awake and had been saved by the talking ship, but he would have felt much better if all the people he cared about were, so he was sure they'd even been saved.

Still, in the end, there was another war to fight. Another one. He was "Chosen" twice over. How could someone have such rotten luck? How could he lose parents, be raised by people like the Dursleys, be a marked man, spend all that time fighting, and then lose his whole world? A world was not the sort of thing you lost, in general. It wasn't as if you could go out for the day, have a hole in your pocket and have the world fall out. A world was an awfully large thing to lose.

The only thing that had offset the despair shock he was currently going through was the fact that Harry Potter had found a magic room on the ship. First day there, no map and he'd found it--how was that for luck? It was clearly some sort of Room of Requirement--all you had to do was walk outside, think very hard about what you wanted on the inside, and there it was, just like that. Unlike the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, it got around the limitations on magic that existed back home for Harry and even did food.

This remarkable room could even duplicate other places perfectly. This was how Harry found himself in the Gryffindor Common Room, eating chocolate frogs, and playing wizard's chess against the board itself. The opposing pieces were floundering without a player to call the shots, and because of it, it wasn't really fun at all.

Then again, he wasn't sure if he was even allowed to have fun.

Ever again.

After all, Harry though, shouldn't he be grieving? For all the people lost? It was difficult, though, to wrap his head around the numbers, around a loss of that magnitude, and part of him didn't even want to try. As a result, he spent his day holed away in the past, pretending Ron and Hermione would come bounding in through the entrance to the Common Room any minute, and trying his best to quell that tiny voice in the back of his head that told him that what he was doing wasn't healthy at all.

Chess, anyone?

Why hadn't they done this before?

Last poddrop would have been much more tolerable parading around pretending to be pirates than just waiting for people to appear and guide them around the ship. Besides, there was a pretty good crew now, of course they wouldn't need a Wunderkind or and Overlord's help to do that all the time! They could introduce themselves in the coms later if they felt like it and leave all this free time that barely anyone used for the sensoriums. It wasn't like anyone they knew would wake up anyway...

As they had planned, they had spent the last hour with Pram outside to keep guard, not knowing what she'd been doing, engaged in a pirate battle. There was a huge ocean spanning as far as the eye could see, with two large pirate boats stuck in the middle, swaying around with each large wave. Both ships had taken damage, and Lash's deck had a few holes on it, but were still standing. Each one had sails with the colors of their occupant's; Lash's was a dark purple, her flag sporting Black Hole's symbol, with a metal figurehead of Flak as her bow. Zetta's sails were in dark red and black, a live buzzsaw as his figurehead, his pirate symbol (pirate and crossbones with flaming hair on top) flew as the highest flag on the ship . Rows of cannons waited below for her word as the Netherworld's hell-penguins struggled to keep up with her crazy demands of firing every few minutes. Sometimes she would violently take a Prinny and shove it into a new cannonball hole that had appeared to stop the water.

Dressed in what could never pass for proper pirate attire, Lash raised her cutlass, as she held on to the nearby rope, pointing her sword at the other ship before lowering it.

"Fire!"

Another row of cannonballs flew into the sky, accompanied with a prinny or two into the water to attack the ship below. Most of it was falling short of her target's ship, but causing large splashes of water to get sent to the other side. Lash was taunting him, really. The Wunderkind had never done a traditional ship battle, but her crew of Prinnies we getting ordered around like no one's business as she probably abused fake pirate words that would make Drake get angry with her.

"Arrr! Don't want t' give up yet? Next time I won't miss and you're ship will sinking into t' ocean! I'll be releasing my secret weapon!"

Terrible abuse.

Thirteen.

That's how many witches - including the one Mami had finished off moments ago - had been released since they started showing up on-board. Mami honestly wasn't sure how many people knew about this potential threat, and really... she didn't care. This was a problem for the puella magi, not anyone else. It was their duty to find and destroy these witches, and that didn't change just because the territory changed.

She leaned back against the nearby wall, slowly sliding down it until she was sitting. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep going like this. She was exhausted, physically and mentally; she was running on maybe three hours of sleep a night, four if she was lucky. She was still helping Homura with her idiotic, futile search for the pod Madoka slept in, and the stress from that "Visitation Day" still hasn't gone away.

And there was the thought that had been nagging at the back of her head ever since her group had gotten together after the Lirath mission. There really was no way to tell just how many witches were left. A thousand? A hundred? Ten? For all Mami knew, the one she had just defeated could have been the last one. There was no way the ship could predict how many witches would be needed to keep them healthy and still-human until they restored their worlds. Mami's own Soul Gem had been draining at an alarming rate, something that honestly scared her - partially because she didn't know why.

She stays hunched over and sitting in that hallway for a while longer - still clad in her puella magi outfit - with the grief seed she won from the defeated witch in one hand and her dim Soul Gem in another. She can't bring herself to cleanse it; if that was the last witch (or really, even if it wasn't!), what was the point? She's only prolonging a fate she has no way of escaping.

[OOC: Edited for trigger warning for possible mentions of suicide.]

Since living in the new castle with Ruffnut, Mindy had done her best to maintain upkeep, even "borrowing" a few things from the wreckage of Grand Central to spruce up the place. It helped, especially since the events of the homecoming, to keep her head busy. On the one hand, yes, dad had appeared: he wasn't dead, he was proud to know they won, and for just a little bit? She got to be a little girl again, to crack wise with her dad, to show him how far she'd gotten.

But then he was gone again, and the new pod pop didn't bring him out. She shouldn't have hoped for it, but she had, a little. Once that was a no go though, she was either training or helping Ruffnut patch up some of the frayed tapestries or fix up carpeting or overall making sure there were no holes for them to fall through anywhere. It had been good, but even Ruffnut had sort of side stepped asking her about dad. It was something she appreciated: Mindy wasn't known for easily delving into her feelings.

This naturally led to another thing on her mind: what had happened on the mission, where the Castle gun shootout had almost taken her out- SHOULD have, if it was anyone else. She had severely underestimated what she could do: the way she;d moved, the accuracy in each shot, the sheer carnage: that was akin to a limit break.

And now, she wanted to control it.

She emptied herself of all thought: that was how a fight in the dark was, if you had no edge. There were only a few precious seconds to gather your mind, and then you opened your eyes and all hell broke loose. Your eyes and your hands had to work in tandem then, and you pulled back and took out people one by one until you got the job done or you were dead.

Like now: it was those gun slingers from the castle, and she started with ten at first, taking them out easily. The background was the saloon again, only she made it bigger to accomdate the increase in shooters.She cursed to herself (it was too quick!) then brought the number to fifteen, then twenty.

Each took less time, and Hit Girl nodded: she HAD gotten better. She wasn't even using Zetta's gun or her artifact, and she was still taking these bastards down.

"All right: switch it to forty, and place them all over the bar."

Ok. GO.

Sirius Black was no longer in Azkaban. He had spent but a few months there, a small fraction of the time he would have spent had Stacy not ripped him free, but it had left its mark on him. He knew his mind had fractured, he could feel the pieces as surely as if he were holding them in his hands, but he couldn't fit them back together. He didn't know how. He couldn't do it on his own. He needed James. But James was dead.

He should talk to Remus. He'd always been the most sensible and resilient of them. Remus knew what it was like to break apart and then put yourself back together. He'd done that every month since before Sirius met him. But Sirius couldn't go to him, not yet. Not when he could barely string together a few sentences.

Sirius had gone to the city first but it was strange to look out across all those buildings, places that should be full of life hauntingly empty. He turned away and wandered more until he found somewhere full of life. He could forget that he was on board a- what had they called it? Spaceship? It seemed like the four walls around him had fallen away and finally, finally he was free.

He stood still, eyes closed, arms spread, feeling the air.

He remembered his life. There had been bad times, yes. Horrible, terrible times but he had endured. He'd survived. And James had always been there for him. James...

So many happy memories now bittersweet. They flowed over him like waves, each one threatening to take him under but each one he cherished. Life was hard. Life hurt. Knowing that the person who'd brought so much happiness into his life was gone, knowing that Sirius was responsible for his death, it was a pain he could not describe. A pain he never expected or wanted to diminish. But through the pain there was laughter. Through the pain there was love. And that was worth living for, no matter how deep he hurt.

It's what James would have wanted.

"I'll look after him, Prongs. I promise."

The Precinct had a lot of meeting rooms. Dick had signs up pointing to the largest one, since there was never any telling how many people would end up at the meeting. There were chairs scattered around in a vaguely circular arrangement, though they could be moved around as people liked.

Dick himself stood at the front, omnicomm in hand and trying to keep track of what was going on. He was leaning back against a table with two seats behind it. Right now, it was just waiting for people to arrive.

Fuu still hadn't found Hikaru or Umi. What she had were found her armor, glasses, and headband in the storage lockers. She had swapped the glasses, thanking Stacy for the substitute pair, and settled the headband in her hair.

When she touched the armor, she heard the voice. It wasn't in her head like the ship's had been. But it was a voice speaking for her ears alone.

Young woman from another world....

"Windam!" Fuu gasped, covering her mouth.

We have been taken from Cephiro. Why?

Fuu hugged the armor to her chest. "I don't know. We're on a ship in outer space, chosen as warriors to fight a powerful enemy.

There was a sensation of rumbling--she could picture him in her mind's eye, rustling his four wings. I guard Cephiro.

"The ship said that we're fighting destroyers of worlds. But..." She needed to talk to Umi, to Hikaru. "I don't know anything else. Not yet. I don't know if this is the truth, or anything about the allies and enemies we're supposedly facing. I don't know where the others are."

Then find the truth, Magic Knight. You must know what we are fighting for.

"I will." Fuu drew in a deep breath, then straightened up and donned her armor. The familiar weight settled strangely on the plantsuit. "Guru Clef is here."

Then speak to him. Was that relief in Windam's voice? Fuu's stomach tightened. She had never heard any of the Rune Gods speak with anything but utter certainty--something that came with millenia of watching over their world. But now he had been removed from everything he had existed for. He was just as lost as she was now, if not more. She, at least, had been to a world other than her own.

[ooc: THIS IS PRETTY MUCH JUST A SOLO LOG to establish how the ancient spirit manifesting as a mecha feels about this. situation Now that it's done I have finally tagged Fuu into Meat'n'Greet.]

Erhart was quite intrigued by the Sensorium demonstration, so he immediately starts utilizing it for his own needs, creating a huge scene from one of the many battles that grace his roll of honor. In this case, the battle of Carrion Gulf, third year of the Torment crusade.

It was a manufactory world. All large buildings with huge smoke-stacks, clattering conveyor belts, and downtrodden citizenry. And then Chaos came, turning the citizens into frothing cultists, and populating the world with the dark reflections of Erhart, the Chaos Space marines.

His fighting company rides the lighting, bombarding the planet in ceramite and steel drop pods which crack open like eggs, disgorging black-armored paladins like himself inside the capital. Bolters roar from friend and foe alike as the defenders of the faith, and the defilers of the faith square off, ripping into one another at range.

"INTO THEM!"

Erhart roars, through augmented external speakers, before thundering down the assault ramp of his drop pod, and decapitating a corrupted Chaos Marine with a two-handed swing from the Black Sword, the crackling of the power blade drowning out even his battlecry for a moment as it bites through armor, flesh, and bone.

And so it begins....