#Ajak and Phastos do come to check on him and Thena gives them the most bombastic side eye imaginable

[softquietsteadylove]

What if a Deviant has mind controlling abilities and uses on Gil? The rest of them realizing it a bit too late when Gil suddenly started to attack.👀

Let the action and drama take its place!

Thena pulled her sword from one of the many Deviants from this most recent onslaught. "These seem quite unlike those of the past."

"They are bizarre," Sersi murmured, hovering and fluttering around the slain bodies around them now that there was no more threat. She looked up at Thena, "Deviants tend to mimic the wildlife the planet already sustains. But these are...they seem almost alien, like-"

"Us," Thena concluded, making Sersi nod her head with some reluctance. She looked out to the horizon, where the rest of the Fighters were already gathering along the front of the attack. "I must see to them."

Sersi merely nodded. She wasn't a Fighter, but even she had need to join the fray with the attacks were as dense as they were becoming. It was relatively early in their mission, but the more humans flourished, the more protection they needed. She squinted, "is that them?"

Ikaris was always easy to spot soaring well above everything around them. Kingo was also running towards them, waving his arms about something.

Thena frowned, "what are they saying?"

"Run!"

Gilgamesh rose up, breaking the horizon line and coming down with sheer force, his fist opening up the earth beneath him.

Kingo barely had enough distance to escape the minor earthquake, rolling and tumbling from it. Thena jerked in reaction but Sersi held her arm.

"What's happening?"

Gilgamesh continued his pursuit of them though, using his strength and concentrating it into different parts of his body to use as propulsion. He was launched forward, catching Kingo in his escape and raising his fist.

"Gil!" Ikaris swooped down, knocking him away from the Sharpshot Eternal. His eyes charged.

"No!" Thena launched herself up and into Ikaris' path, grappling onto him with a weapon and dragging them both away from Gilgamesh. "Don't hurt him!"

"Thena!" Ikaris roared at her like a pest on his back. He tossed her off, not bothering to return to the ground while the threat was still so present.

"What has done this?!" she demanded of her brother, keeping her eyes on Gilgamesh. Blank eyes took her in, assessing the new threat she posed.

"We don't know!" Kingo protested as he scrambled to his feet (and behind Thena). "One minute he was fine, then one of those things let out this sound--awful buzzing sound, really, then-"

"Kingo!" she barked at him, backing up slightly as Gilgamesh took slow, unfocused steps in their direction. He was the Strongest Eternal for a reason, and any one of them needed to exercise caution.

"I-I don't know!" he flailed again, faced down with the strongest of his brothers approaching like some mindless beast. "We all were fine but then Gil started acting weird."

"He is under some sort of influence," Thena concluded, as half-baked an assumption as it was. But Gilgamesh would never willingly turn on them like this. She kept her eyes on his, not that they were really looking at her. "He would never do this."

He would never raise a hand against her willingly.

Thena brought up her shield, catching the otherwise unstoppable fist of the Strongest Eternal. They both dug their feet in, the ground cracking beneath them. She held him at bay. "Leave us!"

Ikaris had already done so, taking Sersi away from danger at the first sign of an enemy he couldn't defeat singlehandedly.

"No way, T!" Kingo responded, bracing her from behind to help her not be pushed back by Gilgamesh's sheer strength.

"Go!" she snapped at him, keeping her eyes through the lights of her shield and on the enemy...on Gilgamesh. "Find Phastos--Ajak! Find a way to undo this!"

She knew Kingo was reluctant; he was actually very protective of all of them, despite his powers being most effective with some distance between himself and the enemy.

"I can handle him," she said more quietly. Her arms were starting to tire.

"That's what I'm afraid of," Kingo muttered before letting go of her and rounding around Gil's side. He fired a few shots at the ground between them, creating somewhat of a dust cover. "Kari!"

A bolt of gold zoomed through the area, nearly impossible to see at all. She zipped Kingo away and then she was there. Thena spared her the briefest of glances. "I don't know what this is. But we can't hurt him."

He was still Gilgamesh.

Makkari tapped her on the shoulder. Thena did her best to look at her. He's vibrating.

She frowned. Makkari would know, though. Kingo had said that the Deviant on their end had let out some wretched sound and then this had happened.

Gil pushed harder and Thena increased the surface area of her shield, bracing it with her knee as well. She was growing tired of this. "Kari, did you feel a bigger vibration earlier?--some kind of sound or signal?"

Makkari was just as quick mentally as she was physically, looking at Gil and connecting the dots offered by her fellow Fighter. She placed her hand on the inside of Thena's shield, vibrating every cell in her body through it.

Gilgamesh drew back, gripping his head and roaring in agony from it.

"Gil!"

He gripped his head in his hands until he was on his knees. He drew back and smashed his head against the ground.

"Gilgamesh!" She hadn't even realised she had called out the first time, but this second time, Makkari held her back from going to him.

Gil slammed his head down again.

"Stop it!" Thean shouted, not that she could know if he could hear her or not.

His teeth were gritted together. "Run."

"Gil," she pleaded again--practically whimpered as her throat grew tight. She hated to see him like this.

It was early in the mission, sure. But she knew Gilgamesh, knew how kind and sweet and gentle he was by nature. This wasn't like him. She pulled against Makkari, who was letting her feet impact the ground to hold her back. "Please!"

"Thena!"

Makkari's head snapped up and just like that, she was running them away from him.

"Makkari, please!" Thena tried to reason with her sister as Gil got further away and then suddenly vanished from sight. Being transported by Makkari was always hard on the senses. "W-We can't-"

"Thena."

She turned, the rest of her team - her family - already standing by the Domo. She eyed Ajak, walking towards her a little too calmly. "You are going to leave him out there?"

"He's too dangerous, Thena," Phastos chimed in (from his safer distance). "We have to wait it out a little."

Thena's eyes hardened at her team. "You are abandoning him to this...sickness?"

Ajak had a strange look on her face as she closed the distance between them. Thena never liked that look--like she knew something and wasn't divulging everything. "The risk is too great, Thena. We have to let him get it out of his system. Give it time."

Thena looked back to the battlefield, fully able to sense the lingering presence of one of their own. She watched and listened; dirt dusted up and if she really concentrated she could hear him, still wailing like a beast looking for a fight.

Makkari looked between them all, moving to be seen by everyone's vantage point. Interrupting the vibrations worked. I can-

"We can't risk you," Ajak smiled at her, then looked to Thena's half-turned shoulder, "either of you."

Phastos also half turned, but towards the comfort of their ship. "Let him tire himself out, T. We'll go get him then."

"He's just out there swinging at nothing, right?" Sprite added in far too light a tone for the actual goings on. "Let him."

Druig said nothing but also disappeared into the sanctuary of the Domo. Makkari looked at him, shaking her head, but it did not persuade him to stay.

"I promise, Thena," Ajak said in that slow, lyrical way she had. "We will go to him as soon as the threat has passed."

Thena stood resolute against the skyline, watching over Gilgamesh as best she could. "You may abandon him if you see fit. I will not."

Sersi was the last one to leave, hovering between the lines of staying and saying something and joining the rest of her fellow Thinkers. In the end, Ikaris pulled her inside by the hand.

Makkari nodded at her and then at Thena.

"No," she responded to the question never asked. She looked up again, unable to pull herself away from the thought of Gilgamesh left alone with only the violence in his own mind. "I'll stay."

And so she sat herself down, on the ground, watching until there was no sign of movement, listening until his agony had quieted. And then she began the journey back to him.