Mantis Shrimp. Kinetic (D)/Marksman (C). Overall D-rank*. Unaffiliated hero. Based in West Lafayette, IN.
Powerset: telekinesis in a limited range. During the first engagements of the now-infamous Killjoy Incident, she demonstrated an ability to cause extreme pain at close ranges. Speculated double-vial.
* In contention.
- “Mantis Shrimp” landing page, Superhuman Response Unit wiki, archived November 1, 2024
#
The Tippecanoe County Superhuman Jail was in a state of emergency again under entirely different circumstances.
As it turned out, cutting power was not part of the normal procedures when they locked down. Then again, this was a medical lockdown, not a supervillain one. Lycoris would know better than Vivian.
Ephialtes was no longer in her cell. Lachlan explained the situation to them over the phone as Lycoris flashed an ID at the guards to let them through to… the medical bay or the morgue. Vivian didn’t catch which one.
“They’ll fill you in more than I can,” Lachlan said. “This is the world’s worst game of telephone, but she died something like fifteen minutes ago. They tried what they could, but short of Lifeline himself showing up, I doubt there was anything they could do.”
“Any word on what killed her?” Lycoris asked, her characteristic cheeriness dropping entirely.
“Not here,” Lachlan said. “You’ll find out before me. Alexander says he’s on his way too, but he was dealing with some kids that fell into the Wabash, so he’s been delayed. I got a call incoming. Talk to you later.”
Fantastic. Vivian was not looking forward to dealing with Alexander.
She paused her train of thought, nearly tripping mid-stride. Why was she concerned over talking to a superhero she didn’t like? Someone was dead, and—oh no.
A heavily bruised liver. Two collapsed lungs. Hadn’t Alexander mentioned that? Ephialtes had been sent to the ICU over a month ago when she’d hit Vivian with a blast of fear and the Kinetic had thrashed out at everything that moved. It was a miracle that she’d avoided the brain, but it had been a close thing.
Was that the reason why she died? A month had passed, but those were serious injuries.
That had to be it.
It was her fault. Again.
No, no, no—Vivian huffed out all the breath in her lungs as if she could exhale her thoughts away, pounding a fist on her upper chest like her first therapist had once advised.
“We’re going to the medbay,” Lycoris said, answering the unasked question. “The body’s been moved to the morgue, but everyone who knows about the situation’s here.”
“Shouldn’t we see the body?” Vivian asked. No, that was a stupid question. Of course they didn’t need to. They weren’t professionals. They were heroes, not morticians. She cringed at herself.
“Not our skillset,” Lycoris answered simply. “We’re here to do what we do best, not try to do someone else’s job better.”
“Right, right.” Vivian nodded hastily.
To be honest, she was grateful that they weren’t going to be seeing the body. She wasn’t sure if she could stomach looking at another one of her victims.
Then why did I ask if we were going to check it out?
“Here we are,” Lycoris said, turning a corner.
The medbay was spartan but high-tech. There was a one bed with rumpled, unfolded sheets, a single operating table loaded with Synth gear that clearly hadn’t been properly cleaned yet, and just enough space for a doctor and a nurse to work in. Other than the two superheroines, the only current inhabitant of the room was a middle-aged man with a shock of white hair and rusty black stubble. He could’ve been Vivian’s dad.
“Dr. Ward,” Lycoris said, hitting a pitch closer to her usual voice. Cheery, but with the appropriate gloom for a room that a super had died in. Vivian wondered how much of that was artificial. She wondered that a lot these days. “I wish we could’ve met under better circumstances.”
“Lycoris,” the doctor said, extending a hand. His speech was irregular and halting, like he was taking time to reconsider every sentence partway through saying it. “Pleasure to meet you. My children have… shown me your videos. I understand you… have an interest in the deceased?”
“The Guardians tell me it was Ephialtes, a local villain,” Lycoris replied, shaking the proffered hand. Vivian couldn’t help but notice that the red-clad superhero had grown noticeably brighter after hearing that the doctor had seen her content. Did she even notice? “One that was under the employ of Killjoy, who my team is currently pursuing. So yes, I have an interest. Could you tell me the exact details of what happened?”
“Of course,” Dr. Ward said, indicating two plastic chairs. “Please, take a seat.”
Lycoris sat. Vivian joined her hesitantly. Even though there were no bodies here, this room just felt wrong. She hated hospitals. Hated hated hated them. This was no proper hospital, but that acrid scent of sterile alcohol that couldn’t quite conceal the ever-present scent of the people within was just present enough to set her on edge.
But this was important, so she sat and bore it.
I want to get out of here, she thought.
“I heard she had organ damage,” Vivian blurted out as she sat, regretting the words the instant she said them. “Uh, is that what caused it?”
Lycoris looked sharply at her. “You gave her organ damage? What’d you do, shoot her?”
“Alexander told me,” Vivian said, wishing she could melt into the chair. “It wasn’t me.”
“She was indeed recovering from heavy lung damage,” Dr. Ward said, stroking his stubble. “Miss Sanders—er, excuse me, Ephialtes—was on a high-intensity medical regime. We believe that it was one of the contributing factors to her death.”
I knew it. It’s my fault. It always is.
“That can’t be all,” Lycoris said, leaning back in her seat. “Tell us the rest, Doctor.”
“Of course. The treatment Ephialtes was receiving was not only to assist with wounds inflicted by presumably external sources. Her amygdala was overstimulated, and her brain began degrading less than a week into her captivity. When Whiteout knocked out our primary power, the stabilization hardware couldn’t run itself, and she died.”
“What the hell?” Vivian said. It’s not my fault?
“The amygdala is the part of the brain that regulates emo—“
“I know that!” she snapped. “Sorry. I know that. But her brain was degrading? Like, dementia?”
“It’s uncommon, but we believe her power may have backfired,” Dr. Ward said. “I am no expert on the topic, but my colleagues sent me examples of similar circumstances.”
Vivian thought about that for a second, then snapped her fingers. “Her power. It was different. Lachlan said he mentioned that in his report. She was supposed to have touch-range fear attacks, but at the bank, she was able to do them from range without even establishing line of sight.”
“Oh, dang,” Lycoris said. “Killjoy has a vial. Had, maybe. Do you think she was a double?”
“I asked my colleagues,” Dr. Ward interjected. “I did not know about the vial—“
“Classified, by the way,” Lycoris said, playfully holding a finger up to his lips. “Shhhhh.”
“Of course. As I was saying… I did not know about the vial, but my colleagues suggested it. When I sent them the scans, though, they said… the backfires they see in broken double vials are different.”
“He still had the vial on his way out of the city,” Vivian said. “But he used pieces of it to give people temporary powers, remember? Lachlan and I were pretty sure that Ephialtes was on a power-enhancing drug using a piece of the vial. Maybe that backfired?”
“It lines up,” Lycoris said. “Dr. Ward, it lines up, right?”
“Hmm. It does,” he said. “We’ll see more after the autopsy.”
“Oh, shit,” Vivian said, realizing. “My r—there were a bunch of Purdue students who got abducted and fed vial drugs. Are they going to be alright?”
“If they haven’t experienced symptoms yet, I doubt they will experience further backlash,” Dr. Ward said. “This is all very much theoretical, of course. If any of them get headaches, I would advise they seek attention immediately.”
“I didn’t know about the power enhancement,” Lycoris said. She muttered something under her breath. “くそ. That explains some things.”
Lachlan didn’t tell you? Vivian kept her mouth shut. That was between them. She wasn’t going to get involved.
“Is there anything else I can do for you ladies?” Dr. Ward asked.
“Here,” Lycoris said, drawing a business card from seemingly nowhere. “Call or text me if there’s any updates, ‘kay? Mantis and I have places to be.”
“We do?”
“Yep,” Lycoris said brightly, waving goodbye to the good doctor, who was smiling wider than Vivian found appropriate. “I think Killjoy just jumped to the top of my priority list. I need to talk to my boss.”
#
They bumped into Alexander on the way out of the jail. Well, more accurately, the two of them nearly walked into him and now Vivian had to deal with him. Lycoris had spent the last five minutes speaking heatedly over the phone in Japanese, presumably with whoever ran EHC Chicago. Though Vivian was five months deep into Japanese class, her control over the language was nowhere near good enough to follow what Lycoris was saying.
So instead, she had to talk to Alexander. For once, he wasn’t alone.
“Lycoris. Mantis Shrimp. This is Lockdown and Hedge Witch.”
Vivian recognized the names. Rachel had given her enough information on the Lafayette supers that she was pretty sure it bordered on being a straight-up crime.
According to the wiki, Lockdown was a C-rank Brawler whose primary power was a touch-range nervous system short-circuit. In actuality, Rachel had told Vivian, he was an ex-villain who had decided to go legit.
Once upon a time, his name had been Marionetteer, and maximal application of his Brawler power also made him an A-rank Washer capable of fully controlling up to two human bodies via for an indefinite period of time. He was in Lafayette on probation, but he was scheduled to move back to a big city once he was able to.
Hedge Witch, on the other hand, was a Lafayette native. Dressed like she’d come straight out of a children’s fairy tale, she was a quadruple vial, which explained her esoteric powerset. She was classified as a C-rank Marksman, Shifter, Ruler, and a D-rank Mover and Esoteric. All things considered, she was a high B-rank.
“Nice to meet you two,” Vivian said. She was thankful neither of them tried to shake her hand. Even if Lockdown was ostensibly a hero now, she didn’t trust the Guardians much further than she trusted Killjoy. “Lycoris and I were on our way out.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She did her best to sum up what the doctor had told them, then said that the other heroes should probably go in to verify.
Lycoris finished her call with a hasty thank-you and goodbye in English just as Vivian was done explaining.
“Right, so Tsunami wants me back in town yesterday,” Lycoris said. “Mantis’ explanation was good. We’ve been encountering what the mayor calls ‘suicide supers’ recently. This month, there’ve been five supers that were way stronger than they should be, and four of them are now dead.”
“If what you’ve told us is true, that fits as Killjoy’s new MO,” Lockdown said. His voice was gravelly, like someone had taken a cheese grater to his throat. Given his arrest record, that wasn’t entirely out of the question. “Damn. Didn’t think he had it in him.”
“When are you leaving?” Hedge Witch asked. “I do enjoy your company.”
She wasn’t masked, but her Shifter power made it so that Vivian couldn’t tell if she was eighteen or thirty-eight. Her voice was the same. Vivian figured it had to be closer to the latter. Nobody her age could get four vials, right?
“I have a car,” Lycoris said. “So… now?”
“Oh.” The grab-bag heroine sounded faintly disappointed at that. “Next time, then?”
“Next time for sure!”
“Good luck, you two,” Lockdown said. “Killjoy’s a dangerous man. Stay on guard.”
“Thank you,” Lycoris said.
Wait, two? “Am I going?”
“Are you willing?” Lycoris asked. “We could totally use the help.”
“I have class…” Vivian trailed off. She had her second set of midterms coming up, but those were still in a couple weeks. Besides, she was committing to heroing, wasn’t she? If she skipped a few days, she could make a difference. What was a grade compared to a life saved? “I’ll go.”
“Great!” Lycoris beamed. “Follow me!”
The heroine waved goodbye to the Guardians, blew one of them a kiss, and bounced away. Vivian fumbled her way through a hasty farewell and followed.
She couldn’t help but notice through the helmet’s rear cam that Alexander watched them until they were out of his line of sight.
#
“Wow, you have a nice car,” Vivian said. “I think. I don’t know cars.”
Lycoris’ ride was painted the same color as her namesake—bright red. It was sleek, quiet, and comfortable, and that was enough for Vivian. She can afford this after two years of heroing?
“Oh, don’t get me started,” Lycoris said. “It’s two and a half hours to Chicago HQ. One and a half if I hurry. I could talk about cars the whole time.”
“Really?” That was surprising. “I didn’t have you pegged as a car girl.”
Lycoris shrugged, which was terrifying when they were hurtling down a highway that hadn’t seen proper maintenance in two decades at just under a hundred miles an hour. “I’m just into them. What can I say?”
Vivian also hadn’t expected the playlist. The other heroine had asked her for music suggestions, but she hadn’t been confident enough to add any songs. Lycoris’ music was an eclectic mix of J-pop (which Vivian listened to frequently) and high-intensity rap (which she decidedly did not).
“I mean, unless you have updates to provide on the whole Killjoy thing, there’s not much else to fill the time with, go ahead,” Vivian said. “Wait. Uh, sorry, this probably isn’t the time to ask, but… about the payment…”
“Oh, I’ll send it to you when we get there,” Lycoris said. “Don’t worry about it! Oh, and you’ll be compensated for your time in Chicago, of course. Just the standard entry rate, if that’s alright.”
“Uh—yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. Great, actually.” She was relieved to hear that she wouldn’t be secretly paying out the ass for this, enough so that she forgot to ask what the standard entry rate actually was.
“Anyway! You gave me permission, so—this is Aether’s Stratos line from last year. It’s super limited because it’s part Synth tech, but I know Aether’s Synth personally, so I got a discount. The engine is a stable microfusion reactor—“
“We’re riding on a nuke?” Vivian interjected. “Oh, no, I know this one. It’ll fail quietly, because reactors aren’t designed to blow, so it won’t explode?”
“No, we’re riding on a nuke.”
“What the fu—“
Lycoris burst out laughing, which again, was rather concerning given the speeds they were going at. Every little shake of her shoulders meant jostling the wheel, and though Vivian could admit she was similarly unsafe when she drove, it was an entirely different experience when speeding this fast in the passenger seat.
“I can only imagine the look on your face right now,” Lycoris said, snorting. “Your guess was correct! It’s very stable. The Synth who made it went at it with a shotgun, believe it or not.”
Vivian shuddered. “Jesus.”
“So, reactor aside, it pulls twenty-five hundred horsepower,” she said. “Higher than any production car on the planet. You can probably find more powerful Synth cars, but this is great for me!”
“What do you need that much for?” Vivian asked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were compensating for something.”
Lycoris chuckled. “For this.”
She took her foot off the accelerator. Thank god for small mercies—the road was mostly empty today.
Uh oh. Vivian had a pretty good idea of what was coming. She held onto the seatrests for dear life as the car slowed to a stop.
Whoever was driving the car behind them laid on the horn and swerved right. Vivian caught a glimpse of the driver flipping them off as his BMW screamed past them at twenty over the speed limit.
“Zero to sixty in one point four seconds,” Lycoris crowed. She floored it.
The acceleration pressed Vivian too far into the seat to notice the shock on the other asshole driver’s face when they passed his car.
She did, however, catch a glimpse of the speedometer. 211 miles per hour.
#
“I can’t believe you went NASCAR speeds on a highway,” Vivian said, her voice still shaky with adrenaline. “Did you see that highway patrol guy?”
Lycoris chuckled. “Even if heroes could be prosecuted for misdemeanors, I don’t think that car could’ve caught up to us even if we gave them a head start.”
They were fifteen minutes out from Chicago now—well, they were still something like thirty miles away, and inner city traffic was a thing, but Lycoris was bobbing and weaving through highway traffic at forty over the speed limit (aka fifteen mph faster than the average driver). That was still less than half their earlier speed.
“You’re a hell of a lot more confident in your driving than I am,” Vivian said.
“I did tell you I love cars,” Lycoris said. Her ever-present smile had taken a triumphant turn. “She’s my baby. Unlike what you’ll see from my profiles, I’m not actually a pet person. I only got my Stratos a year ago, but if anything happened to her, I would kill everyone in the room and then myself.”
“Are you one of those people who names their car?” Vivian asked with a grin.
“…maybe,” Lycoris mumbled, uncharacteristically muted. “It’s not very good. None of my teammates like it.”
“Oh?” Vivian pressed on. “Let me hear it.”
Despite her earlier misgivings, there was something about the other heroine that made Vivian relax. The pressure in her chest wasn’t as bad around her. Even if the easygoing image she put out was a fake, it was a fake Vivian wanted to believe.
“…diata,” Lycoris mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Radiata,” Lycoris said, louder. Even though she was still driving like a madwoman, she sounded like a kid who’d been caught sticking her hand in the cookie jar.
“Oh!” Vivian said. “Like the species name! That’s the, uh—“ she snapped her fingers, remembering, “—red spider lily, right?”
“Yes!” Lycoris said, slapping the wheel. “Exactly!”
“That’s a cute name,” Vivian said. “Badass. I like it.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Wait, really?”
“Mhm. It suits you, I think?”
“Huh. Thank you,” Lycoris said shyly, which Vivian hadn’t even realized she could do.
They continued in a comfortable not-quite-silence for a while, accompanied by Lycoris’ playlist, which was currently working its way through the top anime openings of the last season. Funnily enough, both of them knew enough of them to half-sing, half-hum their way through them all. Neither of them were particularly good at it, but that was the point, wasn’t it?
When they were ten miles from their destination, the car paused the music mid-song.
“High priority call: SRU Director Williams.”
“Accept,” Lycoris said.
“Lycoris,” a gruff male voice said without preamble. “Is the indie with you?”
“She is. Her name’s Mantis Shrimp.”
“What rank is the indie?”
Vivian instantly disliked SRU Director Williams. She didn’t know why. Was it the voice? The tone? The way he’d called her “indie” even after Lycoris specified who she was? It didn’t matter. She heard him and thought of her least favorite high school English teachers Ugh.
“Uh, Mantis?” Lycoris whispered.
“The wiki has me at low D-rank,” Vivian admitted. She didn’t want to talk to this guy, but she also wasn’t going to leave Lycoris hanging.
“Seriously?” Lycoris whisper-hissed.
“I didn’t ask what the wiki said, indie. Lycoris. What rank is she?”
“I’d say C-rank. Bare minimum.”
“Good enough.”
“What’s the call, sir? We’re ten minutes out. Any fires we need to put out?”
“Long story short: there’s a leak somewhere. We don’t know if it’s response unit, the Guardians, or one of you, but information is trickling out fast. That means we’re acting fast, fast enough he can’t react and clean everything away before we get there. We’re coordinating a raid on all of Killjoy’s known facilities right now. Five teams. You and the indie will be the sixth. Red level op.”
“Understood,” Lycoris said. “Target?”
“Sending coordinates over the secure line,” the director said. “Be there at twelve-thirty sharp. Williams out.”
The call cut out unceremoniously. A moment later, the car announced with a pleasant androgynous voice that its destination had been changed.
“Huh.” Lycoris frowned. “The… airport? I was gone for one week. What the hell happened?”
“You’re going to have to fill me in on what’s been happening here,” Vivian said, double-checking her bag for her arsenal of nonlethal weapons. “Keep in mind I literally started heroing right before Killjoy left Lafayette.”
“Oh boy,” Lycoris said. “We probably should’ve discussed this earlier, but it’s fine! We have time. I’ll give you the quick version. Remember when I mentioned the suicide supers earlier?”
Vivian winced at the terminology, but she nodded.
“I mentioned that four of them are dead,” Lycoris said. “The fifth one’s in custody. During their respective, though, they killed somewhere around two or three hundred people all told. We didn’t have a connection between the attacks, but now we do.”
“Shouldn’t the Guardians have said something about it?” Vivian asked, though she felt like she already knew the answer.
“They’re wrapped under so many layers of red tape that it takes ages for information to even transfer within the org, let alone to the SRU and independent contractors. We technically have a working relationship with both the SRU and the Guardians, but we can’t even use their databases.”
“So you’re saying they could have stopped Killjoy before he killed—three hundred?” Any little trust Vivian still had in the Guardians as an organization faded. Nobody in Lafayette had even heard of the killings.
She hadn’t even seen it in the news—even though the last month had been dominated by coverage of the brewing war between Nova Scotia and Canada, there should have been some local news. Was Vivian really that out of touch, or had the Guardians kept it from spreading?
“I don’t know.” Lycoris shrugged. “All I know is that this was news to Director Williams, and that’s why we’re going on the raid now.”
“He said the sixth team is just us two,” Vivian said, struggling to process the sudden deluge of information. “Are we going to be enough?”
“I think they’re out of suicide supers,” Lycoris said. “At a guess, the new super—“
“You mean Whiteout?”
“Yeah, him. I think Killjoy bit the bullet and gave the kid the vial. There hasn’t been a new incident in the last week. Someone would’ve called me if there was.”
“Still, it sounds like the two of us are trying to take down a villain hideout?”
“That’s probably because the two of us are going to take down a villain hideout,” Lycoris replied. “Don’t worry! Killjoy’s only been here for a month, and I’m pretty sure we got directed to the lowest-priority one. It’s practically guaranteed that we’re just going to be fighting normals. We can take normals, easy.”
That… was fair logic. Vivian was still green, but she’d proved that she was capable of fighting supers, hadn’t she? Jester was a D, sure, but she’d taken down Ephialtes, who was a C with drugs that definitely elevated her, and even though she’d gotten the jump on him, it was her who had ultimately stopped Whiteout, an A-rank.
A few normals wouldn’t be able to stop her.
Vivian took a deep, shuddering breath. “Alright, then. I hope you’re right. Let’s see what’s happened to the airport.”
Lycoris hit the accelerator.
#
It was 12:01 when Lycoris hauled ass into a parking lot, which was predictably entirely full.
So she stopped in the middle of the road, opened the door, and got out.
“The self-driving on Radiata can’t live up to me,” Lycoris said, lovingly patting her car, “but it’s good enough to find a parking space. Come on!”
Vivian looked at the car dubiously, then shrugged and left. They had twenty-nine minutes left, and she knew this airport. Last spring, she’d flown from it to visit her friends in Boston.
The O’Hare International Airport was a busy place at the best of times, and today wasn’t looking like the best of times.
“Okay, I have some more details,” Lycoris said as they ran. Just like Lachlan, she wasn’t even breaking a sweat.
Thankfully, after a month of running every single day, Vivian was no slouch either. “Where are we headed? How did they even take the airport?”
“A specific gate,” Lycoris said. “They disguised it as something else. The Director isn’t telling me any further details, but we have a location. Terminal 1, gate B12.”
They cut through traffic and pedestrians to get through to the airport proper. Thankfully, Lycoris’ car had directed her to the closest parking lot to their destination, but the airport was big. By the time they were actually inside, it was 12:09.
Twenty-one minutes left.
Heads turned as they entered the throng of passengers. With those heads came phone cameras.
“Wow, there’s a lot of people here today,” Vivian muttered. She would say she didn’t struggle with stage fright, but the number of people just watching and recording the two of them was genuinely off-putting.
“You get used to it,” Lycoris said back. “Don’t acknowledge them. We have a job to do.”
They skipped check-in. What are we going to do about security? They didn’t have boarding passes, and Vivian didn’t have ID on her. Would claiming to be heroes be enough?
It was 12:14 when they eschewed the regular security line (which had hundreds of people in it) for the TSA Global Entry one (which had seven). Vivian apologized hastily as she elbowed her way past the people already in line. Lycoris didn’t.
“Miss,” the TSA agent said, “I—oh! My daughter’s showed me your stuff. You’re—“
“Lycoris! Pleasure to meet you.” Lycoris flicked a business-card-looking rectangle into her hand and slid it over. “Here’s verification. We have to go now.”
“I can’t let you—“
“I’ll sign something for your daughter,” Lycoris said, grabbing Vivian’s arm and dragging her through. “Sorry about this. We really have to go.”
The agent protested, but he didn’t stop them.
Gate B12 was, of course, the furthest possible gate from security. The airport’s main hallway was narrow enough that they had to shove past people just to make it through. It got particularly annoying around the plastic dinosaur skeleton, where a gaggle of children had assembled to ooh and aah over the most oddly placed decoration Vivian had ever seen.
They made it to the gate at 12:25. Five minutes to spare.
Unlike the rest of the airport, however, gate B12 was miraculously empty. Police tape marked off the edges of the gate, though there were a couple random passengers sitting in the closed-down gate.
They realized what it was for the moment they sidestepped the tape and got to the gate door.
GATE B12 - Temporary shutdown. Flight UA2444 has been grounded. It is not safe to board. We apologize for the inconvenience.
“There’s nothing here,” Vivian said, looking around. That left only one option. She groaned. “Are you serious?”
Lycoris held a finger up for silence, then tapped her earpiece. “Lycoris here. Yes. Yeah, we’re in position. Seriously? Okay, sure. Sure. Four minutes and thirty seconds, mark. Alright. Good luck to you, too. Bye.”
“Who was that?” Vivian asked. “And are we going where I think we’re going?”
“Ultraviolet, also from EHC Chicago,” she said. “Yes, you’re correct. It’s been grounded for four days.”
Vivian sighed. “I hate planes.”
The door was locked. Vivian used her telekinesis to disable the lock on the other side, blindly grasping around until she disengaged the pins.
She opened it at 12:29.
“They definitely heard that,” Vivian said. “One minute won’t make that much of a difference, right?”
“That’s the spirit,” Lycoris said, and they advanced.