<em>This is bad.</em>I direct the hippogriff to defend Marc with its body, a living shield, as I step forward.<br/><br/>We need to attack from every angle possible, I take a deep breath and draw a staff from my belt.  Normally, I despise inflicting harm myself, but now, I have no choice.  Mark might not be able to handle this on his own, and his powers seem to deflect Kasumi's blows with ease.  I point my rod at the ambassador and dig deep as a horrendous shriek shakes the room, centered around the ambassador.<br/><br/>((I direct the hippogriff to give Marc cover, draw my metamagic rod as a move action, blow two action points and use Spontaneous Casting to convert Curse of Ill Fortune to Maximized Sound Burst.  8 sonic damage, period, to the ambassador and all the surrounding objects, ignoring hardness, with a DC18 fortitude save against one-round stun.  Mind that the stun effect denies Dex to AC, imposes an extra -2 AC penalty, and automatically makes the victim drop anything they may be holding, on top of denying actions.))