8012/Cryptid Hunt Finale - FELL LIZARD LINDBAUM

Cryptid Hunt Finale - FELL LIZARD LINDBAUM
Date of Scene:	08 July 2022
Location:	The Great Ocean
Synopsis:	A scene in which the multiversals beat up a zombified dragon and dealt with its plague. Elsewhere, JRPG intrigue happens.
Cast of Characters:	Crow Armbrust, 7494, 7417, 7359

---

Crow Armbrust has posed:
Tangram Gate, usually an orderly place located down one of the highways leading out of Crossbell State, was one of the better-equipped fortifications in the area. It was home to a regiment of Crossbell's own Guardian forces, a paramilitary organization that typically received some of the best training and equipment that the state could buy. As Crossbell itself did not have a standing army, it was the closest thing they had to something of that scale - being the only arm of Crossbell's law enforcement to possess armored vehicles and state of the art orbal armaments.

    Which is what makes their current predicament so striking.

        EARLIER..

"I said I was sorry," Lloyd says, sheepishly, using his fork to push around one of the grape-tomatoes on his plate. The S.S.S.'s breakfast was a medley of greens, courtesy of their eternally cut budgets; it was all prepared by the recipient of his apology, Elle, who only narrows her eyes further. "We could have had meat tomorrow."

    "Y..yeah." Lloyd admits

Randy wisely stays out of the debate, cleaning his plate with the precision of a hungry man who did not particularly like raw vegetables. "I could go on and on about all the things that mira could have bought, Lloyd." Elie contiues, deadpan, while Lloyd quietly murmurs out a squaky "b-but it was my paycheck, so - " before being cut off, "Yet you spent several thousand mira on a model car."

    "..yeah.."

"Ugh, you're such a little kid sometimes," she moans, putting a hand to her forehead. Randy finally decides to pitch in, saying, "Well. He could've spent it on worse things, you know. Besides - it /was/ his paycheck, he has a point. Or do you wanna' tell the class all about all the makekup, shoes, and nick-nack whatnots you pony up for with your pocket change?"

Losing the ice in her veneer, Elie bites back a rosy cheeked " - that's different, Randy -!"

    "Uh huh."

"See? It ain't an issue. So my suggestion is to live and let live, and let no one complain about Miss Elie's raw veggies 3 meals a day regiment, yep."

" .. yeah, Randy's got it right." Lloyd nods. "For what it's worth, I am sorry though. I should have been thinking about more than just me, Elie."

" ... well, yeah, but it wasn't /really/ fair to take my frustration out on you. It's not supposed to be your responsibility to fund our rations, anyway."

Before the conversation could progress much further, the orbal computer at the end of the room goes off, letting them know that they had priority mail. "Huh? Usually the ole' ball and chain doesn't show up until nine sharp." Randy says, folding both arms behind his head. " .. is it really okay to call our employer that? Well, nevermind." Elie sighs, getting up to head to the computer, along with Lloyd, Randy, and Tio. "Let's see..."

Lloyd puts a hand to his chin, "Looks like it's an emergency request from Tangram Gate."

>Lately, our patrols have been getting horribly sick shortly after returning, some of them having to call it in early because of rapid on-set symptoms that include nausea, blistering, swelling, delireum, etc. This isn't an official request from the Guardian Corps. but I would really appreciate it if you guys could come help us investigate.

        - Noel Seeker

"Well, that sure sounds prickly. What say you, Lloyd?" Randy says.

" - there's only one answer to that, obviously."

Crow Armbrust has posed:
        NOW...

After a hard day of investigating on their end, the S.S.S. turned up signs of a large creature that had been prowling the various wood-and-wetlands surrounding the gate, poisoning everything it came across with fungal toxins. The real sign of alarm came at the discovery of telltale glowing, blue flowers, prompting them to reach out to their contacts in the multiverse for support.

By the time Hibiki, Rita, Rose and Violet arrive to link up with them, though, Tangram Gate is not only under attack, but had been for some time. Several of the buildings had been smashed in and the three APC's that managed to deploy in time have been beaten into piles of scrap. The security gates leading deeper into the base had shut to try and keep the creature out, a massive, rotting lizard with bulbous parasites bulging out of its body an expelling thick, smog-like spore clouds with each breath.

Elie and Tio can be seen trying to treat some of the poisoned victims while Randy and Lloyd do their best to hold the front gate, a difficult task when all they have to protect themselves from the spores are handmade filters tied around their faces. "Finally, some help," Randy says with sagging shoulders. "Give a guy a handicap, yeah?!"

The creature, Lindbaum, turns its glassy eyes towards the new arrivals like a caught-deer.

KNK (7494) has posed:
    There wasn't really that much fixing up to do after their last group outing, but keeping busy on their own, Rose and Violet have barely had real opportunity to settle in and go through their now extensive list of Watch contacts and resources before this request goes out. As long as there's appropriate compensation, you can count on a merc.

    Dealing with a 'fungus problem' sounds pretty easy to Rose, on account of their spaceworthy environmental sealing, but it's dangerous to even think of calling any particular mission a milk run. Maybe it'll be the kind of fungus that can extend roots into synthskin. Maybe it leeches iron and chrome.

    Or maybe it's just a huge beast who can squash you flat by stepping on you. Yeah, that'd do, too.

    "The hell is that?" An actual dragon? "Tch, whatever." Just a big lizard, in the end, isn't it? And a sickly one.

    "Go wide. I'll get its attention." Rose doesn't approach, but instead speaks over the radio, still invisible, but signaling her position up a steep, area-boundary-like hillside at nearly a right angle to where Randy and Lloyd are. She's far off to the right (the lizard's left), and its the heavy equipment she was lugging that appears, first, dropping out of cloak as the twin missile tubes and long, linked barrels of a rotary cannon, with no visible trigger, digs stabilizing claws into the dirt.

    If all goes according to plan, she won't even be there when it turns to face the smoke-trailing rockets and the bullet barrage. A simple AI, remote control, and laser guidance is all the jury-rigged security turret needs to work.

    Violet, meanwhile, heads out in the exact opposite direction, circling wide and to the target's right.

Rita Ma (7417) has posed:
     Rita, in the same blue-cropped-jacket-and-green-skirt outfit she'd worn when she and the Crossbell team first met, comes up short at the Gate's entrance. The physical strength- alright, that's what she expects from a Cryptid. The toxins, though, are going to be uniquely hard on her.

     "There's a good chance it has some kind of 'surprise technique' or 'second wind'," she says to her teammates. "Half of them did so far. Stay careful even if you think you've got it beaten, okay?" Rita waves at Randy and Lloyd with a pluckier smile than she really feels.

     "Okay. Good luck."

     Rita herself tries to stay outside of those poison clouds. A single tentacle unwraps itself from around her arm, fading into invisibility as if a spiraling strip of her jacket sleeve had just dematerialized. She circles around towards its back. First up: testing the effects of brief exposure.

     The sharp-edged tentacle slashes at the monster's tail, passing through the poisonous miasma fast enough to create a whipcrack-like sound.

     Then, examination. What does that brief exposure do to her tentacle? (She doesn't dare to sneak a taste of its blood yet, tempting as it is.)

Hibiki Tachibana (7359) has posed:
    Crossbell again...it's been a bit. As much as Hibiki like to believe that means things have been quiet and peaceful in the vein of 'no news is good news', that's like saying events back at her home have been 100% fine. It just means nothing worth calling for outside intervention has happened in all that time, which you can probably look at as either good or bad. Good, if you don't think about it as the calm before some awful storm. Hopefully. Maybe. Probably not.

    One good thing: she'll get to see the Special Support Section crew again.
    One bad thing: They're going to be locked in mortal combat with some terrible monster again, for sure.
    The other bad thing: ...She doesn't know if C is going to show up again to try and capture it. He wasn't there when they fought Gilderganon way back when, and she hasn't heard from him in a while either.

    Well, first things first. This one is covered in smog that's definitely not good to touch or breathe. With Rose going to draw attention, she has a lot of avenues of attack.

    She promptly chooses to come in from a blind spot at its side with enough speed to disperse any clouds threatening to drift into her path, going for a straight-line punch into its body with enough strength to try and force it away several meters and clear out some space, before she pushes away from the point of impact and flips away to get clear.

    Her scarf and Symphogear's barrier might afford some protection from any spores, but even she'd rather not stay too close to them. "Lloyd, Randy. You guys went and ended up with your hands full again, huh?"

Crow Armbrust has posed:
The deployed turret's barrage of bullets shred into the beast's hide with a relative amout of ease - unlike many of the prior Cryptids, this one seems to be a good deal frailer, perhaps by its nature. However, despite getting littered with enough holes to fill a cheese grater, it shows no visible reaction to it, as if it hadn't felt the gunshots piercing it at all.

In fact, the only stimuli it seemed to respond to were the very basic impulses of a lizard's brain to recognize and seek prey.

And to prove this, Rita Ma's disappearing tentacle leaves it completely oblivious to what she was doing.

The result on her appendage is gross to the eye, and fills the limb with an acute burning sensation that could best be ascribed to something between having the worst blackhead pimple of your life clustering all over it, and having an infected finger. Visually, it was already beginning to blister with warts and 'scales' - like some kind of pox.

Hibiki sends it staggering back a whole step with her powered punch, leading to the generally silent creature to gurgle and wheeze, a thick and stinking sludge regurgitating from its throat.

Its body had already been littered with wounds from the fighting prior, but it seemed to ignore them just as quickly as it ignores the ramifications of the ones it just received - the skin around the fist-sized hole Hibiki had punched into it sloughing off with an uncomfortably wet sound.

"Hoo' ... yeah, you can say that again." Randy sighs, glad to finally have even a minute amount of breathing room. "Hey, be careful not to let Ritty Bitty too close to that thing, yeah? I think it'd be - bad." he warns, as while Randy didn't know a great deal about her unique situation, he did know enough to speculate that the infectious thing in front of them was probably more threatening to her in particular than the rest of them. At least if Tio was right about what it's supposed to be..

Lloyd nods, " - it's strange .. it seemed to mostly stay away from human civilization before, with its 'home' being a field deep in the wetland. It shouldn't be here, and be so aggressive."

Randy shakes his head, "Well, it is though. And while we've done plenty of damage, as you just saw, it doesn't seem like it cares how badly its getting hurt. Its got terrible senses, too, unless you shove your fingers up its nose or move in its line of sight, it hardly responds to anything going on around it."

" - which makes it extra fishy that it's been so determined to attack Tangram Gate, and seems to have pulled off now that you guys have showed up." Randy murmurs.

Lindbaum hunkers its body down low, before the many tall, thin mushrooms on its back begin to chug and gurgle, before firing off what appeared to be parasitized bone shards with thick, fleshy buds wrapped around them, which rain upon the group like a hail of arrows. "Incoming -!" "Ugh, friggin' gross..!"

KNK (7494) has posed:
    Rose asks over the radio about what their present clients and/or requestors are like, and gives a grimace no one can see at hearing the answer. But Rita says they're 'kind,' so she'll shelve her misgivings until there's something actionable.

    Violet tries getting in there without being spotted, but it doesn't work out quite as intended. A wide-area attack sees her getting struck, and the active infection vector is horrendously aggressive. There's hardly anything truly organic about her body, except for the very tightly sealed-up part of her head, but even the slight scratches are proving dangerous. With a thought, she activates a chemical flush in her arm, searing away the growth, but she's only equipped to do that so many times.

    Rose leaves the turret where it is, letting it fire until its ammunition runs out. Might as well, even if it's not proving the distraction she'd hoped for. She, herself, moves around to another angle, keeping out of the dumb beast's field of view as well as she's able, until she can find a foliage-covered area from which to settle down with her other gear.

    While Rose is moving around, Violet is moving in. She's got her high-frequency blade drawn, necessarily visible as it glows with heat, taking the first real opportunity to move in and cut off... something, as it gets within her reach. She's not thinking about it too hard. If she can get close enough, and this thing is that fragile, she can slice through. Whether it feels it or not, it can only get easier by reducing the number of limbs.

Hibiki Tachibana (7359) has posed:
    That sure was a solid hit...though almost all of them, even that one after the fact, don't seem to be getting much of a reaction out of Lindbaum. And is that flesh sloughing off where she hit it? That's just gross. She'd really rather not have to touch that thing for any longer than she has to - not that this is any time to worry about what is or isn't disgusting.

    "Almost like someone or something lured it this way..." Hibiki murmurs to herself at Lloyd's comment, mirroring Randy's own before raising her voice to actually be heard. "Don't worry. Even if it's not reacting to it, damage is still damage. Hit it enough and in the right places and it'll have to stop eventually...!" Easier said than done, though.

    Those even /nastier/ bone projectiles come firing in, and Hibiki sprints forward and at an angle off to the side to stay ahead of the barrage. "Rita! Randy said to be extra careful with that thing! I'm sure I don't gotta tell you, bu--" She's cut off in the middle of her bobbing and weaving by one scratching her and throwing off her rhythm, forcing her to block another with her gauntlets and be sent flying back some.

    The small gash is felt, exhaling roughly as she stops herself, only to lunge back in at full speed. Closing the distance before it can lob too many more projectiles at her, this time she comes in with a kick into Lindbaum's center of mass - once again packing some ridiculous force, and then promptly using the foothold to spring higher up, go into a flip, and bring her heel down on top of the cryptid's head.

    She'll just have to think about the circumstances when she's not worrying about getting inflicted with...whatever the hell this thing spreads.

Rita Ma (7417) has posed:
     Rita makes a grossed-out face and slices off the infected tentacle, well away from the contaminated part, with another. They're expendable; they grow back, barely feel pain. Still, if she attacked with all of them at once like she likes to...

     "Yeah," she says to Randy, grimacing. "It's... I'll stay away. Please don't worry."

     Rita is perfectly comfortable fighting in the shade. Her body moves near-autonomously to dodge the untargeted rain of bone-arrows, threading the gaps between them effortlessly or deflecting them out of the air with a hidden tentacle where they're too dense to simply slip through.

     She leaps backwards, next, trying to stay even further out of the toxin cloud's range. Pointing with her finger to aim, Rita looses a volley of four glowing-blue venom globs from 'empty space aorund her' towards the lizard which splatter and soak in on contact.

     Rather than being 'poisonous', as it's elementally likely to resist, they're mainly 'corrosive'. If enough of them concentrate in a specific area, glowing an ominous azure beneath the skin, they're prone to self-catalyze and cook off in an explosion within its body.

     Rita tries to ensure that happens, focusing on crippling one of its back legs while staying mobile. The volleys keep a constant pattern: one-two, three-four, repeat.

Crow Armbrust has posed:
Randy, having been already pushed pretty close to his limit already, falls with several of the spines lodged in his shoulders and forearms, "U...ugh.."

    "Randy! Hn, hang on, I'll drag him out of the way..!" Lloyd was significantly more agile, and managed to parry off what he couldn't avoid by using his tonfa. He commits to trying to drag Randy to a safer spot where he wouldn't be in danger of getting crushed or eaten, and in doing so, it exposes how badly Randy had been affected by the spore clouds, as the flesh seen in his torn up uniform through the shears were pulsating with abnormal growths and leaking pus. The venom now coursing through his bloodstream surely wouldn't help.

"Drag him over here with the rest of the infected, Lloyd!" Elie calls out, moving to help him drag Randy over by the pile of dozen-and-a-half or so bodies sequestered off to the side of the complex, something they'd only been able to afford thanks to Lindbaum's single-minded focus on prancing through the main gate, as if to make way towards Calvard.

Violet and Rose are blessed in ways that virtually everyone else present were not, in that they had airtight combat suits and themselves had enough synthetics that they were not in an immediate danger, beyond the corrosove properties of the venom. This affords Violet to get close with her sword and show her stuff - testing the efficacy of her weapon at first, it seems effective at lacerating Lindbaum's hide. But trying to take out a larger chunk; namely, swiping the blade strongly through its wrist, is difficult yet not impossible. The difficulty comes entirely from the mass of syrupy, rotten flesh that could only be chewn through by her vibro-blade, as a typical edge would have gotten stuck partway through.

Lindbaum loses its balance and falls on its side, barely stopping itself from toppling over by using its elbow, providing an opening for the others to exploit.

Hibiki's powerful blow to its head drives it directly into the earth, kicking up a dust-cloud and popping one of the large pustules lining its skull, drenching her in an unfortunate amount of viscera that although mitigated by her Symphogear, quickly begins to prompt sickness to begin taking a physical form on her body.

Something that was distinctly not the lizard they were fighting screeches as she does this, the sound high-pitched like, like a woman's falceto mixed with nails on a chalkboard.

The acidic globs pockmarking its body from Rita's assault along its flank is telling, as it melts away enough of the beast to show its true form, revealing the countless bundles of wriggling parasites that infest its insides, wrapped along its spine and living inside of every former organ. It should be no wonder the lizard was so dumb - it was dead, and this colony of mycetes were moving it along like a poorly tailored meat-puppet.

Lindbaum moves to swipe at Violet vicious with its claws, still as sharp and hard as dragon-talons ought to be, before opening its maw in Rita's direction, the sputtering gagging being the only warning before a wave of thick, sticky black tar pours out of it like a jet stream to coat her in it thoroughly.

Rita Ma (7417) has posed:
     Rita smells human blood, somewhere. Her eyes snap to Hibiki first, as if magnetically drawn. Then they snap to Randy a second later. The latter's injuries jolt her into action, sprinting over with a hand on her leather satchel. "Mr. Randy, are you o-?!"

     She looks up just in time to see the torrent of poisonous tar descending towards her. Rita kicks off in an explosion of earth, diving out of the way- but it's a little too late. Some of it splatters on her leg, with disastrous consequences.

     Rather, it splatters on 'the tentacles forming her human disguise', on her leg. She unravels them; what looked like a shoe and one leg of charcoal tights comes undone, tar and all, and is amputated. New tentacles clumsily replace the old.

     As she picks herself back up and hops away from the Cryptid again, Rita casts a worried glance over at Randy- will he really be okay after that?- but forces herself to turn her focus back to the monster. Maybe if they kill it, he'll miraculously be okay?

     Probably not. But she can hope.

     Rita's body begins to glow from within until a blinding light has washed out all its details. She sprints up the Gate's wall, kicks off of it, and pivots in the air to aim down at the Cryptid from above. The glow in her body- really the whole thing looks like a lightbulb- condenses down into just her arm, then just her hand.

     The torrent of light she fires down at it is concussive, scouring, and crushing rather than burning. It scrapes the paint from metal, reverberates the air, turns living flesh to pulp.

     Rita lands a little distance away, her arm sizzling. She needs just a second to catch her breath, whether the Cryptid is dead or not.

KNK (7494) has posed:
    Compared to the spines being thrown everywhere, a swipe is a lot easier to dodge. It comes out fast, much more quickly than a meat-puppet could have been reasonably expected to react, and as close as she is, Violet's in a terrible position, mid-sword-sawing, to dodge it.

    But that doesn't matter, as she reacts at speeds to make one wonder if time has any meaning. It might as well be glacial, the only thing that matters being the few physical limitations of her own body. Thrusters fire from her lower legs and around her waist, jetting her compressed air, both feet and one hand on the tail as it's coming at her, then flipping up and over it, letting the dragonswipe's speed transform into her own spin. With absolutely uncanny precision, she shoots, not tosses, tiny metal canisters from the similarly-tiny cannons that pop out of her arms. They stick, barely penetrating the target, then open up to spray their tightly pressurized, foul-smelling, cloying aerosol all over Lindbaum's length.

    Violet hits the ground at a roll, then moves directly away, speaking into her radio, "Oil out!"

    Rose, ignoring the rifle she'd set down to drop the rest of her heavy load of just-in-case weaponry onto the ground in front of her, responds with, "Clear!"

    The rifle would have been good for blowing a dragon's brains out, but if it doesn't have any, that'd be a pointless gesture. It's barely even using its eyes. Far better to rely on the multi-rocket launch system Rose has somehow, despite her small frame, carried all the way here. It'd be overkill against a human-sized opponent, but that's not a word she believes in.

    She sights in the aim herself, wired directly into the launch system. It's a wide-angle dispersement, aimed to drop absolutely unreasonable levels of incendiary munition over every part of that infected mess the moment Rita, Hibiki, and Violet are clear of it.

Hibiki Tachibana (7359) has posed:
    Muck and all sorts of gross infected innards splash up onto Hibiki, which is really the expected response from hitting it really hard. The force of the pustule popping plus her own 'get out of dodge' instincts are enough to propel her up and send her spiraling higher away into the air, where she just barely manages to flip into landing half-properly a short distance away.

    "Ugh...I should really take my own advice..." The sarcasm helps her put off how bad she's feeling after that, with the cut she received before leaking a little more than just blood and some of her bare skin starting to discolor. Randy has it even worse than this, too... Still, if it means taking this thing down as quickly as possible, she doesn't mind. The sooner th--

    She can finally get a good look at this thing's insides, now that it's been partially melted away--that's /really/ disgusting. "Is that the real cryptid...!?" She feels like she's gonna hurl, looking at all of those writhing masses. No wonder Randy didn't want Rita messing with it. She just barely manages to swallow it back down, gritting her teeth and grimacing while bracing against that sickly sensation.

    The magical girl stomps a foot back, clenching her fists. She sends herself into a jump straight upwards, one of her sets of leg armor ejecting a series of spike-tipped pistons behind them as she ascends. Inside the gaps left behind, a golden glow shines out as Gungnir's internal power builds--

    "Hah!" And spinning into an overhead flip, she kicks down at the same time the mechanisms pound back in, launching a comparatively massive crescent of raw energy down towards Lindbaum - where it'll try to slice down it lengthwise, rending directly through most of its parasite-infested spine, and then down into the ground beneath it. After a one second delay, the gashed-open earth will burst up in a plume of light to barrage the dead beast and all of the creatures taking home in it from below.

    She's just going to kind of fall to the ground on a knee after the fact, getting some of her breath back. Fortunately, far enough to be clear.

Crow Armbrust has posed:
    "There...Elie -"

"I'll hit you if you leave him here with me," she squeaks, keeping the detective in place. " - let's...trust the Watch, okay? Help me pull these out."

"R..right.." Lloyd says, putting his tonfa down to help her in getting the invasive bio-darts off of Randy. Tio had brought a large barrel typically used for oil to store them in until they could be disposed of.

Using scissors to open up his shirt and coat, she up-ends a tearal balm onto a clean towel and covers his gaping sores with it. "Keep pressure on this," she commands, and then focuses on her orbment. She'd been using Recuria to stabilize the victims of the Guardian Corps. before, but all it had done was stymy the symptoms. They had taken samples of the spores and venom they'd found investigating in the wetlands off to St. Ursula's for analysis and some kind of serum to administer - but with the rapid assault on Tangram, they hadn't been able to wait it out for the results to come back.

Thus, she was stuck unable to help anyone, only able to prevent them from getting worse. And in Randy's case, that wouldn't be for very long, given she was exhausted and her Orbment was ready to give up the ghost.

    Meanwhile...

Hibiki's divebomb down the zombie's spine drenches her in further gore, but she finds such purchase that its like cannonballing into a pool of sludge, before coming out the other side and skidding across the ground.

Lindbaum opens its mouth and releases an earth shaking roar in conjunction with the screech of the parasites - something it was capable of now that the gunk was cleared out of its throat, perhaps.

Crow Armbrust has posed:
The colony of parasites inside writhe and coalesce with one another, evidently adapting to the holes in the body by moving to fill it up, re-arranging organs and marrow to force the body into functioning somehow, even as it splits the dragon's gut in two and uses its intestines to sew it over the new holes Hibiki had made; a move made for naught, as it is firebombed promptly by Rose and Violet, setting it ablaze.

The way it all wriggles in the flame is horrific. Oily as it all was, it was difficult for them to actually burn, being cooked by the heat instead, much like a slug.

The misery of the monster and that of those around it from its awful cries are finally stomped out once and for all by a great light that flattens it into the dirt, smashing it into paste.

"Thank Aidios," Elie breathes out, slumping slightly. "Yeah. And our friends of course.." Lloyd adds with a grimace.

They both stand to go check on the Watchmen, with Lloyd hesitating to pull Hibiki up due to the sludge coating her body, before he gets over it and grasps onto her so that she could be carried over to where the rest of the victims were laid out. Elie sees to Rita in the meantime, just to ensure she didn't catch anything untoward from interacting with the monster, " - it seems that you were able to amputate the infected extremeties quickly. You - should be alright, I'm so relieved."

Lloyd motions over to Rose and Violet, making to ask if they were okay before a haunting melody fills the air, played from a flute. " ... an instrument? Actually, isn't that - "

The tune ends, and the remains of Lindbaum disappears into motes of light. " ... it's gone." Lloyd murmurs, before frowning deeply, his face full of thought.

    Meanwhile..

A cloaked figure puts his instrument away. "Well, that was pretty disappointing."

A beautiful woman stands away from him, balancing herself precariously on a stump so that she doesn't have to sully her dress, or legs, in the muck. "Is it truly~? It may have wiped out Tangram Gate and the S.S.S. if left to its own devices."

The figure chuckles, "Yeah - but, Tangram Gate is still slim pickings compared to the military power of the Imperial Army. That thing's biggest boon is how infectious it was."

" .. so why did you send it after an isolated army base, instead of deploying it in Heimdallr? After you went through so much trouble to borrow those three girls from Arianrhod to capture it, too."

"...- well, even I'm not that bad, you know? The devil flute can't just tell the spores not to make people sick. I wanted to see how well it performed against a modest armed force."

"I have no complaints about that," the woman admits with a small shrug and a smile. "I'm sure the battle data we've accumulated will be worth something to a certain someone, either way."

    "Mhm," the figure mumbles, and the two disappear shortly after as the woman waves her staff, vanishing them with a fading glimmer of light.

KNK (7494) has posed:
    Rose is staying away, under cover, scanning the area, as if expecting a post-boss ambush or a double-cross. It's Violet that waves cheerily to Lloyd, leaving the business of spotting entirely to her partner.

    "I'm okay! I got it cleaned out." There's a gash on her arm, but the wound is entirely covered -- or filled -- with foam, as if she'd used a very precise fire extinguisher. "Are you okay? You're not, like, secretly armored or made of metal or anything, are you? That'd be pretty cool, though. Hey, wait. Are we on a different planet? Does that mean you're aliens? Huh, but you look human..."

    Rose, meanwhile, is trying to track that flute down, but she's set up for precise EM-based target locating, not aural. It's rough going, for only a short melody.

Rita Ma (7417) has posed:
     Rita's expression is closer to "relief" than "triumph" when the thing finally dies for real (well, probably not for real for real, but you know).

     She seems a little uneasy with Elie's concern for her, even though she herself was just panicking about Randy's state a moment ago. "Yeah. I think I'm fine. What was that sickness, Ms. Elie?" A little pause as she tries to peek over the woman's shoulder, visibly worried. "Is Mr. Randy going to be okay? I saw him get hit, and..." Her hand still fidgets with her satchel of first-aid supplies, for all the good they'd do.

Hibiki Tachibana (7359) has posed:
    Hibiki gladly takes the assistance from Lloyd, much as he might (understandably) not want to. At least partially, that can be managed thanks to the wonders of Magical Girl Transformations, where a harmless burst of gold covering her body has her Symphogear vanish into flecks of quickly dispersing light as if it were never there, making a great deal but not quite all of it vanish into thin air along with it.

    Doesn't do anything about anything that got into her though, or that discolored skin. That's not what's making her frown though - it was that sound going through the air. She can't tell where it was coming from, but...

    "...I hope not..." She murmurs to herself, only one person who'd be playing one at a time like this coming to mind.