1449/Automated Assassin - Nozomi Houken

Automated Assassin - Nozomi Houken
Date of Scene:	30 January 2015
Location:	Tokyo-1892 <892>
Synopsis:	Nozomi is targeted by the first of the Collective's mysterious assassins.
Cast of Characters:	342, 596

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Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    The principal of Nozomi's high school is retiring at the end of the school year. She has never had any particular regard for him, aside from 'one of the few people at the school who knows any details about her secret job', and yet here she is in the school gym.

    Her class rep had made it acutely, abundantly clear that the /entire class/ was going to be there in solidarity to show the principal their wellwishes; her eyes had singled out Nozomi in particular for this. He's been there longer than Nozomi's been alive, after all. Even 'Gloomy Houken' was expected to show. And so she sits in the back of the gymnasium, in a folding chair, in the full, 'formal' version of the school uniform, while teachers she only knows by sight trade platitudes and little gifts. Half the student body is here; hell, half her /class/ is here.

    There's a grumpy expression on her face about that. 'Whole class is going to be there' indeed.

    Meanwhile, up on the roof of the gym, a machine of black trimmed with yellow lies on its stomach, looking for all the world like a very large, very bored cat. TIGER's sensors are on passive scan mode; with no supernatural threats at the moment, he is unperturbed, and taking this time to relax and wait for Nozomi.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Some day in the future, Nozomi may curse herself for ever coming to this assembly, but doing so would be entirely pointless. At some point, somewhere, somehow, this would have happened regardless. Out of the clear, blue, midday sky, a second shape of organically sloped black metal appears; not dissilimar from the TIGER unit at a first glance. It simply seems to materialize out of thin air, having disengaged active camouflage as it entered the range at which Nozomi's partner would pick it up anyways, and blots out the street below it with the sudden appearance of its shadow. Whatever it is, it's roughly the size of a bus, but shaped in flowing contours that give it the appearance of some sort of deep sea creature, with wide 'fins' angled like that of a ray's that give the only impression of front and back there is to be seen. It hovers at the height of a four storey building, gliding through the air at a sedate, unhurried pace in a wide circle around the school. The air ripples ever so faintly as it engages a shield system that should be very familiar to its two targets.

    Formerly smooth surfaces along its swept flanks suddenly tilt inwards like rows of dominos, revealing stacked lines of launch ports which quietly jettison several dozen black objects the size of a baseball that unfold like the petals of a flower. Within moments, each of them deploys a tiny series of faintly hissing thrusters, and shoots away from one another; zipping through the air to establish a wide, hemispherical net around the school.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    As a weapon, the TIGER unit was designed to counter supernatural threats. Its sensors are tuned toward the spiritual, psychic and magical ends of the metaphorical spectrum, and so it is perhaps less well-equipped to spot threats firmly rooted in the mundane. As a result, the first inkling Taiga has that there is any sort of incoming threat, is the moment when the machine appears overhead as if from thin air.

    The mechafeline lifts his head in surprise, then comes up to his feet an instant later, cannons unlocking and swivelling into place. He recognizes the technology quite readily, even if it's a different application of it. And his response is a low, threatening growl, and a crouch that makes it plain he's getting ready to move the moment he feels is right to do so.

    At the same time, he's sending out a pair of alerts, one to the local JSDF notifying them of the attack, and one across Union bands - that Nozomi will be certain to hear. However, it is an unfortunate truth that the threat is already here; they almost certainly won't be able to respond in time to prevent an attack. He's going to have to handle this on his own... or at least, with only Nozomi.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    It seems extremely unlikely that a piece of Collective technology would wind up in Nozomi's world, right at her school, simply by accident, especially considering it has miles and miles of spare city to attack that isn't anywhere around her, but it's also unclear as to why, or even how, an ostensibly automatic unit would seek her out. It's even more uncertain as to why it hadn't picked a time of day to come after her when she would be asleep, separated from the TIGER, or else indisposed, but those questions will be forced to wait, because the Arma: Type-1 anti-Gensou, first of its class, isn't going to sit around until they're answered.

    The instant that Taiga readies his weapons, the Arma responds in turn, swivelling with alarming quickness on its Y axis until it presents its slimmer, forward facing target profile to the mechanoid. A pulse of golden light shoots through razor thin collections of otherwise invisible lines over its hull, before coalescing into a single point below its nose; discharging with a percussive shriek and a flash of multi-spectrum light. The blast is deliberately aimed. With the myriad drones surrounding the school from every angle, it knows the exact position of everyone in the gymnasium. If the TIGER tries to dodge it, the raiser bolt will only slam directly through the roof and hit the principal, playing to all the worst retirement tropes at once.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    Taiga knows exactly how bad a situation he's in; the gym directly under him is filled with students and staff that were not expecting life-threatening situations to crop up in a nice little after-school assembly. If he dodges at all, the beam will present a very large risk to those inside - he doesn't have the Arma's precise sensor readings and calculations, but that much is plain to anyone. The only way both he and the building below him are going to get out of this without heavy damage, is if he diverts the beam.

    So the cannons on his shoulders fire up, unleashing a rapid barrage of energy shots. They pack less punch than those unleashed by Rampart Mode, but they are merely meant to provide cover for the mechatiger to take a straight-up leap right towards the invading craft with all the superhuman-level strength he possesses. He's not light, either, and he plans to not only latch onto the craft (or shield) with claws and teeth, but also use his body weight and momentum to divert the beam as best he can. It's entirely likely he'll get scorched hard in the process, but that's preferable to the alternative.

    Meanwhile, the people in the gym below are treated to the muffled sound of energy cannon fire, a heavy weight pushing off from the roof, and quite probably damage to the building from the Type-1's weapon. The teachers are out of their chairs, and shortly thereafter so are the students. Nozomi is already halfway to the exit when this happens, and it brings her to a halt, looking up with surprise and worry bordering on panic.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Things unfold extremely quickly in the first few moments between machine and machine. If Nozomi has been specifically targeted, it stands to reason that whoever or whatever is doing so remembers her from her battle with the corvette, and in that instance, it should have volumes of sensitive combat data relating to the abilities she and the TIGER possess. The Arma recognizes the energy signature of those cannons the instant they warm up; signalling its drones at a transmission speed surpassing light. Before the first shot is halfway to its target, one of the strange black blossoms whirrs out of TIGER's peripheral field of vision at breakneck speed; interposing itself in the line of fire and releasing a flash of electromagnetic gauge symmetry distortion that causes the cityscape behind it to shimmer as if seen through a heat haze. Each shot in the salvo swivels sharply as it hits the flattened field in turn, veering off sharply and flying into the distance in seemingly random directions. After absorbing the full chain, the drone collapses its petals, applies the last of its propulsion into a straightforward stab at Taiga, and then detonates the remainder of its battery like a grenade.

    That doesn't however, actually stop the TIGER unit's charge. The interception may be flawless, but it prevents the main Arma from firing through it, buying Nozomi's partner just enough time to leap from the edge of the roof and collide with its target. The body blow hits the shield a few inches from the surface of its hull, but the momentum is sufficienct to shift its ventral cannon just slightly to the side; discharging the raiser through the wall of the gymnasium rather than the ceiling. The blast shears off the side of the school building completely, flooding the gym floor with a roaring wave of smoke and flame and a flying maelstrom of shattered brick and concrete; scorching the lines straight off the wood and melting the nearest fire exit door shut. A pair of the drones burst through the incendiary cloud, zeroing in on Nozomi in the audience and diving towards her.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    The gym is full of panic in a heartbeat. The teachers, narrowly missing injury, are engulfed in smoke and dust and immediately lunge away and off the podium. The students are up and moving away from the destruction, something which puts a great number of them in roughly the same general area as Nozomi - who is for a moment frozen in perplexed panic herself. It leaves her still as a deer for the drones to come hurtling in straight towards her-

    -only to be smashed out of the air at the last second by a high-speed, high-precision lunge from Taiga, who tears them apart before he even hits the ground. That prompts more than a few renewed screams from the students, and even more surprised mumbles and mutters - but those are peanuts compared to how they respond to what follows.

    Taiga pads up to Nozomi quickly, looking up at the damage with several points of scorching and light melting on his faceplate.

    "Nozomi." ("Did it just call her by name?!" "How does it know Gloomy Houken?") "...everyone's watching, though..." "We have no choice." "...r-right..."

    She has only to look at her frightened classmates, the dust-covered teachers trying to assert themselves over the near-panic, and the damage to her school, for her face to harden just a little. "...right," she repeats, more firmly. "Taiga." The mechatiger nods, a gesture more human than feline.

    "Disengaging Independent Mode. Rerouting Gensou Engine power to motive and combat systems. Rampart Mode engaged."

    Just seconds after Taiga's rapid dive into the gym, the dust still hanging in the air erupts outward as the transformed Nozomi practically explodes out of the opening and whirls around in the air to begin opening fire on the Arma without a hint of hesitation. And below in the gym, students are beginning to make an entirely different sort of noise. "It was her-?!" "Gloomy Houken is-" "Th-that's the Black-Amored Girl!" "No way, I don't believe it!"

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The pair of drones crumple against the floor like brittle aluminium, splitting the hardwood with the jagged pieces of their metallic fins that fall under Taiga's weight. Sparks of electricity blacken the varnish for a meter in every direction as the internal batteries are torn to pieces rather than deliberately overloaded. Assuming that their controller is fast enough to launch a second attack in the brief period Nozomi converses with her partner, it seems completely content to wait outside, including keeping its deployed forces beyond the school's perimeter. That said, it /does/ most definitely notice the shift to Rampart Mode. The moment their energy signature merges, the drone net suddenly reconfigures, clustering together with surreal speed, as if pulled together by an invisible string. In fact, the transformation may be exactly what the machine was waiting for.

    The moment Nozomi is out of the gym, a half dozen drones streak in from several directions at once, pulsing together once in unison to wall off her gunfire and sending the energy bolts swerving off into empty air before they can hit their mark. They're light and fast, tracking with her motions like a perfectly controlled set of cameras, staying just outside of arm's reach. The Arma doesn't seem to have any intention of shooting at her however. As she launches into the air, it engages its reverse thrusters, climbing higher into the air as it aims another shot at the school, deliberately targeting it above her.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    Off in the distance, sirens can be heard. The entirety of the Tokyo Bay base the TIGER calls home is going on high alert. The armed response is coming, but it's not going to be nearly fast enough.

    The cold expression on Nozomi's face tinges with the faintest hints of frustration. Her shots just aren't getting through that protective field they're generating. She keeps shooting, hoping to find some gap, to overpower them, to deflect a shot from one drone into another, /something/; and she's just preparing to go from that to a melee assault when she looks up to see the Arma preparing to fire. Her eyes widen, looking down at the school and back up at it, and in an instant she realizes what's happening. "Diverting energy to defensive enchantment." The TIGER's plating shimmers as the girl in control hurls herself forward at full speed-

    There is a blinding bright light as energy slams into the girl who's thrown herself in the way. There is enough power in the shot for it to pour out around her, like a rock in a stream, and when it ceases, she's holding the EM Zanbatou up defensively. The blade is scorched. Her skin is burnt in a few exposed places, and there's more visible melting on her armor. But with her teeth gritted, she turns to look over her shoulder at the roof below-

    And sees new holes in the building, with the students inside screaming. It's hard to tell, but some of it sounds like pain. Some of it sounds like terror. And the look in her eyes when she turns back to face the Arma above is no longer cool detachment. It's utterly icy fury.

"Disabling safeties. Limiter disengaged."
"Gensou Engine output rising to 150%."

    Every single yellow 'gem' on the TIGER's armor begins to shine a bright yellow, lighting her up like a beacon in the sky. She whips her sword around her briefly, and then she is suddenly a blazing comet hurtling towards the Type-1. Her power output is suddenly beyond expectations. There is no combat data on this. She's far beyond the output she showed in defending the port. And if her sword cut like a monomolecular blade before, it cuts like a shear in reality now.

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Nozomi may or may not realize it, but her initial reaction plays exactly into the profile established by the anti-Gensou's operational parameters. Coming after her outside of a mission wasn't for the sake of trying to catch her by surprise, but to ensure that others were in the way. Others for her to protect. It'd take an enormous amount of firepower to pin down such a quick and heavily armoured target as the Rampart configuration TIGER unit, but by simply aiming at civilians, its operator is forced to interpose herself as a living blockade. The power that would be used for weapon systems is then available to remotely manipulate slews of disposable shield drones, letting the Arma stall its opponent until she tires out, she overtaxes the engine, or her armour fails from repeated interceptions.

    hat was the plan. A significant margin of error had been established in the Arma's design to future proof it against any unexhibited capabilities of the TIGER unit, but not nearly to the extent that Nozomi is calling upon now. Correctly assessing the elevated threat she now possesses, the Arma recalls its drone network with a strangely organic throb of movement, as if they were being carried by an invisible heartbeat. The six already screening her leap into the way of her sword, expending their payload in a burst of counter force to halt her blade, only to flatline and explode well before reaching their goal. Another dozen snap into a straight line ahead of her, each one discharging and detonating in turn as the zanbatou overloads and carves through them in sequence. Twenty four drones cluster together into a tight, double layered circle mere meters before their controller unit, and the counter rotating torus generated by them hits Nozomi's sword like a blow of equal force, discarding any attempts to block like a shield altogether. A full twenty of them add their remains to the trap of scrap following Nozomi's meteoric ascent, but the combined energy is just barely enough to halt her inches short of hitting their mothership.

    This of course, causes the Arma to ramp up its combat operations to ten as well. Its VTOL thrusters flare to life with a flash of blue fire, kicking up a swirl of dust, smoke, and fine debris as it ascends further up into the air, forcing Nozomi to chase it. The slats in its sides open up again as it deploys another racing wave of black bodies and swerving contrails. The main cannon resumes firing, discharging several bolts in relatively quick succession, all aimed behind Nozomi rather than directly for her. Points of energy congeal around a quartet of concealed mini-batteries, which open up on her with sprays of automatic fire in the same fashion, if less in scale, than the corvette's point defense guns, aiming to funnel her movements into the thickest parts of the drone field.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    With the Gensou Engine uncapped, her armor's yellow hemispheres shining brightly, Nozomi has become something entirely different. Sparks spray briefly out of her thrusters, but she explodes back and to one side in the blink of an eye, suffering what must be incredible G-force without any pause in order to simply dart around the obstructing drones. She's rocketing straight up towards the Arma Type-1 again when it opens fire, and with all the power straining the TIGER unit and pushing it beyond its limits, her response this time is, if anything, even more forceful.

    She slams right into the shots, not even making a pretense of dodging. Three hits taken straight on cause less damage than the single one before, all that power bled off by her armor's defensive field, and if the main cannon is less effective than before, the automatic fire barely seems to do more than scratch her paint. In return, she lifts up her left gauntlet and opens fire; where before, her Rampart Mode energy shots were about the size of a baseball, now they're more in the neighborhood of a volleyball, the mix of magic and charged particles all the more volatile for it. And even that is a simple covering tactic to let her close the distance faster.

GENSOU ENGINE STRAIN:
[II ]

Zwei (596) has posed:
    The Arma briefly calculates the strength of Nozomi's defensive field from the increasingly minimal damage its main weapon inflicts, finding the values to be extremely unfavourable when compared against its intentionally light armament. The coaxial guns cease firing entirely after several seconds of sustained barrage fail to inflict any significant injuries, redirecting their power back into more useful systems. For the thing's size, it certainly is fast, but it doesn't possess nearly the torque of the fully unleashed Gensou engine, and so the best it can do by retreating is buy time.

    Each shot from the TIGER's cannon is intercepted by a trio of ablative drones, burning out with each impact as the energy of each sphere exceeds their total capacity. The Type-1 constantly refreshes those lost to Nozomi's gunfire with steady launches from its port and starboard rails, intent on holding the bulk of them directly in front of it in a dense screen that swivels to track her movements. The Arma goes quiet for several moments, save for the sizzle and snap of drones being blown to pieces left and right, making the risky move of stopping completely, before the main screen suddenly parts down the middle in a narrow tube, which immediately fills with a blinding stream of white light. The few moments of diverting all energy to the main weapon results in a far more concentrated, 'overcharged' beam several times more powerful than the cannon shots aimed for the school; igniting the air it passes through as the sheer energy causes its particles to undergo micro fusion. There's less raw firepower involved than a true frontline machine, but it's concetrated into an extremely small point, aiming to see how much pressure it takes to puncture that magical barrier.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    That glacial hate in Nozomi's eyes hasn't abated in the least. If anything it grows stronger the more her prey eludes her, the more she has to chase. The screen of drones before her seems little more than an annoyance, both gauntlets now brought to bear in a truly withering barrage of cannon fire, and one that leaves both her gauntlets faintly smoking in a rather worrying way. If she's worried, though, it doesn't show. Not even when the screen of drones suddenly parts to make room for a blast many times more powerful than she's endured to date.

    But in its own way, it's an obvious tactic. If this thing is here to kill her outright, if it knows it can't escape, it's going to turn and fight. So the very instant the drones part, hopped up on a power boost that cranks her already-inhuman reaction times up even higher, Nozomi pops upward. She twists. The jets on the EM Zanbatou kick on, and she swings it around herself. And completely upside-down, directly above the powerful beam as it fires, she swings the weapon right into the attack, splitting the blast and dispersing it with sheer offensive magical cutting power. By the time the blast stops, her weapon itself is looking a little melted, but that doesn't stop her, doesn't even slow her down. She just rights herself in the air and keeps coming.

GENSOU ENGINE STRAIN:
[IIIII ]

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Machines don't get scared. They don't get stunned, stumped, or flinch. There's no reaction to Nozomi outright splitting the beam in half down her blade . . . but anyone watching can certainly imagine one. The gun port vents a short burst of sublimated hydrogen to drop the temperature of the firing array and allow it to recharge, preceeding a sickeningly abrupty reversal from the Arma's thrusters. Rather than the upward direction it was attempting to escape in, it suddenly flips itself over entirely and dives back towards the earth in such a way that would burst the blood vessels of a human pilot; streaking down over the street with a howling screech of jet burn. The dual cannon assault momentarily overwhelms its steady output of supplementary drones, causing several of the volleyball sized energy blasts to explode against its shield with dull, muted thunks and shivers of electrostatic energy.

    Why it hadn't simply peeled off some of the drones forming the main screen suddenly becomes obvious. The minute the Arma peels off, the drones between it and Nozomi suddenly burst outwards in all directions; swarming around her like an angry hive of hornets moving in clockwork, synchronized precision. They halt their motion in a perfect sphere around her, simultaneously opening their 'petals' to their widest extent, and then each letting off a searing blue-white glow. Rather than projecting a flat field of distortion to ward off gunfire, they network together to fill in the entire sphere with the same thing; generating one so strong that the air flickers like static. The result is a networked gauss force so strong that it would strip a lesser target apart molecule by molecule, pulled to pieces in the inside of a magnetic separator.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    The drones have almost stopped registering on Nozomi entirely by this point. Her entire focus is on the main body, the intelligence directing this assault on her city, her school, HER classmates. The sudden descent buys the Arma only a second at most, because that's all it takes for her to react, turn, and start rocketing downward at full speed. She doesn't react to the circling drones until the instant they lock her within their ridiculously powerful gauss field. Her eyes widen in the split second before the field obscures her from sight, and for just a second there is relative silence.

    Until the EM Zanbatou stabs its way right through the sphere, and then whirls around in a high-speed spinning cut. Drones on either side of the cut explode outward as well, as Nozomi fires off both gauntlets /while in the middle of swinging her sword/. She doesn't have to worry about aiming. Everywhere is a target. She can spin, cut, fire, and hit things no matter what. And it only takes a single spin before she's carved enough of them to simply smash her way through on brute force, hurtling straight down towards the invading machine.

    Even with both shoulders and the thrusters on her sword smoking noticeably, her gauntlets outright sizzling, blood running down her face from her forehead and her nose, and cracked ribs that show no overt tell, she has no hesitation in raining down more fire on the Type-1 from above. And even still she's trying to close in to melee range.

GENSOU ENGINE STRAIN:
[IIIIIIIII ]

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Had Nozomi stuck to the normal operational limits of Rampart Mode, she might have been in serious trouble. The collective, finely tuned and highly charged field bounced between so many gauge drones would normally be more than enough to paralyze just about any target of her size. With her tapping into the true depths of what the Gensou engine can accomplish however, there simply isn't any configuration of assets aboard her personal assassin craft that could equate to something more powerful than her. The zanbatou slices through the interstitial links in the field like nothing, carving through drones and lepton channels alike, where the ruptures in the net allow the gauntlet cannon blasts to explode without restruction. Light and fire blossoms from each gap in the steadily detereorating sphere, until it collapses entirely and inverts in direction; disintegrating the remaining drones with the backwash.

    There's no telling how many of the things the Arma is loaded down with, as it is already in the process of pouring out another wave of them; obviously having come prepared for a protracted fight, erring on the side of overkill rather than underestimation. Stockpiling them for some other purpose, it is forced to take more shots directly to the shield, which is clearly reaching the limits of its capacity for punishment. Analyzing that energy weapons won't do much to Nozomi at this point, it switches out a second wave of drones for a salvo of identically proportioned micro-missiles, launched from the exact same ports in a howling corkscrew tornado of smokeless thruster fire. There's no point in attempting to target the scenery. Every one of them is a seeker aimed directly at the TIGER unit's 'cockpit'.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    And as she descends, Nozomi turns. Faster than a rock she plummets, and she still corkscrews in air, lifting a damaged gauntlet to begin opening fire on the micromissiles. She can't hit them all, not by any stretch of the imagination. But she can thin the cloud a little. Obliterate some of them in mid-air. She can lessen the pain that's about to hit her. And even a tiny bit less will help.

    Because every single projectile she doesn't shoot out of the air slams into her, not even the vaguest attempt to dodge in evidence. She's taking them purely with the overcharged defensive power of Rampart Mode's armor, heedless of the damage to the suit or to her own skin on the places that aren't covered.

    And out of the explosive cloud she surges without even a hint of lost speed, trailing smoke from several points in her battered armor and bleeding from more than one wound now. But now. Even now. Even through all that, she's still intent on only one thing.

"EM Siege Breaker."

    The energy that floods her damaged blade is tremendous. It's like she's swinging a sword of light for just that handful of seconds. The blade shines a bright yellow-white as she descends, the thrusters on it exploding to life one last time. And with strength beyond the limits that her body or her suit can handle, with more cutting power than any blade should rightly have, the armored girl swings.

    And all she needs to do is get that blade through the hull. That's all. Because the instant it cuts in, all that energy devoted to power-cutting will instead explode, becoming a blast to rival a bunker buster in sheer explosive force.

GENSOU ENGINE STRAIN:
[IIIIIIIIIIIIII ]

Zwei (596) has posed:
    Offloading a hundred kilos of deuterium-tritium warheads in the blink of eye was originally the plan of last resort in the anti-Gensou's operational guidelines; to be done solely in the instance that it becomes clear that the TIGER unit would be impossible to capture or salvage, and that destroying it would be an acceptable alternative. At this point however, the Arma is firing them simply for the few more seconds of data collection it buys, allowing it to study how the TIGER's defensive capabilities measure up to the highest point of its arsenal before loss of function, and pushing Nozomi as close to her limits as it can.

    Unfortunately, despite the generous allowances of power variation allowed by its design, it just isn't a match for Nozomi when she fights seriously. The newest wave of drones abandons its defensive posture entirely, knowing full well that they don't have the capacity to even slow down the Siege Breaker. They dive towards Nozomi as kamikazes, closing up attempting to punch into her armour like darts before overloading their batteries in direct contact with her. All for the benefit of squeezing as much data into the last few milliseconds the Arma has, before its transmission is cut off by the descending edge of the blade that shatters its shields, peels apart its hull, and then rips through every one of its internal systems at once in a devastating wave of destruction. It erupts into a rippling fireball of roiling plasma that covers the street with a layer of crackling glass like frost racing over the surface of water mixed with liquid nitrogen, shattering windows across the entire block and setting off car alarms even further beyond, where the nearest vehicles simply melt and cave in.

    Nozomi will find however, that barely a single piece of the machine reaches the ground. Like flakes of ash carried on the updraft of a crackling fire, everything in the way of debris disintegrates into an invisibly fine mist.

Nozomi Houken (342) has posed:
    And the blast clears to reveal only Nozomi, her boots planted on that glassed street, the charred, warped EM Zanbatou cluched in her grip while she holds a followthrough posture. A holographic indicator hovers before her, sitting in the corner of her vision, informing her of the suit's strain levels; she barely even seems to register it. The armor itself is in bad shape, sparking and sizzling, pieces of it hanging only by narrow wires, circuitry and magical crystals exposed in numerous spots.

    The students are starting to filter out now that the danger has passed, and Nozomi is just turning to face them as they do so. Several of them wither under the intense, cold stare that is her natural face in this state, but it is only to last a moment. Because that's when she disengages the armor. "Gensou Engine output reducing to normal levels. Safties en-en-engaged. Disengaging Rampart Mode. ode. Rerouting Gens@#$#2441^ine power to cognitive and mo- mo- mo- cesses. Independent Mode engaged."

    It is a bit of a stop-and-start process. Some of the armor's parts take a few tries to peel back and away. But Nozomi does finally step free, the color fades from her hair and eyes, her hair is let down, the control bodysuit disappears to reveal her school uniform...

    And like a puppet with its strings cut, the girl simply collapses outright, falling unconscious on the street before her classmates as the military's armed response finally arrives.