Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Chat Noir As was the case previously when this world was asking for help, Chat Noir has put up a mission board post requesting assistance. It was a little bit short notice.

    SENDER: alleyCat239
    SUBJECT: Emergency Help Needed!
    MSG: Ok so I'm sicker than a dog right now because I was an idiot, and we've got a supervillain on the march that is obsessed with exploring beyond the gate. Specifically he's obsessed with conquering beyond the gate. This specific kind of villain is viral, he recruits minions from the normal population. They kind of turn into weird colonial soldier guys. We're calling him the Pioneer. This is kind of a bigger problem than normal since he intends to go causing trouble outside of Paris.

    I might be able to make a surgical strike on demand but I'm a liability in a fight right now. I need some people to link up with Ladybug and take care of this guy. P. sure the object his akuma is in is his musket. Since I'm the one out of action you won't need to catch it in a jar this time. Same rules as before, pretty much everybody here is a victim so don't do anything that will result in lasting damage if you can avoid it.

    OUTSIDE OF THE ARC DE TRIOMPHE...

Local police, who appear to be armed with laser guns of all things, have set up a perimeter around the gate to try to keep the Akuma at bay. Though the existence of outsiders is an open secret, officially only the local authorities know that there are other worlds, and there are concerns about an interworld incident springing from this Akuma attack.

Out in the distance a small army of people are on the march towards the gate. They're dressed in military uniforms that are distinctly colonial-era in style with dominantly purple color scheme. At the very rear of the pack is THE PIONEER, a great hulk of a man wearing a bright purple button-down shirt with rolled up sleeves, a matching vest and black trousers with plain-looking shoes, along with a ludicrous spiked pith helmet. He's carrying an absolutely enormous gun that is really more elephant rifle than musket.

Every now and then an adjacent civilian gets caught up in this mess, and the Pioneer literally just throws a wad of cash at them that appears transform them into another soldier for the army. There's time for some introductions and to prepare... but not much.
Himei     Oh huh. That's something. The posting, that is. Himei is trying to get the mission briefs organized - damn paperwork - when the notice pops up. It's not that far, and it's a call for help that is needed right now! So like the go-getter action hero she is-

    Hahaha, who are we kidding? She definitely doesn't want to be here, but Jack's presence in this Paris last Sunday has made her curious enough to answer the call. It'd HELP if she had read more than the most minimalistic of briefs, but she has the general idea. That's why she's brought a taser and such rather than her normal arms.

    Aaaand she walks out to see chaos. Sigh. "... when will I ever learn?" Oh well. Himei immediately starts to look for the quickest, easiest way to approach the PIONEER, because like hell is she going to stick around and be flashy. This'll give time for anyone to fill her in on important details she may have missed.
Ladybug Waiting near the Arc de Tromphe is Ladybug, amazingly easy to pick out of a crowd, as all of the police troopers are in swat armor with shields and closed helmets with laser pistols, led by one moderately overweight man in a shirt - a captain of some sort? - who tries to keep civilians out of the line of fire, and lead the wall against the akuma forces.

Even if they are the police and ready to fight, the cops seem actually hesitant to engage the Akuma and his forces, potentially because of their general experiences with these sorts of situations in the past.

Ladybug herself simply waits by the gate, spinning her yo-yo down and up idly as she leans against the gate, before catching and flipping open the side to check the time, and if anyone responded to their job posting. Well, Chat's posting. There's a rather large part of her that is absolutely thrilled that she won't be going it alone. There's another part of her that hopes everything will go alright with many more people. It's an apprehensive sort of hope!

As people come through, she waves at them. "Hey, welcome to Paris. Did you read the posting about what's going on?"
Homura Akemi     Quality of life things, but this time Homura went through the stock footage transformation before stepping through the Warpgate(s) on the way over, and so when she arrives she's already wearing her usual outfit, plus glasses, sans weapons. She didn't really expect there to be an army ready to match RIGHT THERE, admittedly. She thought they'd have some time. She's also not doubletaking at the Arc de Triomphe this time, although it still makes her a bit uneasy.

    She would, the moment she sees Ladybug, ask why the policemen of her world have laser pistols. Either this is not as modern a Paris as she thought, or these people have adapted REALLY QUICKLY to the Multiverse.

    Stepping forward from behind Himei, she shakes her head as well. "Never. The answer is never." As well, a confirmation to Ladybug that she is primed on what's up. "We need to take the fight away from the policemen. Armed or not this isn't ideal for them. One of us should remain by the Warpgate just in case this Akuma has a secret trick up his sleeve allowing him to rush right past the frontline. Judging by his abilities, his victory condition here is really just to reach the Warpgate, not win the battle."
Himei     "Yeah, I read it," Himei confirms. "I'm armed for nonlethal combat, don't worry." Back to the good old days, huh? She elbows Homura for the comment, but agrees with the assessment. "Sadly I'm pretty much a punch, kick, or shoot girl. I guess I'll go after Pioneer and try to get that musket out of his hands, huh?"
Kyra Hyral Kyra Hyral passes through the Arc de Triomphe once again, though this time lacking in the dashing fencer that accompanied her the last time she was here. She already has her hunting rifle drawn and loaded, the weapon kept tightly to her by a sling that crosses over her left shoulder. The weapon is pointed down at the ground as she moves, the redhead very aware of safety principles guiding the handling of firearms.

    Though before arriving, she did send off a message:

    SENDER: xXDJdeadm0gXx
    SUBJECT: Re: Emergency Help Needed!
    MSG: ok i am down but afterwords let me look at you? i am training to be a doctor so i can probably help with your sickness!!!

    Sent from my mPhone.

    "...huh, looks like we may have a shootout on our hands? Yeah, I got the email. Hello again!" She glances down at her gun, "Don't worry, I'm packing tranquilizer rounds today, not explosive rounds. None of this stuff should have any lasting harm on the victims, just knock 'em out for a while."
Lyria Mason Lyria Mason had got another ping on her mPhone about trouble in Paris. It seems Char Noir was in need of more help. The General summary in the message is pretty clear on the sort of troubl that this villian would pose. They intend to infect and recruit minions, then start gate hopping. If this happened they might never be able to find the Pioneer again given how large the multiverse in and of itself was.

The Police seem to be there and in force as people are heading for the gate. She looks at the style of dress it's certainly strange.

"...Deep six me, I knew Souji would throw money at problems, but this guy takes the fishcakes. Also hello again, I take it same deal as before we need to find a way to revert this person back to normal and to keep from using overly lethal attacks on the victems of this?

She's not alone today the spider bots might have been missed but the coiling mechanical sea serpent which hisses a bit.

I have taser rounds loaded into my own pistols today so hopefully that will help.

She gives Kyra a big grin at this as she sees her friend once more.
Duet Fortuna     The masked woman stepping through the gate should be familiar. She's set aside her sword in favor of a baton, but she does still have a pistol. Hopefully, that will stay holstered, given the situation. "Oh... there was a message? OH! That one, yes. I read it! Keep it clean and keep it safe, yes."

    Homura is glanced at, and then Himei. When Himei announces her intent to go after the Pioneer, that makes her own choice easy. "I can stay by the gate if you want. I don't mind playing guard duty. I do have a couple tricks to make it harder for people to enter. Maybe I can do something about them, even."
Chat Noir What is the easiest way to approach THE PIONEER? Flight would probably be the most straightforward for somebody who has it, though you'd have to go wide to avoid weapons fire from the mass of minions the Pioneer has accumulated. Coming from the ground guarantees a fight with that big mass of soldiers, but circling through the sidestreets is entirely plausible if a little on the long side. Running along the buildings is probably the middle ground between these options.

Kyra's message tone goes off as an answer is sent.

    SENDER: alleyCat239
    SUBJECT: Re: Re: Emergency Help Needed!
    MSG: If I was worse off this would be ok, but I'm not in critical condition, just bleh enough to be a liability to Ladybug. I deal with too many drug tests in my civilian life to be treated using methods from beyond the gate unless I'm really hurt. I superhero for free you know!!!

In other words, he doesn't want to get fired because something mysterious turned up in a sample. It's only half-truthful, but Adrien actually does have to deal with more medical stuff than the average teenager by far, and he doesn't want to deal with the repercussions of Weird Stuff in his system if he can avoid it.

The front lines of The Pioneer's army splits off, moving to surround the Arc. The middle ranks halt, and take up a firing position. The frontmost of them kneel, those immediately behind stand.

In the rear, the Pioneer pulls what must be an officer out of his rear line to command, and then splits off to climb a nearby building. He reaches the top, swings his rifle off of his shoulder, and begins taking aim towards those gathered around the gate.

A butterfly-shaped outline burns in the air around his face. A moment later the Pioneer's imperious voice booms, "BRING ME HER MIRACULOUS!"

The first thing that happens is that those muskets turn out not to be muskets at all. As the first round of fire is exchanged and the police predictably find their laser pistols to be relatively useless, great claps of thunder rock the area as /lightning/ of all things belches out of those guns. They do not appear to need reloading. The good news is that the police are the primary initial targets! The bad news is that the police are the primary initial targets and they're dropping like flies hurling themselves into a bugzapper.
Homura Akemi     Kyra's presence is great news. Even with Ladybug's strange power, having a healer present is never unwelcomed. The others are all reputable problem solvers, so at least this shouldn't go too south even if it does go south. You can never really tell, though you sure can try your hardest to make sure nothing explodes.

    Duet offers to guard the Warpgate and prevent its use; that'll do. From that position, Homura assumes, Duet can also assist the fight anyway. Kyra and Lyria can provide cover fire, and Himei's going for the obvious commander. Homura'll fit herself in as needed, though she's curious to see Ladybug fight too.

    Prepared to intercept a wave of bullets, she is caught by surprise when it's lightning that the muskets fire. The initial blasts aren't something she can react to as a result, and she frowns seeing the policemen take the worst of it.

    To mitigate that problem, Homura points one hand towards Kyra, and a purple flash of light imbues the White Mage with some of Homura's time magic, essentially granting her a minor variation of the Haste spell. It's better than nothing for sure.

    A more severe ripple causes clocks and watches to lag behind a little bit, and although Homura doesn't move that doesn't prevent the appearance of several dozen riot shotgun payloads in the air, suddenly rocketing towards the army. They're rubber shells and taser darts, functionally nonlethal at the cost of lacking the stopping power of a real shotgun.

    Though anyone who's played SS13 will tell you a riot shotgun is still nasty.
Himei     "Right, see if you can't keep their fire off me," Himei says to the others. "Anyone coming with me to the commander, let me know. I wouldn't say no to some help." She doesn't need to do any incantation now, and instead of a transformation sequence, she just has her clothes flash in a silvery light to be replaced by her sailor fuku.

    She flashes a smile to the others present, pretty confident with this particular team. Then the wings sprout from her back so she can leap up, winging to the side immediately so she can try to 'hop' to a roof. Himei is not bullet nor lightning-proof, so she's going to have to take some careful evasions rather than charge blindly through the growing makeshift army.

    She's pretty sure she won't be that lucky, given how quickly the police are going down. "Duet, Kyra, Lyria, can you do anything for them?"
Lyria Mason Lyria Mason looks forth at the army wondering just what is fueling the Pioneer's power? She starts to move as they are looking like they are about to fire. Thus she's going to get moving, she's not sure what to think about the police's weapons not being of any use, she'll have to look into that, but she's first got to try and thin things out, which seems like a good idea and Homura could use the covering fire.

She draws both pistols and opens up with the taser rounds hoping to try and thin out some of the hostile victims of this very strange super villain.

Another idea strikes her but that might have to wait for a moment, Kyra would know though Lyria does seem to be carrying her somewhat infamous sonic grenades with her. She's got to get closer for her plan so she's going to start moving and it does make the Levitani a much harder to hit target.

"I can have Swimmer support and protect them but he doesn't have any medical systems!"

Hopefully Kyra can help on the healing end of things.
Kyra Hyral As Kyra starts to take up a position ideal for sniping-that is, she casts Float on herself and uses her lightened weight to climb up the side of the Arc, her phone goes off with a squeaky-toy sounding noise. To her credit, she doesn't check it until she's on top of the Arc, not unaware that the Pioneer has also committed himself to higher ground, leaving everyone with the Kyra-predicted shootout.

    But she does fire off a quick reply:

    SENDER: xXdeadm0gXx
    SUBJECT: Re: Re: Re: Emergency Help Needed!
    MSG: aw :(

    Sent from my mPhone.

    Her new perch offers a gret vantage point and a pretty decent 'safe zone' from the initial barrage of lightning. The haste takes ahold of her and the effects are pretty profound-her spellcasting comes quickly, almost so quickly that it can be legally considered a dualcast in Galianda.

    "SHELLGA!" the first spell drops down over a wide area, emerald magic shields falling down upon those below her, though primarily the beseiged police.

    "CURA!" the follow-up is the traditional white magic healing she's so well known for. It seems to be working in top shape today at least.
Ladybug Ladybug gives Himei a little shrug and a helpless smile. "I have a yo-yo?" She offers with a twirl of her aggressively red ladybug print weapon, but things begin to get a bit more serious. The advancing army causes her some worry - as she doesn't really want to get stuck in with all of them.

"YEah! Just... break his gun, and the Akuma butterfly should pop right out! If that doesn't work, just keep breaking items on him - especially purple ones!"

Ladybug makes a horrifying realization. EVERYTHING HE'S WEARING IS PURPLE! "Just, uh, it's always been a 'thing' and not something that they wore like clothing - pen, letter, umbrella, bird call, that sort of thing!"

Please do not eviscerate a man's clothes off of him.

As the lightning guns begin, she grabs the large police commander, and stuffs him behind the cordon wall. "Stay here! Make sure your people keep safe!" She shouts over the din, before swinging her yo-yo up towards a roof, to swing off up to the rooftops and over the melee below.
Duet Fortuna     Defending the gate suddenly seems MUCH more important! "Oh! I was actually hoping to just stand here and do nothing and be lazy! Sorry!" Arms flail wildly as lightning blasts mow down the first wave of police. Kyra is going to have her work cut out for her.

    But there are things Duet can do to support. Using her high speed, she darts forward in front of the downed police, readying for the next volley by... drawing out her baton! Against lightning bolts. "I'll do my best!"

    She actually does something though. The next volley with have her darting back and forth, trying to block the blasts with her baton. In no way is she actually fast enough to block lightning though, she's just going to fake it by using a small barrier. It is, unfortunately, small so it isn't wholly effective. If they blast again, Duet is going to be relying on Kyra's shell to keep herself from turning a juicy golden brown.
Chat Noir The minions generated by this specific akuma aren't as strong as is typical, but they still seem to have a fraction of the force-blunting endurance that Ladybug and Chat Noir themselves do. A peppering of shotgun shells with taser darts in them strikes the forward line, and the remarkable thing is that although it sends them a-jerking and twitching while careening into neighbors it doesn't fully knock them down. Their surprised neighbors get toppled over from the unexpected shifting of their fellows, and they themselves lose coordination and often their weapons, but they're definitely not down for the count yet.

The second line is forced to hold fire to avoid shooting their own people in the back, so it definitely buys some time to get /some/thing more done. But there's still the circling soldiers to take care of.

Rising into the air and climbing onto the nearby rooftops, Himei immediately finds herself under fire from the pack of soldiers who /can't/ fire towards ground targets at the moment, because they're too far to the rear. They'll have a hard time getting a good angle on her once she's moving along rooftops, but during the initial leap they've got a decent window.

A second round of taser rounds barrels into the struggling front line and causes them to drop, losing too much control of their bodies to keep going. On one hand that's a section of the enemy that's out of the fight, and on the other now the second line is starting to just step over their fallen buddies and open up on Lyria and Homura in retaliation.

Police that had fallen and those still standing find themselves shielded or restored to better working condition a moment later. Most of those who were already downed remain down, but the stir visibly where they hadn't been before. Those that are still up and now shielded move to reform a proper line, laying down covering fire over the top of the fallen soldiers and slowing the advance of any more... for now. Their guns aren't strong enough to keep it up, and they definitely have a limit.

Up on the rooftops, THE PIONEER is taking aim. He focuses first on Ladybug, as the one possessing the object that he wants. But then a healer gets fielded and his aggro is drawn, and /very/ rapidly his sights swing up to Kyra on top of the Arc. He fires the tremendous rifle in her direction. You might expect that the man carrying the elephant gun would also fire horrible bolts of lightning, or actual bullets, or something along those lines.

You would be wrong. A great tusked elephant comes out of the gun, rocketting through the air at speeds that such a mass should not be moving, trumpeting angrily. Much like his minions he also doesn't have to reload, and swings right around to fire at Ladybug as she swings up to join ROOFTOP squad. A tusked, angry elephant goes charging across the rooftops, and it's not a threat to just Ladybug-- Himei will have to contend with or get around it too.

Down on the ground, Duet lends her support to dealing with the volleys from the soldiers. Already having had their effectiveness thinned somewhat, it isn't difficult to catch all the shots that come through this time 'round, but it may be wearing on the Shell and her own shield to eat them all the same.
Kyra Hyral Healing successfully doled out, Kyra shifts, lifting her gun, putting the sight on the Pioneer. Just as she does so, she sees that the Pioneer is just now lining up his sights at her. A grin flashes across her face and she squeezes the trigger, firing off a single tranquilizer dart at the Pioneer.

    The dart is intercepted by the oncoming elephant, moving at a velocity that elephants have no right to move at. "Oh shit!" she exclaims, though in a squeaky, speeded-up, chimpmunk voice due to the haste. In fact, if it weren't for that haste spell, Kyra would not have been able to roll out of the way onto the edge of the Arc, very narrowly being missed by the elephant that lands on the arc next to her just where she was float-sitting. Hopefully the Arc can support an elephant!

    Kyra continues firing tranquilizers, though this time at the tusked beast before it rampages her right off of her high ground.
Homura Akemi     "Who turns these guys into Akuma in the first place?" Homura shoots towards Ladybug, now more than a little bit curious on where these strange but threatening powers are even originating from. A line of thought interrupted by a volley of lightning bolts, which, blasting into the girl, cause her to not only lose her footing but drop both of the shotguns she was holding. With now scorched hands, she grunts, taking their durability into consideration.

    No, best not tempt fate by grabbing lethal weapons. She can improvise still, and buy Duet a bit of time.

    With another application of arbitrary time magic, Homura hurls towards the advancing front lines a single grenade, which actually turns out to be a dozen of them out of nowhere. There's a little Confederacy logo on them, even.

    They're stun grenades, luckily, not explosive ones; you could think of them as electrical bombs, or tasers in grenade form. They're going to hurt like hell, maybe knock out, but definitely not kill. Homura just hopes these guys don't have resistance to electricity, as their rifles might hint.

    It might not be enough to disable a significant chunk of the frontline, but it should HOPEFULLY be enough to halt their attacks so that Duet can have a whole ten or fifteen seconds to recover.
Himei     Yeah, like Himei's luck would let her get through this unscathed. "Oh come ON!" She blurts this as she dives behind the lip of a rooftop, bolts of lightning blasting it and more than singing her. Her landing was pretty bad, thanks to the smoldering on one arm, her hip, and shin. Unfortunately, as good as she is at surviving, Himei has never been great about avoiding injury.

    Which just makes the elephant that much rose of a threat. "I hate my life," she mutters, seeing the ponderous pachiderm pulverize the edge of a vent on its way forward. Deal with it, huh? "SALVATION STREAM!"

    A glittering series of silvery rays lance out, hoping to at least blind the elephant charging her way and allow her to dive for the next roof. Maybe these things count as supernatural evil? She's never tested it in a situation like this. Either way she's preparing for an almost comical chase around the rooftops until she can think of a better solution like-

    Like maybe leading it off the edge since she can fly?
Lyria Mason Lyria Mason is glad Kyra is here for all her issues with her magic going wild? There's no other healer she'd want in her party and so that's how it goes. She spots Ladybug and is glad to have another hand here, doubly so someone who has more experience with things like this. She now finds her self coming under fire. This is certainly going to put a damper on thing for her.

Swimmer hisses and moves to do what Lyria said cover the police and it will try to act as a barrier and a shield it will also use it tail to try and knock down any hostiles who get too close to the police. Lyria meanwhile isn't quite quick enough to avoid all the shots coming her way she's caught by a blast. She lights up for a second like a holiday tree and feels like she's been hit with a Thundra spell. It's not enjoyable she's clearly hurt but she's still moving. Yet she's going a lot slower.

...You....asked for this.

She holsters a pistol pulls several small spheres and launches them into the enemy formation when they hit the ground they will start playing the worst corporate pop band music from her world at a level of volume that it could knock someone out or at least make them too disorientated to fight, before they will shut them selves off.
Duet Fortuna     Whew. Duet rubs her head and grumbles, panting heavily. She blocked them all, maybe, but this 'holding back' thing was starting to be a pain. Nothing for it though... even if her hand is feeling hot. Is that a blister? It isn't, but she's going to fret about the very minor burn anyway.

    Mn... maybe...

    A little 'nudge' with her powers tries something on the second row of guns, urging them to briefly animate and twist. In the chaos, maybe nobody will think to question where that came from... but if they're magically-summoned she's not even sure she can DO that.
Ladybug It's not correct to say that Ladybug is ready for this. Ladybug is never really 'ready' for things, she merely copes fast and tries her hardest. She extends her yo-yo to deflect what will obviously be some weaponshot, right? Even Bubbler's weird bubble-energy-blasts could be deflected by the spinning force of her weapon aaaaaand that's an Elephant.

As she's charged down, Himei blinds it, and Ladybug tries to get out of the way, but her spinning weapon twirls around the charging Elephant Gun'ed animal, causing her to turn, in horror, before getting swept off her feet and flying along the rooftops.

"THIS IS NOT WHAT I HAD IN MIND!" Ladybug shouts, as she's carried in the other direction by a blind, magic elephant.

This may work out for her, but for now ahhhhhhh!

"Punch girl! GET THE GUN!" She yells, back at the not-going-the-wrong-direction hero up on the rooftops with her.
Chat Noir The first elephant lands on the Arc with a thunderous crash, cracking the surface upon which it landed. It turns, not with great speed but enough that it isn't utterly outpaced, to turn an angry glare on Kyra. It is not, unfortunately, a normal elephant. Applying many more tranquilizers sees the animal slowing down, but it isn't stopped outright just yet. It rushes forward -- sluggishly though, as if Slow had been applied to it -- and attempts to gore the healer as she unloads into it.

Up above, the second elephant is proving to be an obnoxious obstacle. It had been targeted at Ladybug, but it's definitely in Himei's way too, and Himei turns her silver light upon the creature. It seems that her powers recognize the creature as supernatural evil, in part if not in whole, because she can detect the distinct physical feedback of actual contact.

That elephant screeches in pain, its forward motion halted as it shakes its head furiously. There's a window to skirt around it, but it won't last forever.

Good news bad news time for Ladybug: Her defensive maneuver went completely south and she's currently attached to an angry blind magical elephant. On the upshot, its flailing combined with her Good Luck powers causes her to spin around the dumb panicking thing and bind its legs loosely.

Problem is she's also bound against its side in the process. Now, she COULD just release herself, or she could pull taut and keep that elephant right where it is. While strapped to it. Ugh.

Down below, Homura applies stun grenades to the foremost cluster of soldiers. The distinctive flash-crackle as they're set off races through the unsuspecting surrounding soldiers. Those who get the brunt of it fall dazed outright, their weapons clattering to the ground. Others nearby but not directly in the blast radius raise their arms defensively, flinching away. More time successfully bought.

Lyria's Swimmer doesn't have much physical fighting to do because the soldiers are being tripped up by the interference run on them all 'round and aren't advancing beyond reasonable shooting range besides, but it does successfully take a few shots on their behalf.

Her sonic grenade meets mixed results. Having been bombarded repeatedly by unexpected complications including grenades, one on-guard soldier literally winds up her rifle like a bat and slaps a couple of the spheres right back at Lyria. A few others still land, prompting a discarding of arms to cover ears within the middle of the crowd but-- they don't seem to be KOing cleanly as expected.

Some subtle spellwork on Duet's part causes a number of the lightning guns to briefly come to a life of their own-- it's more difficult than animating something with no magical presence of its own, which she can easily ascertain from the difficulty itself was the case. But they're not /immune/ to outside interference, and the guns twist their own barrels shut as triggers are squeezed. Several backfires occur simultaneously, but you might need a spot check amidst the chaos to notice that this happened.
Duet Fortuna     "KYRA!" Duet sees the elephant moving for Kyra, and shrieks out as much of a warning as she can. Briefly she considers more... and that's a bad thing. Decisiveness was a virtue, after all. The brief window of her distraction allows one of the shots to slip through, jolting her sharply and forcing her attention back to defending the police.

    "Shoutan I hope you know what you're doing!" Duet shouts non-directionally. She is not going to try for a bigger move. She felt the resistance. Trying anything more dramatic will probably have a backlash that isn't good for her or the area.
Ladybug Ladybug is definitely not liking this one bit. Not oneeee bit.

Retracting her yo-yo, without releasing it, gets her tied up around stuck to an elephant. It can't hurt anyone, but it's kind of lame. Such is the weight of her self-sacrifice! THE SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS!!!

Really, she doesn't even conceive of 'I can let this go and do my own stuff', becuase OTHER PEOPLE could be HURT. Plus, there's a bunch of capable people fighting the enemy today! So, now, she's filling in for Chat.

To Homura, belatedly, Ladybug explains. "The akuma are the weapons of a mysterious man in a silver mask named Papillion! He wants our Miraculous, and if he gets both /really/ bad stuff could happen!"
Homura Akemi     By now, Homura's at least gotten used to the cadence of the lightning rifles, the firing lines, their brief delay in aiming, and how quickly new soldiers replace ones on the ground. It's a lot easier not to get nailed by several lightning bolts in a row, but still kind of difficult to dodge lightning. Even with the ability to stop time, lightning travels at such speeds that if you stop time a moment too soon it doesn't matter, and a moment too early and it's no more helpful. She has practice, but isn't used to attacks this fast.

    Luckily for her being transformed into her magical girl outfit does grant enough resistance to attacks that even an errant lightning bolt to the chest or shoulder, as happens now amidst a dozen dodged ones, hurt about as much as being punched, with a bit of scorching action going on. Better than the alternative for sure.

    "So that's why this guy screamed about it," she nods at Ladybug.

    Rather than produce more guns or grenades, she goes for her bow, the long, black bow immediatly aimed forward, with a bright pink bowstring forming out of light, and a plume of energy flickering at one tip, like a flame.

    "She doesn't, but she usually makes it work!" Homura answers Duet, while a large amount of magical energy collects in her hands. An arrow of light forms, finally. "Heads up, I'm tearing a line through for you!" The warning is given to Himei, specifically. "STARLIGHT ARROW!"

    Homura fires the arrow! It is not an arrow at all, it is a very large pink and purple magical girl laser beam. You've seen this kind of attack a thousand times before, it's no different. It's more or less nonlethal, has mild purification powers (but nothing even remotely close to what Ladybug can do), and is aimed at the Pioneer, which means it's going to (try to) pierce a line right through the army. Even if the larger man knocks the laser away (and at this point she expects this), that's a distraction for Himei to swoop in.
Himei     On the upside, window of distraction! Himei takes it! She's put together that the gun is the thing they need to take care of, and hopefully Ladybug can handle herself long enough for Himei to manage that. So she hurls herself off the side of the building!

    Downside. Now she's in the line of fire again. Himei immediately thinks of the worst, most stupid plan she can and does that. She lets herself plummet, hopefully throwing off any fire coming her way, and spreads her wings to do a low altitude buzz along as much of the channel that was opened by Homura as possible.

    This is stupid because she ends up rocketing toward Pioneer and the elephant gun at high speed. What was her next step? "Uh..." Oh right. She didn't... have one.

    Oh well, she'll improvise.

    "SHINING STAR STRIKE!" Alliterative today, are we? Yeah she's just going to try to PUNCH the gun, and doubtless end up with numerous lightning blasts singing her and probably smack right into the Pioneer at high speed, too.

    Behold the elegant maneuvers of the magical girl in flight.
Kyra Hyral Faced with the decision between being run off of the Arc and gored by an unnaturally strong elephant, Kyra chooses the former. With nowhere to go at the edge of the Arc, she leaps backwards off of the famous landmark, her ongoing float spell letting her feather-fall to the ground with no damage to herself. She doesn't fire at the elephant anymore, having completely emptied her chamber on the beast. But as she slowly falls, she makes use of the time to load fresh darts into the rifle.

    The Elephant will have to leap off of the Arc to pursue!

    By the time she has 'landed' (used losely, as she still floats a foot above the ground), she's reloaded completely. In that moment, she makes use of what little time she has unmolested by enemies to swing her rifle around and take a few more shots at the Pioneer, doing all she can to not attract attention to herself until those shots land.
Lyria Mason Lyria Mason watches for half a second as Ladybug is carried off by a blind magic elephant. No she wasn't expecting something like that other herself she hears the call to go after the gun. She should have seen it, it was pretty obvious when one thought about it. Still she can do what she can to help with this. Swimmer meanwhile sees that it's able to act more as cover for the cops than having to actively defend them by attacking.

Her sonic grenade seems to have her own weapons turned on her this doesn't seem to be going well, she has to wonder is it something about the makeup of humes on this world? What was done to them? She doesnt know because shes going to have to stomp her own creation to shut it up before she ends up passed out by it.

Lyia's shaking as she fires some less well aimed taser rounds into the ranks of the remaining soldiers but it's clear she's not had a good time of it today.
Chat Noir One elephant is tied up on a rooftop, secured with Ladybug's... is it misfortune? Or fortune? Really, it's hard to tell the difference in this case.

The Pioneer is aware of multiple high-priority enemies. Ladybug has what he wants, but with Himei charging along after him he can't get at her very easily. There's also a lot less /glowing/ going on from that direction though, so his attention zeroes in on Homura and her broadcasted attack.

His elephant gun whips about, trained on Homura now. It fires again, launching an elephant directly into the beam. It serves as a 'wall', bounding the outer range of the blast so that while it passes through the ranks of the soldiers sending them scattering in all directions, it does not reach the Pioneer himself.

It fries the heck out of that extra elephant though. Gross.

Through the space cleared by Homura -- which is larger than the elephant wall -- Kyra fires tranquilizers down the firing line, dancing out of range of her elephant. But when the Pioneer goes to re-target, Himei comes crashing into his gun with an extended fist. It's possible that she /is/ getting shot at from nearby, but the whole giant pink laser has been a bigger concern until this exact moment.

When Himei's fist connects, the gun cracks down the middle. The resistance it has is actually lower than would be expected of an equivalent item that's not been altered by magic. If she'd struck an actual elephant rifle with that force, it would have likely fared better.

When that happens, all of the Minions turn back into real people and promptly collapse. The elephants vanish altogether, and the Pioneer turns into a relatively unassuming-looking man who looks positively bewildered and utterly drained. A black-and-purple butterfly drifts up out of the broken weapon (now merely an antique musket), fluttering up into the air and trying to get away. That seems to be the source of all of this, and it's definitely magic that is being grossly misused. If the color itself wasn't clue enough, the little butterfly absolutely radiates emotional pain.
Himei     This hurts a fair bit, but Himei does end up with singes, and bruises... lots of bruises. She also ends up tumbled down and thudding to the ground, to see the reversions. Oh hey it worked! "Nobody tell Kiyoko I did that. Say it was part of uh... Duet's plan."

    That should be the ticket.

    "Do your... thing, I think I'll just... lay here a few minutes." THUD.
Ladybug Released from the AWFUL PRISON of her OWN CREATION, Ladybug drops a few inches onto her back, in a tangle of yo-yo cord, but extricates herself easily and rewinding her weapon, standing up. The gun is broken, by hero combo! She may have some complaints of the tactics people use - Grenades? Really? - but overall, it doesn't look like anyone was hurt!

And the fluttering butterfly is her cue, leaping back over a rooftop with a twirl of her yo-yo before slinging it towards that fluttering badfeelserfly. "I'm releasing you from evil!"

Cue dramatic posing stock footage, opening of yo-yo, flying out of butterfly, with 'bye bye, pretty butterfly!' and explosion of positive energy and Good Luck as played by a giant pile of magical ladybugs in a giant status quo cloud.

The power restores the civilians, the damaged city, and the scraped up cops. It pointedly does NOT reset people's own health states, merely leaving them feeling 'pretty good' and south of critical if they were there before - Kyra still may be required.

Dropping to street level with a wave at Himei, she grins like a dork. "Good job, everyone!"
Lyria Mason Lyria Mason watche as the gun cracks dfrom Himei's punch she's done enough to keep the minions under control before everyone starts to revert. She does not have healing powers but she has a few potions which she's going to use. She holsters her guns and hobbles over to check the various now liberated civilians if they need those potions more than she does.

"This ... has been one of those days."