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Starbound Flotilla	NVR "GREY AREA" (EX)                                                        APOTHEOSIS EX APOPTOSIS                                                     CLASS 7 NEUROVORE COMBAT SHELL                             This game zone for IFO, Interstellar Frontiers Online, appears to be a tremendous, shattered-open planetoid instead of an island in VRMMO Earth. The fractured planetoid drifts far above Earth, something like two thirds of the moon's size at least, and it glitters with a startling array of lights that indicate spots of activity, habitation, or perhaps even space colonization. Segments of the tremendous planetoid seem to offer strange mineral themes, conspicuous organic growth, or even obvious technological artificiality, depending on the nature of the individual fracture.     The Flotilla and all crafts associated among it approach the Grey Area, which already seems active. Rushes of infectious Cells at tremendous sizes are surging into the rest Altair V. "Looks like Bennings finished off his quest!" George calls out to the rest, over rattling machinery. He's pushing the heavy ship here to its limit. "Only way to shut this down and keep IFO from getting screwed up is to finish ours fast!"     Subtitled Russian can be heard over the radio, just as aurally incomprehensible as ever. "<I've got the With Your Name On It crewed, repaired, ready. Slow it down. Plant a beacon. We'll hit it with RKV momentum we've been building.>" She says, gruffly. Meanwhile, the absurd semi-UFO Cruiser Tormod has formed up alongside the group. Its roaring and flickering screen seems... Somehow angrily inviting. Around its circular body what looks like a projected, oxygenated field; for those who feel more comfortable about facing the foe on foot, Cruiser Tormod intends to act as the battle platform.     For those more inclined to strike in space, though... The Loaders and Swordfish fighters have been armored up, armed up, and well equipped by the Miner and the Ace, each of which are intending to ride into battle alongside the group as well. "Hangars open, get out there and get in there!" George calls out. Approaching the Grey Area makes it clear what they'll be getting out into...     The massive crab-like body, with the head fully replaced by twisted growths of awful, rubbery black Cells, is the full length and size of a capital ship. Warped ports along its body spew a stream of Neurovore Cells, but thruster organs at its back are lighting up. It's MOVING, and more specifically, it's moving towards Earth, or where Earth could be found outside the visually constraining field of Interstellar Frontiers Online. The front three pairs of massive legs host huge, dangerous claws, while the fourth and fifth behind host powerful maneuvering thruster organs, and the huge twisting structure at the back that makes a warped, organic mockery of a ship has rows of capital ship thrusters forced into it by Bennings, to bring the whole thing crashing to Earth. ================================ <OBJECTIVES> ================================ * DEFEAT THE GREY AREA * DEFEAT THE ENEMY COMMANDER * APPLY THE THREE AGENTS TO PRODUCE THE CURE
Silica	Silica sits in her Swordfish, as the carrier moves into position. She listens to the radio chatter and takes a breath before hitting the release control, then gunning the engine. "Leo-1, Sortie!" She picked up a better laser gattling, and refitted an Anti-Capital weapon in the wing mounts. This isn't a torpedo, but a heavy gauge Beam Emitter. "I'll try and slow it down. Aiming for the thrusters on its back." she says, pouring speed into the engine system. "Leo-1, Engaging." Now to see if the Grey Area has any Point Defense in this form, or if she's going to need to dodge escorting xenofauna infected forms. Either way, she's diving straight in to try and gut the thing's engines to slow its progress.
Corona Arclite	Corona gives a tip of her hat to the Miner and Ace. "Much abliged fer the help, pardners." Once her hat is back in place on her head she climbs up into her own Loader and fires it up. Takes a moment to get her goggles on then glances back out of the cockpit. "Y'got a secret weapons ready, Hopalong?" The robotic jackalope shoves something into the Stampede's limited cargo-hold, makes a thumbs up with one paw, then climbs it after the payload and pulls the hatch shut. Corona nodded as she settled back into her seat, flicks open her device and sets it on the console to keep a second personal line active. "Y'all ready up there, Windrose?" It's not geared for more than self-defense so the train-like Steamhammer Express ship is staying towards the back of the gathered craft. Instead of fire power it's got as many sensors and scanners as Corona could hotwire into the system running. Everything is being fed to multiple screens setup in the cockpit, in the midst of which sits the pilot skunk. "As ready as I will ever be," she huffs back to Corona, "Considering what it is we're about to fly into. Scanners are hot, engines are on standby, shields are good." She flicks a few more switchs. "Teleporter is on standby should you need your backup." "A'right then. Time to make this last roundup count!" The loader fires its maneuvering boosters, launching itself out of the bay with a "Yeeehah!" yowled by the pilot for emphasis. Thrumming can be heard from the loader's arm weapons as they're hot and ready to dish out some pain.
Yuna Kagurazaka	"LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT *UP*!!! EL-LINE!!" Yuna still hasn't had the right opportunity to get a Loader or the like together - but El-Line has served her well in space battles before, and against that Class 7, she does NOT want to bring out anything less than her heaviest armor and weaponry. It's still a gamble - bringing the giant robot means Yuna will have far more trouble trying to deal with person-scale threats like the Neurovore Cells and suchlike - but she doesn't have anything else that's up to slowing down something like the Grey Area. Besides, even Powered Form would be hard-pressed to tank something like this. So as soon as Yuna reaches the battle zone, she summons the Matrix Figure, and her cry results in a pillar of light erupting around her, Elner, Jiina, Marina, and Erina, their five forms fading out of view within the radiance. The pillar diminishes again soon enough, revealing El-Line in all its glory - and Yuna wastes no further time in charging into battle. "SHUGOSEIHEKI!!!" Yuna shouts as she charges, and the massive kite shield - the Wall of the Guardian Star - takes form on the sleek mecha's left arm, already raised to help her try and physically body-block the Grey Area at full throttle. Of course, she has to swing around and come in from the *front* for that to do anything. But she does so, without hesitation. It's not that the Neurovore are any less squicky or terrifying for Yuna, mind you ... but the thought of the Neurovore escaping from IFO and infesting the Earth that Kirito, Yuuki, Tomoe, Silica, Asuna, and all their native friends call home? That terrifies her *FAR* more than the personal grossness of the Neurovore mobs she's faced, particularly given all the innocents who are in harm's way if they don't stop the Grey Area ... and Bennings himself.
Iria	Hyper Blade? Check. Weapons and defense systems? Check. Fighting spirit? Hell yes! Iria's craft is locked and loaded and ready to rumble! And on that bounty hunter's face is a determined look that just screams, "Let me at em!" Because the Neurovore have become quite a pain for Iria and the others, and the thought of them escaping and invading the real world? Not happening on Iria's watch! She and the others will put a stop to it! "Heeeeeeere we go!" Iria says as she flies towards the Grey Area, readying her weapons and smiling evilly. "You picked the wrong people to mess with!"
Alexis Maaka	The Mokin (No not the cute girl with raptor legs the gunship) streaks through space as Maaka pilots it. She's tense, "Desdemona, standing by." She says over comms, her ship dancing as it evades enemy fire. Her eyes widen behind her visor as she spies the target, the boss, as she reaches the Grey Area. "Holy-Look at the size of that thing!" Maaka says, her ship picking up speed while she picks up Laika's transmissions. "Copy that, Laika, we're engaging now!"     She moves to intercept the boss when she encounters Neurovore Cells, evading them while she aims to fire upon one of the limbs with cannons blazing away. Experience in games like these tells her that damaging body parts will do a number on the boss's HP.
Kirito	Kirito has re-named his Loader. It now registers as the Black Jackbunker, now that he's figured out his fighting style. He clearly doesn't care much for the thing though. It is, however, ready for battle.     And he brandishes the Pile Bunkers with a newfound poise before hopping out into space and engaging the thrusters.     "This is a worst-case scenario!" He blurts halfway to himself, halfway into the radio.     "Retreat or defeat aren't options... no matter what!" And saying this terrifies him. This is basically... straight back into the death game.     And realizing that brings a cold focus to his heated mind. Kirito grabs his controls with a grunt and falls into formation with Silica, agreeing with her tactics.     So his first objective is to cripple this ship, and he's got the perfect hardware for messing up just about anything!
Septette Arcubielle	As much as she might like to see the results of their Loyalty Mission firsthand, Septette isn't on Tormod- not just yet, anyway. Her talents in melee would be wasted on a gunboat platform like that. Instead, she's at the helm of the DRIVE ME CLOSER, absolutely flooring the craft's thrusters as her magic heats the hull itself to a dull red glow. For all the bloodlust that her rapid approach implies, her voice on comms is cool and collected.      "Arcubielle closing. Everyone else ready? Impact in five... four... three..."      Between the Grey Area's fourth and fifth legs on its left side, a small explosion blossoms. Pieces of hull spall out into the void from the excess kinetic energy of a fighter colliding with a capital ship at maximum sublight velocity... and then a tiny speck races out of the explosion, sprinting low across the Grey Area's hull.      Heavy talons dig into the chitinous shell, holding Septette tight to the surface regardless of whether the boss has its own gravity. A long curved blade snaps out of her arm, rapidly heating up to white-hot temperatures as she nears the fourth leg. With a sharp heave, she tries to drive the blade into its basal joint before sprinting around it in a circle, aiming to slice off the maneuvering leg- or at least cripple it. If that's not enough to finish the job, she'll chase it with a shotgun-blast of icicles, trying to inflict the PLASMA effect of the SCIENCE! damage type!      "Boarded, hold fire against port fourth leg! Will update with changing position..."
Tomoe	Thing just kept getting more nuts with this game, not that she really could call it a game. She was now ready to try and deal with this massive Neurovore. This thing that Cardinal whipped up all in the name of content. She thinks about an very old game her father used to play with space ships and such. Where the worst of the players considered grifing and just shutting people down from playing content. She's got that much of a view of Cardinal. It's time to fight and stop the person the AI turned Parasite goddess from screwing everyone else over and hopefully /saving/ him in the process. <<Good to have you along Captain, It's welcome." She's ready with her Loader which has been altered to carry some more tanking gear since the last time she used it. It would be far easier if she needs to board the thing to deal with it. She's also almost certain several government are readying ground based ICBMs and other weapon systems to try and deal with it if they fail. <<I am ready here. I'm as ready as I will be Arcubielle. Thanks for sticking with us through all of this.>>
Starbound Flotilla	As Silica approaches, there's no point defenses. No modules firing back up from the surface, nothing like that. She has a clean airspace on her approach, and heading for the rear segment is a very good idea, at least at first. Sadly, the clear shot the has at first, the shots that draw a stream of violent red digital damage lines along the capital ship thrusters, is a shot that's swiftly lost and taken away from any followup. Kirito's going to need to cover her, because despite the creature's massive capital-ship-scale size, the movement it does next is far more like something Kirito could expect out of the Skull Reaper; its whole body TWISTS around, screaming violently, and one of those front six claws lashes out, intent on violently swiping Silica straight out of space if that shot isn't parried, and if it is, the blunted impact will still be a brutal shock to experience.     As it twists and spins like a stylish swordsman in action, its mouth opens wide, and it emits a warbling, synthesized electronic noise right alongside a sound like a rotten fruit being squished. A massive raygun blast fires towards Corona to try to intercept her approach, and it cuts an entire segment of Altair V in half behind her. Yuna halts its dangerous, massive maneuvering with an impact against her machine; the shockwave launches space debris away for untold astronomical distances. Those claws begin to try to batter her shield away or apart, slamming into it with harsh lateral strikes and attempts to maneuver around her.     One massive, heavy overhand strike with those huge claws is done with the intent to stun, before it whirls around and attempts a swift, corkscrew-spinning backhand razor strike with three huge claws, attempting to smash Iria and Maaka both before they can get too close. Once that spin has stopped, that's when Septette lands, slamming into its body and provoking a heavy, angry roar. Her slice against the leg, aimed to cripple it, dumps huge amounts damage into this thing, but it's got an absurd number of health bars and a dangerous amount of regen, making it a heavy damage sponge. The impact needs that plasma to hurt hard, and the creature screams when she uses it, turning the thruster against Septette and blasting her skeletal form with a rush of particles in states of heat that many scientists only theorize about, while a mass of Neurovore Cells emerging from the ports on its body change course and head towards the wound Septette just made. This thing will regen some of the damage if she doesn't sustain her violence against it, but that would mean standing in the direct line of fire of this insane blast of highly damaging thruster exhaust!
Corona Arclite	The downside to that attack is that it is massively telegraphed. Corona has dealt with enough bigass critters to know opening mouths and weird sounds are bad news. "Hold on!" Corona yanks back on the control harness and stomps a foot into the pedal levels, causing the Stampede to abruptly jerk back and upward as she forces thrusters to switch directional firing a bit faster than they're made to. It's rough enough to shake her around even with safety restraints but it gets the job done as the cannon blast screams through space just below. A few seconds too late. "Reckon we're gonna have to do somethin' about it's means of attackin'." Corona snorted, and reached over to smack the audio player she hotwired into the cockpit. "Give me some 'propriate background music!" Then grabs the controls and dives the Loader back towards the battle already reaching a hectic pitch. o/~ We've come too far to turn back, it's way to dark to unpack. Stuck right here but we're slippin' this ground is losin' my grippin'. Way in over our heads it seems, this place is coming apart at the seams Can't stop or control the direction, the farther we go the less protection. o/~ As it dives in the Stampede swings forward its arms, revealing that both have now been outfitted with shotgun weapons, favoring more firepower. But there is one noticable difference when Corona starts firing. One shotgun still shoots the scattershot of scorching plasma... while the other shoots what is essentially buckshot made of ice crystals. Looks like she's two-handing elemental combination of her own, firing off the shots at the Giant Boss's face/mouth before it can charge up that mouth cannon again.
Alexis Maaka	This thing is much *faster* than people expected. Maaka narrowly avoids getting hit by a swipe of the claw, her ship getting scraped by the claw as she's knocked to the side slightly. "Ghhhhk!" Her ship turns swiftly, blasting away at targets that come on radar. "Copy that, Sep, covering now!" Her ship's auto-turret aims for the neurovore cells, trying to shoot them down before they can reach the damaged area in time to regenerate from any damage inflicted.     "Be advised, this thing's cells are acting as repair units. Try and keep them from doing their job."
Yuna Kagurazaka	The sight of the Grey Area whipping around to smack Silica, punctuated with the blast it unleashes at Corona, both serve to illustrate to Yuna exactly why SOMEBODY needs to tank this - even if she's abruptly worried about how well she's going to be able to soak up the damage the Class 7 Shell can dish out. But she gets its attention, shield-bashing the Grey Area in its (singularly ugly) face - and then those claws, probably all six of them, come swinging in at *her*. El-Line backs away *just* a bit - just enough to make sure that the claws hit Shugoseiheki and *not* El-Line itself. The impacts are still pretty devastating, and the defensive aura which surrounds the Matrix Figure (as well as the kite shield) flares brightly as it fights to reduce the resulting damage, leaving sparks like lightning crawling over the shield's surface. But without the Wall of the Guardian Star, the damage would all be on El-Line directly - and Yuna wouldn't be able to stay in this fight long enough to do any help. Through it all, Yuna does her best to stay in the thing's face, only backing off as Elner picks up on allies getting ready to shoot the Grey Area *in* said face. And since letting them do all the offense risks pulling aggro away from El-Line ... "LIGHTNING SWOOOOOOORD!!!!" ... Yuna calls for her giant robot's melee weapon, the blade materializing in a brilliant flash of light - and then she brings it sweeping down across the Class 7's head, not so much aiming for specific parts or features as to just cleave it open and make it *hurt*. She doesn't care if she does less damage than any of her allies - she just has to do *enough* damage to keep it from dismissing her as a threat. And it's not just a big sharp piece of metal; while it's not exactly electricity, radiant power crackles along the blade's length, lending visual credence (if not actual truth) to its name. All the while, Yuna is keeping a corner of her attention on El-Line's status. If they came this far and they *don't* have somebody functioning as a healer or the like, she's going to have words with the entire Gatecrashers Union - assuming they're still around to have words - when this is all over.
Iria	Meanwhile, as Yuna attempts to tank, Iria attempts to back up her ally with some gunfire from her ship. "Hey you! Why don't you go pick on someone your own size?" She scowls a little as she says this, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she fires. "You know, I hate creeps like you! You remind me of the scum I found in a sewer on a hunt a few days ago!" How Iria manages to reminisce about things like this during battle is anyone's guess. After that, Iria backs up a little, keeping an eye on the others to ensure they're not in danger at all. "Not letting anyone get hurt here! Or now!"
Septette Arcubielle	Septette's cloak immediately vaporizes off of her body as the thruster-blast scours her form, blackening her metal plates and cracking her eye-lenses from thermal shock. It takes her more time than she'd like to accelerate to full speed from her near-stop, but after a split second she slips out of the thruster's beam while still glowing a brilliant orange, sprinting across the hull at full bore. She tacks left and right in erratic patterns while Maaka prunes back the cells, trying to bait the beam into burning its own hull as it tracks her!      "Covering fire noted- appreciated, Maaka. Shouldn't be much left with this leg, though..." As Septette weaves around and encircles the bleeding leg's base to avoid the thruster's fire, her hands glow an ominous icy blue.      Glowing magical circles form around her fingertips and wrists as the spells charge up, culminating when she brings her hands together and manifests a beautiful fractal shard of ice the size of her torso that roils with cryogenic arcane energy. It hangs in the air for a moment... and then she hurls it into the path of the searing thruster as it passes near the leg's base, before dashing away to safety.      Plasma. As the beam and the shard meet, an explosion of concrescent elemental energies greater than anything she could manifest under her own power alone wracks the crustacean's limb.
Silica	As the beast comes spinning around, as the beam cannon from her starboard wing winks out and begins recycling to fire again, she instinctively pulls hard on the yoke to pull up and out of the way. She won't make it in time, but thanks for Kirito intercepting the blow, the Leo pulls up and clear of the horizontal plane of the combat space. "... I have a plan, cover me!" she turns tail, gunning the boosters and trying to get out of the Boss's aggro bubble. "Okay, got to do this quickly." she did keep the skinsuit for vacuum exposure in case she needed to eject at some point.     Once she's clear of the bubble, the cait sith does something crazy.     She puts her fighter back into her inventory, leaving her floating free in space. "Alright... GCS Black Swordsman, Jump in!" she pings a beacon, and a frigate-class Capital Ship jumps into the sector a moment later, tractoring the Cait Sith aboard. It's a bulbous thing, looking like a normal ship, built around some module a far larger vessel would likely be able to equip more than one of. It's vaguely cigar-shaped, with a big spherical bulge amidships, and multiple heavy cannons in turrets with a raygun-gothic motif. It's an FSC design, but sporting some Pirate and Autowarlord motifs with the engines and hull plating.     Silica appears on various view screens, standing with her hands clasped behind her back on the bridge of the craft. "This is the GCS Black Swordsman, Deploying repair drones and beginning Warp Bubble activation sequence."     The bulge becomes apparent in function, as the hull splits open like flower petals, revealing a large swirling vortex of purple energy contained in a matrix of baffles and deelieboopers and other scifi gubbins. The 'vanes' begin to focus the energy as it seeps out of the baffles, creating a 'web' of purple lines around the Grey Area, beginning to pin it down and reduce that speed advantage it's been pulling.     Meanwhile, small drones detach from the vessels aft hull, around the engines, looking like repurposed Von Neumann Constructor forms, that flit out to hover around the various fighters, projecting 'Healy Beams' at them to shore up their defenses and help repair damage.
Kirito	Kirito's reflexes take over at those strangely familiar movements from the enemy ship. With a heaving gasp he wrenches the controls and cross-extends the pile bunkers to catch the business end of the claws. The impact nearly knocks his Loader into Silica's ship but he SLAMS on the Afterburner thrusters for extra force. Even so, sparks fly from the claws-on-weapons and annoying alarms blare in Kirito's cockpit along with flashing red lights as he reaches his limits and rebounds away from the parry to recover.     The pilot's QUITE rattled by that exchange. His face white and sweaty... "What a monster...!"
Starbound Flotilla	Corona's aggressive in-your-face violence dumps damage into the head of the creature, and the roiling mass of cells splits apart again. She'll want to coordinate that well with Yuna, and if the switch-offs aren't performed with expert timing, she'll suddenly have to deal with point-blank blasts straight out of the mouth of the creature, intent on dumping more damage into her Loader than she can afford to keep.     And somewhere in the midst of that roiling mass, something can be seen. A humanoid shape, warped and lanky, followed by a wake of churning flesh jammed into the spinal column.     The glance is all she gets though, before she has to pull back and let Yuna do the tanking, dealing with those smashing, slashing claws again. Iria follows up with the gunfire from her own craft, keeping one of those huge arms from swiping back around the shield as Yuna gets into place. The massive overhead blade swing is intercepted with a single, massive claw, one that halts it in place but cracks hard under the strain. That's when Cruiser Tormod rushes in, in a massive, rapidly spinning rush like some kind of huge buzzsaw, shredding lower muscles and forcing the arm to get slammed and battered away, giving Yuna a straight shot!     Pulling back gives Iria a good view of stuff; the rear engines are a bit damaged, but not enough. Maneuvering is going down if Septette has anything to say about it. But if Silica's plan is going to work, someone's going to have to get back there and deal with those engines at the rear! SOMEONE needs to get on that!     Elsewhere, someone's on something very similar, at least. Maaka manages to thin the swarms effectively, though the huge bossmonster still regains some HP simply from the sheer, overwhelming number of Cells rushing around. The maneuvering thruster is on autopilot in the way that enemy mobs often are. It doesn't realize the intense threat that is presented by continuing to fire in predictable patterns, and so Septette is easily able to bring the ice into the blast range and hit it with a huge volume of plasma. It begins to curl, as if to defend itself, before the Miner suddenly rushes in from one side and grapples it violently, forcing it to sustain the blast that he's a little better equipped to handle. As the thruster takes that final hit, the entire Neurovore begins to lean to one side like a man limping, righting itself unsteadily; it's still going to be quick and dangerous, but it's going to be a lot less unstable, and the broken thruster means Septette can have the time and freedom to focus her attention elsewhere.     Then comes Silica's capital ship, deploying its drones and its slowing field. The massive creature was just about to take a swing at Maaka, one that was so fast it would be nearly impossible to avoid, when the field begins to constrict it and slow it. Seeing itself damaged and restrained like this, it unleashes another electronic scream, firing a point-blank blast straight at Yuna's machine. The huge rows of thrusters at the back surge into greater activation, and the acceleration desperately attempts to match the slowing effect, enough to push straight INTO the enemy capital ship and either slam Yuna's machine between them if she doesn't evade, or crush it between its huge claws if she does.
Alexis Maaka	Maaka gets an idea, and as the cogs turn in her head, she begins to open fire on where the cells keep filing in, maybe block them from emerging any further. Of course, this winds up being a mistake. Her ship is swatted out of position by a claw that moves too fast for her to keep up with, leaving her drifting and spinning across space. "AAAAAAAAGH!" This is not her best day.     THe ship keeps spinning until she regains control of the throttle, engaging the engines to try and kick her back on track, but she's still disoriented and dizzy as alarms blare loudly into her ears. Shield integrity isn't too good, neither is her hull. "Need a heal, and maybe some new shields...shit, that was close." She grumbles, trying to keep out of the red zone while she takes pot shots at enemy fighters. "All units, see if you can figure out where the Neurovore cells are coming from, and seal the openings. Might keep the boss from healing itself."
Tomoe	Tomoe now sees the thing and will make for her own attack runs she starts to drop the ECM and other tank related abilities she has, she'll also moves to attack now and she starts to wonder about this thing could do? She knows this is going to be pretty crazy for a fight against something this huge. She keeps track of where her allies are and she doesn't mind the heavy firepower coming from Corona. "Right if you need me just call me down." Her own machine attacks now as she tries to get close to put her plasma Naginata to use. "Great it's got healing adds, Maaka? This is going to pain in the ass." She's now keeping an eye out for the healing adds intening to pull them on to her so she cna burn them down or with help if it's needed. She keeps moving and starts to wonder, just what this thing has packing given Cardinal will keep adapting things and there will be a point they flat out may never be able to win and stop this sort of thing...
Silica	Silica grunts as the field begins to strain as the massive creature kicks its engines up to speed. It starts to /drag/ the smaller frigate along with it, as retro thrusters flare to life, and try to arrest the larger craft. "Divert auxillary power to the Warp Bubble, route primary thrust to the retro engines, push them through the redlines if you have to." She then seats herself in the command chair. "Guns up. All fire teams, target on this vector. Distribute firing solution to all party members. Maintain assault. Lets give it something to worry about."     The Raygun-Gother turrets swivel into position, and with a resonant PWAM PWAM, fire raygun bolts into the Grey Area's ventral hull. They're not focussed on any one point, but that's not the purpose. She's trying to drag aggro from the others and slow the thing down, while also diverting those precious Cells to non-vital systems, thinning the swarm.     "Engineering, task swarm Omega on the Mokin. Keep Alpha on El-Line. Beta and Charlie disperse between the other party members. Keep Omicron for ourselves." Her NPC crew jump to doing their jobs, responding with a mix of subtitled jibberish Russian, wheebleboops of droids and generic 'Aye Captain's.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite takes the volley of shots and then fires the Stampede's boosters to maneuver away as Yuna comes in with shield and sword to piss off the monster even more. Just because she trusts Yuna to not accidentally hit her doesn't mean she wants to be in middle of what becomes a brawl between blade, claw and Tormod. The Stampede jets back around E-Line and behind to let the tank do its thing and get out of immeadiate view for a moment. The Loader comes around on the other side, opposite of the tug-of-war with the claw and reorients towards the 'head' and the disgusting mass that makes up the rest of it. Did she really see... in the end, it doesn't really matter. For the moment it's attention is on Yuna and the capital ship. Corona maneuvers the Loader closer towards the back of the infested boss. "Windrose, y'got anything?" "There's just too much mass to pick out specific deployment spots," replies her 'gal in the chair' from aboard her spacetrain. "Then we'll just have to work our way through." Corona hits the controls to open the Stampede's cargo bay. "Send 'em our little present, Hopalong!" The hatch opens to reveal the robotic jackalope. With an clockpunk launcher. That fires towards one of the clusters of healing Nanovores. Oh, but this isn't your typical explosive bomb type weapon. Corona stuffed a chem-bomb full of the stuff used to clear the infection for other players. Considering that effect, lets see how the Nanovores deal with direct exposure to it. Why? Because SCIENCE! that's why. There's any other reason?
Kirito	GSC Black Swordsman, huh? Kirito... sweatdrops at that IFF signature pinging on. And grins in sheepish embarassment where nobody can see it. Nah, he's not going to say a WORD about that. Even if he wanted to, now is a TERRIBLE time do so.     The ship's design aesthetic does quirk an eyebrow, but mostly because EVERYTHING in this setting rubs him weirdly. He wants his greenery and dark caves and flying castles back!     His heart leaps at the sight of a thing that any warrior looks for though: AN OPENING!     The ship has diverged its attention and not chosen to go after him... and he takes this opportunity to take aim with the pile bunkers and hit the trigger... and WHOOOSH!     Dual pillars of silvery, gleaming doom spear for the Grey Area's engines!
Yuna Kagurazaka	'When you pull this trigger, you are ruining *somebody's* day, somewhere, at some time ...' Technically, the only reason why Yuna ever saw that movie was because it was part of her science classes at the time; besides being educational about the physics of deep space travel (and related microgravity vectors), it was interesting, and key lessons from it have stayed with her - not just because they were presented in an entertaining manner but because they've been *useful*. Admittedly, if Yuna had known back in middle school that a lesson like that would come to mind in the middle of fighting a giant space monster with laser breath weapons, she might have focused more on the science than the entertainment - but between Elner detecting and warning Yuna of both the power surge up front and the rising curve from the gigantic Neurovore's thrusters, and her own ongoing awareness of where her allies are relative to her, the Savior of Light does two things so simultaneously that they're basically a single action. Specifically, she applies reverse thrust - trying to maintain a distance between herself and the Class 7 Shell - and she keeps her kite shield interposed in front of El-Line's torso and head, even as the Lightning Sword vanishes. That massive laser is definitely the kind of thing that will ruin somebody's day - which is exactly why Yuna focuses on keeping herself, El-Line, and the Wall of the Guardian Star *in front of it*. Because if it's not *her* day that gets ruined, it'll be somebody *else's* - maybe a lot of somebodies' - and she doesn't want that to happen. She's grateful for Silica's support; the cloud of repair drones are definitely keeping El-Line's damage to a manageable level of intensity, but this beam is probably going to test them even more. Still, the longer she keeps taking the heavy firepower, the less of it the Neurovore can turn against anybody else. She was going to try to dish out some more damage, too - but that may have to wait until she's in between deadly oral-launched superlasers ...
Iria	Yuna is attempting to shield others from the laser? A valiant action, but for Iria, it's one of those things that makes her stop and wonder what Yuna is thinking. Granted, she is aware of how Yuna is more of a 'compassionate' girl who is willing to go that far if need be. But to Iria, it seems like a foolish decision, since she can't bear to watch a friend go down. "Stay with it! You're supposed to be focused!" Iria kicks herself back to reality and realizes that now is not the time to stop and stare. She decides to help Yuna by keeping the Neurovores off of her so she doesn't have to worry about that at all. "If anything happens, I'll be there, I swear it!" Iria says.
Septette Arcubielle	The little Von Neumann-esque healing drone that Silica sends over patches up the more superficial damage to Septette's plates, but it seems to struggle with fixing the finer mechanisms: it isn't that it's failing to heal her, exactly, so much as her obfuscated and degenerate design makes it hard to tell what the damage is.      It's still a measurable and welcome help, though, especially when she starts carving her way through the black and rubbery cells between the wounded leg and the thrusters, giving the Miner a grateful wave along the way. Taking down the maneuvering jets is good and well, but if they want to stop this thing, they need to disable the primary thrusters!      One of her arms unfolds into a grotesque assembly of blades as she races across the beast's shell, carving a trail of ichor and voxels through the trash mobs in her way. The other shows the same magical sigils as before, but its blue glow continues to intensify long after the point that it ceased at before. Finally, with a twitch of her fingers, a great spear comprised of rough and jagged ice crystals condenses in her clawed hand, its tip crackling with arcane potential.      The wisdom of centuries of monster-hunting: if it works once, keep abusing it. She skids to a halt in view of the enormous thrusters, cocks her arm back, and puts her weight into a mighty heave that might produce a sonic boom if there were any atmosphere. The spear soars towards the thrusters' high-temperature vents, trying to abuse the same plasma-based exploit as with the maneuvering jets!
Starbound Flotilla	Maaka's going to have a tough time clearing those ports! Mostly because they are, by necessity, some of the /densest/ concentrations of Cells possible, and partially because the Grey Area is just so, so intensely dense with HP. That's when the Ace rushes in, blazing away with a perfect-tandem series of blasts and bombing runs, meant to clear out the swarms right when Maaka's heaviest blasts would land against the ports, letting some of them shatter. The huge volume of HP that this thing has is now, at least, receiving less regeneration. If Maaka can get further crowd-control combing with heavy hits on the ports, she can seriously cut this thing's healing even more.     Tomoe is a perfect crowd controller; as Maaka pushes into this more heavily, Tomoe finds that the ECMs are certainly functioning, though less as a taunt for the Cells, and more as a stun. This means she can briefly, BRIEFLY disable the regen on key points! While also simultaneously drawing their wrath, as is seen when the creature turns its huge crustacian head and blasts another ray-beam straight towards her Loader.     A good opportunity for Yuna to maneuver out of the way of the upcoming crunch, and towards a co-tanking position. She can keep that beam on her, however insanely damaging it may be, while pushing to the side and making sure the incoming collision doesn't squish her while she keeps some distance; it also means that there's an opening for Iria to work on interrupting! Yuna never has to worry about this for /too/ long, since Iria can manage to land a few solid attacks every time when it's sustaining that beam too long, though the huge claws swipe violently at her if she pushes that too far. The distraction of the boss in dumping DPS on all these other issues means Corona gets a clear shot to fire that bomb, and it's surprisingly a different kind of effect than was expected. It seems to be "destabilizing" the pure infectious substrate of the enemy. A health bar depletes all at once, but a sudden rush of buff icons takes its place on the VRMMO interface, flooding it with a dozen different effects as it gains a dozen strange and powerful mutations. Spiney filaments, like piano-wire tentacles, begin forming on its front surface, and start to lash out with absolutely vicious razor attacks against Corona!     At the back, though, thankfully, Silica's orders have worked out well. Kirito and Septette have a fantastic teamup here, one that will let them work well together. The mechanical power means that yet-inactive thrusters can be punched through effectively with a rush of combo strikes, and Septette can handle the active ones by dumping the huge volumes of plasma into them. This is certainly something that's worked and that Septette can continue to use... For a while, anyway. It may become a little less viable as something very strange happens.     Less the Grey Matter trying to counterattack her, and more an incidental effect. The huge beast begins to corkscrew, a natural movement with one of its four maneuvering thrusters down, but one meant to tear through parts of the warp web, and to rush in towards Silica, and to dodge around that ruthless main-gun fire, which it's... Actively SWIPING and PARRYING at! And then, as the corkscrew closes, it tries to close in on her craft and pincer it, grappling it and trying to physically shake it like a predator breaking the neck of freshly caught prey.
Silica	Silica grins ferally as the giant ship closes in on her. She flicks a little device over her eye, and pulls a pair of waldo units out of the command chair's arm rests, gripping them firmly as the front section of the frigate unfolds into a quartet of 'arms' with heavy duty grappling pincers on the ends. These snag onto the grabbing pincers from the Grey Area, and strain as the servoes kick into overdrive. The smaller craft is clearly overmatched, but that's the exact reaction the Cait Sith wanted. "I'll hold it down! Get that beacon in place!" she calls over the radio, diverting power from the main battery to the engines and Warp Bubble. The gunfire slows and becomes a more sedate 'Pew pew', but the rayguns don't let up even at point blank range. "Maintain position, Stabilize the forward shield arc, activate the plasma saws on Arm three and four, cutting laser on arm one, and the harmonic resonator on arm two." she commands, glaring out of the optical interfact at the horrid maw of the monster capital ship. The smaller frigate strains under the immense pressure the Grey Area can put out, but as long as she's holding its attention, the others can get at the rest of the craft and hopefully slow it enough that the RKV can take it out.     "Damage report. Main engine stress at 80% and rising, redlines across the board. Main battery is at 20% capacity, Grapple arms reporting stress damage across the length, down to 70% integrity."
Corona Arclite	Good News: That took a serious chunk out of the Big Boss' HP. Bad News: Looks like the Neurovore mass is rapidly mutating to try and combat the effect. We'll just file that under 'not operating as intended'. Corona kicks the thrusters into reverse, but it's not fast enough to avoid the sheer number of now very slick and sharp tendrils lashing towards her. "Why does it always gotta be tentacles!", she laments to no one in particular. Several lashing put gashes into the armor of the Stampede, and when she swats the away from digging into the cockpit they slice off a healthy chunk of the right arm instead. "So much fer bein' fancy." Corona shifts the loader to hold it's damaged arm towards the cargo hold. Hopalong hops out to grab the damaged limb, clamps on with his claws and transforms into his weapon mode to replace the lost gun. With that Corona hits the remaining thrusters, swooping back towards the mass of mutated cells to clean up her own mess. "Ah am sick and tired of these mutherfraggin' viruses on this mutherfraggin' spaceplane!" Exhaust vents from the jacka-cannon-lope as it fires, spewing molten hot slag at the mass of mutated cells. Corona is going to kill it hot and fast before the buff can spread to other parts of the Grey Area.
Yuna Kagurazaka	Well, they're making progress, at any rate. Now if somebody's experimental weaponry hadn't just made the boss evolve into a far more dangerous form ... Well, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time - Yuna is sure of that, she isn't going to complain TOO much about that. But she's still trying to balance 'hold the Neurovore Shell's attention' against the immediate exegencies of 'don't get killed outright' - and that remains a VERY tricky balance to maintain. Between the spines and the wires and the corkscrew maneuver, Yuna has to back El-Line off even further; she spares a couple of Lightning Shoot blasts from the Matrix Figure's hands, but they're little more than beestings. If she hits something sensitive and/or delicate, great; anything that actually weakens the Grey Area and/or diminishes the amount of damage it can do to the Gatecrashers and their allies is a good thing. But at this rate, it's acting more like a battle of attrition .... and the Gatecrashers are *not* currently coming out ahead on that curve. So, time to change things up. Yuna was ready to do that even before Silica called for people to start doing their big things. That RKV is on its way in as well, but its success depends on the Class 7 getting *immobilized* so the RKV does not have to hit a *moving* target. So Yuna grits her teeth a little bit - and dismisses Shugoseiheki entirely, at least for the moment. She'll need both hands for this. And what is 'this,' you may ask? It's a very large beam rifle - even on the Matrix Figure's scale, it's huge, easily a two-handed weapon, tucked under El-Line's right arm rather than clutching a pistol-esque grip. Part of that is because the Lightron needs to tap directly into El-Line's systems for power; part of it is because the recoil would throw the weapon off-balance without the super robot's mass to help anchor it. Within the cockpit, a pistol grip slides into place in front of Yuna's seat; she lets go of the normal piloting sticks, and leans forward to wrap her hands around the firing control, her right index finger curling carefully around the trigger. She can't afford to take too long on this, even allowing the capacitors to build up their necessary charge for firing, so she just lines up her shot, tweaking her aim so that the crosshairs intersect over the Grey Area's mouth. She *particularly* wants to destroy whatever quasi-biological mechanism imbues the Grey Area with its mouth-laser, but she'll settle for just blowing its head apart as a whole. She didn't see where Bennings is within the Grey Area; that might be just as well - but her thoughts still touch on the Neurovore-assimilated player as she clenches her jaw and pulls back on the trigger. And the Lightron fires - an intense, focused beam of radiant power, ripping across the distance between El-Line and the Grey Area and *tearing* through whatever it hits. And then Yuna dismisses the giant rifle once again, gasping, "Shugoseiheki!" to re-invoke her kite shield. *Now* she's going on the evasive.
Tomoe	Here we go once more Tomoe thinks as she engages the alien horror and she's glad that she's got some backup here in he form of Maaka she keeps acting to taunt but she can disble the healing for a littlebit. She makes note of thei as she now moves to try and do what she can to stall the healing on areas the rest of the raid group are attacking. Well when she is able to as she takes a hell of a hit alarms go off there's clear damage but her Loader holds for the moment, she fires some missiles off at the creature that just blaster her in return while trying to close to melee range. <<I can stun the healing adds I'll do what I can there and i'll try to focus it on areas you are burning down!>>
Iria	Meanwhile, Iria continues to cover Yuna, switching to missiles now in hopes of adding on a little extra damage to the grey matter. When Iria sees the giant rifle appear, she goes wide-eyed again. "Whoa, that's some heavy firepower you've got, Yuna," Iria says with a grin. "Remind me not to get too close to you!" She chuckles, before firing off another blast of missiles. When the beam does fire, Iria has to cover her eyes briefly, but then opens them again when she sees that it's all over. "Next time, maybe I should wear sunglasses?"
Kirito	The ship suddenly SWERVING while Kirito's still dug in with both Pile Bunkers has the obvious effect of putting SEVERE g-forces on him and nearly slamming him into one side of his cockpit! "Ghhhhh-uh!" And that is not cool. Intense G-forces aren't something he's used to dealing with and it leaves the Black Jackbunker tumbling free for a few moments. He soon recovers and fires his stabilizers and the Loader re-orients in space, only sparking in a few places from the stresses and strains on its systems.     He exhales in relief at seeing the damage Septette and he have accomplished, and it quickly turns into a more-confident and determined grimace.     But now that Silica's in a nasty grapple, he doubles down on the task at hand. Because a ship's engines are usually also its main power supply he's hoping that damage to them will shut down other systems and deprive the Neurovore. Again and again he withdraws, repositions, and SLAMS the pile bunkers against still-intact nacelles, aiming precise pile thrusts at delicate innards and anything that looks sensitive - with the hope that, as it usually does, these weak points will hold true and damage the component's durability meters even more!     A ship that can't move can't reach earth and can't complete its mission.
Starbound Flotilla	Here it comes. The massive monster closes in the smaller capital ship, and, with a huge roar, tries to slam its two tremendous claws down onto the craft and crush it, and the small girl inside, to death. But those tremendous arms, shaped rather like one would expect a strange puppetry suit used by special effects artists in the fifties, can snag its huge claws in their grasp and wrangle them. Silica's got better grip, though unfortunately, she has inferior reach when it comes to pure numbers. Her grasp can hold the machine in place, though not for long if she only has the two arms! The others had better act fast!     The mutation is spreading, and it needs to be contained before the whole mass of this is lost. Thankfully, when you fight a wildfire, a trench of scorched earth can be the most effective thing; by blasting portions of the main body of the craft into slag, Corona is able to cut off the growing mutations and cauterize the wound she caused earlier, though not before the burning, dying masses of filaments try to lash around her Loader and yank her facefirst into the hull of the craft, trying to crush her against her own molten slag!     Yuna goes for a strike that's so intense it may well stun the beast, and the built-up charged attack is good enough to provide a sort of cover to Silica, letting her break at least some of the ongoing melee combos that the huge creature is so intent on slamming into the Black Swordsman... The bigger one, I mean. It tears out a segment of jaw, and the sputtering, almost "sparking" mass of flesh that it leaves behind seems to have been once a part of the beams it was firing. That horrible beam doesn't fire next, but now, instead, it gushes some kind of horrible, corrosive weapon, trying to drive Yuna away, and to keep her from opening fire like that again, leaving horrible trails of sickly green fluid. The opening volley is interrupted though, thankfully, and made just inaccurate enough that Yuna can get a better evasive position; Iria's gunfire has covered her, and thrown it off!     Tomoe's focus on stalling healing allows the accumulating damage to build up, and it's the only thing that prevents the Cells from swarming right back into that jaw wound where Yuna's massive blast just disabled the beam. But if she wants to MAINTAIN that stun, she's going to have to suffer the corrosive damage of that awful sickly green fluid to get close and sustain her ECM!     And meanwhile, far behind, Kirito manages to blast apart enough thrusters that a chain reaction of power and fuel mismanagement seems to take out the whole rear section, ensuring that, for now, the huge neurovore will remain immobile... Until Bennings works on a bypass, at least. But here's the chance! If someone can plant a beacon and then GET OUT, the incoming RKV can strike with precision!
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite is doing her best to cut off the mutation and burn it out before it can spread. Which appears to have worked for the most part. Unfortunately while she's focusing on melting out specific parts of the monsterous hull to do so she can't be all zippy and evasive. Meaning as even as they're burning and melting several tendrils manage to snare onto the Loader and start to drag it in. Thrusters strain as they try to fight, but sputter and hiccup from the damage the Loader has already taken. Hopalong clatters loudly as tendrils grab onto the arm, quickly detatching and hopping up to the cockpit before he gets subdued in neurovore ickiness as well. Corona lets out a soft sigh, undoes her restraints. And for a moment takes off her hat, holding it to her chest. "Ya been a good steed ol' boy. Now do us a favor, an' give em hell one last time!" She redoffs her hat, activating the force-shield space helmet, and opens the cockpit. As she's climbing out she reachs over to hit a big red button marked 'CAUTION: ONLY USE IN EXTREME BOSS FIGHT EMERGENCY' on the way out. Corona grabs onto Hopalong, and he lets loose a blast from his mouth as a makeshift rocket jump to launch them away from the horrific mass before any of the tendrils can grab onto her. As the Loader is dragged into the tendril mass it transmits a powerful frequency that should be little trouble to pick up by anything needing a signal to lock onto. It will do that for as long as possible, until the system overload kicks in, and the machine self-destructs. Hopefully the explosion will do some hefty damage from within the neurovore mass it was being dragged into.
Silica	CLANG. CLANG. The shield is holding for the moment, but that third arm is severely putting pressure on the frigate's hull and power systems with the repeated strikes. She can't task one of her arms off to grapple the free claw, without letting another one free to keep smashing at her ship. "Arm integrity failing. Arm two's resonator is offline. Shield down to 35% and falling fast."     Then Corona manages to get the Beacon online. "Beacon signal active!" The ship lurches hard to port, throwing the Cait Sith around in her command seat. "GNNNH! Arm integiry dropping. I can't keep this up much longer!" Just as she says that, a panel explodes behind her, throwing the NPC crewman across the bridge and into the main display, shorting it out and cutting her radio comm. "Damn it, Damage control party, lay to the command room!"     Flames lick across the control console that used to be the comms array, then a couple things happen at once. Arm 2 and Arm 3 snap, their servoes exploding from the strain. That leaves the Cait Sith with only two arms, the ones she's directly controlling to hold those massive pincers in place. "Divert power to the main battery. Fire on that third arm, load Impact Charges!" The cannons, firing into the body, swivel up to start targetting the free arm that's pounding the ship's hull with their renewed PWAM PWAM, the bolts holding a latent kinetic charge that blasts out like a shaped charge warhead, trying to reduce the impact of that bashing appendage.     "Runner lights, signal allies. Continue the assault, we fight to the last man."
Yuna Kagurazaka	It's not very often that Yuna is pleased by how much damage she's managed to inflict on an adversary; this, however, is one of those rare exceptions - and its lack of a functional mouth-beam is particularly gratifying. On the other hand, it *can* spit that gunk, and Elner's analysis warns her that it'll eat right through El-Line's armor if it gets a chance. But on the flip side, Silica - who more or less took over tanking duty - is now in a lot of trouble, and while the GCS Black Swordsman may have arms of its own, it's *not* designed for extended defensive melee. At least, Yuna doesn't think it is ... and Silica's report that she needs help pretty much confirms what she'd thought. So El-Line comes charging in, with Yuna's cry of "LIGHTNING SWORD!!" heralding the rematerialization of the Matrix Figure's blade. The sleek, gleaming robot loops around as if it's about to go after something else ... but only so that Yuna has a better angle to take advantage of El-Line's momentum when she DOES come in on the attack. It's not exactly conventional swordsmanship, sweeping up from below and bringing the Lightning Sword up in a thruster-boosted slash, hopefully-through the Grey Area's 'elbows' ... but most dojos don't really include 'deep-space environments' or 'divine magitech super robots' in their conventional training, either. Yuna has both of those to work with and she's doing the best she can, to save another friend.
Kirito	BOOOOOOOOOM! The engines go, and Kirito's right in the thick of it. He realizes the danger only a few moments before it happens. Just in time to kick retro-thrusters into full swing and pull away. Even then his Loader's caught by the explosion and pelted with shrapnel that damages it even further.     His reckless-looking style just isn't that suited for mechas and spaceships. Skeletons and Lizardmen don't EXPLODE.     "... that was too close..." He rasps out in relief... only to hear Silica's comms drop over the radio.     RIght then and there his heart sinks, and thoughts focus sharply as any of his blades. The Black Jackbunker about faces in space and hits FULL SPEED thrusters for Silica's frigate. He's not sure what the situation over there is yet but he can't do ANYTHING from where he's at!     His heart pounds in his chest and all thoughts go for rescuing Silica! The young man's teeth are clenched grindingly tight and veins nearly popping out of his forehead in strain!
Iria	Iria doesn't have the ability to utilize melee the way Yuna does, so she resorts to the old fashioned way of taking that thing out. "I told you to pick on someone your own size, now you're gonna get it!" Iria calls out as she unloads a full barrage of missiles on the Grey Matter. "You mess with my friends, you meet my wrath!"
Tomoe	Tomoe is going to keep it up she knows what she's going to face as the corrosive damage eats into her loader as she moves in to maintain the ECM. Her machine is going to be dot'ed to death sooner or later but that's not so imporanty to her then again she has been known to be wreckless and this is one of those time she'll attempt to use her plasma Nagiante if she can get close enough ot hit anything but her main focus is on the ECM and keeping the monster from healing whenever she can.
Starbound Flotilla	The beacon is set. With it goes the Stampede, which soon will go out with a bang. The glimmer in the distance has the be the RKV, which seems to be coming in at a fraction of the speed of light that its multifaceted coloration is gleaming a dark blue. Aboard, Laika has the helm, and her crew are bracing for impact, slowed by relativistic processes. As the Stampede sinks into the slag, it detonates with a huge blast, tearing a gap in the hard crab-like armor.     Now they just have to give Silica space to get out of there... RIGHT when the RKV hits. Her grapples are capable, but they can't endure forever. Thank goodness that everyone's converging on them to deal with this. With all the damage accumulating, she may need to bail on the craft and return to her fighter, but she won't get hurt too much with Yuna, Tomoe, and Kirito closing in, brutalizing the arms that are menacing her. With the three of them working together, and Tomoe suppressing regeneration at the elbow, they can give her enough freedom to evade it.     Yuna's first. She moves in with the lightning sword, halting the arm in motion, bracing it against the edge, and slamming her full weight into it to be able to halt its wild swinging. But the wound is deep enough that the ambient Cells seem to prioritize healing it, and the rush of Cells pulls in towards it to close the wound. Then, in comes Tomoe, slamming into it and blending it with her own weapon, but more importantly, maintaining that ECM, stunning the enemy's support units and keeping it from performing this regeneration, while Iria manages to rip through the stunned mass of Cells with her own missile barrage. Then comes Kirito, tearing his way towards the arm; if he can pound through enough of the armor at the arm there, it'll enable the lodged blade that Yuna's machine grasps to dismember the limb CLEAN OFF, giving Silica enough opportunity to survive holding the creature in place, while also giving her enough freedom to escape before what comes next.     What comes next is surprisingly lacking in ceremony or dramatics. It's like a warped line of relativistically stacked rainbow lights in a simple, straightforward column. It's impossible for even the sharpest reflexes to observe it as it passes, the mysterious mass of metal. The Relativistic Kill Vehicle makes no noise, emits no strange energy signatures, and otherwise is lacking in dramatics. For a moment, all was normal. Then, for a flash, a column of light. And then, once more, all was normal, with the exception of a massive hole punched straight through the Neurovore.     Physics breaks down enough that it fails to provide even drama for the event. The most it can provide is dramatics for the follow-up. The wake of particles that theoretical physicists only think about in fever dreams shines like a sun, and the interior of the column of the wake actually experiences strange temporal events and views into odd realities before the impact zone collapses. Then, and only then, does the Neurovore roar in pain. The main body goes limp. Much of the creature cannot contain its own biomass. And at the head, the huge mass of cells... Shifts. A lanky humanoid, their true form obfuscated by layers of tentacles, emerges just enough to show that the Neurovore is pressed to its last resort.     The obfuscated figure swipes a hand in the motion of an Augma User opening their menu.
Silica	"Abandon ship! All hands abandon ship! Get to the life pods!" commands Silica as the grapplers finally give out. She shoves power into the retro thrusters, lurching the ship back and away from the incoming RKV. The Warp Bubble sputters and shuts down, the vanes coming loose and falling away with the sudden thrust. The ruined arm segments fall away and in all, the GCS Black Swordsman is done for.     "Core breach! She's going critical!" Silica swipes her menu and, as the hull ruptures around her, summons her fighter again, the NPCs piling into escape capsules that launch back towards Altair V and the FSC facilities that act as 'staging points' for such crews. Silica herself just leaps out of a hull breach, and clambers back into her Swordfish, as the ruined hulk of her frigate lists heavily to port, then detonates in an expanding plume of blue-white flame, leaving two halves of a former ship, before they shatter away into voxels. "Leo-1 to all points. The Black Swordsman is down... ... Looks like that wasn't it's final form though, heads up."
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite only has to drift for a few minutes before the shine of an energy beam claims her. A few moments later she steps off the teleporter pad on the Steamhammer Express. She sets Hopalong down, only to get intercepted by a brief hug from Windrose. "I still can't believe you blew your Loader up!" "Sacrifices gotta be made.. An' better they made by the machine than our friends." The fox's tail gives a few flicks as she trudges up to the cockpit, leaning on the console and staring out at Grey Area. Not that there's much to see, it's just one moment it's there, the next moment there's a hugeass hole in the thing. And that mass is still moving. Windrose hustles up to drop back into the main pilot's seat. "There's something still down there, eeeew!" She taps the controls to zoome in on the humanoid shape gesturing admist the cell mass. The skunkette makes a face. "That is just sick and wrong. Sick. And. Wrong!" "An' that's why the screwball's gotta be stopped." Corona turned to hurry back to the Steamhammer's cargo section. "Jus' keep an eye on things 'Rose, Ah gotta re-gear up."
Yuna Kagurazaka	And that, at least initially, seems to be it. The Grey Area, Neurovore Class 7 Shell, takes the brunt of a viciously pragmatic assault, or maybe a pragmatically vicious one, in which the RKV's impact is decidedly the heaviest single instance of damage - putting a hole straight through the giant Neurovore which momentarily reminds Yuna that this is a simulated reality, with all the physics-processing hiccups thereof when something *that* extreme happens. Yuna is too keyed up to relax, though, and too wary to let her guard down. If that's really it, then there should be a 'battle over' effect: the Neurovore should dissolve or something, there should be loot windows, congratulations ... well, maybe not loot windows for her, it depends on how well CARDINAL -- And then she remembers the quest objectives for this event-stage. The Grey Area is defeated, but nobody had a chance yet to do anything with the three Agents they've acquired. And if the fight hasn't been declared finished, if CARDINAL hasn't told them the enemy is officially defeated ... It's not over. The Matrix Figure snaps its sword out to the side, as if flicking blood off of the gleaming blade, and then El-Line brings its sword and shield up in a defensive stance. Shugoseiheki doesn't block Yuna's view; as El-Line reorients to face what's left of the Neurovore 'boss,' she can see that humanoid shape ... and she can see that gesture, opening an interface window. Yuna pointedly did not want to kill Bennings. But right now, she has a hard time being relieved that he's still alive - because the threat to this Earth isn't over yet. She's still hoping to neutralize the threat without sacrificing Bennings's life, but is that still even possible ... or can she make it possible?
Iria	Meanwhile, Iria's at a bit of a loss for words herself. It feels like it's over, but it's not. There's still more to do. "Keep your head in it!" Iria says to herself. "We're only getting started!" She narrows her eyes.
Kirito	Kirito does indeed come in at ludicrous speeds, pushing the Loader to output it simply shouldn't be controllable at. Yet somehow he times the bunker extensions and thrusts with excellent orchestration, spearing through limbs and using the thruster momentum to TWIST them and spin around like a twig through a rubberband for insanely deep ad penetrative damage. The g-forces should be more than enough to KO a normal person but he just swoops on and on towards Silica's cockpit, aiming to shield the ship as long as possible...     This position, after the lightshow and freakish transformation... gives a very disgruntled and jumpy Kirito a great view of...     "... Bennings?!"
Tomoe	The fight is going hard she keeps supressing it's regeneration now even if her machine is going to not last for as long as she'd like they got a job to do. She also woners if it will ever stop? No this sort of thing will keep happening for the rest of her life. She grimaces at thie and keeps fighting. Even with her friends also cutitng into the beast her machne is in hella bad shape she does however get a moment to flee from the blast though she has enough time, the comm chatter of her allies echoing in her ears as she pulls back. She's checks her inventory she's go enough stuff to shove down the victem of Cardinal's madness throat she will be making ready to do what she can for Bennings. <<Time to ...make like Bucklies.>>
Starbound Flotilla	Bennings is the only one here who is a native player of IFO. His time and dedication spent in it are something admirable and remarkable, and so he is the one here who has the most connection with its systems. As the Grey Area suffers the impaling wound, and as Cells try and fail to repair the sheer quantity of damage. Bennings himself has arisen, alternating between mutters so quiet that they can't be heard, and shouts so loud that they travel through space itself, over stray radio waves. His mutated, warped voice can only be understood with Kyoko Takada's translation efforts. The Neurovore's main body is in its death throes, its stacked healthbars depleting away as the shining red damage indicators around the impaled hole eat away at it, but only so much HP can be lost at one time for a player vessel...     "<No no no no no, I can't let this happen! God damn it CARDINAL, god damn it, isn't the hero supposed to win, isn't the status quo supposed to come back, this isn't RIGHT, IT ISN'T RIGHT!!>" His lanky, mutated, obfuscated form pokes and prods at his VRMMO interface, smashing a confirmation on a red window. And the moment he does, the Neurovore's body is wracked with fresh explosions at the rear, huge rows of thrusters detonating as Bennings initiates a self-destruct. "<This isn't fair, it isn't fair! I wanted to see the world when it was cured again! I wanted to live to the end of it!>" And the thrusters that haven't exploded from the overload launch into a suicidally powerful rush.     With a flash, Bennings' Loader armor has been assembled around him, a huge bright white steel industrial humanoid shape, badly infested with untold numbers of Neurovore strains that give it jet black accents.     In the left hand, some kind of massive railgun infested with gleaming Neurovore claws. In the right, some form of tremendous shotgun boiling with blisters of mysterious chemicals. On each shoulder, missile launchers loaded with a hive of awful growths. The thrusters writhe with maneuvering flagella. The pilot seat only barely contains his volume of biomass, keeping the man hidden just enough. He releases an insane battlecry, suicidally desperate. ================================ <OBJECTIVES> ================================ * DEFEAT THE GREY AREA * DEFEAT THE ENEMY COMMANDER * APPLY THE THREE AGENTS TO PRODUCE THE CURE     Bennings opens fire with a swarm of biological Neurovore-styled missiles that scream and cry as they streak out in a huge spamming missile massacre attack, attempting to latch onto any foes with disgusting sharp claws at their heads and detonate at extreme close range. Meanwhile, the Grey Area's corpse, after all this effort to get out of the game zone, fully leaves IFO, and the world around the group flickers from a strange, surreal space realm into the real high orbit of Earth. The pale blue dot is distant, but approaching. There's still time to complete the quest, but now the stakes are fully visible.
Corona Arclite	"Y'all gonna have to deal with Bennings on yer own fer a few. Ah gotta regear after losin' the Stampede." After giving her allies a heads up Corona clicks shut her comm device for the moment. Fortunately being a properly paranoid sort she is she had backups planned in case she did lose the in-game Loader. She steps on a crowbar to flip it up into her hand, then goes to start prying open some of the crates she had stashed in the back. After chomping down some coal to restoke his furnance Hopalong lops into the cargo hold, emitting a few mechanical click-chirrups as he does. "Yeah, you better be charged back up." A panel clatters to ground as Corona crawls inside. "Gonna need all the power ya can give me fer this to work."
Kirito	Normally Kirito would have been all over explaining things to Bennings. He'd be having no trouble explaining matters. But the Infection Index mechanic has rendered all of his efforts useless...     The bits and pieces of messages he gets hit him hard in the gut. And one thing is certain.     He cannot leave Bennings stuck in this situation. He absolutely cannot. The path he's walked to this point never allowed him to abandon someone in trouble, no matter how desperate things are.     That determination guides Kirito's hands as he once again grips the controls and puts his Loader into a dizzying and insane tumble-spin evading through the portion of missiles aimed his way. Only a few manage to clamp on and explode, ripping chunks of armor and mechanical parts free from his machine and depleting its Durability, but not slowing it much.     It's a perilous gambit manuever Kirito's set course on. One that aims to basically bodyslam Bennings' loader and pin it in place with strategic extensions of the Pile Bunkers!     A charge that is very Kirito, and straight out of his Gun Gale Online playbooks. He must not expect his Loader to survive this fight!?
Tomoe	Damn it Caedinal was one thought Tomoe shared with Bennings, she didn't fault Bennings he had been tricked, used by Cardinal to enable all of this. She's got to figure out how to get Bennings out of this thing as best she can with the rest of the party before they force feed him the ure. She does not intend ot let a Cardinal claim another soul if she can help it. She checks her machine's damage report, she's got some HP left to it but it's not as good as she'd like. Still it's a tool and one more that they have to deal with Bennings and hopefully get the poor sob out of this mess. 5R Her Loader thruster kick in and she'll fly right after Kirito to catch BEnning shortly after Kirito makes his move. She'll move to use the force and the mass of her mahcine to hopefully pin Benniongs as wlel and she will take hits if she has to, to deal with this. SAO Surivors are not entirely sane anymore...
Yuna Kagurazaka	There has to be a way to snap Bennings out of it, thinks Yuna - some way to break through to the man engulfed by the machine, to drive home the fact that the game's stakes are no longer within their intended constraints. Using the anti-infestation dosage on the Grey Area itself backfired massively, and in Bennings's current state it might not do much better ... plus, she recognizes the frame of a Loader around his still-infested avatar - or is it his real body by now? She can't suppress a shudder at the thought of it - imagining what it would be like to be an Augma-user, and to have the Neurovore infestation effect piercing through the digital construct of her avatar to infest her real, originally-human body inside it. How in the Light's name did Yuuki and the others tolerate it? Yuna's almost glad she *doesn't* have an Augma at this point. In the meantime, missiles. A lot of them. Probably too many to blow away with any of her ranged options - but she's already got the Lightning Sword at the ready, and with a loud yell, Yuna charges in - not at Bennings himself, but trying to take out as many of those missiles as she can in one high-speed melee pass. It won't be enough of them, she knows that before she starts ... but every little bit helps, and for now, the game is still providing protection, as far as she knows - the data layer that contains numbers such as 'hit points' and 'status buffs' and the like. She'll do her best; that's all she can do - that, and hope that 'her best' is enough.
Starbound Flotilla	NVL "MAGNUM OPUS"                                                           CLASS 4 COMBAT LOADER                                 When Kirito approaches, the issue in space is that there's very little cover and that Bennings is ready to engage in melee. Sadly, Kirito has more melee experience, but much more reduced gear levels. This game may be quite skill-based, but as anyone who has dug into EVE Online would know, sometimes numbers just matter. The pile-bunkers slam through, tearing a bright red hole in the armor and dealing a great amount of damage, but there's simply too much durability on this gear for it to disable him even when Kirito deftly pins his torso segment against the Neurovore. He tries to parry one shot with that huge railgun, but the other pile bunker gets through, showing the advantages of Kirito's dual-wielding style even here. "<Two...!?>" He starts, then yells, "<Get off me you goddamn /monster/!>" And unloads his shotgun straight at Kirito's machine.     Thankfully, Tomoe is there, managing to pin the huge gun away and take the heavy shot herself. The impact, wherever it lands, will be enough to blast a shockwave of terrifying chemical particles around that corrode badly. He fires more and more of those missiles, arcing them over the pair that pin him, but Yuna's interception is well capable of dealing with all the swarms and rushes of incoming explosives that might hit Kirito and Tomoe from behind.     "<Infected Augmas, god damn it. God damn it, I'm trying to help you!! I'm trying to cure you!! Can't you see what's happened to Earth, it's all--!!>" He calls out desperately, and the tiny filaments of flesh that line the gaps in his infested pilot pod begin a razor-violent assault on the close-range attackers, trying to brutalize them with punishing damage over time for the attempt to pin.
Corona Arclite	"Corona, are you sure about this?" It was impossible to miss the concern in Windrose's voice even over the comm channels. "You barely tested that rig other than the means of powering it! Not to mention that's not really legal to the game." "Time fer playin' by the game's rules is over when it's threatenin' to twist an entire world into that... stuff. No time fer more testin'." When Corona finally beams off the Steamhammer Express and back into the fight, its with a rig radically different from the in-game Loaders. You know how old sci-fi basically styled spacesuits like old fashioned diving suits made for space instead of water? Give that a good steampunk athsetic, and you'd get the right idea. While Hopalong is folded up into the backpack, using his engine and furnace as a power supply for the EVA rig. Once clear of the teleport Corona engages the thrusters and propels herself towards the bruhaha starting around Bennings and the corpse of the infected Grey Area. Her Matter Manipulator stands out in contrast where it's clipped to the exterior toolbelt, within easy reach for its use as a portable armory. Out of which Corona pulls another launcher style device. After Yuna clears out the swarm of missile, Corona fires a few of her own back at the Grey Area. No, these aren't anti-infection bombs this time. But they're not the sort that explode, either. On successful impact anchors snap shut from the rocket heads to clamp onto the craft, while the thrusters continue to burn. They're designed to stop runaway locomotives by applying thrust in the opposite direction, and while there's probably not enough force even with several to stop the Grey Area, every bit of its speed they can bleed off to delay it's progress is an advantage.
Yuna Kagurazaka	That went better than Yuna was expecting, even with far more missiles flying than she'd accounted for at first - at least, up until the filaments reach out for El-Line. It's Elner who really notices them, and rather than simply verbalizing a warning, the robo-faerie sets off a blaring alarm, highlighting the endangered direction in flashing red. The effect is just as intended - Yuna lets out a yelp and ignites her thrusters, propelling El-Line *away* from the Neurovore Loader before she spins around to focus on it again. She *still* doesn't want to shoot at Bennings himself, in any case; if she were all Augma'd up with the 'virtual' gear that they're supposed to be using, it'd be one thing, but El-Line is *real* - and while Yuna has some control over the output of its weapons, she's still worried about the risk of hurting the infested player if she isn't careful enough. But at the same time ... they need to stop him. Disable his Loader and breach its armor, so that Kirito and Tomoe can try the anti-infestation items. Plus, of course, there's the Alpha, Beta, and Gamma Agents which have to be administered to truly eliminate the infection. One task at a time. El-Line comes in for another pass, and this time - without missiles in flight - she's trying to carve into the missile launchers themselves, either to slice them off the Magnum Opus's shoulders or to simply wreck them beyond the ability to launch more missiles.
Kirito	"Gah!" Kirito can't handle this thing. His Loader's getting overpowered at close combat. The stats just don't work out no matter his skill. Yeah, he has the guy pinned against the Grey Area as they all fall towards Earth... but now what? He's still screaming bloody murder at them all...     And has a shotgun. Kirito wasn't expecting that! "--TOMOE!"     Well. He can only gulp and trust his allies to help tear this Loader apart. But now...     What exactly is he supposed to do? He's only got the one pile bunker holding Bennings down and now that he's up close there's not much he can do to keep hitting him and crack that shell... not wit those weapons, right?     Well, he doesn't stop there. With grunt after grunt Kirito grabs his controls and times a thruster burst with torso servos slamming the ship forward.     BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!     Yeah, his Loader is now basically headbutting the crap out of Bennings's ship and taking severe damage with each impact!     Kirito's apparently out of ideas.
Tomoe	Tomoe :Deals with the gun byt taking the shot herself her Loader does a hell of a lot of damage her Loader is melting and more alarms are going off she's not doing well there and she's not certain if they can get through to him but she's damn well going to give it her all. She doesn't know how much her Loader is going to take. <<YOU IDIOT CARDINAL IS PLAYING YOU! WERE CLEARER FROM SWORD ART ONLINE!>> Then it hits her he can't understand her and she can only guess at what he's saying. She's also comming under attack from behind she does however keep her ECM on for what good it will do as she attempt sto roll with the hits. She also move to take her own loader use the lance un powered to just smack it trying toi disable one of the weapons. Hopefully Yuna plan works because she's honestlty not sure how long they can keep this up.
Starbound Flotilla	Corona brings out a fresh and incredibly strange rig, one that it seems has been meant to buy some time. That pale blue dot is looking agonizingly close, and the traces of atmosphere that mark the zones of proximity to it are getting perilously detectable. This should keep it from going full colony drop just for now, but it still can't halt it entirely, at least not with this arrangement and not permanently. The loss of speed is good, but it immediately draws Bennings' desperate wrath. "<No, no no no! You can't! Stop it, the cure won't work if it never /gets to Earth/!!>" He shouts, and immediately points the Magnum of his Magnum Opus straight at Corona. The claws split and swirl around its length, and he fires off a massive shot of a layered, organically-wrought electromagnetic slug. Whether she deflects or evades, it tears clean holes through the falling debris of the Grey Area.     Yuna should be able to mostly judge this right. The advantage of being an Augma user is that all damage, while effectual, is abstracted; there is no way to accidentally kill Bennings, as long as one watches the HP bar. But speaking of watching the HP bar, she may have another matter that needs addressing: The Cells within the Grey Matter are swarming on Bennings, trying to restore his wounds. Tomoe can disable them, but they need to be cleared out! She carves through one of Bennings' missile launchers, but the regeneration is swift and the retaliation even more swift as he floods the space around him with corrosive chemicals, themselves beginning to spark violently as they react with traces of Earth's atmosphere.     Kirito's headbutting is brutal, but effective, dazing the man inside and cracking the shell. Strange flesh within churns. He brings that shotgun up again, and... Tomoe's smashed it! The weapon shatters in half, into a spray of voxels. But the power loader's huge infested claw-like hand, now free, focuses elsewhere. He forcibly tries to elbow Tomoe back, then with a strained grappler's shout, he tries to grab and rip the cockpit straight off of Kirito's mecha, kick the whole mass back, and dislodge himself from his pinned position simultaneously. "<See if your goddamn infestation mutations can get you flying out here!!>" He cries out, sounding... More desperate than murderous.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite grunts and discards the expended laauncher. It'd take too long to reload it, precious time they don't have to waste now that she's bought them a little more. Because she's pretty sure that... yep, that got Benning's attention and something fiercing. "Hopalong, Ah need counter-thrust!", she snaps to her robo-buddy even as the cannon is swung in her direction and fired. The maneuvering thrusters on her pack readjust and glow as they warm up again, vectors adjusting to keep her stable. But for what? Corona whips out her trademark sledge, the breaker extending to its full size as she winds back and squeezes the handle lever to crank up the pulsarium core in the head. As it glows to life with the plasma aura she does some quick calculating in her head. There was little if any atmosphere out here, so there's nothing to drag the projectile's speed and line of flight down... So.... "NOW!" The thrusters roar back to life as Corona swings and Hopalong directs the vectors to spin her around without being flung about by the lack of directional gravity. Plus doing so adds momentum to the swing as the Corona Breaker arcs it's plasma charged head right into the shell! She's trying to slam it right back at the Grey Area! Though we'll take just knocking it away from doing damage to anyone important in general. This sort of thing is difficult to calculate with precision when you're improvising on the go.
Kirito	A sense of dread fills Kirito when that claw comes around. He tries to bring around his second Pile Bunker to parry it... but to no avail. The weapon is not so good at this position. It's too close to finely manuever without releasing the Magnum Opus...     And in that moment of clumsy attempting, the claw digs into the upper half of Kirito's machine...     ANd flings his cockpit out into space! But the motion also shatters it... courtesy of all that pummeling.     The Black Swordsman tumbles end over end with his eyes clenched shut and in a bit of a panic. Fairy wings appear in a stream of sparkly black light from his back, but they flutter up to speed to no avail. This is space, after all. The Oxygen Nanoskin he's borrowed from the Flotilla saves him here.. but he's still tumbling end over end away from the Grey Area and back towards IFO space without any way to stop himself...     "He's just like I was." The Spriggan murmurs to himself. He's been where Bennings is in a few different ways.     All alone on a terrible crusade, listening to nobody. Struggling your hardest, without any evidence that it had any meaning or chance of success. Perhaps many people would be willling to write Bennings off here. But...     ... Kirito is not one of them.     He tumbles end over end for hundreds of meters, and from here can get a clear view of the Earth. Big and blue and green with life. There, down in the seas south of Japan, he can see Alfheim even.. His mind flashes back to what he saw when Bennings dragged him off. An Earth covered in that unspeakable infestation... and who knows what might happen there.     The wings flutter a few more times and Kirito's course changes faintly. Again and again they thrum and vibrate and alter his tumbling... and then...     With a SNAP-WHOOSH that shouldn't be audible in space, Kirito impossibly rights himslf and re-orients towards the Magum Opus and the Grey Area. The boy's eyes are fierce as a wargod's, teeth clenchd and grinding. He has no words to share for the moment, just a glare full of determination. Whipping a hand up behind his head, he draws Elucidator, stretches his wings as far out as they'll go... and then *SNAPS* them back into full acceleration mode. A shockwave of compressed cloudy air that shouldn't exist - one of Alfheim Online's special effects for fairy flight - spreads from his starting point. Elucidator illuminates cerulean as he closes in at tremendous speeds --- "HUUUUUUUUUUUUOOOAGH!!!" -- aiming to pierce the Magnum Opus's own cockpit and anchor himself into place. From there... Both swords blaze with starlight the moment he's anchored in place and he begins a frantic series of brilliant slashes against the reinforced metals!
Yuna Kagurazaka	If there is one thing - just one specific mob - out of the whole of Interstellar Frontiers Online which Yuna will be ecstatic never to deal with again, it's probably the Neurovore Cells. The Neurovore as a whole are awful and scary and she'll be glad to wash her hands of any quest having to do with them - but the Cells in particular, healing and reanimating and all of that, have earned her particular dislike. And they're doing it again - the swarm of Cells is racing over from the Grey Area to surround Bennings's Loader and repair all the damage that Yuna, Kirito, and Tomoe are trying to do to it. And there's no way El-Line can fight them off with sword and shield - Yuna could try to get in their way, physically interpose El-Line, but they'll just maneuver around the Matrix Figure - if they don't try to infest it instead. And while Yuna *was* wondering if diving into the Neurovore infestation effect might let them snap Bennings out of his current state of mind, she has a whole lot of qualms about actually trying it *with El-Line*. The Lightning Sword and the Wall of the Guardian Star both vanish as El-Line maneuvers, bringing both arms up with mechanical palms splayed, light starting to crackle, then to flare as Yuna lines up her shot. She's leaving Bennings and the Magnum Opus to Kirito and Tomoe for now - mostly because *somebody* has to deal with the Cells - and if she gives Corona some extra help, all the better. "LIGHTNING .... *SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!*" The flaring and crackling of energy erupts into not one but *two* torrents of radiant power as Yuna unleashes El-Line's firepower - not at full force, but in the form of a sustained blast. The beams start at an angle, giving Bennings a wide enough berth to let Kirito and Tomoe keep doing their thing - and then Yuna swings her aim towards the Grey Area, after giving Corona enough warning to get out of the way. The Twin Lightning Shoot thus traverses right up along the most direct path between the Grey Area and the Magnum Opus - hopefully taking out a *lot* of the Cells which were coming in to help Bennings out. Probably not all of them, but the lion's share nonetheless - at least, that's what Yuna's trying for. And as noted, if she winds up carving another wound into the Grey Area itself? All the better. Probably.
Tomoe	This is how it seems it's going to go having an Augma is a hell of a life saver on her part, she will do her best to make use of it as she keeps an eye on the HP bar even as sh acts. She attempts to use her ECM to keep the healing down and keep other things focused on her if it comes to it. There's also a heck of a lot of pain coming her way her Load isn't going to last much longer. With Kirito headbutting this man twisted and warped by Cardinal she's thankfully able to take out the weapon, which is good news but still she's got something else to deal with. Namely she just got elbowed. <<You dumb ass STOP THIS INSANITY!>> With Kirito going all out? She will move to power her plasma naginata up and move to attempt further disabling attacks before her machine comes undone on her it doesn't have long till it will just be here. Also didn't she see a mecha fight like this in an anime once with the arch villain and protag arguing with each other? Then comes Yuna's addtional support to keep things off their back, hopefully it will be enough, she also makes sure she has the antidote /ready/ too it's going to be needed soon.
Starbound Flotilla	Corona's impact does shift the Grey Area, but more importantly, it has a secondary effect. Bleeding speed from the thing is good, breaking up its integrity to create extra surface area for the growing density of atmosphere to slow it down, but the secondary, truly useful effect is that Bennings, who is less secure on the surface of the head of the great Neurovore, is disconnected from it, screaming as he tumbles through space, and keeping the Grey Area from being part of the fight, even in its death throes. The shattering body is splitting into voxelized debris as it descends now, debris that begin to show traces of re-entry burning...     Good lord, that was a home run slug.     Now the splitting thing is falling from heaven properly. Kirito, as well, is falling. He descends among the sprays of wrecked Neurovore chunks. And Bennings, being someone who knows a bit about ALO, seems to think that's the end of him; another of the infected monsters, cast out of the battle and dying on the re-entry to Earth. So Bennings doesn't even remotely expect what comes next, and focuses his full attention on Yuna and Tomoe here.     His rapidly oscillating healthbar stops oscillating up the moment Yuna deploys that rush of powerful lightning. The combinations of ECMs from Tomoe and the powerful stunning and chain-damage effects of the lightning from the cells, working in perfect tandem with the Neurovore vulnerability to Science elemental attacks lending them a little extra vulnerability to lightning, means that the ensuing chains of bolts detonate Neurovores in clusters of dozens, creating chains of explosively bright lights all around the Grey Area.     Not without reprisal. The left gun is going down soon, but not soon enough. Yuna's focus on his support draws Bennings into a panicked scream, and he unloads a cluster of shots at her; Corona's going to have to work overtime deflecting those massive bolts, fired at such a rapid pace, straight for the center mass of Yuna's machine! Luckily, the volley can't last forever, because Kirito closes in hard and hits him with melee.     "<Ghhh-- What?! How?! You're-- But you're from ALO!!>" He says, uncomprehending as his machine is impaled. "<No no no, no!! Get off! Support, heal!>" He calls out, as the shining red lines show the shredding of his torso column. But the others have cut him off from most of the Cell support, especially Yuna's massive blast, and what little gets through is disabled by Tooe. He's helpless as the cockpit's extensive durability is worn down hard under the assault. An attempt to point the heavy railgun at Kirito gets cut off as Tomoe's naginata rips into it, and the missile launchers that charge are shocked into inactivity too. By the end of the combo, Bennings' cockpit opening is ripped to shreds, exploding in a burst of voxels. Inside...     The warped, lanky creature that Bennings has been mutated into. Lashing tentacles join in the melee, becoming an extension of the desperate, hallucinatory mind. Bennings assaults Kirito as hard as he can, and as he does, Infection Index may yet begin building in Kirito himself as Bennings begins to duel him directly in space!     He's exposed now. Surrounding chunks of the Grey Area are beginning to burn up in the atmosphere. Bennings is the only thing standing between the group and jamming the three reagents into the quest's completion. They just have to get this finished.     Of all the beings... It's Cruiser Tormod that slips in, below the huge craft, making an unearthly noise of determination as the Von Neumann Berserker itself begins to burn in the atmospheric inferno. It's here to help recover those in need of recovery, and shield those in need of shielding, as best it can, to let the descending defenders activate the three quest items.
Iria	She's been mostly in the background for the time being, but now Iria and the Hyper Blade are coming into action again. "All right, it's time to kick ass and take names!" She calls out as she flies in towards the Gray Matter. "Yahahahahahaha!" Iria's got an evil grin on her face as she fires numerous shots at the Grey Matter, obviously on an adrenaline high.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite glances over her shoulder (as much as she can with steampunk style bulk of the EVA rig) as she collapses and restows the hammer. "How ya doin' li'l pardner?" Hopalong emits some clicks and clacks that somehow manage to sound tired from where he's folded into the backpack, but at the same time sparks arc along to the thruster vectors. He's still got some juice in him. "Rawght then, give me all ya got!" As the light flares behind her from the thrust Corona directs herself towards the E-Line. The thrusters give her enough boost to get into motion, allowing her to put her parkour skills to use and hip-hop her way across the chunks of debris floating away from the broken Grey Area. Then as she kicks off the last large chunk she twists around to fire the grapplers built into the rig's arms into the hunk of hull she just lept from, and with a final vector thrust from the pack attempts to slingshot the hull debris into the path of that volley. "Yuna! Improvise cover, comin' yer way!" Gotta destroy the this stuff anyways, might as well kill two birds with one stone... so Bennings doesn't kill her partners first. Except now she's not going to have much thruster power left until Hopalong gets a few moments to charge back up. And breaks in the action are too far and few between right now...
Tomoe	Kirito has just did his thing she looks at Benning. She also does not let up. <<Some contiune digging into what happened and it lead to ALO from SAO. I am Tomoe the Iron Lily, tank for the Cleaers and that is Kirito the Black Swordsman!>> She triggers the ECM again trying to keep that up even as her own machine is going up. The cockpit it cracked open she can see the things bennins has become. She'll take a risk as she's there she'll pop her cock puit open and she's got an item menu up, with Bennings clear she now make use ot active the antidore she has and she targets Bennins with it then leaps out of her Loader to attempt t pina nd make sure she can force use the stuff /on him/. <<Cardinal's been using you!>> She's also totally open to attack while she does this, this could go bad for her....
Kirito	Now that Kirito has a foothold on the Magnum Opus, he exploits this for all he's got. The translation is helpful, but he's not so sure how much infection he needs to acquire before Bennings will listen to him...     Still, this is an angle Kirito's willing to exploit. The tentacles that lash out at him... he simply bats away, focusing his EVERYTHING on pure defense and keeping Bennings too tied up to deal with Tomoe!     <"Come to your senses already! The infection turns everything you see around!">     He... hasn't realy put any thought into how he just flew, and that fact will probably slip his mind for the time being.
Yuna Kagurazaka	On the one hand, Yuna really *did* need to go 'both barrels' with the Lightning Shoot in order to make that work - the sustained blast wouldn't have had enough punch if she'd only used El-Line's right arm and hand. On the other hand, she *was* leaving herself vulnerable - and Bennings takes full advantage of it, addressing a sustained barrage of fire at El-Line's center of mass. And while she's still recovering from throwing that much power into a single attack, Yuna can't summon Shugoseiheki again fast enough to protect herself. A series of bullets hammers into the Matrix Figure's torso, and Yuna shrieks in pain - maybe not direct, personal injury, but El-Line is an extension of her, and the sustained damage, the barrage chewing away at defensive aura and actual armor, takes its toll on Yuna herself. But Corona sends that chunk of the Grey Matter's hull flying into the line of fire - and El-Line grabs it, a measure of desperation evident in how tightly the super robot clings to it. "Thanks," Yuna gasps over the radio, finally catching her breath in the brief respite. It's just enough of a respite for Yuna to catch her breath, muster her focus, and call out, "Shugoseiheki!" - just in the nick of time, as the last batch of bullets punches through what *had* been part of the boss ship's hull. So. Bennings no longer has a functional Loader, or at least, the Magnum Opus is no longer a factor in the fight. Bennings himself is fighting Kirito directly; the Grey Area is falling into the atmosphere - but something is slowing it, and a quick check with Elner confirms that it's the Tormod, trying to slow the Neurovore Shell. Tomoe is standing ready to help disinfect Bennings of the Neurovore ... and Yuna would have to be outside El-Line to do any good. There's one thing Yuna *can* still do with El-Line, and she does it - flying underneath the Grey Area and the Tormod, helping to take some of the brunt of re-entry friction and heat off of the Von Neumann Berserker. She doesn't care about protecting the Grey Area - it can burn, it *needs* to burn - but she's not about to let any of her friends die, in victory *or* in defeat.
Starbound Flotilla	As Kirito aggressively parries the dueling melee rush, matching the body-wide melee lashing and whipping with his own dual blades effectively. Bennings is not a melee specialist, and rarely has IFO ever possessed much of a melee combat scene, much like early ALO. But the assault is buffed heavily by the sheer volume of attack vectors that the foe is capable of, assaulting from so many angles at such a frequent time and with such intense aggression, getting to the point where Bennings is pushing himself out of his cockpit and simply dueling atop the body of the Loader itself. Well, for a given value of dueling, considering how one-sided it all is.     The inferno rushing around them intensifies for only a moment when barrages of stray debris from Iria's biolent introduction, until Yuna Kagurazaka rushes in and cuts the inferno off. This sudden shift gives Tomoe a moment of cover as she rushes in and sort of tackles the writhing mass of a man! He slams away from the cockpit, then straight against one of the shattered legs of his once-vehicle. "<No! No!! Get off! I have to--!!>" He screams, lashing out against her and trying to struggle away from her. The horizon is rapidly rushing up around them, and it's not even clear if the Infection Index can run down enough. But it begins to, gushing the curative chemicals out and searing away the damaged, infesting biomass.     As he lowers, more and more, further, down from ten levels of infection to seven, to five, to three... Parts of his face -- a human face, young and yet gaunt and emaciated from lack of food and sleep -- are revealed. Parts of his astronaut armor are shown. "<Wh...> What..." He whispers, in a confused, uncomprehending tone. Looking back, he sees, somewhere around Yuna and Tormod, the sheer, overwhelming blueness of the planet he once thought was lost to an infection. "Wh...!! This isn't real, it's an infectious effect, it's...!"     He can probably hear them -- maybe even understand them -- by now. If they can convince him to, if they can convince him that it would save Earth, he'll self-destruct this awful, tremendous neurovore. But they'll need to overcome the sheer, overwhelming pain of his Overview-Effect-induced traumas with something intense. And they'll need time and space to do it; Yuna's going to have to tank the infernos of a violent re-entry if they're going to keep the fight from reigniting in a suicidal, atmospheric blaze.
Yuna Kagurazaka	Yuna had a pretty good idea of what she was doing when she maneuvered underneath the Cruiser Tormod to try and take the brunt of re-entry. She's done it before, really - executing re-entry in El-Line, from stratosphere (or further) to surface, and doing so at pretty much full speed from the get-go, only letting the atmosphere itself slow her down. And she did it to fry a perfect sunny-side-up egg. Seriously. On the other hand, the time she did THAT wasn't on the heels of a high-intensity mecha battle, and El-Line was completely intact at the start ... plus she had a 'heat shield' in the form of the skillet she was using for the egg. This time, El-Line is rather significantly the worse for wear, she doesn't have a skillet/heat shield, and she DOES have rather a substantial mass of ships behind El-Line, which changes the equation by rather a lot. The Wall of the Guardian Star provides *some* extra protection, but ... is it going to be enough? "BENNINGS!!!" she calls out, as loud as she can, even with the radio - partly to make sure she can be heard over re-entry noise, partly just to get his attention. "It's not your imagination - this is the real Earth we're descending towards ... and if the Neurovore infest it, everyone is going to suffer! Maybe not even just *this* Earth! The Neurovore made you think you were 'clean' while it was Earth that was infested and corrupted - you have to help us STOP the Neurovore from making it down there! You have to help us protect Earth, the *real* way!!" There's no faking the desperation in her voice, tinged by now with genuine fear - because by now, calling out to Bennings, pleading, trying to break through the game-inflicted delusion is literally the only thing left she can do towards accomplishing their goal. Trying to protect Cruiser Tormod, trying to slow the descent of Gray Area's remains, those are just buying what time she can. Actually *finishing* this is in hands other than hers.
Iria	Real or fake, there's a job here to be done. And in this case, if the Earth isn't protected, it's gonna be a lot worse than just a game over screen. A whole LOT worse. "Listen to her!" Iria calls out to Bennings. "You have to come to your senses! This isn't just a game anymore!"
Kirito	Finally! As cleanser after cleanser seems to work its magic... Kirito can ever so slightly relax.l.. and let up on his assault. Though he doesn't sheathe his blades... he still stands over the shattered cockpit. Scowling.     <"Soloing the Neurovores was a big mistake. You've been on their ship the entire time. Have a look at this quest log! If this ship of yours reaches Earth it WILL infect everything!">     Kirito doesn't waste much time here. he downstrikes a thumb at the air, presses the menu corner to switch the menu into FULLY VISIBLE mode, and with another gesture spawns a mirror window for Bennings to view.     Most of Kirito's personal details are of course, obscured by the opened menu windows, although his name is visible. Who knows if Bennings would recognize that name...     But the names of the IFO quests Kirito has active, particularly THIS one, and the objectives, should say everything he could possibly say otherwise.     Because after tinkering around with the Infection, Kirito discovered that no matter what, it doesn't affect menus.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite would rather not drift into atmospheric burn herself, so she grapples onto the E-Line and reels herself in close. "Just keep doin' whatever yer doin'!" she yells both out loud and over the comm because at this point we're not even really sure which is what people actually hear. Corona still has a trick or two up her sleeves. Because what fox doesn't. They have a reputation for being clever to keep up, after all. Not everything she stores in the manipulator is weapons. Like the devices she pulls out and, after some on the spot tinkering, slaps it down on the super robot and activates. It's actually a spare pulsarium core like her breaker and shotgun use, but now modified to re-direct the energy of that core through it's glowing greebles to project some kind of makeshift energy field. Any little thing she can do to ensure the E-Line doesn't burn up along with the Grey Area's descent, even if she has to pull a Scotty sized miracle out of her fluffy arse with a bunch of spare parts.
Tomoe	Tomoe will attempt to shove a bit more of the med down Bennings for the moment hopefully to the point if it's needed but she will hold off for now though because it seems Kiirto has this well in hand. So she'll hold back but she will speak. "You have been played by Cardinal it's now flaw on your part, it used IFO to twist this whole situation for /contents/ sake alone." She notes but she does make ready if he needs to act again.
Starbound Flotilla	One hopes Yuna has some eggs in there. And not Neurovore eggs.     The brutalizing heat doesn't impede her words, backed by Iria. They reach Bennings and slam into his emotional substrate, hitting him hard in tandem with the Overview Effect. His compulsion of sympathy -- even empathy -- that comes from heroic tendencies cultivated in games that ask for heroism is something that's going to impact his emotional approach to thinking about this deeply, but a compelling logical angle is absent here. "No, no no! It was... It was the game! It swapped things! It makes it all look... Look...!" He says, speaking with a faltering voice and clinging to the rationalizations.     Kirito's approach, backed by Tomoe, is one that hits him a little more. Pinned to the leg by Tomoe's continued painful medication efforts, he can't help but see, and while the fall from the sky is rattling it all and making the entire effort difficult to read, he can eventually focus on it, full of terror and distress. "It's not... It's not..." He mutters, with a tone somewhere between despair and desperation. "I didn't want..." And when Tomoe finishes her shouting, he slumps, somewhere between anguished crying and shouting in his inarticulate noises.     With trembling hands, he opens the menu in his interface, meant to remotely activate a self-destruct. The Flotilla's craft, scorched badly by re-entry at this speed themselves, are swooping low to things, now that Bennings won't counterattack them. George is aboard, readying the three reagents that the group has acquired. They finally escape Earth's high orbit...     The massive Neurovore is falling into the pacific ocean from far, far above, blazing like the sun. With a massive blast, George fires the Alpha Agent, Beta Agent, and Gamma agent straight into its expiring body, completing the quest. Among the falling group the quest completion popup activates: <<<EMERGENCY QUEST COMPLETED!>>> The flickering body of the Neurovore, falling apart into voxels, releases a tremendous wave of energy, and floods the drop buffers of all those nearby with "x999 Neurovore Cure". Whatever is going on in IFO will solve itself, but for the group here, the cure has been finished.     Bennings mutters, softly, "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, it doesn't make sense. I don't know what's happened to Earth or what hasn't happened, or what I did, or..." He quietly confirms the self-destruct on the Grey Area, causing it to detonate in a tremendous blast of voxels and item drops, as the battered and burned Cruiser Tormod moves up to brace the falling group and ensure their safety alongside Yuna, giving them a safe, albeit quite hot place to land a bit more gently when they impact the pacific ocean... Somewhere near shores of Japan, of course, within range of the boats there. And certainly in sight of them.     It's all finished.