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Lemeza Kosugi     This has got to be the most full-of-itself Guardian that Lemeza has ever met. Calling a group of elites "soft", claiming they have "already lost". This isn't even very far into the Tower. That said, the party still had to fight it. That left one obvious course of action. "HEY UGLY!" He addresses the big bug queen directly, brandishing his ornate, golden Angel Shield rather aggressively in one hand, and his trusty whip equally aggressively in the other. "Think we're soft? Take a swing, I dare ya! Test your mandibles on /this/, baby!" On saying "this", Lemeza starts beating his shield, attempting to draw the Queen's full focus and attention to it - and himself.

    But that's not all for his taunting ways! Maximizing on his provocative assault, Lemeza begins just LAYING into the queen. "You're rather full of yourself, aren't you queenie! You think you're all that? You're nothing! You think you're immortal? I've killed gods. Immortal gods, in fact the one who created me. Immortal creations of that very same god. All of them, now in the eternal hereafter. And I sure as hell ain't soft -- it'll take a lot more than some STUPID MANDIBLES to wound me! I've had far worse, and LOOK AT ME! Perfectly intact!" He forcefully gestures to himself to demonstrate just how intact he is. (Just a little damage from earlier fighting.) "Oh, and you think WE'VE lost? Clearly, you suck SO BADLY that you had to give up on the VERY FIRST STAGE!" His tone at this point is absolute mockery, indicating that he thinks very low of this "Lord" indeed. "You're the most pathetic excuse for a 'boss' I've ever seen!"

    Of course, this whole time he's braced for the inevitable really powerful attack headed his way. There's no chance he's not about to take the full brunt of this Lord's attacks, and despite what his word say, he's bracing for a world of hurt.
Nova Terra     By the time they reach the throne room, Nova is looking a little banged up. Her suit has certainly seen better days. It's marked by a number of cuts from sharp claws, scorch marks from burning acid and there are a number of dents in the armoured sections from heavy impacts. Plus a few strands of hair have escaped from her ponytail, hanging down behind her ear.

    Still, Nova walks into what appears to be the final battleground with a purposeful stride. She stops, slowly looking up as she takes in the size and disgusting form of the insect queen. It may just be the fatigue talking, but she's fairly certain this one is even uglier than the Zerg version.

    "So." Nova ignores the queen's words as she releases the empty clip from her rifle, "We just need to kill ugly here and we're finished?" She slides in another clip of the large bullets and chambers a new round, "Let's get to work!"

    Nova is off and running, looking to keep moving and hopefully out of range of the queen's strike. Said insect can't be too mobile, considering part of her looks to be lodged into the tunnel behind her. So Nova keeps her distance as she fires off a burst of automatic fire, the 25mm rounds capable of doing a lot of damage, even to something the size of the queen.
Arthur Lowell     Okay, so, red beacon. Steel for health. Arthur is gonna try that out first, after a few grateful, wobbly coolkid handshakes with Yuuki. He first checks it for a captchalogue card slot -- no dice -- before just going with abstractly selecting it out of his inventory. Hopefully this'll get that wound closed fast, and get him ready for the next fight, though he's not above finding more loot to feed into this.

    Arthur's back in time to dive in, slipping out of his own Gate right at the fork. He stylishly backflips as he swirls through the air and heads right in as the door opens, right alongside Yuki. He's already readying up his broom as he passes through it. Another hell of ambushes, and one Arthur is already well familiar with. On one hand, the "unwellness" haunts badly. On the other hand, no dead bodies this time, which means Arthur is working in mentally peak condition, or as peak as peak gets for him; now that he has a better idea of the scale of time and endurance involved in this, he's diving in and acting with a much more focused, much less hit-me style of combat, keeping defenses up with his stance and lashing out with brutal strikes meant mostly to exploit weak moments, rather than simply going all smashing all the time. But he's keeping up his way of socially handling this though.

    "YEAH! C'mon! Bring me something BIGGER! I see that POWER SPIKE you motherfucker, I want you to straight try'an SKEWER ME with the motherfucker, LET'S GO! COME ON!" Straining to hold back massive pincers, blunting jarring impacts that smash through his whole body, he builds huge blasts of starlight meant to sear the insects into exoskeleton and cinders.

    He gets to the door and gestures eagerly for Nova and Yuuki. "Let's get those TOTEMS, yo! I wanna do some BIG-ASS QUEEN FIGHTS! Let's hit that HIVE! Let's SMOKE this bitch!" Hopefully they take the invitation, so he can get in there! Once he does, he holds back his usual drifting flight and walks forward slowly and patiently, broom held defensively at the ready. When they arrive and see what they do... Well, Arthur would be disgusted, probably, and put a little ill at ease, but these aren't /human/ corpses being fed to this horrifying queen, so he can press forward. And so he does, walking further ahead to the center. However frightened he may be of this sort of thing, he's got enough bluster to cover it up. "ALLLLLLLRIGHT!" He shouts out, brandishing his broom at the Queen. "You're GODDAMN RIGHT I bring the SOFTNESS here, ya ARTHROPOD MOTHERFUCKER! I got the BONES where it COUNTS! I might SQUISH but I won't BREAK, you gargantuan goddamn BITCH. I'm not 'bout to let some IRRADIATED HEXAPODAL CUNT bust up my DEBUGGING JOB. I checked out that HOMEWORLD HELLSCAPE you got, and if you're 'bout to tell me that the BIG TOP-DOG IMMORTAL MOTHERFUCKER couldn't get that shit FIXED, I'm 'bout to tell you why that means you don't got the SACS to TAKE the HEAT I'M DISHING!" He points the broom, bristle-first, at her, and calls out. "Clean out whatever EXCUSE for a TYMPANUM you got there and take a GOOD LISTEN! The name's ARTHUR LOWELL! ROCKET-POWERED JERK! INTERGALACTIC HOOLIGAN! And the BADASSEST MOTHERFUCKING DEBUGGER in THIS WORLD or in ANY OTHER ONE! You keep that ON THE MIND when you're bouncin' back off the ABYSS!"
Arthur Lowell     "If you're the TOP DOG, I wanna see what POWER you got that EARNED IT! I wanna see what kinda FORCE straight breached that TOWER! Bring the REAL STRENGTH, motherfucker! Hit with that BIG SWING! Blast with the BIG GUN! You better not fuck up this DEBUGGING by holding back ONE GODDAMN OUNCE OF POWER! I wanna FEEL the goddamn RIGHT OF MONARCHY, ya HIVE-FUCKER BUZZLORD! COME AT MEEEEE!!"

    There's even a dramatic, badly-compressed Street Fighter voice that announces: "GET READY! STRIFE!!" Just three seconds before Arthur opens up the battle with a gushing beam of raw starlight energy blasted out of his broom that he's intent on just dumping right on the Queen's midsection. An opening volley! While Lemeza's personal insults are probably more legitimately hurtful than Arthur's weird assumption that the Queen's actually really strong, asking Arthur to let the tank do all the taunting is never going to work, and that's just an unfortunate fact. At least, though, he's keeping that wide beam focused on a good way towards where Nova is blasting.
Note     Note's been a little rattled through this place ever since the INSECT WAR was made known to her. The area's been gross and weird, but only upon that did she really feel horrified. The sheer senseless almost mechanical violence, death and dismemberment....

    And it all leads to this one big chamber. By now, traveling with the group, she's dropped back into her normal form...

    But facing the Queen's arrogant declaration, it riles her up like nothing else.

    "Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaah!!" Clenching her fists and slamming them to her side, Note taps down deeply into the well of her power, and opens the floodgates. Golden energy once again flares from her toes upwards to engulf her whole body in a flame-like aura. Her eyes now green and hair incredibly spiky and golden-blonde.

    On spiritual senses, she's pumping out INORDINATE waves of energy almost off the charts for a being her size and build.

    "Useless, huh? Yeah, like I haven't heard THAT before!"

    Surprising her, Lemeza charges off with all kinds of trash talk, leaving her staring for a brief second.

    "HYAAAAAA!!" Throwing a hand forward, she goes the simple route of just firing off a brilliant blue beam from her palm that's as wide as her body and noisily screams its way across the distance!
Alexis Maaka     "Oh that's one -ugly- motherfucker." Maaka calls aloud, as she sees the queen. Good thing she brought fuel-air incendiary rounds for her launcher...

    She reloads the underslung launcher with another moon clip, as she calls to Nova. "Go wide, I'll cover you!" With that, she lets out a burst of coilgun rounds aimed at the queen, aiming for her limbs to deny mobility, as well as aiming to fire away at the webbing too.

    She's beginning to feel her armor get all gummed up with gooey web. It's the fucking worst.
Yuuki Kuran There had been a great commotion when that last door had been pushed open revealing the Queen, bathing in the magical light from above. It made sense, now, the overall structure of the world. The 'monster' - the Queen - resting within the central hall of the highest point of the levle.

Well, ok, the insect eggs out on the way outskirts, least guarded, that was still the kind of logic of a Role-Playing Game, but this tower sort of ran off the logic of a role-playing game. It was allowed to make sense in such a way, because it was consistent.

And, with consistency, Yuuki responds in kind. "Oh, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong, here. No disturbance or issue on this area." Yuuki notes, as the Queen cutscenes at the group. It is when her party leaps right to combat that Yuuki is caught flatfoot. "Oh, we were... But..."

Pointing at the queen, and then the way back, and then the queen, blinking twice. "Are we... I guess we are. I, um, guess we'll be challenging the tower a bit more then!"

Unfortunately, she's decidedly slowpaced, drawing out her collapsed baton as everyone else is well into fighting! "Oh... Hmm, Artemis may break something. Immortal... Uhhh..."

Yuuki juggles a bit, before drawing the EMPTY COLT PISTOL. "This should be fine. Ok!"

Yes, yuuki, everyone's already started, stop holding up the party with your menuing.
Alexis Maaka     "Oh that's one -ugly- motherfucker." Maaka calls aloud, as she sees the queen. Good thing she brought fuel-air incendiary rounds for her launcher...

    She reloads the underslung launcher with another moon clip, as she calls to Nova. "Go wide, I'll cover you!" With that, she lets out a burst of coilgun rounds aimed at the queen, aiming for her limbs to deny mobility, as well as aiming to fire away at the webbing too. She's beginning to feel her armor get all gummed up with gooey web. It's the fucking worst.

    Maaka spies Yuuki with an empty gun, before hurling spare magazines at Yuuki with her matter manipulator printing out ammo and mags as fast as possible. "Hope you know how to use that!"
Rurufon     When the random intruders bumbling into the 'royal chamber' begin screaming and lighting up and beating their chests, it is the smaller workers that tense up and begin hissing and skittering, rather than the Queen being directly threatened. Her massive antennae merely twitch with the almost bird-like rotation of her head, while her malformed brood act on seemingly animal instinct, doubling up and clustering around like vicious guard dogs. A long, fleshy, naked tongue of sorts snakes out of the Queen's manyfold maw, sponging up the blue gore dripping from it, before disappearing back down her throat like a rat's tail down a hole.

    If there is a maniacal laugh or villainous monologue, if this alien creature is indeed capable of formulating that kind of reaction, given that its previous noises had only just barely translated, it must be entire pheromonal in nature, because a faint, acidic stench not entirely unlike formaldehyde begins to fill the room, and the workers go scuttling into small service tunnels and through antennae-covered doors in the sides of the room that open of their own accord when the Queen so commands. They actually desert their broodmother, leaving her completely alone with the Elites and their anti-tank rounds, ki beams, fusion blasts, and coilgun slugs all pile onto her in an absurd initial volley.

    The hive section the group is technically suspended in palpably shakes amidst its calcified web of supports, as tiny shards of shattered material shower them from the ceiling. The insect carcasses of the enemy nest go flying every which way, smashing and splattering against the walls and doors. The ground cracks and blackens beneath them, and holes appear on every surface as shrapnel and slugs ricochet like darts. When the first wave subsides, by way of gunners having to reload and energy beams tapering off, the resulting gunsmoke and charred haze seems to practically melt away under the sickening green light, not even allowing for the chance of a dramatic 'did we get her?'. The Queen's glowing eyes penetrate the smog immediately, and it falls away to reveal a completely healthy and unblemished thorax. The walls behind her are covered in scorches and bullet holes, but directly under and behind her, they're completely clean. Only some blood from the corpse debris speckles her carapace.

    That is, the Queen didn't take the damage and regenerate, and she didn't somehow deflect the damage. It all hit her, and had literally no effect. 'Immortal' may have been an iffy translation. This . . . might have been what the last expedition had left each other so many notes about. What they'd tried to explain while dying.
Rurufon     "ALL THE SAME. THEY ARE ALL THE SAME. THEY COME IN SEARCH OF POWER, BUT NEVER IMAGINE ANY OTHER MIGHT HAVE FOUND IT. THEY DO NOT IMAGINE WHAT POWERS THE ABYSS HAS. WHAT POWERS ITS GREAT QUEEN HAS. THEY BECOME MEAT, AND I MULTIPLY."

    The Queen's mouthparts separate grotesquely, and the resulting acid attack cannot be called a spray or a jet or anything so much less than a volley of arrows; hard and piercing blasts of boiling green liquid that stab and melt at the same time, released in shotgun sprays. Even that would be a real problem given that there doesn't seem to be a way to hit the Queen back, but just after, new skittering and rumbling sounds from behinds the tunnels and doors to either side, and reinforcements begin pouring in. Rather than the workers, the huge, white-armoured soldiers crash into the room, and an more massive dark-grey ant-like creature barely squeezes its way in, clearly the caste owners of the fang and antennae totems respectively. They've barely arrived before they're launching sprays of acidic green mouth-webbing and chitinous spikes at the party, closing in from every side.

    It's then that the door they'd just come from opens up, and an unnaturally strong hand reaches through and grabs Lemeza by the collar of his jacket, hauling him throw, and then yanking Yuuki back by the hand as well, pulling them into a side passage, and leaving it to fate if anyone else is smart enough to follow.

    They're dragged out of the royal chamber and into what might as well be an alleyway, given the tight squeeze into one of those sealed off junk rooms that has been recently cracked back open. When they're tossed under the glow of luminous fungus, they can see that a man who must be eight feet tall had hauled them in here, completely bald, bare chested, and clothed something between an Incan and Mesopotamian warrior, holding an extremely makeshift stone axe about as large as Lemeza is, apparently carved out of the nearby cave.

    "There is not much time. The Queen will not follow you. She guards the way. Her children will. They can smell you. You can only run, now, not hide. Do you know the Queen's secret, as the last man did, and the men before him died for?"
Rurufon     On the smallest upside, Yuuki's suspicions are exactly correct. Beforehand, when Arthur wobbles over to the ominously red beacon (and its language scatters back to English), jamming the knife into it causes the metal to melt and disintegrate instantly, and for mysterious reasons, a solid chunk of Arthur's health vial to fill back up. Not with temporary health or 'red HP' either; a the real stuff.
Yuuki Kuran Granted a printed magazine, the Kuran princess grabs it out of the air with a hand, looking the ammunition over. "I don't need this!" She calls at Alexis, but loading the pistol anyway, deliberately getting the magazine to click secure, drawing the slide back until a round chambered, and thumbing the lock to prime the gun. She's ready to---! Oh.

Nothing happened. "That doesn't look good."

BUT IT'S OKAY! Yuuki is dragged INTO A SIDE ROOM, spared from any of the queen's repulsive buggy bleck-ness by...

Oh hey, it's one swollen boi. Yuuki spends her action POINTEDLY NOT going about actually running from any bugs while she whips out her camera phone to recall the previous clues, working out a SWEET PLAN - something something eye totems, something something get some gourds - amont the party.

Then - with almost certainly the masses of the Queen's forces bearing down on her, she realizes that oh right she's in mortal peril. "It has to be doable by some guy with a knife and a gun! Remember, it's a puzzle, a puzzle!"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur's beam intensifies, and intensifies, and intensifies, morphing into strange and new forms of starlight energy, until it becomes clear it's just doing nothing at all. Something's just failing to take. It's connected straight to the Abyss?! But /how/?! Arthur breaks off as reinforcements rush and as the acidic blast of wounding ranged blasts come at him. For all his bluster, he sure does break off fast when he doesn't get any indication of damage from the foe. But no! Suddenly, a pincer attack from sides! /With pincers/! And then! Oh god human hands. "Yo, don't DITCH me, HOMIE!" he blasts away at the reinforcements, trying to hold things off and keep the group clear while he manages the barrage of acid. It's about all he can manage to flick a hand to one side and sling a Gate backwards towards Lemeza's general direction! This should take him directly to the top of the stairs in the upper fork path!

    "Yo! Big and Tall Survival Emporium! Those homies wrote down JACK SHIT, you gotta give us the LOWDOWN! We're just gonna NAB EVERYTHING and get to spamming INVENTORY on ANYTHING, dog!" He calls out to their informative savior, still trying to blast away and keep the bottleneck clear of encroaching foes.
Note     When the smoke clears and the Queen's completely unfazed by all of that, Note recoils back a step, quivering with fear! And pondering if she should ramp it up a notch for another go!

    But with the chamber starting to UTTERLY SWARM with activity, she takes another step back, and then--

    YOINK! There goes Lemeza and Yuuki! "H-hey! Wait up!" Aborting the assault, she takes off like a meteor of golden energy, swooping after the two and into the tight passage.

    As soon as it seems safe to stop near the strange warrior... she drops out of the transformation, the glow vanishing and hair dropping back down into the smooth black ponytail, eyes once again black.

    "I... wasn't paying much attention to those messages, since it never said what the secret was. Uh.. one of them mentioned a joke..?" And a moment later, she peers closer at the warrior... "Who are YOU?"
Alexis Maaka     Maaka stares in bafflement just as she gets hit with acid. She takes several hits, trying to pry melting pieces of armor off her body frantically. "Shitshitshitshitshit-" More and more damage to her suit is left, as she suddenly sees the soldiers arrive. "...well, fuck me." She growls, firing upon them as they arrive and leaping to the side to avoid a spray of acid. To say the least, this is not going so well. Maaka keeps rolling, firing a burst or two when ever her back is on the ground until she reloads and jukes a spike hurled toward her head.

    "Where the hell did Lemmy and Yuuki go?" She calls out mid-burst.
Lemeza Kosugi     No damage. Not a scratch on the Queen. Okay, Lemeza's seen this before, that's a sign that a special item is needed to make the enemy vulnerable. Before he ends up having his defenses tested, however, he's involuntarily yoinked away from the fight by a ridiculously strong hand. And before he can react, the owner of that hand advises him to run, and mentions something about the Queen's secret. Okay, yeah, this fight's a lost cause if any Elites decide standing their ground is a good idea. Let's find that Key Item that lets the party do damage!

    After a rather intense discussion involving totems and blatantly important gourds that SOMEONE DIDN'T BOTHER TO PICK UP, Lemeza and Arthur agree on a plan. Once Arthur throws a Gate his way, Lemeza takes the chance to dive into it, swiftly locate the gourds, toss them safely in his pack, and... maybe not a good time to retrieve his plane. If left unopposed, he's swooping right back through that Gate to bring back the gourds.

    He still wants his plane back, dammit.
Nova Terra     Nova skids to a halt as her the last bullet is fired from her clip. A little smoke is still rising from within the barrel as she reaches back to retrieve another clip to reload. However, she pauses mid action as the aftermath clears to show the Queen to be completely unphased. Nova is clearly shocked at the development, "Uhhhh..." She's fought some tough creatures before... But this. Not even a scratch with everything they threw at her. Nova instinctively takes a step back, sensing the incoming creatures moments before they begin to pour into the chamber. No time to reload, "I think this calls for a tactical retreat..."

    Spikes of both the acid and chitinous go flying and Nova is forced to backpeddle. She makes a dash towards one of the isolated insects, drawing the sword from her back with her free hand. The monomolecular blade of psionic energy lights up before Nova drives it into the body of the insect. Pulling it out once more, Nova dives over the creature's corpse before ducking down behind it. She uses it briefly for cover while she reloads, during which there's some radio chatter.

    The sudden disappearance of Lemeza and Yuuki doesn't go unnoticed. Nor does the feeling of someone who is neither part of the group or an insect. While a little too distracted to focus on specifics, Nova does get the general idea of the conversation thanks to the radio chatter. Time to fall back.

    Nova concentrates for a moment, trying to block out the sound of numerous insect legs skittering closer and closer as light begins to collect in her hand. When they are mere moments away, Nova stands from her cover and turns face them. Throwing her hand out, she unleashes a telekinetic blast to wash over them, potentially crushing those at the front, but primarily knocking them back to buy some time. Time that Nova attempts to use to follow the others into the 'alley'.

    Nova runs, Canister Rifle barking out more large bullets quickly as she attempts to hold back the horde. On the way she calls out to Alexis, "Fall back!"
Rurufon     Lemeza winds up exactly where Arthur intended to send him. It seems that only the Tower 'spine' works on godawful 'loading barrier' rules, where sections of it don't seem to actually exist until a particular door or passage is accessed. Once inside one of these branch 'Realms', he's given total impunity to teleport around within it. Unfortunately, Lemeza is also dumped in next to another swarm of the flying yellow things coming back to the site of the battle, no doubt to claim casualties. He's about five feet away from the chest, and fifteen feet away from the nearest giant stinger, which turns out to be just enough to grab the 'gourds', but also just enough for the vicious bug to turn on him and tackle him back through the gate, attempting to physically shred him and putting him in severe danger of dropping his MYSTERIOUS POTION x2.

    Those retreating in pursuit the strange, ancient-looking man (or being dragged by him like he's basically Sasquatch) are bought extremely precious time by the two women with guns holding back the tide in the royal chamber. Given the sheer number of small tunnels and bizarre struts the bugs could easily use to pop out just about anywhere, keeping their attention might work better than trying to outrun them.

    At the very least, even the larger soldiers are a far cry from the Queen. They're big, heavy, angry, and covered in spikes and acid, but they're not tremendously more combat ready than that, with nothing overtly supernatural about them. Combined fire or precision shooting brings them down fairly consistently, and soon the chamber begins to clutter with the dead, but no doubt there are tens or hundreds of thousands still coming in fron outside, and the more that Maaka and Nova kill, the less room they have to maneuver. Soon even the workers are streaming into the chamber, slashing at their ankles and biting at their knees, even when they too are caught up in blasts of acid. They're certainly keeping the horde's focus, for better and for worse.
Rurufon     Aforementioned huge dude doesn't mince words. Kicking aside piles of discarded equipment, he gives off the impression that he's seen many individuals and groups before aggro the queen and then be hunted down even after retreating. "Those men discovered her secret, but all but two were weak and afraid. When their thunder ran dry, they fled and were massacred. I have seen it done but once before."

    "The Queen of Raldo came here many millennia before my time. Many tribes came with her, but when it appeared they found what they sought, she took it for herself, and she and her children killed the others. A treasure of the Tower of Shadows is hers. She keeps it secretly, above her chamber, and basks in its diseased light. It is a stone of invincibility, but also sickness, and the Queen's desire to rule the oldest and largest nest outweighed her desire to return to her world, so much that all of her old brood are long dead, and her children are born sick and crippled from gestating in the stone's light, and have lost their minds. All but a few."

    "A creature with eighteen blue eyes. You must find one, and rip one free. You must carry it with you, and fight to the highest chamber of the royal hive. You must bear it before you, to the doors of royal eyes, as they will only let past a creature that bears eyes like their own, which tend the stone. Within that chamber, you will find it, and there you must destroy it. Choose one among you to be a sacrifice, for the sickness will certainly claim them so close. Hurry. It is many miles' journey to that chamber. I have seen it once before."

    When people ask /who he is/ though, he only looks somewhat troubled, suddenly fiddling with a necklace of massive teeth, with something like a bronze Mayan dogtag on it. "I do not remember. I have been in this Tower a very long time, in search of my king. The creatures will ignore me, until they have devoured you. I am not afraid either way"
Arthur Lowell     A thought drifts through Arthur's mind. He considers the fact that this chamber is just above. Could he teleport there? Would such a sequence break invalidate his bug-testing efforts? ...Would such a sequence break invalidate his respect for his fellow adventurers, and the Tower? There's a lot of questions about whether teleporting would be wrong, and enough come up 'yes' that he immediately decides he won't be taking any easy routes.

    So when Yuuki calls out for his help making a miles-long journey shorter, he breaks off from his efforts to hold off the soldiers and pulls away. "Alright, you want a SHORTCUT?" He calls out, grinning a manic grin. "Let's CUT this motherfucker SHORT. GEEEEET READYYYYYYY!" He calls out, flicking both hands out to his sides, identifying the tunnel leading highest as it can from here. His space magic floods it in a flickering mass of black and white. "For a REAL MAN'S GODDAMN SHOOOOORTCUUUUUUUT!!"

    And he begins to sort of... Start compressing his hands together, forcing them towards each other as if experiencing great resistance. And the magic he's flooding the paths with begins to compress; the path from here to the top will experience a "force" of geometric compression. It's not that he's crushing the structure down, it's that he's folding the space the structure itself occupies. There's going to be no structural damage, but it's like taking a spring and pushing it down, forcing everything within to pack more densely. If everything goes well, the top of this will have an entrance well visible in a matter of moments -- but every hazard, obstacle, and enemy from here to there finds itself stacked together and packed just as tightly.

    His shouting rises to a height, and he screams bloody shounen murder. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!" Before locking the spatial fold in place and rushing forward to head to the upper chamber as much as he can, even with such large amounts of his Aspect committed to this spatial warp! No matter how much of his magic is forced into activity, he's still ready to crash and bash with his broom!
Nova Terra     Nova winces at the pain as claws and teeth breach her suit, reaching skin beneath. Blood trickles down to the ground as she continues to back step away from the horde. She's had to reduce her fire to single shots, which is probably what has allowed the insects to close in. That and their sheer numbers. Nova's definitely getting some feelings of deja vu.

    Nova throws her final grenade into the increasing mass of monsters, before once more pulling out her psi-blade. With it in one hand she begins to chop at the smaller ones bitting at her heels, while she tries to keep her distance from the larger soldiers, occasionally firing a round into them from the rifle in her other.

    She calls out to her fellow fighter, Alexis, "How are you holding up, over there?"
Alexis Maaka     Mags run low, and Maaka decides that Nova's right. She jumps to her feet, using her booster jets to give her an extra leap as she tries to stay out of range. Acid blasts are a problem, so are the workers hacking at their ankles. She fires off an incendiary blast from her launcher, as airburst rounds send out a torrent of flames.

    "Pretty fuckin' shitty over here. You?" She replies to the Ghost, reloading her magrifle only for it to get snagged by a bug. "NO NO NO, GIMME THAT BACK!" She rips it out of the bug's mandibles, smashing the buttstock into its head as she draws her 10mm sidearm, firing away frantically, juking and jiving the pinchers, moving to cover Nova's blind spot as they go back to back.

    "We're not gonna make it at this rate."

    At that moment, Arthur does...*something*, and space gets compressed. "Fuck are you thinkin', Lowell?!"
Lemeza Kosugi     Oh these gourds had better be worth it. Turns out those flying bugs are still around, and turns out they're still aggressive. Lemeza nabs the gourds, but ends up tucking and rolling with them embraced in his arms, rather than having any sort of time to throw them in his pack. He does manage to get back through the Gate, but his backside takes a few stinging blows, tearing his jacket and piercing deep enough to draw blood. That was a rather big price to pay for an unknown liquid...

    Oh hey, looks like the rest of the gang's figured out the Eye Totem. Neat. And they've got a way to circumvent the stupid long distance as well. Though, it seems Arthur's gotten a bit crazy with the spatial magicks and is going to traverse ALL THE OBSTACLES instead of just teleporting like a sane human. So, that's also taken care of, maybe. Maaka and Nova are losing ground, so Lemeza figures his most effective move is to give them fire support, taking aim at the workers bearing down on them in sequence, doing all he can to thin their numbers and take some heat off the gunner girls.
Yuuki Kuran Arthur is called upon by Yuuki to make this gigantic gauntlet section of multiple MILES into something more manageable. Something more... Speed-runny. Which compresses the danger, as well! The pinching of space itself is impressive on its face - and Arthur even has a sweet super signature move name for it.

It's going to be a sprint to the finish! "Nova! Nova, the door!" Yuuki calls, as the back-to-back Tactical Ladies Operate Tactically on the bugs as Yuuki is dragged along behind the broad and strong shoulders of Mister Mesopotamia. She takes her own aim, down range at the bugs harassing Maaka and Nova, and starts firing shots. Peashooter shots, really, with all that chitin and mandible and--

The sonic boom from her "shot" cracks through the air shortly after the rather pathetic 'bang!' (compared to Nova's Canister Rifle), tight cones of force blasting at the flanks of the insectile horde.

"C'mon! Always forward, never back!"

This is a speedrun, and so the party has arranged to Save The Frames.
        And Kill The Animals.
Note     What witchcraft is Arthur doing?! Note turns immediately when the screaming starts, watching in a mixture of awe and THOROUGH CONFUSION. She's nowhere near old and educated enough to understand what just occured! But the pathway is clear... and her senses tell her, it's gonna be DANGEROUS.

    So this time with just a tensing of muscles and a grunt-- *KRAKOOSH!* Once again she transforms into the golden-haired warrior, radiating immense energies - no doubt, much of it wasted from inexperience.

    "This is starting to get tiring!" She complains, as the situation keeps conspiring to prevent her from making the most efficient use out of her energy. Transforming over and over again takes a toll!

    Well, she's just about had it now, what with the Big Darn Bug going down too easily, the Queen ending up a non-starter....

    So at the sight of a big CHALLENGE GAUNTLET...

    Oh, it's on!

    "Hyaaaaaah!!" Note blitzes straight into the action with a FLYING KICK for one of the bugs that's about to go after Maaka, ricochets off it and somersaults in the air... which transitions into unleashing a flurry of blue-white ki bolts that curl and swerve towards targets to explode like grenades!

    When she finally lands she KICKS off the ground and rockets like a golden bullet just off the ground, on a complete rampage of kicks, chops, spin kicks and even on a few occasions grabbing bugs between her legs by their 'necks' (or anything else that she can wrangle them by) and using a flip to THROW them at walls. It's time to vent some of that aggression and hot-blooded instincts!

    "Outta the way, we're COMING THROUGH!"
Rurufon     Arthur could almost certainly teleport there. The gate had worked perfecty fine before. Even assuming that the warded doors keep his space magic out, it'd certainly cut a lot of time. That's not what he does though. What he does is take the journey there -apparently miles long according to this mysterious warrior from another time- and condense it to an olympic sprint. Doors wind up banding the single, continuous hallway snake with the constant frequency of windows, forced into the open position. Stretches of fresh, acidic structural webbing are shortened so much that most of them can be jumped over. Eggs are clustered together in grotesque, slimy bushels, and the scattered equipment of dead challengers is piled in awkward jumbles in corners formed by offshoots from the main path not compressing nearly as much. Of course, now literally hundreds upon hundreds of formerly stampeding bugs are caught in the hall, and appear to be about as confused as they should be for suddenly being almost shoulder to shoulder, instead of scenting each other at hundreds of meters apart. It buys the runners a few precious moments of surprise advantage.

    Another advantage is that with the bugs now clustered so close together, Yuuki firing saturating force blasts from the empty gun is supremely effective. The creatures are hurled together into jumbled masses of ineffectually flailing limbs and snapping jaws, thrown down corridors like bowling pins falling down the back of a lane. The others are suddenly caught without space to move from the the hail of bullets. The can charge down the concatenated super corridor, but that only takes them straight on into the shooting, providing brief, living cover for the row behind them, leap-frogging towards the group by overrunning the dead. The density of their charge is such that there is next to no chance of anyone safely getting through the gauntlet, as the operators holding their ground are only more directly besieged, and Arthur is strained to the limit holding the space magic, leaving just Yuuki and Lemeza able to move the line up.
Rurufon     The sole exception is Note, who is both able to fly straight over the trapped sections of floor, and so fast that she can blitz past most of the bugs before they can stop her. Acid blasts the walls inches away from her, and mandibles and claws cut at her heels, but the condensed hordes are smashed and tossed aside in her wake, until the end goal is in sight. Just as the stranger had said, she clears a path to one more set of doors, by far the most 'human' and intentionally constructed of the lot, appear completely out of place in the hive. Dozens of compound eyes similar to the one they'd retrieved from the lost dead man stare down at them, almost vibrating with a certain kind of energy. Bringing the dismembered eye to them, just as with all the others, allows the Elites into the chamber beyond, wherein they are abruptly blasted with pulsing, crashing waves of green light so dense and revolting as to immediately induce the urge to vomit, and the likelihood of puking blood. How has the bloated Queen insect below bathed in this light all this time?

    The room is actually very small, barely bigger than a garage, and mostly filled with a lattice of what appears to be fused bone (not exoskeleton) that holds aloft a man-sized crystal of pond scum green colour, and focuses most of its light down through a wing membrane lens beneath it, channelling it like a spotlight through a hole in the ceiling and shining it on the voracious matriarch down below. Just approaching it feels like getting cancer across every square inch of skin, immediately dispelling any doubts as to why something like this would be consigned to the Tower of Shadows, but kept on the first tier. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of time to faff about with it. Even up top, they can see the horde starting to overwhelm those still holding the rear line.

    The royal chamber is so dense with bug corpses that there's barely room to shoot even with ammo remaining. More hideous, grey creatures begin filtering in, and the sheer quantity of weaponized acid and digestive juices being used has turned the floor into a knee-deep river of the stuff, capable of consuming even Maaka's armour in seconds, and forcing them onto corpse islands where they're easier to attack. Nova can feel no end to the reinforcements coming in. In fact, there only appear to be more than before waiting just outside the room to replace their fellows, and the Queen is still utterly undamaged.
Lemeza Kosugi     Gross gross gross. Rising acid threatens to eat Lemeza alive. Bug corpses crowd the arena. Only one thing to do. He starts surfing one of the corpse clusters, bringing back out his whip and shield since bullets would quite possibly just bounce around dangerously and hit ally long before it hit enemy. Not a whole lot to do except shield-block and whip-parry the incoming attacks that are wearing him and the others down.

    And wear him down they do. Lemeza was not built for protracted combat against waves upon waves of swarms. One big opponent he could do, but this constant barrage of bodies is taking its toll, and he's probably going to end up succumbing soon if this continues. So, in a bit of desperation, he chugs one of the blue MYSTERIOUS POTIONs and hopes for healing rather than poison.
Nova Terra     Nova is called out to, briefly halting her onslaught in order to throw the EYE TOTEM to Yuuki. Along with providing words of encouragement, "Hurry it up!"

    Turning back to the endless wave of reinforcement bugs, Nova attempts to fire off another large round into another faceless soldier bug. Only to find the clip empty, "Shit."

    Nova eyes the soldier charging towards her, pulling her blade over her shoulder. She then swings it forward and releases her hold on it, sending the weapon spinning through the air, aimed to embed into the soldier's head. Nova then jumps clear of the charge, landing on another pile of dead bugs above the growing acid line, some of it unfortunately splashing up onto her and eating away part of her suit. This is definitely turning out to be one of the stranger battles she's been in.

    Reaching back once more to retrieve another clip, she calls out, "Last one!" She slides it into her rifle and begins firing once more. She warns, "They're still coming... There's no end to them!"
Alexis Maaka     'Last one!' Maaka hears, and she turns to Nova as she suddenly produces an SMG vaguely shaped like a P90 of sorts, if with a holographic interface for a sight and a foregrip of some kind. "Take it!" She says, before tossing the PDW and some magazines to Nova. "Make 'em count!" She herself swaps out her magrifle in favor of a shotgun with her manipulator, the former dissipating before a KSG shotgun reforms in her hand, shells included on the sidesaddle.

    She slams herself as hard as possible against a big pile of bugs for cover, as she chambers a magnum shotshell and pokes out at a soldier bug, firing point-blank into its chest.

    She can feel acid burning away at her armor more and more, leaving just her mask and the undersuit as well as booster-rig and grappling gear left. At the very least, she's more maneuverable.

    It still means one good hit is gonna fuck her up if it penetrates the graphene suit itself.

    She ducks behind cover again, as a bug fires acid that scrapes by her side. Pain lances up her body, and Maaka's pain-inhibitors kick in just as her forearm opens up.

    She fires out with a spiky projectile that begins beeping very, very quickly. THen it explodes whatever it hits, be it bugs or corpse pile.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur is keeping everything going. And while he may be strained to his limit, he's well familiar with operating beyond it. Which is why despite the alarming bits of flashing Health Vial display on his game UI, he continues forward with a brutal assault, blatantly disregarding the fact that fighting the Abyss for control of this local geometry is stressing him to the point that blood is beginning to stream down his face in thin, worrying lines; he may not be able to move the line up, sure, but at the very least he's going to keep it from falling back.

    And of course, this comes with a plentiful helping of screaming, shouting, and obnoxious insults.

    Once they tear their way to the chamber itself, Arthur's well familiar with the sensation. Radiation, jolted with magic. He calls out happily to Nova, "That means we don't gotta STOP KILLING!" He glances around, and then surges in, seemingly taking the radiation raw without even the benefit of a potion. "'MEZA! Hope that POTION INTUITION was LEGIT!" He shouts to his fellow adventurer, wading knee-deep in the acid and seeming to burn alive as he does in a brilliant show of bright white starlight. "Get up in this motherfucker, 'cause you're about to have THREE SECONDS, TOPS from me!"

    Letting Nova and Maaka cover the bugs, he heads in, slogging through acid hell and going right for the immortality stone. While he can't muster a beam like he used before... He can do one thing, which is utterly clear the way for a more capable shot. Slamming both hands through the acid and into the ground, he screams a rising battlecry and rips a field in space that the radiation can't get through, forcing its wavelengths into harmlessly lengthened densities. It won't last long, but if the other attackers can survive long enough to get a good shot, this ought to give them a clean one, hopefully enough to blast apart the horrid radioactive stone.
Note     Note's among the first to barge into the small chamber housing the crystal... and the moment she does, she regrets it. On reflex she shields her eyes and face from the light, and flies up into a corner of the room to not block the way. "Y-yuuuuughck-.... what're we supposed to do with THAT? Destroy it, I hope..." A thing that makes one invincible but also SICK FOREVER? What good is it?

    What good is that to ANYONE?

    "Uuuugh... you guys figure this out!"

    Unsure what to make of the crystal (were it her call, she'd just blast it and be done with it) Note flies back out of the room and sets to helping hold off the INFLUX OF BUGS!

    Since she doesn't want to get into the thick of that again, this mostly means standing there glowing like a small sun and FIRING OFF DOZENS OF COMPACT KI BLASTS for the hordes, which basically has the same effect as a machine gun that fired grenades instead of bullets. As soon as people are clear enough, the tunnel's just going to become ONE BIG CONTINUOUS EXPLOSION!
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki is doing some dumb bullshit rather than unleashing her full power. This is why she doesn't succeed. She cannot succeed. She is not allowed to. Fighting halfheartedly rewards halfhearted results - and though she destabilizes, she doesn't manage to kill, the raw mass of the buggies absorbing her blasts.

Time runs out.

Nova throws her the orb, and she turns while shouting - "I got it!" - trusting the others to handle it. To survive. It is easy to forget that survival isn't always ensured.

Rubbing the key on the door gets Arthur and Note into the endzone... and Note aborts dealing with it. Yuuki cannot blame her for not wanting to thrust her hand into the awful, sickening radiation to crush the source of the Queen's invulnerability.

They are out of time. "Go go goooo!" She cries, as she blitzes for the door, faster than any woobie noodlearm has any right to, extending her hand like a marathon sprinter, into the sickening jewel's radiance, and with a grip like iron, smashing the damn thing.

This will go over great, embedding cancer crystal into her bloody hand, just great, the best, there will be no side effects at all.

Nope.

That's why she's biting her lip so hard blood runs down the corner of her mouth, a stifled scream, her eyes aglow with an inner red light.
Rurufon     The royal chamber becomes an absolute clusterfuck of chitin, acid, blood, bodies, limbs, spent ammo, broken armour, and crackling energy. The narrow lanes are choking overfull now, to the point that each of the fighting Elites are growing increasingly isolated, effectively trapped in individual thunderdomes of the dead, surrounded on all sides by bugs able to crawl across the ceiling and through the tangles of bodies. Even killing those just deprives them of further space to move, and to dodge, only forestalling the inevitable. Nobody even has a shot at the Queen anymore, even if they could hurt her. There's no line of sight anymore, and getting close means fighting through an even thicker wall of soldiers pouring through the doors on her side of the boss room.

    When Lemeza slugs back the viscous fluid in the organic container, he finds that it tastes like thick, sour, cough syrup, burning more than a little on the way down. After swallowing it however, he does indeed feel immediately better. The overwhelming, gut churning nausea of the green light fades, and the acid clinging to him oddly loses its potency, giving him a much needed breather. Unfortunately, he isn't in the crystal room with his new cure. When Note turns back, it falls to Yuuki to charge in after it, and when she does, she actually finds the temporally displaced giant of a man following her.

    Where reinforcements from Note's passage close in from either side, he smashes them aside with blows of his mighty arms and splits them in half with swings of his gigantic, makeshift axe. One especially powerful strike pins a huge soldier bug to the wall, and he leaves it there thrashing in place, grappling the giant, scythe-like mandibles of a second, and ripping its head in half by pulling in opposite directions. Yuuki makes the final sprint to the crystal room, takes the absolute brunt of the abhorrent artifact's radiation, feels her skin blister and die away, and then the stone splits straight down the middle, fractures into several pieces, and slips out of its supporting bracket.

    Namely, its pieces down. Broken lengthwise, a number of long, heavy spears of solid crystal drop through the screen, and plunge a great height through the room below. Completely unaware of the danger, the Queen is right beneath them when the heavy, razor sharp fragments plunge into her soft and bloated abdomen, riddling her with glassy javelins as tall as a human being. The ancient creature lets loose an ear-splitting screech, causing the chamber to quake and shudder in her agonized rolling and thrashing, spurting green blood in great fountains that paints the walls and floor. The bugs all around her immediately fall into confusion, scattering in an aimless frenzy, some falling on each other and tearing them to pieces, and others fleeing through the many exits as the entire eusocial hierarchy breaks down.

    The Queen's bodymass actually deflates as sickly ooze pours out of her wounds in massive quantities, disgorging a slurry of diseased eggs along with her rotten guts. She manages to crawl forward several paces, barely dislodging herself from the exit corridor, before collapsing in the center of the chamber, hissing and chittering her last before finally expiring.

    "FOOLS. NOTHING CHANGES . . . THIS ISN'T OVER . . ."

    Finally, the chaotic horror of the collapsing hive structure moves out from the central chamber, no doubt causing the utter bedlam to spread into other parts of the nest, but leaving the Elites otherwise 'in the eye of the storm'. Those above can easily jump down to the charnel field below through the skylight hole, where a door of the Tower's white stone and signature rune awaits, as does an odd, blue, insect-styled jewel or ornament of some kind, and a silver ring set with a large ruby, in alcoves of opposite walls.
Nova Terra     The crystal is broken, the Queen dieing, the chamber shaking and the bugs in a frenzy. And they're right in the middle of it. Nova stumbles a little as the room along with everything in it shakes. As one of the frenzied bugs charges Nova swings her rifle around and pulls the trigger, only to receive the click of an empty weapon. Her mind quickly races for options, until one is provided to her in the form of a thrown weapon.

    Snatching the PDW out of the air, Nova brings it around just in time to jam it into the mandibles of the insect. Pulling and holding the trigger, she lets it unload its barrage into the back of the creature's head, before it finally explodes in a blast of flesh.

    Nova climbs through the mess to reach runed door, where she begins trying to wipe off the numerous remains of bug that have managed to coat her suit. She's covered in numerous cuts, burns and there's probably some bruises starting to form to. Nothing life threatening, but she's definitely going to need some rest after this.

    For now though, Nova reaches out with her hand, a nearby soldier corpse twitches for a moment and then the sword lodged into it slides out to fly across the room into Nova's hand. She shakes the weapon off before returning it to her back. Looking back at the countless bug corpses piled up in the chamber, Nova shudders, "I need a shower..." But first, Nova hands the PDW back to Alexis, saying, "Thanks."
Alexis Maaka     Maaka sees things EXPLODE, and she makes her way toward the runed door. She's looking pretty bad herself, as she sees Nova approach her to return the PDW. "No problem." She says, stowing the gun as she approaches the silvery ring. Stowing her shotgun, the cyborg wipes goo from herself, already wondering how she's gonna be able to salvage this suit now. "You're telling me, fuck." She grouses, already desperate for a shower herself.

    She takes the ring, before it inevitably reaches the group inventory after a brief inspection.

    "Alright, let's find a way to get the fuck outta here."
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki stands there, after the crystal falls, for a few long moments, her right (grasping) hand cradled after the sizzling 'sacrifice' moment with the green crystal. It didn't shatter, like it ought, but in a constructed way, sliced and dispatched with the Queen.

"Not over... No, I suppose not. But we did it in the right way."

Yuuki sort of half-stuffs her blackened hand into her sleeve and smiles weakly. "Well, I suppose that's for the best, then. Good work, everyone!"
Note     Note's a bit startled to see the ANCIENT WARRIOR charging through the mess they all made, but she keeps up the assault as long as needed for people to figure out what to do with the crystal! Which turns out to be...

    Destroying it. Upon hearing the shatter, she flinches. SHE could've done THAT... why did nobody tell her that's what they were gonna do?!

    Irritating.

    Having a glance through the holes that were punched in the floor by all this DESTRUCTION though, Note quickly wishes she -hadn't- looked at what's happening to the Queen. Her face goes about as green with nausea and revulsion as it can!

    "B-bluuuuuh---" Yeah. Once more, struggling to not barf.

    And glad that descending doesn't mean DROPPING. Hooray, being able to fly and stay far above THAT mess...