Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Riku     It's another dreary day in Sunnydale, continuing to give the lie to the town's name as the chill of autumn begins to set in. This makes things even more miserable for people, really. The water seems to have gathered even more since the last time the group has been here, the liquid sloshing about and rising up to people's ankles in most cases, where the drainage seems particularly bad. Oddly enough, the people driving and walking through the gathering water don't seem to be particularly alarmed, simply making their way from place to place like always. Many of the people walking around have a gleaming pin with the SCOOL logo stuck to their coat or purse, mostly the teenage contingent working it into their ensemble as they gaggle about their smartphones and chat. The people cluster closer together seemingly, casting weary glances about that surely is entirely due to corporate suburbia and nothing else.

RIPPLES
ARC 1 - STILL WATERS RUN DEEP
CHAPTER 2 - SMOKE ON THE WATER


    A posting on W-Slash provides the information the group is looking for. The encryption key provided gives them access to the files: Clipped conversation. Professional-sounding, indicating moving in on a warehouse. Street camera images of a girl matching Anna Marie's description running from something that never seems to get caught on camera, ducking into a warehouse with a nasty-looking compound bow that seems crafted from the same kind of ornate tattoo-material that Reapers seem to possess. Baofu included GPS coordinates as well, making locating the place simple enough.

    The warehouse in question is near the piers. Nominally mostly for the rich and aquatic-inclined to enjoy themselves, there always seems to be some cheap storage area nearby, and this is one of those places. The walls are wood and cinderblock, a skylight on the roof and a few windows on the sides. One of them is broken. The doors are locked, as is the loading ramp area. Everything is quiet. Wet, and quiet. Something about the area feels wrong on a fundamental level, kind of like the feeling you get when you walk into the wrong side of town. Except supernaturally so. There don't seem to be any apparent mystical wards or auras, however...

BGM: https://youtu.be/jgREHOmwrxI
Kupot Kupot is good. He has a jacket with a hood. His head comes equipped with a doodlybob that has a glowy ball that flashes random kanji. He does, however, have to stay out of the water more, as he is shorter, so it's more about thigh level to him. And that's terrible.

This world is very strange to Kupot. But he suspects because he missed this urban part of life, growing up on the edges, then living his longer life being a cyborg soldier.

Kupot has been on the pier, waiting, watching. With his bug like optic guard over his eyes, he is able to steadily scan the building for structural weaknesses. And his tall ears twitch, the cybernetics within them picking up sounds. He will wait for the others, then provide what he has gathered.
Sumiko Mikoto was here in rain garb.  A pair of jade-colored rain boots, a jade-colored poncho and a hat to sit on top of that to shield her from the rain and cold.  Arriving at the place, she looks over the building.  The broken window sure is a sign of something, but it could just be abandoned and in ill repair...but the video seems to disprove that.

Throwing her coat up into the air she unleashes MAGICAL GIRL TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE, and the poncho falls back over her.  She might be a magical girl, but she hates the rain and getting cold and wet.  Ugh, it is the worst!  Sword in hand, she impales it on the ground as magical girl runes form.  

Rats appear, and charge off, swimming through the water towards the warehouse.  Well, the first thing she can do is get an inside view of what is going on in there without risking herself or others.  Just in case this place was teeming with noise, shadows, or heartless.  Then again...it could be anything that is giving her this feeling.

Though not a witch.  She'd know if it was a witch.
Sho Fukamachi      Sho's probably getting a bit over his head by continuing to look into this whole missing person thing, given that it's gone from a simple search and rescue to some whole weird conspiracy thing. If only Tetsuro was here to help speculate. But he isn't, so here Sho stands, outside of the abandoned building and already transformed into the Guyver to save time (and potential freak outs).

     Making his way towards the building with a bit of apprehension and sloshing through the flooding street with relative ease, the Guyver places a hand against one of the walls alongside its head. The two smaller metal spheres on the side of its head begin moving along the fleshy track on its helmet, as if trying to sense something. Mainly it's trying to pick up if there's any potential people or monsters inside, or any odd sounds.

     While it can probably easily bust into the building with little problem, it's best to assess situations that aren't super urgent like these before going in guns blazing.
Ash Williams      The cabin of the Oldsmobile is host to a dangerous combination of sounds. There is the rumble of the V8, of course--but there is also a sound which should never be heard in the cabin of any responsible driver while the car is in motion: the crinkle of a bigass map. Naturally, Ash is driving distracted. But, hey, he's not gonna shell out money for some lame GPS machine, and he's damn sure not getting a smartphone. Somehow he manages to drive without another incident. He makes it to the warehouse safely.

     He hasn't bothered with the 'dress' prosthetic today, instead wearing the crude cybernetic fashioned from an ill-fated 90s gaming peripheral. Surprisingly, given his style of driving and literally everything else, there is a shred of subtlety in this man. When he steps up to the door and finds it locked, he slings his duffel bag over one shoulder and seems to have a solution that isn't 'break it down.'

     "Don't worry, guys... I'll have this thing open like a cheerleader on prom night." Only a shred of subtlety--and not one shred of decency or tact to be found. A set of lockpicks is ejected from the index finger of his prosthetic. He begins working on the lock, with a satisfied, smug grin.
Seifer Almasy      Missing Reaper cases are hard.

     Seifer Almasy had reviewed the footage like twice. He'd had the Moon Cell review it once after a serious argument with a terminal and maybe some help from his wife. There was something Baofu wasn't telling them, something beyond just the Shadow/Noise chasing Anna Marie through the streets. He'd bet on it. Maybe not something super-important to him, but he'd probably throw a bit of Munny at someone who wasn't Lilian, since he's pretty sure that'd be a no-bet anyway.

     But he was sure of that much.

     Now, whether they were being used or not, he couldn't say, yet. But Baofu had an agenda. And Seifer was confident that unravelling it was an important part of this case.

     Not that anyone would ever know that from Seifer's swagger. And swagger he does - full white coat with the big red cross, gunblade over his shoulder, rain running down his handsome square-jawed face, running along his deep gash, running through his short blonde hair. Even in the face of the supernatural, Seifer doesn't lose his cool composure. It's not even trying to look cool, either; Seifer doesn't care what people think of him. No, his walk is just part of his lifestyle. Just part of who he, Seifer Almasy, is at the core.
Phyllis Lancaster Phyllis is behaving today as always. She's not going to stare. She just has to focus on the posting and directive that's come up and nothing more. With the warehouse in sight, it'd be a simple enough matter to wait for everyone else to get ready and to just bust the place open.

That doodlybob, though. It's so damn enticing! The witch can barely tear her eyes off the thing, watching it go through those random letters and only taking her eyes off it when Mikoto goes through her own transformation. That reminds Phyllis to do the same, and she starts drawing some runes in the air before her more casual garb is replaced with an all-white witch outfit!

... Which probably just ends up looking kind of dreary with all the rain and lack of color to really make it pop like Seifer's with his splash of red. Oh well. "Looks like a... Warehouse. Um. Shall we, then?" Clapping her hands together, the witch takes one step forward and holds her hands low to the ground, drawing them up slowly while bones and pale limbs start piling up around her. They wriggle and writhe, slowly knitting together and building up into a gross golem of flesh and bones!

It smells kind of bad.
Axel When you're visiting a shady warehouse to search for someone who may or may not have been kidnapped, you need your shady black trenchhoodie to fit in. Appearing from a black portal of darkness not far from the warehouse's area, Axel has his hood down, revealing his spiky red hair and teardrop tattoos, as he moves to group up with the others and the rest of the Concord. Axel hasn't met most of the people here, though he knows Seifer, who gets a nod.

And then he talks to Ash. "Did you really just say that?" He looks slightly bewildered, as the fixer speaks up.

"Does anyone else feel a strange feeling around here? I can't tell if it's the type you feel when something horrible's lingering inside or not."
Riku     Kupot scans the building. There's lots of structural weaknesses. The blocks are mostly a front on the wooden structure underneath and a lack of proper maintenance and upkeep has left several portions of the wall weak. The place isn't all that secure, really, it's not like there aren't a half dozen entry points at a casual glance. It's just a question of how much vandalism you want to get into to do it.

Mikoto sends in the rats. Whatever's in there, it's not a Witch, that's for sure. The rats scurry into the building, and Mikoto gets a rat's eye view of a lot of large storage crates. They turn the corner, and something seems to be in the center of the building but before they can really identify what it is, some kind of darkness overwhelms them and she is treated to the a truly unpleasant sensation rolling through her consciousness before the connection is cut. Sho detects this with his SPECIAL HEARING as a kins of slithering noise. If the spiritual animals have bones, he gets treated to the sound of said bones snapping and crunching. Pleasant.

    Ash arrives, and shows off his skills. Even with his greasy old man aesthetic, he knows his crap, and the lock is not really a barrier anyway. It only takes a couple seconds for him to jimmy open the cheap lock with his prosthetic enhancements. The door is open, revealing that the place seems to be stacked high with rusty cargo containers that probably have been sitting there for years. The water seems to have gotten in here too, only enhancing the rust-stained puddles around the storage utilities. It's a little mazelike, however, blocking off clear views of the room.

    Seifer is present. He will do his thing when appropriate. His phone, however, does ring, which might interrupt his swagger for a moment. Phyllis assembles a golem. It's not pleasant. Thankfully, no one seems to be here to have a problem with the nightmarish horror arriving on sight. The water doesn't make the corpse puppet any less gross.

    Axel meanwhile fits right in with the slinker types. That black trenchcoat can totally be stylish or ominous depending on how you're wearing it, and what's going on right now is definitely more on the latter side.
Kupot     Kupot's face scrunches as he sees the bone golem form. Both from the smell and the sight. But he is open minded and knows that not all worlds are like his own, so he does not JUDGE.

People go through the front door. And while it doesn't sound necessary, Kupot will take the roof. He pulls a cord from behind his ear and disconnects it from his phone. A snap of his jacket brings it tighter around himself. Then Kupot leaps.

Mithril cybernetics brings him up to the building next to the storage warehouse in question. He runs straight up the wall for a good dozen feet, arms out behind him, then leaps again just as he reaches the lip of the roof. With an aerobatic spin, he lands on top of the warehouse, entering via sky light and/or shitty hole in the roof.
Sumiko There are a bunch of things that assault Mikoto's senses and mind all at once.  The smell of rotting flesh and bones forming into a golem cause her to be queasy, her stomach turning inside out, no thanks to the smell before she turns away from the group and retches.  A few moments to recover...

Then the darkness rolling through her consciousness causes her to cut the line and struggle to break out of any attempts to assault it.  The last thing she needed was anything in THERE.  Of course, her last orders to the rats were 'bite anything that tries to harm you'.  

Turning, she looks pale as she tries to recover her wits, and power through it.  

"Something is in there...it tried to assault my mind, I think...something dark and shadowy."
Seifer Almasy      Phones do not interrupt Seifer Almasy's swagger. He is on like a legally distinct gorilla in a tie whose name is Tonkey Wong. He picks up and carries on a brief, clipped conversation with Baofu, during which he resolves to change his number (again) and get another layer of Moon Cell Encryption on top of it. Even if Baofu means nothing by it, the fact that Baofu got it means other people can get it, which means it's not secure. It's just S.O.P. for SeeD.

     When Ash gets the door open, Seifer's already striding through it, his coat flapping around his legs, in part to get through and get to the front (since he's a melee specialist) and in part to get away from the weird smell of the dead. He holds up his hand as he passes Axel, but otherwise just moves in, gunblade on his shoulder ready to go.

     Mikoto says something tried to assault her mind, and Seifer steps back. His face twists into a sharp frown.

     They already know the party's there, so there's no point in hiding it anymore. Might as well see what they're dealing with.

     Seifer presses his fingers together, raising his hand in front of his face.

     Snap.

     KABOOM.

     An explosion lights the room, an explosion in the middle of the air, with no fuel or source. It just...erupts. It's a blast of unexpected light that he's hoping will surprise whatever's in there *and* give them a look at what it is before it can adjust its eyes.
Phyllis Lancaster "I didn't feel anything, but... It didn't just feel like a ghost or something, did it?" Phyllis asks Axel as she turns to her golem. After receiving some complaints about it, she sighs and starts piling more bones and meat across the beast's arms, legs, shoulders. It takes some doing, but it eventually has wings and extremely beefy legs! She gives it a quick pat on the shoulder, and the golem launches itself into the sky before starting to flap its nasty ass wings!

Something that size shouldn't even be capable of flying with wings that small, but there it is. While Phyllis lets her golem handle going inside, she turns her attention to Mikoto when she looks significantly worse than she did mere moments ago. "Maybe it's the Noise? Or..." Frowning a bit as she turns back to the warehouse, she raises a hand as the golem sails towards the warehouse gracefully, then throws her hand forward in time with the stinking giant folding its meatwings against its sides to speed up. With any luck, it'll crash right through one of those windows and land on something to start beating on!

Phyllis, meanwhile, takes the front door, sticking behind Ash and Seifer while brandishing an arm bone from something far larger than herself. She might not necessarily know how to use it, but.. Well.

She's already controlling the golem. What else does she need?
Ash Williams      Ash tucks the lockpicks back into his finger, snapping it shut. He wiggles the fingers on his prosthetic just to ensure the articulation's still good--and it looks like it is. He nods with satisfaction, then steps inside. The greasy old guy slaps the back of his prosthetic, activating an integrated flashlight. He shines it around, trying to make out the labels on the rusted containers, if he can. If he can't, he rather quickly turns the light on some of the blind corners--until Seifer gives the order to stand back.

     "You got it, chief," says Ash with visible relief. He hangs back near the entrance until the kaboom. When the explosion subsides, Ash is already in 'fuck everything up' mode. The golem brushes past him--and if he hadn't seen Phyllis summon it, it'd be the first thing on his shitlist. As-is, all he does is snap that chainsaw into place, and draw his shotgun.
Sho Fukamachi      Snakes? Well, he was expecting something a bit bigger, but given he was able to pick it up, they're probably monster snakes. Well, there's only one way to find out, and given that this Bafou guy seems to want them to go inside, he doesn't really have any reservations for what he's about to do. It's not like this totally trustworthy man would lead them astray or anything.

     The Guyver firmly plants their feet on the ground as it places both of its hand in front of it, causing the metal orb in its waist to glow a bright white.

     A large, rather ominous black orb starts forming between the Guyver's hand, before it's shot forwards into the side of the building, attempting to burst open a hole so that they're able to enter, and hopefully catch whatever's inside off guard.
Axel As they move inside, Axel summons his chakrams to hand with a flick of his wrist, and then hangs back behind Seifer and Ash. As they draw up and move to attack, he looks for a high-ground, something to quickly climb on top of, and waits for the threat to come.

If the threat /doesn't/ come out to kill them, that'll be a bummer, but, he doesn't get through this life by taking unnecessary risks. Instead, he talks to Phyllis. "You're a necromancer, huh? You work with just corpses, or ghosts and personalities, too? That thing doesn't look smart."
Riku     Kupot sneaks in through the skylight using a series of potent acrobatic moves that many street warriors would kill for. Many likely have. Still, the cybermoogle leaps into action and drops into the building without trouble. The skylight is positioned directly over the center of the warehouse, and he lands right in the middle of where the almost mazelike array of crates seem to converge.

Sho simply blasts a hole in the side, opening another wide entrance to simply walk in and do what they're going to do, making it easier to approach from multiple directions. Axel goes high, Phyllis goes... well, her golem also goes high, but at least she's tagging along with the others.

    The water can't hide that a battle of some kind took place here. There are bullet holes in the sides of the crates, several broadhead arrows with armor-piercing tips sticking out of several places. The latter have traces of blood on the points. Several empty canisters of tear gas bob on the surface of the slightly-flooded room. A thoroughly soaked purse is left on the floor there, and a blood-soaked sodden shirt entangled in a bulletproof vest sits next to the purse.

    Ash enters and looks over the crates. They're mostly empty, but a couple of them are still sealed up. They have half-corroded labels for a shipping company, the contents mostly broken pallets and scrap of various kinds that isn't even worth looting.

    Seifer walks in and lays down an explosion of light and heat, a flash that bursts through the room. He can feel something /recoil/, a disturbence in the ominous aura, something seething under it, full of malice... And then it clamps shut.

    The building itself is engulfed in a swirling black darkness as the underground area shifts, twisting from the darkness hanging about like a curtain, as if something was drawing it a little deeper. Mikoto can watch the shadowy walls rise, ephemeral yet mind-boggling, a barrier meant to foil escape instead of simply lock them in. It's no Witch Barrier, she can push through it easily, but it seems to distort things so it is harder to leave...

    The environment changes in the room. The water seems to rise significantly a bit as the windows suddenly blow inwards, hulking rotund /things/ lunging into the place without adhering to basic physics. They almost look like parodies of cops, the bloated bodies clad in officer's uniforms... But with a massive hole punched entirely through their body, a key hanging within on a ring. The faces, piggish and blackened, are barely covered by a blue mask with a diamond-shaped mouth, winking eyes covering the upper half of the face and doing nothing to hide the rest of the thing.

There's a number of them. They all have pistols. They immeditately raise those guns and begin firing at the people within. At the same time, an even /larger/ version of the thing in a red officer's outfit smashes down through the skylight, holding a massive chaingun. A terrible sneer splits its sausage-lips as the thing begins to spin up, immediately spitting bullets as it tracks towards Seifer!
Seifer Almasy      Ah good, bullets.

     Seifer's actually good enough to cut the first few bullets out of the air. It's kind of spectacular to watch - the gunblade twists and turns in ways that weapons are not meant to turn in, at speeds that human bodies should not be able to sustain, at angles that it should not be able to cut in. He parries bullets with the back of his blade while he cuts others with the front and pierces more with the tip. In several notable instances it looks like he's cutting in two places at once, which is surely an illusion but is nonetheless maddening to watch. If this was just a chaingun, he'd probably even able to keep this up and advance.

     The problem is that that's a supernatural chaingun.

     The shadow's chaingun finally pierces his defenses. One bullet cuts through his arm. Another punches through his shoulder. A third pushes through his side, a fourth gets him in the stomach, and by that point he's no longer trying to keep up the defense, he's just running. He takes what cover he can, clamping down on his side. He refuses to tear his coat for this, so he's just drinking potions to temporarily staunch the bleeding. He'll regret it later.

     Later is not now. Later is later. Now time is now.

     Seifer rolls out from behind some of the crates and charges. It looks like a suicidally stupid maneuver, but there are two problems with (most) chainguns - first, they have charge-up time. Second, they aren't prepared for the lengths Seifer Almasy will go to solve a problem.

     In mid-run, in mid-step, he snaps his fingers pointed straight at the ground.

     The explosion comes just as his feet leave the floor. It tears up the ground below him and sends him shooting towards the Shadow at speeds best classified as Advent Children CGI. He goes shooting past it, pulling the trigger at exactly the right time as the gunblade passes through the monster.

     Another explosion, directly below him, spins him back around. His legs hit the other side of the building going much faster than he'd like. He mitigates it as best he can, which it turns out is quite a lot as a SeeD, but he's going to ache tomorrow.

     A quick front-flip and he lands on the ground, blade raised, pointed at the monster. He doesn't want to give it time to recouperate, so there's another barrage of explosions, rapid snaps of his finger as he forces soul energy through his hands and disrupts it in brute-force blasts.
Phyllis Lancaster "Flesh and bones, mostly. I know there's some that have done this sort of thing with ghosts and even put some kind of intellect in them, but..." Phyllis shakes her head lightly at Axel, then gives him a determined grin. "One day, I'll get it!"

Today is not going to be that day. Today is the day where she is at risk of getting drowned and shot full of holes as the cop corpses start blasting away at the gathered Elites. "Whoa! Sc-scatter!" Phyllis warns the group as she starts running, splashing through the rising water and focusing on not getting shot right in the face even as some of those bullets tear painful-looking red marks across her face.

The golem doesn't quite dodge the bullets as it just barrels right through them, losing a fair bit of one arm in the process. Despite the damage, it continues charging forward, trying to wedge what's left of both arms into the central hole of a masked corpse and tear it apart from the middle. As it does that, Phyllis flings herself at that same corpse, bringing her bone club down at it with a mighty, yet mildly-unaccustomed-to-combat shout!

It actually doesn't make much sense why she's getting in there herself. Maybe she's just feeling fired up because of the company she's with.
Kupot Kupot lands in the maze, frowning. Then the world begins to shift. The water begins to rise, and that's not good for Kupot's stance. He does a spinning leap up to one of the storage crates, grabbing at the side of it with a foot and hand. Micro claws, much like shuko, dig into the wall. Only for Kupot to turn his head and see the windows EXPLODE with police officers.

"Kupo."

He uses his free hand to snap his wakashazi out, but there are way too many bullets. Several of them strike into the moogle's jacket and flesh, hitting up against the dermal plating underneath. Kupot flips backwards, running up to the top of the crates and out of sight for a moment to get a breather.

He calmly slides the wakashazi away into its sheath and grasps the katana's hilt. Focus your breathing. Still your mind. Pain is nothing, when people's lives are on the line.

Rebounding from storage crate to storage crate(ping ping PING), Kupot keeps off the floor and out of the water. He runs across the side of one, coming down on a group of the 'officers'. When his sword swings free, the initial swing can't be since.

But there is a definite THUNDERCLAP as the monoblade swings out, ushering out a bladed shockwave that lifts the water away.
Sumiko Mikoto frowns as the wall forms in front of her.  She pushes on it, realizing she could push through it.  So this is just like...well, similar to a witch's barrier.  Not the same, but similar in uncomfortable ways.  Of course, someone claims that snakes aren't fighting them.  This causes Mikoto to become suspicious.  Things that can form a barrier like this usually have minions.  

Mikoto decides to take a chance and leaps up.  Data starts swirling around her arm, as a strange bracelet starts to form.  Spikes jut out from it, as she starts to form the barrel of something that looks like a cannon.

And then a ball of dark data-like magical energy attempts to hit the barrier, and shoot a piece of it back to her.  With any luck whatever is controlling the barrier will suffer the badness of the Data drain, while Mikoto could get more information on what is inside it.  
Ash Williams      Ash is knocked onto his feet by the force of the second explosion. Usually, they only come one at a time! He slams into a nearby shelf, and several of those heavy crates topple over, smashing into him. He lifts his chainsaw arm to protect himself from the brunt of it, but he's still heavily battered. He throws them off with surprising strength, but the effort of doing so leaves him out of breath and easy pickings for the boys in blue--he takes a few shots, darkening his blue work shirt.

     "Jesus Christ," shouts Ash, running through the labyrynthine arrangement of crates to shield himself from the bullets. "What, are you guys on loan from L.A.?!" He comes around the corner, heralded by the sloshing of water. Despite being slowed down, he has remarkable speed--enough to barrel into the first blue uniform he sees and shoulder check them like a hockey player. He brings his shotgun arm up and gives both barrels. BLAM. BLAM. He's aiming for the key dangling at the center...
Axel Water is rising. Axel can't work on the ground as easily, since he's fire-specced. But Seifer has the ground charge covered. So Axel, from his perch, leaps forward, running along a wall, and snaps his wrists, engulfing his chakrams in flames. As the chaingun and bullets blast into him, several bullets impact with his coat, sending him skidding downwards and making a pained expression, but they don't send him into the drink, even if it's a fair amount of damage. A bullet or two is deflected with a spin of a chakram, but it's not as efficient as Seifer's own block.

The flaming chakrams suddenly go flying for the police Shadow goons, moving to grind into them and burn their 'flesh', aimed for their heads since there's a hole in their stomachs. Since they all wear masks, Axel wonders if smashing the masks does anything, and aims the chakrams for there primarily.

"Alright, let's see if you work like Heartless...!"
Sho Fukamachi      No snakes, or monster snakes. But Sho's found something worse than monster snakes, a building that ignores common sense and that appears to be flooding despite the various holes in it that shouldn't allow it to be doing that. It's very odd, but he should probably get used to things like this.

     Spotting the bloodstained purse and shirt, Sho goes to investigate, hooking his arm through the purse strap to carry out while he picks up the shirt to get a better look at it.

     He doesn't get as much time as he'd like to examine this stuff though, as the shadows appear. Some weird mockery of law enforcement. The fat rotund shape of them somewhat painfully remind him of one of his run ins with Kronos, but now's not the time to be traumatized.

     The Monomaniac Fuzz fires a round at the Guyver, and Sho flinches slightly as the bullets penetrate his armor. Fortunately for Sho, they don't penetrate the suit, and the strange blue carapace shifts and turns a bit as it repairs itself, pushing the bullets out as the vents on its face shoot out a small gust of air.

     Adopting a makeshift battle stance, the Guyver retaliates by leaping into the air and towards the shadow, an arm outstretched as the blade on its arm glows and grows in size as it aims to bisect the creature.
Rean Schwarzer So yeah, Rean's here despite having missed the first foray into this missing persons case. He'd read Nanoha's report, and asked a few people who were involved in the last one what was up.

Anyway, the building they were looking into sealed itself up with darkness and started flooding. Some monsters dressed like police also showed up, supernatural beings know as Shadows.

A kind of non indicative name since they weren't really dark but whatever.

Anyway, Rean crouches low, drawing his sword quickly enough to create an arc shaped shockwave aimed at the Shadow's gun.
Riku     Seifer's response is immediate and intense. The chaingun tries to track Seifer, spitting bullets the entire time as he blasts himself through the waterlogged room, creating wide bursts of hissing water as he flings his power around... And then he's cleaving through the Gatling Fuzz. The hulking, bloated thing emits a thick wash of black smoke as the weapon cleaves into and through it. forcing it to stop shooting for a critical moment. It looks back up, pulling itself back into position and charges forward as the chaingun starts spinning up again... But it doesn't wait to fire. No, this time it simply hurls itself forward, attempting to crush Seifer and anything in its way.

    Phyllis strikes back, not taking this brutality sitting down. The golem smashes into the fuzz, beginning to tear it apart. It stretches and twists, but it's the club that finishes it off, the impact crunching it and sending it dissolving in a wash of blackness to melt away. A victory... But there's more to deal with!

    Kupot unleashes the true power of the samurai as he tries to cleave all the bullets out of the way, but thankfully, he has augmentations to back up those skills. Bullets are tough even in the best of times. He pings and zings through the room, swinging with a deadly iai strike as he cleaves straight through a group of the Fuzz. A moment later, the flashing blade wave cleaves through, following the motion precisely, and they fall apart, shorn in half as the water flashes out to leave dry ground for several moments... then the water crashes back in as the Shadows dissolve.

    Mikoto, ever the person with the best ideas, unleashes the power of DATA DRAIN upon the shadowy barrier. Waves of dark and malicious energy slam back into her consciousness with it as she samples the unrestrained ids that are rampaging about. She sees their strengths, their weaknesses, but perhaps most of all, she sees something else...
Riku     Ash keeps things simple. He understands how this goes. He's an action hero (proving that not all heroes are shiny and pure), he makes a witty comment and unleashes overwhelming firepower. They have pistols, he has a shotgun. The barrels unleash, and the key blows apart inside the Fuzz... As well as a good chunk of the rest of it. If the key is a weak point, it's hard to tell either way because it's certainly gone.

    AXEL HATE WATER. It's all over the place, like some kind of ironic reversal of the Floor Is Lava. Still, those spiked chakrams are still perfectly effective, and he leaps forward, dodging through the room along with the other speed moogle Kupot... but he shows that the chakrams aren't all show even as he gets shot. The piercing weapons grind and burn into the thing, the strike against the mask shattering one with a massive blow, crushing it into pieces.

There's nothing behind it, a seething blackness that surges out in a wave of dissipating smoke as the Shadow collapses back on itself, vaporizing.

    Sho doesn't get time to examine the stuff at all, almost as if the things were simply waiting for someone to arrive or something. It certainly /feels/ ambushy. Still, despite the latent mental trauma, Sho quickly leaps forward and cleaves into his attacker, the strikes shredding through the minor Shadow and ripping it in half to cause it to disintegrate like the others.

    Rean, who was here the entire time, strikes out with a slashing arc wave to try to blast away the gun of one of the Shadows, but a shimmering barrier interposes itself, absorbing the shockwave and swirling it around the Shadow, absorbing the energy! Uh oh.

    The good news is that the room is now far less occupied with Shadows. The bad news is there's still quite a few more. The Gatling Fuzz crashes about, continuing to try to bull itself over things while the gun spins up, while the Fuzz continue to fire bullets at anyone they can find!
Kupot Kupot leaps back up onto a crate. The mini gun turns in his direction and starts to spin up.

HUD circles on Kupot's eyes bring it to attention, snapping the moogle's head around. Bullets begin to fly like a swarm of wasps, bearing down on Kupot like a lethal hail.

The katana swings out in time, his arm becoming a white blur, the black mono blade katana becoming invisible as it swings through the air. The white blur snatches out at each bullet, a single high pitched 'WHING' before it moves on. The jacketed street ronin stands up against the hail, carefully picking each bullet out of the air with unerring precision and speed.

When Kupot stops, his katana has a neat row of bullets along it, set in a line, from the tip to the hilt guard.

His insectiod optics turn to the Gatling Fuzz. And then he swings the blade in a single swipe, sending a neat spiral of bullets back at him.
Sumiko Mikoto wasn't sure what she was expecting.  It wasn't that.

She wasn't used to getting posts from social media directly into her brain meats, and also really does not like this realization that it is what it is.  Also what is happening here, as well as the influence that she just somehow managed to figure out between the posts and uh...this place.  

Ok deep breaths, calm down, there has to be an explanation to this that makes sense.  Speculate later, she thinks and provides what she knows to others.  Taking a breath, she pushes through the shadow barrier.  Kicking on the FLIGHT she got from Nanoha she soars up...and then straight down like a bolt of lightning towards the inside of the building.

She hits the ground aiming to cause a lot of water to be kicked up to hide her form for a second, before she dashes towards one of the nearest cops, and attempts to send her blade into it, trying to cleave through the monster.  She has a plan, but she needs more focus...
Axel Axel thins one of the Shadows, but learns nothing about it. More bullets come at him, smashing into his coat and finally sending him downward closer to the water, soaking into his boots, but his chakrams remain blazing.

Jumping upwards and onto a crate, as the Gatling Fuzz crashes about, Axel points a chakram out at the monster. "Let's light you up!" He heard it was fire-weak, so...

Lances of pure flame ignite around the Shadow, and move to slam straight into it, attempting to burn into it and do Extra Damage. The spearing lances create some steam if they hit the water, unless it's magical bullshit water that refuses to steam.
Phyllis Lancaster One down, many more to go! Taking a moment to pose like some kind of baseball player besides her golem, the witch goes starstruck when she watches her allies cleaving through their own obstacles. Getting ideas on what to incorporate herself is anothers story entirely, though, since she doesn't exactly have the nimble footwork or martial skill of people like Seifer, Kupot, Axel, or Rean. She doesn't have the raw power of Sho, the firepower of Ash, or the...

She's actually not sure what Mikoto's doing, but putting two and two together isn't that hard when the magical girl relays that info to the group. "Electricity and fire... I don't have anything like that!" That kind of sucks, but Phyllis will have to make do. She yelps again as the remaining corpses resume bombarding the Elites with bullets, forcing the witch to scramble once again as her golem starts falling apart.

Not good. She's forced to rely on her own footwork now, staggering a few times as shots knock her almost off balance before she catches herself on some debris and flings herself around. She draws several more runes as she scurries about, literal handfuls of bones launching out of them in haphazard sprays that leave more bones lying around compared to how many are actually coming anywhere near hitting anything.

It's like she's leaving them around on purpose or something.
Sho Fukamachi      Sho wishes he had pockets on this suit, it would make protecting the purse he's holding a lot more easier. But he doesn't, so he has to deal. He attempts to backtrack his way out of the building, his right arm cradling the potential evidence as that's the only real thing between it and a stray bullet.

     He's caught off guard by another Shadow, the creature firing off another shot as the alien suit is left with little time to react. Thankfully his equipment picks up the slack for him, as his free arm reaches forward in front of it, creating a small ball of gravity that slows and dampens the bullet before it slams into the Guyver's armor, embedding itself into armor plating and eliciting a similar response from the suit of it pushing it out as it repairs itself once again.

     Rather than let the ball of gravity in its hand go to waste however, the Guyver fires it off. It's significantly weaker than the ball of gravity used to get in, but it's still a ball of pressurized gravity being fired at high speeds.
Seifer Almasy      The dog monster smashes into Seifer. It sends him sprawling backwards into the water. He's never been great at strength-on-strength with supernatural foes and it shows. That's *normal*, when he's *not* injured from gunshot wounds. Now, he just gets plastered.

     He sits up out of the flooding water and coughs. The thing's still charging at him, even as Kupot throws himself in the way. Seifer rolls out of the way anyway. Can't ever tell if a Moogle's gonna be able to stop a charging monster. Axel starts blasting fire through the area, so Seifer, as he gets back to his feet, starts snapping his fingers, furthering the blasts, directing the blasts with aftershock, and adding to the fire with yet more flame. It's the best he can do right now - he's taking a beating, and the more firepower they can pile on this thing, the faster it stops.
Ash Williams      Ash lifts the flat of his chainsaw up to protect his head from the Fuzz. Sparks fly from the quality S-Mart steel, protecting what little remains of his brain--but not the rest of him. He ducks behind cover and bleeds some more, his breath ragged as sweat begins to bead up on his brow. "I hope these Reaper dicks are loaded, because this is worth a lot more than a free smoothie!" Pop. The easy-open cap is flipped off of a bottle of dubiously acquired painkillers.

     Ash swallows a handful, tossing the empty bottle into the rising water. His breathing becomes less ragged as the 'medicine' takes effect. Then, he pops out from cover. This conservative approach isn't doing him any favors--if he's gonna make it out in one piece, he's gotta take the fight to them. Ash charges through the shallows, cutting forceful swaths with his chainsaw. It roars to life.

     He doesn't bother aiming for the keys anymore--he's just bowling his way through the blue masses, swiping furiously with superhuman strength as if clearing a great quantity of brush. It's not the most defense-conscious approach, but he seems to think he can mow them down faster than they can light him up. Hopefully, he's right.
Rean Schwarzer ...Well, that didn't work. The Megalomaniac Fuzz absorbed his attack via some sort of barrier. He raises his sword to block the shot, and it rings off of the blade, making Rean stagger back. Anyway, Mikoto found out their weaknesses. While he didn't have any wind arts installed to cover electricity, he did have his usual fire spell set up, plus his usual setting his sword on fire thing. Admittedly Axel and Seifer were already on it, but why not add more fire to the fuel...wait. A blue ring of light surrounds Rean as he casts an art, causing a spell circle to appear near the ceiling. "Might want to watch your head!" Rean ^shouts, as the spell circle then shoots out several flaming rocks out of it across the field.
Riku     Kupot's in a predicament. Everyone keeps trying to parry the gatling gun with a sword, but it looks like Kupot actually pulls it off. It would be impressive indeed, but Shadows don't seem to have an appreciation for that kind of deft and flashy maneuver. The bullets, however, make a pointed response. The flung shot punches back through the Gatling Fuzz, ripping into it and causing it to shake, bleeding darkness from a dozen or more wounds.

Mikoto leaps into the darkness. She passes into it easily. It WANTS her there. She's able to fly right in. Thankfully, the environment doesn't seem to interfere with her abilities. She lunges down and stabs into one of those Shadows, impaling it! She's succeeded in that, but now what? The thing looks confused for a moment before the gun becuns to lift, the darkness leaking around the wound... But what does it care?

Phyllis sends bones flying everywhere, the impacts crushing into the Fuzz just as easily as everything else tried so far. It seems like they don't have any particular defenses, just weaknesses. SO FAR. Sho follows up with a burst of gravity that begins wrecking things, and helpfully dragging in more high-speed bones. Her bones. Their bones. Bones bones bones. Ash doesn't give a damn about bones, instead enacting the California Chainsaw Massacre as he crashes forward to simply saw through his opponents. Fuzz after Fuzz falls in his wake, the man even cleaving through the one Mikoto has impaled in an excess of scrapper lock.
Riku     Axel, meanwhile, is eminently equipped to deal with the Gatling Fuzz. As he blasts it with flame, the Shadow reels, the thing immediately igniting as the gun begins popping, the ammunition beginning to cook off. Even the bullets Kupot deflected into the thing begin to burst for some unknown reason, exacerbating the damage significantly as it is caught in a hellfire that sends up roaring bursts of steam! Rean sends flaming rocks bombarding across the field, only making it even worse as steam rushes through the warehouse, crushing Fuzzes and crashing into the Gatling Fuzz alike. Seifer follows up with a series of ki blasts, directing the flames into the thing to enhance the strikes over and over, augmenting the burning assault with his own strikes! And that proves to be enough as the massive thing seems to decohere in the middle of the flame, cracking and vanishing into a large burst of darkness.

    The terrible aura dissipates as the final Shadow falls. There is a wash of relief and invigorating air as the claustrophobic aura dissipates, the water beginning to rush back out of the building. For a moment, it might seem like you have a moment to recover...

    A few seconds later, there's a click, and with a THUMP something is fired down into the center of the room from above. There is a brilliant detonation and shockwave as the flashbang rips through the area, and the sound of splashing as the tactical men begin sweeping into the area, using overlapping fields of fire to begin blasting down anyone in their path as what looks like several groups of 3 make themselves apparent. Sho in particular gets focused on, considering his strange armor set. Each has a tactical mask with weapopns hanging on them. A couple have actual grenade launchers and several seem to be carrying some kind of charge....

BGM SHIFT: https://youtu.be/eFLrLuYojyk
Kupot Kupot leans against his perch, putting the monoblade down in the wood and taking a moment to breath. He pulls out a WARK! bar and pulls the tip of it off, only for his HUD to light up. His ears stand tall. The bar is dropped for the katana, swinging down around an extra hail of bullets. But he is caught slightly off guard, and bullets tear through his flesh, bouncing off dermal plating, but leaving bloody gashes.

His head darts around to the number of people in the room. Most of them are likely to want to kill their way out of here. Or at least mortally wound. A reasonable response.

Kupot's idiosynchroncies are not what you might call reasonable.

He snaps the katana into the sheath, then fastens it, creating a blunt weapon.

Then Kupot leaps off his perch into the nearest group of three. Here, he is not playing at range, with defense, or trying to pick off one by one. Instead, he seeks to disarm and distract, swinging the sheathed weapon out in a wide arc.
Seifer Almasy      YES!

     Now, /this/, Seifer knows how to handle!

     Spooky scary shadow-kin and weird supernatural horrors were always more Molly and Sora's bag. Seifer was a wrecking ball. He crashed into what he was pointed at. He stood in the way to protect them. He was the Knight; she was the Mage; Sora was the Hero. It rankled him, just a little, that Sora was the Hero and he wasn't, but in the end, hey - he didn't need destiny. He'd never liked destiny. And he did like Sora.

     When the men come crashing in, the bloody Seifer goes surging forward. They're shooting at him, but he's blocking, deflecting, carving through bullets much more efficiently. The few that get past him don't get nearly as dangerous as the chaingun. These are *ordinary* people, with *ordinary* weapons. This, he can handle.

     The SeeD goes plowing forward without a care in the world. There's a wild grin on his face. He's not a fan of killing people - in fact he'll probably be hitting them with the blunt side of his blade so they can take some of these men hostage and find out what the hell is going on.

     It's a ballet. Seifer's taken this gunblade shit so far that it's become *art*. Other people *use* weapons; Seifer's weapon is a dance. He spins. He whirls. He fences. He carves. He flicks. The slightest motions are without a single bit of exaggerated movement. His economy of motion is flawless. His grace is flawless.

     Nothing he's doing makes *sense*, because it's not any kind of proper school of swordsmanship and he learned it by watching a movie ten million times and doing that until it stuck, but hey. It's definitely art, and it's definitely effective.
Sumiko Mikoto is told they don't need to be here, as well as Seifer needing a way to take a man hostage.  Well...

The Magical girl dances back away from the hail of bullets and swings the sword around her.  Bullets are sent flying from her in various directions, though some still manage to make it through.  Wounds appear on her sides and arms, causing small streams of blood, but hardly a fatal wound.  

Leaping back, she thrusts her sword into the ground to summon another animal.  However, what comes up is...

A large lion-like creature, with a human-esc face.  It's /huge/ for a lion, and more like a sphinx than anything.  It roars menacingly as it approaches the front, and pounces on a man, trying to bash him out of the way, before moving to cover Seifer.  Mikoto, has taken to the thing's back, riding it like a mount.  

"Alright, friends, if you wanna keep this up...I can introduce you to the literal zoo of horrors I have seen!"
Axel Well, this is bad. As the Shadows go down, the water drains, Axel takes a breath of air, and then a spec ops security team drops through the skylight, shooting at them. Axel takes further damage to himself and his coat, a bullet nicking his face and drawing blood, as he resummons his chakrams. He can't set them on fire or kill them - that'd be messy.

So, when Seifer moves to knock a guy out, Axel moves to assist. As he blunt side of the blade hits one of the guys, Axel moves to slam him in the solar plexus with the blunt part of a chakram and keep him down, and then grab him and pull him back, slamming into him again to contribute to knocking him out. He'll function as both a body shield and a hostage, and once they're clear, try and drag him Out Of Here, possibly through a Corridor of Darkness.

If Axel /can't/ knock someone out, he just moves to start opening a Corridor and escape. He'll catch up with the others later, and allow anyone who wants to come with him out, and it'll deposit them Somewhere Else in Sunnydale.
Ash Williams      Ash certainly looks the part of slasher villain--the dark viscera of the Fuzz splatters him quite thoroughly, to the point where his eyes are manic white pools that flit from one enemy to the next with unnerving focus. After literally splitting one with Mikoto, it happens. "OHH!" He cheers in exultation like he just saw a sick-ass play at the NBA finals. He pays a brief glance towards her, puming his prosthetic hand in triumph. He looks like a madman, in that brief moment.

Ash is in the Zone.

     Then... silence. He takes a moment to run a hand through his hair. Normally, it'd be ill-advised, but considering his 'product' of choice is shoe polish, it'll probably be fine. It's at that time that the flash bang hits. Ash is blinded, his head pounding, his hearing host only to an irritating ringing. His vision comes only in flashes--but he sees what he needs to. Ash dives into the water. The bullets from the SWAT team--he assumes that's what they are--rip through him exactly as they likely expect.

     He dives forward, into the water with a splash. It saves him from getting skewered by bullets. It also waterlogs his shotgun. The chainsaw fares better, but he won't use it against these guys--not against guys that might actually be real, living guys. That's only for monsters. Seifer mentions wanting to take one alive. Why not a bunch?

     Ash gets to his feet, soaken wet, bleeding and covered in the blood of Shadows. He groans, the exertion clearly getting to him--but he attacks, nonetheless. To see him, you wouldn't think his strength to be even middling. To see a fat old guy topple over a shelf stacked with metal crates, then, is truly impressive.

     He throws his full weight at it, dislodging it from the floor with brute strength if necessary, attempting to bury several of their attackers in a mountain of toppling crates.
Phyllis Lancaster With the Shadows brought down, Phyllis touches back down on the now-dry ground looking just a bit disappointed. "Aw. I was hoping to do something cool. But everyone's alright now, so good en-"

And then things go to shit once more. Phyllis looks right at the flashbang as it bounces off something, not quite noticing what it is and catching a big ol' flash of light to the face for her trouble. She staggers back and falls flat on her ass for a moment, howling in pain when multiple bullets rip right into her and force her to pull several bones close just to use as a makeshift barrier against further shots.

"Blrh... Nnh! Ff... Cut it out!" She has no idea what's going on at this point with the human-looking people, but at least she now has an opportunity to execute THE PLAN. Floating into the air suddenly, Phyllis rights herself in midair as the runes she had drawn earlier shine around the warehouse arena all at once. They pull into her one after the other, lines of light drawing over the bones and pre-golem chunks to link up with the witch. "I don't know who you are, but if you're going to use lethal rounds without warning, then..."

Her previous scattershot tactics become clearer as, all at once, the bones start flying around the warehouse at a breakneck pace. "... Then learn the error of your ways!" Bones crunch, stab, pin, and overall provide a significant amount of suppressing fire as they bludgeon the spec ops soldiers from all angles. The waterlogged flesh from the golem even gets thrown around, sizzling as the chunks turn into acid that slip in between the gaps provided by the mass of bones. All of it works together to act as a makeshift killzone, somehow managing to avoid Phyllis' allies even as the projectiles close in and threaten to melt equipment and flesh alike inside the shrinking death zone!
Sho Fukamachi      The Guyver is caught in a grenade explosion. Normally it probably wouldn't be an issue, but Sho's particularly interested in making sure the evidence isn't destroyed, so he positions himself so that only one side of him is taking the brunt of the explosion.

     It goes about as well as one expects things to, as the boy inside the suit lets out a howl of pain as he's down one arm. The Guyver leaks what is obviously human blood for a bit, but it soon stops as the suit seals itself up and begins the process of rebuilding Sho's arm. The regeneration isn't as instantaneous as with the bullets, leaving him there as he thinks through with his next course of action.

     Maybe if he just removes the suit, he can try to deescalate the situation and everything would be fine. Yeah, just remove the suit and- The medal on the suit's forehead glows for a moment, as it becomes abundantly clear to Sho that it isn't an option. It won't come off. He'd normally be panicking about that, but there's other more pressing matters to lose their mind over than his suit refusing to cooperate.

     Well, if he can't disarm himself, maybe he can disarm them. Several ideas run through the Guyver's head. None of them good, as he's too afraid to he'd kill what are clearly normal humans, or that his methods won't target enough of them in time.

     Wracking his brain more and more, the suit picks up on his need for an way to DEAL, and the control medal glows once more, this time, the strange medal orbs on the Guyver's face reacting by vibrating.

     As they vibrate, a loud, ear shattering frequency is produced, enough to shatter glass, enough to shake the earth, and probably the most importantly, enough to cause people immense pain as it blows out eardrums and other probably shake people to their core.
Riku     These might be intimidating people in modern combat armor, and with advanced weaponry, but these are still human beings. Despite them shooting to kill, many of those present seem to have problems with fighting back at their full power. Kupot moves in to strike with a disarming, disrupting maneuver. The motion is precise, perfect as the sheathed weapon smashes into battle rifles, knocking them aside and forcing them to drop on tactical rigging, not to the floor like one might hope. But it does buy valuable relief from one side for several seconds as they back off to regroup instead of doing something stupid like pushing in without their weapons at bear.

    Seifer pounces like a wrecking ball of power and finesse, his SeeD training more than capable of putting him in the position of dealing with this problem. They are normal guns, not some supernatural approximation of one, and his gunblade deflects and parries them much more easily. He weathers the withering wave of gunfire, striking out with the blunt of the blade to try to knock people out. But they move as a well-oiled team. Every time Seifer goes for one of them, the other two move to interpose themselves. There are signs that they've been doing this for a long time, drilling and training together. There's little sign of the usual clumsiness that multiple combatants usually exhibit when working to fight someone. For a time it seems like he might be kept at a stalemate...

    But then Mikoto comes striking in, using the spectral cat to do what cats do best: Pounce. She crashes into the enemy group with full survivors, pinning one to the ground and giving Seifer just the moment he needs to knock one of them out with a quick, solid strike to the base of the neck. The fallen man is a perfect target for Axel to grab and take him. Taking one of them as a hostage causes an immediate shift in tactics. They back off, holding fire as they move to cover the exits of the building. Axel pulls the guy through a Corridor of Darkness. The landscape here is pretty normal, so thankfully, the Darkness here is fairly navigable. And drier.
Riku     Ash, meanwhile, is left to bask in the glory of that moment where he straight murders everything, that moment that makes monster slaying worthwhile. Well, that and saving the ladies, of course, right? But things get more complicated for him as he deals with the new threat. Everything gets wet, and he finds himself choosing to try to do something unexpected. He shoves his weight into those crates, and he knocks them over, sending a pile of them collapsing on one of the operations teams. There are yells as they are scattered, forced apart as they leap for space. If they weren't already pulling back, they'd probably have been caught right under them. But as it stands, they're already backing out, now in disarray.

    Phyllis makes the degeneration of the unit cohesion even more intense, the BONE STOOOOORM punching into combat armor and shanking bodies through joints, knocking them around and generally being complete hell. The acid doesn't help either, burning through what the bones don't pierce. This makes them retreat even faster, two men stooping to grab and drag one that takes a bone splinter to the knee.

    As the soldiers bail, the vibration wave blasts outwards, shattering glass and eardrums with equal felicity. No one's holding a gun now, and some of them are barely trying to even hold onto their squadmates as they back away from the superpowered combat team that they happened to cross. It looks like they have these guys on the run...

    But the retaliation is intense and deadly. There is a chirp a moment later, before high-powered explosive charges detonate at the corners of the warehouse, instantly turning the entire place into a roaring blaze that collapses in on itself, threatening to bury the lot of you in flaming wreckage.

    Mission accomplished...?
Kupot "Excellent, we have not wasted any l-"

An explosion roars up.

Kupot turns his head, hand snapping the fastening and holding tight, bringing his sword around in an arc to cleave the shockwave. It parts, but only enough to catch the moogle samurai on either side and smash him up into a storage crate. He slumps down painfully, but pulls himself up ready enough, his face burned up one side, fur scorched. He lets out a call to the area around him, getting back an answer from one. A save going on there.

Last out. He leaps up, using a sword swing to batter a flaming bit of roofing out of the way. He stays high, trying to use his blade to cover the exit of the others.
Rean Schwarzer And the Shadows are down! Unfortunately, there's a bunch of soldiers coming in with guns. Rean tries to back off, but gets shot up anyway. A couple of the shots graze him, leaving a few bleeding cuts on his  arms and legs. Sho's screeching thing isn't helping either, and interrupts any spellcasting he might've done. He lets Ash take the last seat on Mikoto's Not A Sphinx and prepares to run out-

And then everything explodes.

Rean braces for the attack, and is knocked into a nearby wall by the blast, glass raining down on him. "Agh..." Rean mutters, as Kupot calls out to him. Sounds like Mikoto's got his back, though...maybe. His head's spinning.
Sumiko Mikoto gets a warning about EXPLOSIONS.  

Well, uh...crap!  The only thing she could do was use the sword to create a barrier of jade spikes around herself.  They spike up, managing to send the brunt of the fire and force around her, though the barrier isn't able to hold /everything/ back.  Fire and force wash over her body and she cries out.  

However, the mount she was on was able to keep steady.  She offers a hand up for Seifer, as she was near the man if he needs it, and forces the beast towards Rean so she could also drag him up and places him over the beast in front of her.  Effectively on her lap, if need be, and coaxes the thing towards one of the sides of the wall...

A moment later, the beast roars as it dives out, fire brushing against it as it makes its escape (with passengers.)
Phyllis Lancaster As the whirlwind of bones comes to a stop, Phyllis settles back onto the ground and even strikes a DRAMTAIC HERO POSE complete with one knee and hand down with the other knee up and the other hand held out behind her. It doesn't really look nearly as cool as she thinks it does, but it makes her happy, and the soldiers are fleeing! What's wrong with a little showboating at the end?

Many things, apparently, as that chirp and the warnings from her allies over the radio all combine to form one giant collapsing warehouse. Screeching again as she's buried under rubble, it takes some doing (and the assistance of a hastily-formed bone arm) to dig herself out of that mess. She's bleeding from several places now and singed in many others, but the witch is still on her feet!

She probably won't be for long if this keeps up, though. Leaving Rean and Seifer to Mikoto to assist while Kupot makes his own way out, the witch opts to group up with Ash! A rune appears in front of her, a broom slides on out, and she takes a seat on one end of it while patting the other end and jerking her thumb towards it. "Got an extra seat! Just don't think too hard about balancing and you'll be fine."

She's got a brave face on, at least, even though there's a lot of blood coming out of her. Phyllis waits to see if he gets on or not, and then she'll take off like a stereotypical witch on a broom! It's actually a comfortable-ish ride, too, as long as he ignores all the blood and how physics should work trying ride a flying broom.
Ash Williams      Ash books it as soon as he hears Baofu's warning. The thing is... Ash's reflexes are great. He's one tough son of a bitch, and as seen with the crates, deceptively strong. What he /isn't/ is fast--at least, not when it comes to running. The fight has tired him out, and he's getting old, besides. 'Booking it,' therefore, means 'awkwardly jogging.' Awkwardly jogging like he's got a stitch, which he probably does. Water splashes around him as he slogs through.

     The blast catches him, throwing him off-course. He skips across the surface of the water, but manages to get a hold of Mikoto's Legally Distinct Mythological Creature, pulling himself up with the last reserves of his upper body strength. He nearly makes it home free, but, as if the universe were paying him back for his litany of distasteful, disgusting and disgraceful remarks, a piece of rubble strikes his shoulder painfully on the way out.

     "Jesus," says Ash after a groan, once they're free. "Might as well have eaten M&Ms for all the good it did me." He wanders off in the direction of his car. He probably shouldn't be driving, but he shouldn't be driving in general, and stopping him now would be like polishing the brass on the Titanic.
Sho Fukamachi      Well, at least he remembered there was an explosion rigged this time. Not that it does him much good. He can't fly, so he's gonna have to run. As the mysterious SWAT team run away, the Guyver bends down into a sprinting position, its mostly regenerated arm digging into the dirt along with its feet as the mask of the suit produces another puff of air from its vents.

     Putting every bit of energy it has into its leg, Sho, and by extension the Guyver, burst into full sprint, doing their best to escape the explosion, purse still in hand as they make a mad dash to safety.

     While he's able to outrun the explosion somewhat, bits of shrapnel embed themself into the suit's backside, causing Sho to nearly fall over several times as some of them manage to fully penetrate his armor plating. By the time he's fully in the clear, the Guyver is in obvious rough shape, but still in one piece.

     Sho counts his blessings that he managed to stay alive, before placing the purse he had been carrying for most of this outing down on the ground, opening it up to make sure he didn't just fully waste his time playing bodyguard for it.
Riku The van that held the ops team is far down the street by the time they exit. There is a lot of confusion, but at least Sho got out with the purse.

    The purse carries, well, a lot of girly things. A wallet with ID that shows it belongs to one 'Anne-Marie Sonomura'. A very nice-looking compact with three mirrors in it, and a smartphone. It's run out of charge. The rest is various knick-knackery.