Scene #7628: Cryptid Hunting File 02 - PERPETUAL TERROR GROWTH HYDRA PLANT

Owner	Pose
C	One week after the last outing to subjugate Elon Ark, the Elites gathered at Crow's behest find themselves once again in on the continent of Zemuria, wandering out into Eastern Crossbell. The highway itself connects directly to Crossbell State's capital city and namesake, though, everyone finds themselves well off the beaten path and away from the safety of the various devices set up along the paved road which seemed suspiciously like small and stubby street lamps, but if questioned, C will clarify that they are in fact Orbal Lamps that emit invisible waves that ward off the various common pests and monsters of the area. Of course, without them, they have to fend off a handful of attacks from varioud woodland monsters, such as giant Raccoons and large insects with thick stingers dripping with poison, or beetles the size of a large hound. All in all, for a bevy of high caliber fighters such as themselves, it doesn't pose much of an issue. "Hopefully, we'll be able to clean this one up faster than last time, so that we can duck the fuzz," C hums, wistfully, "I doubt they'll be nice enough to let you all off with a little scuffle like before." The area has many rocky crags, a good bit of moss, and loose, fertile soil that spongily dips as they keep walking. It wasn't necessarily swampy, but a good, nasty torrent could easily make the area similar to one. And as they begin to turn around on a slope... "R-Randy, Lloyd, don't you dare look..!" "Hey, hey, if I don't look then how am I supposed to get you down..?!" "Just hang on, Ellie ... if .. if I can get myself free..!" "Zeit. Help." "Woof!" Arriving on the scene to find the S.S.S. already engaged with the Cryptid in question, referred to as Hydra Plant, the scene doesn't inspire confidence. Ellie, the silver haired woman in pink, is dangling twenty feet off the ground and tantalizingly swung around over a ginormous cactus' stubby, blunt tip. The whole area seems as if it had been invaded by hostile life, as none of the fauna seemed indiginous -- even the bright blue pleroma grass was being overtaken. And the giant 'cactus' itself seemed to be rising from a pool of otherworldly muck. It goes without saying that it's not a cactus at all, as revealed when it splits in half to reveal that it was in fact, two massive jaws full of big, sharp, and full teeth. Roughly spiked and textured plantoid serpents seem to not only be growing out of it, but the surroundings as well, giving Randy trouble fending for himself and for Zeit, the one-eyed wolf. Noel is collapsed behind a nearby rock, covered in bites and oozing with some kind of nasty slime, the numerous bite wounds covering her giving a good idea of just how bad of a time she'd had it. She most likely had been moved there by her allies for her own safety. Tio and Lloyd are both being restrained by slimmer, rope-like vines similar to the one dangling Ellie above Hydra Plant's largest maw, Lloyd constantly juggling between smacking away more of the larger attackers and trying to free himself, while Tio utilizes freezing ice Arts to keep them at bay, clearly taxed and running on fumes. "Good grief. Looks like we showed up at just the right time, huh?"
Redshift Operators	Once again, White Dwarf gets involved. The extent of the rest of the Redshift Operators' involvement is some help from a quiet fellow in an astronaut suit, who kindly drove the white-haired woman as far as the roads would take them. She hikes the rest, engaging the local wildlife with eager vigor; efforts to tame them and make an animal companion are fruitless, but she does try to save some of the fresh meat, for the sake of what she claims is the cursed hunger of a beloved demon kept at home. "Hmhmhmhm!" A true chuuni chuckle sounds out as she rounds the corner. She already knew what was coming before she saw it properly, of course. "Were you not warned? Told to stand out of the way of our efforts? Truly unwise, lesser warriors. Come see true power." She strikes her dramatic pose, pressing her cybernetic arm across her face, leaving the index finger gently covering the third eye of her tactical goggles. She is doing her best to look like someone who didn't get riot-hosed last time, and, honestly, doing a damn good job. Striding on, she draws her katana dramatically, leaving the sheath in her off-hand. Thank god she's finally got an antagonistic audience, doing this drama for allies and monsters was just frustrating. Her high-speed dash splits into a dozen paths. She's looking for a sequence of dramatic slices to carve through the battlefield against this massive plant, searching for what lower roots provoke the most visible damage and pain. Her high-speed bursts of dashing come with slick pass-by samurai-style slashes. She also does her best to specifically stop by Tio, intent on slicing her rope-like vines dramatically, and then delivering a firm kick to the midsection to send her away from the monster plant, either to give the woman with the katana a little extra room to attack the plant-beast, or to personally "rescue" her previous attacker. Or attack? It's great drama moment, done by someone who cultivates an identity based on the horrid dark ninjas and skull-faced demon-bearers of her chosen media. How much it antagonizes the security force is another matter entirely.
Zephyrman	IN THE FOREST: "You know," John admits as they walk through the dungeon, "The big problem with being a transforming hero is that if you transform all the time, it stops being cool, you know?" He ducks under one of the monsters and tosses it over his shoulder to Rita. He's not a great fighter, but he's servicable. Every so often he delivers a reasonable punch but it's nothing on the level of anybody else - at best it's a brief disruption so somebody else can take advantage of it. "Like, if I do it right now, to fight trash before the boss, doesn't redoing the sequence at the boss just get boring?" Another duck, but not quite fast enough. He gets a good, solid scratch across his face as he straightens. "I mean, I'd have to untransform, and then retransform, and redo the whole speech, and...." He swings down to let another monster roll over him and pushes it at C from behind. "And that just kinda loses something! You know what I mean?" They come around the corner. John waves at the scene and puts his hand on C's shoulder as he pulls out the Gale Whistler. "See what I mean? This is a way better place to transform, right?" RIGHT NOW A distant tune, the music of a flute from far away. The whirling of a tornado. A gust of wind roaring through. A flash of light. A flash of white. Pavement, torn apart, a wave of shredded asphalt scattering across the dirt on either side. The tendril hits the ground with an ugly thump. The asphalt dust clears. There's a great gouge in the road, cut straight through, as if it was nothing but water and a boat had cleaved straight through it. Some of the street lamps are bent at an angle that'll surely need repair. Several simple, low-level monsters have been killed incidentally in the process, corpses scattered about, waiting to be looted. Lights flicker, but do not die. At the end of the gouge is a fluttering silvery scarf, a silver powersuit glowing with red lines, a red beam saber clutched in one hand, and Ellie tucked against his chest. Zephyrman. The transforming hero sets the young woman down and nods at her. He gives her a thumbs-up. He's probably grinning behind the mask. Then he turns and starts walking through the giant cleft of road in front of him. "The wind called my name, and so I arrive! That voice upon the breeze brings salvation!" Zephyrman flicks the Gale Whistler to the side. "The Hero of the Wind is here!"
Rita Ma	On the walk over, Rita is cheerful and conversational- she greets everyone she recognizes with an earnest smile and an overenthusiastic wave, and introduces herself with an adorable bow to anyone she doesn't. She takes a back-seat position in dealing with the trash random encounters, notably hiding behind Hibiki and Zephyrman. But when the party gets near that slope, she abruptly stops walking, straightens up ramrod-stiff, and opens her eyes wide. That smell... it's unbearably delicious. I feel like there's a freezing hole where my stomach ought to be. No, but I recognize it from a week ago- isn't that...? She sprints ahead faster than a professional athlete, kicking up tufts of marshy grass. "Something's wrong!" she shouts back over her shoulder. That's human blood. And it reminded me of... one of those policemen. Noel is lying, wounded, behind a rock. Rita emerges from the woods next to her, staring down the injured woman with a vacuous, almost soullessly empty look. It isn't an expression humans should be capable of. Rita swallows her drool. This is worse than it was before. It's a stabbing, gnawing pain; achingly empty. I want to hook my fingers inside her ribs and shovel her guts down my throat. Is it because I didn't get a chance to eat breakfast? Or am I just unraveling this fast...? After an unsettlingly long pause, she pulls herself back to the present. "This looks bad," she says, forcing herself to frown sympathetically. "Is it okay if I help you, miss?" She kneels down to assess the injuries, then reaches into her satchel and pulls out some sterile rags. Tie one tight to tourniquet a bleeding limb; stuff another into a pierce wound to stanch the flow there; wipe the strange goop off of her with a third. She's our enemy, but she's not a bad person. If I ate her, I couldn't live with myself. But there's so much blood- maybe she wouldn't miss a finger...? No, stop it, Rita! Don't think like that. Don't. Once she's adequately stabilized, Rita stands back up. "Now, stay there, okay? Everything will be alright." But once her back is turned on her patient, she can't help licking the residual blood off of her fingers. A mistake. She doubles over after only a few steps towards the monster. Her insides are a kaleidoscope of starvation and pain, painting vivid new patterns of shifting agony from those two ingredients. She barely maintains enough composure to actually contribute to the fight. Her own whickering, invisible tentacles unravel from around her arm to whip out to sever the thinner vines holding Lloyd and yank him to safety, throwing him roughly behind her. She tries to wrap them back around her arm afterwards, but doesn't quite have the concentration to do it right; the rewrapped disguise exposes pieces of the true flesh of her arm underneath, pale skin shot through with ominous blue veins. "Give them back," she mutters quietly, grimacing as she tries to stare the monster down, but unable to straighten all the way up. "They're not yours."
Hibiki Tachibana	Man. In a way, these worlds with monsters everywhere if you just go off the road are rougher than her own. "You think so?" She raises an eyebrow at John while casually elbowing an oversized beetle out of the way. "But what if you just stayed transformed when you got there? ...But I guess then the speech has less impact." Hibiki has had quite the week, but not enough to stop her from coming along to help again with C's Cryptid hunting. She's a little wary of the whole thing after certain events, but the way she sees it, the best way to get to the bottom of what everything is about is to keep coming along and lending a hand. It's the easiest way to learn more about C and what he's trying to do, and they'll also probably run into the SSS again. Oh. That's the SSS right there. "I'll say...!" She replies back towards C while taking quick stock of the situation. It's totally different than Elon Ark; instead of just one massive creature, this thing is more like a /lot/ of them with the way its overgrowth is spreading around the environment and serpents are springing up everywhere. This is an even more obvious example of the problems these things can cause to the ecosystem. Fortunately, she's already took the chance to transform on the way here unlike Zephyrman, and the same people who tried to arrest them last time need help. Now. There's not any time wasted in dashing forward at full speed, her Symphogear's skirt thrusters adding on some extra acceleration before they throw her up into a high jump. And she comes down in a descending axe kick aimed to come down on one of the spiked snakeheads harassing Randy and Zeit with full intention to crush it beneath her heel, where she can flip off and land nearby them. There will be no hand throwing with them this time of course, and she's going to be doing her best to help keep the aggressive plantlife off of them while the rest of the group assists the others. "Hey, are you guys alright!? Sorry we didn't get here sooner...!" She says, when they weren't expecting the SSS to be here and they probably weren't expecting them either.
Cloud Strife	As if on cue, the sounds of a motorized engine can be made out approaching the group, now loud enough to be unmistakable despite the sounds of the ensuing battle echoing from within the marsh. The origin of such a thing is both as obvious as it is confusing, given they are rather distanced from the road proper at this point. Then, a blinding light comes in to view between the various stalks of plant life along with a trail that seems to be entirely comprised of dark, organic, and moist terrain being kicked up by some force. The light was from none other than a headlight, the beam of which was providing a phenomenon that obscured the rider for the briefest of moments. It's not really a question of who that was. That much would be obvious from context clues alone. The what can now be identified as an orbal motorcycle lurches as the blond-haired merc slams a foot into the ground mid-transit and launches himself and the vehicle into the sky- aiming to shoot above the battlefield all at once as he reaches an arm back to grasp the hilt of his signature weapon and slices it through the air in a forceful draw. One would this such an action would unbalance him in the air, but as the vehicle begins to lurch to one side he raises his legs and kicks off of the automobile with just enough force to veer it to a relatively safe spot of vegetation to minimize how much impact it was going to take before raising his Buster Sword on high as he, as far as the Hydra Plant was concerned, momentarily eclipsed sun. The EX-Soldier tightens his grip further and brandishes the unusually sized weapon with both hands, twisting them slightly almost to confirm to himself that he was ready to handle the shock of delivering the blow. As he descends, the shadow cast upon his face by having his back to the luminescent sunlight is dispelled as the stones socketed into his blade begin to shimmer and release a light, and his sword is wreathed in a firey plasma with the light flickering off of his azure eyes before he attempts to bring it down on and through any defenses this creature might muster in the interim without so much as a word to the others in the immediate area.
C	C, for his part, kept his cool easily enough despite being pestered so severely by John on the way there. It was much harder than it looked, you can rest assured. Rita charging ahead of the rest makes her the actual first one on the field while John is busy transforming with his Gale Whistler; Randy glances to the side, "Hn!" and smashes the head of one of the thinner Hydra's heads, the plant wailing as an electric jolt rattles its jaws, preventing it from taking a sideswipe bite at the deceptively young looking woman as she darts behind him to get at where they'd tucked Noel away. "Hey, you're..!" Noel blearily looks up at Rita and weakly recoils. T-that look. I'm just seeing stuff now, right? Isn't this that little girl from before? ... so why .. does it look like she wants to sink her teeth into me too? I feel like I'm gonna' hurl. "Ungh.." But, rather than chewing on her like a piece of candy, Rita holds back her baser instincts and manages to wipe the worst of the slime off of Noel's body, and provide basic treatment to ensure she wouldn't bleed out. She's able to tell that the substance Noel had been slathered in seemed to be some kind of powerful neurotoxin, mixed with stomach acid. As one of the Hydra Heads harassing Randy and Zeit come in for another bite, Hibiki makes her interjection and smashes down on one of them viciously, causing it to squeal painfully as green and orange fluids dribble from the busted lump in its head, wriggling and wiggling from side to side in pain. This gives Zeit the opportunity to leap and bite at the 'throat' of the second one, allowing Randy to swipe at the side of its head and cleave half of it off. The remaining body wriggles and wiggles, reeling back. "Whew ... nice save, kiddo." Randy says, the wolf beside him giving an less-than appealed growl in response, but he didn't seem like he was going to bite her. And then the Hydra Head that Randy had just destroyed, its remaining body splits with a nasty slurp, and reforms into two. The same happens to the one that Hibiki had attacked, but not defeated. "C'mon, man. Not this shit /again/!" Ellie, rescued by Zephyrman, huffs as she filches herself down in an attempt to grab at her weapon, before realizing that it had likely fallen off somewhere when she had been dangled over the creature's biggest mouth, "Ack. You can't be serious, now we're getting saved by terrorists? Although they aren't all bad, it's still leaving a bad taste in my mouth -- Randy?! Don't tell me you let it split again! Oh..." Tio, after having been rescued, is given no chance to respond before she gets kicked in her small, armored plate and sent flying. "It hurts." She lands in a soft bush, so it's all fine.
C	White Dwarf's parallel-timeline-cognition as she hips and hops to search out the best spots to slash at are fruitful, yet meet the ultimate same fate as Randy's attempt to curb the Hydra's heads; the more she chops at any of the growths or their peripheries, the more fiercely they grow. It is easy, at this point, to realize that it was not being incompetent that got the SSS into this kind of predicament. Walking into this kind of fight without knowing the enemy had this ability, it wouldn't take long at all for it to spiral out of control and become wholly unmanageable. Lloyd looks appreciatively at Rita, "You--" but before he can finish, he also is chucked away. He finds his cushion comfortably in Ellie's chest, "LLOYD-" "H-hold on." "Ugh," she bites her tongue and her indignity as she pushes him off of her, and helps him collect his tonfa from the ground, roughly shoving them into his hands. "/Please/ help me come up with a plan, this is NOT working." Bush Tio pops her head out, "Hydra Plant is some kind of entity which grows explosively in response to trauma. It should not be possible for it to have the energy to reproduce at this level; however, because it is rooted over top of a Septium Vein, where pleroma grass grows.." Ellie has a look of understanding, "It's feeding off of it to fuel itself. But it's impossible for something to be done about that..." But, he thinks to himself, those tentacles from that girl were un-nerving. Still, there was no time to bring it up now. Cloud's entrance draws everyone's eyes and attention as he launches a blistering slash of light into the biggest body, carving out a sizzling, gaping and putrid wound. The screech of the Hydra Plant is loud and hideous. "Ah, man, it's gonna' be a pain in the ass to get that back," C moans, as Cloud's orbal bike sinks into the soft soil, as if trapped by quicksand. The multitudous heads shoot around in a frenzy, each pursuing independant action with independant instinct, and begin to rapidly attack the Elites with their mouths, some attempting to spew the same substance that had paralyzed noel, and some going straight for the kill with the intent to bite them in two.
Zephyrman	Cloud's arrival is impressive. He soars through the sky in exactly the way you'd expect someone making a Dramatic Entrance would. John would absolutely be cheering were it not for one, specific, little, problem. Rita. She tells them not to look. She begs them not to look. She's scared, and nervous, and worried, and there's something she desperately wants to hide. And John, after yesterday... ... OK. Zephyrman flickers in front of Rita with the sound of the wind. She can see his scarf fluttering in front of her. She can see the Gale Whistler in his right hand. And she can see his back to her. She begged him not to look. She begged them not to look at her. So he won't. Rita can see the thumbs-up. She can imagine the grin on his face - the big, heroic, 'Don't worry. I won't.' grin. 'It'll all be okay,' that thumbs-up says. 'Just believe in me, and I'll believe in you, too.' So when the mouths start smashing in, and he starts bringing up his beam saber to protect himself, he's not protecting her - he's just got his back to her, to make absolutely sure he can't see. When one of them comes in to bite him, he grabs it in one hand, and it bites down on his arm, and sparks fly out, like all good toku damage. But he's clinging to the thing with all his might, and he brings the Gale Whistler down on its head like he's clubbing it until it opens. Zephyrman can't use speed in front of Rita - he'd be exposing her to the ridiculous winds of the Zephyrman costume's thrusters - and he can't just swing the Gale Whistler around without risking cutting her. He can't see where she is, after all. Only that she's behind him. His fist whirls around into the monster's head. "TORNAAAAAAAAADO!" BUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" The red circuitry along his arm bursts to life. When it hits the plant head, there's more behind it than just that. Because out of absolutely fucking nowhere, the giant arm of HurriKaiser comes smashing in alongside his attack, punching the everloving shit out of everything in its way. And then, as soon as it's come, it vanishes, and Zephyrman's already taken up a fighting stance. "I won't look," he says to Rita. "I promise." Yeah, he's just tied one hand behind his back, but this is way more important.
Hibiki Tachibana	"You're welcome...but this looks like a real mess." Zeit gets a slightly apologetic grimace from Hibiki, for obvious reasons, before her attention snaps back up to the pair of hydra heads they were facing down with. Correction, the four. "...You have got to be /kidding/ me," she complains in time with Randy. The heads rip in towards them, and she's forced immediately onto the defensive at threat of being ripped open. The muddy ground makes for seriously bad footing, and moving would take too long with the way her heavy boots are sinking into it--so she holds her ground against the snapping jaws, beating it back each time it comes in with a resounding impact from her fists. Despite already being in enough danger herself, she's still trying to cover for Randy and Zeit too. ...Rita is all the way over there. Hibiki can't see her from where she is now, but she wants to be over there too. Even if she doesn't want them to look at her, she wants to take hold of her hand and tell her, face to face, that they're here for her no matter what the problem is. Whatever is wrestling with her from inside...but Zephyrman is being the hero she needs to see right now. And that's more than good enough to know she's in good hands. And right now, her mental lapse nearly gets her arm bitten off before she narrowly catches the serpent's jaw open, gritting her teeth as teeth scrape along skin before pushing back away. "How big are these Septium Veins!?" Hibiki calls back over her shoulder towards Tio In The Bush. In her mind, it's either doing something about that...or maybe, after what Cloud did, hitting the biggest of their bodies might just work better. But for now, she waits for another of the regenerating heads to come back in. And when it does, she throws her fist forward towards it, full force, to smash into its snout before it gets the chance to open its maw. "Haaaaah!" Her armor's pilebunker-esque piston pulls back halfway and slams in on impact, to send a violent shockwave down the entire length of the thing - to rip through its body as it goes and blow it apart from the inside, even the parts of it that are underground, and reduce it to a bunch of miniscule bits of plant. If it can regenerate from something like that, they're really going to have a problem.
Cloud Strife	The state of the bike was something that Cloud Strife did not have time to commit to memory as he was now on the defensive. He was in a bad predicament, as he wanted to land and glance over his shoulder to confirm the status of the others especially given the mixed signals he's hearing from their predicament in some masked worry. Unfortunately, he would not be allowed to strike such a silhouette as the horrid plant began to exhume a fatal substance that he can only presume to be some kind of poison. Last he recalls, he did not pack any kind of items to deal with that particular status effect. He raises his blade instinctively to block the bulk of the liquid but such a thing only needs to make contact, and as he rolls onto the ground the Merc tenses as he feels the neurotoxin get to work immediately. He inhales sharply, then exhales. This would likely be putting him on some kind of time limit he imagines, and the proliferation of the being from being split in two was another thing he'd likely have to worry about. He deadens his face again and flourishes his Buster Sword until it rests in front of him as he prepares to face off against the creature once again. At least, until he hears someone declaring their attack name with abandon. If nothing else declaring your attack before you perform it gives your allies a good chance to know what's coming, and he's forced to momentarily backstep away from the creature and analyze exactly what this 'Zephyrman' was performing. Well...Even if he thought it looked cool that wouldn't be an opinion that would be shared. Regardless, he uses that momentary opportunity and blatant display to embolden his own approach. He flips the edge of his blade down and causes it to slam into the ground as she sprints forward to close the gap he had created himself and carves a scar through the earth, pushing through the embers created from his prior assault with layers and layers of mud being scattered with each step. Then, moments before he'd have gotten so close he'd be shoulder checking the Hydra Plant there's a faint shockwave in the terrain immediately surrounding himself as he brings his own momentum to a complete halt and aims to rend his sword down from root to sky. ...Yeah. It can recover itself. It can also place a timer on those it fights. The answer should be some kind of tactical maneuver to exploit its weaknesses in order to bring the fight to a close. However. If he simply cleaves enough in twain to overpower the creature's proliferation that would be a solution in itself. The bigger plans can be left to his employer or anyone who seems fit for the task.
Redshift Operators	A dozen shades of possible futures are badly burned, corroded out of possibility as White Dwarf dodges the bulk of the vicious spew, picking one of the thirteen different predicted directions. It's the best she's got to come away from it with some sizzling on her legs, barely diving out of ther way and rolling. Rita's chatter on the radios sounds like it's building up to something. It sounds like she's cursed with a dark shadow-self or something like that! She'll hit her Demon Spark and do something so cool. The fantastical swordswoman resolves to trust in someone who truly is cursed with, well, whatever it is that Rita is cursed with. This, as something Rita has intensely hidden and which is subject to her own yet-unknown illusory abilities, so it's nothing that even the precognitive woman can predict. Even still, she can roughly see the shape of whatever approach Rita will take. And she projects her own shotgun-blast of future selves, finding whatever approach that is, whatever method Rita will use to terminate its regeneration, and intersect the two. Blade out, her dance of slashes and flora beheadings will carve the most elegant path through the defenses this thing has that she can make. "Whatever your dark curse is, <Lita>, lay it bare as much as you need! I'll carve your path through the power of my own!" She calls out, eager, supportive, and whirling with bladed violence.
Rita Ma	<J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, breathing shallowly: "This was a bad idea." <J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana says, "Rita? Are you okay?" <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says quietly, "There's something wrong with me." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "I shouldn't... have tried to do this." <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators \| White Dwarf says, "Hm? You have a sensitivity to this battle? A sinister pollen on the air, or some other risk?" <J-IC-Scene> Zephyrman says, "Rita, are you okay?" <J-IC-Scene> Zephyrman says, "No, you aren't OK. Rita, do you need help?" <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "No, it's..." An unidentifiable, organic sound. "... Don't look at me. Please don't look at me." <J-IC-Scene> Zephyrman says, "Rita!" <X-Watch-Chatter> [4] Zephyrman, quietly, but pleading, says, "Rita. If you need help...please ask us. You don't have to carry things alone. OK? Please." <J-IC-Scene> C ambiguously, "Oh...? Huh. So I wasn't seeing things after all." <X-Watch-Chatter> [4] Rita Ma swallows hard. "O- okay.... Mr. John." <J-IC-Scene> C irresponsibly, "Well, even if you retreat, this is also why I brought an extra hand. Alright SOLDIER, have at 'em." <X-Watch-Chatter> [4] Zephyrman, sternly, "John." <X-Watch-Chatter> [3] Hibiki Tachibana says, "...We're all right here for you. Don't forget that." Rita is physically, bodily coming undone. The appearance of an innocent, ordinary girl in ordinary clothes is peeling away in strips. Her hair, her clothes, her skin, they all come off her bit by bit like the wrappings of a mummy. It's all a mimic octopus's elaborate disguise. The true form, revealed in glimpses and slices underneath, is a girl scoured by some progressive mutation. Her still-human skin is shot through with spiderwebbing cracks of blue, as if the pale skin-tone were scales parting to reveal the azure beneath. Around the torso, the cracks merge together until they become the dominant coloration, painting her body with cerulean fins and jellyfish-like lappets in an almost dress-like pattern. Even her hair is shot through with tendrils, no longer entirely a human's. And the ribbons of her disguise, now revealed as tentacles sprouting from her upper back- from forearm-sized to thicker than her legs, probably massing more than Rita herself. They arch and sway with a foreign, active intelligence. But Zephyrman can't see any of that. Rita steps up and wraps her arms around his waist from behind. "Thank you so much," she says. Her voice is hoarse with emotion, but it's still Rita's voice unmistakably.
Rita Ma	This hunger, it's killing me. I'd give anything to be eating raw flesh right now. I shouldn't have tasted that woman's blood. I shouldn't have come here. I shouldn't have pretended to be a hero in the first place. I know I'm a monster. I'm not heroic. What's in my heart shouldn't inspire anybody. But at least... I can be a monster that protects humans. That's something I can do. Invisible whickering tendrils surround them both, a blender of constant audibly-sharp motion aiming to protect her and Zephyrman by slicing through or wrenching aside any incoming attacks from the plant. Her two largest smoky-dark tentacles, though, snake forward over John's shoulders and stab into the Hydra-plant's main body, gouging as deep as they can. Glowing veins spread out under the plant's surface from the points of impact. In swallowing 'pulses', she tries to drag out its life force bit by bit, visible as bubbles of blue essence flowing back towards her through the tentacles. "I'm starving all the time. It's like I'm being stabbed in the gut. But I don't want to hurt anybody," she says- softly, solemnly. "And this thing won't stop regrowing. So I'll devour it until there's not enough left to come back. And we'll solve two problems at once, okay?"
C	After applying sufficient trauma to its head until it opens, snarling at him, Zephyrman is able to free himself from the Hydra Head that had attempted to use him as a chewtoy; though, his arm and upper body is now coated in viscuous slobber. It's rather nasty. The combined punching power of Zephyrman and his signature giant robot, the HurriKaiser, several Hydra Heads are smashed apart and left to flail limply; except .. Just like before with Hibiki and Randy, they all divide and multiply back to full strength! Rather than a handful to accost himself and Rita, there are now nearly a dozen of them savaging them like a pack of giant hounds. Tio calls to Hibiki from her bush, " ... too big to do something about. And, even if you could disrupting the Septium Veins here like that could negatively impact all of Crossbell .. like the parts of the world where the veins have dried up." C appends, "Those places have turned into inhospitable deserts unsuit for anything to live in, so she's got a point. That should also be an incentive to get this guy to stop feeding on it, right?" Hibiki charges in to obliterate the main body with her greatest attack so far, and blows apart nearly a fourth of the largest Head's form, eliciting a screech and a geyser of various, blood-like bodily fluids to rain down on her. They smelled utterly putrid. ...But after several seconds, nearly a dozen other heads grew in place of the wound, shooting out to tunnel into the ground wetly slopping through the dark purple substance that had begun suffusing into the dirt of the area before raising back up to surround Hibiki and attempt to tear her apart. Randy, for his part, throws his caution to the wind given she'd attempted to help them at cost to her own health, "Zeit! Protect Noel, I'm goin' in..!" Zeit barks. Clenching his Orbal Halberd, Randy dashes in, a fierce aura beginning to emenate from him before it takes the form of a lizard, his swift stab transforming into a gushing stream of flame that annihilates several of the heads and gives Hibiki enough breathing room to fight back -- even at the cost of creating more Hydra Heads in the process. "Heh .. sorry, things're gonna' be even tougher now that I went and did that." Cloud's gargantuan, comically oversized sword is wielded with grace and extreme prejudice as he, similarly to Hibiki, carves through a fair portion of the main body; approximately a fifth, though his area-of-trauma was far greater, having virtually split one of the jaws in two with his strike. Out of the wound pours yet even more Hydra Heads, which all pour down onto Cloud and force him to defend himself or become nothing more than sustenance for the massive monster he was fighting. The "main body" that had been attacked was quivering, and practically vomitting a variety of its fluids hither and thither with abandon, wailing the whole time. But that just meant that Cloud and Hibiki, even if they had caused numerous more Hydra Heads to appear, had also caused it an immense amount of pain.
C	"Okay ... they seem like they have a plan! I don't like the idea of working for terrorists, either, but if they can stop this thing, then the S.S.S. needs to pitch in. We can't let our differences stop us from helping the people of Crossbell." Lloyd rouses his comrades, who all nod in agreement. "Although .. uhm, I still don't know where my Orbal Pistol is ... so I can't do anything ..." Ellie mutters. So, this effectively meant that Lloyd would need to pick up the slack, as Tio herself was out of energy for her staff. " ... Alright, in that case, wish me luck..!" Lloyd takes in a deep breath. White Dwarf uses her signature ability to hone in on Rita's best chance, and tries to make it a reality. She carves through countless Hydra Heads, and for each one she cuts down, two more take its place. There had to be hundreds of the things in the area, by now. Lloyd charges next to her and pitches in, "TIIIIGER -- " "CHAAAAAARGE!!" His body becomes coated in a fierce blue energy as he blasts through them with the fierceness of a charging tiger, or perhaps more accurately, a bright blue bullet, giving White Dwarf a greater opening to fight with. This in turn, also gives Rita a superior opening. "Well, I've got a bad feeling about this," Randy admits to Hibiki before grinning with a sardonic, 'well what can you do about it?' look on his face and in his eyes. "But shoot, it's better than gettin' eaten .. these things have bitten me enough times already!" While Zephyrman may not be watching, C certainly is, though what precisely is running through his head is hidden behind his visor at this time. Rita Ma transforms into a hideous, horrifying monster just as predatorial as the Hydra Plant that has been attempting to devour all of them this entire time, and indeed, she does just that. The Cryptid has a gargantuan amount of life energy; that is to say, it has a technically infinite amount of it. But as long as it manifests in this world, rather than the one it came from, it only has as much here as it can draw from the Septium Vein it was growing on. And it can't feed on that, faster than she could feed on it. The Hydra Heads redirect themselves all from the other Elites as she digs into it, viscera flying as they attempt to rip her apart and devour her. She eats them. They eat her in return. This was a battle which would be decided by who could gobble the other up the fastest, and it was such a horrifying one that it had stopped the SSS dead in their tracks as they watched. Of course, by the time it was over, there was only one beast left standing, having sated its -- her -- fill, as she had drained it of its life force entirely, the Hydra Plant had shriveled into dust as it stopped resisting and blew away in the wind. C shakes his helmeted head and places the Demon Flute back in its carrying case. "Welp. That's a Loss, with a capital L for me, I guess." he sighs. The colorful bird perched on his shoulder smirks, before projecting his master's voice -- that of a certain opera singing witch, Oh~ but it isn't likely they could have beaten the Perpetual Terror Growth into submission without killing it off, you know. Can you really be that mad about it?"" "Tch ... I guess not. Still, I better make like a tree myself and leaf, before I have to go beat the hell out of those SSS chumps because they want to arrest me while they're dead on their feet." Turning, C seems to vanish almost instantly, and not in the same way that Vita had teleported him before. He was gone in a genuine blink.
Zephyrman	Rita hugs him from behind. John doesn't look over his shoulder. He just knows it's her. He knows it's her tentacles slashing around them both, around her, around his shoulders and his waist. He knows it's her tentacles crashing into the thing, spreading the glowing veins, pulsing, dragging out the bubbles of essence into her body. He doesn't look over his shoulder even as she tells him that she's being stabbed in the gut. That she doesn't want to hurt anybody. That she'll eat, and eat, and eat, until there's not enough left to come back. That she'll eat and solve two problems at once. He doesn't look over his shoulder. But he does reach behind, and, gently, feels for her face, then her hair. Then, awkwardly, he pats her on the head. That's it. That's all he does. As she defends him, he pats her on the head in one of the more awkward shoulder-twisting motions he's ever done. But it's important to him. And it's important to her. As she eats it, the heads realign. They point directly at her. Zephyrman digs his heels in. What heads he can stop, he stops. He'll buy Rita time. He'll buy her time and he won't look. His feet slam into the sand. HurriKaiser's massive arms come forth from the ground, hammering as many of them away as it can. He's just buying her time. He's not even intercepting most of them. Just buying time. When it's over - when she stands - John falls to his knees. He's expended a lot of energy. But the SSS is still there. So, with Rita still holding his waist, he whips out the Gale Whistler, and plays a tune, and HurriKaiser comes sliding down from on high in its jet mode. "Let's go. Before they decide they want to push the point."
Cloud Strife	The Merc raises his blade like a shield in preparation for the incoming swarm- that never arrives. Indeed, there were more pressing matters to attend to here that had to be addressed. That is the situation regarding a certain metamorphosis that Cloud could not bear witness to initially. Ignoring it was no longer an option, and in any typical situation, he would take this time to make an opportunistic strike to assist in finishing the monster off, as is typical during many conjoined efforts... ...But this was something completely different than what he was used to. People roughly working for the same goal turning into something hard to differentiate from the monster opposing them is not something he is familiar with. He was not fully confident that if he lapsed into his combat reflexes again he'd be able to avoid swinging instinctively on one of the many tentacles writhing that originally belonged to Rita. So he doesn't. He stares in deadpan awe as she enacts the rules of nature on the Hydra Plant. One that showed who was stronger between the two. After the sudden event and the calm after the storm, he casts his gaze over just in time to see C make his exit stage right. Then, realizing that he was sinking the longer he stood shellshocked into being a statue he decides to spin his own blade around and brush off the remaining plant phlegm off his clothes and arms. He wanted to ask the same things as the others of course, whether or not they were all fine. But in the end that wasn't his job. More important than that though is that the others that appeared to be closer to her got the answers for him without the need of exposing himself to a social situation, so he'll simply end the spin with the blade hefted on his back and take a momentary scramble of the afterbattle as an opportunity to go and pull the bike out of the bog and get mud from some of the more mechanically fragile parts. ...Though it would still take more than a few revs of the engine to get this going and each one felt like it rung slightly louder.
Rita Ma	Rita tries to relinquish her hold on Zephyrman, to maneuver more freely and try to dodge the Cryptid's death throes without endangering him- but freezes once she realizes what he's doing. John... no, don't. I didn't ask you to do this, so why are you doing it? I don't want anyone else to risk their lives for me. But she doesn't let go, either. Her two feeding tentacles are lodged firmly in the Cryptid's body, but the remaining array of finer tendrils are free to defend her, and they do. They form illusory bodies to draw the Hydra's ire; they slice deep into whatever heads lunge for them, trying to push them back or wound them enough to slow their assault; they create deceptive bands of optical camo, shifting their colors to match the background and break up Rita and John's mingled silhouette. When she's inevitably bitten anyway, Rita proves tough to chew. But not impossible. As the dust settles, she trickles blood from shallow bite-marks all over her body. Her lungs heave like a bellows from exertion; her tentacles droop, finished with their messy feeding. The blue spiderwebbing cracks on her body, though, glow with a new vigor. Ellie offers to heal her. Rita acquiesces, peeling herself away from John with a pat on his shoulder. "I'll be right after you, okay? I just... need to get patched up. Are you sure you're okay, too?" When she rejoins everyone else on the HurriKaiser, she's back to her appearance as an ordinary girl, albeit a markedly tired and slightly shell-shocked one. She's smiling a little, anyway. She was prepared for things to go worse.
C	<J-IC-Scene> C \| Ellie says, "Of course. Here, I'm going to point this at you, but the bullet isn't going to hurt, I promise -- it'll activate healing magic." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma audibly flinches. "O-okay?" After wiping most of the purple slime and viscera off of her Orbal Pistol with a grimace, Ellie approaches Rita gently and does her best to push aside her trepidation -- but the caution in her step belies her uneasiness. Even still, she calmly and carefully aims at Rita and pulls the trigger, activating the Water Quartz inside, "Teara!" A medium sized blue pellet smashes into Rita and explodes into a drizzling rain of firefly-like particles that suffuse into her skin, her blood, her bones, and her organs, mending the most serious of her injuries. As a medium-rank Healing Art, it healed approximately half of someone's wounds, with priority given based on the severity of the trauma or danger to the victim's life. Further, it acted to soothe pain, even for injuries it couldn't heal wholly. After everyone else got their healing if they also had desired it, and got ready to leave, the SSS all bunch up to see them off. Lloyd, Randy, Tio, Ellie, and Zeit all smile and give waves -- except for Zeit, who simply scoffs for not having the ability to do so -- and wish them well. Cloud is the singular exception, as he is attempting to rev his bike up. Given his direct connection to C, as announced by the man himself, they couldn't exactly let him go. Especially now that it was all of them versus him. "We're going to need you to come with us." Lloyd says, firmly. Randy, with Noel carried half-bridal with one arm, winks and taps his Orbal Halberd against his shoulder. Cloud has Tio's staff pointed threateningly at his nose, "Do not resist."
Hibiki Tachibana	So doing anything about the Vein is definitely off the table. But continuing to just hammer away at this thing isn't getting them far--before she knows it, heads are swarming in from every single direction. Even covered in the thing's blood, she braces herself... And gets pulled out of proverbial fire by Randy's literal fire. "...! Thank you!" It's a very genuine one, complete with her own dry, humorless chuckle as twice the heads rise back up to come down on them. Fortunately, they're not going to have to go down back-to-back. Because Hibiki's eyes go wide when she hears Rita's declaration. Wait, what is she--? Hibiki couldn't see, fully, even if she wanted to. Zephyrman's form is standing there tall, buying time for the girl. Randy's sardonic comment is met with open-mouthed surprise, and then the Symphogear user nearly breaking away to chase after the heads as the area surrounding those two becomes a whirling mess of slashing tendrils and biting hydra heads stricken through with cyan veins. It's really too chaotic to make much sense of. But she can see enough, and when all is said and done...Zephyrman and Rita are still there, and the Hydra Plant is blowing away in the wind. Enough relief washes over her that she nearly loses strength in her legs on the spot. The only reason she's not already sprinting over there is because she's taking a moment to give Randy a nod of appreciation. "...We'll see you next time! Thanks for everything!" And then she's off, to join the others on the HurriKaiser before it takes off. Rita is very promptly, despite Ellie's healing arts already being used on her, immediately given a brief, wordless hug and then very insistently poured over for any remaining injuries. In this moment, Hibiki is one step past an overbearing, overprotective sibling to the point it might be a little uncomfortable. And she doesn't exactly notice C's sudden disappearance or what's going on with Cloud either because of it. Whoops.
Cloud Strife	There's one more rev of the engine and a pathetic failure of the pistons to start the orbal engine only followed by a sigh as the EX-Soldier turns his gaze towards Tio as she approaches him. There's a moment where he glances back away from her to refer to the state of the vehicle then towards the current position of the HurriKaiser. If he hadn't walked away from the group it would be a more viable jump up and catch the hem of their way out to make it his own, but given the lack of terrain, he can't do anything to reach it now. So he moves to a stand and while he is not a necessarily tall man the squareness of his shoulders makes him come off as much larger than he really is to the girl, especially given their current states. With his azure eyes glowing as it refracts the sunlight he casts his eyes forward not just with the idea of sizing them up, but regarding them as an entity to be considered a threat. "...I'm merely a hired mercenary. I'm not on contract to fight you right now, but if you insist I will defend myself." There is no intention to intimidate them, nor is there any venom to his words. What he is stating is a fact and the way his hand has already grasped the hilt of his blade is a heavy indication that he has no intent to go silently, but simultaneously will not be the first one to lash out.
C	Narrowing her eyes, Ellie frowns. Tio frowns just as severely. The battle that soon rings out in the forest is a legendary one, it goes without saying. "I .. I hit him! So why is he still upright?! He's supposed to be asleep!" "Zeit. Bite him." "Woof." "Stop right there..!" "Man. I guess, just cast it again?" "HUOOOH DAAAAAH!" ... it was well past night-time when it was all said and done.