Scene #7705: Cryptid Hunting File 04 - MERCILESS BLACK TORRENT GILDERGANON

Owner	Pose
C	On the ball more so than usual, due in part to Crossbell's diet taking the matter of the Cryptids more seriously after the incident at Mishelam, the Special Support Section is dispatched on a cold and dew-laden morning to the far flung outskirts of Armorica village. The tell-tale, luminescent blue flowers that foretold the appearance of a Cryptid had been spotted growing along the paths to the old fortress off the beaten path to Armorica, and this is where the attack force consisting of Lloyd, Randy, Tio, Ellie, Zeit and Noel had been dispatched to. They'd even had special permission to use one of Crossbell's advanced armored carriers to assist them in destroying the creature before it could leave the bounds of the Ancient Battlefield. The battle was so fierce that the villagers of the peaceful honey-making town could hear the arduous thunderclaps and feel the vibrations of battle, as if a hurricane were blowing by, even as far away as they were. By mid-day, when the S.S.S. had dragged themselves back from the Ancient Battlefield, it had been without their armored vehicle. Every single of them looked ready to keel over, with Tio draped over Zeit's back and Lloyd being assisted by Ellie. It went without saying that they had been defeated soundly; shocking and terrible news for Armorica village, the residents of which realized they were still under threat of a violent death at the hands of a vicious monster. Which brings events more or less, to the present -- as the Special Support Section reaches out to the Elites of the multiverse to assist them in putting a stop to The Merciless Black Torrent, now officially identified under the name of Gilderganon. The Elites are all given relevant tactical information beforehand, as they and the S.S.S. venture out of Armorica. Their target is a massive creature with an appearance crossed somewhere between a hound and a lion of some kind, with thick and leathery skin and a bright red mane of fur. It possesses many boney spokes, perhaps dorsals, and thick, sharp claws to pair with two massive tusks which jut out of its jaws. Further elaboration is provided that it has a preternatural control over electricity and seems to be capable of creating vast amounts of it from its own body. "To go over our battle plan one more time, we'll be splitting into two groups. The first group -- you guys, will be the vanguard. This is necessary in the event that Gilderganon breaks through." It went without saying that it would be an unmitigated disaster of the creature managed to reach the village, Lloyd shudders. "The second group comprising of the S.S.S. will be a bit further behind and serve as a second line of defense. Fighters who get worn out can swap with us and rotate, which should give everyone just enough staying power to wear it down and go for a killing blow." Randy sighs as Lloyd finishes his recant. The police force all look to have been patched up, but they're still very clearly exhausted from their prior bout and Lloyd, in particular, still seems to be recovering from his brush with death at Mishelam. " ... it's coming!" Tio suddenly interjects, having been monitoring the area with her Aeon System. The ground rumbles, and the Elites aren't given much time to split themselves up and enter formation accordingly before the towering beast bounds clearly over one of Armorica's rolling hills, causing quakes and tremors as it lands only a scant few meters away. Tio raises her Orbal Staff and closes her eyes, "Casting." "La Crest." The Elites are all fortified with the power of Earth, just in time to receive a blistering roar from Gilderganon; the jaguar-like screech is accompanied by a sonic boom and a massive plume of electricity that rattles around its whole body, supercharging it.
Redshift Operators	"Why is it we have no such name?" "What?" "Why can we not have a name as powerful as 'The Merciless Black Torrent'?" "First, that sounds like somethin' off a cartoon. Second, we got mercy." "It's very important to only use violence to reduce violence!" "I think 'The Red Torrent of Mercy' would still be dramatic." "That sounds kind of like a bad limewire file." "No taste, none at all." "Look, I cleared you for this fight, that's all I got! Go get 'em. We'll stay behind in reserve and swap in for ya if you need it, but I'm not gonna be seen helping cops." The Redshifts might swap in, one at a time, based on needs and timing, but the woman with the robot arm is the Redshift rep for the vanguard. And she's already taking off on a dash about five seconds before Tio speaks up, apparently having future-predicted Tio saying the alert. She draws her blade and LEAPS! A shotgun-spray of her future selves are shattered under the brutal acoustics, but she searches out a locale of least damage mid-air, and locks onto it. Lightning and sonic waves assault her, beating a few bruises and burns over her body, but with a swift motion, she gestures a mystic seal mid-air (which does nothing) and arcs her leap straight for the creature's head as it roars, trying to bring the blade point-first into an essential neck, mouth, or face structure and cut off more howling.
Featherman Neo	Featherman Neo prepares with the group. He accepts their two-line strategy. He shows concern for the others. And when it's time to strike... Featherman Neo grasps a locket from thin-air. "Alright! Let's get over this barrier!" He places the locket into his belt, and... SNAPSHOT It opens up, showing Lloyd telling them to GET OVER THE BARRIER. LLOYD BANNINGS - FEATHER TONFAS A pair of tonfas appear in Featherman's hands. They're exactly like Lloyd's, except for slots for more greebles. He throws a tonfa up, and suddenly summons another locket, which he places into the greeble slot before catching the other tonfa. CANDY - NITRO GAUNTLETS The tonfas start to change. Suddenly, two explosive dynamite-like objects appear on their ends, while two gauntlets appear over Featherman's hands, as Featherman charges the beast, holding the two tonfas, and moves to slam them into his nearest leg. The results are positively explosive, without injuring Featherman himself. Hopefully he can heavily injure that leg. "Feather Tonfas and Nitro Gauntlets...a match made in heaven!" And then, a shout to Hibiki, when she eventually shows up. "We've got this! Take it down!" Hopefully he can hype her up.
Rita Ma	Rita the perfectly ordinary girl is here, just as she'd promised. Her feelings on the SSS have wavered back and forth over time, with the recent Mishelam trip nudging the needle into 'positive' territory, but even if she were still warier of them, she'd be here. Monsters that hurt people have to be killed, after all. That's just the way things are. If it beat the SSS, it has to be strong, doesn't it? ... But then again, have they ever actually won a fight by themselves? They were getting beaten up by the Hydra Plant too... I should assume the worst, but it's hard to say. Tio shouts her warning, and Rita's broken out of her contemplative reverie with a sudden jolt. Her eyes go wide as she turns around, just in time to see Gilderganon land mere meters away. "It's coming to us for a fight...? But-!" Whatever protests she had are drowned out by its deafening roar and crackling electricity. A jolt of electricity arcs to Rita, striking her body- -but it's just a decoy, unraveling into nothingness- -and the electricity arcs along the invisible connecting tentacles anyway, giving her true body a nasty jolt. Rita decloaks and stumbles in surprise, then quietly curses herself. Right. My decoys probably aren't grounded, and they're still connected to me. Unless there's some kind of workaround, I can't rely on that for attacks like those. For now, she plays defense, lunging to the side hard enough that the ground cracks under her to get away from that electrical aura. I can't strike it with my tentacles safely- not like this. So what do I have? ... There's nothing for it but to dig into powers I've eaten. Spider silk isn't conductive, is it...? A dense white web spins itself in front of Rita's outstretched hands once she's gotten a bit of distance, woven elaborately by a half-dozen extruding tentacles like a cat's-cradle of yarn. The cloaked tentacles lunge forward to wrap Gilderganon up in the web, entangling its limbs for as long as possible in the sticky netting. As long as any of the web remains stuck to its body, it'll steadily leech the Cryptid's strength and vitality!
Candy	"Sure, sure, 'vanguard,' sure." Candy's tone is a flat, businesslike thing, here--very different than his normal affable, flirtatious demeanor. "You guys don't worry about a thing, ah?" Deadpan, "I mean it--" It's coming. f All outward appearances suggest that he's there, and ready, fortified with Earth just the same as anyone else. When the quakes, tremors and sonic boom set the earth and air to rumbling, he stumbles in place as one might expect. He even leans on someone nearby briefly, for support--but when that screech is put directly in his path, his entire body ripples, like a pond disturbed by a stone. Candy is Not There. The real Candy has snuck into one of the homes, behind the line set up by the SSS. The real Candy, in that home, is twirling a lock of hair around his finger, sat at a desk which wasn't previously part of the decor, operating a sparkplug radio which wasn't previously there. He's careful not to use his voice--but there are pops and squeals rhythmic enough to form a pattern, should someone on the other end be savvy enough. Candy has known C to be pretty savvy. Candy doesn't trust the SSS--not to get the job done, nor, in the worst case, with the spoils of a job well done. His mistrust has cost him the benefit of Tio's earth benediction. When he makes his way back, it's under the cover of whatever natural features he can use to lower his profile and keep himself clear of the jaguar-looking cryptid's cone of sight. Rifles and machine guns of various differing makes are planted behind trees, under bushes, just behind the peaks of hills. Candy strikes from ambush, seemingly from all of these points at once.
Hibiki Tachibana	The entire situation with C has felt...to put it lightly, a little tense for Hibiki since the events in Mishelam. Not only that, but a certain encounter with him while she was laid out as well. But it's been a while since then, complete with her getting back on her feet and the much happier trip to the island - she's more than together enough to start thinking about how she wants to deal with the entire thing, when the time comes. It'll definitely be a time that won't be over the radio or anything like that, but face to face. For now though, he's not here, and it's the Special Support Section that needs their assistance. "With any luck, we won't have to make you guys tag in for us. I still need to pay you guys back for the birthday wishes, you know." In the planning lead-up, Hibiki's usually serious expression is replaced by what she hopes is a reassuring smile to Lloyd and the others, along with a small pump of her right hand - which, unlike said vacation a brief time ago, is securely attached to her wrist again, sans command seals. But that's a story for another time. Especially as the Merciless Black Torrent itself makes its appearance, and the defensive power of La Crest is one of the only things that helps protect her from the booming roar that resounds across Armorica's hills. The other is her clutching at the pendant whipping around her neck as it bursts into golden light from between her fingers. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron...!" The barrier created from the transformation is not gotten over, but it does break away as Hibiki bounds forward in her Symphogear to close the small distance between them and the beast. "Right behind you, Featherman! Haaaah--!" White Dwarf goes for the head, and Featherman might just manage to unbalance its leg. Which means...! Hibiki goes to take advantage of that, igniting her gear's thrusters mid-movement to give her a burst of acceleration. Her charge takes her low, down towards the feline's furred chest. The electricity shrouding it doesn't stop her from pulling her fist back, piston in her armor slotting backwards as she does so. And throwing it forward in a shockwave-inducing punch, followed up with the slam of the mechanism sending a visible blast of raw force through its body, with the intention of blowing even something as large as it off its feet and tumbling away, back the way it came. The more distance they can put between here and the backline, the better.
C	White Dwarf's leaping swordsmanship yields a spurt of blood that tears a split down its mouth and begins carving into its neck; though she finds that its skin is abnormally tough, its nothing something of her caliber is incapable of dealing with. Her assault seems to agitate the monster enough to prompt it to immediately go on the offensive rather than continuing to build its power, a sure-fire indication of her success that comes with the price of it attempting to snap her up in its jaws and gnash her with electrified teeth. Featherman follows up on her blow with an adherence to good timing, while its busy trying to chew her to bits, and strikes an explosive blow to one of its legs that forces the Cryptid to stumble with a grit of pain, a large welt having been blown into its thick hide. The blood that comes out is scalding hot -- visibly charged with the same currents running throughout its whole body. As recompense for its wound, it raises one paw and makes a lightning-fast, and explosively powerful slash with its claws that attempt to mash Featherman into the ground and trap him under a torrent of electrical shocks. Rain begins drizzling from the sky. Rita's plan to wrap it up in spider silk is a double-edged one; on the positive side of things, the vitality draining net restricts its movement. The SSS had mentioned that one of the monster's more troubling aspects had been its sheer mobility when they fought it at the Ancient Battlefield -- and now that there's a chance to examine the beast further, it still bore clear wounds from that encounter, just as the SSS had. But, on the other hand, the frustrated creature's dorsal fins rankle and release jolts of lightning that electrify the webbing bogging it down before it reaches up and uses one of its claws to pry off a glob of it to restore some of its mobility -- visibly already going more lethargic from its aggression displayed even momets prior, and hurls it back at Rita. Hibiki cap-ends the cooridnated string of attacks with her charge, the shockwave blowing back from the point of impact throwing away the rainfall in a semi-circle as Gilderganon yowls in pain, digging all four of its limbs into the ground as it is forced to skid back nearly eight meters from an all out attack. Randy whistles, "Nice! Its for sure way less energetic now than it was before. While it'd have been nice if we could have beaten it by ourselves, I'm just glad we were able to get the help to turn the tides today, eh?" Lloyd frowns, but nods, and though he didn't say it he couldn't help but feel a wave of guilt at having held everyone back. Not only because I was injured but, it was also my tactical call that got the armored car destroyed. I not only underestimated it, but I also patronized Noel, Tio, and Ellie last time .., but I won't let my pride get people hurt again.
C	Candy's ambush catches Gilderganon flatfooted and, wobbling on its legs from having had its strength sapped by Rita's ventured and gained strategy, thick rivulets of blood run with the rain as even its thick body begins to relent under the hail of armaments. ELSEWHERE: A certain Mysterious Masked Rebel stands before a series of brightly lit screens, with a variety of orbal equipment hooked up to them. Well now. What have we here? "... ha ha." he chuckles. BACK WITH THE ELITES: "La Forte!" "Saint!" "Sylphid!" With the SSS providing support Arts from the back to the vanguard in the front, the battle seems to be progressing in the Elites' favor, Gilderganon seeming to have been pushed back. But with the distance Hibiki provided, it also could take advantage of it, and visibly it begins to gather more energy into itself as it raises its head to the pouring sky and howls. The electricity raging around its body draws the ire of natural lightning from the sky, which screeches down at it and strikes it upon its head. Yet, rather than damaging it, it seems to feed it further and provides it with a much needed kick to let it continue pushing through Rita's remaining webbing.
Featherman Neo	The electrical claws come down. They rake into Featherman Neo, even as he moves to deflect the worst of it with his explosive tonfas, and is knocked backwards by the electrical shocks. He's surging with pain, but keeps going on. And then, he notices the dorsal fins. "Hibiki! Everyone! FOCUS ON THOSE FINS!" Featherman taps his feet together, and jumps. His jump is boosted by his boots, allowing him to narrowly make it up towards those fins, but actually moving on the body will be painful. So mid-jump, he moves to point the Nitro Tonfas forward, and fire blasts of dynamite energy straight at the dorsal fins, trying to damage them as much as possible before he returns to the ground! "You can do this, everyone!"
Candy	Focus on the fins. Shit, Featherman, I gotta last long enough to aim for that to happen! The rain is beginning to sting, coming down as it is, matting his clothes to him and his hair to his head. Weapons left in vantage points at ground level sink into mud. "Them tides ain't turned yet," he calls over to Randy, breaking open the shotgun he'd made to slot in another two shells. "Keep up the heat, uniform!" I want it nice and beat when C gets here. Gilderganon's aftershocks throw him back-first into the trunk of a tree, moments before the tree leans threateningly from the quaking earth. Candy hisses, blood on his fingers when he checks the back of his head. As it washes away in the rain, Candy shoulders the long gun and gives the Cryptid both barrels, a spread of pullets swarming outwards to collide with its face and eyes. The smoking shotgun is lowered, and into Candy's opposite hand there appears, in a smoking, flashing blink, a spread of five playing cards. He tosses them in a spread pattern like the spokes of a wheel, and they sail towards the cryptid's fins. Each is razor sharp, lethal enough to cut flesh.
Rita Ma	Rita's standing directly in the path of the electrified webbing projectile. Her eyes widen. There's no point creating a decoy; the attack's already launched, and that'd just give the webbing two targets to hit. She's frozen like a deer in the headlights. But before she can stop it, her body moves on its own, dipping down into a low crouch and then leaping into the sky so hard that the wet ground underfoot explodes once more. The webbing glob misses by a healthy margin. That could've been ugly. Even if I hate this body, at least it won't let me die. But we can't be up this high in a thunderstorm! It's dangerous. ... Wait. That's a great idea! Rita's cloaked tentacles extend over the field, weaving themselves into tall, narrow structures with the illusory appearance of being metal. She detaches herself from the structures, leaving them to calcify. They're lightning rods, designed to starve the cryptid of further energy by keeping the ligthning from striking it! From her perch on top of one of the lightning rods, Rita lingers (maybe dangerously) to raise a hand above her head and charge up a deathball of glowing white energy. The longer she's allowed to charge up, the deadlier it becomes- and with her allies beating on the cryptid like they are now, that's going to be quite deadly indeed. Finally, after (hopefully) a good few seconds of holding it, the big, noisy, bright deathball will inevitably become impossible to hide- and so she casts it down, blasting Gilderganon with a huge splash of scorching energy. In the immediate aftermath of the enormous blow, Rita rappels down on strands of spider-silk to risk dipping two of her fingers in one of the cryptid's open wounds. She only needs a drop of blood that she can lick off for what'll come next...
Hibiki Tachibana	Rain falls. Hibiki doesn't like that for what a monster like this might do, but it's not going to cause her to shrink back either. Thankfully, she didn't maintain contact enough for the blowback of Gilderganon's charged aura to lash back out at her, and quickly braces her feet and regains a proper stance as its sent skidding back through everyone's efforts. The injuries are already showing, and with its mobility limited... "Good thinking, Rita! It looks like we already have it on the backfoot! ...But..." Hibiki's lips purse together, and she can't help but narrow her eyes as the battle progresses on. A bad feeling that gets some validation when Gilderganon calls down lightning itself, and she avoids the painful discharge of electricity through bunkering down and gritting herself through it until it passes. But now they have one very angry and powered-up Cryptid to deal with. "The fins--" She glances between them as Featherman points them out, right before her expression tightens up and she nods. "...Then just like she said," recalling what White Dwarf mentioned before. "We'll just take those out!" Her foot digs into the now-slightly muddy earth, and she uses it to launch herself forward to close the distance created again. It looks like she's going to run it down exactly the same as last time, but right as she gets close, the series of pistons in her leg armor eject themselves forward only to slam back in the opposite direction, creating a burst of force underneath her that scatters dirt and sends her arcing upwards in a nigh-instant jump over the beast just as the explosion from Featherman's dynamite explosion clears up! Putting her right above its back. "Got you--!" She throws a punch down, straight towards the fin - and then another, and another, and another and another and another. Each one comes faster than the last, picking up speed until one becomes six and six becomes twelve and then the number of blows doubles yet again. A barrage of blows so fast they're a blur, the impact and momentum behind them enough to keep Hibiki above it where she is rather than falling down onto it, all of them intended to tenderize and crush the fin and a good portion of its back while she's at it. "HAAAAH!" Until the final punch comes down with much more force than any of them before, another piston-reinforced blow with some seriously heavy wind-up, coming down like a hammer to try and force Gilderganon down. The recoil from the full-force blow will be enough on its own to send Hibiki flyign back the opposite direction and away, out of range of the rest of everyone else's attacks coming in.
Redshift Operators	The cyborg ninja doesn't have a future available where she isn't flipped into and gnashed a little by those teeth. But like a woman dodging raindrops, she manages to suffer mostly bruises and quick electrical burns, bouncing off of blunt segments of teeth to avoid them sinking in. It doesn't take her too long to maneuver a kick on the upper jaw, launching herself back. Before, and during, she calls out... "It's not merely the fins... The storm. A storm, roiling with dark power, is arriving! It revitalizes this creature. Is there a way to draw away that lightning? A grounding rod we can establish on the fortress at the path?" She strikes a pose mid-skid, as she recovers from being tossed back. The pose leads easily, cleanly, into raising her blade to conduct the support artes. The fins... she'll target them, with the others. If everyone ought to focus on them, then... Another vast array of potential futures. Again: A shotgun blast of dashing white-haired cyborgs fired into the future, trying to find the point where some tissue below the hide conducts between the many fins in a series of leaping overhead flipping strikes meant to drive the blade deep. With the damage the others are doing likely disabling dangerous autonomous reflexive ganglia, can she slice into controlling nerve pathways to sever larger swaths from conscious central control and keep them from contributing to that dangerous power buildup? Always a bit of a surgeon's mind on her. That must be why she's so focused on cutting so deep.
C	Recoiling from its face being blasted so headily, Gilderganon rears its head back with a warning growl that rumbles through its entire body -- but Candy, with heedless pluck, continues his attack with a handful of magic cards thatembed themselves into several of the elongated structures jutting out of Gilderganon's back, like spines. In the meantime, seemingly operating on the same wavelength as White Dwarf, Rita is able to create an effective stop-gap of lightning rods that attract the thundering bolts from the sky and prevent them from providing Gilderganon with further succor for a second wind. Speaking of whom, White Dwarf's various alternate selves find themselves undergoing midling success as they have to contend with Gilderganon's electrical rage in their search for the points at which they would best be able to carve into it. But, the White Dwarf of the here and now is the one who achieves the best result and is accordingly able to cut and carve into the tender flesh and nerves interconnecting the complex array that allow the thing to function as it does. It seemed to be some kind of biological energy reactor, on further introspection as to its nature. Featherman even manages to blow one of them clean off moments later, after Hibiki strikes it at full force, the combined might shattering the largest of the dorsals down to the root and causing an eruption of charged blood, along with a howling cry of agony. Lloyd sweats nervously, as he and Randy had already ran out of energy for their Orbments. This left Tio and Ellie to do most of the heavy lifting for keeping the Elites powered with a steady stream of buffs to assist them. "C'mon, just a little more...!" Contending with all of this, it gives Rita the time and opportunity to cast her orb of destruction down at Gilderganon and consume it with a mighty explosion. "She got 'em!" Randy whoops, before narrowing his eyes. " ... or at least, that's what I'd like to say. Heads up!" One black paw comes out of the smoking dust, and clenches deeply in the loose soil before Gilderganon saunters out of the crater with a limp, a savage and vengeful look in its blue eyes. Rita gets her lick of blood, a good taste to wet her appetite before Gilderganon releases a genuinely massive spark of electric power that sets flame to the greenery around them and incinerates the spiderwebs. Seeming to speed up, it dashes across the battlefield to maul the Elites with its tusks and claws, "Shit --!" "ELLIE!" Lloyd calls, in time for her to raise her Enigma unit. "ADAMANTINE GUARD!" It gives the backline defenders a barrier to save their lives, but, it is shattered instantly by Gilderganon's rampage and throws the Special Support Section into disarray, forced to regroup after being trampled. Randy grouses with a, "Tch - !!" Leaping from the ground, it blows past Rita's lightning rods to perch itself on the hill it had leapt over prieviously, and turns to the group, opening its maw wide. All of the energy in its body that it can still maintain control of coalesces into its tusks before it roars once more, and spews a tidal wave of blindingly bright energy at them in a all-encompasing breath attack.
Featherman Neo	As the SSS is thrown into disarray by the Adamantine Guard being broken, Featherman shouts out, having touched the ground again. "No-!" And then, the Cryptid charges up, and unleashes that blast of bright energy. The breath attack is guarded with the tonfas, but it's not enough, sparking hard against Featherman's armor and sending him skidding back. But it's not enough to defeat him. He's stronger than that. "HIBIKI! BREAK THE BARRIER!" With his tonfas, Featherman charges forward, leaps up high again, and moves to strike both Nitro Tonfas straight into Gilderganon's skull, trying to rattle whatever it has inside there with pure explosive force. "NITRO...TONFAS!"
Candy	Candy says, "Lightning rods!" Candy jumps and pumps a fist at Rita and White Dwarf. Heedless pluck, indeed. He'd clap, if he weren't holding a double-barrel in his off hand. "Fuck yeah!" He keeps moving across the battlefield in uncanny, instantaneous blinks. I mighta blinded it. But I might have just pissed it off, and it can see just fine. Not gonna be no teeth on me, no claws, no nothing. He laughs, the sound abruptly jolting from spot to spot, behind-tree to near-bush to White-Dwarf-adjacant. "At least," he calls to Gilderganon with a determined furrow of his brow, "Not from you." Then, in that brief pause, Candy tosses the Jack of Diamonds into the mud. "Hi, neat space lady. Hi, Rita." Sprouting from the mud are two -more- lightning rods. Only they're fake. These cryptid things are usually pretty smart, he's found, and he imagines Gilderganon will probably try and destroy Rita's, if its reaction to the web was any indication. Therefore, a couple of fakes should give her time to adjust, assuming the Cryptid decides to go after them. It's flagging, though--and maybe, if he's really lucky, the sight of -even more- will take the fight out of it. "...she got 'em? HEY, Hibiki, jump on back over, she got--" She did not. Time stops with Candy's chest beneath Gilderganon's foot. Candy scowls up at the beast frozen in its rampage, his chest bleeding from where claws have pierced his skin. Rain drops are frozen in flight all around him. Behind him, Hibiki is just coming to the end of her nimble backwards flight, as Featherman is in the midst of a valiant charge forwards, two heroes in tandem. At the fore, Rita and White Dwarf, the former locked in the moment immediately following her dramatic death ball, the latter no doubt frozen in an equally dramatic and highly weebish--yet equally cool--pose. Candy blinks himself out from under the Cryptid's foot, still scowling. First, he opens up with a crowbar. When, after several swings, it has dented against the creature's leg, he readies the shotgun and slots two slugs--buckshot won't do. He gives both barrels to the opposite leg, the gun clicking, hammer snapping, yet nothing. Not yet. Candy rolls his sleeves up and slips the suspenders of his pants down his shoulders, where they bounce at his hips. Winding up with his right arm, he makes a haymaker aimed right at the side of Gilderganon's head, drawing on Hibiki's strength and expertise to find the spot most likely to result in... Time resumes. "Lights out." -Gilderganon's foot crushes empty earth. -Candy is right next to it when its breath is loosed. A flurry of metallic impacts and weighty thuds, two shotgun blasts--weird, his doesn't look like it went off--and a precision knockout punch all slam into the cryptid in rapid succession."
Hibiki Tachibana	"Did we really get it...?" Hibiki calls out at the same time as Randy and also in reply to Candy, having been thrown a good dozen meters backwards after her assault, rising back up just in time to see the plume of smoke and debris left over by Rita's ball of death. Between that, the deep wounds from Candy and White Dwarf, and the lightning rods depriving it of the storm...that should have been more than enough to at least disable it, right? But she underestimated just how tough this monster that thrashed the SSS really is, because it comes marching back out. With a vengeance. "Agh...!" She has to brace herself against the surge of lightning and the ignition of greenery, even in the rain, and isn't fast enough to prevent the beast from rampaging through their ranks either. "Lloyd--everyone...!" She calls out for the Special Support Section, but they're fine, thanks to a timely defense - it's herself she should be worried about, as she's caught by the Merciless Black Torrent rushing past at high speed and bowling her backwards, tumbling head over heels. By the time she's picking herself up, Gilderganon is charging up its last ditch effort. Her eyes widen the moment before the breath attack washes clean over her with a shout of pain. It looks like she's trying to physically struggle against the tide for a moment, before the blinding energy overcomes her, and by the time she's back in sight, she's rolling out of it smoking and burnt. 'BREAK THE BARRIER!' Those words hitting her ears get her to grit her teeth and force herself back up to her knees however, just in time to see Featherman going in again with everything he has. "Right...if it's going to throw everything out at the last stretch, we'll just do the same...!" The worst of her singing and injuries are already healing back over at a rapid rate, slowing down when they hit the point of not hindering her ability to fight anymore. With that, she can fully rise back up. Again and again, just like she said she would. Hibiki starts moving, then running, then sprinting to pick up speed, all to dig her heels in and kick up in a massive jump to ascend the hill in one quick go. There's a brief moment, leaping up past it, where she'll be able to look it in the eyes. "You /are/ just another barrier...! And I'll--!" Her jump takes her higher, where she rears back her right arm. The piston inside her gauntlet slots back for the third and likely last time today, reaching its limit before she grips onto it and tugs back manually with all her strength. The sound of straining metal fills the air as its yanked out further and further, the machinery necessary for it to even go this far coming from seemingly nowhere, until it's forced all the way past her elbow. And a roar plus a final wrench of her arm forces it back twice that distance in one go, leaving the piece of equipment extending out a whole six feet behind her - gravity and all the extra weight kicks in, sending her back down towards Gilderganon. Her Symphogear's thrusters fire up as well, speeding up her fall further. "GOT YOU!" Her punch, aimed at the Cryptid's back around its damaged dorsal fin, comes down with all the might she can manage. This is before the unrealistically overstressed bunker is slammed back in, taking almost an entire second to do so, making for a brief delay before a sound as loud as any of Gilderganon's thunder rings out. And the ridiculous force behind her one-two hit is used to try and all but bury it down into the hill below.
Redshift Operators	Further back, when the backlanes are broken, the rest of the Redshifts are tossed aside, unprepared for the sudden rush, just like the rest. Yet, this still leaves the ninja standing. A breath attack? There's no direction to dash that's good for that. The wave-like blast is going to spew over the environs, and that means every dashing future self is incinerated in a shining blast. But one makes it through: A massive leap up at incredibly high heights. Whoever said white girls can't jump has clearly never met the kind of girl who spent her entire life training to be similar to an eastern television show about ninjas that do chakra wizardry. Still, though she avoids most of it, the wave of bright breath washes over her, and, lifting her with the heat of the air, flings her up and off-course before she slams into the ground. Not incinerated, but hardly in a good mood after that impact. WHAM! It's a sickening crack, though she struggles back to her feet in a way that makes it clear she's not out yet. Alright, medic-ninja, think. Come on! Think about this. It has natural lightning and breath, everything coming out of that weird bio-reactor. She pulls down into a mad dash stance, and takes off, arms behind her pulled taut by the force of the insane speed. She has to strike between the breath attacks! Ascend the hill, leap up, and... SLASH! Her blade lashes out towards the tusks, trying to sever one while all the controllable energy is concentrated there. The attack is in three parts: Sever a tusk, snatch it in mid air with her robotic hand, and then plunge it like a knife into the place nearest the bioreactor she saw before to discharge and disable the energetic manipulations.
Rita Ma	There's no room for Rita to dodge the point-blank massive spark. Without the benefit of her illusions, sheer agility is her best defense, but that only works if there's a travel time. It scorches her skin (or the tentacles comprising the skin of her disguise), even as she leaps away from it and skids to a stop in a three-point stance with her eyes wide. I hate everything about this. It's designed to be as awful for me to fight as possible. It hasn't been safe for me to really touch it; my decoys conduct its attacks; even creating water is a bad idea. Rita braces and mentally sorts through her options ahead of the lightning-breath attack. Leaping over it is the intuitive thing, but she can't stay in the air- her 'floating' requires having tentacles in contact with the ground, and that'd just mean getting electrocuted here. The rainwater-puddles here are reflective surfaces; she could use those to get around it. But- Oh. Her eyes fix on the Crossbell SSS behind them. Wounded, low on energy, likely unable to get out of the way themselves. Right. The days when other people had to protect me are over. I'm strong enough to take care of myself now. I'm still getting used to protecting other people, instead... but this feels like a good start. Rita smiles a brave little smile back at them, the kind you put on when you're trying to seem more reassuring than you are assured. For just a moment, the full mass of her tentacles turns visible- far larger than her body, waving and angling and twisting in the space around her, chalky-white and translucent-azure and smoky-midnight-blue. Then they multiply in number like the branches of a tree, and weave together into a great barrier in front of her before detaching and calcifying solid. An expenditure like this... it's miserable. I'll be hungry for days to grow these back, even if I choke down that whole cryptid. But it feels right, to be doing things like this- even, no, especially because my monstrous half hates it. Gilderganon's breath washes over her barrier, crackling and singing it black and fracturing it in places. But for the SSS, it holds. When the attack is done, Rita is nowhere to be seen. And of course my body wants to recoup it. The drool in my mouth that I have to swallow back; the way my limbs keep trying to move on their own; the feeling in my gut like it's being stabbed with a freezing knife... It's all telling me to go in. Okay. Fine. Now you can take control. Get us that spent mass back. Rita stands, invisible, behind Gilderganon as the others throw their finishing attacks at it. Her cloaked tentacles weave together beneath the beast, its electrical aura now dimmed enough to make contact a safer prospect. They concresce to form a solid, visible, sheer spike beneath its heart. Hibiki goes up. Hibiki comes down. Gilderganon gets slammed onto the spike, which unfolds inside its body, blue veins shooting through it and coursing beneath its skin. Rita shimmers back into view. The tentacles she's using to greedily drink it down stay cloaked, but the blue glow of stolen essence coursing from Gilderganon to her can't be entirely concealed. Her eyes are glassily imperious; she doesn't have the presence of mind to concoct any kind of one-liner.
C	White Dwarf has difficulty cutting through the tusk in question, as Gilderganon recoils with a vicious snarl, gnashing its teeth as she cuts a gash into it -- but with persistance and leverage, the most dramatic of the operators finally manages to hack off a chunk of tusk bigger than her head, which, makes a shockingly effective implement to skewer it in its chest with, momentarily stifling its electrical reactions -- which, after its breath attack, seemed to already have been fading out and in dire need of a re-charge. This provided a perfect opportunity for Hibiki, Candy, and Featherman to launch a three way attack that provides a true display of grit and camraderie as they collectively assail it, Featherman and Candy rattling its skull with a penultimate strike that leaves blood oozing from its mouth and nose, its bright blue eyes rolling as it staggers; and Hibiki driving it deep into the mud with a decisive attack into its already grievously injured back. Weak sparks bounce around its body as it shudders, and after several moments begins to whine and wimper, like a beaten mutt. Its suffering, at the least, wasn't long for this world. Carrying Tio on his back, Randy grimaces. Ellie and Lloyd were learning on eachother for support, watching as Rita begins to subsume her now defenseless prey. He felt that it was true for all of them that they were happy Rita had survived the attack -- that look of re-assurance had brought forth thoughts of the worst in both himself and Lloyd, for they'd seen it before, and worn it themselves -- but, himself, he couldn't help but think he'd never get used to the sight of her 'eating' like this. It's like she's a totally different person. No, rather, that's not the look a person would wear at all. he thinks with a wince, before looking away. "Looks like that's the end of that..." he grunts. Tiredly, Ellie nods, "I suppose so. This rain .. I hope we don't get sick. I'm just happy to have had the support of all our friends." "...yeah,." Lloyd intones. At first somber, he forces himself to grin in the wake of Featherman and Hibiki rising up against the odds with his catchphrase, before addressing the Elites more generally; "We appreciate your help. With this, the Merciless Black Torrent has been Exterminated and the mission can be considered accomplsihed. What do you guys say we go and clean up at Armorica's inn, and rest for the night? We can even pick up some of the village's famous honey while we're there." Randy twitches, casting an eye to the forests surrounding them. A shadowy figure slips his flute back into his cloak, and retreats calmly, seeming to accept his loss -- at least, this time.
Featherman Neo	As the beast falls, devoured, Featherman Neo is exhausted and doesn't comment on the group effort, but he seems pleased from his whistling. He desummons the Nitro Tonfas, and turns towards Lloyd. "I'd love that, Lloyd." He only turns to the forests when Randy does, but doesn't notice anything himself. "Honey, huh? I won't be able to try it there, for obvious reasons, but I should be able to take a jar home with me! Haha!"
Rita Ma	Gilderganon's body crumbles away to dust as Rita extracts... whatever Rita takes, from it. The girl herself falls to her knees on the muddy ground, then to all fours, taking fast and deep breaths. Even after that... I still feel so empty. Doing something that big was sort of stupid. But it's down to a level I can handle, now. You're still upset with me, aren't you, body? ... Good. For all you've put me through, you deserve this much. After a few moments, her breathing eases off and becomes more normal. She picks herself up, flicking the mud off as best she can, and letting the drizzling rain take care of the rest with an equanimity you wouldn't expect from the girly-girl exterior. For a moment she looks really happy as she trudges over to rejoin her teammates and the SSS, or at the very least 'relieved'. Then she realizes the way Lloyd's looking; the way his eyes were downturned, the slight uneasy undertone to his smile. "Um," she says. What is there to say? 'I'm sorry'? That doesn't mean anything at all, when I didn't choose to be like this and can't change it. 'I don't blame you'? That's true, but what does it solve? I want to just slink away and hide. ... But they'd have raw meat at the inn, wouldn't they? And it still hurts so bad... "... Okay. I'd like that a lot. Thank you so, so much." Her eyes are still downcast; it's not immediately obvious what she's thanking them so emphatically for.
Candy	Dead--good. Long as it's not in some SSS zoo or whatever these uniforms have. "What you looking at, Randy?" Candy claps him on the back a little too firmly to be friendly, his tone a little too laden with suspicion to be curious. "Cryptid's dead." He might have an idea, being that he warned C--but that's no reason not to give one of these guys a hard time. "Making sure there's no witnesses when you shoot us?" Yeah, he still hasn't forgotten the incident on the beach. "How 'bout you, Lloyd? Making sure you put the right shoes on the right feet? 'Got 'em,' he says, after it almost got -me.-" He shakes his head, but they're getting off lightly today. No friendly fire, and they were mostly okay. "You guys weren't terrible this time. I'll check out the inn, try the honey, sure." He slips his suspenders back over his shoulders, not that it's necessary. Obliviously--or perhaps all too aware, "Rita, you got room for more? My treat. Last one to the inn's a cop!" He cheats again and does that unnerving rapid blink-teleporting, his limbs unmoving as he A-poses into the horizon.
Redshift Operators	White Dwarf finally gets a good chance to properly watch a Rita feeding frenzy, and boy is it cool. She spends a moment dramatically sheathing her blade, of course, as one must, but after that? A contemplative pose is struck, one she can sustain while she watches Rita chow down. With everything cloaked dramatically, it looks like... "It is as if you drained the very soul from the beast, <Lita>. A darkly beautiful display, hmhmhm." No, there isn't an ounce of insincerity there. She nods in a knowing way, making noises of self-assured confidence in what she said. Then she starts openly doing wound management on her own body as the group moves elsewhere, as if feeling insecure about her own lack of extensive biohorror to show off and so deciding now's the right time to unfold her own robotic hand and start tending wounds with exotic mechanical devices therein.
Hibiki Tachibana	When Hibiki finds solid ground again, it's to briefly drop to a knee and clutch at her right arm, the gauntlet of which is in the process of sparking and sizzling from both residual lightning and her heinous stressing of its mechanisms. "Hah...hah...we got it for real this time, right...?" With all the damaged it had suffered, and being impaled right through the heart, she'd hope so. And if not, it looks like Rita is going to take care of that in very short order. It won't be long before Gilderganon is nothing but dust, and Hibiki spends a few moments simply watching the girl eat in silence. The look on her face is thoughtful, more than anything, though the beast's dying whimpers can't help but spawn a slight tinge of guilty, despite everything. There's a slight smile seeing White Dwarf supporting Rita though, and even at Candy giving Lloyd and Randy some heckling, as much as she might want to butt in and tell him to knock it off. No, she remains where she is and by herself for a moment, her expression returning to a more neutral one as she briefly looks around, as if expecting to find something. But she never catches on to the figure within the trees at all, and she's forced to let it go after a few tense moments. So she ends up being the last one to rejoin the SSS, as her Symphogear is replaced with her casual clothes in a brief flash of light. "...Yeah. Let's get out of this rain, it's gonna bring down the atmosphere. I'm glad Armorica is gonna be safe. Kicking my feet up doesn't sound half bad..." She groans and rubs at her right shoulder as she says that.