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Rita Ma      The Semitone is an odd but bland ship: boxy, high, and narrow, with everything sterile white or dark gray, suiting the advanced world it's on loan from at the Commonwealth's behest. Its futuristic propellers produce an omnipresent hum that, over the course of a day-long journey, has faded to background noise. The bulk of its volume is a single cavernous cargo room meant to be unloaded via ramp, lit with flickering and unpleasantly orange lights.

     That room is stuffed with high-tech medical supplies, logistical vehicles, curse-breaking implements, sacred water and incense candles for consecration, coins and baubles for placation of the restless dead, and so on- most of which the gathered Elites have had a hand in buying, stealing, producing, or procuring via complex fetch quest, as individually suits them. All of it is going towards the blight-stricken swords-and-sorcery region called Gravelrise, which has inconveniently few Warpgates.

     Assembling all of this collective effort was one adventure. What happens in Gravelrise will doubtlessly be another. This is supposed to be the boring part. For the last five hours, it has been.

     The cargo hold's bundled pallets, parked vehicles, and dim lighting give it the air of a dull library; 'shelves' of dense-packed supplies create private aisles for intimate conversation. The scant crew (who wear crisp space-opera-ish uniforms) are mostly down here, having seen enough of the sea. Some of them are playing penny-ante poker, using a blessed coffin of vampire rehabilitation as their table.

     The surface deck above is flat, gray, and boring, serving mostly as a roof for the cargo hold below. Besides the broad glass-windowed bridge, the only thing breaking the plain of dull metal is a single oversized turret-mounted cannon, clearly meant only as a deterrent.

     Nevertheless, the surface deck is where most of the other passengers are congregating; a strange mixture of medical professionals, priests, occult scholars, and the occasional whip-or-stake-wielding undead hunter. The sun is setting over the glass-smooth ocean. It's a sight few of them get to see often, so some are snapping photos or straying dangerously close to the guardrails.

     Shortly, things are going to get completely out of hand. But for now: where are you, and what have you been doing?
Kale Hearthward EARLIER, SUMMARIZED:

Kale: "Hey I need a bigger budget for stuff"
Paladins HR: "Maybe."
Kale: "C'mon, I do stuff and follow orders"
Paladins HR: "We'll think about it and talk later. For now take this boring escort mission"
Kale: "I don't want to take that boring escort mission"
Paladins HR: "You just said you do stuff and follow orders, checkmate"

NOW:

Kale's perched up on the top of the cannon (or whatever's the tallest point of the ship), keeping watch.

"Nothing... over here," he says, peering out to starboard.

"Nothing... over here either," he continues, peering out to port.

"And nothing... over here." It's like a game, albeit a very simple game with two rules (1. Look to starboard 2. Look to port) and only a single prize (boredom).

He'd go down and play poker, but he already lost all of the money he'd brought with him in a series of all-in bluffs that didn't work out. This, at least, is free.
Ishirou Ishirou has been here and asking the various Priests, scholars, and medical professionals what they know of what is going on in Gravelrise.  He heard blight, and from what's on the ship it seems to be some sort of undead situation.  So really, he's more or less asking for clarification on what the affliction (or afflictions) are, the curses, and so forth.  Essentially, he wants actionable intelligence the moment they hit the ground with supplies.  

Also, it's a chance to further his intelligence into higher magic, but lower technological worlds.  Whereas his world had relied on a fusion of both and in high amounts, how do worlds with reduced technology work with magic?  Does one take precedence over the other?  Is there a drive towards a fusion?  

He is noting everything in his holographic notepad as he talks to people, generally being upbeat and easygoing.  He, for some reason, avoids talking to the hunters.  Their 'methods' of curing things are less agreeable.  
Kirishima Joining the Semitone's journey as both unloading muscle and a bodyguard is none other than... Another passenger! Clearly, just a regular passenger and not at all one of the Paladins brought on board to scope out the joint. There might be someone looking to sabotage this trip for their own purposes, after all, waiting for the opportune moment to strike while waiting on board for the vessel to get somewhere a little less visible.

Kirishima most certainly isn't present here, but some paper-pusher named Haruna is. She's checking on the other passengers, making sure they have all their supplies in check long before they're ready to get to work, and definitely not listening for whispers of things that shouldn't be happening where she shouldn't be hearing them.

Just a regular person doing regular person things, indeed. There's no way this lady that looks like she can barely stand being on a boat could possibly be some kind of Elite in disguise!
Lilian Rook     Lilian sort of hates spare time. People always ask her how she can possibly stay so busy, but she's never really gotten that. How do you exist without a point to it? How do you throw away someone as precious as time on nothing? Doesn't it feel awful, knowing the world is creeping ahead of you while you're at a standstill? It's not as if you can get it all back by working harder later. Five hours is torture. Not because it's boring, but because there are so few things she can do right now that she'll have to try rearranging everything later to make up for doing as much as she can right now and--

    ...

    Lilian paces up behind Kale. There's an open book in her hand, as there usually is whenever there's nothing else to do, but she's only half-reading it. She finished it already, and isn't getting much from 'double-checking'. "So. How did it go?" she asks, excruciatingly lacking in any other topic to take interest in. She naps the book shut, tucks it into her messenger bag, and adjusts her singular glove uncomfortably. "How much did they offer?"
Staren     Staren is happy to add medical and anti-vampire supplies to the cargo. There may even be mechs/power armor specialized in such if Gravelrise is known to have any pilots, or if any of those undead hunters can use them.

    Staren herself has kind of wandered around. The glassy sea IS an unusual sight. Sometimes she cat naps. She's now swapping stories with some of the undead hunters about earlier multiversal adventures and her own recent-ish trip to the South in the past.
Rita Ma      Things coast on smoothly. The sun edges closer to the horizon. The very brightest stars begin to peek through the haze of blue overhead. The passengers and crew are open to chat or talk business, being at least half as bored as you are. Gravelrise's problems have to do with the unlucky simultaneous emergence of a mundane plague and a "blood moon" reanimating the freshly dead as mindless creatures.

     A needling whine, just barely at the edge of hearing, is the first warning that something might be wrong. Is a machine doing that? Is something wrong with the engines? At first it's virtually unnoticeable. Over the span of ten or twenty seconds, it swells until it sounds like a mosquito buzzing uncomfortably close to one's ear.

     Then the engines stop with a grinding, ripping, fleshy noise, and something seems to 'snag' them. The loss of forward speed makes the whole ship jerk. Some of the people up on deck scream; others stagger or nearly fall over the railings.

     The water behind the ship is red. What on earth did the propellers hit?

     It becomes a moot question seconds later. A huge boneless tentacle- as wide around as any of the logistics trucks- spears through the cargo hold and begins to writhe inside, tossing pallets and vehicles around like toys, threatening to crush crew-members, and beginning to flood the interior with seawater. The tentacle's flesh is rubbery-black, but barely visible under a dense studding of what might either be huge symbiotic barnacles or beaked jaws.

     Driving the tentacle back seems like the logical thing to do, but it blocking most of the hole it's just made is the only thing stopping the cargo hold from flooding faster.

     A white craggy dome rises out of the water near the ship, half as long as the vessel is itself: the monster's head. It is repulsively both like a whale and a toad, carpeted in the same ivory barnacles(?) as its limbs. Its huge, empty eyes look gormlessly up at the ship above with something like greed. People are definitely screaming now, but there's nowhere to run.

     Their screams are almost drowned out by its singing. That buzzing whine has gotten painful now; it isn't dangerous in a psychic sense, but in a purely acoustic one, rattling bones and fuzzing vision. Up on the bridge, glass begins to crack.

     A redwood-sized tentacle emerges after its body does, reaching up to sweep across the surface deck like an anteater's tongue lapping at the dirt. A few brave fantasy-types try flinging their undead-banishing magic at it, to little effect. Some passengers are crushed to a pulp under the limb immediately if not somehow rescued; a dozen more are swept overboard, plummeting a hundred feet towards the water below. The monster's jaws hang slackly open in anticipation, but the fall alone would kill them.

     There is unmitigated panic up on the bridge, too. Local radio picks up the captain shouting something about "BULKHEAD PROJECTORS!" and "TRANSVERSE COMPARTMENT BREACH", but his frenzied lever-pulling and order-barking hasn't come to anything tangible yet.
Kale Hearthward "In terms of take-home, not as great as I'd like."

Over to port... nothing over there. "But they're yielding on operational budget and benefits."

Over to starboard... nothing over there. "So the rest of the construction on the airship's being taken care of, at least, and I might be able to get a pilot assigned for it... and I've got a budget for the next Secundus expedition and a line-item for commissioning some new gear from home."

Over to port... nothing over there. Kale realizes he's probably being rude by keeping this up while talking to Lilian, but at this point sheer momentum has overridden any sense of volition he has. "And a line item for 'uniforms and cultural dress' which is sort of-"

Kale stops as he hears the whine, his superior animal person hearing picking it up. "Engine's making a new noise," he says, misunderstanding what it is he's hearing.

And then he falls all the way over and off of the cannon as the ship comes to a sudden stop.

He doesn't bother standing back up. Standing back up is for people without jet boots, who can just fly upwards and orient themselves the right way in the process.

"The hell-" He cuts the curse off, as he sees the... thing, emerge. He reaches for his weapons - and a split second later, makes a different decision, jetting off and casting wind magic rapidly and desperately. If he can just push those that are falling overboard away from the monster, and try to catch them with updrafts - or at least slow their fall enough so that the impacts aren't fatal...!
Ishirou During his typing, Ishirou nods to one of the priests who's also trying to convert Ishirou on the sly.  Ishirou just plays dense, because sometimes he doesn't understand certain things, due to being an android and not born human.  Sometimes he plays it to his advantage.  Not often...

Almost never really.

Then he puts a hand over his ear.    "Do you hear that?" he asks a few moments before it becomes audible for most other people.  Heightened sensory organs certainly are a boon sometimes.  He is already starting to filter it so it doesn't hurt his ears.  

Then hell on water breaks loose.

The nearly invisible creature pierces the hull, after causing the ship to lurch.  Ishirou manages to grab himself, looking over the side of the boat to see what was happening.  Right as the creature's head burst to the surface.  The song gets worse too, he can feel his teeth and bones chatter.

He fires a biohack beam, aiming to try and do one of the following.  Trying to convert it to a friend, and gain some control over it...or try and remove the ability for it to make that piercing shrill, or at least mute it some.  Kale is already working on saving people going overboard, but right now he can help by trying to mitigate the threat itself.  
Kirishima Maybe now's a good time to finally take a load off. It's been a couple of hours already, and 'Haruna' hasn't really heard anything juicy enough to chase after. Maybe this leg of the journey really will go smoothly!

And then it doesn't go smoothly at all. Things start creaking, tearing, slamming about, and the hapless passenger is already presented with grave danger in the form of the cargo hold getting busted open. With little time to think and even less time to act, Kirishima doesn't bother hiding her presence any longer as she sprints across the cargo hold, sliding and leaping over incoming vehicles through what would totally be sick QTE sequences to get to the crew-members in time and hurl them out of harm's way.

"Get to the deck! There's more protection there!" She barks out orders to the crew-members even in mid-toss, vaulting over the cab of another vehicle while snagging a long chain off another pallet in passing. The simple answer would be to just start attacking the tentacle to ward it off, but the hole it's plugging up can't just be left open. If the creature is left to continue thrashing about inside, though, who knows what kind of problems it could cause?

This kind of thinking is going to keep Kirishima occupied for a good bit, and it stops her from committing fully to an effort in driving the tentacle in the cargo hold off. Until the other crew-members have escaped, though, she can't even leave! The best she can manage for now, then, is to keep harassing the tentacle, slinging that chain at its rubbery surface like a whip while leaping around the cargo hold to instead try and hold its attention until she can finally decide.
Staren     "And so with our vampire hunter waiting on the roof of the next building in his custom Samson, we swung down and through the window of the room the vampire was--" Staren's ears perk up and rotate this way and that. "Do you hear that?"

    She stumbles as the engine stops. Warping in some drones to go take a look around the ship-- but there's no need for that. There's the head of a sea monster... and it's NOT one of hers from the waters around Huffman Island.

    There isn't time to decide how to fight it. A tentacle is sweeping across the deck NOW. While the hunters she was talking to try their magic, she jumps and a 10-foot-tall suit of power armor warps in around her.

    But rather than immediately begin attacking as such, the Delilah deploys pylons into the deck to stabilize itself as Staren leans forward to try and slow the tentacle down, to give others a chance to not get crushed or maybe run. If she can even buy them a few seconds...

    Of course, there ARE weapons on this thing, and most of them are arm-mounted. Vibro-blades deploy and plasma cannons fire point-blank; missiles launch upward from the back launcher and then rain down on the tentacle, trying to make the beast reconsider placing that tentacle on the deck!
Lilian Rook     "Hoping to skim it all off the margins of operational expenses are you?" Lilian replies to Kale. Her tone is dry, but not wholly disappearing. "A little bit of a low-class move, but all successful people get their start somewhere. Offloading discretionary expenses as business to take home a greater percentage of personal is a common strategy for people with any stones, but just because it's so common, they'll notice it quickly if you get too aggressive with it, and you'll need to negotiate up quickly, before they get tired of it." Lilian's gloved thum runs idly over the bridge of her nose. "Well, you took my advice and became richer for it. That's what matters in the end. You should-- What is that obnoxious sound? Is there something wrong with the engine?"

    The boat jerks. Lilian slows down incrementally less quickly than the deck, and is propelled forward. As she is trained, she doesn't throw out her arms and wobble for balance by reflex, instead disconnecting from the deck with a little ripple of black static and twirling lightly through the air, drifting like a ghost. The sound of shredding metal below . . . no, the tentacle from above!

    I have the crew! Get that fucking thing away from the ship!" The first part isn't a promise; it is a statement of fact. While Kale rescues the crew and passengers thrown overboard--

                -----[stop]-----
    "God this is such an enormous waste. How much is going to be left for-- No, it's not as if I can just watch. There's nothing to do but be quick about it." Lilian moans to herself as she rushes about the deck, snagging a collar here, throwing a body over her shoulder there, snatching up some tackle rope and dragging two more by the waist. She has to heave them rather unceremoniously towards the lifeboats opposite the monster, lacking any other safe place to put them, and figuring that to be the least immediately lethal choice at the moment. They can figure out the rest.
                -----[start]-----

    --sees that the passengers in danger of being crushed are taken somewhere else. She stops to catch her breath a second, checking the tips of her gloveless fingers for . . . some reason. Then, the six inches of black metal come unhooked from her thigh holster and the golden spiral etchings light up in the wand extended like a switchblade.
Rita Ma      The air smells like blood and diesel- though, thanks to Lilian's timely rescue, much less blood than it ought to. Shrieking metal, shrieking people, and that unwholesome bone-rattling whine drown out most other noise. The water is churning white, or pink where the thing bleeds. Slivers of its flesh bob down-wake, one of its limbs having snagged the propellers. On accident? On purpose?

     Kale successfully deprives it of its meal as his updraft buoys the plummeting people upwards, keeping them suspended in the air. It reacts with dull brainless frustration, swinging two of its vast tentacles at them- and him, forming a harrowing danger zone of lashing limbs that he'll be forced to navigate to rescue them. Where they miss, they saw deep gashes into the ship's hull with their barnacle serrations.

     Ishirou discovers quickly that it's extremely determined not to be his friend, but his bio-hacking has the effect of muting its shrill cry anyway- the incessant shriek fades to a rumbling burble. But as soon as it identifies him as the culprit, it balls up the end of a tentacle like a hammer and smashes at his location repeatedly, less concerned with eating him and more with crushing him to bits.

     Staren's efforts, likewise, have an effect in preventing the sweeping tentacle from doing even more damage than it already has. Unfortunately, the tentacle- as thick as her machine is tall- wraps around the mech and starts trying to simply crush it. If that's unsuccessful, it tries to drag her beneath the waves next- something that could prove lethal in conjunction with a cracked cockpit.

     Finally, the captain manages to bring the 'bulkhead projectors' online. Amber forcefields pop into existence, dividing the cargo hold into four lengthwise parts to compartmentalize the flooding.

     That's good news for everyone else, but terrible for Kirishima. The chamber she's in is now effectively flooding four times as fast, and there's no way out except to swim against the geyser-like current of water and out through the hole the tentacle's made.

     Where her blade can slip between the armoring barnacles, she can land some telling hits, but even sinking her blade as deep as it'll go won't get her to the center of that blubbery limb. After flailing around in an attempt to grab her- something that causes nearby flasks of blessed water to start 'cooking off' in bursts of searing sunlight- it starts trying to bash down one of the amber forcefields, which begins to flicker and weaken. She can stay and try to drive it off to preserve the bulkheads' integrity, even as the compartment becomes an aquatic environment, or squeeze out through the hole and run.

     The people Lilian's thrown into the lifeboat take a second to stop screaming, looking around in utter bewilderment. Only one of them, a priest, gets his wits quickly enough to recognize her as the cause and give her a shakily relieved thumbs-up.

     Up on the deck, the oversized turret that the builders certainly never thought would see use begins to sluggishly track towards the monster's head. Guided by dumb instinct or pure, disastrous chance, it swipes a tentacle at the bridge, razing it into a debris-field of sparking consoles and mangled limbs. The turret stops cold.
Kale Hearthward Kale rescues the falling crew... or, well, at least delays their demise. The phrase 'every second counts' works both ways, every second he pushes back their doom is another second he can do something with.

... He may not have those seconds. The tentacles are going to knock the crew out of the air anyway-

Kale moves entirely on muscle memory. He draws his right-hand sword, activates it, and holds it at his side as he flies in. He doesn't have to bother swinging it - the sword leaves behind a solid blade trail, suspended in mid-air.

And now, as Kale starts weaving into the thrashing mass of tentacles, trying to get his charges out of danger via further wind manipulation or manually pushing them to safety or whatever other means he can, he leaves behind a 'tentacle' of his own - the weaving and winding blade trail remaining a sharp barrier for the tentacles to slam into and cut themselves up on!
Kirishima <J-IC-Scene> Kirishima says, "There's a massive one in the cargo hold. I can't remove it or it'll flood, but I can't leave it here! What a pain..."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook yelling annoyingly loud to be heard over the garbage, "I CAN SEAL IT OFF! BUT WE CAN'T HAVE ANOTHER ONE POP UP AND TEAR A NEW HOLE RIGHT AFTER! JUST CUT IT DOWN SO IT CAN'T REACH THE CARGO"

A decision is made, but is there enough time to make a difference? Kirishima just has to find that out the hard way as she brings out one of her longer blades (which is still relatively short/normal sword sized) to try getting through all that flesh. With the rescue efforts more or less concluded, she can even afford to be a little more haphazard in her leaps around the cargo hold, but it's already getting worse by the moment when the cargo hold gets divided and hers happens to be flooding the fastest.

The exploding flasks temporarily blind her, too, and that gets Kirishima to close her eyes reflexively. Even though it's only for a moment, it's just long enough that the tentacle manages to grab on, but she still manages to get her arms free with a short blade in one hand and a sickle in the other. "Stubborn thing...! Bring me in, then, if you dare!"

It's not like she has much of a choice in the matter at the moment. With her cutting implements readied, she starts carving up any bit of flesh she can reach, not quite needing to aim as long as she's still being grabbed. She'll need to do as much damage as she can in the shortest amount of time if she doesn't want to get dragged into the sea at the rate this is going, after all, and there's still the ever-present danger of all the water rushing in.
Ishirou Okay good!  Now it can't just slowly liquefy their insides with sonic attacks...though this thing is oddly very /very/ determined.  That's odd, but he can figure that out later (hopefully with its autopsy.)  However, his moment of joy is immediately stolen when he sees the tentacles rise up and start swinging for him.

Thankfully, Ishirou is /fast/ on his feet.  He dives for cover as it swings for him, trying to keep moving to be just ahead of it.  He's /mostly/ successful, but takes the whiplash of some of the deck coming up from under him.  He's bruised, but he could be much worse right now.  Instead, he realizes that he needs to get armored.

"I really need a name for it.." he muses before he is covered in a flashing light.  The pocket dimension delivers to him is power armor, allowing him to cover himself and preequip the flight configuration.  Soon, from where the creature thought he got the twink, comes flying out of the armor...but just as it smashes the bridge.  

The weapon goes silent, and quickly Ishirou gets an idea.  He flies around, aiming to switch into humanoid mode and land on the cannon.  With a flash of his eyes and his power armor's hand touching the top of it, he takes over controls and continues aiming it.  

"Optimizing code, taking over controls.  Aiming subroutines rerouted to your command," The POD says, connected to the flight unit in the back.

If he can get it up, he moves it into firing position and lets it rip.
Staren     Well, Staren got its attention!

    ...The problem is, now Staren has this tentacle's attention.

    She keeps making things *unpleasant* for this section of tentacles, and fires another salvo of missiles before the launcher is crunched completely, but the problem is the leviathan has a lot more tentacle while the armor just has the armor.

    There is the sound of metal beginning to crunch and crack; at least at first, Staren herself isn't squeezed, but it's only a matter of time at this rate, the kraken WILL win.

    Oh, great, now it thinks it can drown her. Stupid. The piloting suit she's wearing inside the armor has a helmet and emergency air tank; lack of oxygen is unlikely to be her cause of death here.

    Well. Eventually she'll be squeezed too tightly to breathe anymore. She has emergency measures for THAT, too. They won't last long, but they'll keep her blood oxygenated long enough for something else to go wrong. She's not actually sure whether crushing would lead to death from massive trauma *before* her heart is squeezed too tightly to circulate blood and her brain runs out of oxygen anyway; She doesn't particularly want to find out.

    Of course, while thinking of a plan to get out of this, she does KEEP FIRING, slicing blades and plasma cannons turning the water around the arms into superheated steam making sure that crushing her is at least *unpleasant* for the giant sea beast.
Lilian Rook     Lilian breathes a heavy sigh of relief at the blessed 'silence' that follow's Ishirou's hacking. At least she can hear her own thoughts. And doesn't need to scream into the radio. A moment later, she realizes the priest is thanking her. A little stunned by the noise, she waves a little lamely at him, then checks the situation with a burst of short-lived precognitive projections.

    Her attention snaps back into focus. "Kirishima; to you! I've got the hole!" Lilian takes a deep breath, backs up, and then sprints at the railing, diving smoothly over the side of the boat.

    Lilian slows her fall with flight-space magic just enough that she smoothly pierces the surface at the highest speed she can tolerate, then switches to using her body to turn in the direction of the monster. Conserving the Time she'll need, she approaches the pierced underbelly of the Semitone with a series of powerful dolphin kicks, turning only her head to assess the monster beneath the ocean. Once she's in position, Lilian places her fully charged wand to the tentacle-filled hole and--

                -----[stop]-----
    Lilian lights the tip with coruscating black-gold power, extending a beam as a shortened, high-intensity blade, which she uses to slash through the perimeter of the tentacle in contact with the hull. The blood forms a narrow ring of fresh red, unable to disperse into foggy pink. Then, she runns the occultic implement through the freshly spilled blood of a mighty creature as an impromptu sacrificial arcane medium, rapidly burning numerous runes of long winter, the cold moon, pale mists and frigid death, into the hull, connected to a simple but currently supercharged material conversion mandala. Then she bursts through the underhull, while the water currents are stopped and she can swim right up them.
                -----[start]-----

    --appears next to Kirishima, soaking wet, hair and clothes plastered to her body and gasping for air. Of course the makeup has come right off her face and exposed the slash of gold. The important thing is that the hull breach is now being rapidly filled with several feet of magical ice, which is then rapidly converted rough transparent sapphire six inches ahead of the creeping wave.
Rita Ma      The tentacles are massive, but mass means momentum, and that momentum works against them when they slam into Kale's blade-trail. One of them develops a long shallow cut that oozes bright red blood; the other is hacked halfway through by the force of its own movement, and begins to convulse before being withdrawn beneath the waves.

     That leaves him able to bring his rescuees back onto the deck, such as it is. In his absence it's been turned into a warzone, strewn with debris, rent with gashes, and in places smeared with (mostly the monster's) blood. Still, it's infinitely better than plummeting into the waves below.

     During her brief foray underwater, Lilian can catch a more complete glimpse of the monster. Blessedly, it isn't much bigger than what they've already seen (though that's plenty big in itself): its head is most of its rounded body, in place of flippers it has stubby limbs like an elephant's, and it has six tentacles, one of which has been wound around the ship's propellers. Its underbelly is the only part not covered in those armoring barnacles.

     Staren gets the same view a moment later. The boiling water absorbs much of the energy of her plasma weapons, and though it has an effect, she doesn't succeed in disabling the tentacle that's grappling her mech. It drags her rapidly closer to its gaping jaws, full of flat, grinding teeth prepared to crush her mech like a soda can.

     Kirishima is in a similar dilemma, but not yet being submerged, her weapons avail her better- not to mention that the monster can't see what it's doing in the cargo hold, and has to operate purely by feel. Pincushioning the tentacle eventually forces it to let her go; when Lilian emerges and seals up the breach, they have a weakened and partially immobilized flailing tentacle to finish off.

     It has one last weapon, though. Wherever its tentacles are above water, the symbiotic barnacles yawn open and disgorge, like anthills, carpet-thick swarms of flesh-eating lice. They swarm over the ice and sapphire in the enclosed cargo hold to menace Kirishima and Lilian; they wash over the deck to threaten Ishirou, Kale, and the rescuees.

     Ishirou, if he can buy himself a few more seconds against the tide of horrendous bugs, finds that the oversized cannon's turning speed is agonizingly slow. It's definitely meant for long-distance encounters, not getting up close and personal with a sea monster. When he finally aligns it, despite the encroaching hazards, it...

     Begins to charge. In a way it's disappointing; in another way, it's awe-inspiring. Flywheels spin up with a sweet metallic squeal. Capacitors charge, causing prickly static-electricity goosebumps. The barrel begins to glow with the color and intensity of the setting sun. In just a moment, this'll all be over.

     "Just a moment" can't come too soon. Driven again by instinct or disastrous chance, one of the beast's few remaining intact tentacles swings lazily at Ishirou and the turret, aiming to destroy it. If someone can just protect it for the precious heartbeats until it fires...
Kale Hearthward And, finally, there.

"Get lost or get armed," says Kale to his rescuees, which is his 'if left unattended I may eat raw beef' way of saying 'If you're capable, rejoin the fight, otherwise get to safety as best as you can'.

<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Hey Kale, how...powerful are the winds you can make?"
<J-IC-Scene> Kale Hearthward says, "Hurricane strength, at least."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Give me a second, and if you can aim them where I indicate, it might buy us the time we need for this /SLOW AS HELL BUT ALSO VERY COOL/ gun to fire."

"Right!" He has to leave the rescuees alone for a moment, kicking off from the deck and getting a bit of air...

... And takes a deep breath. Deeper. For several long precious seconds, he inhales, chest swelling slightly, as the wind mage does what is essentially charging up....
Ishirou The weapon is moving so slowly.  Why wouldn't they install something to make it work faster?!  He sighs, but it /does/ have the power they need.  He looks up just in time to see the mass of lice being fired at them by the monster.  Ishirou looks absolutely sickened by this because lice are the /worst/ things besides Eels to be created.  

He needs more time on the cannon because now it's charging and it /looks so goddamn cool/.  On the other hand, the lice will definitely get them first.  He asks for Kale to give him a relative strength of his winds and then hatches a plan.  

His eyes scan out while he controls the cannon.  Everything slows down for him for a moment, as his brain calculates everything on the battlefield.  The waves hitting the hull, the damage to the ship, the light charging, the people, and their placement.  The creature, where its tentacles are, and even the current wind.  Trying to count for as many factors as possible, his eyes light up.

"There!" he says, and red laser beams fire out from the shoulders of the power armor, aiming to tag several of the lice.  The idea is that it'd start a chain reaction, the wind would be able to buffet everyone, but those ones would cause a stacking collapse of their line, aiming to cause the creatures to smack into each other like a car pile up.  If his calculations were right, the majority should be also in the path of the cannon.

Hopefully, he accounted for everything.
Lilian Rook     Lilian isn't all that concerned with the tentacle. This part is the formality. It's blind, bleeding, weak and stuck. All it requires is that she unhook Night Mist, focus her energy through the gleaming (and now wet) black blade and into its luminous scarlet markings, and execute one focused, clean, and powerful "Cleasa!" straight through its savaged base, the four foot blade and an extending slash of focused power likely more than enough for the task of dismembering it at just about floor level. She slides past it on the ice, which will continue to surge to plug the breach.

    "Kirishima, I think . . ." Lilin starts, straightening up, flicking the blood off her blade (which freezes), and pushing her sodden hair out of her eyes. Then the barnacle pods open up. And all that comes out. Lilian glances down at her dark clothes clinging to her frame, and nothing else. ". . . that you can handle this. I believe in you." Lilian disappears from the hold. A handful of activated runestones scatter around where her feet just were. If Kirishima can get to them, they'll link to the icy circle and expand its effect.

    Meanwhile, Lilian reappears in the air well above the boat, where lice aren't going to get her. The wand still in her other hand, Lilian quickly flares up the requisite series of interlocking 'magical circles', spinning them up alongside the cannon, and concentrating the fast-cast stream of power into a single point of swelling monochrome distortion. Once it reaches a size she's happy with it, she aims it in the direction of the monster, and it-- implodes and disappears?

    Well no. It disjoints through spacetime, specifically into the coordinates currently being occupied by the tentacles going for the turret. It explosively collapses into a perfectly two-dimensional circular plane of '''magic''' that should lop the limb off partway, leaving it up to Kale to divert just its free mass rather than all the strength of the giant monster.

    
Kirishima The dire situation suddenly looks less dire when Lilian arrives at of nowhere. "Lilian! Just in...! Time...?" Kirishima shouts, first in relief, then in confusion at her appearance. She didn't see Lilian coming in, and she definitely wasn't expecting her to show up all wet and with an impressive gold marking that must surely have some kind of intricate backstory behind it.

Thankfully, Kirishima's actually able to keep her head in the game rather than getting too distracted, and not just because she's personally looking probably a whole lot less impressive dressed up like a glorified office worker that's just fallen into a dunk tank. As she adjusts her hold on her weapons now that she's freed, she gestures at the weakened tentacle along with the barnacles starting to swarm over that magical ice sealing up the hold.

"Lilian! Can you get more of that ice set up? I'll-eh?" Lilian.. Believes in her? Feeling a surge of pride hitting her right in the chest, Kirishima inhales slowly while keeping her expressions steady and focused. "... I've got this. Don't worry about this area!"

With that sudden morale boost and the opportunity to show off in full swing, Kirishima breaks into a sprint to start zipping about with far more fervor than she had before. She rushes towards the swarm, the hand holding the sickle slipping down to the chain so she can start spinning it to build up some much needed speed. With that, she can start lashing out with both the short blade at the overgrown lice closest to her and the chain sickle at those further away, trying to carve through as many of those creatures as she can while leaping from runestone to runestone to start activating as many of them as she can in a single bouncing maneuver.

She's fast, but not time-stopping fast. She has some fire and fire-based artillery, but freezing the rushing waters? That's something Kirishima will have to study later, but the runestones provide a better chance to see it up close, too.
Staren     Oh.

    Oh it's going to try to EAT her.

    Some primal part of her brain is very alarmed at this on top of being alarmed at impending death in general, but fortunately, Staren has enough of a plan to just GO without further thinking about it. Micro-wormholes expand...

    Staren goes catform to make room and then abandons the body. While she's out, a metal sphere with a nuclear trefoil warps inside the armor where her body WAS. A torpedo with a similar marking appears nearby and speeds away. Another body in armor appears nearby with a jetpack and flotation devices. Time is given for it to surface and begin flying into the sky before the devices arm.

    Fortunately, the tactical nuclear devices perfected by humanity during the arms race of the late 21st century emit barely any radiation: They're all boom.

    The one in the armor is connected to an inertial tracker: If it stops, or has moved to the approximate location of the monster's maw, it detonates. Also if the other one goes off. (It de-arms if flung back towards the boat.)

    The torpedo dives down, waits for the first explosion, and then comes back up to hit the monster from the opposite side. (Or just detonates itself if grabbed)

                                 ~~Meanwhile~~                                  
    Staren wanders the astral plane. A pale, colorless white spirit wandering through endless white clouds in a silvery void. Her only sense of direction is a sense that a body is close. She's been sure it's close for some time. She's not sure how long it's been. Has it been a minute yet? Has it been ten? Thirty? It's damned impossible to tell in this place. No, it can't POSSIBLY have been that long on the outside; In almost all tests she's completed body transfer in less than half a minute, usually much less.

    Somehow that's small comfort as she wanders the endless void, though.

    (It has been several seconds)
Rita Ma      The turret seems to roar as the air around its barrel becomes superheated. The carpetlike swarm of hungry lice and the sweeping tentacle both converge on it, getting harrowingly close to undoing all their efforts.

     Lilian severs the tentacle clean through. Before it's even begun to tumble, Kale blows it off-course and flings the lice back into the ocean with a gale-force wind strong enough to scour the paint from the metal deck. The amputated chunk of flesh splashes harmlessly down on the other side of the ship.

     Kirishima, down below, thins out the crowd of lice. They're unthreatening except for numbers; if they manage to sink their scissorlike jaws into her, it'll hurt, but as long as she stays mobile there's little to fear. The wounds she's previously inflicted on the tentacle cause it to succumb more easily to the ice; the blood oozing from them becomes a solid tomb. Once she's activated enough of the runestones, the weakened appendage simply shatters, and the leak is completely plugged.

     Staren succeeds in extricating herself, but no nuclear underwater explosive strong enough to slay a monster like this would leave the boat unharmed. Dull thumps and eruptions of foam follow, but it survives with a bleeding wound on its side and shattered teeth.

     The combination of all of those things makes it shriek once more, bone-rattling and raw. Its three remaining functional tentacles raise out of the water, threatening to shred the ship beyond repair.

     Then the turret fires.

     A beam of energy nearly as wide as the Semitone itself lances through the monster's eye, out the back of its rotund body, and creates a lane of boiled water out to a thousand feet behind it. Blubber and bone and organs are visible through the gaping cylindrical hole it leaves behind. They smoke and steam.

     Its tentacles go limp. Its scream is cut short. It gurgles and sinks beneath the waves, leaving behind a trail of red.

     The Semitone is still floating. The propellers are destroyed, the bridge is ruined, and the captain is dead, but all the passengers are unharmed and at least three-quarters of the cargo (thanks to the bulkheads holding) remains salvageable.

     It will definitely need to be towed somewhere. But Gravelrise, after a small delay, will have its relief.
Staren     FINALLY.

<J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Back! How long was... ten seconds?! Felt like forever..."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It felt like not long enough."
<J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Gh. You didn't even know I was gone till I said it."

    Seeing the fight is over, Staren pops her helmet and just breathes fresh air for a few seconds, hovering up there on the jetpack.

    She wonders if it'll be possible to recover things from the sea floor. She'd considered, during that whole mess, ways she could attempt to recover the wreckage of the Delilah before opting to self-destruct instead. A conversation on the radio indicates: Very possible, actually!

    The top of a giant robot surfaces near the lifeboats. It's the same one she got for exploring the area around Huffman Island. She had it following the boat in case of a sea monster fight, but uh... it just didn't work out that way when rushing to stop that tentacle from crushing (other) people took priority.

    On the bright side, this means it's still in peak condition for swimming down to recover sinking cargo! So Staren flies down to it, gives a quick smile and wave to the people on the lifeboats, then climbs in and dives.

    This is going to be slow and tedious work, isn't it...
Kirishima After a hard fought battle filled with yet more QTEs, close calls, and a lot of slashing and flipping out all over the place, Kirishima emerges victorious! Her outfit's a little torn to shreds, though, so she'll need to find some spare clothes on the way out. There's plenty of dead lice and scattered pallets and that big frozen tentacle, but spare civilian clothes in her size might prove to be a problem depending on who's still alive on this ship.

Also, the matter of sorting and identifying the dead. From what she's hearing on the radio, however, that will still need to wait. For the time being, Kirishima will just have to settle for switching to her spare ninja clothes before slipping back up onto the deck just so she can leap off the back of the ship to begin the long, arduous process of pushing it from sea level.

With any luck, she'll be able to still look cool doing this so Kale isn't the only one getting it moving.
Ishirou Ishirou breathes a huge sigh of relief, it seems that teamwork pays off.  Ishirou is starting to wonder if he can use his data collection a bit more proactively...and how far he could take this.  Thoughts for another time, as Ishirou stands up fully and considers their situation.

Ishirou sets up a SOS beacon so that they can get towed, while others try...alternative ideas.
Lilian Rook     Other than being soaked and dripping head to toe, Lilian is pretty happy with her personal condition in all this. The crystalline seal on the hull isn't all that aquadynamic, but it's good enough, and it'll hold. The lost cargo is a blow that stings, given how much trouble they'd been through to get it in the first place, but the crew had been saved the sort of demise that makes her stomach turn violently to think about. She has no trouble drifting back down to the deck, loading up a flare gun, and firing a green shell into the air for the lifeboat.

    The death of the captain is an enormous problem, though, second only to the total destruction of the ship's propulsion. The losses are barely within acceptable tolerance for the Gravelrise operational allowance, but egregious delays will tip the scales beyond that.

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "First we need to get this ship moving though."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Any plans on how to make that happen?"
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Or are we going to erect a very large sail and make Hearthward blow on it?"

    Oh. That's . . . that's apparently just the plan.

    When the crew return, Lilian is giving orders as if it's her business to do so at all. "Check the hold for any unaddressed damage or immediate points of potential failure. Do a fresh inventory of our stockpiles so we can communicate the adjusted payload ahead of time and plot our tonnage to thrust immediately. Leave one of the flood bulkheads up at all times. Someone see to the captain's body and effects, or whatever there are left. Engineering should give up on the propeller and see to the bridge; salvage any controls and equipment possible, I don't care if you have to hotwire panels like a stolen car. Medical, check all crew for injuries abovedecks; marines and the well-armed should scout below for any remaining hostiles. The Paladins are taking emergency command until we're out of danger; follow ordinary chain of command procedures once we're in friendly waters. We're following our original course immediately, so get it done yesterday."

    Not remembering the correct sea-word, Lilian just finishes with "Chop chop. Hop to it.", thankfully with the exactly correct post-crisis 'calm and in-control concrete directions' voice to at least make it happen.

    She turns out to the water and watches the slowly sinking bulk of the pulverized giant monster. Lilian thinks again about those dim, soulless eyes. That slack, gaping maw. She shudders in revulsion. Something about their random attacker bothers her, but she can't decide what.