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Ishirou	INDUS INDUS is a large city, one of the last of its kind in this version of the world.  Until recently, humans were the dominant life form, until Eggman had made his mode to robotomize them, and turn them into the new workforce.  He then turned to the Androids, their chattel slaves up until this point, and put them in charge.   Despite this change, the city has embraced the change to its new management.  Androids now running things, and the freshness of their alleviation from slavery has managed to avoid any retaliations on the now mindless humans who do the rudimentary tasks of running the city.  Of course, this wouldn't last forever.   So in a plan to extract the humans from the city, fully giving the city over to the Androids, but also aiming to remove Eggman from the control of the city, a plan has been hatched.  Several things were put into place first.  First, the commander had moved the non-combat androids to another location temporarily.  Second, the human robots were given orders to go to a certain location, so that they could be easily extracted.   The next part of this plan was that suddenly the Mana turbine would be turned on, and set to high speed.  After a while of being silent, and then being turned on at its highest setting, the Nullborn, which were monsters made of mana who seemed to be hostile to humanity and their creations, were set into a frenzy.   Their numbers grew around the city, then exploded as they started to become increasingly hostile.  So hostile that Eggman's forces couldn't ignore them and would have to defend.  This would trigger the next part of the plan.  With Androids being called to the wall to help defend, and Eggman's forces to be drawn to defend... All that was left was a two-part plan.  One group would attempt to get people on board Kale's transport ship before the Nullborn were driven away, and then escape.  The second would drop on Eggman himself, and attempt to engage him further distracting him...or kill him should the opportunity arise.   Once all these pieces were put into place, the team going for Eggman would launch, aiming to bring the Eggman down for good.   Ishirou would be part of this group, but with the R.E.S.C.U.E. Unit, he could theoretically cover multiple locations.  He would be beside this group, ready to crash down on Eggman and hopefully turn the tides on him!
Eggman	The Mana Turbine turns on, as expected. The Nullborn start acting, as intended. As intended, Eggman's garrison - the *Egg Breaker* capital airship and its mechanical complement of Combots, Swatbots, Badniks, and Egg Robos - moves to engage. The fighting becomes fierce almost immediately, fierce enough for the call to go out for reinforcements. As the plan suggests, other nearby Egg Fleet ships begin moving in to reinforce, and the turrets on the new outer ring join the fray, and FANTOM is called in. It's going exactly as the heroes want. Everything is right, exactly, on, point.      Eggman arrives.      The Egg Carrier isn't with him.      A moment of genuine vulnerability. He's not surrounded by an invincible flying fortress. He's not surrounded by his home territory.      The Egg Carrier's grounding may only be known to the Concord, but anyone can tell this is a moment of vulnerability that cannot be missed. A moment of Eggman being *alone*.      His Obligatory Boss Chair(tm) (he'll get that trademark one of these days) (multiversal law can count on it) touches down, and he disembarks. Right now...      He'll never be more vulnerable than he is *right now*.
Kale Hearthward	"Welcome aboard East Wind Airlines! Please board in an orderly but expedious manner, as there are approximately eighty thousand of you. Please note that there is no drink service on this flight, as you are all currently robots. Also the space warping enchantments we recently placed on the aircraft seem to be interfering with the on-board wifi, so... no in-flight movie either! This is your East Wind deck crew, hoping you have a pleasant voyage, which is assured because any place is going to be better than right here in a few minutes." Hazelthistle (call sign East-2) sets down her PA mic and glances over at the ship's captain (call sign Boots-1). "Kale, all green?" "All green... wait." He glances at the tactical readout. "There's... no egg carrier." "He's alone." He gets up. "We can't let this opportunity pass us by. We can finish this right here and right now." "That's - this can't not be a trick or a trap or... something." "Doesn't matter. Watch the ship. Get ready to launch once it's all loaded." --- Hello Eggman. Here's your introduction to Kale Hearthward. He's clearly one of those pesky animal people of the sort that keep bothering you, this time with a sword gimmick. There's no heroic speeches, though. He's just flying in low and quick, sword drawn, trying to cut Eggman into two pieces in passing.
Ishirou	There would be no shouting or screaming at Eggman.  No recriminations or heroic speeches.  Lilian made it clear what kind of mission this was.  Even Ishirou felt it was wrong to kill someone, they had to push with everything to make sure he stayed away from the city long enough to get the people out.   So when Eggman appeared, the RESCUE unit, in flight mode dips out of the clouds and unleashes a barrage of missiles.  All of them homing in on Eggman, all of them focusing on him.  However, the majority of his focused effort isn't on this attack. Instead, he's feeding data to someone else, someone getting ready with something of their own attempt on Eggman.  This shot only comes once in a while.
S6	As Eggman departs the Egg Pod to get a better idea of what the Actual Hell is going on, something metallic collides with concrete. To either side of him, sword blades jam out through the landing deck. In a swift motion, both swords circle around him, sending up trails of sparks. The floor is quite suddenly thrust upward into the ceiling.     The two swords recede back to the person they belong to-- Striker Six, as she leaps out of the hole she'd just made-- where they neatly fold across her back. She's in the same outfit from the Oblivion Protocol mission; the black dress with bright blue highlights. In the fading light, it becomes clear the blue and orange parts have a slight glow to them, accentuating her silhouette.     The concrete slab she'd lifted glows with the runic rings of the VRCS, which abruptly fade and drop the steel-reinforced block back into its hole with a colossal, bone-jarring bang.     S6's silence is less strange compared to the others. She isn't usually that talkative while working.
Futaba Nuki	Thus far, Futaba has never met Doctor Eggman. She's heard of his exploits, of course, and his cruelty towards his enemies along with his showmanship towards also his enemies. She's heard plenty from him over the radio, largely from listening in rather than directly speaking to him, but she's never really entertained the thought of actually meeting him face to face or fighting him like so many others have tried to before. Today, that's finally going to change. Joining in the attack on Eggman is another one of those pesky sort-of animal people, albeit with a more human-y face despite the raccoon-like markings on her face, the giant leaf flapping against her forehead without coming off, and a raccoon-like tail that's nearly as large as her torso. She doesn't actually have a lot to say just yet, but that's because she's visibly excited. After all, she's coming face to face with THE Eggman, and she needs to make sure she can make a good first impression in fighting him even with so many people already aiming for his head. Instead of just trying to crash into him with that oversized tail, Futaba's tail gleams as it grows to nearly double her size in that dive while taking on a more stony appearance. It crashes down at him with the same weight and impact a stone of that weight would have, too, likely embedding into the ground while somehow allowing Futaba enough flexibility to sling some extra shuriken his way just to try and keep the Doctor on his toes.
James Bond	As defenders both android and robotic rush to the walls to stem the advance of the Nullborn, swarming from garrisons on the ground and from the Egg Breaker, a lone individual stalks between alleyways, breaking sightlines with buildings and taking advantage of the chaos to make a path through the city. He's dressed like a rank-and-file FANTOM defender, appearing as if he's meant to be here, in those moments where he has to cut across major roads or wide-open spaces--but he's not one.      His path traces a more-or-less straight line to a building with roof access. A heavy-looking weapon case bounces on his back as he ascends flight after flight of stairs, practically sprinting up without any sign of tiring. The building, having been evacuated for the attack, is eerily empty on his way up. Theoretically, the rooftop gives him a vantage point on the Nullborn attacking at the wall. More plausible deniability, thanks to the disguise.      But the weapon is not from this world. It's an Earth weapon--a preference of the man in the disguise. A compact, bullpup configuration sniper rifle, with a wooden stock and a bipod mounted along either side of the frame, complete with a high powered scope. Bond, knelt on the rooftop, has chosen a vantage point a few blocks away from Seras, intending to create a crossfire.      A detachable magazine is slotted into the rifle, the bolt pulled back. Bond rests the legs of the forward-mounted bipod down, lies prone, and finds his target. He waits, exhaling, the doctor's person showing up in the scope. Bond shifts his aim, the crosshair moving towards Eggman's hip.      After a steadying breath, Bond pulls the trigger.
Tamamo	Tamamo worked with Kale to help set up the ship for taking on even more passengers, but that was all prep work. Hurried prep work, but something she's used to doing. Blessed talismans supercharge key magical systems to keep everything running smoothly with the extra load, and boundary-marking talismans 'create' more space inside existing rooms. This is usually near-permanent work, but under the circumstances, and being set inside a mobile platform, it's probably going to unravel in a week or two. That leaves plenty of time for their purposes.     Tamamo isn't on the ship at the time the operation activates, though. She's not especially stealthy, even under motivated circumstances like these. For that reason, she doesn't take any sort of offensive action at all until she's well away from the plan's designated loading zones, looking out from between two buildings. Once she starts working her magic, there are all sorts of ways for sensors to spot her, given one had the idea of looking for nearby mages or divinities.     The lack of appearance of the carrier has her cautious. What plan is being set in motion? There's no reason for Dr. Eggman to show up without it, is there? No, surely, there must. She's simply unaware of what it could be. It's either needed elsewhere, or its presence would interfere with something that its owner currently intends.     Though her presence is certainly easy to spot, exactly what she first attempts to do is much less so. Sorting out the 'threads' in which she views Fate, Tamamo looks for the ones that will reveal Eggman's plan. It's less mind-reading than it is future-reading. With what she learns, she'll be better equipped to aid any aspect of her cause.
Seras Victoria	The moment that Eggman departs his capital ship, the skies fill with a dizzying flurry of blazing metal and explosions. An onslaught of mass-produced, utterly mundane artillery fire. There's nothing fancy about it at a glance: a barrage of 30mm high-explosive, armor-piercing shells coming from... the city?     Nothing fancy except for... one thing.     The aim is deadly. Despite the distance, the winds, and other forces that make such shots difficult, the only thing that will save Eggman's mechanical minions is well-timed dodging.     Tracing the fire back to its source shows... Seras Victoria, standing tall atop one of Indus's tallest buildings, eyes aglow with hellish crimson determination and brows furrowed with the focus of someone putting their all into doing their one job, holding nothing back.     She wears quite the feat of engineering: a vampire-portable artillery platform. Two massive ammo drums strapped tightly to her back, belt-feeding a pair of cannons with shell after shell. Every press of the trigger sends another shell flying. Looking from afar, it looks like full-auto fire, an unceasing stream of explosions spitting hot projectiles at the skies.     But Seras's gaze sweeps this way and that, drawing a bead on every little thing moving in the skies and differentiating everything scurrying along the ground. Every target gets the same amount of subjective care as a master sniper's deadly precision.     "Welcome to Indus, Doctor." She states to the wind.
Blemishine	In the leadup to this operation, Maria had insisted to Ishirou that she give the R.E.S.C.U.E. unit her own look-over to make sure all systems were running as well as they could and construction was solid. She's been rather busy back home lately, getting Things in order, so the fact she did so implies the obvious - she's worried about him. More than a little.     The fact this is partially an assassination mission hasn't excluded her from being willing to join either; it might have necessitated some thought, but to ensure that the robotimized humans of INDUS will be able to be evacuated, so that the androids can truly have their society to their own...and for Ishirou's sake...     That, and she has an almost awful feeling that Eggman isn't the kind of man who'd simply let himself be killed that easily, no matter how well they plan things out. That story about his grandfather is still clear in her head, and the absence of his carrier feels glaring. How true all that is...     They'll find out. The blonde-haired knight, having been perched in waiting position until now, plants a foot against the ledge of a rooftop - and leaps, as the others begin their assault in earnest. Her attack isn't so direct as theirs, but it's no less potentially fatal given some of the things coming his way.     A sword held aloft, and a bright, momentary flash of focused light meant to either force his attention away or blind his vision entirely, for a few precious moments. That's all it'll take, for plenty of these.
Lilian Rook	Of course Lilian has deployed with Tamamo. This is not so much a tactical necessity as it is that Tamamo is the only thing that Lilian truly values on this entire battlefield, and Lilian is the only asset that Lilian trusts with her; but they do make an excellent team, and she has planned accordingly.     Already wearing the Lady in Black, Lilian has taken the time to gear herself up properly, strapping cellphone-sized carry cases and strings of semirigid materiel holsters over the top of where she can most easily reach, keeping Night Mist sheathed in a properly forged hard-scabbard at her back for ease of access, Winter Crow held to one thigh, and her folded up tactical wand from Sword Team on the other. She paces around the remains of a divination circle, recently drawn in untranslatable runes(?) and freshly smeared catalyst. Her hand hovers over the radio's talk function, talking constantly while she watches the FANTOM tactical feed and Ishirou's uplink out of the corner of her eye with a StarkTech projector embeded in her earpiece.     "He's landing out in the open when he doesn't have to; he knows something. Don't range your shots for volley two. Discard any preconceptions and assume he has contingencies. Move immediately to secondary attack plan, then clear the area and zone for overwhelming barrage. Bond, move with me once we have close fire support to secure the termination. Ishirou, I'm routing my signal to you; I can get close without being hit, so bounce it back at our sharpshooters. Futaba, Blemishine, place yourselves blocking the mana turbine and the FANTOM tower; keep opposite quarters to him and don't bunch up. Hearthward, press aggressivley and push the battle line back like we discussed. We'll need periactus for the machinery. Synchronize round two on my mark."     For now, she's in the oversight and planning phase, but she already has multiple layers of strategic approach decided on days, weeks, in advance. Lilian is only waiting for Eggman to make his first move before she determines which option chain to pursue; at that point, she'll leave Tamamo (in as far as she ever really 'leaves' Tamamo) to join the frontline as well.
Eggman	Missiles.      "What the devi-"      The missiles come down *hard* and *fast*. Eggman scrambles around to try and avoid the explosions. He runs left. He runs right. His too-long too-skinny legs wheel like a cartoon character around the explosives. He actually trips as the swords come up under the floor, falling *just* before the floor hits the city overhang.      It's all that saves him from being smashed by both the falling concrete and Kale's sword-slash. Instead of a dead-on blow the sword scrapes across Eggman's belly with the sound of metal against metal and sends him bouncing backwards, until he rolls to a stop against Futaba's tail-rock with a hard *thud*. The threads of fate aren't favoring him all that much today, are they, Tamamo?      Then again, Eggman's never been one to let supernatural entities tell *him* what to do. No, normally he's the one in that position. hashtag Eggboss.      Eggman moves to stand. Blemishine's light flashes into his eyes. James Bond shoots him right in the hip (a cry of "GYAH!" can *just* barely be heard over everything else going on). He falls backwards against the rock-tail again and vanishes into a hail of dust and shrapnel under the sniper shots. Glass rains down from on high.      It is going *flawlessly*.      For a heart-stopping moment it looks like he's even dead.      Then, there's a loud, wet, pseudo-mechanical *cough*.      Screens all over Indus turn on. TV screens. Blimp screens. Computer screens. Just like with his bounty post.      Just, this time, instead of the Eggman Empire logo, it's his face.      He coughs across a multitude of displays. "I really must remember..." Another cough, "To thank my other self if I ever do meet him, if only briefly."      Eggman stands, unsteadily.      He shouldn't be *alive* right now. He should also be bleeding. He should be bleeding big, goopy, red pools of blood, and-      -and...not...      Oil?      Wait.      "I admit, you forced my hand. With the Egg Carrier out of commission I had to come here personally, and with all available Egg Empire units diverted to honor my promise with I1 - a promise I believe I can now quite safely *revoke*, after this admittedly date-appropriate betrayal - I was most concerned about what to do."      He's holding his side as he straightens. There's some sparks at his hip. He's limping slightly away from the rock. "I knew you'd try to oust me at some point. An obvious decision." Another cough over every screen. "But I didn't quite know when until yesterday. Doesn't give me a lot of time to plan, does it?"      Finally, he straightens. The cuts along his body are...not healing. They're deep and unpleasant. And they're also cut into metal.      And in an instant Ishirou and anyone else who's had any contact with a Roboticized citizen at all knows exactly what he's done.      "A bit of a Hail Mary, really. And serendipitous that your plan hinged on the Mana Turbine being activated. Honestly, any other means of luring me and I might've been caught with my pants down. But!" His gloved finger rises. "Never let it be said that Ivo Robotnik doesn't understand the necessity of luck."      That finger goes ominously to his glasses. The shadow falls across his face.      The Grin.
Eggman	And then, out in the desert, there is a horrible, mechanical roar, loud enough to punch through all the noise of combat.      "You don't *honestly* think that a resource as marvelous as the Nullborn was of no interest to the great Dr. Eggman, did you?" The screens ask as Eggman himself stumbles backwards into his Pod. "Come, now. Put two and two together. I've been Robotomizing and Roboticizing them for weeks. Most of them aren't on Indus, of course, wouldn't do for you to learn about that even though I *thought* you had already figured that out..."      A shadow carves its way across the sky as the sand begins to slough away in the distance. Something enormous lopes free from subterranean imprisonment. Tall, and long, and broad, with eight massive arms and eight massive eyes across three massive heads, with three great tails - one a stinger, one a *cannon*, one an enormous jet, with three vast maws full of more than one row of titanic teeth *each*.      In his seat, with a bit of wooziness, Eggman removes a recorder from his pocket. He's not really used to being this sort of thing right now, so his voice broadcasts across all the devices he's already in. "Note to self. Remember to thank Dr. Thorne for her insight. 350% more Nullborn per Nullborn is indeed very efficient." Then he tucks the recorder back into his pocket and says, more clearly to the crowd, "BEHOLD! THE *EGG HYDRA!*"      Three heads let out an enormous roar as it takes off for a run towards the now-empty city and the heroes thus assembled. A barrage of missiles launched from its back is all the excuse Eggman needs to start flying the hell away in his pod.
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, Petra Soroka says, "I--won't be able to help with the, the mission. Tomorrow." PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, Petra Soroka says, haltingly, "I need to. I. I can't be around her. And I wouldn't really contribute much anyways." PHONE: Ishirou says, "Oh...oh...that's okay. I'm sorry...but thanks for telling me." PHONE: Ishirou says, "What...did you think I was going to be upset?" PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, Petra Soroka says, "A little. I mean, I'm bailing on helping you free your home because Rook was mean to me." PHONE: Phoning Ishirou, Petra Soroka says, "That's pathetic. You can be mad."     It seems Petra got over whatever depressive spiral was preventing her from aiding the assassination attempt. The Kana hovers over Indus, arriving before anyone else, seeming almost embarrassed in how it hangs back while the heroes make their entrances. After Eggman touches down, the flying mech slowly lowers onto the roof of a building near the staging ground, without any urgency.     In plain sight. And Eggman doesn't seem to give it a second thought.     The Kana touches down on the ground and holds an anticipatory breath, before settling down on its four bulky legs and quieting its engines. The hatch twists open, and someone who should be Petra hops out, jumping directly from the cockpit to the asphalt ground below.     Everything about her is off and off-putting. She looks clean and refreshed, her bangs lazily curled to frame her face rather than tucked away into the rest of her bob cut. It's the first time anyone's seen her wearing lipstick, subtle though it may be. A tasteful level of makeup is layered on her face, slight eyeliner made all the more striking by its expected absence, though stark purple marks grip tightly around her neck still. She's wearing a cute yellow blouse, a denim skirt fastened with a flower-shaped buckle, over which is her ever-present jacket and boots. But the most visible change about her, the thing she uses to slow her impact into the ground with a booming report, is the new weapon she holds, gripped in two hands.     Looking like a stockless shotgun with a heavy metal bayonet, more dials and switches cover its handle than a typical gun should have. Petra seems to hold it with trepidation, as if she's afraid that it's going to bite her, and when she swings it onto her shoulder, everyone can see a glimpse of the bright red Eggman Empire logo on the base of the grip.
Petra Soroka	Petra glances across the swarming Paladins with an awkward expression on her face. There's more of them than I thought. Petra releases an anticipatory breath, and clenches her fist tightly enough that nails draw blood. They'd all find out eventually. Might as well make a confident debut.     Looking up at Ishirou spiraling through the air is dizzying, for a moment, but the feeling rapidly metastasizes into anger. Hurt him and everyone will flock to his defense unquestioningly. No more equivocating. Petra swings her shotgun off her shoulder viciously enough that the tip of its blade bites into the asphalt, then fires to fly up, over, and then on top of Ishirou, landing with both boots heel-first on his back.     Petra bends down, and the moment before she tries to speak, her chest seizes up, constricting her voice to a hoarse whine.     "Hey. Funny seeing you here." She inhales shakily, "You know, I really wish you took my advice. This only has to hurt as much as you make it, Inspector Unit Four."     A moment of hesitation, and Petra twists the muzzle of her shotgun a few degrees away from Ishirou's head, firing a deafening blast of flame and smoke right next to his ear and kicking off his back. She twists around midair, landing softly on the ground with her shotgun readied in front of her, warily scanning the field full of new opponents until she finds the one she's looking for.     Petra tries to suppress all the quakes shaking through her body as she steps up to Lilian, staying a healthy twenty paces away. Her mouth feels dry, and any preconceived declarations of intent are wiped from her brain.     Hoarsely, Petra practically stage whispers her greeting. "Hey."
S6	-ALERT-     S6's approach ceases when her POD chimes, a second or so before Eggman stands up again. She inclines her head with a small, unreadable frown. The roar causes her head to turn, but she does not take her eyes off the Doctor as he gloats and postures.     The Hydra swoops overhead and crashes down. Bombarded with missiles, those that would impact her directly are mysteriously pulled off course while she pulls her armss up defensively. By the time she lowers them, Eggman's booking it to the Egg Pod and flying away.     "I do not think so."     A faint hum spins up inside the android as she reaches forward. Golden rings form around the Egg-Pod, then constrict-- surrounding Eggman himself and his metal body with the runic ring of the VRCS. She wrenches back in an effort to tear him right out of the vehicle, hurling the robotomized Doctor Eggman right at the Egg Hydra at entirely unsafe velocities.     "Ishirou!" -- whether it's a too-late warning to the sudden threat presented by Petra or a right-after reaction to what happened to him isn't entirely clear.
Lilian Rook	Lilian is up on top of the nearest building, then she is out on the street. She breathes a strange sort of sigh when Eggman gets up, alive. §Within projection. I did say he wouldn't get himself killed over this city. Still . . .§ The Hydra is of course, the worst possible answer to the operation they've chosen, but though she'd entertained the faint possibility §It was better to dwell on the future than in the past back then.§ but it's still a problem they can solve with overwhelming firepower. Lilian didn't care to argue the distraction at the time. §Too busy thinking about whether this is even the right thing to do. Whether they deserve salvation at all. If this were my home, if they were the people I remember, I wouldn't want anyone to save them. I'd--§ This is a clear situation. It can be righted with a fight. No matter how difficult Eggman makes it, even he knows it's his last spiteful goodbye to the mean joke that has already run its course.     Boots on the ground at the main thoroughfare, sprinting towards the Hydra's entry path, Lilian sees the roar of the Kana overhead. §I've seen this before. There are two ways this ends. Please, for once, let it be the right once. Let something good happen, please.§ She sees Petra dismount, and knows, instantly, that something is wrong. She sees Ishirou go down. She slides to a halt. Her fingers tap against her earpiece, but only a desolate sigh comes out. Precisely ten seconds of silence pass.     §You knew this would happen. You've been here before. Don't let it get to you. Don't let it register. Even if all the right motions are death, you can change it. Going off-script will work out, somehow. It usually does.§     Lilian tilts her head slightly, and speaks into the mouthpiece. "We're on this fork. That's . . . No, that's fine. Someone get to Ishirou, then continue with the strategy I outlined with Kratia. No notes. I'll handle the speedbump." Then she double taps. The receiving blink cuts out. Dim noise plays from the earpiece instead, inaudible from where Petra stands. Lilian's eyes wander visibly to the new weapon, and a joyless smirk crosses her lips. She detaches Winter Crow from her hip, checking the en-bloc with a flick and release, and unshoulders Night Mist, still sheathed, with her other arm.     "Nice gun. Did your new dad pick it out for you?"
Kale Hearthward	A lot of shocking things happen. Somehow, Eggman revealing that he robotized himself doesn't break into the top three. "Soroka..." Kale clutches his sword with both hands. "I knew you were low, but you've found entirely new depths to sink to, haven't you..." He wants, very much, to go stab Petra right now. Right in the back. End this all really quickly. He has to wonder if this is even the worst thing she'll end up doing before it's all over. If he'll look back on this day and think man was it nice when all Soroka was doing was screwing over tens of thousands of people. ... Lilian's dealing with it, though. And he can always go track her down and deal with her permanently later. Eyes forward. Focus. One threat elimination at a time. > "Hearthward, press aggressivley and push the battle line back like we discussed. We'll need periactus for the machinery." "Well ahead of you, Rook..." He breathes into his sword. It unfolds, and starts spinning up, changing into drill mode... ... And he takes off again, aiming directly at the hydra's center of mass. Even if he can't literally drill all the way through it, he's going to halt its advance...!
Ishirou	What happens next happens so fast for Ishirou.  The operator at the Turbine calls out, warning them that it's stuck.  That's /bad/, it means that they'd have to spend time tearing it apart the moment Eggman's gone.  That'll make cleaning up harder. The Roar in the desert gets his attention.  His scans cause him to pale a little, he didn't consider the implication of what is happening.  The idea of the Turbine being messed with makes even more sense.  He was ready for this... CRACK. Ishirou's caught in a fall, as the heels of Petra smash into his back, and the two fall.  Hitting the ground he can't turn to face Petra, who fires a shotgun shot right into his ear, causing the ringing.  Though that's not the worse thing she has done.  That name sticks in his mind, it's something he struggles with every day.  Those words probably struck a dagger into his heart more than what she has just done. The missiles from the Hydra crash into his prone form, and he barely manages to roll to avoid the full spread...but it was already terribly painful.  Ishirou lies there, on the ground facing up.  POD sends repeated requests for his status, but Ishirou is...hurt in a way that physical pain pales in comparison to.  He, again, tried to put others over...not only himself but those close to him. He ignored Lilian, he tried...he really did try to help Petra.  Tears well up in his eyes, and worse...he'd put everyone he cares about in danger...his own home... The RESCUE unit was damaged, but not destroyed.  He hovers slowly up, wiping the tears out of his eyes.  People want to keep hurting him.  Denying his existence...taking advantage of him.  Is this...what it was like to really be human?  To hurt others so badly?  To live only for your own needs..?  To deny everything around yourself?  Were people like Lilian the exceptions?   He wipes the tears from his eyes.   The Hydra was heading for the city, Eggman was escaping.  Pride would dictate that he should go after Eggman, that he should stop him.  Put it was /that/ human emotion that got him here.  Disgusted with it, he instead turns towards the Hydra.  He flies, straight for it, and then over it.  He is already scanning it, trying to look for a weakness, trying to see how close to its original biology it maintained.   "POD, load the launcher.  Reroute the ACWS to control the shell.." he says, and fires.  The electromagnetic system locks on to the fired shell, and then gives it a speed boost, aiming to try and propel it for the back of the Hydra at much /faster/ speeds.   "This is my fault...again...and I'm going to fix it.  I promise.."
Seras Victoria	Seras was more focused on the Badniks and other minions than Eggman himself, as the chances of a shot striking an alley when others were closing in for melee was fairly high. Nevertheless, any Badniks near him were certainly targeted.     And plenty of badniks have certainly gotten their due attention. Still, the relentless fire finally comes to a stop, courtesy of the rampaging Egg Hydra making its sudden appearance.     Seras stops firing and, instead, just stares for about five seconds. "How does something that big.. move so--!" Nope, no finishing that sentence. The scream of missiles being let loose and a fair amount of them coming her way. Seras takes aim and fires, even shooting down a small percentage of them... before there's a misfire, one of the shells cooking off a mere ten feet in front of her. Resultingly, Seras ceases firing to protect her self... and is thus set upon by missile after missile. She leaps and spins this way and that trying to dodge, but, weighed down by the Harkonnen II, they inevitably catch up to her. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. They scorch her undead flesh and leave her uniform's exterior in charred tatters, but she rises from the dust remarkably intact, and still armed. Somehow, her weapon's ammo belts remain intact.     She now aims both barrels down at the approaching monstrosity, aiming for its heads, all of three!     She's got plenty more 30mm explosive shells where the first batch came from.     "That thing's huge. Is even THIS gun going to be enough to put a dent in it...?!"
Futaba Nuki	At first, it looks like the mission might have gone far too well. It's certainly not the type of finish Futaba was expecting nor the dramatic battle she would have been hoping for, but her unease is quickly answered when she realizes from both the smell of what's dripping out of Eggman isn't blood, but oil, and what she just slammed into wasn't armored flesh, but metal. "Doctor Eggman...! We should've known you wouldn't be out here directly. That would've made things too..." What was the word again? "... Anticlimactic, especially for you. You might not have had a lot of time to plan, but you must have something up your sleeves!" Her hunch is proven true when, after that ominous grin hits the screen, that chilling roar comes out from the thing christened the Egg Hydra. Futaba's gaze goes upwards when she sees that multi-headed monstrosity coming out of the sand, and fighting orders are relayed to her and the rest of the Paladins courtesy of Lilian. 'Futaba, Blemishine, place yourselves blocking the mana turbine and the FANTOM tower; keep opposite quarters to him and don't bunch up.' "Same plan... Got it! Even if this Egg Hydra's way bigger than the Doctor himself, that just means we need to go bigger." She glances over at her allies, notably looking towards S6 and Ishirou for a little extra guidance there. "Er. Right?" Of course, as she looks back over at Ishirou, Petra's come down to make her grand debut, and there's a long moment when the ninja stares at her, completely dumbfounded at what's just happened. "...Wha? You're involved in all this, too?" She's clearly trying to sound annoyed, but there's some element of excitement in Futaba's tone as she looks from Petra to Ishirou to Lilian. Before she can indulge in whatever it is that's running through her head about this unexpected turn of events, though, Futaba's attention goes right back to the Egg Hydra as it starts launching so many missiles all over the place. Still committed to the outlined plan, Futaba starts running straight at the giant, zipping from spot to spot to avoid direct collisions with any of those missiles and turning herself into a more watery form to disperse the shock from those explosions she can't so easily evade. "Darn it... We'll figure your stuff out later!" Futaba shouts at Petra before looking back at the Egg Hydra with her still-watery head. Once she's on a direct collision course with it, she takes on a physical form once again. Springing up off the ground with a massive push, the ninja's body expands and grows heavier once again, forming herself into a giant metal spike with legs to slam herself into the great beast's center mass before starting to shove herself in deeper, feet crunching into the ground to try and anchor herself and the Egg Hydra to stall its advance for at least a few moments.
Eggman	"Oogh, I think I need to lie down-"      Eggman's head is *swimming*. That's because it's split across Every Computer On Indus right now, and, well, they don't talk about what a hasty transition from human to mechanical does when the human isn't being mentally shut down. Ivo Robotnik (Ver. Mobian) never thought about that kind of thing because why would he? It was a device for slavery. Sure, it might've been a health-care machine briefly, but that stopped pretty much immediately after Jules. And Ivo (Ver. Mobian) was perfectly content with the slow, steady cyberneticization for himself. Roboticizers are for slavery.      Ivo Robotnik (Ver. Eggman) is now reaping the rewards(?) of that thoughtless, petty cruelty. It's poetic.      "-you won't get away!" Eggman responds to S6, latching onto the only words he heard from her - and then is immediately *latched onto*. Magitech! Was there ever a more worthless word? Just call it tech- no, hang on, that's not the issue right now, focus, focus-      The pod is ripped open. Eggman's fingers cling to the edge of the door as S6 tries to rip him free. With a sudden burst of mechanically-charged hypergenius he manages to reorient himself long enough to trigger the deroboticizer subroutine.      It works.      He wasn't actually sure it would.      There's a victorious laugh from the Eggman. It's not at S6, it's not at Ishirou. It's at himself (ver. Mobian). His consciousness goes from All Across The World to Right Here; he ceases to be something impossibly vast and becomes merely Eggman again.      Eggman, covered in cuts and bruises and burns and with a hole in his hip.      The sudden blast of pain knocks his fingers free. He falls.      The Egg Pod breaks from the VRCS with a wrenching crack and catches him. It sinks briefly under his weight and then resumes rising as Eggman shakes his head clear.
Blemishine	If there was any crash course needed for how far Dr. Eggman is willing to go, this is one of them.     The turbine was sabotaged. He converted the Nullborn. More than that, he had converted /himself/.     And he figured out what they were going to do...yesterday?     It's all a lot to take in, as Blemishine lands on the ground with wide eyes - and the monstrous Egg Hydra hits the scene. She's absolutely beholding it...for as least as long as it takes the storm of missiles to come down, forcing her to snap out of any mile-a-minute thoughts and get moving. At a sprint.     She's fast, and though ballistics in that amount are impossible to entirely avoid the splash radius of no matter how she weaves and darts through explosions, shield braced against heat and force, to get clear of the assault and into something resembling a more proper position. When she breaks free of smoke and debris, she can see Eggman trying to make his escape, the Kana's landing, and...     "Ishirou--!" She had missed the obvious signs, in the chaos, despite those golden eyes of hers. She missed even the Eggman Empire logo emblazoned on Petra's gun, while she was making to meet the Egg Hydra on its approach and leap high - to land boots-first on one of its legs, and let momentum and speed keep carrying her higher along the limb. Until it runs out, and her blade stabs into its hide to catch her.     Maria's so shocked as the gunshot goes out that she nearly falls off the creature, right there. It's only after Ishirou returns to the fight that she grimaces and swallows, using her leverage to swing away - onto a nearby building's wall, and then use it as a jumping-off point to ascend even higher to get onto the thing's back.     With a few more gashes for good measure, making her way towards the necks.
Tamamo	Tamamo runs toward the turbine. In so doing, she's also running toward what the Egg Hydra is drawn to -- at least, it should be, if it behaves as a Nullborn. Perhaps it isn't drawn to the same things, and is fully controlled, and the center of the city is merely a general area toward which a city-destroying beast would travel. In any case, she expects to be in danger throughout the journey.     And she is, with the missile barrage coming down, but she's reading the path ahead of herself, finding where she can go while being struck with the least force, her wards still holding. Leaving it to others to be daring and brave in more direct ways, the bunrei focuses on her own defense as she runs, making a flashy appearance of fluttering and chiming gold and dark robes all the way to her destination.     Eggman is getting away, but she'd only agreed with the assassination plan insofar as it 'would' work, for the goal they were seeking. It's certainly not out of any love for the man -- if anything, her feelings are sharply negative -- but she can't see herself as an assassin. So much easier to focus on the threats before her.     The turbine is constantly drawing power up from the planet. Even if it's a sophisticated machine, the method is simple, and it's stationary. If she acts to ruin the city's geomancy then the power below will divert, dropping the output of the turbine even as it still functions. It will take time, but this isn't her first or second visit.     I can do this.     This only leaves a portion of her attention left over to work with the others. She can't help being in the danger zone at all, and she probably can't help attracting specific attention from something with that many eyes to spare, but her work is still, mostly, subtle. She sends out talismans to fly from her position toward the allies she intuits as most in need of additional power and blessings. Blessing weaponry is something she can do, too. Just slap those ofuda on like stickers.
James Bond	>Bond, move with me once we have close fire support to secure the termination.      "Roger." Oil spills from a bullet wound, magnified in the WA2000's scope. Bond's finger rests on the trigger. Another twitch could do more damage, but that's making assumptions about the design of Eggman's body--and ignoring the shadow crawling across the ground.     Bond pulls back from the scope in time to witness Petra's assault on Ishirou. The corners of his mouth flick downwards in a sharp, determined scowl. <Tac-Paladins> [4] Lilian Rook sighs desolately into her receiver. Precisely ten seconds of dead air follow. <Tac-Paladins> [4] Lilian Rook says, "We're on this fork. That's . . . No, that's fine. Someone get to Ishirou, then continue with the strategy I outlined with Kratia. No notes. I'll handle the speedbump."     "Understood."     S6 is pursuing Eggman. Or his duplicate. Bond isn't sure what's going on, there. He's only sure of the mission, which is to get him out of Indus, one way or the other--and the new, emergent objective Petra has caused. 'Getting Ishirou' will fall to him, then.      A passing FANTOM craft catches his eye, on its way to handle the so-called Egg Hydra. Bond fires the remaining five rounds at the Hydra in quick succession, the semi-auto rifle's loud cracks mixing with the din of battle.      He then abandons it, leveling his wrist at the passing air-ground support unit, rolling back the sleeve of his FANTOM uniform. A standard-issue Paladins wristwatch lies beneath, and with a press of the stop, a dart flies from a concealed chamber along the front of the watch. It strikes the aircraft, and a surge of electrical current washes over it immediately after, stopping it dead in its tracks and opening the cockpit.      As the pilot hurriedly attempts diagnostics, Bond races for the edge of the builing and takes a flying leap, landing on the craft's body. "Terribly sorry. Unplanned layover," he says to the bewildered pilot, before his fist crashes into their throat. Unclasping the safety harness, Bond tosses the stunned pilot safely onto the roof, then climbs into the cockpit and mashes the stop on his watch again.      The armored canopy closes overhead, a digital display of the surroundings lighting up around him in piecemeal.      <Tac-Paladins> [4] Ishirou sniffling, "This is my fault...again...and I'm going to fix it. I promise." <Tac-Paladins> [4] S6 says, "Ishirou..." <Tac-Paladins> [4] James Bond says, "Stop." <Tac-Paladins> [4] James Bond says, "You didn't put thoughts into that misguided little idiot's head." <Tac-Paladins> [4] Ishirou says, "It...it's like you tried to tell me with Nazca, James. Lilian tried to warn me, but I thought I could help everyone. I didn't see the signs..." <Tac-Paladins> [4] Ishirou says, "It was my arrogance."      "There are people you can still help. Right here in this city. Worry about them. Not her." The stolen aircraft curves in a tight loop to support Ishirou, a mounted cannon beneath the nose swiveling to provide suppressive fire on the Hydra's tails following Ishirou's assault. As he makes his pass, Bond coaxes the craft into a pre-emptive roll to avoid reprisals.
Petra Soroka	Relief. It's done, the battle lines are drawn. All Petra can do now is keep going forwards.     Her shoulders relax, she coquettishly twists the toe of her boot into the ground, and a stupid smile crawls across her face. Lilian responded with another insult, not with a silent, efficient attack. That means she understands the setup, agrees with the pacing of the scene. She has the same vision of their rivalry that Petra does, despite all her protests otherwise.     "At least this one never hits me!" Petra lackadaisically calls out, spinning the shotgun in her hand. It's *so much easier*, just *saying* things, without needing to worry about the other person. Maybe Lilian feels the same way.     The gunblade's rotation stops, pointing at the ground, and with an echoing boom Petra launches herself upwards, scarring the asphalt with buckshot. Plummeting down directly over Lilian, Petra predictably has the bladed underside of the shotgun raised up in an overhead swing, to directly and effectively transfer the impact of her fall into the strike. Just before getting in range, she shifts her grip on the weapon, flipping a switch to create a flurry of mechanical motion across the length of the weapon.     The grip swings around to click into place in line with the barrel, becoming a hilt. Petra's grip tightens on the still-present trigger, and a muffled explosion vibrates through the sword without releasing a shell. Instead, sharply sliding along a track within the machinery, the bayonet blade launches forwards with shocking force, snapping into place at the end of the barrel to create a full-length, two-handed sword, curved slightly at the tip. The extended sword juts unexpectedly past where Lilian expected the collision to happen, and after slicing at her, the blade retracts back into its original position.     Petra lands unsteadily a few feet away from Lilian, then rights her posture and grins with adrenaline coursing through her. "Anyways! I came up with the idea! He just made it. Wasn't it the same for you?"
Eggman	The advent of the Egg Hydra - and truly it *must* be called an advent, for its arrival is assuredly as notable an event as the creature itself - is not without pushback even from a few of its own kind. Other Nullborn understand that this thing is a predator to them, too. A few of them try and get in its way and are *obliterated* by its mass.      It's a distraction, though, and enough of one to ensure that Kale can get inside its defenses enough to plant his drill in its chest and *push*.      The thing is tremendous. It dwarfs him by leaps and bounds. 350% More Nullborn Per Nullborn isn't an exaggeration, so even before its mechanical advantages come into play, it's a nightmare of durability and strength. Kale shoving against it alone won't accomplish anything - but Kale and Futaba? Together they are strong enough (technically) to stall the thing at the center mass. Its challenging roar is cut short by Seras landing a shot in one of its eyes - it doesn't appear *weak* to headshots but nothing likes being shot in the eye, not even a roboticized trikaiju. The shrill triple-toned mechanical roar pierces through ears as much as the shot pierced it.      Reprisal is slowed by James Bond pinning the tails down. The multiple tail weapons are forced to make a lot more stops and starts, trying to weave around fire for as little damage as possible - which of course makes it much easier for Ishirou to blast it in the back with the hyperaccelerated shell and Blemishine to *leap* onto it and grind her way towards the head.      It's a massive thing, but Blemishine's fast, and she's got help.      And that's a good thing, because, well, a city-sized mechanical tripartite kaiju is nothing you want to spend much time on the back of. Up close on its back she can see it bristling with natural weapons that it's already reloading - and the much more unnatural weapons...      ...production...      ...oh.      *Oh*.      It's not just a monster. It's a *factory*.      It's just waking up now that it's close enough to the Mana Turbine.      All that Mana being collected is flowing directly into the facility. And the bits on its back are starting to churn.      Tamamo dips her hands into the feeding material, and immediately the three heads turn to look at her and roar. There is a discharge of missiles from its maw as those rows of teeth launch themselves forward - and then three metal rods the size of a building launch themselves from each tongue at the goddess like an orbital strike from a horizontal position.      Everyone else is lucky. They just have to deal with the active factory, which is now dropping off little scuttling mechanical Nullborn horrors that are *only* human-sized instead of titanic nightmare engines, and *only* have six legs and one head with a bunch of horrible roboot eyes and are *only* swarming towards everyone still on the ground, on a building, or otherwise In Reach. And they only have claws! Isn't that nice.
S6	Eggman de-roboticizes himself, freeing himself from the metal-seeking clutches of S6's VRCS. She refocuses on the Eggmobile itself, baring her teeth in frustration as the vehicle is wrapped in rune-covered magical rings.     He catches a break when she's bowled over by one of the mechanized nullborn produced by the Egg Hydra, releasing her hold on the Eggmobile and giving Eggman the window for escape that he needs.     Her swords twist off her back and into a spiral motion, shredding the monster on top of her into multiple greasy metal-laden chunks. She rocks back on the ground, using one hand to spring back up to her feet. A quick glance is cast towards Ishirou, who seems more emotionally hurt than physically-- thankfully. S6 quickly assesses the layout of things, the arrangement of people and monsters and the Egg Hydra itself.     Her weapons sail out and away from her, one going high and the other going low. They zip right through the fight between Petra and Lilian, striking the facade of the building behind the pair. Slicing through the upper and lower part of the structure's corner, the swords immediately return to her-- leaving glowing golden rings around the part of the building she'd just weakened.     S6's extended hand closes, those rings tightening. The building rumbles, casting off dust. A heartbeat later, the steel beam supporting that corner of the structure tears itself free. The android braces herself, drawing back as the beam orients itself. With a heaving motion, she throws-- and the beam itself fires at the Egg Hydra like a javelin. Fully intent on impaling the beastrobo.     Large problems require large solutions.
Kale Hearthward	There is no artistry to what's going on. It's like this with birds sometimes. All of the clever plans and tricky strategies go out the window. It's just power versus power, right now. Kale's answer to facing down a bulky tank is to just push harder. He takes a deep breath, steels himself, and pushes more of his inner strength into his gear - the drill sword spins faster. The jet boots push harder. And between them, Kale keeps drilling, trying to tear into the hydra factory's insides...!
Ishirou	The RESCUE Unit is forced into evasion tactics, but  Ishirou couldn't dedicate himself fully to this, he had to keep scanning, looking for the linchpin in such a complex creature.  Missiles fly, and automated defenses can hold out for only so long.  He tries moving, but the explosions still catch him, causing him to lose control, but not long enough to hit anything dangerous.   The energy would be feeding into the factory... which means it needs to use the power... He scans along where it was absorbing power from the turbine, running it towards where it would be storing and using that power.  Ishirou dives down, closer to the beast to find it.  Immediately sending out hacking bolts to get into its systems.   The goal?  Forcing the power control circuits to go out of control and causing the creature's power regulation to completely fail.  It might not work right away, but it would also (hopefully) effect it's the ability to produce more horrors.  Power storage units are flagged for others to hit.
James Bond	The aircraft has sophisticated tracking, when it comes to the autocannon mounted beneath the nose. It's little surprise--FANTOM likely wants to leave nothing to chance, when it comes to Nullborn attacks.      The screens on the cockpit are awash in red warning symbols, a harsh, buzzing alarm filling the cockpit. Hostile target lock. One hand works the stick, coaxing the armored aircraft into a displacement roll, shifting its flight path from a defensive split with Ishirou around the Hydra to an almost suicidal path *through* its tails.      The other hand quickly flips open a protective case on the flight console and mashes a blinking red button. Compartments along the fuselage open, and with a loud *bang* a host of flares streak from the craft, intercepting some missles. Violent explosions rock the craft--but as it threads the needle between the tails, Bond makes another roll, low-profiling past the factory-monster's coiling weapons, causing some of the tooth-missiles to impact the behemoth instead of their intended target.      With inches between himself and a fiery crash, Bond pulls up, letting the autocannon swivel and dissuade any direct reprisals. Protective filters gradually fade into place over the screens on the cockpit, as he flies into the sun, intending to put blinding light between himself and the Hydra.      Let's see how well it deals with that. 'Well' is his guess. But any and all avenues have to be exhausted to deal with it. From his position on high, Bond has an energy advantage even if the sun doesn't pose problems for the Hydra's optics, able to both fire weapons-free and adjust for return fire easily--in short, he's put himself into a position that demands at least a little attention, and any attention he can draw away from Ishirou is time well spent, knowing what his fellow Paladin usually does in fights.
Lilian Rook	'At least this one never hits me!'     Lilian falls silent. The smirk falls from her lips again. Her grip squeezes around Night Mist-- and then she slams it, still sheathed, into the ground beside her; the orichalcum shodding cracks the road and leaves it standing up. She takes a deep breath. Her free hand clenches around her opposite wrist; armoured fingers touch the bracelet, the one with a single black strap, still there over the inner layer of her armour.     What Lilian thinks is §Cognitive interrupt. You've practised it so much. It doesn't have to be the way you saw. You know, deep inside you, there's something you can touch. Something that doesn't want--§ one thing.     What Lilian says is: "He should have."     The words come too fast for her to stop them. But she thinks that maybe she doesn't want to anyways. If this is where they are, now, then they might as well both just say it. "Then maybe you'd have turned out better. More like me and less like you." The fact that she slips tone, cadence, even language, escapes her notice. "Maybe you wouldn't be so obsessed with the idea of being a 'pristine' Elite. Like you can be the only one in the sector who doesn't know what consequences are; who's never suffered to get where she is. Maybe if something boring and pathetic ruined you first, you wouldn't be so eager to get hurt by everything glamorous; just a little."     Petra leaps upwards with the recoil of her gun. The shotgun is different than the revolver Lilian has seen her use before, but she doesn't look surprised; she has watched her fight twice before, after all. The eye she gives Petra is like she already knows all of her moves. She remains in place as Petra comes down. "I wish your father beat the shit out of you, until you couldn't walk. Then you wouldn't have this fetish for exploiting real people. I wouldn't have to be your prop; not to feed your fucked up kink for abuse."     She looks laser focused, impossibly ready; so prepared that she doesn't need to repair, like she's listening for the chord to come on stage for a dance she's already performed a hundred times. The snapping blade jars her out of it, a little. There's a moment's hesitation; a moment where she realizes she §Can't just read it out of her. Fundamentals. Like back on Skye.§ The tip nearly reaches her collarbone, at her paradoxically 'unarmoured' chest. And then it shaves the air a hairsbreadth away. Lilian watches her tumble past and land.
Seras Victoria	Blam blam blam! After her initial shock and disastrous attempt at evasion, Seras has not ceased firing. Shell after shell streams from the Harkonnen II and, by this point, the rooftop is covered in a layer of clinky-clanky spent shell casings. They'd be a walking hazard, if she wasn't as nimble as she is.     And being nimble, even weighed down with a weapon which weighs an astonishing 345 kilograms, proves to be very useful as the building is scaled by a ton of 'littler' monsters. Seras shifts her attention to them, unleashing hell on the swarm that's coming her way and blowing a great deal of them up long before they can reach the roof. The half-dozen which do... force her to once again dance around, leaping as well as she can this way and that, opening fire with precision shots to blow the creatures up. Only once does this effort fail to pay off... one, where a creature intercepts her at the landing point and manages to catch her nastily across the legs with its claws, rending a great deal of flesh very painfully...     It gets its upper half blown off in thanks.     More of those things might still be crawling up the building, but Seras has bought about ten seconds to regain her composure and focus and fighht down the pain in her bleeding legs.     Which is when the paper talismans, brimming with good fortune and spiritual energy, flutter by, some attaching to her weaponry, some attaching to her outfit. She recognizes them instantly as Tamamo's work and finds it much easier to stand and focus on what must be done.     "A-alright! Maybe the sun is more on my side than not." Heartened by this turn of events, she elbows the switch on the Harkonnen II... and it extends attachments. She hooks the twin cannons into them and finishes equipping the alternate firing mode, huge bulbous but flat-faced mechanical monstrosities many times wider than the cannons...     With careful aim, she levels them at the distant beast...     This time, instead of 30mm shells, the bulbous attachments open up and belch out flaming hell. A pair of rather sizable rocket-propelled grenades go screaming off on a collision course for the Egg Hydra... or rather, where it's very likely to be in the next few seconds.     Casting off the attachments, she follows it up with an endless barrage of everything she's got left. Hundreds more shots for all over the Egg Hydra!
Lilian Rook	"No, actually. I--"     Elbow to the inside of Petra's arm, outer arm pushing hers painfully above her head. Stance forward, thigh between Petra's legs. Winter Crow held close in, angled and drawn back to the waist. Muzzle pressed to the flesh. Flashes of black-gold muzzle-light. Three incendiary boom-shrieks of muffled sound. Spent gold ejected into the air. An arcing uppercut motion; a shot through the stomach, heart, and throat, close and precise.     Petra should die two and a half times. It's only crackling embers that gush out the other side. The shots hurt. They really really hurt. Enough to make someone vomit. But they're all burn and no entry wound. It's like being shot in the brain. A hammer to the psyche, driving a spike through the conscious mind and deep into the gut; the cold pit of the heart. A §Stop.§ that presses air from the lungs and fills veins with ice. A §No.§ that shakes the bones and renders the body cold and frail and exhausted against the will. There's no gentleness in it. No warm playfulness, like someone else. It hurts like a broken nose and like feeling guilty for starting it besides.     Grip shifted to target the wrist. A sharp pull, to haul Petra up over her shoulder and throw her to ground. The weapon swings around. "Are you having fun, Petra? Is this what you came for? To entertain yourself, before you have your fill and go back home? To your nice daddy who gives you everything you want and never raises a finger? The hard reality doesn't dissuade you, right? It turns you on. You fucking voyeur. You tourist."
Futaba Nuki	"Mister Hearthward? You're... I won't let you down!" Futaba shouts as she realizes that she's not the only one ramming herself into the Hydra to try and halt its advance, her legs buckling from the sheer size of the factory kaiju as its immense girth starts forcing her backwards. Her legs start punching through the ground at first as the giant forces her back, and for a moment, it looks like she might get crushed underneath it without even trying to step back or get out of the way! Her only saving grace here is that, instead of her legs getting broken when they start bending  the wrong way from the strain, they instead start curling and pulling into her torso, then reforming from center mass to anchor her again from a little further back. This process of pulling in the frontmost legs to turn that mass into new ones further back keeps repeating as Futaba digs her regrowing heels in further, constantly giving herself more anchors to stand her ground even as she's still getting steadily forced back. "It's pulling more things out of itself, too? But then what's with those things going after it?" She shouts as she notices the Nullborn throwing themselves at the greater kaiju and getting themselves destroyed in the process, drill-shaped body still shoving forward until she realizes that using such a shape just to push against the Hydra is still inefficient. Right now, she's still just a weird spike with legs.  She needs a more powerful form, something more fitting for the situation at hand. Her spike-shaped body reshapes itself again as she takes on her normal form, and her tail slams into the ground to bolster the anchoring effort while the rest of her upper body turns into a (relatively) large steel wall. Alone, the wall still wouldn't do much to a kaiju of this size. What bolsters Futaba's efforts, though, is using the force of her anchored legs and tail to start shoving her forward again along with growing increasingly warm to the touch that becomes a searing heat within seconds, all spread through her fairly massive surface area pushing back and up against the Hydra to once again try and arrest its advance while also angling herself ever so slightly towards Kale to try and force the Hydra even deeper against his drill sword.
Blemishine	Production.     It's even worse than she thought. And when they're dealing with a behemoth biomechanical horror loaded to the brim with weapons, that says a lot.     "This thing--it's not just weapons, it's an entire mobile production facility...!" A hurried call, as her eyes rapidly scan left to right to take in her surroundings and commit them to memory. Weapon emplacements. Missile ports. Swarming Eggborn, scuttling everywhere. Scuttling around her.     One of them, she batters aside with her shield. Another gets sliced through at the thinnest point of its body by her blade. She cuts through a dozen before her guard is broken through and she's tackled down onto the surface of the massive moving creature's back - where there's a moment where she's swarmed over before she flips and kicks it off of her before breaking free of the horde, sprinting to keep ahead of those trailing behind her.     While Ishirou is mechanically scanning for weaknesses, she's visually picking them out. Despite the danger, the heads are still her ultimate goal - but stationary weapon systems, and more importantly, the power storage units that Ishirou has tagged are prime targets while she's on the way. "Then let's try...!" One of them, she diverts course towards.     And wreathing her weapon in an edge of gleaming light, she carves a deep gash into one such storage unit, as if the material had not a hint of hardness to it, while dashing past and moving on further. The radiant energy of the Arts left behind, shining where she's left her cut, along with the mana that had been stored away within...     ...Will very likely, result in a suitably large explosion to take out her pursuers. And it won't be the last as she keeps up her pace.
Tamamo	Tamamo's efforts quickly prove far more important, and more threatening, than she had initially expected. That the robotomized Nullborn would be able to absorb the energy without actually consuming the turbine had been outside her suspicions, perhaps in part for not having ever seen one get close. That this one is doing so is, while she is paying attention to the flow of energy, immediately obvious.     It attacks, immediately and viciously and to great effect, but she'd seen the lines of danger before the moment even arrived. Her efforts are hasty, but they begin before the attack is aimed, and that's important. The ground is utterly wrecked, of course, while Tamamo is only grazed, a seer's foreknowledge and supernatural luck allowing her to leap at the perfect moment.     Being 'grazed' by that spins and knocks her away, the force only partially blunted by shattering wards. It's her healing charms that go to work, then, blood staining her robes. She hisses, but purposefully switches off her radio, first. She doesn't want to distract anyone for a wound of only this level, when it's already mending.     "Good enough that you view me as a threat. Come, then."     Taking her away around the turbine's grounds, she drops two types of talismans. Some begin to form a rough circle around it, a preparation for a larger sealing action. Others are targeted to points that seem, to an untrained perspective, to have nothing to do with each other, but each is a curse against some building or landmark that causes a calculated shift in the leylines beneath them, each shift adding up in force to begin diverting the crossing rivers that feed the turbine.
Eggman	Ripping open a hole into the Egg Hydra is a good thing. It exposes some very important facts about this horrible nightmare.      First: It is in fact a roboticized Nullborn, or, rather, several of them welded together in some horrifyingly arcane scientific process (not to be confused with magitech, which Eggman does not do, and never will). The hacking points confirm that, too, as Ishirou interfaces with the (frankly horrific) roboticized nightmare.      Second: this thing is bleeding horribly toxic magical industrial pollutant. As Futaba and Kale rip open their way a horrible, corrosive, toxic *sludge* simply sloughs its way out of the metalized flesh. Where it spills onto the ground it sizzles and hisses and poisons. Tamamo, all the way over There, can feel the metaphysical acid, the *disintegration* of the magic. The magic it's eating is being ripped apart and turned into raw materials and what can't be used, however arcane and nonsensical, is becoming industrial, toxic pollutant. The ley lines themselves are being damaged by this thing.      Horrific.      Third: as Kale and Futaba get inside, mathematics is revealed to be a real bitch. Seifer Almasy says, "The point at which you add two and a half more bears to a bear is the point it stops being a bear." Dr. Maricel Thorne says, "It isn't at a Pareto optimum of bear-ness." Dr. Maricel Thorne says, "Three and a half, good sir." Seifer Almasy says, "That's four hundred and fifty percent." Seifer Almasy says, "A hundred percent is one bear." Seifer Almasy says, "Two hundred percent is two bears." Seifer Almasy says, "Three hundred is three, and fifty is half." Dr. Maricel Thorne says, "I said three-hundred and fifty percent more bear, not three hundred and fifty percent total."      Surprise. The other two and a half nullborn in this thing's construction are *inside it*.      A serpentine pair of heads simply *extends* from inside its chest, in the cavity that the pair have opened up, and start vomiting that poisonous runoff everywhere. It's an attack with no special target, no special parameters. It's just venting its own run-off as it produces even more drones to run everybody down. Two sets of arms also unfold within the thing's horrific mechanical organs to sweep massive claws at Futaba and Kale and narrow their dodging opportunities.      The production facility hiccups as Ishirou forces the regulation out of control, aided by Blemishine, who simply *explodes* one of the mechanical batteries around her with her own magic, and then another, and then another. Here, too, though, she's met with sprays of acidic magical run-off, which the drones that *are* nimble enough to avoid being caught are much more resistant to than The Entire Landscape Of Everything Else.      The heads that *aren't* spewing pollutant (i.e., the original three, with the damaged eye) are thoroughly unhappy. Between the rocket-propelled grenade in the face, the high-speed impalement by a giant beam javelin, and James Bond detonating a jetpack in its other face, the creature is shrieking in horrible multi-jawed pain, and Tamamo diverting its food away, the creature's rage is building fast. It starts lurching towards Tamamo despite its massive wounds - it understands, instinctively, that she is a threat not only to its life (like everything else) but also its Food, and that is simply unacceptable. The smoke peeling off it and black score-marks of damage from two successive explosions - the hole in one of its heads - these are temporal.      *Food* is its purpose.      *Production* is its purpose.      *That* must be protected.
Petra Soroka	"More like me and less like you."     Petra doesn't respond verbally. Instead, she just grins, the edges of her lips unnaturally tight, looking like a half concealed grimace. The wavering attempt at a smile slips off her face at the word fetish, and she spits at Lilian. "What, calling your own dad boring and pathetic? I thought you were so devoted to your family, indebted to them. You keep talking about it."     Petra tries to flinch away from Lilian's approach, clumsily pulling the shotgun in to block her as if it was a much more maneuverable weapon. She grits her teeth and whines at each shot, but No hasn't stopped her so far. The cold grip on her chest seems to squeeze her words out more easily, rasping through her throat.     "You keep--talking about how you owe everything to them. Every part of your upbringing. You're not so *stupid* that you'd forget about *that* part of it. So yeah. Fucking admit that it helped make you a person."     Petra's wrist is grabbed, and squirming in Lilian's grapple, Petra manages to depress a second button on the grip of the gunblade. Pulling her hands apart, the shotgun rips into two separate revolvers, metal plates and rods improbably sliding into place to split the weapons. Each revolver has a bayonet-like blade strapped to the underside of the barrel, and with her free hand, Petra slams the blade into Lilian's stomach, squeezing the trigger to explosively stab it through her armor.     "I'm not a *fucking* tourist! I'm not a tourist. I *left* there, and it doesn't matter if I'm welcome back because I'm not fucking leaving this! This is what I can't stand about you people! You can't rub this shit in my face forever and never expect me to spit back."
Kale Hearthward	Oh gods that- What is that Kale doesn't have words to understand what he's seeing. He doesn't have the right concepts in his head. What in the heck even is going on in there? This is possibly a thing to bring up in therapy. He has to fall back to get away from all the toxic... stuff. Sludge. Byproduct? Whatever it is, he doesn't need it on him, and he especially doesn't need to be breathing it in right now. He's overworking himself already, and that's with moderately clear air. He falls back. Drilling at a single point isn't going to do everything he needs anymore. Periactus is dropped, and he draws his other sword and activates it, before delving back inside (after taking a deep breath, of course). The second sword transforms, and as Kale swings it, it leaves behind a series of sharp afterimages suspended in the air. They're not immovalbe nor unbreakable, but a neverending stream of sharp objects is definitely not the sort of thing you want gumming up your monster's insides!
Futaba Nuki	After the last push, Futaba was expecting the Egg Hydra to try and run her and Kale over wholesale once again. Or maybe she was expecting it to recoil, but getting inside of it and seeing all that toxic sludge built up within it? That much is completely unexpected, and she's forced to revert to her humanoid shape once again just to not get absolutely doused in that acidic garbage flowing out of it. Even inside of it, she has to make sure to walk on raised peg-like legs so as to minimize how much actual contact she has with the 'ground' that's also the innards of the beast. "This looks like the best place to do some real damage, but what the heck is all this?" Her questions are answered as the weird THING she's staring at turn out to be more nullborn, and she recoils in surprise as those heads start hurling more of that vile garbage all of the place. Leaping from gap to precarious gap as thing start getting covered in all that gunk, Futaba even starts working her transformations into getting closer to the pair of inside-Nullborn. The first claw coming at her has her flipping over it and shoving off the top to fling herself into the air, and then she splits herself in half from the bottom up when the next comes at her before reforming from the top going down. "If we're just inside this thing, then... Everything's a target, right?!" Drawing a katana out of her significantly smaller-than-a-katana pouch, Futaba lands on a single leg as she starts twirling the blade overhead and calling fierce flames out of it. "It's time to really put the hurting on this... Uh. This!" And then she starts whirling herself around the inside of the beast, slinging her flaming sword around herself in wide loops not unlike a buzzsaw, but on fire. It quite literally spins around herself, too, as Futaba's transformation means her arms can just go around her body to keep swinging the blade every which way, trying to ignite and carve up the entirety of the Egg Hydra's insides rather than just the Nullborn inside it.
Ishirou	Ishirou tries to stay ahead of the creature and its...toxic nature.  However, only so much could be done.  The moment he tries to dive up, he's splashed by the goop.  Not a complete submersion, but enough to feel the /burn/ from the creature.  This stuff is /toxic/, and dangerous...and if this thing died in the wrong place it'd be disastrous.   Ishirou's RESCUE unit converts into flight mode, and then... Seems to leave the battlefield.  Is he running away?  Leaving his allies here..?   No, but he has to go to a spot on the wall far enough away.  Once he gets there, he lands and quickly takes control of the artillery set up on the wall.  The first step... He targets the Oblivion facility.  The place where he died once, where the experiments on Androids were completed.  Where this all began.  The artillery pieces aim...and then fire.  They blast a hole, opening up a way for the creature to be dropped.  It's not perfect, but it's enough to keep it from being a worse situation.   Then he turns the artillery towards the Hydra and starts lobbing shots with it.  Hopefully, this will do some damage.
S6	The Egg Hydra sprouts extra heads and starts trundling towards the power plant building. S6 rips up a section of roadway by its reinforcement rebar to divert some of this toxic runoff, though it still hisses against her combat kit and skin. Bits of the Mechanism are visible where the sludge has eaten through her aesthetic shell.     -SCAN COMPLETED-     S6 tilts her head slightly towards the POD floating near her shoulder.     -SUBSTANCE IS A HIGHLY CORRUPTED LIQUID MANA COMPOSITE.-     Data scrawls rapidly across one side of her vision. S6's eyes widen slightly. A second later, her expression hardens. A plan is formed with the support of her partner and the most magically dense individual present-- and all those willing to continue with their support.     S6, to her credit, has created a bit of an advantage for herself though: The steel beam currently embedded in the monster.     She springs into a dash, hurling one of her swords forward as she runs. It embeds in the side of a building, providing a step for her to bounce off of and ascend-- pulling itself free the moment her heeled boots no longer touch it. Ascending this way, she begins crossing rooftops at a dead sprint, circling the Egg Hydra as the others engage it.     Once she has a good vantage point, and with the hope that Tamamo has been collected by James, S6 plants her lead foot and grinds to a halt on one steel heel. She reaches out with the VRCS, wrapping its runic rings around the construction beam lodged in the beast. Steam jets from the hem of her skirt as she wrenches on it, using the beam as a lever to spin the monster around and steer it in the direction she wants.     It must be dreadfully uncomfortable, though.
Blemishine	It is, in some way, a good thing that Blemishine is on this thing's back, so she doesn't have to directly witness the honestly horrific sight of hydra heads bursting out of the thing's chest cavity.     In another way, already having to contend with masses of these things /combined/ with the magical runoff she's discovering runs through this thing's body is something else entirely. Almost too much, even. The fact that the mana it's devouring can turn into something like this is nothing short of terrible.     One aspect of this terrible-ness is direct contact, which becomes unavoidable no matter how fast she is. A shield only does so much. Armor as well. It burns in a way that's much more than skin deep, though the skin deep part is still awful. It sears at a part of her being that really shouldn't be feeling like that, and she swiftly abandons any idea of trying to defend against it head-on in favor of getting as wide a berth as possible.     "If this thing isn't put down in the right place...!" There's a plan, though. With Ishirou and S6 doing their best to steer this thing to where it needs to go, she needs to do everything in her power to make sure that goes off without a hitch, and that Tamamo has more leeway when it's coming after her.     Blemishine's mad dash carries her to one of the necks - where her weapon, still edged with radiant light, is stabbed down into the back of one. Like a hot knife through butter, it remains embedded and dragged behind her as she doesn't slow down one bit while precariously ascending towards the writhing head proper. She'll stay ahead of the spray of magical pollutant this time.     And keep going until she's tearing straight into its skull.
James Bond	It's heading for Tamamo. Spewing that bile everywhere. When Bond comes down from his attack position, the craft attempts to make another dangerous pass--but the Egg Hydra's heads are not nearly as discriminate as its tails, in this particular attack.      Corrosive, poisonous bile splatters on the armored hull of the aircraft, boring into it and setting it to leaving a trail of acrid smoke in its path. Warning buzzers fill the cockpit, as Bond's face is lit up by the pulsing, angry red of warning lights. They cast his determined frown in stark relief. Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou pings a place somewhat near by, but towards the desert where it came from. Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "There is a weak leyline there, so the mana will have a good place to work." Tac-Paladins [4] Tamamo says, "I... can do so, yes." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "James, can you help her?" Tac-Paladins [4] James Bond says, "I'm on it." Tac-Paladins [4] James Bond over the concerning buzz of warning alarms, "It got me with that bile, but I'm still in the air. FANTOM built these to last." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou pauses, "...wait...we.." hm. "Don't draw it there, but whereever we kill this thing..." Tac-Paladins [4] S6 says, "...Ishirou." Tac-Paladins [4] S6 says, "The Oblivion facility." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "That's...close to the ocean though, isn't it?" Tac-Paladins [4] S6 says, "There is no leyline there that souls could have escaped through. Reinforced concrete walls. Without the machinery it is just a hole in the ground." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "That's...a good idea." Tac-Paladins [4] Blemishine says, "Mmngh...! I think...Miss S6 has a point! Anywhere else and--there's no telling what damage might be done to the surroundings!" Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "Even with it's closeness, the location is pretty good to seal it." Tac-Paladins [4] S6 says, "Use the wall artillery to tear it open. We will do our best to get it over there." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "Alright, I'm leaving the zone then." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "Once I get there I'll provide support." Tac-Paladins [4] S6 says, "If you could spare a few shots on the Egg Hydra, it would be appreciated." Tac-Paladins [4] Ishirou says, "That is the plan."     Bond clears the heads, then jams the stick hard, putting the aircraft into a lateral spin that'd have less experienced pilots feeling lightheaded. Toxic runoff sloughs from the fuselage, clearing it save for a few spots of worrying, bubbling metal. His fingers then find and flip a toggle switch, and the aircraft goes from thrust to hovering, swooping in to stay barely a foot off the ground from Tamamo, angled so that with effort she can climb into the copilot's seat once the canopy opens. The autocannon's targeting feed displays as picture-in-picture, a frighteningly widening portrait of the Egg Hydra as it bears down on her. Bond holds down the trigger until the autocannon tucks itself into the undercarriage to reload. A red 'FEED ERROR' message blinks on the screen, and Bond spits a quiet swear as a self-diagnostic tool slowly initializes.      Once Tamamo is inside, Bond takes off, towards the aforementioned complex, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake.
Seras Victoria	Seras Victoria... fires her last shell. The Harkonnen II's ammo drums have run dry. She lets the massive weapon crash to the rooftop, heaving it off after loosening the straps. With it reduced to nothing more than a bunch of heavy metal, she leaps backwards and over a few piles of debris and behind an extruding air vent and retrieves her ordinary weaponry.     By now her legs have healed, and she stares at the long, long way it is to the next building. After a gulp, Seras breaks into a speedy dash, building up momentum... and vaults over the expanse, Harkonnen under one arm and a massive rifle under the other. She lands on the far roof without incident and keeps running and jumping. When she reaches the last building she takes aim with the Harkonnen and fires off a few more shots at the thrashing Hydra. This proceeds as she gets closer and closer to the Egg Hydra proper, firing off a shot here and there whenever she has a good angle on an already-devastated part of its anatomy.     It turns out though, that TOO CLOSE happens in no time. The magical gunk rains down without warning, a deluge that threatens to wash her away. The poor vampire girl's entirely submerged under the stuff, swept right off her feet and carried away quite a distance before the flood has receded enough. Her whole body's twitching. Gurgly, choked noises struggle to escape her throat.     She looks quite solidly down. Definitely down enough that it would be wise to stay down... well, provided she were ANYWHERE else.     Gurgling and groaning, she slams a trembling hand against the ground and uses it to haul her soaked, pain-wracked self back to her feet...
Lilian Rook	'I thought you were so devoted to your family, indebted to them. You keep talking about it.'     Lilian sighs as she pulls the trigger. She's supposed to exhale to stabilize the aim anyways, even if they're right up close. "It figures you wouldn't know the difference. You have no idea what a debt is like. You've always taken everything you wanted. Gotten everything for free, no strings attached. You've never fought for anything, so you don't know what oweing is like."     Petra reeels away. She squirms from Lilian's grasp. The next shot goes right past her head, searing her cheek with fire and noise and the bitter burn of a hundred hours of tears. Lilian is already ahead. She advances as Petra retreats, stepping into the space she cedes. An outer arm bar deflects one revolver away. Winter Crow slaps her aiming line aside, then Lilian jolts forward, slamming Petra right beneath the collarbone and shoving the barrel of her weapon against her abdomen.     'Fucking admit that it helped make you a person.'     "I don't--!"     The momentary distraction is enough for Petra to get her blow in. A slip that Lilian doesn't make anywhere. With anyone. The blade slams against her waist. The shot-impact makes a piercing sound like vibrating glass. Golden sparks fly from the armour, like droplets of fast-dissipating blood. Lilian shoves herself back, staggering, winded, but quickly stabilizing herself again, bleeding off the momentum by turning around over her back leg and sweeping into a low crouch that fires four more times through Petra's chest again, her gun braced in against her shoulder, spitting hissing aether and steaming gold.     "This is why you're fucking sick in the head. You want so badly to be taken seriously, but you're so fucking blank, so hollow, so full of fucking nothing, you 'get hurt' like you 'get a tattoo'. I can't stand people like you. You don't know the first thing about struggling --not even a little bit-- but that yawning pit inside you just craves what people get by being forced to fight for it. You can't stand pain --real pain, not bumps and bruises from flashy fights-- but you're desperate to take what we made for ourselves out of it! People like you should just drop dead!"     Lilian blinks forward again to get right between Petra's gun hands, kicking up with her last step into a knee strike, sharply aimed into the underside of her ribs, aiming to pin her against the wall of a building. Winter Crow swings under her chin. Forced on Petra like a suicide grip. "Damage doesn't make you a person, you fucking creep! Pain is just pain! Scars are just scars! I know a pristine little snow white sheet of nothing and no-one wouldn't get it, but all the ways I got hurt only ever made me worse, and you don't deserve to steal what I made from the pieces! For yourself! For your fucking amusement! To play with and throw away like your fucking toy!"     She presses against Petra to pin her gun arm to the wall, and her off hand behind her outer shoulder. And yet, Lilian struggles to pull the trigger. "I don't live in that world anymore! I'm beyond you! That part of my life is over and you can't fucking change that! You could have been one of us, and you chose to be one of them instead! So I'd rather kill you than let you drag me back!"
Tamamo	It's good that S6 spots the extra issues with the sludge and saves Tamamo from having to explain. They really need to get this out of the city, and away from anywhere of value. It's practically a walking curse, on its own. "And curiously unlike the function of the Nullborn had been," Tamamo murmurs.     She continues to try and avoid even this focused attention, though it's only possible for the fact that she's also running away as fast as she can. That's not extremely fast, with only her remarkable agility (on those tall geta, too) going for her, and the way she moves as if she'd never considered the possibility of doing something so ungraceful as tripping. The same keeps her ahead of the swarms of little clawing machines.     The sludge that does get close to her is pushed back with blasts of wind and ice from her talismans, momentarily robbing her of the chance to use the same to attack as she remains on the defensive, though she still has enough presence of mind to scan about the battlefield and send her blessings where they might do some good. Maria, S6, Victoria... each gets some help as she's able, and then more for Ishirou. She doesn't quite catch Kale in time, but she has some healing saved.     And more she needs to use on herself. It's going well. Even if her supplies are running out, and what she has left won't be able to keep up with that oh so necessary speed, if she's pressed the same again.     I'm fine.     She closes her eyes, takes a leap of faith, and opens them to find James and his aircraft right in front of her. She reaches out, half-stumbles into a not-quite-seated posture, and says, "I am here! Let us go!" Needless, perhaps.     She says nothing more, after that. Rather, she speaks rapidly, but it's low, clearly not to her pilot, and not in a language intelligible to anyone else here. There's not much room for her to work, and she needs the full, short flight out to their destination to prepare as much as possible, breathing the words into paper and solidifying them with passes of her hand and the scraping of one nail.     This is what lets her explode those curses into motion all at once, once they reach the spot S6 and Ishirou had selected. It's an expanding cloud of glowing, burning paper, giving way in flight the patterns of mystic force pushed into each, and becoming so many streaking stars. They flare, scream, and pummel the massive, mechanical beast with more raw, physical force than anything else. It's misfortune honed into so many red-hot, exploding blades, chosen for the purpose of remaining deadly to something known to feed upon surrounding mana.
Eggman	It is a combined, catastrophic, effort.      The monster roars. It shrieks. It screams. It's dragged, bodily, into the pit, shrieking the whole time. The damage just keeps piling up, and up, and up, from every which way - from Kale's stream of stabs and shattering afterimages, from Futaba's katana-slashes inside its body, from the quick-leading artillery shots and the beam jammed into its brain, from tactical bombardments and a thunderous magical hyper-curse of endless blades. Bond and Tamamo lead it on even as Blemishine utterly dismantles one of its heads, coating herself in the goo more than anyone else, a true champion all the way through, smashing through both blood and viscuous material and all the rest. And, at the end, finally, once again, the plan Works Perfectly.      The creature tips forward. For an instant it seems like it might turn around.      But it does not. It trips, and stumbles, as Blemishine obliterates its rightmost head with a last blast from Tamamo, and it plummets - with Kale and Blemishine and Futaba inside - into the pit. It will die on impact. There's not enough of it left *not* to.      So now it's just clean-up duty.      Clean-up duty against the crawling horrors that it spat out. The huge horde of clicking, clacking mechanical man-sized kaiju that it produced on the way to its death.      There's a lot of them. They're still swarming. They're just attacking everything around them indiscriminately.      But the Egg Hydra itself lies dead in the ditch, contained, the horrifyingly acidic corrupted magical runoff pooling into a horrific lake.      Eggman, from on high, flips on his speaker. He sounds a lot less woozy.      "They won't forgive you, you know," Eggman says to the group.      "Not Ishirou. Not I1. Not S6. Not one of you will ever be forgiven by the true heirs of Indus."      "You've betrayed the man who brought them paradise, and they know it." The broadcast at the start. Every screen in the-      Oh.      Even on the ships.      "You may be driving me out, but the poison I've left behind will never disappear. Your dream of a peaceful world is dead. Your people will clamour to have me back, and the only way to stop them will be to become just like the people you hated."      Eggman leans forward. Even in defeat, he's got one little last barb to spill.      "And I doubt I1 will ever be able to trust anyone again as long as she lives. I wonder which subordinate will be the one who delivers a Brutus to her in the end. Who will it be who drives the knife into her back when she walks the path of tyranny to clean up the mess she's made?"      "It might even be one of you two."      "That would be fun."      And then he flies away. And as he does so, so too do the Egg Fleet ships.      The wounds he's left behind will remain.      But that is, without a doubt, Eggman leaving.      They won.
Petra Soroka	Petra stumbles back, color draining from her face as each shot strikes her cleanly in the chest. Her teeth are clenched hard enough that tendons stand out on her neck, and the taste of blood fills her mouth. The impact of each bullet causes a surge of nausea and dizziness, and Petra's vision swims, but for what may be the first time for a confrontation with Lilian, Petra isn't crying.     Tears don't work for Petra in the way the magical compulsions of the Winter Crow's bullets expect them to. Flooding her neural pathways with despair hits her in the stomach, rather than the heart. Each shot carves a deeper pit in her gut, building into gaping hollowness, the kind of hunger and emptiness that makes it impossible to even stand up straight. "So full of fucking nothing."     Petra opens her mouth to spit back at Lilian, but the wind is knocked out of her as she's slammed against the wall. Fighting to speak past her racing breaths, she pays no mind to the gun under her chin.     "Fucking *test* me then. See for yourself what kind of pain I can endure. You keep saying "people like me" but you fucking *know* that I know more than those kinds of people. They don't give a shit about the ways people like you are hurt, or the ways you think or feel. They can't even *recognize* it."     Petra twirls the revolver in her pinned hand around her finger, spinning it on the trigger guard. "If I could've been one of you, I would've. And you know, if you're really considering pulling the trigger," To emphasize her words, Petra flicks a switch and pulls the trigger of her own revolver, launching out the blade to barely scrape Lilian's head, cutting through her hair more than skin. "Do you really have any right to say 'us'?"
James Bond	Bond, having coaxed the Egg Hydra into place using its aggression towards Tamamo, breathes a sigh of relief when her curses explode. Clean-up duty ensues--something for which Bond had been keeping a special option in reserve. The two bulky cylinders on either side of the air-ground support craft are not engines, or part of its internals.      Telescopic covers slide up and over, revealing the noses of myriad high-explosive missiles. The screens on the inside of the canopy shift, from red to green, as countless target locks occur. A mechanical whine follows--the missile pods are shifting position, rotating and facing the sky. The aircraft strafes around the spawn of the hydra, as a chorus of hissing missile-launches sounds in the air.      The surface is bombarded, countless missiles lancing into the air, turning sharply, striking the ever-more-poisoned ground and sending up pyroclastic plumes of blasted earth. Eggman's face appears on the viewscreen as an incoming communication.      Bond mashes the mute button. It doesn't work. 'The only way to stop them will be to become just like the people you hated.'      Bond's fist crashes into Eggman's virtual visage, causing that segmented section of the heads-up-display to flicker and fail, displaying a solid, blank grey screen. Still, Eggman's voice filters into the cockpit. Tamamo can't see Bond's expression from the passenger seat, but she probably doesn't need to, to know how that affected him. Especially not when his fist crashes through the speaker, several times in furious, quick succesion, until Eggman's voice shorts out.      With bloodied knuckles, Bond fumes silently in the pilot's seat, breathing heavily. Is that all I'll ever be? A goddamned garbage man?
Futaba Nuki	After so much work, the Hydra is finally brought down. Futaba doesn't even realize it at first with how much focus she's putting into slicing it up from the inside, flailing that burning around herself to scorch and gash whatever she can while keeping her movements swift and erratic in the face of those Nullborn still inside it. It's not until it actually falls and crashes into the pit that Futaba, too, finds herself suddenly moving downwards with it and yelping when she's dragged down by both gravity and the inside of the Egg Hydra. She grows herself briefly to lessen the overall impact against herself, although getting shoved up against so much awful sludge still isn't the greatest feeling as she feels something off about all of it. If nothing else, she can at least dislodge the bulk of the physical substance by transforming herself rapidly, if not necessarily the spiritual effects of it. Indeed, by the time she emerges from the inside of the creature, she's looking considerably more worn down even if her clothes are still unnaturally immaculate. Her hair's not even the right color. Hearing Eggman, she looks up, but not without joining in on clean-up duty as well. She grows her hands to a ludicrous degree so she can sart smashing those crawling horrors into the ground like gigantic flyswatters. "Is that what your angle was? That's...!" Wait. This isn't the time to shout anger towards Eggman. It's not her world, but Ishirou's and S6's. The best thing she can do for them right now is to focus on the cleanup so there's one less thing for them to worry about.
Ishirou	This is the type of monster to explode into smaller monsters.  Ishirou can figure that out, and thanks to this he manages to stay just barely out of their claw reach and responds to their attacks with machine gun fire of his own.  It'll take a while to clean these guys up...but they should be able to.  The toxic waste dump created by this monster would... might never be cleaned.  At least it was far away from important infrastructure and... burying a thing that should have never been discovered. Ishirou dismisses the RESCUE unit, and sits down next to the large cannon, his body hurts, he's got injuries everywhere.  But deep inside him, the worst injuries are there.  The betrayal.  The remainder of his own trauma.  The reminder of who he was helping.   The reminder that...no matter what Indus would never be home to him.  He pulls his knees up to his chest and presses his face into them.  There isn't anything he can do now, nothing he can work on, or something he can focus his mind on.  Right now, the enormous weight came down...and now he'll never be safe here.   Eggman was successful.  He tore his home from him, out of pure spite.
S6	From her perch on the building, S6 breathes a sigh of relief. Steam jets from her HDS fade, as the heat generated by exerting the VRCS is dissipated. The Egg Hydra twists, collapsing and screaming into the hole that used to contain one of Indus' darkest and most twisted secrets. In a way it's poetic to dissolve them under a sludge produced by human excess and hubris.     There are still monsters to deal with, the Hydra's wretched offspring. Taking in a breath, the android leaps off the building and into the streets. Human-sized monsters are something she can use her swords against, even if their altered and alien nature makes them more dangerous than the usual Nullborn.     Some minutes later, battered and clawed and singed, she comes to a stop and swings Contract in an arc to scatter corrosive sludge from the blade. Beside her, the POD chimes, then projects the video of Eggman's final message. She straightens her posture, watching the pronouncement with a dull, dispassionate expression. It's the same look she usually wore when concealing her emotions. Playing the act.     As the video concludes, she swings Contract up through the image, severing it as the feed ends. Contract is released, returning to her back alongside the larger Treaty.     As has been the case countless times before, S6 squares her shoulders and lifts her gaze, standing in the middle of a city ruined by the Nullborn, the wind teasing through her hair and rustling the hem of her dress.
Blemishine	The beast is brought low - and Blemishine, armor and skin seared by magical runoff, realizes what's happening when it begins lurching and losing altitude. Pulling her blade free from what's left of the thing's skull, she turns on her heels and sprints. Towards the side, over it, and digging a heel down before using it to leap off of the Egg Hydra mid-collapse.     She hits the ground off to the side of where the absurdly behemoth frame of the mechanical menace falls, hitting the ground rolling for meter after meter until her momentum slows and she spins up onto a knee, breathing heavily. It still burns. There's still a countless number of these things.     They're easy to deal with. But only compared to what they just toppled. And the far less physical fallout of all of the events of today. No matter how much she might wish the sound of her own pants would drown out Eggman's voice, there's no such hope.     "Doctor Eggman..." She's not using radio. Merely speaking to herself.     Today doesn't feel like a victory. Toppling the giant monster in reality is never as clean as it is in stories. She sincerely only hopes it feels like that, right now, and isn't the reality of the situation.     "...You really, really are a spiteful man."
Tamamo	"James?" Strange, for Tamamo to use that form of address, and to sound so uncertain. Maybe he misheard her. That's definitely her hand, reaching for his, though.     "Allow me to see." Clean, white bandages for his knuckles. A small, sealing strip, something illegible scrawled over it. He won't need to wait for an hour for it to heal over, though he'll still feel it before then, when the adrenaline wears off.     She doesn't ask 'are you alright?'     "There is still fighting in the city. Please. Can you take us back? I have to see her safe." It would be harder not to guess who she means.
James Bond	The heavy breathing stops, when Tamamo address him. Not 'Mr. Bond.' James. Unusual, for her.      He holds out his hand, but only after hesitation. She hadn't asked, with words, if he was alright, but something inside him is telling him that she's asking with her tone. Something else keeps him from answering.      "Yes. Of course." His tone is clipped and mechanical, the words coming because they have to, the man himself lurking somewhere beyond them. The aircraft is swift, even through its damage. Bond skill as a pilot shines here in a less obvious way, navigating without the use of a portion of the viewscreens.      He takes her to Lilian, that she can see her safe. Someone should come out of this intact, at least.
Lilian Rook	'You keep saying "people like me" but you fucking *know* that I know more than those kinds of people. They don't give a shit about the ways people like you are hurt, or the ways you think or feel. They can't even *recognize* it.'     A sound bubbles up from Lilian's throat. Something awful and raw, bloody with the jagged edges of the words coming up behind it, like vomit. The gun trembles against Petra's chin, Lilian's armoured finger clicking against the trigger, and then the butt strikes across her face as Lilian steps away from the incoming blow, untouched.      Winter Crow is pointed down, right, and a shot is fired through Petra's left wrist. The ratios are all wrong. It hurts like fire. It swivels down to her left foot, and fires again. Leather bursts open. Blood oozes from skin torn in the pattern of static. Like the hands of a cock, Lilian seamlessly swivels it to her left hand, and fires into Petra's right leg. Less and less it strikes her psyche. Less and less, does she feel Lilian's soul puncture hers. Then her right wrist, putting a gunshot through all four limbs. That one damaged the bone. Half-lethal.     The sound, held down in her throat, comes out from between Lilian's teeth, choked and mangled. She thought that'd make her feel better, but it doesn't. All it accomplished was devouring the last of the weapon's supply. The stripper clip, elegant as clockwork, fires from the bottom with a sharp ping. The feed splits the length of the gun and glittering aether gushes out like steam, venting waste energy. It takes everything she has to drop it, instead of reloading it.     'Do you really have any right to say 'us'?'     "Why shouldn't I? You made it perfectly clear that I'd never be one of you."
Lilian Rook	It doesn't matter. She can't help it. Just like that, Lilian's empty hands are around Petra's neck. Not like the show, where she dragged Petra to her seat by whatever would hurt most. Both hands. Fingers laced. Her thumbs depressed into her larynx. "What is wrong with you?! Why can't you just leave it alone?! Why can't you ever be satisfied?! That fucked up world of yours --that world you say is the whole world-- we know goddamn well that there's no place for us in it! You don't want us there! So let us leave!"     Trying to hold it back only keeps her neck from snapping. "But you don't want us gone, do you?! You don't want me gone! Not really! You can't stand that I might just leave! Go somewhere else! Be someone else! Do anything else with myself but please you; all of you! You just can't stand that there's any world but yours! You can't stand that people could be or make or think anything else but what you decide!"     She can't let go. It's like she doesn't have control anymore; or like she finally, at last, has complete control. Nothing else factors in. "And that slavering, bottomless pit inside of you; all it wants is to make everything, everyone, just the way you expect, so you can chew it up and shit it out! You got everything the way you wanted the moment you were born! You were promised! And nothing makes you angrier than seeing that you don't fucking have it all! You'll never, ever accept that someone else could ever have something that you can't! Because it all belongs to you; even me!"     She can't let go. She can't stop. She can't bring herself to. She can't even make herself want to. "I should have known! I should have fucking known I'd never get away from you! One of you was bound to come here eventually! That bottomless fucking hunger won't let you stay away! You're all insatiable for every last drop of pain you can get! I was insane for thinking I could cut myself out of your world without killing you first! But I'm never, ever, going through that again! I'll never let you ruin this world too!"     There's guilt, but it isn't enough. There's fear, and revulsion, and those are a little stronger, but they don't tip the scales. Lilian fumbles, desperately, for the code, and makes a grievous mistake, because all she remembers is §Thou shalt not deny thy brothers and sisters that which they hath earned-- No. Only when a man seeks to tear down the station of another is he then without value-- No. Thou shalt kill without hesitation-- No! Those who die for the greater good hath their reward-- No!! Stay thy hand not for unnecessary-- No!!!§     She isn't even looking at Petra's face. There's nothing to see. There's no one there. It's hard to remember why she even cares. Why she keeps doing this to herself. Why she doesn't deal with this problem, this threat, this lump of soft and vulnerable noise and pain, just like all the rest. All she has to grip to is the feeling of fear itself; the unshakable gut urge that she can't do this; and the bracelet still on her wrist. The bracelet is all she can look at.     Ghostly fingers caress the earpiece of her communicator. The slightest shade of fingertips hold her cheek. What comes out of Lilian's throat, bloody and raw and choked with every torn and broken, jagged-edged feeling in her heart, is two words, shouted at the top of her lungs.     "Tamamo! Help!!"
Tamamo	Lilian calls, and Tamamo drops from the sky, together with the roar of a braking aircraft. There was no time to slow on a second pass, and she trusts her ability to land on her feet. That trust, at least, is well-placed. Her hands don't even need to touch the ground, after her shoes clack, and her blue, black and gold dress has yet to settle from how it fanned in the fall before she's rushing forward.     In one hand, she's drawn a talisman, which she pushes onto Petra's center, cursing her with painful lethargy as a matter of course. With the other, and a moment later with both, she's dragging Lilian away by her waist. Without regard for the tactical implications, she presses together.     There's blood on Tamamo, down her side, soaked through her clothing. It's easy enough for Lilian to find, and harder to tell that there's no wound beneath it. It already healed, but the stains and tears remain. Tamamo, herself, no longer recalls it. She only has eyes for Lilian's wounds. All she has to say is, "Lilian...?" for the depths of her concern to be audible.     "Lilian, I am here. Are you hurt? You are, are you not?" It's a few degrees short of frantic. It's half-controlled. She's retaining enough control to still be able to help, though she'd need to take a step back actually check her for injuries, instead of taking this opportunity to stare into Lilian's eyes. It's convenient that Lilian's been picking heels to exactly match Tamamo's height.     There's only one thing that can take Tamamo's attention away for even a moment, and that's to turn her eyes, flashing a gold brighter the bells that hang from her headdress, onto Petra, to affix her with a look of utter, scornful contempt, upon the creature that would harm her love.     "There now, all will be well, as I am here. We have won."
Lilian Rook	On some level Lilian thought something else. Somewhere deep inside, she §Didn't really think . . . didn't expect she'd . . . she really came. It's her. I just-§ has to assess reality. Hard as that is, little as she can see, pitch black and asphyxiating as the acidic churn of her feelings is, the task is ultimately simple. The lump in her hands will still be there; and she needs her. The urgency in those hands is one she knows well. The feeling of cooling blood on cloth is something awful beyond words; a cold, choking nightmare.     Lilian's fingers come away from Petra's throat only because Petra has ceased to exist. The girl vanishes from her eyes as her face turns to Tamamo. Like a shadow, erased by light. Like a stain, cleaned out. An immense psychic pressure disappears all at once. The cold electric tension in the air, bleak and deathly and tasting of iron and copper; thunderclouds over Chernobyl; dissipates in a single, foggy instant of confusion, concern, and then care. Lilian turns to Tamamo, and forgetting the rest of the world, throws her arms around her, and the sense of warmth, of a pulse restarted by shock, of finally being able to breathe is radiant.     "No. No I'm-- I'm fine. I think. I'm-- I'm not wounded. Not really. I-- I just . . . I-I just . . . Y-yeah . . . yeah we . . . we won. But it did hurt. I'm not hurt, but it hurts a lot. I'm sorry. I can't-- It hurts so much, but I'm going to be okay. Don't worry about me. Let's just go home, okay?"
Petra Soroka	Petra's cockiness isn't knocked out of her with the first strike, though she staggers and her head is ringing. She grins and twists her arms down to ready her revolvers, spitting out bl--     Her hand is knocked away by the impact, fingers spasming in a dull attempt to reassert control before the pain registers. With each successive shot, her mind catches up to reality slightly faster, the building pain becoming overwhelming within moments. Feeling the concussion of the final shot vibrate through the broken and torn nerves along her bone, Petra wheezes and doubles over, her abused stomach convulsing to finally expel--     And she's cut off a second time. Petra's mouth and throat burn and fill with the tang of iron, and when she reflexively tries to suck in a breath and can't, her eyes widen in horror. Dropping any sense of composure, Petra desperately claws--Oh, she painted her nails again--at Lilian's hands, silently twisting her torso and kicking at anything she can reach.     Responding to Lilian is not even within consideration. For multiple reasons. But even while Petra's consciousness bleeds out, every desperately frustrated hammers against her ears, clearer than her dimming vision. Is this really what I wanted? Isn't it? Look at her Look at me, she's a wreck. Why do I think that's good? I hope I at least get to see what happens after she kills me.     Petra's head rolls to the side, resting her cheek on Lilian's hands, and the seconds that pass before Tamamo pulls Lilian away are lost to the darkness. Petra slumps to the ground helplessly, and for a worrying second her chest doesn't rise, until her curse-weakened diaphragm can pull in a rattling inhalation.     Petra's eyes flutter open, and she convulses, then vomits, retching over and over while curled up on the ground. The creature doesn't manage to pull herself together until Tamamo and Lilian are already leaving. She shakily grabs the two gundaggers and shoves them in her jacket pockets, and crawls back towards the Kana until she's able to walk.     Well, that went well. Back inside the cockpit, Petra slumps in her chair, one arm dangling uselessly to the side and still streaming blood onto the floor. She stares listlessly at the blank viewscreens. Idly thinking to herself, Petra twists her damaged neck down a few careful degrees to look at her wrist. I should probably go get medical help, or I'll die here.     It takes a long time for her to decide to turn the Kana on.