Scene #8509: Remee Steals The Kana

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Beneath the Aegis Astray, hundreds of feet below the castle walls built from the wreckage of a prior Watch operation, is veritable miles of containment cells and storage facilities, holding dangerous criminals and objects from across the multiverse. A vast dungeon of florescent lights and exposed steel scaffolding running along the ceiling, the array of confiscated materiel that could be liberated from the warehouses they gather dust in is unfathomable, but today, the Watch is here for one thing in particular. Operations on the scale of the Commonwealth are hard to comprehend in their totality. The bowels of the Aegis Astray are the workplace of tens of thousands of Paladins and bureaucrats all on their own, and the temporary home of easily ten times as many prisoners, with the colossal breadth of facilities necessary to sustain that raw quantity of sapient presence. One processing checkpoint of dozens outside the huge Warpgates meant solely for this purpose accepts hundreds of new seized or arrested residents daily, with a steady flow of lines filtering through bureaucratic stations for safety, paperwork, filing, and assignment, like customs for entry into a country that most never leave. With that amount of manpower churning inside of it at all times, it's no wonder that the Aegis Astray is home to at least one Watch operative. Remee's contact is understandably skittish, leaking the location of the Ekanamsha S1 and the surrounding floor plan through anonymous channels and absolutely nothing else. The closest entry point to its holding place is, unsurprisingly, a heavy weaponry processing checkpoint, where armed, armored, and typically large machinery is examined to ensure the lack of possibility of remote or automatic discharge, and then to categorize them and assign them an indefinite resting place somewhere in the endless stretch of subterranean warehouses. The employees staffing the checkpoint aren't threats in of themselves-- you're Elites, after all. They are, however, prepared for the possibility of AI or other forms of autonomous control suddenly springing any of the war machines they work on to life, and are thus armed with method after method of broad-application anti-mechanical procedures. Sealing foam, electronic pulses, sheer physical barriers dropped from the ceiling to pin rogue weaponry in place until it can be contained, plus any number of more specific techniques, are all potentially at their disposal. Left unattended, the Paladins staff could shut down the Kana and render it useless, disable Nephra's Androktasia suit, or worst of all, close down the Warpgate itself and strand the infiltrators until they find an alternative method out. Alarms, when inevitably triggered, could call over reinforcements, Elite or otherwise. You're in the heart of the beast, and having already been cut once all those years ago, intruders will be dealt with swiftly and mericilessly. The hallways past the checkpoint, leading to the Kana, have ceilings over fifty feet high with accomodations suggesting that weaponry of that magnitude is regularly transferred through. They are also, appropriately to the scale, long. From the Warpgate to the room where the Kana is held is nearly a mile of vast, open space, and you likely won't be welcome to ride in the transport cars on rails on either side of the hallway. It will take, even in the best case scenario with little opposition, some time to get the Kana from where it's held to the Warpgate-- multiple minutes where anything could go wrong.
Ishirou	Ishirou was still here, working hard on the Kana, trying to undo a lot of damage that had been done to its systems and trying to untangle the mystery that had been somehow placed in his lap. Worse, it was he who had to take this mantle up, but also it was a good way to get over the trauma that he felt. The last thing he would expect was an infiltration team to be here to take the Kana. Right now, he is sitting on the edge of the war machine, slowly going over an agonizing part of it to try and detangle its damaged systems in a way to make some sort of sense. Ishirou himself is in his more typical set of clothing these days. Baggy jeans, a hoodie with the hood pulled over, and gloves on his hands (because he can't hide them in his hoodie while working.) Hovering nearby is POD, which is working on its own section of the Kana. They are not prepared for anything to go wrong today!
Petra Soroka	The weapons checkpoint isn't the only point of entry, of course: upper floors of course have innumerable other passages, Warpgates and airports servicing the rest of the city-sized castle. Employees enter almost exclusively through these upper routes and take elevators down-- the Warpgates in the 'dungeons' are for things that need to be processed and interred, not for trusted personnel. This means that disguises could help the infiltrating Watch operatives slip past the layers of defense to get to the Kana, but it still needs to be taken out through the Warpgate large enough to accommodate it. The hangar that the Ekanamsha S1 itself is held in has a couple dozen other war machines inside, of varying sizes. Beetle-like mechs that lie close to the ground with a fine layer of dust, a bipedal giant made of stark shapes and gleaming porcelain-like metal, various turrets and types of power armor, all lining the walls for however many ages they've been forgotten down here. The Kana is distinct from all the rest in one, subtly gut-churning way: every other machine in this hangar has some sort of organic touch, from the curves and inspiration for the beetles, to the necessity for human hands to operate the triggers and aim the turreted cannons. The Ekanamsha S1 does not-- bulky and hostile and impenetrable. The one sign of human movement in the hangar is Ishirou, clambering around to study the Kana again. During his last visit, he discovered a huge swathe of ruined data and functional connections in the Kana's computers, apparently gutting its capabilities, despite the violence it was capable of before. The damage was far too extensive to fix that day, or possibly ever, but Ishirou was able to do to some patchwork repair to rewind a fraction of the damage done. Today, while coincidentally studying the Kana on the day that it'll be liberated, he discovers something. Each function of the mech, including ones that logically would have no reason to be, had been connected by a web of information relays, communicating data between every part of the machine. This was one of the things shredded by the spike that had crippled the Kana, along with many other capabilities. But now, after the minor repairs that he did last time, Ishirou discovers that tentative connections have been formed between old, ruined data relays-- ones he isn't responsible for. Like neural connections cropping up in a long-dead brain, quiet echoes of intra-computer communication are whirring inside the Kana.
Remee Halcyon	Method for dealing with the staff, part 1: "Hey, does this rag smell like chloroform to you?" No, okay, no, that's not actually what happens. That's silly and inefficient. Remee has tranquilizer darts that work very well. For any Paladins personnel that those wouldn't work on (ex: robots) she can just sneak up behind them the normal way for takedowns, and she has restraints to keep them quiet and in one place. She moves carefully, but also can't afford to take her time - she doesn't have good intel on what sort of anti-infiltration measures are in place, the staff she's taking out could be missing desginated call-in times even right now. She can't clear out everyone, that'd take far too long, for which part two comes into play: disguises. The gear she's brought along includes a variety of lab coats and guard uniforms with facsimilies of the correct ID badges... <Tac-Watch> [4] Nephra Tangent says, "That include the funny little technician hats you always see in the movies?" ... including funny little technician hats, yes. Remee herself's in a janitorial uniform (in human form) and is pushing a mop cart that has her gear and weaponry hidden inside of it. Even top security weapons containment hangars need cleaning, right? ... Oh, there's... Ishirou, right near the Kana. That's great, with massive sarcasm asterisks. "... Hey, buddy," calls Remee, as she pushes the cart in, trying to make her voice sound different. "Gotta clean this place up next. Might want to break for lunch."
Futaba Nuki	<X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Ishirou says, "That's... not right..." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Futaba Nuki says, "Eh? What's up?" <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Ishirou says, "The Kana's systems are regenerating data pathways that I haven't touched..." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Futaba Nuki says, "Huh. Was someone else working on it?" <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Ishirou says, "...No." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Futaba Nuki says, "Then how can...? Hn. I don't get it. You poking at it now?" <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Ishirou says, "Yeah." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Futaba Nuki says, "I'll come on over, then! Never did get a good look at it way back when, and... Heck, maybe there's some... EVIDENCE. Of someone touching it or... Whatever." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Ishirou says, "Yeah, evidence that someone with highly intensive scanning equipment couldn't find, but a ninja princess can." <X-Paladins-Chatter> 4 Futaba Nuki laughs "That's right!" And that's the story of why Futaba's even nearby the Ekanamsha S1 today. Or at least, she would be if she would just ask for directions on how to actually find the machine. Even after introducing herself to various staff members and showing her credentials, actually getting any idea of where the war machine is turns out to be a lot harder than she thought. It'd probably also be easier if Futaba wasn't getting distracted looking at all the other machine coming in and out of the massive facility, certainly providing little actual help to anyone trying to keep those lines flowing steadly (or steadily enough, considering the size). Still, it's not a bad thing to see all this stuff in action at the ground floor once in a while. Even as an Elite, she'd still rather know what needs to be dealt after all the exciting battles and things so she knows what to explicitly avoid. Her curiosity keeps getting the better of her, though, and she's probably inadvertently created a few more incident reports just jumping off and climbing all over things on the way by the time she does eventually reach the Ekanmasha S1. Naturally, that coincides with someone needing to clean up the place. "Already? Aw, I didn't even get to touch it yet." Futaba jokingly complains, then waves at Ishirou once she spots him. "Hey, Ishirou! Where'd you look already?" She asks while making her way further up, both to stay out of ~~Remee~~ the cleaner's way and to get a better look at the machine from an angle that isn't right next to it. "Might as well iron all that out first in the meantime, right?"
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki Tachibana does not want to be here. Not really. Stealing just isn't her way of doing things. Doing things that might antagonize the Paladins - or more importantly, people in it that she cares for - isn't her way of doing things. That sounds a little strange for somebody in the Watch, said out loud, but she's awfully far from normal. Someone very good at putting things concisely did so: I don't think it encompasses any sort of justice that you pursue at all. It is simply a smash-and-grab of a nominal hostile organization. Without any further elaboration, she had to come up with her own decision regarding that fact. What does she do about this situation, where her justice doesn't play a part in it at all? Where she almost definitely knows Remee is making a mistake, yet continues averting her eyes? Where someone who's hurt, someone who's probably going /to/ hurt, and people she doesn't want to see hurt are all at a crossroads? If it's between letting whatever happens happen, or doing something about it, what does her heart tell her she should do? ... Well, it involves a funny little technician's hat, an engineering technician's disguise to go with it, and keeping her Symphogear pendant tucked out of the way beneath the collar. Stealth operations aren't something Hibiki does, and they're not something she's good at - but in this case, she's both thankful that they're going quiet, and thankful for Remee's approach in plenty of other ways. The tranquilizer darts route solves a large portion of her worries already. That's good. Remee wasn't ever the one she was especially concerned about on that front, though. She'll do her part to make sure nothing more extreme has to happen, or happens at all, with classic techniques like chops to the back of the necks as required. It also occurs to her, only when they are indeed already in the belly of the beast, how utterly awful it would be for this to go south. She has to actively stop herself from being awed by the sheer size of the hallways--and the entire underground of Aegis Astray in general--at risk of looking suspicious. ...Nothing for that, though. If not beforehand, once they inevitably have to move the Kana, there won't be much hope of not having things get messy. Hibiki just has to...make sure it all works out with the minimum harm for everyone involved. Somehow. Somehow. Looking at the Kana again, coming into its storage area, fills her with a complex mix of emotions. Ishirou being in here with it feels like a worst case scenario in of itself--but for the moment, Hibiki hangs well back at the edge of the conversation's range and tips down on her hat to hide her face while glancing away, hoping beyond hope that he'll make it easy and leave with Futaba.
Nephra Tangent	Very Cherry Red is, objectively, the best flavor of store-brand unliscenced blow pop clone gum-filled lollipop. Benzaldehyde and sucrose, citric acid and obscene amounts of red dye 40, it's the exact kind of processed nothing to shock taste buds (and any stinging little cuts in one's gums) into overload. It's not pucker-sour, it's not acrid-sweet, and like all of its sibling flavors, the putty wad it calls gum is tasteless and hard to blow bubbles from, but it's still a perfect fit for the heel-bouncing anticipation before a firefight. Gone, (Unfortunately) is Nephra's rainjacket, having to be replaced (courtesy of Remee) by a spick and spam maintenance tech's uniform (complete with the silly little grey baseball cap), albeit with her black duffel slung over her shoulder. The black caterpillar of her Pass IDs, looking busy, and the cover of one eye glaring at anyone who bothers to glance her way for too long, are not the method she'd like to use to get into the belly of the Paladin's headquarters, but they made do, to a point. "Haha. I'm sure you'd both agree it's a helluva lot more thrilling when it's loud from the get-go, right, little buddies?" The 'little buddies' in question are a pair of actual Paladins technicians unlucky enough to shuffle off into the same elevator as her. Technicians unlucky enough to startle when their apparent-comrade hit the elevator's emergency stop button. Technicians unlucky enough to have shouted, to have reached for radios. Now, leaned awkwardly up against the smooth aluminum walls, with trails of spit and blood from where her elbows forced jaws to crumple against them, neither one will be anything but a silent and captivated audience to the show Nephra aims to put on. She pulls her lollipop out of her mouth, and crouches over one of the workers, on notice of an eye flicker. A little sigh escapes her lips, and they purse, as she lightly taps the technician's forehead with the lollipop stick. "Go back to sleep. You're dreaming. Or concussed. Maybe worse!" The subsequent flicker subsiding, coincidentally, for sure, elicits a hum from Nephra, and the hard candy is stick back between her teeth. Showtime. By all accounts, the elevator is still stopped dead in its tracks, in-between floors and thick layers structural fortification. Elevators aren't made to move and fall, without active motion and intent. So when metal flows down her limbs from the folded-space spinal storage form of her suit, and the distinctive thud-thud of her reactor's heartbeat echoes around the small aluminum box, anyone would be right to be surprised when cables groan, lighting trembles, and gravity pulls like a frantic beast at the elevator. Friction-catches scream, but the feeling of falling, gut-tugging and lunch-lurching, rings out even before cables shear and the machine follows suit.
Nephra Tangent	She's timed it right. G calculations memorized, and timed by her suit's system, a rough estimage of delta-h by the elevator's suit of floor buttons and access requests, so when gravity cuts off, before she and her little buddies crumple like scrap at the bottom of the shaft, or miss their exit, there's finally a chance for safety precautions to slow and stop their fall. Duffel still over her shoulder, but disguise stretched and strained and tearing at its fitted seams with the expanded form of her combat suit beneath it, Nephra's hands- gauntlet-clad and tipped with claws instead of fingers- pry at the elevator's doors even as sirens and automated emergency calls ring out, no doubt to the elevator manufacturer and some center somewhere in the facility. How nice, for them to give out an entrance theme like that! She giggles into her lollipop, as she tears the metal doors apart and steps out onto the fluorescent-lit storage floor. She takes the silly little hat off her head, and tucks it onto Little Buddy One, with a gentle (not gentle) pat. Footsteps almost skip-like as she gets on her way, the omnipresent heartbeat echoes out, each step stock-firm and forceful enough to cause lights to flicker overhead. Now, which aisle was it on....Ah! Unlike the rest of the armor's matte black, the Androktasia suit's claws have been angle-ground and buffed out into a shiny silver glimmer, for little reason than to give Nephra's incessant waving a brighter glare to it- and wave she does, when she sees workers and an all-too familiar floating drone. She lets out a belly-laugh. "Oh my goodness, is that who I think it is, up there!? It can't be you, can it?"
Remee Halcyon	If she's not stopped, or... really whether Ishirou takes her trick or Nephra's baiting or even if it fails, Remee goes to get the Kana in motion, one way or another. Ideally this involves getting inside it and getting it in motion, trying to remember what she's seen of Petra piloting it before, but worst comes to worst she'll just push it along.
Futaba Nuki	Futaba Nuki says, "That janitor sure did sound familiar, didn't she?" Futaba comments idly as she hops onto a handrail, balancing precariously on it while standing at her full height and stepping along, one foot in front of the other. She doesn't seem too worried about the clearly-a-janitor's identity, though, since... Why would she? It's not like anyone's crazy enough to come down here without permission. Also, someone's here without permission! Hearing a vaguely familiar voice from further below as the alarms start ringing out from the elevators way of there, Futaba looks down and over as the alarm bells start ringing in her head, too. "You're...! You need to go before things get worse!" She shouts in half-warning and half-threat towards Nephra and Remee, leaping off from her high point to conveniently land beside the not-Hibiki janitor. "Things're about to get dicey, so get running!" Grasping her by the shoulders firmly (but not necessarily painfully), Futaba whips her tail around herself (somehow) to give this janitor a big shove away from where Nephra and Remee to try and get her to safety! "And you!" She points at Nephra and Remee dramatically, hands already moving together to start going through NINJA HAND SEALS. "What the heck are you doing down here, anyway? If you get caught here, you're gonna get way worse than just me and Ishirou beating you up!""
Ishirou	Ishirou's repairs were going well... too well. He quickly pieced together why, and that was the Kana starting to repair itself. This is highly irregular. Potentially dangerous, which caused Ishirou to be concerned. Either Petra was afraid of this, or she... no, let's not worry about what if's yet. Let's figure out what is before we go into what was. His head popped up when 'cleaning' arrived, and his eyes narrowed. Then turned into a smile. "Oh sorry, but I made sure to file the paper work in for this hangar to be reserved and not disturbed. The device here is dangerous, and just discovered something potentially even more dangerous. Must not have informed you, but it is Sunday..." he shrugs, yawning. Futaba walks in, "It's fine, they're going to be going anyway, so you can 'try and find something that I couldn't find.'" he says this, while rolling his eyes at the Ninja Princess, but mostly in good humor. That was until the massive and explosive entrance of Nephra. Pieces of the explosion smack the robot, forcing him to duck but he manages to avoid the worst of it. Popping back up he stares at Nephra, hands shaking for a little bit. He starts to hyperventilate but grips himself at the last moment. "You won't leave if I ask you nicely, will you?" he asks, looking at POD. There is a flash before the RESCUE suit covers his body in much of the same way the Hoodie and baggy jeans did. Flight systems would be too cramped, he figured, so it's time for land use. He releases what is close to a tank out of his subspace system, and it breaks out into four pieces. Ishirou jumps to each one, ending on a chest plate that covers his vital organs. His scanners already start firing, aiming to go over Nephra's body and her systems to find to start this assault. His right hand comes up, cannon-like weapons taking shape. "Well, I'm asking you anyway, leave now. I'll even let you go without any reprisal and we'll just bill the watch for the damages."
Petra Soroka	It's probably vanishingly rare for anyone to clean these enormous hangars, especially considering that they're the size of multiple football fields stitched together, copied a thousandfold across just one distract of the underbelly of Aegis Astray. Even more rare for it to be a person on foot rather than some automated system patrolling to sweep up whatever garbage happens to get left down here. Whether or not Ishirou falls for the trick, though, the tearing of metal echoing down the hall from Nephra's stunt quickly alerts the rest of the facility to intruders. Alarms blare and shouts ring out, unsure of where the source is, until information propagates away from Nephra's dramatic entrance over the course of long minutes, allowing for the Watch operatives to gather together in the hangar. Now, though, they're caught up, and cameras high up on the fourty-foot walls twitch and focus on the janitor currently climbing inside the Kana. Black pods attached to the bare steel scaffolding of the ceiling hiss open, releasing various lockdown procedures-- in particular, flying drones with whirring golden rotors, equipped with some sort of canister and a hose to release its contents. The drones spiral through the air and encircle the Kana as Remee is trying to start it up, and all simultaneously engage their spray cones as some distant command is issued. Each one releases a stream of off-white foam, with the pressure of a firehose, that sticks and clings to the Kana. This wouldn't be a problem-- it's a tank, after all-- but once it hits, the foam begins expanding rapidly, swelling to ten times its size and toughening up to be tear-proof and impact resistant, like surrounding the mech in a sticky cushion that adheres it to the ground. Given time, it could lock even the Ekanamsha in place, helplessly immobilized. The spray doesn't spare anyone else either, flooding over the Paladins and the other Watch members alike. None of it is lethal, or even painful, but it'll get you stuck until those shouts from outside get here!
Remee Halcyon	"C'mon, get moving, get moving..." Dang it, how did Petra do this? Her ears pick up on the drones, and she pops her head out out of the Kana - and grimaces as she watches what's happening. No guesses what that foam's going to do. "Nothing for it..." She abandons, for a second, her attempts to get the Kana started, and pulls out the handgun she's hidden in her uniform, gripping it with both hands (proper form!) and sighting down at the circling drones. One drone, one bullet. She doesn't have enough time to try firing more than one shot each, really - taking out the drones will buy her some time, but playing defense won't get her or her prize out of here. And she just needs a little time, really! Petra could pilot this thing, how hard could it really be for someone else to figure out?
Hibiki Tachibana	Oh my goodness, is that who I think it is, up there!? It can't be you, can it? Well, there went any hope of all of that. And thanks to that, the situation has changed in very short order from 'maybe we can at least get Ishirou and Futaba out of the way' to 'alarms, Remee going for the prize, more alarms, and getting sprayed down by foam'. All of these are especially unpleasant--and Hibiki would love to chew out Nephra, if it weren't for everything else that requires immediate attention. At risk of things getting irrecoverably bad. One of which is Futaba trying to get her out of the way, which leaves her actually surprised enough at the attempt that she gets shoved off and moves a few meters. She could go, technically. Nothing is stopping her. But on seeing Ishirou facing down Nephra and his reaction to her, and the ninja preparing her handsigns... She grimaces. "...Sorry, Futaba," her familiar voice murmurs from behind. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron..." That sure is a burst of golden light right behind Futaba. And that sure isn't a janitor putting a gauntleted hand on her shoulder from behind, mid-ninjutsu prep. That's not a janitor at all. That's Hibiki Tachibana! Looking rather unhappy beneath Gungnir's oversized scarf. She also promptly stops her by going to seize her arm and judo throw her back over her own shoulder to try and floor her in one smooth motion. She'll come down awfully roughly, but not really all that painfully; if anything, Hibiki is using the opportunity to also have an excuse to lean down and lower her voice enough to so that the tanuki is the only one who can hear her. "...I really am. The only thing I want is for these two to get out of here safely, too."
Petra Soroka	How did Petra pilot this thing? The Kana is actually really complicated, now that Remee is looking at its controls rather than just its pilot. The screens, booted on because of Ishirou, display huge quantities of data, both about the mech itself and the world outside, screens providing an alien circumferential view of the hangar. Even the assortment of levers alongside the wheel is a little dizzying to think of managing, and that's just moving it, much less moving and firing. Petra may have been a dumbass who sucked at using her mech, but at least she-- oh. Wait. Every one of the flying drones and moving figures outside the mech has red indicators tracking their heads on the screen. Remee could probably just tell the mech to target those. But with what? » High-Explosive Shells » Baryonic Inversion Cannon » Anti-Organic Gel Spray » Small Ordnance Outside the Kana, Remee's efforts in taking down the drones is minorly successful. There's only so many of them in this specific hangar, and they're more of a delaying tactic than a sole line of defense. Even with the application from all the hoses being slowed from knocking some of them down-- the others are puttering out of juice soon after, they only have so much-- the foam swells around the Kana to the point that it'll have to fight to get moving, once Remee starts it up. Meanwhile, the alarms keep up their shrill warning in every corner, reminding the Watchmen how short their time is here, and how far away the Warpgate is. A series of clicks and then bootfalls outside the hangar door announces the arrival of a handful of guards in the transport cars, wielding weaponry far too small to harm any of the Elites. Even so, they fan out by the door, relaying information into their radios about the intruders, all clearly some variation of distressed. One of them, seeing the Kana start up, hits an emergency button on the wall by the door. Flashing yellow lights crisscross along the ground of the entire hangar, boxing in not only the Kana, but every other piece of machinery within, with no regard to where the people themselves are standing. The warning they convey is clear: Don't stand on these lines!!!! After a couple seconds, thick steel walls slam down from the ceiling along each of those lines, boxing in the Kana if it's still in place, or crushing it from the top down if Remee's started moving it. Additionally, the door out is similarly walled off, along with having the Paladins standing guard by where it was.
Nephra Tangent	The jumpy panic that immediately rushes through Ishirou is all the confirmation Nephra needs to know who exactly this unfamiliar-looking figure is. All his radio yelps and shudders form a trend, after all. "Ah-hah! I was right!~ Ain't that something, Ishirou, little buddy?" She snickers at her word choice, a joke that obviously he won't get. 'You won't leave if I ask you nicely, will you?' "I can't recall ever wanting a single nice thing to come out from between your lips, Ishirou! Come the H. E. double-hockey-sticks on." 'Well, I'm asking you anyway, leave now. I'll even let you go without any reprisal...' A hand gets stuck up, mimicking a mouth, and she flaps it open and closed in time with Ishirou's words. Her lip curls, as she spits out a reply. "It's dangerous, here, Ishirou. I thought you'd know better. So how about... If you run now, I'll let you go without reprisal." Nephra giggles, when the series of drones fill the air, and start spitting out expanding foam- but her laugh fades, quickly, and Ishirou's own suit-up draws an irritated lip bite from her. One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, all you fuckers hit the floor. Nephra whistles in wordless tune to the rhyme, muddied by the candy in her mouth. Gravity surges. How come you get to fly? You all should just be ripped from the air. As her reactor's heart beats, she tries to do just that. The weight is crushing. The pressure is worse. Nephra's own heartbeat pounds, spurred on by rising adrenaline, pressured by the tight-inflated gravitic compensators in her limbs, to force blood that wants only to sink towards the floor back up towards her brain and lungs and the muscle that it all flows through. Her steps are forceful and twisting, as sticky foam builds up around her, and she does her best to shear through it, even as the crushing weight of its own bubbling material fights against its expansion. "What's the cannon for, Ishirou? You think you're going to blow my organs out against the wall behind me? Do you have the guts for that?" Limbs click-snap through motions, as she swings her duffel out to the side, its straps straining under the constant, pressing acceleration. Teeth clamp around the lollipop stick in her mouth, as she takes a full few seconds to pull both halves of her spear out of it, re-affix the bag over her exosuit's insectoid-jointed shoulders, and stick the duct tape wrapped pole into a cohesive weapon. "I want you to fight me up close. But I'd rather you ran. Make your choice, okay? You won't like leaving that up to me.~" As much as she may be offering him a chance to run, to escape, surrounded by hellish, movement-hampering sticky foam, under the crushing weight of gravity that only the surface of young stars ought to feel, actually running, Ishirou (or anyone much else, for that matter!) actually getting feet underneath to follow through on escaping may be far, far harder done than said.
Futaba Nuki	This was just supposed to be a day of looking at stuff. Sure, Futaba wasn't really expecting to find that much on the Kana, but what other opportunities would she have to get a closer look at the mech she fought against up close? If things go the way that Remee and Nephra planned, possibly not for a while. "Hey! Don't think we'll just let you up and drive it off!" She calls out to Remee while she's trying to get the machine working, bringing her hands up to her face as she finishes going through the motions (literally). Before she can fire off a burst of flame or whatever it was she was preparing for, though... Light from behind Futaba catches her attention along with a familiar gauntlet on her shoulder, and a familiar voice just before she goes up and over Hibiki. Wait, Hibiki?! That's not right at all! The ninja just manages to catch herself in mid-fall, slamming her hands and feet into the ground to arrest her fall (which arguably might be worse than if she just took the fall and dispersed it properly). "Geh... Is that why you're all here! And they're not just gonna run for it instead?" Futaba grimaces as she keeps holding her position for a little longer, both to process what Hibiki's telling her while also giving her oversized tail time to slowly work its way above Hibiki. "Guess you've gotta make it look good, then... But I can't let them steal this thing, either, so you better get packing before you go down with them!" Futaba shouts as her tail dips downwards and at the Symphogear-bearer right around the same time Futaba's body melts through that hold into a puddle of water. Futaba-as-a-tail comes down on Hibiki, trying to pin her down to the ground for a moment before flicking upwards to hurl her back, once again an attempt to get her out of this situation!
Remee Halcyon	> But with what? This was a lot simpler idea in Remee's head. Though to be fair, in her head she didn't think there'd be Ishirou on the scene, or Nephra being Nephra (well, okay, that last one was her fault for not thinking about). "What's... baryonic? Aren't people organic?" She glares at the options she's seeing. Did she remember Petra using any of these? Actually, did she ever see Petra using this thing in combat? Remee glares at the options again. Baryonic means... means... dang it, this is something that wasn't covered in her education. Is this something the non-homeschool kids learn? Remee punches in the controls for 'high explosive shells' just because she knows all of those words, and it sounds like it'd have more impact than the small ordnance. And then she shouts - using the Kana's PA system if it has one, or just literally shouting via volume and radio if not. <J-IC-Scene> Remee Halcyon says, "Get out of the way!" And then she desperately tries to work the controls, aiming for the nearest wall blocking her way... trying to aim away from any personnel there, but she did give them a warning either way.
Ishirou	The pure force exerted on Ishirou is enough to crack armor, shatter important systems, and strain his entire combat system under the pure strain of the force that Nephra can exude. It's completely different from Phony, where she could do this but do it in a gentle way... this is completely without care, pure force. Controlled but not kind... Ishirou groans, "You don't really want me to run away, do you? You just want to hurt me and others more..." he says, straining under the force. "And I'm not running either... I can't let this thing get out there... and I won't let others get hurt because you feel like it." She mentions blowing her organs out behind her... and he does not want to do that, that's true. He refuses to let the Kana get out, he refuses to let Nephra hurt more Paladin forces... There is a burst of light around Ishirou, and he calculates a lot of different variables at once. Metal is falling, steel is clashing around everywhere... but she can't weigh down his magic. His hands hit the ground, and a line of energy traces along the ground. He aims to try and wrap the collapsing metal around her, trying to force the gravity he's being saddled with on her own systems by way of outside forces. "I won't run away this time.." he mutters to himself.
Petra Soroka	As with everything in Aegis Astray, the steel barriers dropping from the ceiling are precisely calculated in their weight and velocity and position, to be as minimally harmful but maximally effective as possible. Everything adhering to an efficient standard, reined in to acceptable ranges, apply control without being uncontrolled itself. Nephra's core exerts its pull on the hangar just as the steel barriers are dropping, amplifying gravity to ten times the expected value. 9.8 meters per second on thousands of tons of steel becomes the impact of a dozen solid steel bombs across the hangar, crunching the walls themselves down like cans and shattering the concrete floor beneath them. The Paladins guards themselves go flying at the unexpected impact of the wall behind them, then slam into the ground with that same crushing force. There's blood, absolutely, and a handful of them aren't standing back up, but without a closer look it's hard to tell whether they're dead or just downed. One of them, though, manages to force herself up against the gravity, clinging on to a buckled portion of steel wall to stay up. Tucking a clearly broken arm to her chest to keep it from being pulled down and broken far worse, she unclips her radio from her belt and brings it to her lips. With all the sounds of battle, it's hard to tell exactly what she says, but it's easy to see the effects. The ceiling supports are all squealing with the effort of holding up against Nephra's gravity. Metal bars buckle and twist, but the containment measures affixed to them still function, and a series of beads, attached to every intersection like wasps' nests, detonate into clouds of chaff-like material. Electromagnetically charged, they work to disrupt all forms of scanning, from the Kana's tracking to Ishirou's own scans! There's one additional problem, though. With the increased gravity, the charged metal scraps don't just float in the air-- they plunge down like a stream of flechettes, on Watch and Paladins alike, though not over the guards. Remee's efforts to tunnel through steel with the Kana's cannon are unsuccessful. The explosion echoes through the hangar and the shockwave slams into everyone, but when the smoke clears, the wall is only scorched. What other option is there... there's that other cannon?
Hibiki Tachibana	"...Yeah. And I wish they would," Hibiki mutters to Futaba, in their moment of physical lockdown with one another. Her conflict over the situation is enough that she doesn't actually notice the tail sneaking above her. Which leaves her wide open to a second of wide-eyed surprise, when the ninja-- --turns into water!? It causes the magical girl to slip and lose her balance, which is just enough for tail-taba to bring her down onto her front, which is a lot less painful than it otherwise should be considering the level of fluff, before she's hurled back!? Damnit, between this and the steel walls coming down, this is going south fast-- Before she can get properly flung, Hibiki's hand scrambles around to grab onto the tail. To bring her with her, of course. This might end the same as her last attempt to grapple with a shapeshifter, but the suddenness might get her somewhere. "...And I wish /I/ could, but I just can't leave them behind like that...!" Not even Nephra, apparently. "Or--" Ishirou, although that part goes unsaid. Oh, they're both going to go right into one of those steel walls. How much this'll actually hurt Futaba in her current form is up in the air, but it's mostly to keep her locked down--as her attention is half on what's going on in the other one-on-one fight here. That's getting--damnit.
Futaba Nuki	Wincing as the alarms keep getting louder, Futaba just starts gesturing at them instead of trying to get the idea across to Hibiki with shouted words. The yellow lines, unfamiliar as they are, convey enough danger to Futaba that she stays well away from them, even trying to steer her fight with Hibiki away from those danger lines. The timing of that works in their favor, too, as Nephra starts messing with gravity and causes those walls to start smashing down far harder than they should have any right to. On the plus side, Futaba getting pulled along with Hibiki from that toss means she doesn't get a chance to see the direct damage from the walls versus the personnel just yet. On the less plus side, Futaba's stuck hurtling after Hibiki. She manages to twist and turn herself just in time to 'land' on her feet, though, sticking to the wall horizontally while focused squarely on the martial artist in front of her. "Rrgh... You can't erally bail on 'em either, huh? Fine. I get it!" Letting out an irritated noise, she only shoots an annoyed glance at Nephra and Remee from a distance and yelping a bit as the wall she's stuck on collapses sideways after smashing into the ground so terribly hard. "They're your comrades, right? Then..." Trailing off with another frustrated shout, Futaba starts whipping her tail back and forth to try and throw Hibiki off of it. It doesn't stay the same shape it normally is, of course, as her tail starts extending and shrinking rapidly in the process, all in an effort to wear down Hibiki's ability to actually hold on and keep fighting rather than directly striking at her just yet. It seems, even in these circumstances, Futaba's still trying to get Hibiki to back off rather than confining or injuring her, especially in light of the hangar coming ever closer to collapsing. Or maybe it's on purpose, so there isn't a risk of Hibiki getting stuck and wounded if this place really does come down around them.
Remee Halcyon	> there's that other cannon? Well, Remee's out of other options, unless she wants to try ramming the Kana into the wall... and between the counter-fire coming her way and the mayhem being caused by Nephra, she's running out of time as well. Baryonic cannon... baryonic inversion cannon... what is baryonic, and what does it mean to invert it? What does it even do? There's really only one thing that Remee can think of, in this case, and that's focusing on the last word. It's a cannon. If it didn't fire, it'd be... a field, or a drive, or something. This isn't the baryonic inversion engine, it's the baryonic inversion cannon. And cannons are meant to be fired. Remee takes a deep breath, and places both hands on the firing controls. "I can't chance half measures on this either..." She focuses. She'd been hoping she'd be able to test this next part out in a controlled environment, since it's something she's never tried to do before, but if she fails here it's not just a case of no Kana, but... no freedom as well, trapped in a Paladins facility. Remee has a piece of the Big Bad Wolf in her. It takes effort to bring it out, to channel it. It's easy enough to channel it into a house-destroying punch, it's harder to channel it into her guns, to pack the same sort of destructive energy into a firing mechanism and bullet, but she's managed to master it enough that it's come naturally now. Pushing it into something larger than a gun is difficult. Pushing it into something larger than herself is... not something she's ever thought through as possible, really. She's trying now. She's pushing the Big Bad Wolf's energy into the entire mech. It turns out to not be possible. She pushes, and pushes, and ends up nearly burning herself out in a way she hasn't since she first discovered the power within her, and only barely pulls the energy back within her before it all dissipates. Rethink. What am I trying to do here? Go back to basics, the power is narrative... so what story am I trying to tell? This isn't the story of the Big Bad Wolf breaking into a facility that wasn't prepared for her. I'm not... that big, or that bad, at least not yet. And they were clearly quite prepared for me. Remee's hands grip the firing controls again. She has it. She just had to rewrite the narrative. "This is the story... of the Big Bad Kana." The power flows through her - not to make the mech an extension of herself, as she does with her guns and bullets, but to it as a character in its own right. "The Paladins built a house of steel, thinking they could contain the Big Bad Kana, but they underestimated it and didn't build enough. And the Big Bad Kana said... I'll huff, and I'll puff..." Ah. There. The narrative power flows at a sustainable rate. It turns out to be an easier story to tell... possibly because it was true all along. Remee squeezes the trigger. "And I'll blow your house down."
Nephra Tangent	It's an utter cacophany of crushing debris and groaning metal, all around the facility. Nephra's heartbeat is a horrific misutilization of technology, straining and stretching and pulling all it can down, down, down. As she stands, breathing heavy, blood pounding, fragments and droplets of expanding foam, stray flechettes, and dust rocketing as hard as it can out of the air, catch into a faintly visible rotating nova around her- disk-shaped, accreting into a grim mockery of a body circling halo. Nephra's teeth grit, shattering the head of her lollipop, until its faint gum layer is all that's stretched between molars that are trying their hardest to gnash together. She doesn't smile, as she sees Ishirou stumble, his own metal shattering. "Ishy! Oh, squishy, squishy Ishy, I do want you to run! I want you to run, because I'd rather you never had to be here in the first place!~" Her tone is saccharine, a fascimile of friendliness, utterly steeped in annoyance- until it cuts back, flat. "You're no good at knowing what I want." A cough racks her, as she doesn't struggle to stay on her feet. She spits, red fluid hitting the foam- it's probably just lingering dye from her lollipop. Her ears ring, and she- Crushed, twisted parts of beams shaken free from above her are falling, not just down, but towards her. Synapses burn, neuroelectric lightning sizzling through the barest of gaps between implant electrodes and the nestled magnetic recievers in her suit. The barest of split-second-faster reactions click-snap her suit's limbs and pistons, metal and hydraulics screaming together under the weight, to grab at the debris trying to encase her, to push back, to stand her ground amidst the clutching foam. Through gnashed teeth, with straining breaths that come faster and faster, Nephra's words are hissed as much as they are shouted- not only at Ishirou, but mixing in with the ongoing din. "Knife's at your throat, now. It's so eas-" A sputtering cough. "So easy to give up! Do it! I told you to, already!" Steel piles around her, but her grip digs into it, until it rips and shears and bends- it's what this was meant for. Each motion a thunderclap, each tear a deathscreach. It's undeniably slowing her progress, towards where Ishirou stands guard- but still, torn shreds of steel get thrown onto the expanse of foam, and jets roar, to help her step up towards them, and use them as nearly a boardwalk through the clutching, sticky hell. Her footsteps leave imprints in the metal itself, and don't only just push it down deeper into the hardening spray. "I said I'd fight you up close, Ishirou." She did. And step by creak-snapping step, she's close. It's remarkable how fast her suit can propel her, even at this hellish lensing of weight. It's remarkable how she can face him down,, and intersperse her own body and head between him and the fluorescent lighting. It's remarkable how fast her spear can whip around like a swung stave, like a baseball bat, like a crushing cable snapped off a bridge, to try and crush life and limb- and it's remarkable how it's aiming right at Ishirou.
Ishirou	"I don't know what you really want. If you really wanted me to run away, you wouldn't be doing this..." he says, muttering, trying to discern what is /really/ going on. The spear is coming up, the woman is crashing through the attempt to bury and slow her down. He's scrambling to think of a way to contain this before she does even more destruction to this place. He takes a breath. No, he's one of the few who could actually stop this and buy the civilians a way to get out. Her armor, her core... he just had to damage it long enough for the field to collapse... they could escape before too much more damage happened. "I can't run away anyway... there are people here who need me," he says, quivering in fear, but... it's not brave to be fearless, it's bravery to be afraid and still push forward anyway. The spear swings, and he attempts to move, his legs feel like lead weights, and the force is still enough to swat him away like a fly. He goes flying, but just barely manages to flip to his feet and slide to a stop. His eyes cycle... kinetic force won't be effective... His cannons switch to energy. He fires a shot, attempting to strain her defenses, while a second shot fires, attempting to get a magical attack into her systems. This one heading into her suit's core, trying to stop the gravity wave she is producing, while also attempting to scramble her weapon systems the best that he can. Junk data, rerouting subroutines, straight forceful data destruction... simply anything and everything he can do to try and disrupt her.
Hibiki Tachibana	"Ngh...!" It's both a sound of strain in response to Futaba, and a wince at the worsening situation around them. Nephra's control over the gravity in the room--the effects it's having on everything--is impossible for her to ignore with her focus split halfway between her opponent and what else is going on. She knew Nephra would try and make trouble. But she critically underestimated exactly how much. Those people she only barely got a glance at--are they injured? ...Worse? Is the ceiling going to come down and make none of it even matter? Any more tug, and she just doesn't know. And it's too late to wholly stop her. And she has a horrible, horrible feeling about something coming up. "I can't--I won't--!" Hibiki's teeth grit in frustration and exhaustion both, not getting the program enough that her grip /tightens/ on Futaba's tail, instead. It's not easy at all, but she does it nonetheless - although not necessarily because she wants to keep fighting Futaba in this sort of way. The boosters of her Symphogear fire off as she does, transforming it into a sudden and violentlywrenching motion. Where she intends to slam Futaba down into the floor hard and keep on going with the thrust, which is probably going to hurt. More than just that, it'll let her effectively act as a bodily shield over top of her from whatever's going to come, whether from more wanton destruction like the metal flechettes, or from the Kana itself. She's probably not fast enough to do the same for the personnel. Even if she's trying to bring both her and Futaba in that general direction at full speed. There's just so much going on, and not enough time to do everything. The frustration is enough that sweat isn't the only thing composing the droplets beating off her face.
Petra Soroka	Remee clicks the trigger, and it becomes immediately apparent what the Baryonic Inversion Cannon is. Mechanisms cycle inside the turret, ammunition is swapped in and out by precision tailored machinery, and in the brief instant after Remee fires it, a thin, glittering-white sabot round flashes out of the end of the barrel. It connects with the steel barrier, turns inside-out, and in the blink of an eye, the entire wall vanishes, eaten away by the antimatter projectile, converted into pure energy. The heatless, explosion-less shockwave rocks outwards with more force than the Nephra-enhanced impact had, sending other metal machines in the bunker flying and crashing into walls, battering the Elites, and tossing the guards back like dolls. There's a certain level of callousness necessary, to fire weaponry that you don't understand, in an active firefight. Blood smears the walls and floor, and it's less necessary to get a close look than before. A smooth concave domed crater is gouged out in front of the Kana, enough that it'd be a hassle to walk over with Remee's inexpertise, but this mech can fly, once Nephra turns off her gravity. The foam is shredded into nothingness, all around the room, freeing both the Kana and the Elites from the sticky hazard. The shockwave is, also, the final straw for the supports in the ceiling. Metal scaffolding squeals in distress at the impact, twisting into itself and then finally ripping out of the ceiling, shredding like twigs. Beams rain down from the sky as crumpled balls of warped metal, tangled into uselessness, slamming into the top of the Kana and the rest of the hangar. The ceiling itself bows downwards, no doubt causing more destruction upstairs-- there's dozens of stories above this one, and chunks of concrete tear out and fall with meteoric force, shattering against the ground. Two of the Paladins guards are still up and moving. The one who called the chaff is not. One of them, bloody and ragged, tries to pick her up to drag her out, but even with the mild physical enhancements all of them seemed to have to even think that this venture was reasonable, it's not possible to lift her in this gravity. Hibiki, positioned over Futaba to shield her, is in the perfect position to see that guard struck down by a fist-sized fragment of concrete traveling faster than a bullet. The last one, his Paladins-official uniform torn and stained, manages to pull himself under the temporary shelter of a bowed piece of metal, though it's only a matter of time before the thing shielding him from the raining debris crumples down on him too.
Remee Halcyon	There's a long pause from inside the cockpit, as the pilot takes in and processes what just happened. "..." This is a moment when someone would be realizing what they've done. Seen the blood smearing the walls, see the survivors limping away. Blood's on her hands. Consciences can't be cleared. "..." This is a moment when courses change. Regret sinks in. Atonement starts. Now is when that awful feeling pervades someone. "..." Remee grips the controls again. "I told them all... to get out of my way." She's having none of that. Regrets are for other people. Regrets are for smaller people. She goes to find the flight controls, figuring that'll be easier than messing with trying to walk it around the crater. It's too early to say if she's getting the hang of this, but she's at least feeling more confident now, so she's no longer second guessing herself or despairing over not remembering how Petra did it. How Petra did it is no longer as important, anyway, now it's about how Remee's going to do it. The baryonic inversion cannon swings around. A threat. She sights down it, for a moment, at the injured survivors... And decides that if they're about to be crushed, then that's their problem. Their fault for working here. And then returns her sights forwards. Towards the warpgate, and however many obstacles are still in her way. "Get out of my way. Or I'll fire this again." She starts it moving.
Futaba Nuki	"What are they even...?!" Futaba's starting to hear more things coming apart, and there's no way that could possibly be good. As long as Hibiki's still fighting her, though, Futaba can't just focus on evacuations and leave Ishirou to getting triple teamed. Her attention wavers briefly, and that's enough to get her to yelp again as Hibiki gets that firmer hold on her tail. Rather than getting tired out, Hibiki seems to be fighting back even harder, catching Futaba off guard as she's dragged backwards across the floor! "Ow, crap, goddang-!" It's not a pleasant ride in the slgihtest, and not just because she's getting pushed along so many layers of concrete, steel, and other assorted gunk on the floor. By the time Futaba remembers to turn her back into something a little less pain-prone and more slippery to make it easier to slid backwards, she notices... Well, a lot. Remee, in the Kana, blasts a massive explosion through so many walls and into even more people, some of whom Futaba just can't see any more aside from the smears left in the walls. The ceilings are coming down, with several injured personnel trying to escape, others desperately trying to pull their companions out from where they're trapped, and others simply not moving. Hibiki's frustration becomes all too visible for Futaba, and even she can tell from that look on her face that it's not just exertion anymore. "Geh... Dammit, dammit, dammit!" Futaba's own frustration, too, starts boiling over, and two of her arms slip out from underneath Hibiki. She raises them over the girl tackling her to the ground, but instead of slamming them down at her, she instead aims to shove her right off before reaching for the ceiling directly. "We don't have time for this! Tch... Take your /friends/-" She spits that last word out distastefully "-out of here before I change my mind!" While still lying on the ground, Futaba's arms keep stretching and rising to the ceiling while her hands start spreading and gleaming with silver. Without a real knowledge of architecture, the best she can manage is to just start spreading them all over the place, creating a dense support structure along the ceiling to try and compensate for all the missing supports while using herself (on the ground) as the anchor to keep things from collapsing entirely.
Nephra Tangent	Ishirou's attempts to connect with and scramble whatever weapon system Nephra is using quickly run into a problem: There is no weapon system in the Androktasia suit. In fact- his attempts to latch into any system he finds there at all, unsettlingly, seem to slip and miss. Inputs and subroutines clash, variables seem to actively scramble themselves without even being observed, each motion of her suit and body causing flickers and reorganization of outdated and patchy code, paved over and shredded and fed back out of the suit's processing, into neurochemical feedback and sputtering, chaotic input from Nephra herself. He may recall from months ago, on top of the skyscraper he last saw Nephra upon, having felt at the core of her suit- its gravitic impact on her surroundings revealing its ever-so-slightly destabalized contained black hole. It isn't a weapon. It's an electrical generator- and the only system jockeying it, unsettling its field bindings, letting it reach fractions and fractions of fractions of its gravity out onto the world, is Nephra's nervous system, hooked in and flexing it like a muscle. Ishirou has aimed right towards that muscle, that beating heart, the hand-sized fortified housing, where the mechanisms for its magnetospatial containment fields rest around the pin-sized singularity, sealed and (theoretically) safe- and poured enough energetic force towards it to slag steel and short-circuit substations. Around her, ineffectual gravity flares to try and disrupt the core-shot, pulling at nothing, as her body tries to twist out of the way. Ishirou can already guess the intention behind the frantic eye-widening, the sudden movement- damage control. Nephra, surrounded by her metal armor, is quite literally powered by near-disaster, and as she fails to quite dodge, precious milliseconds wasted on habitual mirror-neuron reactions, she's given a single choice as her suits electrical resistors struggle to compensate for the overflow: Let it destabalize, let it cook through the shielding, and gamble on whether its killswitch engages or it spaghettifies everything within eyesight, and who-knows-how-many 'and then some's after it- or shut it off herself, let it go, untense the muscle holding everything down and stifle the heart of her suit.
Nephra Tangent	It's not fair you'd leave this up to me, prick. It's instantaneous to shut it down, the heartbeat fading off until gravity relents. Excess power channeled through the suit burns lichtenberg figures across her covered skin, aching and searing, and she severs the lollipop's stem with her teeth. But she's unbound, too- she may handle it better than a footsoldier, but she still feels it, it still pulls her down- so the snapping motions that ensue, to follow up Ishirou's careening flight, are furiously fast and seeping with horrific intent. "Oh, you stupid, stupid little boy!" The flat tone, even angry, doesn't shift far. She's on him in a second flat, she's over him in less than that, and her claws are around his neck, forcing hydralics to pick him up (nearly weightlessly, now) by feeding in the last dregs of electricity to her analogs for muscle. "You really don't care for your safety, huh? You really won't just save yourself, huh?" The Baryonic Inversion cannon's bright flash causes Nephra to stumble- a shudder, a falter, footsteps that don't catch her right. She winces from something other than pain, as the impact waves pass. "Haha. Okay. Fine. But you don't get to leave unscathed. I won't allow that. You get to bleed too." By the neck- it's always by the neck- she wrenches Ishirou up, near her face, and lashes out with red-stained teeth to grab into the opposite side of his neck from where her vice-grip claws hold him- and bite. You don't get to pretend you're less fragile than I am. And then she's done. Ishirou is thrown more than dropped, back to the pavement. She's turning to run, spear in off-hand, towards the actively escaping mech.
Petra Soroka	It's nearly impossible for Futaba to hold up the pieces of the ceiling under Nephra's gravity. Spread out like that, with cracks forming faster than she can shift her attention to them, pieces fall out in the gaps between proverbial and literal fingers. It's all she can do to hold back the biggest loadbearing pieces to prevent the entire thing from coming down. That is, until Nephra's heart stops beating, and the crushing pressure of being on the surface of the sun vanishes abruptly. Metal creaks upwards and barely-stable supports split with the rebound, sending incidental debris to the ground, but with Futaba's support, the ceiling holds, barely. If Futaba lets go, though-- there's no guarantee it'll stay that way. The remaining Paladin security employee glances between the Kana and the walled door out, then down at his companions. In a split-moment, he makes a professionally-unwise decision, and triggers the door to open to allow the Kana to pass, and once it does, he pulls himself across the ground to do what little first aid he can, with two limbs disabled, and few targets for whom it'll make a difference. Once in the air, the Kana picks up enough speed in the enormous hallway that it barely matters what resistance that Aegis Astray has prepared for them. Shells, everything from small arms to manned turrets wheeled out of the other hangars lining the hall, bounce off of its hull, and there's enough mass behind it to simply barrel through other obstacles they throw up. And if all else fails: there's that cannon to eliminate whatever Remee needs to get through to reach the Warpgate.
Ishirou	Ishirou causes the black hole system to less disengage, but instead not be used in an actively destructive way. However, what he doesn't see in time is Remee using /that cannon/. He screams, throwing out drones to stop the worst of it, to try and put down protective barriers, or to lift the fighters near Remee and the Kana away. It's... not enough. He stares there, unable to move... they're... He doesn't have time to respond, Nephra is on him. Claws at his throat, digging into his neck, choking him as he's forced up into the air. The teeth bite into his flesh, which resists... but she is still able to piece below. Liquid shoots out, coating her mouth and the side of her body with black liquid. She hits metal before she tosses him away like a rag doll. 'You don't get to get to leave unscathed.' He rolls onto his feet again. "What part of this looks like I am unscathed? What part of this makes me look less fragile than you..?" he says, drawing a weapon into his hands. The rapier. "I tried showing kindness. I tried showing restraint. I tried using reason. I thought underneath all of that was someone who did not want to hurt people. No... no this is what it costs others to think the best in others without a care." he says, drawing the weapon. "You all killed them... and I might not be able to bring them back, but I will at least make sure they get justice for this. You wanted me to run away, but I am not going to do that anymore... /never/ again." He dives forward, screaming as he jumps through the distance between them, he thrusts the weapon repeatedly, his eyes glowing, trying to find the right spot to place the blade in, before he pulls back. "This is what I get for thinking the best in people who don't deserve it."
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki, positioned over Futaba to shield her, is in the perfect position to see that guard struck down by a fist-sized fragment of concrete traveling faster than a bullet. It's hard to tell what really gets her eyes to go wide or her voice to catch in her throat. It might be the terrifying, awful power of the Kana's Inversion Cannon being fired indoors. It might be the fact that /Remee/ did it. That she not only did it, but she's threatening to do it again. Or it might just be another person she couldn't save, with the only difference being this one was right in front of her. "F-Futaba..." She'd be stuck in place, frozen down to her thoughts refusing to chug forward, until the jolt of Futaba flinging her off forces her down onto her back, and she blankly spends two whole seconds watching the tanuki's arms extend ceiling-ward. Until the words hit her, her face scrunches up, and a hand scrapes against the metal floor beside her on its way into a clenched fist. "...They're not," she answers with a voice on the brink of breaking. Rolling over, Hibiki breaks away from Futaba and sprints forward, moving full speed towards the single Paladins staffman barely protecting himself from the storm of debris, and pushes through it herself to grip onto the bent metal sheltering him. It dents and gives way under her fingers, but she physically keeps it held up so that it doesn't crumple down onto him. She strains against it, all the way until Nephra finally cuts the gravity. At which point she has to actively stop herself from accidentally tossing it away by using too much strength, letting go and stumbling back until she falls down to her hands and knees. Even staring straight down at the floor, there's no escaping the sight of everything around her in the corners of her eyes. Blood--bodies...all the wreckage, and she doesn't even know how much is on top of-- A hand grasps at her scarf and violently wrenches it down before Hibiki retches right there, and dry heaves a few times after for good measure. Rapid and heavy, desperate gasps for air come so fast that they're almost layered on top of each other, and she throws herself back to a stand so quickly that she nearly falls over again, and she doesn't think she'd be able to get back up. She can't stay here. She should, to rescue as many of the still-injured as possible. To get the bodies. She should at least do that much--but she can't. If she does that now, there's no going back. So Hibiki has to sprint as fast as she can, with her head held low and the crippling, awful, ice-cold ache beating in her chest trying to compete with white-hot anger.
Futaba Nuki	Reinforcing the ceiling is the only thing Futaba can think of doing to control the situation. Ishirou's fight with Nephra is ongoing, and Remee's getting away with the Kana, but Hibiki... At least Hibiki's got some more sense than the others. There's a strained grunting noise coming from Futaba as she sees Hibiki escaping from the corner of her eye, but she can't afford to spare much more attention to what she's retching at or doing while the ceiling is still straining to come down on her and everyone else that's still stuck here. No time to think yet. She just needs to keep acting, keep moving, and not wonder about what could have been in favor of doing what she can now. "Get the injured outta here! I'll keep this up as long as I can, so don't-gah... Dang it. Don't dawdle!" Futaba yells out as she slowly starts getting up, transforming again to readjust her hold on the ceiling. It's not enough to just use her hands. She needs to put her whole body into it. Extending herself upwards again, Futaba's form becomes far less humanoid and more like an actual wide pillar, stretching herself out as far as she can to cover more of the ceiling. She still won't be able to hold it forever, but she can at least hold out until the rescue crew gets here to pull out whichever survivors are left. No thinking. Don't think about the dead. She just needs to keep pushing her body too much to afford to think.
Nephra Tangent	Nephra spits Ishirou's blood from her mouth, its acrid black hue tainted with a red that could no longer just be from her candy habit. Her eye follows his roll, his stumbling return back up to his feet, his actions a refusal to / bleed out / or / run for cover. Her lips curl. "Why won't you ever just stay down." She makes something close to a 'Tch' noise- but whether she's just trying to eject more of Ishirou's blood from her mouth or not isn't clear. A trembling, clawed finger points towards the fleeing Kana. "It's that easy. You didn't change anything. You just got in the way. You just made" She bends over at the waist, coughing and hacking. Her hydraulics struggle to pull her back up straight, still in the in-between, reactor cycling, and power sparse. "Y-you just made it harder than it had to be, for everyone. And for what? And for fucking what?" The walls echo rumbles around them, even as things seem- for a moment- not to be getting too much worse. She stands still, shaking under her armor, adrenaline coursing through veins that finally have more room to exist, and her one eye stares Ishirou down as he advances. Stares him down as he draws a sword. 'I thought underneath all of that was someone who did not want to hurt people.' "Underneath what? Don't try looking deeper, Ishirou. You should know that I've hurt you plenty. Patch your god-damned neck. Or put a tourniquet on it. You'd be fine without bloodflow to that head of yours, right?" There's almost a grin, as he approaches. As he brandishes the weapon. Her spear stays out to the side. Don't take that for mercy or safety. 'I will at least make sure they get justice for this.' A pained snort escapes her. "Haha. Oh, goodness. Justice? The fuck's that going to be found, in a place like this? Where are you going to cut into me and find it, huh?" Still shaking, her off hand claw scratches an 'X' into one of the moving plates of her suit- over the center-left of her chest. "This mark the spot, huh? Right 'tween the ribs, right through the slots in my armor?" Her stance lowers, and quietly, ever so quietly, the thud-thud heartbeat kicks back- whatever cycling needed to prevent collapse, done. Gravity stays at a cool and pleasant 1-G, though. Plates hiss and move. When Ishirou's blade connects with them, they crunch, they stick, they scratch- but there's little purchase, until Nephra's beady stare meets his glowing eyes, and she grabs the rapier point with a snap-reflexive motion, and shoves it through a moving slit in her armor, herself. Her eye shoots wide, and her cheeks bulge with air she can't help but blow out. Wincing, shuddering, natural and artificial red seep down the rapier blade, and through Nephra's still-clutching claws. "Is that the justice you want? Is- is it really? It doesn't do one shred of good, right? Haha. Ha fucking ha. It don't wash off that easily." Her grip loosens, her eye not quite able to fix back on his anymore, and she lets him pull away. She, too, pulls away. Her gait is stumbling at first, droplets, few at first, followed quickly by many more, paint a trail on the hardened foam as pistons- not her muscles- roar and hiss, to send her suit, and her along with it, the machine running faster than a human could to catch up with the Kana, and hands grasping onto any surface to let her be carried with it onwards and away, scratched in with servomotors and hydraulics, reflexive neural impulse driving the shell around her when her own flesh shakes and trembles.
Ishirou	He couldn't stop her... he found himself too late, and... too many people paid the price. Again. Paid for him trying to figure out what he was about, pulling his punches, trying to see the best in people. This is it... some people just don't have a 'better side'. What you see is what you get. They're just this way because they want to be... or because they were forced to be. It's hard to want to help others who refuse to be helped. Who... push you away, who refuse to do anything to change themselves and push hard against anything. He falls to a knee, too hurt to push forward, but at least gravity stopped pushing... maybe he spared some destruction. Maybe... 'Is that the justice you want? Is- is it really? It doesn't do one shred of good, right? Haha. Ha fucking ha. It don't wash off that easily.' "It's better than watching people die for no good reason. You didn't have to be here... you didn't have to make a huge mess. You didn't have to kill these people! So I'm choosing to not let it continue. I'm choosing to be more selective to who I show unrestrained mercy..." He swallows, it hurts him to say it because it /goes/ against everything he feels is right. "And... I'm going to stop you. You're going to answer for this.." he says, even as she's forced to run to the Kana. He falls to his knees, tears welling up in his eyes. He hates this, he hates seeing this. Why do people have to hurt each other? Why does he have to... Why does he have to choose who he shows kindness to? Why do people want to take advantage of it..?