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Petra Soroka	|TITANOMACHIA SPECIAL DEPLOYMENT - FORCE         |     |------------------------------------------------|     |MISSION: OPERATION DOOR TO NOWHERE              |     |DATE: 172-11-27-05:15:37                        |     |AREA: SECTOR G6 DIST A114 47.5982° N 10.8352° E |     |------------------------------------------------|     |ACCESSING . . .                                 |     ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯                                                            |BRIEFING:                                       |     |------------------------------------------------|     |INQUIRY INTO PRIOR CONTACT WITH HOSTILE XENOLIFE|     |REVEALED CONNECTIONS TO NATIVE TECH OF INTEREST |     |TO FURTHER REFINEMENT OF PROJECT TYPHON. CO-ORD-|     |INATES OF LOCAL HOLDING ARE ENCLOSED. RETRIEVE  |     |TARGET; EXPECT RESISTANCE.                      |     |                                                |     |  UTILIZATION OF PROJECT TYPHON IS AUTHORIZED.  |     ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯     As horses guided the growth of civilization, so too did trains, planes, and cars. The designation of 'urban' and 'rural' morphs throughout the ages, cities popping into existence and growing along travel lanes like fruit on vines, clustering around rail lines, the texture of the world shaped by the means of relocation. Resources are shared, populations shuffle, communication builds community, and culture itself pumps through the arteries of transport to vitalize a collective 'humanity'.     Unification brought warpgates, which do much of the same. Even a New York City becomes comparatively rural, without a warpgate to bring itself snugly into the multiversal fold, and a natural warpgate sprung up in the wilderness will often be built up into a modern evolution of the edge city within a few years. Entrenched urban development is slow to adapt, but over the course of years and decades and lifetimes, the new peripheral nodes of travel define the boundaries of the sprawling heart of civilization.     Conventional cultural commonwealth begets its opposition, criminals co-opting communal conversions. From bandits on horseback to highwaymen, hijacks and getaway cars; *every* kind of person has had to maintain pace with the changing cultural floorplan, not just as an adaptation for simple survival, but because the means of travel, the accessibility of movement, the shape of the world as it is warped by the paths humans trod down, is ingrained into navigational centers of the brain. When performing a crime in a city, one considers cars. When performing a crime across worlds, one considers warpgates.     -- Which makes the path that this mech has taken *weird*.
Petra Soroka	It's not hard to follow the path that the mech has taken, after blasting through the headquarters of the Bavarian Alchemists with such an apathetically brazen lack of subtlety that SONG was able to mobilize immediately. In its relentless press of a 'getaway', repeated firings of that weapon leave a breadcrumb trail of pearlescent blasts, leading right to the the mountain foothills where it now is, as the Elites catch up to it. For Touta, Petra, and Hibiki, who are somewhat familiar with the operations of the Titanomachia, neither this careless disturbance or trackable trail are the strange part-- the Titanomachia itself operates much the same way, leaving behind earth scraped and stamped bare for so many miles that a toddler could track it long enough to become an adult.     The strange part is the *route* it takes. Cutting a beeline southeast, the mech's intent seems to be to escape by cutting across worlds by their full length, flying however many thousands of miles it needs to reconvene with the Titanomachia rather than taking a warpgate and traveling in an instant. This leaves it, now, a hundred miles away from the nearest warpgate, in strictly local territory, its travel lane cutting carelessly across the expected grain of movement. It's as if it doesn't even recognize that warpgates exist.     Petra sits awkwardly in a SONG helicopter, right across from Hibiki. This particular emergency response, the reports of those blasts, alarmed her enough that even Pettie herself had to put her grudge with Hibiki aside and ask SONG for a ride beyond the warpgate-- the inconvenience doesn't make her miss the Kana, this time. Wearing her overalls, combat boots, bomber jacket pulled on, with an anxious wide-eyed expression directed at nothing, she looks almost exactly like she did around this time last year, when they first met.     The only differences from before are both black-gold-- around her neck, and layed across her lap. Petra grips Pillar of Creation in both hands, fingernails squeaking across the color-splashed obsidian spear in wordless fidgeting. Discomfort, both with the lack of conversation with her flight partner and what lies ahead, had led Petra to start-stop fragments of half-attempted small talk, always either ending with a cold shoulder or a dull '...yeah'.     As the helicopter crests over the mountains, getting close to the reports of the mech, Petra peers out of the side, looking down to finally see the glass for the first time. Hibiki can see the way she goes silent and still, eyes widening fractions, but not fearful, not any more than she already had been. Instead, the way she goes still, pupils dialating, breaths slipping out of her parted lips without visibly moving her chest, carries an air of sick fascination. Dissociative, like seeing a body on the highway and creeping up to prod at it with a stick. The squeaking of nails on spear stops. Hibiki can practically sense her blood slowing in her veins, taste the prickling itch washing down her throat.     After all that, all Petra says is a quiet, almost random, thought. "... I never thought I'd get to ride a helicopter." It still feels abstractly gut-wrenching, with a hollow, slightly dreamy tinge.
Petra Soroka	Mountains soften to rolling hills. Charred lanes of obliterated earth and grass mark where the mech deemed necessary to repel opposition. Pockmarks of glass, coated infintesimally thin over every stone and fencepost and blade of grass, glittering in perfect radii, feeling even more hostile. Pearlescence gleams and twists, picturesquely holographic, but everywhere the glass extends is as lifeless as the bombed ruins.     Straying towards the glass is tempting enough to be to be alarming. A prickling vacuum of presence within the blasts seems to tug you towards it, despite the feeling like you're breathing in fiberglass as you get closer, and the gradual dissociation between neural impulses and the movements they should cause. The body moves on its own, dragged by reflex to the teetering precipice, the animal fascination with hurling itself over driving motion where your cotton-packed mind slows and stalls--     Stepping *into* the blasts would be worse. Like gunpowder smoke lingering on the air, the presence of having been fired recently hangs smothering in the area, pierced by the roar of engines and sounds of alarm further down the way. The mech's path, as ambivalent towards warpgates as it is, is just as apathetic towards settlements along the way.     The mech hanging above the small town is strikingly familiar, at first glance. Blocky, tanklike, covered in inches of steel and brutally efficient, the quadrupedal mech is the spitting image of the Kana-- but only at first. Cold steel forces its way into glittering splinters of glass, its stocky legs made of spikes of it rather than the familiar metal. Broken in uncountable millions of places, the iridescent glass is jammed through with metal bones holding it together, the articulations at the 'knees' and 'hips' squealing and shattering with every movement, somehow never falling apart.     The turret on top, the round beam of steel threat that nearly everyone here saw make wastelands of fire out of whatever it turned itself towards, is replaced with more of that pearlescent glass. Only the turret itself-- a previously semi-spherical chunk of it, faceted on all sides, cloaked in the back with a sheet of flat glass that rolls off of the turret and down the back of the mech like a cape. It looks like a head. The metal barrel, rammed through the center of it, leaking orange ichor, looks like an execution.     A churchtower is reduced to debris as the Ekanamsha S2 continues through it unimpeded. You're not the first responders here-- local military, a full truck of them, have pulled up, piling out with automatic weaponry and explosives, setting up a heavy turret to pierce its armor. Shots ping against its armor, and with its attention drawn, the mech's turret smoothly twists in the truck's direction and fires, a stream of fire slamming into it and exploding.     Then, registering your presence, and turning its turret up to the helicopter, Ishirou can hear an outgoing signal. <S2>: Hostile xenolife. <S2>: Not native military. <S2>: . . . <S2>: Acknowledged. <S2>: Prior contact confirmed.     A thin white sabot round-- also familiar, of course, shoots out of the turret, contacting the helicopter's rotors without a sound, and causing them to immediately slow to a halt.
Hibiki Tachibana	"I want every single car and aircraft we have moving! Drop everything else! We'll worry about the site it attacked after!" "Get Defense Minister Hiroki on the line! He'll take the call; it's an emergency!" "Give out the same evacuation plans we use for Noise to every populated area in the way! We can't afford to waste any time! Tsubasa, we're going to need you there! Saving any lives we can is our top priority!" "Ogawa! Get transportation for Hibiki-kun and anyone else who needs it! Only the fastest we have, before it goes too far!"     SONG headquarters, underneath Lydian Private Music Academy, is a chaotic mess of activity. Commander Genjuro Kazanari is throwing out orders left and right, while an overstressed bridge crew handles the fine details of taking calls, forwarding messages, and ensuring civilians have advance warning to get out of the calculated, disturbingly odd path of...     ...that thing. Japan's unique division for responding to 'special disasters' almost always means Noise, and more recently, the looming threat of alchemists when they can be found on their soil--but an abrupt attack from something not only clearly not of this world - not even of the Bavarian Illuminati - but also something so shamelessly destructive, wreaking hell where it travels through, is something else entirely.     As soon as he saw the look on Hibiki's face as the first reports of what was happening came in, when she warned them to give out orders /not/ touch the trail it was leaving before rushing out the door, he had an inkling of how severe it must be. And now...     ...it's not pretty. And it surely will be even uglier afterwards. Genjuro knows this well.     But the first order of business is handling the situation, and they'll need all the help they can get. ...     Elsewhere, in a nondescript office tinged in dim light, an elderly man in plain brown robes reclines within his seat, a fist to his cheek as a sharp gaze scans over the screen in front of him. Despite the abhorrent sights depicted on it - despite the endless ping of alarms, news, warnings, satellite views and otherwise coming from all rungs of the powers that be - the only expression he has to make is a grim frown.     "Hmph! I warned that useless son of mine of what fraternizing with outsiders would bring. They've all grown soft and complacent, the entire way down. Do they expect others to clean up not only those alchemists, but this mess as well? This nation, having to pay the price for its own government's sheer incompetence..."     The clenched hand he rests his head's weight on clenches tighter still, knuckles going white with strain.     And after a few moments, it loosens back once more, shifting to sift through his grayed beard.     "...Hmmn..." ...     Worlds away, securely still in Paladins safekeeping, a blue-haired girl has a faint downward twinge to her lips. She had asked to be kept appraised of any developments back within her home world, but 'ignorance is bliss' may have been the kinder choice to have taken, from her reaction to the reports she's receiving.     "...My creator, are you...?" ...
Ishirou	The desire to move toward the white substance was enticing, but through either willpower or some other power Ishirou managed to avoid that seductive gaze and instead focus on the S2 itself.  He's got to keep his focus here, remembering how bad it was at the disaster zone.  More to the point... trying to figure out what this thing is, why it stole what it stole, and try to take back the item and destroy the S2.   Ishirou feels guilt, he went digging inside to try and find out what it was and unintentionally found... this.  There were no notes, no answers and now he's unleashed a monster.  Even if the Watch actually did the release, it might have been a matter of time before it escaped with what he did.  More so now that it has access to all of its weaponry again.   Ishirou himself does not need transportation, already flying in formation with the other SONG helicopters.  The RESCUE slowing its flight to keep pace.  Eventually, the shot fired, and Ishirou moved to avoid it, only for the helicopter to take the strike.  Its blades are being caught by that strange material and gumming up the works.   He doesn't know what to do other than send OPTIONs into the transport, offering his ability to fly and manuever in the air so that they can get out before they go down with the ship so to speak, before Ishirou and his machine flip over, going from a hovering humanoid mode, into it's faster flight mode.  Blasting off, he already starts scanning, aiming to try and find out where the artifact is so they know where /not/ to blow up and where retrieval can happen... assuming they can beat this back.   He also sets up and maintains a HUD network, providing up-to-date information on the defenses and capabilities of the S2, making sure he gives the others the opportunity to make each shot count.
Angela	Angela is in datapad form today--the Eggpack is not just a way for Angela to get around it's also a precious gift so she doesn't want to risk it in a high-danger engagement. The real purpose of the Eggpack isn't to help with missions, after all, it's so Angela can have an easier time getting around with her friends without being in ipad mode all the time. Tiphereth is with her, looking sullen as all out. Rose is carrying said pad, looking between Hibiki and Petra. The shall-we-say multiversal element of this job means any Agents could have been sent this way but Nonon is busy with a longterm project in Rita's world and Cinder is trying to get her pokemon-slanted sleep schedule back on track and Carol and Nikki have the day off. Lobotomy Corp is likely to be a bit stretched thin until the matter with the Queen is settled--or at least attempted to have been settled. Rose is really glad she's not part of that particular mission. It feels like a suicide mission. The rotors stopped moving, she realizes dimly. THE ROTORS STOPPED MOVING, She screams at herself a moment later. She hears that Dysnomia is gonna do something about the coptor so she just leaps out herslef, relying on her EGO Gear to cushion the fall. No longer using SONG helicopters Rose vows to herself as she throws one of her hammers towards the mecha in an attempt to deter it from shooting more like one of the hammer bros. "Glass..." Tiphereth murmurs. Angela leans forward but doesn't say anything.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia leapt from the side of her own helicopter, her suit humming to as her TK array came to life. A violet mist unspooled from her her, coiling around the landing track, causing the helicopter to seize suddenly in place as its momentum came to a stark stop, metal shrieking where it was seized...     ...Then, it stopped. She made a twitching downward motion with her hand, as the mist tried to carry the helicopter down, out of the line of fire.     She turned her eyes to the monstrosity, her line pressed into a thin line as she hovered. This...Thing, couldn't be the Kana, could it? No. Even if they'd found the remnants, it just wouldn't have been worth it to salvage.     "Of course they made more." Dysnomia scowled. "Why would I expect anything less?"
Ritsuka Fujimaru	With so many helicopters provided by SONG, the trio of Ritsuka, Mash, Jeanne end up piling into one of them, the first two sitting on one side to gawk out the windows at the passing mountains while the third has her perpetual irritated grimace plastered right on her face as she stares at the window from the opposite side. "How far do you think it got?" "It shouldn't have gotten too far considering how large it was, but..." "Brace yourselves. I doubt anything forcing SONG's hand like this could leave a pretty landscape for long." Indeed, Jeanne's prediction is right as the group starts seeing the ruined landscaping turning to glass, and the glass making even the charred earth from earlier look downright hospitable in comparison. A horrified look covers MAsh's face as she starts to realize how much destruction the mech is capable of, and even Ritsuka can't maintain her usual upbeat demeanor in the face of all that. Worse still, the mech's turret starts firing on the helicopters, and it's only a matter of time before theirs stalls out or gets blown up entirely. Sighing lightly, Jeanne gets up to give the pair light smacks on the back of their heads, then scoops one up under each arm before approaching the door to their helicopter. "Keep your heads on, idiots. Do you a plan or not?" "Plan...? Oh! It's got a gun, right? So we can... We stay close. We can't let it get a chance to shoot us, so we'll stay right on it!" "And if it has any sort of close range defenses, I'll keep you both covered." "... Eh. Good enough." Without giving particular care to the helicopter itself, Jeanne shoves the door open with a boot, then leaps right out with Mash and Ritsuka still held under her arms. The single parachute that deploys is just enough to stop them from falling too quickly to survive the falls, although it's still a rough landing in their approach of the mech. Ritsuka, fighting off both the fear of getting obliterated by that cannon herself and also the sheer nerves from diving out of a helicopter with only one parachute for three people, only manages to pull it together enough to force several red runes to start pulsing on the back of her right hand. "Mash... Jeanne. I command you: Wreck that mech, and stop it before it can destroy anything else!" One of the runes burns off, and a surge of power washes over the pair with her as Mash grunts and nods in focused determination while Jeanne laughs briefly while conjuring up those flaming spears she's so fond of slinging around. "Understood, Master!" "You're getting fired up over this, aren't you...? Hmph. You should get serious more often." Jeanne is the first to just start sprinting at it, hurling flaming spears at it in her approach. They don't explode just yet, however, although the flames linger in their wake and continue burning long after impact. Mash and Ritsuka, meanwhile, take a slightly more roundabout path with the former providing cover for the latter as they try to find a better position to actually attack the Ekanamsha S2 from rather than just charging headfirst at it.
Hibiki Tachibana	...     In just one of the SONG-deployed copters following the trail, despite ostensibly being positioned across from Petra, Hibiki doesn't sit. When she's not glancing out of window of one of the doors with a grimace, she's standing in place and obviously unsure of what she should even be looking at. Even sharing the space with Petra, there's nothing to say, and they both know it. Her heart isn't in any of the curt replies she gives back, when she deigns to give one at all.     She's not even glancing at her most of the time--except when Petra turns her attention outside herself, and she can take in every single subtle shift of her expression, and that...look that takes to her face. She doesn't like it, she thinks--and it's only when the tension is cut through and words come out, that she pauses for a split-second before shaking her head. "...Get it together already, Petra."     That time, there's a barely restrained /something/ behind her voice. Like she's struggling to keep it level. "...Here, of all places--" But before it breaks, Hibiki turns back away to the opposite door, her hold on its handle painfully tight. Experiencing that feeling once before doesn't give any particular resistance to its effects, but it means she can brace for it, even as they approach rapidly.     It's the sight of those pockmarks of glass themselves that get her breath to cut short, and halt entirely when she realizes that thing is over a town. It's still /demolishing/ the town, the responders, with that damn weapon and its own mass. That patchwork thing of metal and pearlescent radiance, crackling with every movement--you could call it beautiful or ugly, and probably not be wrong either way.     Hibiki just clenches her teeth, clutching at the crimson pendant hanging from her neck as the sabot hits the rotors. Without hesitating, she throws open the door - and leaps out. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron--!" The normally ethereal chant is practically growled out, and a flash of light descending through the air becomes a Symphogear-clad Hibiki, scarf whipping out behind her, as she angles her descent straight towards the Ekanamsha S2. 'After overcoming so many darknesses     Shouldn't you finally be able to see         The light of dawn shining in the SKY--!?'     The beginning of her song breaks out of clear lyrics, turning into a shout at the very end--as a tightened fist is primed back, and all of her falling momentum is turned into a blow intended for nothing less than coming down caving in that ichor leaking 'head' - that turret, with her fist, as if relentlessly going right for the throat from the start.
Lilian Rook	Having given up on Hibiki Tachibana isn't the same thing as having given up on everyone and everything around her. As much as Lilian is tempted to, as if it would amount to some sort of deranged, indirect punishment of her, she knows she can't do that either. It's been only days since she'd uneasily forgiven, and then encouraged, Meika for the exact opposite. The Tenth Code is fresh in her mind, and more than most times, the question of her own mental integrity rings louder than those of selfishness and want.     It's one of those times where Lilian is glad she stuck to those thirteen rules for so long. Even imperfectly. Even sometimes poorly. She realizes, dimly, on the way there, that they've taken on some of their own inertia in her head; enough that she can nearly abdicate her moral reasoning's hand in deciding against the rest of her, and simply allow the words seared into her memory to decide for her. Distantly, she feels the corner edge of understanding why Petra does everything like this.     Besides; approaching this in the context of 'finish what you started' is easier than accepting what it really is. At least all at once. Finishing what she started was what she was doing yesterday, and her body still aches to prove it. There's residual momentum in it. Something easy to ride before her brain fully tells her that the danger is over. The mech is easier to confront when the images of bulging eyes and slavering jaws are still fresh in her mind.     Seeing the turret makes Lilian double over and gag regardless. Staring wide-eyed at the ground, she does her best to speed through wondering why; only to run circles around the vivid sickly orange of its--     'Balwisyall nescell Gun-------------'     Hearing that familiar chorus coming down from over the mountain makes Lilian's stomach clench up, and in a moment of clarity, she decides that it feels better than churning. Breathing out slowly, whisper-humming it quietly to herself, she repeats an old song out of focusing habit. "--Má théim 'na choille chraobhaigh cruinniú smeara nó cró A bhaint úllaí de ghéaga nó a bhuachailleacht bó Má shíním seal uaire faoi chrann a dhéanamh só Ó cad é sin do'n té sin nach mbaineann sin dó?--"     "Ah, I suppose I'll have Petra do lots of explaining later. That'll be entertaining." Lilian says, dully, upon reaching the range boundary of where the Ekanamsha is occupied, currently blissfully unaware of the contents of its transmission. Breathing it while counting to four, holding four, releasing four, and holding four, Lilian mutters "Let's see what we're working with here." and draws her sidearm. The distance to be sighting down Winter Crow, even with both hands, is more than a little presumptuous, but hitting something vital isn't the point; she wants to familarize the pilot to being shot from behind by a lagging force, and put her on their mental radar first.
Touta Konoe	When Hibiki contacted him, there were so many thoughts and feelings that ran through his mind. It's those very feelings, this instance of panic that he shares across worlds with Hibiki at the realization of what had come knocking on her doorstep. The pen she held that time, whether it was left in her home, on her person, or in the trash, it didn't matter he'd use anything and everything to arrive as soon as possible...Because as he saw it...     He was the one that looked into the Titanomachia's location. He was the one that brought Hibiki along to investigate its appearance, and now out of nowhere it seemed as though it had been able to track her world down? Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe Hibiki's world was just another target for the taking. Though in his head there's only one thing he can think to himself...     Did we lead them here...?     ...     It's the same thoughts he finds repeating in his head even as the copter takes them to the mountain region. His ride was separated from the one that Hibiki and Petra rode in. He wants to be there. He knows she doesn't need it, but he wants to make sure she's okay...He wants to apologize for the part he's played no matter how big or small it is. Even now the casual if not friendly demeanor he's tried to keep with most people is left behind. His eyes are simply locked on the path of destruction that's been laid out. The scene is way too familiar for comfort...     It's only as they finally get closer does he find the true calling card of the Titanomachia... Glass.     There's no second guessing it, there's no denying. Even if for whatever reason they've chosen not to take the warpgates to come here, they've arrived. Titanomachia has arrived...Or at least, one of its heralds of destruction in the form oh so eerily reminiscent of the Kana.     In the moment that they identify its presence, it too locks onto the first copter, the first round pelting into the rotors.     Hibiki doesn't wait for Petra before she makes her descent down, and like her he too doesn't wait for Ishirou's support, he doesn't try to keep himself out of the fire of those that have already started to assault from range, or even those charging right at the mech.     More now than ever he feels responsible, he feels obligated. He feels like a monster for allowing such a thing to happen so...He'll show them a monster.     In terms of demeanor, when the Elite known as Touta Konoe shows up to a fight there's no daunting presence to him. He carries himself with a kind demeanor that makes him try to be approachable, even if at times it fails. And as an Unaffiliated there's never any authority behind him...He's just Touta, that Elite that you can't get rid of...
Touta Konoe	Yet, as he falls from the sky, that form changes...Like Hibiki and her Gungnir, a transformation begins to take place. Dark magic envelopes Touta's form, weaving across his frame less like an armor and more like an exoskeleton. What appears from that Miasma could surely not be considered human, nor could it be considered a vampire. The creature looks as though it'd simply weaved black across its form, horns protruding from its head, the whip-like tail that appears...It can only be described as...     "Demon...Advent Armament."     This creature lands itself right upon the Ekanamsha S2. The crimson of its gaze beaming into it as it silently pulls back its fist. As this creature winds back its arm. At first, it appears as though the arm that reals back starts to shift. It's size shifting into a more menacing size, it's fingers adorn with claws that looked as though they'd have no issue mauling through metal...And it's only when that arm is pulled back as it prepares to cleave through, does two additional sets of arms begin to sprout out its back all each of the same menacing form, all primed is this magical monstrosity full intent on rending through it's canon and shattered this glass as fifteen blades rain down upon it.
Meika Kirenai	It hardly matters if she hasn't slept the night before. It hardly matters if the blows taken the prior day haven't even had time for bruises to appear from. It hardly matters that notice came in time to for her to leave food half-finished cooking on the stove, with a mumbled excuse to her youngest sister and a suggestion on how to finish it with a microwave, time from notice of emergency to being able to act on it burns away sickeningly quickly. Even if it could be left to someone else, Meika is quick to get out the door, hockey stick tucked under-arm, and to plead that her familiar Cherub until it relents to relaying her intent to the Holy Refulgence, as well as her begged-for permission to use their sanctioned aid in even getting to the disaster zone. When the relayed-back message burns more time, in Drop's ugly, scratchy mimickry, she's even quicker to want to throw the creature all the way to their facilities- That's time burnt pleading in person.     There's no comfortingly familier surroundings to her home, this time, when Chevalier Vermillion finally hits the ground skating from the monochrome ripple ushering her in. No fancy academy, no bustling city, just foothills still far from the besieged town and the ugly, carved wreckage of a trail to follow there. Making up time lost preparing, thumbing through notices, and navigating her own world's public transit, by teleporting in further down the infiltrator's trail, means the rest of the distance is up to her to cover, grouping up only with the helicopters en-route. Making up for time burnt away slowing near the icy, pearlescent splatters, for wondering what it'd be like to trace fingers through, or-- That'll only be time made up by muscle-tiring hustle.     As miles churn by, she joins Ishirou in the informal aeriel escort, keeping pace in her skating motions across surfaces that just aren't there. It's hard for Vermillion to keep a dead-straight path like a helicopter can, but dipping and diving to and fro to maintian her speed and navigate the formation's blade vortex turbulence, even if it doesn't *feel* it, with her focus set and teeth gritted, still looks unsettlingly playful. Then, suddenly stricken by a sense of worry, in getting this-close to official seeming military vehicles (and more, their operators), without the certainty they knew she's there to help- Vermillion twists words through the air, amplifying herself to try and be heard through the noise and noise-dampening of the helicopters, with middling result.     "Paladins Chevalier, um, Chevalier Vermillion, making contact!" Is that the right kind of phrase? I don't remember how they do it on TV... "Please don't panic! Or shoot! I'm here to help, too!" It takes her a long moment to realize she's put on a softer tone, out of an uncertain instinct in addressing presumed non-Elites- She regrets it, nearly immediately, and how childish it sounds, and chides herself to figure out better patterns later.     Helicopter engines and rushing wind don't stay the dominant noise for long, though, when the town grows nearer and nearer and nearer. Sharp pops- Gunfire? -parse easily, the ensuing ricochets- Windchimes? -do not. Immediately, she starts to swoop closer-in to the ground, eyes tracking the unearthly tank and the light that glitters as view-angle shifts. "Is it bleeding..?" she says, out loud, her voice still carrying clearer across staccato-filled air.
Meika Kirenai	Vermillion is already out of formation by the time helicopters start to fall from the air, and her heart jumps- her already steep dive deepens, carrying her down, nearly towards street level, and circling around buildings and their rubbled remnants. It's just one foe. Big, heavy, and it's breaking stuff it moves through. 'Stopping things from moving' is a safe first protocol with fighting Temptations, and as she calls up her magic, a jagged, rippling shard of bright-red tangible sound rips to life in her free hand, cocked to throw like a javelin at the hulking vehicle.     The steeple's toppling opens a sufficiently good angle of attack, and the shard is launched with a thundering echo- and Vermillion is already touching down on pavement, skates silently cracking it, to try and duck from whatever sight the monstrous butchery of a mech posesses. Heartbeat pounding, coming to a halt in motion for the first time since Kagoshima, her mind wanders to the local military vehicle. She peeks out of the allyway she's stopped in, and stares at whatever may be left of it. Come on. The little guy's guns sound different than the big one. Pop pop, listen for it, some of them might've made it, right?
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Phoning Hibiki Tachibana, Petra Soroka repeats, hollow, "It's not a weapon. It's just a tool, a toy. But you can stab someone to death with safety scissors if you really try. It's almost fitting, in a really, really fucked up way."     Petra's reaction to seeing the Ekanamsha S2 is even more dramatic than whatever Hibiki might've expected. It snaps her out of that haze she fell into upon seeing the glass, and she whips her head up to stare at it, shifting through recognition, disgust, confusion, and abject horror in the moments before the turret turns to give her a look down the barrel and a receiving taste of the inertia-halting projectile she used so many times before.     Petra doesn't wait for Dysnomia to put the helicopter down either, despite having much more reason to than Hibiki does. She jumps out the moment her shock allows her to, pulling out her revolver from her jacket pocket to fire it downwards, slowing her momentum in a well-practiced-- she keeps falling, just as fast. Petra flails and squirms around in the air, panicking at the sudden reminder at how scary falling is now that her recoil techniques have suddenly failed her. Making a split-second decision, she throws her revolver to the side, grabbing on to Pillar of Creation with both hands, and drives the spear into the ground when she impacts it to redirect as much force as she can into the weapon.     She hits the ground and staggers, limbs numb but hands still locked around the spear. It takes her a couple tries to pull it from the ground, yanking it out in a shower of dirt, and then she gestures furiously at the S2, waving her spear but still keeping her distance, unconsciously curled away from it like it hurts her.     "*Fuckers*! What did they do to my fucking *mech*?!")] In her frenzied alarm, standing on top of a ruined hill overlooking the town, Petra fails to notice a few things. Firstly, she doesn't realize that she needs to elaborate, given that everyone here has only seen the Kana, and the first person (besides Lilian) who suggests that she means *that* mech is given a hissed, "Not the fucking *Kana*, you fucking idiot! *My* mech! I stole that from *them*, they stole *this* from m-- I stole *this* from somewhere else! Unrelated!"     The second thing she doesn't notice at first, is that within her itching aura, the blast radius of pearlescent glass creeps up off the ground, growing into splinter-trees like iron filings sticking to magnets, tracing along invisible thin lines in the air to irregularly arc towards her. When she turns around and freaks out, rushing to get further away from the glass, the sharp formations stay there, frozen in growth. She gravitates towards Lilian, clutching her spear in both hands, still hesitant to go towards it. "L-Lilian-- I-I-I-I don't know-- I don't know what this is. I don't know what's happening." > Scanning     This isn't the same Ekanamsha that Ishirou dissected, and Petra piloted-- which is a little strange, since everything he found in its files pointed towards it being a one of a kind machine. Both he and Dysnomia can tell, scanning it, that this isn't even *one* machine. The 'glass' and metal aren't even cohesive with each other, with all the interior parts of the mech being metal, but the glass is practically stapled on, Frankensteinian like a suit of human skin.     Ishirou learns something else, a mortifying discovery upon realizing that this *isn't* the Ekanamsha S1. Every vulnerability he'd used to get into the Kana's systems, from when he'd fought it, to the later examination, has been reinforced. Thinking back on the massive output of data that the Kana started emitting after he tinkered with it, he can conclude that he accidentally did their bugfixing for them. Among giving them other things.
Petra Soroka	Dysnomia sees the S2, particularly its glass portions, differently than the rest. Absorbing more of the electromagnetic spectrum than purely visual light, it's immediately obvious that this material isn't truly *glass* in the conventional sense, which tracks with how it doesn't really look like glass either, shimmering with iridescence. Instead, she can see that it's made of crystalline hardlight, shifting in miniscule, indiscernable ways in response to her primary vision sliding up and down wavelengths.     Its armor, in the steel parts, proves to be just as dismissively resilient as the Kana's was. Jeanne's spears clatter against it and leave soot instead of torn and charred metal; Rose's hammer deflects off of a heavy plate harmlessly-- because it doesn't really care what you do to it; you can't hurt it, not really. You barely even exist to it. The glass, on the other hand, is infuriating in an entirely different way. When Touta, Hibiki, and Meika smash through it, it shatters, easily, but the momentum of the shards stops soon after. They hover in the air around it, still moving with the mech as if connected, frozen in their shattered explosive sphere-- clinging to whatever shape it's forced to be.     Between Ishirou's assumptions about the pilot, Dysnomia's assumptions that there likely isn't one at all, and the ambivalent reaction to the psychic shot that Lilian lands on it, it's hard to tell if there's a person inside at all. Does it matter? What difference does it make? There's no cockpit windows. There's no way to see in to confirm a human face, and no way to see out except as dots on a screen. Whatever presence of human direction there might be in the Ekanamsha S2's actions, it's behind six inches of steel, filtered through cameras, dissociated into seeing 'xenolife' and 'natives'.     The mech *does* take notice, as Lilian intended. Ponderously turning in the air, the front of the mech reveals another sheet of glass plastered to its hull, enshrining a Relic that looks like a long staff with a trio of spikes on top, and a purple gem in the center-- the Cane of Solomon, positioned directly underneath where the cannon fires from. It's uncomfortable to look at, not entirely because of its own merits. Looking at it through that glass makes it unnaturally prominent in your field of view, as if it takes up more of your field of vision than it should.     Not that there's much time to take in the sights! There's one last transmission out of the machine, before the cannon fires again, and again, blasting explosives at each of the Elites. The ones on top are subject to the turret swinging around incredibly quickly, acting like a bludgeon to dislodge them, and then following it up with an explosive shell. It's all fire, so far-- no glass. <S2>: Two prior contacts.
Ishirou	Ishirou's scans come back, as well as trying to poke at the security holes he discovered before... and realizes that they're all gone.  It's like he bug-tested the software for it, and worse, the holes he found are now /gone/.  He's trying not to hyperventilate, of course, it would you moron... you should have figured /that/ out the moment it was connecting with a database.   He can't think about that now, think about the next five seconds.  Think about the next few moments... try and find a way to stop it /now/ and worry about what it can learn later.  Find a way to stop it from reporting /later/.   He can analyze the way it communicates later, which can come after.  The battlefield comes first.  The explosive shells are here now.  He tilts the RESCUE just enough so that the first one flies by him.  His hand reaches out to the second, aiming to grab it with his electromagnetic force and TUG it down so that he can fly over it, and the next he flies upwards, just narrowly out of its explosive range.  He swaps out of fighter form, and into humanoid mode, to take a stock of the battlefield. OPTIONs fly out, Touta gets one despite complaining that he doesn't need help, and he can feel his energy coming back to him.  Hibiki gets another, and data floods into her HUD, letting her know where her blows need to go to maximize effectiveness.  The next flies over to Meika, providing covering fire and a protective barrier, as well as targeting data.  He tries to help her place her shots.   While this is going on, Ishirou launches a shot from a new laser cannon he points down.  While its damage wasn't all that impressive... it DOES make it easier to hit the S2, combining his effectiveness with those he's already provided OPTIONs to.
Angela	Tiphereth at first doesn't really think too much about Meika's presence but she recognizes something in Meika that's been bothering her now that Lilian is pressing the matter. Just like my brother. Throwing himself away, not caring about himself at all, spending his life pointlessly when it shouldn't have been him in the first place She grits her teeth in annoyance and a warning look from Angela causes Tiphereth to say, "Tch. Lady Angela, one day she's going to burn everything she is and you know what kind of wreckage that can leave behind." Angela isn't exactly happy about murder, of course, even from a mecha but it's important to Petra and that takes a higher priority for Angela than the lives it might end. What's more on the ledger anyway, she thinks bitterly. She gives some instructions to Rose, who seems dubious, but she catches the OPTION and Instead of throwing it utilizes it swoop down, deftly swaying between explosive shots to drop down by the hammer she dropped before. And THEN she sets the Option down for a moment just in case she has to throw it later. She closes her eyes. She takes a breath. And she lets the WRATH in. When she opens her eyes again, they are burning red as tears of acid drip out of her eyes and the hammers have partially melded to her arms. And fortunately she is pretty well focused towards what's before her as the green acidic fluid spills out of the hammers in a deluge, swathing the area underneath the mecha with the gunk, hoping to erode at the lower portion of the mech to try and immobilize it. "Asking for Corossion this early, are you sure about that?" Tiphereth asks. "Not particularly. But my understanding is that like Exigent, we should not be attempting Insight or Instinct or analyzing data from works." Angela says.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	'*Fuckers*! What did they do to my fucking *mech*?!' "Your mech?" "Her mech?" "So that's the machine that got so many Paladins riled up that day. Hm. Interesting twist!" Seeing her spears bouncing off the the S2's armor doesn't bother Jeanne as much as it could, considering what she's heard and what little hearsay she still remembers about the Kana's previous capabilities. Instead, she looks more excited to be battling the machine at all with Ritsuka's power boost letting her fling herself around to remain a difficult target for the mech's weaponry. She also gets to see the attacks on the glass working in a strange way as she passes by where Touta, Hibiki, and Meika strike it, raising an eyebrow before remembering to leap again so the explosives don't land a clean hit on her. Mash and Ritsuka, meanwhile, have to take a more defensive position against that cannon fire. As the shield bearer slams her slab into the ground to anchor it, Ritsuka squeezes herself into the gap to keep her mana flow steady for both Mash and Jeanne way over there. Between the shield dispersing most of the impact into the ground and Mash just absorbing the shock damage herself, Ritsuka gets through the blast mostly unscathed. Knowing that there's still plenty of firepower left in that machine, though, means trying to take it slow doesn't strike her as the greatest plan. "That glass isn't as strong, so... Jeanne! Hit the-" "I know!" Jeanne shouts back at Ritsuka indignantly as she gets blown forward by one of those explosive shells impacting just behind her, rolling forward before continuing her mad dash for the S2. Once she sees a potential gap in the firing pattern, she leaps for the mech, searching for that section of glass with the spiked staff hiding behind it. Rather than using her spears again, though, Jeanne calls her flag to her hand, and she twirls it around once before thrusting the flatter end of it at said glass to try and smash into it not unlike so many other of her allies in this fight already did. The talk on the radio spurs Mash into a bit of a furor herself, too, as she starts running forward shortly after yanking her shield out of the ground. With Ritsuka following closely behind her, she raises her shield and starts directing (Ritsuka's) mana into their allies, bolstering allies defenses even from a distance!
Dysnomia	The explosion hit her hard, and the helicopters seized momentarily in the air--almost dropping. "It's not your mech anymore!" Mia spat. Her lip curling up into a snarl, Dysnomia dove toward the S2 in a rush, plasma rushing along fingers into the vague shape of a spear.     The glass, unreal as it was, seemed worthless to attack; it would just restore itself. But the actual Titanomachian work was just as durable in a different way. Mia rushed forward in rapid zig-zag, explosive shells grazing past her here, trying to stay out of view of the turret.     Elecritcal arcs curled from her spear as she stabbed, furiously, at the connective points between the steel and the glass, searching for some vulnable tissue binding them together, some weakness which she could pry apart, all as her presence began to coil around the mech, veiling in a constricting violet mist, trying to pressure it DOWN--     --She grunted, her body going fuzzy at its edges, under the grand and terrible WEIGHT of the E2's force. She felt like a toddler trying to shove down a wall. It was all she could do to keep going in the face of this overengineered monstrosity.
Hibiki Tachibana	...shifting through recognition, disgust, confusion, and abject horror... ...is a sight that still clings to some corner of Hibiki's mind, even as she recoils backwards a few meters through the air from the impact of her own attack, shards of glass unnaturally in the air around her. Between that and the machine's own lumbering turn, she has a moment for her eyes to also flash in that direction, towards...     That's where Petra has gone. And...Lilian. She's here...? A part of her thought she wouldn-- This isn't even about Tachibana. Right. It's her Code, and because it's Petra's problem. Don't convince yourself into thinking anything else. She sucks in air back through her teeth, facing back forward.Just in time to have a swing of the turret batter her back through the air, and make her a prime target for the detonating shot. 'All these feelings carved into my heart--     Aren't just pain, they're seared-in memories...!'     A thruster-flare halts her momentum when she's upright, and she brings up her left fist to punch /into/ the shell, briefly deforming it before sending it skewing off to the side, where it explodes in the air. It clears the space for a second boost to get right back in up close, already clenching her opposite hand tightly. There's just enough time for her mind to race a mile a minute on the approach.     Touta's doing something she's never seen before--and they barely talked besides her rushed warning of what was going on. Ishirou mentioned the mech relayed a 'prior contact' message. Is he beating himself up over it?     Meika...is she really here to repay her coming to help before? Or was that just an excuse to justify her being here? Her concept of Meika's opinion of her makes the former doesn't feel like it fits. But she doesn't want her to get hurt either way.     Petra--     The thought is shunted back out, just in time for her to be able to see the stolen object that's been locked onto the machine's front. "That's--" Hibiki doesn't know what it is just off of appearance alone; but there's a deep, ingrained sense that it shouldn't be there, and she refocuses. There's no way she can let that thing fire its cannon again. Absolutely not. Not with everyone here. If that happens-- 'What are they for? Who are they for?     What are my instincts telling me?         Get to heart... Get to heart...!'     Hibiki flips, redirecting herself towards one of those joints where cold metal meets iridescent crystal. A set of spiked pistons eject themselves a meter forward from her Symphogear's boots, reaching their limit at the same time her heel attempts to bash into its target--where, just as her gauntlets do, they pummel back into their housing to release a one-two punch of the actual heel drop, followed by a shockwave of raw kinetic force directed into the internals. 'They're overflowing in a single strike--!'
Lilian Rook	'*Fuckers*! What did they do to my fucking *mech*?!'     That's enough to drag Lilian out of staying in her own faintly ringing ears and squeezing insides. The revolver sound wasn't, but those words make her notice the taste of bile on her tongue, swallow it down, and pause to check how much ammunition she'd used, before processing that she'd unconsciously counted anyways. Petra coming running up to her reminds Lilian to breathe. She vents a burst of aether from her gun's action with a single rolling whipcrack motion, then holsters it again. The voices pouring in through the radio throb in her ears like a dull headache. The inexorable turn of the machine's unwavering sightline exists in her awareness like a physical wire scraping the ground.     §Next part. There's always a next. You know that. Like breaking a fall. The ground is there and you can't slow down in mid-air. Bend and roll or break in half. They'll be there. They'll be there again tomorrow. Next step. Next. Think about your next step. What are you going to do next, before they catch on.§     'L-Lilian-- I-I-I-I don't know-- I don't know what this is. I don't know what's happening.'     "Don't you?" says Lilian, already as if nothing is amiss. "Because it certainly sound as if you know more than I do right now. So what do you expect me to make of it?" Lilian turns her gaze back on the hovering mech at the exact instant its sweep reaches halfway to her; reacting as if she'd memorized its timing and kept the clock running in another part of her brain. "You're not seriously hoping you can get out of this now, are you?"     The cane of Solomon (that must be what it is, right?) makes her stop blinking. Lilian draws her sword, and the subtle tensing of her banged up muscles makes her armour click. "After all this time? After everything you did with that thing; what Tachibana and the rest did; with what I know I fucking see up there, how long do you think your stay of execution in is?"     §Here it comes. Slow and smooth. No variance. No human error. Just as usual. I see the list already; it'll start with the fringes and work inwards; pick off the weak and isolate the strong. It knows where you are, so do what you told yourself you would, and don't be there. Shock and awe and confusion. So get off your heels, look away from the cane, sight an empty space--§     "--ly, get your makeup on, put it all back before six, use the coat you ironed, check the folder, get to the stop by seven, check the queue, look for the opening, and before they even notice--"     Exactly where Lilian was explodes in a military-grade fireball. Petra is unfortunately on her own; not that it'd be hard to guess seeing as she'd been close enough hear Lilian whisper that to herself; harsh and soft and repetitive like a mantra.     §Picture the stupid little dot on their screen. Don't imagine a colour or a number. Now how they'll react when it moves. An error. A glitch. A bug. That isn't supposed to happen. The machine handles this. What do they do--§     "--ct like this, and the record check is clean, and they don't know where you're getting it from anyways, so they have to deal with the way everyone else inter--"     §The cracks aren't real. They're a monolith. Total solidarity on this one thing, in defense, despite how it looks. You know better. Target--§     "--the ones who don't know your--"     §Relative position.§
Lilian Rook	It's a trick almost everyone else here has seen Lilian pull numerous times before, to the point that it seems near-disrespectfully basic. There's a very specific reason she chooses to close two kilometers without crossing them and appear at the machine's turret-rear, however. Unlike exploiting a human field of vision, the pilot or program never loses track of her existence like this; only her position, so a rapid flurry of precognitively-guided half-tangible thrusts to the pinpoint recesses of the machine's camera grid, aimed to black out a narrow slice of sensor acuity, has the immediate result of--     §Introducing--§     "--ambiguity--"     §--into where--§     "--and who--"     §You§ "Are."     A swiftly executed triangle step dances over the machine's hull before it can reactively swing its turret at her, because it will, and she has no doubt about it, or how long it will take, or how hard it will hit, and Lilian falls away at 300 meters clutching a tiny canister that now contains ichor instead of mercury.
Hibiki Tachibana	Meanwhile, back at SONG HQ...     Satellite imaging and the agents they do have on site (thanks for saving one of them, Dysnomia! He looks shockingly familiar to the last one the way he gives that thumbs up through the window...) means that the bridge crew is able to keep tabs on the situation in the visual department and more. Attempting their own scans on the S2 reveals, unfortunately, very little information that proves to be of worth when Ishirou has the job handled.     They do, however, specialize in one thing more than he does - and that's detecting the Relics native to their world. When Gungnir first actively awakened in Hibiki Tachibana, they were on the site in no time at all. And while it was within the Illuminati's possession, it was well outside of their ability to simply pick up and zero in on...     ...being right there on the visuals, in an active battlefield, is another story. While the battle rages, multicolored patterns cycle through on an endless loop, dozens on dozens on dozens until they finally link together in just the right way. A confirmatory ping, and a name on screen.     Genjuro loudly slams his hands down onto the console, wide-eyed. "Solomon's CANE!?"     It takes the rest of the agents several seconds to take in the information themselves, until one of them picks up the comms themselves, to radio in to the battlefield - almost hilariously as soon as Lilian thinks of it herself.     "C-Confirmed! That machine is in possession of a Relic! It s-seems to be...Solomon's Cane...! The very same one that was owned by...the Bavarian Illuminati..."
Touta Konoe	The S2 no matter how hard it's attacked, no matter the angle appears incapable of being penetrated when attacking its exterior. Its armor proved to be sturdy enough that most attacks seem to be offering little against its metallic frame. For the ones that are able to shatter the glass, it's only to realize that even when the exterior layer of the glass frankensteined on is dislodged, they're still able to return to that former shape. It's made apparent that its defenses are truly formidable.     Though the S2 would find that this form was formidable in its own right. In the moment that the machine attempts to swivel its turret to bludgeon those atop it, the moment that it attempts to swing at Touta, two of six hands can be seen holding it at bay with an excess of strength, and a literal excess of hands to work with. Even as it follows up with an explosive shell after the fact, while it does find itself able to swivel just a tad more as one hand is partially blown apart losing its grip, the other hand still continues to hold it steady, and in little time at all, that disfigured arm begins to reform once more.     Even if he recovers, there's little time to think. Even to attempt to process every attack that's gone through, and its effectiveness, to make note of the cane's appearance and the confirmation of being right below the canon. It's already apparent that taking anymore time that isn't necessary will simply allow that glass to repair itself. That allowing this machine to continue operating is something that can't be permitted.      If that's the case I can...      <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "We can worry about tomorrow tomorrow." <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Right..." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You can't worry about tomorrow when tomorrow happens. Then it'll already be tomorrow, you--" <J-IC-Scene> Mash Kyrielight says, "Agreed. We have a machine to stop, and... We can still break it by attacking around the metal, yes?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It's like breaking a fall. You have to do it; now. If you don't, you'll get hurt, and the ground doesn't care." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Part of the process is doing triage so you have time to prepare for tomorrow." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "There's always going to be a tomorrow. They'll always be there again, at the exact same time."     There is a moment wasted admittedly. A thought of what to do for now, and for tomorrow. What follows is an overlapping of force. Already latched to the S2, he can see as Jeanne begins to start shattering at the glass around the staff, Touta's attack follows in kind. With as much piercing strength as her flag or spears, his hands attempt to pierce into the glass as well in an attempt to rip away at the staff, to dislodge it from the S2 if possible. Using each arm to follow through with one assault after another, doing all it can to try and keep the glass from reforming or returning to its 'shape' back from where it was.     It's only when he believes himself to have a proper opening does he use the power provided by Ishirou's OPTION to use all the strength he can in an attempt to tear away at the piece of proper metal beneath it all and dislodge the Cane of Solomon. Even if it means potentially destroying it in the process.
Meika Kirenai	Without as much time to curse her luck that the blow could be rubbed off as it was by the glass- no, crystalline hardlight, Vermillion spends the moment of impact to watch how the little pieces just linger there, held molded midair. Like a school of tiny, shimmering fi-     Her stomach turns at the too-recent thought of what her magic can do close-in to crowds of fragile masses. Thankfully, it's a different material altogether. Unthankfully, it's snagged in her mind enough to dwell on, that she might actually try. The cough she lets out when she touches down in the alleyway tastes bitter. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You can't be here for this. Not-- It's not that you're not allowed, it's just--" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "*You* can't be here for *this*." <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai says, "W-why? Why can- can soldiers, or pilots, or-" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, in the strained tones of wishing it could be anyone else to say it, "It's nothing to do with your job or your age or anything else like that. It's-- I'll explain it later. Some day. But this is the last place in the world any one of you girls should be right now."     Chevalier Vermillion's eyes shut tight from the radio, as she just barely silences the clatter of punching a crater in the brickwork rubble beside her. Pain shoots up the bones in her arm, even if they can handle it. Isn't that just how it always is? Everywhere I am is the last place I should be. Everywhere I should be is the last place I can stand. If I can't do it right, why can't I at least just see it through? She kicks off, harder than she means to- silencing this, too, and the gouged-in scrape her skate leaves in the ground.     She figured that it'd be fast to spot her again, even if she's fast, even if she's silent, there's only so much you can do when crossing sightlines- It only helps for yards at a time, but every chunk of rubble, every remnant iron fence is something to skip through, quickly f-f-flickering a ratting, cracking thunder, fractional seconds displaced as nothing but force through a medium, to cover ground. Vermillion's heart pounds, echoing in her ears, as some of the S2's shells hit true enough to her trajectory for shrapnel to dent at armor and shockwaves to knock her off her stride- closer in is what she needs.     Open space around the S2 is a different story. No cover, no material to skip through, just that fast-swinging effigy of a turret. Just- A shield. But Cobalt isn't- The magical girl dives into a skate-first slide to where Mash holds aloft her shield, a bastion against the cannon's blows, and all the magic emanating from her teammate. Grabbing a rock- or broken brick, really -off the ground, and saturating it as much as she can with the angry red glow that tells of her clingy, cuttingly forceful sound magic, and heaves it at the Ekanamsha. At the distance, even as it soars like a projectile more than a tossed scrap, the glow has time to fade in its impact, and less time for the energy from it to propogate against the mech's fragments. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook after a moment, "Keep Meika safe."     "I can't do much from far away. If- If you're listening to Chevalier Rook, and that's why you two are- um, then, cover me so I can get in. Give me an opening. I'll do my best, and it'll..." Through heavy breaths, it almost sounds like pleading to Mash and Ritsuka- but she doesn't charge ahead, not yet. Marginal safety achieved, reluctantly.
Petra Soroka	"Hm. Interesting twist!" "Not the fucking *Kana*, you fucking idiot! *My* mech! I . . ." "You're not seriously hoping you can get out of this now, are you?"     Lilian acting calm has an immediate and visible effect on Petra. She twists her grip on her black spear, and closes her eyes, brief breathing focus accompanied by the wave of itch that it always seems to be. "Right. Right. Right. Of course. I'm fighting."     She has a lot of things she wants to say, and probably half of them are asking for some kind of comfort. But now isn't the time. Petra nods reassuringly (to herself) and rushes off towards the Ekanamsha, dodging the explosion with just minor scorches on her battered jacket.     Ironically, Rose's spreads of acid do more to damage the steel as it splashes up onto it, than the glass she's targeting. The glass snaps and twists like twigs in fire, tinging green even after the acid pulls away, but generally retains its shape and doesn't melt. The steel, on the other hand, dissolves easily, and with a targeting shot from Ishirou at a weak point on its hip, Rose manages to leak acid down *through* the skeletal supports of one of its glass-spiked legs, dissolving the steel within it.     Dysnomia's spear, along with Hibiki's spear-relic-- and Petra's, too, having finally made her way into the melee, even though she's still shaky-- catch in that weakened joint, lodging through and nearly prying the entire leg off. Glass connections like tendons squeal and shatter into infinite tiny needles, forming a disparate rainbow arc still 'connecting' the leg to the body. It moves awkwardly, uneven with the other four, attached but disjointed and limping.     Jeanne and Touta's efforts to pummel the glass are met with clouds and clouds of ejected splinters of glass, thrown inches of feet above the surface by the force of their hits before stopping. This creates a shredding 'forcefield' of sorts, breaking through the glass entirely in some places at the cost of lacerations all over weapons and arms, but it's still impossible to properly reach *through* and grab it.     Meanwhile, Meika is rewarded to know that those gunmen are still alive. Thin, comparatively to the roar of the cannon, pings of gunshots sound from around buildings, barely denting the steel armor, but still as plucky as military forces can be. A pair of them are dragging the anti-tank turret out of the wreckage of the truck, trying to force it upright so they can use it again.     The Ekanamsha, after being nearly blinded by Lilian, settles down in its haphazard explosive demonstration, turret quieting down for once. A thunk in the internals warns of its shifting intent just before the cannon raises up again, pointed into the cluster of Elites, and--
Petra Soroka	Where skirting around the edges of glass-laminate remnants felt like approaching a dizzying low-pressure field, being subject to the firing of the cannon itself feels like being thrown into space. Without fire or sound, something intangible cavitates so violently that you feel that same 'something' in yourself crumpled into the vacuum, ripped away to leave you empty.     You're not hurt. But scales fall away from your eyes, and you wish you were. Proprioreceptors trigger in your fingers, converting pressure to chemicals to electricity, to chemicals, to electricity, to chemicals, to electricity, to thought, somehow; the only way you're even convinced your fingers are 'you' is diluted and garbled through translation errors. Nocioreceptors tell you nothing. You're not hurt. You're fine. The absence is agonizingly dissonant with what your brain tells you *should* be hurting-- everything.     Your movements feel off. Senseless, disconnected. It feels like looking down at yourself in third person, at a ballistic doll wearing your face. Thin coatings of painted skin over sick, fatty jelly, meant to be torn through, so that the feeling of 'nothing' becomes 'something', no matter how awful.     Infintesimally-thin glass coats the road, dirt, and buildings. They might as well be made of it. You might as well be made of it, too. Light shines right through you; hollow and transparent, before the Cane flashes and something else rushes in to fill--
Petra Soroka	Your sense of self tentatively restablishes itself just before the chasm of non-existence or that discordant, buzzing external presence swallows you instead. With none of you being directly hit, the lingering effects are dizzying and disorienting, the 'absence of pressure' within the blast radius still tugging you in to its diseased gravity well, but no one is dead or unaccounted for. Except--     Where those gunmen once were, Noise have taken their place, hazy greens and oranges and purples in unnatural semi-humanoid shapes. Within the houses near, too-- a handful of Noise crash out through the walls, appearing out of-- not nowhere. From *people*.     This would be the most unnerving aspect of the aftermath of the cannon's use-- and maybe still is-- but at least Noise are *familiar*. Whatever this is, caught on the bare outskirts of the blast, is viscerally difficult to look at, and only becomes *more* alarming when wrapping your head around what it is.     There's a hole where Petra's face used to be. Two dimensional, flatly projected any way you look at her, as if seeing her through a television screen that's had a bullet hole shot right through the glass. Cracks spiderweb out, hairline fractures of impact spreading through the air, dense enough around her head to make unreadable shards out of reality. Her whole body is refracted and distorted, lines between jacket and overalls and gun and skin indiscernable, and when her arm jerks up towards her face, it shreds bloodlessly across invisible barbed wire, disintegrating along straight hairline cracks in three-dimensional space.     It sounds like she tries to speak, though there's no mouth movements to confirm that. What comes out of her is a chaotic overlap of inhuman noises, *emitted* rather than spoken. An Ælien song the shriek of a reactor glass tinkling on pavement wailing discordant Noise ticking layered over it all, nothing in the mixture sounding at all like her, but distinctly, recognizably through non-language, terrified.
Ishirou	The lack of feeling washes over the RESCUE, sending the machine tumbling to the ground.  It takes all of Ishirou's willpower to try and move even an inch, to try and activate the thrusters, to try and do anything before impact and what would follow from the S2 next.  This is so much worse than if it had just shot him... this is somehow worse than the napalm.   The /lack/ of a feeling is worse than pain by degrees.  He screams, but nothing comes out... he spirals to the ground... but as he's about to hit it... The feeling ends.  He pulls back up, and instead of crashing into the ground, he scraps across it and stumbles a bit... but barely manages to stop before he hits anything of consequence.  Despite everything, he's pulled out of this somehow not as badly as others have.  He's breathing heavily, and after a moment he doubles over and wishes he could throw up right now... Because he can't.  He has the feeling of being sick, but none of the organs to actually be sick.  It comes out as a dry heave, a feeling of disgust and sickness that his brain processes, but his body can't.  It's awful, it sucks, and he takes more than a few moments to recover... Only to see the Noise come out of the house.  Out of people.  It's the soldiers now... he looks around horrified and sick again but he can't /be/ sick.  Drugs enter the braincase to try and counter the feeling that he shouldn't have only for his eyes to look over Petra and absolutely look horrified.   Only 'oh fuck' is the words he can manage to get out of his lips, and his mind is running a mile a minute with what just happened.  For a moment he freezes, unable to determine what to do next but... one mission objective from earlier comes to the surface.  'Protect Meika'.  Meika, he realizes, is likely going to either freeze at the sight or... go right for the monster... Or both.   He doesn't have much he can do, but he draws the laser and lays it down towards the S2.  He fires another shot, as OPTIONs run out to try and aid others.  Touta and Lilian feel the energy reserves get refilled thanks to Ishirou's OPTIONs, and more tactical data floods Hibiki's HUD.  Lighting up another weak point on the S2 now that it's fired its cannon.  That cane needs to get out, but he figures Lilian has a plan for that... so he instead fires the targeting laser towards a part of the cannon that he sees has a weak point just after firing.   Enough, hopefully, to give everyone a place to fire on.
Angela	Rose will probably never know just how much her EGO Gear is protecting her here, but EGO gear only ever provides resistance--usually consistent resistance--but still only resistance. Even Corrosion isn't really protection--actually, truly, Corrosion really only makes it worse by putting Rose's mental stability at a lower starting point. Angela and Tiphereth who are worlds away and seem to be out of reach of the effect are completely oblivious as to what's going on so when Rose starts, say, screaming and grabbing at her head--they figure it's just the Corrosion at play. "She's going to go berserk at this rate." "Without consistent mental assault she should be ... Ah. Rose, that is enough." Rose naturally doesn't listen. She starts swinging now at the mech, not particularly aiming for steal or glass as she loses her mind in pure wrath, much in the way that when sufficiently angry, say, a personal friend might punch their hand through glass but in this case the hands are also hammers and her blood is acid until she calms down. Fortunately, smashing one's hands against glass repeatedly--even if it doesn't break--does tend to calm one down, Rose might be back to normal after hammering away for a while. Is the mental assault why Lilian was worried abut Meika? Her eyes slant towards the mahou but she seems ... okay? But Angela doesn't really have to understand Lilian to know to follow her orders--pity that she can't really protect Meika when her one and only agent on the field is losing their shit. "We'll let her tire herself out first." She decides. At least until the mech seems to turn people into Noise and-- PETRA'S FACE HAS A HOLE IN IT Angela stares wordlessly at the horror show that is Petra's face and body and form and SONG. And Angela feels a presence in her head as she looks at something that is Abnormality, but isn't. Petra, but--not quite? It's not words at first that come from the presence but like someone mimicking a sharp in take of breath at seeing something... SOMETHING that just punched them in the chest. But the presence has no chest anymore, it's just a mind, and eventually she whispers something in Angela's head. She's ''so'' beautiful... Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could look like her? But not her? Looking like her but like themselves? Angela closes her eyes instead of answering.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	'I can't do much from far away. If- If you're listening to Chevalier Rook, and that's why you two are- um, then, cover me so I can get in. Give me an opening. I'll do my best, and it'll...' "That's how we work best!" "Right. My specialty is defense, so please feel free to go all out, Chevalier Vermillion!" "Yeah! Wait. You think Jeanne'll get mad abou this?" When Vermillion comes in behind Mash, both the Shielder and the Master are unified in purpose to keep her defended. They still remember her from their time in Meika's Japan, of course, and there's barely a moment's hesitation before they start adjusting their positioning to make sure Vermillion can stay covered as well. "Stay close. I'll cover you both, so let's put everything we have into this!" 'I'll do my best, and it'll...' "As if we'd do anything but that." Beaming confidently, Ritsuka places a hand against Meika's back, partially to reassure her, and partially to pour some of her own mana into the magical girl to give her another boost of offensive power as well. Except... Isn't she reaching too far to the side? Isn't she sliding off now? No, there's something off about all of this. Ritsuka knows where her hand should be going, and she knows that Mash should be right in front of herself and Vermillion, so why can she see all three of them at once? Why do they look so glassy? Why is her head cracking? Feeling her senses snap back to reality, Ritsuka lurches briefly and braces her hands against both Meika and Mash, the latter struggling to keep her shield aloft as she comes out of that messed up feeling that had struck her as well.  That awful feeling remains as they see the Noise starting to emerge as well, and there's a moment where Ritsuka gets that deer-in-the-headlights look and Mash looks stuck at what to do next. Shortly afterwards, Jeanne's conjured spears start bursting out of the ground, driving themselves upwards at the Noise and bursting into flames in a flashy display of power. "Focus! You can have your little breakdowns after you survive this mind bullshit!" The Avenger shouts towards the two and Vermillion as well, still bracing herself against the surface of the mech to keep her footing after having her mind blasted with that eerie imagery. Looking up and over, she notices that hole in Petra's face, and she scowls at the unrecognizable language coming out of her. Something tells Jeanne that throwing more fire on that won't help. She keeps her flag burning with that purple flame just in case.
Angela	Rose... Rose is lost in her own head. More specifically, she has lost track of Rose. Distantly she hears conversation, her ears still function the way ears ought to but she also hears something else. Looks like you found yourself in the wolf's belly. The Red Hooded Mercenary, Rose thinks, me? Is that me? There is a voice from her/self. But she can't hear it because her/self is louder, all around her, a burning wrath from a stronger presence--but only in volume. Acid is pouring up to her body. She thinks she hears someone say Her mental corruption shouldn't be this high! We could lose her! but despite that voice shouting it's distant. Her body moves, controlled by something else, as she hears... Every time you're betrayed you're letting your friends down. There must be balance. That's her voice isn't it? Her eyes are burning and they burn and they burn and then-- It stops hurting, though the green tears don't stop flowing. They're her tears. They've always been her tears. They've always been like this, she remembers. A piercing reactor shriek alongside discordant Noise comes rushing into her awareness and she pushes back against her own mind so that her own mind has room to exist, slowly but surely.
Hibiki Tachibana	The attack...wasn't enough. It's as successful as one could hope for, nearly severing the entire limb free from the rest of the body--with Petra's help, too. But it's not enough. The unworldly effects of that hardlight glass still leave it 'connected', and that's not nearly enough to do the job. Unless they utterly dismantle this thing as best as they're able, the same as the Kana, it's not enough. It'll kill--do worse than kill, if it's not stopped.     Because she knows exactly what'll happen. She knows it enough to have a flash of open fear on her face as the cannon is leveled at them, her head whipping towards the rest of the Elites, the instrumental backing to her song hard stopping on the spot.     "Move! MOVE--! Don't let it--!!" ...     It's not any better the second time, is it? The contrasting feelings of hyperawareness of everything happening to you, yet not even being 'you', like your own body is alien. It really is horrible. No, it's worse this time. And this time, Touta isn't going to shake you awake. Are you going to get 'yourself' together enough to break free of it?     What does it even want that Cane for? Moving is hard. I know what I need to do--it's right in front of me. But clenching my--my...?--...my fist is so strange. Get it together. Hold onto it. You still have something to do. You still have to destroy that thing. ...Wait. What is--?     Hibiki only realizes that wasn't a head-on hit after she's already collapsed onto all fours, dumbstruck and gasping for air. The instant she recognizes that she's still herself and alive, her head snaps up to make sure everyone else is, as well. They're accounted for, safe and unharmed, but it's not them that she ends up staring towards.     It's the Noise. She's fought them so much, so many times, to immediately know what's wrong with these ones. Showing up now, where they're appearing from, who they've taken the place of without any of the carbon piles to show that they've simply 'just' killed them.     Her stomach doesn't sink. It goes beyond that, wrenching so much that her lower half goes numb. Slack-jawed, fingers trembling as they scrabble through the dirt, her head slowly turns.     "...Pe--" She can see. Exactly what's happened. In horrible clarity, pushing through even that horrid combination of mixed sound, words chiming in her mind to remind her of something she already knew perfectly well. She's not enough of a person on her own either, so she fills in the gaps with everyone else. "...tr...a..."     "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH--!!" Her still-dirtied hands come up to grip into her own hair, and Hibiki lets out a truly wretched-sounding, hollow, /awful/ scream as her eyes shut tight and her head falls to the floor. She messed up, again. She couldn't stop it, and this is what happened. To the soldiers. To everyone in those homes. To Petra. It's not just those words rushing back into her downspiraling thoughts, unbidden, but countless other things. Some from years and years ago.     Her own words. On the day that Gungnir awakened, surrounded by gathering Noise just like they are now.
Hibiki Tachibana	I can't protect other people. I don't want to protect anybody...     You had three *fucking* years to fix it for Lilian! Or to not be a self-absorbed piece of shit in the first place!             I hate it. Why does nothing ever go the way I want?     But for the longest time, I really did want 'us' to make it work. Oh...I get it. The Noise are here for me. Because I didn't die there like I was supposed to.         You have no right to be alive. With none of you being directly hit-- ...I can't believe it. You let me survive again. You're going to make me go through this again!? Shut up and stop talking about Courage like a fake could have any idea what it's like the way we do!     ...Aren't I one too? Someone who isn't human among humans. A monster that can kill the Noise--     Of course. That's what she can still do, even if what's done is done. She can't sit by and do nothing.     Quaking from head to toe, Hibiki stumbles to her feet, nearly falling in the process. She violently wrenches down her scarf, exposing her mouth as she takes heaving, heavy breaths. But even with still-desperate lungs, she brings the automatic response under control to grit her teeth together, canines unnaturally prominent, wide eyes making it clear just how ferally dilated her pupils are, and she tears her vision from Petra to glare up at the S2.     "Did I not hate you enough already...? Was everything you were responsible for already not able to satisfy you...? Or maybe I'm just never going to escape what happened before, am I...?" 'Manic' is the only way to describe her shaky and low voice, on the teetering edge of cracking and shattering. It's not even clear if she's talking about the S2, or the Titanomachia as a whole.     "Following me to my home... stomping over everyone and everything like people aren't even people--are you not going to be happy until you've ruined all of it...!? Are you going to do this to /everything/ people care about!? Everything I want to protect!? You, and now the Noise too!? Again!?"     "Give it back... GIVE ALL OF IT BACK--!"     There's no rhyme or reason to her approach, a kick abruptly sending her a dozen feet in the S2's direction before Hibiki stomps down and springs forward again.     Leaps that are all instinct and no technique, meant for nothing more than getting close enough to pummel her fist into pearlescent glass and rip away to scatter it through the air. Even the absurd durability of that metal won't stop her from attempting to crater it inward with her fist and tear it to jagged shreds, the same way she did to Nephra's suit.     And she'll do it again.     And again.     And again.     And again, lunging in from another angle every single time, until she's worked her way to its cannon and Cane, to mangle anywhere she can reach as if it'll fix all of it.
Dysnomia	Mia grunts in satisfaction as the arc of her plasma seared into the new Kana, and she wondered for a moment if this cobbled-together wreck was weaker than the old version. "We've got it on the fucking ropes," she growled, "Hold fast, and--"     --Words left her mouth, but she couldn't parse the meaning in them. Hideous, meaty flapping noises, pinching off air. That vacuous, worthless shell fell to one knee, as her own skin, her shell became claustrophobic...No. Suffocating.     She gasped breath after breath in reflexive, needless WANT. She clawed at her throat with hands that arced with plasma fire, ripping first at the collar around her neck, and then her throat, a deep red mist spilling from her neck into the air around her--     --It stopped. Her arms had dissolved into a swirling, gaseous mass, like they couldn't decide on their own shape ending in claws burning claws. Her features blurred, like aa drawing whose lines had been smudged together, her every movement leaving a trail a smoke behind.     Remember the shape of you. She told herself, as she reclaimed what was I. With herculean effort, fighting not against any physical resistance but suffocating panic, begging her to RIP open a windpipe that wasn't there, open it to air, open it to ANYTHING Dysnomia finally pried her claw away from her throat, wound slowly closing.     She turns to E2 with sharp eyes. "No one's watching, are they? No." She answered her own question. "Of course they're not. They're all hiding behind you, so they don't have to see it themselves. So they don't have to see the screams, and the dead, and they can write off the 'xenolife' as just numbers on a datasheet no one has to read."     All of this? It was nothing. The people on the Titanomachia would wake up and go to work and go home and none of them would know about it. The suffering and death neatly tied up and cordoned over THERE, where it could never even touch them. I HATE you.     She snarled, lunging for the mech, with her claws this time, but she's not close enough to hit. What is she even doing? She holds out her hand through empty and--they stretch, growings suddenly until they're thrice as long as she is tall.     They clutch around it, as she tries to hold it still with one hand, eve as the other frantically tears at the E2, trying to disembowel it.
Meika Kirenai	Ducking where she s behind Mash's shield, Vermillion barely bites back a "Yes!" when her ears pick up the pop-pop of the military small arms fire. That's a goal to prioritize, vulnerable people who can still walk out of here in one piece, if they're succesful in dispatching the Ekanamsha S2 with enough haste. 'Stay close. I'll cover you both, so let's put everything we have into this!'     Vermillion speaks up again, swallowing back her own frantic tone. "Okay. There's still civ-" 'Civilians' isn't right for actual military people who just happen to not be multiversal, even if, for her, it's come to mean anyone but Vermillion and her sister, any normal resident of wherever she's fighting, and it's hard to replace the word on the spot with a better one. "It's bound to be dangerous for them. Y-yeah."     The tell-tale glow of Vermillion starting to charge up her wreathing magic dances around her, as she clutches her hockey stick tight, readying to act as soon as an answer, a window, a *something* happens, but-     Hearing the 'thunk' deep within the S2 doesn't carry with it any special sense of anxious worry. Vehicles 'thunk' all the time. Vermillion only braces as much as she had with previous shells, still near Mash, and still expecting that bracing could do anything, when the blast does truly ring out.     Vermillion sways where she stands, the shifting pressure driving an alternating click-click--click where skates contact the icy glass, unable to scratch their traces into it at all. For a drawn out moment, Vermillion's gauntlet-clad hands raise near her face, and turn over at the wrist for a slow, lazy inspection. Light glints weird off of the glittering outline of her armor as it moves, like some part of its source was locked in static rotation with her arm, and it tugs at her funny that if she'd just shift the angle upwards enough, anything tucked beneath the boundary it constitutes could just spill out and fall away.     Listless red eyes barely notice the scant hazy smears and streaks that drip to hang as thrown dust and powder does in hollow air, starting as a near-black mess until it fades off, ground out into a faint red at only their furthest edges, a gradient the shape of swiping of one's thumb through soft graphite or wet ink. Faint as it all is, away enough and shielded from the epicenter, there's no acute strain for any of Vermillion to f-f-flicker from. Bitter scrutiny and aimless distaste smudges at her, anyways.     Nothing feels heavy enough. My armor should have weight, substance, something to make my muscles burn from carrying. Something dense to slow down motion, impact, arms, hands, instinct, just enough to be safer, to have time to pull back. It doesn't have to be a lot. But if it's just effortless, if I'm just careless, then how am I making up for-     What's under it all? I can't feel the skin on my finger's knuckles, where it scraped and cracked. I can't feel the tightness of their bandages, their adhesive grip. Both have good reason to be there. I remember that. I was happy to find that box of plasters, and even if the label calls it 'cherry red' I know they're just the right shade of-     Shining, steadfast, perfect, and pristine, isn't it all? So why, after all this time, does it still feel dishonest?     Eerie silence with still-moving lips, insensate as they mouth the shape of unsaid words that form the shape of thoughts that- Maybe it's the other way around.
Meika Kirenai	It's something to reel from, when the sickening flash snaps her back into focus and trembling. And yet there's so, so little time to, when trudging steps that click-click--click close the distance towards the edge of the zone, each taken with its uphill sensation. Noise, recognizably garish, flag immediately as a threat to Vermillion, even if she's never seen them before aside from months-past explanations, and even if the colorful monsters she's more used to *aren't* so blobbishly inhuman.     It's the count of them, though, their motions, their formation, that makes her want to vomit out the fraction of hope she'd grabbed at just before. Were they people? Are they people? Ugly, amorphous things that kill by touch and meld through walls. The reason those people won't walk away, won't even *be* anymore. Angry, awful Noise. Angry, awful sound. She hasn't noticed that, even if she's silencing herself, dizzy, disoriented, and still a hair fuzzier at the outline, Vermillion is still mouthing out her thoughts like words.     For all she's said about charging at the Kana, she quickly, immediately, selfishly and automatically switches path away from Mash and Ritsuka, and towards the Noise. Jagged red shards get called up and thrown, focusing on the encroaching Noise and not the awful, horrid tank. Even if her magic, shaped like that, does more to pin in static place than harm- she knows the deafening, shattering feeling of the otherwise intangible bolts *hurts*, and between the target options, she knows what she'd rather fix her eyes on and make hurt.     As much violence as she wishes, and outputs, throw after throw after throw at the Noise, distracted from the thoughts and plans held right before, that-     A cacophany of fearful cries, and the figure that's missing Petra's face takes over focus. Vermillion's heart skips a beat, and her eyes twitch to try and track Petra's- anything is hard to, really. Thoughts race and scatter, over whatever there is to try and make sense of, whether the fault of the cannon, or, some remnant of a horror found at the workplace Vermillion knows houses all manner of-     "...Mercy for you..." she whispers, uselessly aloud and clear as day, in the same that she exhales to plunge another shard of her magical sound into a Noise's body. All she can do is pray that what's happened- happening -to her isn't so churningly final as it looks and sounds.
Lilian Rook	'Right. Of course. I'm fighting.'     "Yeah. Some of us are." says Lilian. The objective truth is coincidental. "You know enough about what's going on that you won't be hiding behind that when we're done. When I'm done. Until then; pull your weight, and think of something useful to say." Between readying her blade and going still, Lilian speaks to Petra one more time.     "Don't you think that you've seen too much of me and I've seen too little of you? There's a limit to how much of an imbalance I'll tolerate; even for you."     . . .     §There it is. That feeling. Wishing I could see who's inside it. Hoping someone's inside it at all. A human face, deep down in there somewhere, buried in all the machinery. Someone I could reach in and drag out and--§     "--erstand if I just worked work hard enough to get to them so they could see--"     §--who is so much stronger than they are. As if it even matters. Like they'd care. People have tried to kill you for less than computers have. It makes no difference if there's anyone at the stick. They decided--§     "--not to see me from the start."     "Stop trying to attack the glass skeleton!" Lilian calls out over the dropping mech and the sound of the revving cannon. "It doesn't matter how much you damage something like that; it won't actually break." You can't argue someone to death, however badly you maim their psyche. Once they've conceived of a wish, no matter how pathetic, you can't kill it. "Aim for the tangible superstructure! You know how to deal with a tank, don't you?!" Only steel kills. Only steel breaks. Only arguments fought with steel and blood, on absolute terms, ever really end. "So stop fixating on the unknown! The glass can--"     Lilian, sensing no physical danger, foreseeing no catastrophic risk to her one selfish goal, almost misses the instant the cannon stops, barely glances that it isn't aimed close enough to actually hit her, and then she abruptly doubles over, catching herself just by knee and §sword§.     It isn't just 'disorientation' from her. There's more than the sense of disassociation; vertigo; emptiness; nothingness; raw and unfiltered cosmic meaninglessness. Everyone else can see where the space around her, still barren of microscopic 'glass', glows with the active light of the firing cannon. An irregular sphere of space where nothing has even happened yet, centered on her body-- bleeding out of it, even, contracting and expanding in minute fluctuations in time with her heartbeat. The design on Lilian's back, hidden under her armour, shines all the way through it, converting and sublimating some other force that causes the ground to smoke and the air to pop and spark from friction with nothing.
Lilian Rook	§Hey. What are you in the absence of everything else? Not if everything disappeared right now. If there never was from the start. If you'd never met another human being, if you'd never read a book, or learned anything about history, would you be you?§     §That hairpin, that wristband, that scar; you got them from other people. The ways you like to look and dress all came from how you feel from others seeing you. The way you speak and articulate came from your upbringing and your peers. The things you like had to be shown to you by friends and strangers and television. The things you obsess over came from books other people wrote. What you're scared of comes from what other people have done to you. Someone else forged that sword, someone else wrote what you learned, someone else built where you live. Even your name was something someone else made up first, right?§     §People talk about how strong and deliberate you are; how you formed everything about yourself and don't do anything randomly. And they're sort of right. You look down on other people, because you choose a little more, confabulate a little less, have a clearer idea of who you want to be and how you want to live. But when it comes down to it, you're not totally special, are you? Everything they, and you, recognize as 'Lilian Rook', is informed by the pressure of others, everyone, everything on you. The tidal force of all their little moons, pulling on your sea of mind, is what eroded all those little features into your bedrock.§     §So is it any surprise, in this void of anything else; anyone else; any center of gravity; any binding or informing force at all; you'd finally notice how fascinatingly detailed your absurd little natural sculpture of meat and memristic neurochemistry is? What was special about this one, again? Can you remember anything about it that you can't see from its eyes right now?§     §I remember . . . A pull away from the nameless thing I'd become back when I nearly killed that g-- no, it was him all along, wasn't it? The first. Someone else was a subject, but that path, going both ways, came from nobody but me, didn't it? I remember . . . a shape that felt wrong, before I knew that was possible; long before I had any words to define it. And a way of feeling right beyond just that, when I couldn't even describe the concept; one I still can't quite grasp, I think. And a wish that I had, before any human being could conceive it. Before a single other being could invent the terms to imagine it in. And . . .§     §Hahaha . . . Is that really it? Is that my whole 'inaliable core'? That's more than nothing; more than almost anyone, I think; but still. That's the total sum of all the significance I managed to give this one configuration of cells amongst all the other ones. Isn't that really kind of pitiful?§     §<<Well, <I/you/we> don't know about 'pitiful'. But <I/you/we> do know, <in void>, that it is-->>§     "--'Enough'. Yeah. Thanks for everything. I mean that; even to myself."     The bubble of casual ambiguity around Lilian collapses. The light-pop and rushing implosion of the cannon finally happening in micro. Noise grain fizzles against her, briefly obscuring her silhouette-- and looks a lot like a familiar kind of black static. Heard before she's seen, Lilian exhales a deep, shuddering breath, turning into a cough and ragged inhale, and as the light dies, she stands up under a fine cloud of diamond dust; shattering glass falling away from her in gleaming fragments stained in different colours.     It's too hard to see her face, to really know for sure what kind of shape she's in. Probably as hard as it always is for her to see anyone else's.
Lilian Rook	Now, a flickering half-shade of perfect white and perfect black shivers flame-like around her head, with just too much energy and solidity to cleanly make out her features. It's fitted too closely, shaped too identically, for any gap from any angle. A sight like the face of §someone§ who looks exactly the same as her, imposed in superposition. Someone whose faintest traces leave near-imperceptible afterimages in the wake of her movements, and who's translucent hair mingles with hers on the same invisible current as she turns, walks, and begins running, towards--     "Petra! Don't think you get to go either! We all decided we'd go together, you selfish piece of shit! So stay here! Don't you dare try to meet them like that, Petra! §I/she/we§ will fucking kill you first!"     In the vacant bubble of equilizing normality, there's just enough time to see the dim shadows of so many sword-suggestions spiking the encroaching Noise; unconsciously demanding that they cease moving; and one for the gaping void in Petra's face.
Touta Konoe	With all of his being, with claws that appear more like a blur than to have a solid shape, Touta rampages against the machine. Tearing away into the crystalline structure with all the force he can muster. Yet it comes to the point where brute strength isn't enough. Glass shreds into all but dust and it begins to feel less like he's punching into a structure and more that he's just punching into shifting sand. Constantly buffering, constantly shifting, but never reaching the underlying form of it.     "Almost.../Almost/!"     Those claws only grow larger, almost looking like an array of wings by the time they finish expanding. Rather than fists, they attempt to pierce into the dust and scoop away at it in mass. Even if only for a moment to disburse the clouds and reach what's hidden within it. It didn't matter what pain was to come, for that was but a raindrop to the storm that was coming T"Move! MOVE--! Don't let it--!!"     He can hear Hibiki's cry. Knowing full well, for the base in her voice. That they can't let this thing fire. The consequences of their inability would be dire...The two of them know all too well.     "COME OOOOOOOOOON!!!!!"     Sparks fly as glass grinds against claws, the sounds of screeches erupt from their collision becoming just as loud and pain-inducing as the explosive shells moments before. Yet that self-induced torment can't be halted. If pained noises and hands are the cost to reach out for the cane, then he'll bear pain insurmountable, he'll let the clashing of metal and claw grinding become a victory song. If marking the path with his blood was the path to victory then ...     He feels like those fingers nearly brush against that cane and then...          Pearl.      There it was again. The surreal feeling of existence in its purest essence. The feeling of everything else melting away as one's consciousness whittles to the cellular level. The five senses seem to fade, but in their place new ones come to be. Levels of awareness that can only come from the erasure of the self. To lose yourself, and yet...Become every part of your being. Within this emptiness, within this state he can feel everything about himself, the good, the bad...Everything becomes unfiltered...How long would he be in this state for this time? Did it even matter? ***     His eyes open slowly...The feeling of a jolt to his body just enough of a stimulus to bring consciousness...True consciousness to his form. Though as he opens his eyes...He's unsure if it's truly the case. Glass covers the streets, the building, it stains this world and everything in it. Even the OPTION that Ishirou provided, the likely source to which had brought Touta back...Stained.     The next sense to return to him is sound, though what he hears at first is something that seems otherworldly in nature.
Touta Konoe	An Alien song the shriek of a reactor glass tinkling on pavement wailing discordant Noise...To see the source of that call leaves a silence over the area, a moment of disbelief at the anomaly.     "They...What did they do...?"     It's only then that he can hear something that's much more familiar. Though just as cruel in the sound of a howling scream. He sees Hibiki, hands in her hair, gut-wrenching horror on her face as she attempts to cover her eyes from the sight before their eyes...A world of Noise. One where they fill the streets, pour out from the homes, and leave those who watch this travesty asking the question...     "W-Why?"     The demonic facade, the black armor, turns to dust as Touta drops to his knees watching what's all around them. "They...They made them...WHY?!"     It was one thing to cast aside one's own humanity by choice. To become a monster under your own volition. Touta understood that, for it's a choice he made. However, this was nothing like that. It was a slap in the face in humanity and more than that...It was just cruel.     Manic.     It becomes the feeling that envelopes all the Elites in this moment. Each acting on emotion throughout the spectrum. And Touta would be no exception...     Some go to tear others swirl, some burn, some pray, and some shine even brighter than glass itself like a §Star/Sun/Wish§.     All souls filled to the brim with swirling emotions, and yet...Still beautiful in their passion, justified in their wrath. Elegant in their mercy.     Touta slowly brings himself up to his feet. Never more than now does he appear as the child incapable of change. One, that no matter how hard he tries, continues to fail himself, to fail others, and to feel so hollow when seeing the radiance of those around him...     It's enough to make one cry. And so... Tears fall from the sky. The dust of that demonic form accumulates above into the sky forming dark clouds overhead, only to rain down a Black rain.     He knows the only thing he can provide at this moment...The only option he could ever choose as a child... A Tantrum.     Touta raises a hand up towards the sky...And from that cloud something beyond lightning crashes down.     A fist the size of one of a meteor raining down from the heavens as if God had bared his fist to give punishment for the sin that had transpired here. That goliath arm extends down from the cloud, bearing the weight of unrelenting, unyielding force down upon it.
Petra Soroka	"Give it back... GIVE ALL OF IT BACK--!"     The closest thing the S2 has to a face, the direction of its hardlight turret-- barrel impaled right between where eyes would be-- doesn't even acknowledge Hibiki the entire time she shouts. There's no response. There's not even any sign of recognizing that she said anything in the first place-- even if there is someone sitting in that pilot's seat (identical to the one Petra occupied, the entire time their friendship lasted)], there wouldn't be anything to interpret off of that bland metal hull.     Dysnomia is right. Even if Hibiki's voice transmitted through damaged microphones, even if her furious expression was caught on one of the few cameras that hadn't been destroyed by Lilian, there wasn't really anyone there to be angry at. Tracking programs displayed on the screens in that cockpit represent her as a dot. Cameras are tactical, not social; tools of precision violence.     The most unsettling insult of them all is that there's not even a pause after the cannon fires. There's no villainous lingering over the sight of the death and misery it wrought, not to the Elites or the now-Noise; there's no surprise at the Elites' survival, despite the fact that it's likely nothing else ever has before. Its engines are flaring up again before anyone even pulls themselves out of the dissociative haze. The bitter tang of exhaust floods the rural street, deafening rumble sounding flat now that the building faces that would echo it have been turned into rubble. The mech rises back into the air, three glass legs screeching and hunching at each articulation to cleanly lift off the ground. The last one drags, the dagger-sharp tip of its 'foot' scraping a limp gouge in the packed dirt. The only lasting damage, nearly inconsequential by the shattered wish still holding it together.     That can't be it. Dysnomia's claws wrap around the mech, clinging to it to stop its ascent. The demand for satisfaction can't drag it down to earth again, no matter how hard she fights, but she can hold it down long enough for Hibiki to get her pound of flesh.     Metal crunches under her fists, pounding from overlapping ringing impacts, over and over. Hibiki knows just how thick those metal plates are; jamming her fingers into the steel chassis and tearing off a strip of inch-thick armor only reminds her how much more there is beneath is. Brute violence gets her a satisfying crumple finally damaging some mechanism within.     One of the Noise, a horrible sluglike thing with shifting spines along its back, springs up onto the Ekanamsha S2, and Hibiki has just a split-second left to grab at the Cane of Solomon. Its iridescent glass casing is partially shattered, a cloud of glimmering razorblades statically fixed in the air around it, tearing at her armor and skin when she pushes through them to wrap her hand around the Relic and tear it out of metal latches. A moment later, the Noise dislodges her, pouncing on her when she falls to the ground, but she *has* the Relic.     The Noise that were once military men hobble across the grey ash of ruins, aimlessly drawn to Meika and Jeanne. One, staticky-oozing its way out of a charred window, contorts itself and compresses into a spear, lancing down at Meika to explode into a cloud of carbon whether it hits or misses. Another one crumples like tinfoil, to be picked up by one of the bipedal Noise and hurled at Jeanne like a bomb.     The rest of them don't have a chance to attack before being turned to ash by Jeanne and Meika's javelins, or crushed by Rose's hammers. Staggered by the attacks, they're all finished off by the contemporaneous executioner's strikes from hazy shadows of swords.
Petra Soroka	petra babbles to herself in that incomprehensible cacophany of sound, shattered reflections of fingers patterned within and without of themselves attached to a hand splitting along three-dimensional space pressed to her head, nearly obscured by the spiderweb of cracks radiating out from her face. Lilian sees her tugging fruitlessly at a green and orange smear in her hair, trembling too much to get any kind of grip on it. petra never moved out of the glass, and the pattern of cracks shooting like lightning across its surface give visibility to the invisible fractures that her quaking body tears itself on.     The instant she's in reach, even before she is, lunging towards her like a lifeline, petra blindly grabs at Lilian's arms with her splintered hands. The noise spilling out of her picks up in pitch and frequency (exept for one), and her hands squeeze Lilian's forearms hard enough to make the armor of the Lady in Black squeal and cr-- cracks run across Petra's hands, up her arms and bomber jacket like a cohesive surface, white-knuckled with tension. her hands become a little more stable, touching Lilian, refracting fractals of flesh collapsing and smoothing together.     her knees give out from under her, and the moment that the epicenter of the cracks around her face presses into Lilian's chest is the moment that words start slipping through the nonsense of sound. Holding herself up only by clinging onto Lilian, her entire body shaking with her arms wrapped around her waist, the first comprehensible sound to come through the non-language is scratchy, jagged sobs.     "--sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry *Lilian* I--" Over the course of her crying, every alien sound fades away from Petra's muffled voice except for that ticking. She pulls her face out of Lilian's chest, actually visible again, blotchy and pale and tearstained. "I'm not going I'm *not* going *anywhere*, I-I-I-I don't even *know*-- a *tree* it's supposed to be, you said, not a *shrub* ripped out and thrown onto the asphalt and hit by cars and" She'll need a moment, probably, but as long as she spends that moment holding on as tightly as she is, she'll be okay.
Petra Soroka	The battle seems won. The Noise are dispatched, and Hibiki has the Relic triumphantly in hand. Everything the Titanomachia sent this thing to do, it's failed, and it seems like only a matter of time before your combined efforts reduce the mech to scrap. The Paladins managed to do it with the Kana; it's not *invincible*. Touta's fist slams down from the sky, smashing into the turret, and even though the mech doesn't budge an inch, something crunches inside of it. It's not fast enough to get away at this point, and damage is building up.     The turret turns towards Hibiki, the Relic in her hand. Drop it and run.     The effect of shooting the Cane of Solomon with the cannon is a spectacle compared to the relatively simple coatings of glass. With forewarning and a static target, it's easy to run out of its blast radius, and though the explosive presence of the normality vacuum is still disorienting, it's nothing compared to what happens on a direct hit.     The Cane tears itself inside out, folding into a gash of green-gold space torn vertically through the town. Vast golden geometric shapes can be glimpsed drifting in space through the portal, pushing themselves indistinctly through the ground outside. The Cane of Solomon is vanished, displaced somewhere into the realm that it granted access to, but before anything else can be done about it, smaller shapes move beyond the portal.     Dozens of Noise pour out in the brief instant it remains open, like an open faucet. Summoned and uncontrolled, the monsters stumble over each other to start dispersing through the town, *forcing* the Elites' attention to break away from the horrible Frankensteinian mech. In the confusion, it, of course, blasts away, leaving the swarm of monsters as nothing but a smoke bomb for an escape. Ishirou catches one last transmission from it, as it leaves. <S2>: Target lost. <S2>: Usage data remains stored. <S2>: Retrieval possible through further development of Project Typhon.
Ishirou	Shots are fired at whatever Noise comes out to attack, right now Ishirou is almost moving automatically, trying not to think about things that are flooding around him, even though he can see them all.  The entire field is chaotic, everything is a huge mess, and when it's all said and done... He just collapses to his knees and struggles to breathe even though he doesn't have to.  He wants to throw up, even though he doesn't have the organs.  His body tells him all of these sensations that it doesn't have, and as the field finally fades, he just sobs.   It's too much for him, to be reminded like this.  It hurts, so so much, but it's worse because it /should/ hurt more.  He should be throwing up, or crying, or in real pain... this is all simulated, all of it was /fake/.  He wasn't changed or inverted or anything like that because he's fucked himself up beyond all doubt... he ran from who he was because of what someone said... And all he wants to do is go back.   Dry heaves finally pass, as he wipes his mouth for no reason other than it brings him some comfort.  The last signals go out and he frowns.  "It transmitted... Usage Data remains stored... and Retrieval possible through further development of Project Typhon..." he relays to the group, though not sure how many can hear him right now.  It sounds important, even if he doesn't know what it means. Also, for the first time in his life, he doesn't want to know about the tank... not right now.  He's so incredibly exhausted by what just happened to him and everyone and... very happy Petra's face seems to be healing but... the others... the people turned into Noise... Meika has to give them their last rights... All he can think about is how he misses being human like a selfish jerk.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	For Ritsuka and Mash, focusing on just trying to keep themselves and Meika alive through the waves of Noise and the S2's attacks is enough to distract them from the dread seeping its way in. It's easier to fight through it all if they just think of the S2 as their main foe, but it's hard to ignore the military personnel bursting into Noise and losing whatever made them recognizable as human. Still, Mash can at least present herself as a defensive wall for Vermillion to prepare and fire off her attacks, but... It still feels wrong. What if they became like all these soldiers? What if they failed at even their most basic obligations in coming out here? What if they became footnotes by the end of this, doomed to be forgotten as mere numbers among the Noise? It's easier to keep thinking about fighting and nothing else. Meika's approach is covered not only by Mash chasing after her to batter away any Noise attempting to reach her, but also by Ritsuka launching her own basic attack spells at the quicker ones to keep them at bay and draw more attention to the duo. They slide to a stop when they, too, see Petra's lack of a face, and they're joined by Jeanne in watching everything unfolding between her, with Lilian's flickering flames and her commands to petra, with Hibiki's screaming demands towards the machine that had even JEanne pausing to watch it in some kind of sick fascination. The three know they're well out of their element here, but they remain nonetheless. Even with the Relic recovered, they haven't finished their job yet, and the tearing of space means there could still be unknown trials to come. The Cane disappears, however, and it's replaced by another swarm of Noise that forces the trio back into the fight rather than giving anyone what appears to be some much needed space. "More of them? Cover the others! They've still got some heavy stuff to deal with!" "Just when it was getting good, too... Tch." "It's not a show, you two... Ah. I'll cover whoever's left! Keep moving, everyone!"
Dysnomia	Dysnomia wasn't able to stop the reflex of fear as the gun began to roar to life again, the promise of being ripped from this Self before she was ready enough to send her, half running, half flowing, away from the Cane at a dead run.     "Get BACK here, you coward!" Mia yelled, but she knew she wasn't being listened to. As the noise cascaded from the fissure, Mia turned her attention--and her aggression--to them, tossing lines of arcing plasma from her hands even as the mist coiled around vast swaths of Noise, crushing them against each other.     Attention wandering, her eyes finally found Rose, but it was her mind that gave her pause, tasting the overflowing turmoil of a mind being eaten alive. She joined the agent as she crushed the Noise, but drove a thought into the midst of her mind, like a spike.     Rose. aren't you forgetting something? You could lose it forever, in a fight against someone who won't even look at you. Aren't you angry?     A great mass of mist SLAMMED into the ground, crushing the Noise beneath, as well as the pavement, leaving a harsh indent in what used to be road.     Aren't you afraid?
Angela	Angela's eyes are closed but not because of Rose. And it isn't because of how horrifying Petra might look to some, or how beautiful really. Why are your eyes closed? She wouldn't want me to see. It's personal. And she has to believe she's okay, too. Well, physically okay. Mentally? Well in this horrorshow of a multiverse you count your blessings. Tiphereth is distracted herself, "Lady Angela, at this rate Rose won't be able to return to being human." It's okay, Lilian is here. She's crying and she shouldn't look. The apology is for her. Rose continues to smash Noise but she'll likely turn on the others in an instant if given the chance. Rose. Aren't you forgetting something? You could lose it forever, in a fight against someone who won't even look at you. Aren't you angry? Rose is furious but she's more tired than furious. Sometimes... Sometimes it's exhausting being Rose, pardner is the completely honest response. Is she afraid. I've always been a coward. So I fight for Courage. The corroded monster form of Rose pulls in on itself, like inside-out being pulled back hastily into an outside-out, though like any hastily pulled together ensemble, it isn't quite perfectly right. When Rose opens her eyes, they're still dripping those lime green tears. And her irises have gone red with black pupils. She vomits out green fluid and then collapses to the floor. Alive, and still Rose, but perhaps a bit... Distorted from the experience. Mental corruption's stabilized but still high, like ... It's like with Belial... Tiphereth murmurs. "Send in Nikki to recover her." Angela says, staring at Petra with her eyes closed.
Lilian Rook	The order of events isn't entirely clear to Lilian. She doesn't try and fail to distinguish them, though. The fact that she is staggering through the glass, picking up speed, aimed at Petra and she is drawing Winter Crow and firing into the surrounding Noise and she is supporting Petra against her chest and has one arm around her back and can feel her sobbing and she is watching the tank escape without even feeling the rage that anyone should be feeling all occur in a casually linked and co-interacting cluster of moments and actions and consequences, Lilian finds it alarmingly comfortable now--     She is holding Petra tightly in one arm and carefully staggering her step backwards and dragging her out of the blast site and aiming her gun with her arm braced on Petra's shoulder and gunning down the Noise escaping the Cane with little clock-hand sweeps, and saying "I know. I know, I know. I'll forgive you later. You don't have to understand right now, and you don't have to stop hating it right now, and you don't have to figure out some smooth answer or inspiring line or anything. Just keep talking and stay focused on me." in broken sentences between instants of pitch-shifted gunfire.     She's already stopped eyeing the Ekanamsha S2, even as it gets away, like precisely nobody wanted and everyone hates. That slips out of the temporal overlap in her mind and helps everything fit into a retroactive sequence of linear events. Only then does she realize that her armour is absorbing tension again, and that between now and when Petra had first grabbed it, she hadn't felt it flex at all. She'd felt fingers on her skin? and that Petra's squeeze hadn't hurt in the slightest.     'Get BACK here, you coward!'     "Stop fucking screaming Dysnomia! Do you think it even hears you?! Or do you yell at fucking rocks for being in the way!" Lilian yells out over a triple burst of gunshots, only raising her voice even further in the smoking silence before two more. "God, I knew all of you were too green for this! But you at least I thought should know better!" Another burst of shots, and the last of the Noise that Lilian can see have been wiped out. She scans right to Rose; who seems to have it under control somehow; and then--
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "--Shit. Vermillion!" <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "Should I cancel the evacuation request--" <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai says, unsteady, "...Present." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says warily, "Injuries?" <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou sounding unwell, "It... recorded the data of our fight, I think. It mentoned developing a Project Typhon... but I got nothing else." <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai pauses. "I- I don't think so." <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "... Don't know if she'll be conscious. Maybe meet me there." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook sighs. The sharp inhale of a rev-up to releasing shock and concern-delayed fury transpires, and is summarily reluctantly abandoned; seemingly on purpose, even. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Do you see what I meant, now?" <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "Yes." <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai's tone shifts haphazardly defensive. "I- I don't know if I do."     "People who still have blood left in their knuckles don't have any business being here. Anyone who feels like they have to cry and yell about it can fucking leave. That's exactly who they know how to pick off first; and they'll forget all you ever existed right after, if they even noticed before."     Lilian spares just one little glance at Hibiki, sets her jaw, blinks, and then turns to look at Petra instead. "I told you all before. Dust yourselves off and act like it's going to happen again tomorrow; and then every single day after that. If you can't stand that, then praise God for your good fortune and don't feed the machine any of your blood. It doesn't see you, it doesn't care, and you don't get anything for winning."     Her fingers curl with indescribable emotion around the back of Petra's head. It's unclear who she's talking to, other than it'd stopped being for Meika's ears a while ago. "If you overlook her again, try to take it on yourself like a hero, and still somehow survive, I'll kill you myself because God must have slipped."
Hibiki Tachibana	Does getting no response make her feel better, or worse? Does it matter if there's a pilot sitting somewhere inside of there, or if it's just the same as before, and it's all cold automation? Does she need the object of her disgustingly heart-clogging hatred to acknowledge her?     No. Of course not. It's exactly like the Noise. Something unfeeling, uncaring, only existing to ruin lives. A faceless monster with no emotions, no thoughts, no real life of its own. There's nothing that will make her fist hesitate, no sympathies to have. Without thinking about anything else, she can punch and strike and rip and tear and crush and break and shatter and rend and--     "Get--BACK HERE!" The chance Dysnomia gives her is enough for Hibiki to leap for the opportunity like a feral predator. Bit by bit, piece by piece-- until that's the only thing in her way. The dozens on dozens of bloody slices rent into her skin pushing through the lingering field of pearlescence are all ignored, suicidally so, just for the sake of taking back even just one single thing from you...!     She's knocked to the ground, and with her free hand, a balled up fist twitches and pauses for only a split second before it beats into the Noise's amorphous body hard enough to deform it, before ripping it clean in half.     Staggering back to her feet, bared teeth forced apart to hyperventilate for air, Hibiki has just enough time to whirl her head around. Taking in the Noise being mowed down, again and again, by Meika and Jeanne and more. Lilian and petra. Wisps of carbon beating in the wind, and the destruction leveled around them, all in a few moments.     And then back, just in time to stare down the barrel. Her grip gets tighter instead of weaker. It won't have this back. She'll die before she hands it over. You won't take anything el--     --before a raw, primal survival instinct and a flash of what she'd be leaving behind gets the Cane being forcefully dropped as her entire body throws itself backwards as far as it can, messily hitting the dirt - her head raises back up just in time for her to have to shield her eyes from the explosion of light, the gash opened in space leading somewhere else. That glimpse into where they come from.     "No... no--!"     Chaos fills the streets, yet again. The achingly familiar chaos of an unfiltered Noise attack, spreading for the sole purpose of killing. Like suddenly waking up again, as if the dimming light from the cannon's fire jolted her out, she regains just enough of her mental faculties to take in everything she couldn't before; Rose and Dysnomia. Touta-- ...Petra's voice...     And that machine, fleeing the scene as she stumbles to unsteady feet, the gashes torn into her body bleeding with every movement.
Hibiki Tachibana	What does she feel, watching all of this-- watching it fly away? It didn't keep possession of the Cane but it took almost everything else. Almost everything.     The dull, unsatisfied ache still burning in her chest and sinking into the pit of her stomach, even with common sense returning, flares back to life when a sprinting Noise tries to tackle her, only to get disintegrated on the spot by an elbow viciously brought down right on top of it. The sensation of a Noise breaking under physical force reminds her that there are still things to do.     And in the next moment, she's walking forward-- and then running, right into the crowd of Noise before they can spread themselves too thin. Meika has done enough. Rose has done enough. Lilian. They've all done more than enough.     She's the one who still hasn't. She's the one clad in Symphogear, the one who should be doing it. The one who should have been doing that, rather than the responsibility falling on Meika. And she's the one who still has quivering arms and white-knuckled fists desperate to lay into anything they can, but what they want to the most isn't here any longer.     She'll only stop when every last one of them is gone. And only then, before trying to pull herself back together enough to even think about checking in with anyone she's worried about, or answering SONG's comms frantic in her ear, Hibiki finds the corner of a shelled building to stagger behind.     Just to have uneven gasps for breath turn into what would have been a dry heave, if it wasn't for the wad of blood splattering down into the dirt as soon as she doubles over, and the small droplets of much clearer liquid that fall a second after. Her right hand brushes at one of the deeper cuts that pushing through to try and grab the Cane resulted in, and she blearily looks down at the red-stained palm.     "...I let go of it. I need to... get it back. I can't let them... I won't..."
Meika Kirenai	Chevalier Vermillion spins on her skates, their blades grinding chips into the pavement with her sudden momentum- all to swing her hockey stick through the lancing projectile-Noise and scatter its body into a smeared-out cloud of carbon, dragging eddies of grey along the follow-through. It's dead a fraction of a second before it otherwise would have been- harmlessly, this way, at least. Still, Vermillion's posture burns with a momentary fury that these foes don't linger long enough for her to hit them a second time.     As the crashes and echoes of the from the blows being dished out against the Kana ring out across the distance, as the sky splits open to ensure the Elite's retreat is a fighting one, it's a blearly slog of repetitive motions, bursts of magic, and clearing ground and foes away, away, and away from what poses imminent danger. At least it's familiar enough to carry through without thinking overmuch, tempo shifting until it finally peters out. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "--Shit. Vermillion!" <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai says, unsteady, "...Present." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says warily, "Injuries?" <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai pauses. "I- I don't think so."     Even with the breather that comes from the skirmish's end, it's a genuine effort for Vermillion to have to inventory her own physical wellbeing, and an estimate is the best she can offer. Partially, even for how durable Chevalier Vermillion is, incremental injuries still add up day by day and blur together, and partially, it all still feels just a little too faded still to be sure beyond the dents and chips she can see in her own armor. But her limbs move at the joints still, and there's force behind them still, which is all that really matters to carry herself home. 'People who still have blood left in their knuckles don't have any business being here. Anyone who feels like they have to cry and yell about it can fucking leave. That's exactly who they know how to pick off first; and they'll forget all you ever existed right after, if they even noticed before.'     As she listens to Lilian's lecturing, even the parts not meant for her to overhear, Vermillion catches herself silently doing the same slow, twisting examination of her armor-covered wrist as before, watching the wiggling metal plates that shape out her fingers. "...Why's that the way you're phrasing it...?" Her lips move, hush-quiet, without as much as thinking to mean to, or realizing at all that she's spoken.     With intentional composure, though, both of her hands hug the hockey stick she lugs around with her, and she nods a handful of times along in the Dame Commander's direction, no longer bothering to check if she's even being looked at, unable to pick apart embarrassed worry from bitterer feelings where they latch in her throat.
Petra Soroka	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "--Shit. Vermillion!" <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "                                       " <J-IC-Scene>              says, unsteady,              <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says warily, "Injuries?" <J-IC-Scene>        says,                                                          <J-IC-Scene>              pauses.                        <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Do you see what I meant, now?"     Despite being entangled with Lilian and being able to hear what she says into the radio straight out of her mouth, Petra awkwardly contorts herself to press the radio in her ear into her shoulder, digging it deeper into her ear canal to listen to Lilian two times at once, like she's wringing out everything from each sentence. The unnatural posture lets her keep clinging on to Lilian completely shamelessly; all of her motions and expressions seem completely bereft of dignified self-censorship, like a child's.     "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I-- I'll make it up to you. I will. I'll do b-better." It doesn't even sound like she knows what she's apologizing for, just that she has to. Her hands spasm and splay across Lilian's back, fingerpads digging into the armor to feel the warmth and heartbeat within it. "Just tell me what to do. I'll do it I'll try really really really hard, anything you say. Don't g-go."     Rather than crying, Petra's manic babbling in Lilian's arms stays steady in pitch, heaving and tumbling over itself in shifting speed. Her voice is somewhere between a whisper and a squeal, breathy and nasal, pleading pouring out of her as an endless chant of nonsense with absolutely no mind paid to the battle happening around her.     "Is this a little better? Is this what you wanted? Does it make the imbalance better?" The stream of questions doesn't contain a shred of blame or resentment, just the pathetic need to know if she did something right. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to mess it up like that. I didn't know what to show you and I didn't know where to look and I thought when you looked you'd be disappointed to find nothing at all just like you really secretly knew all along. I-I'm scared I'm lying. A pristine little snow white sheet of nothing and no-one. Hollow tourist voyeur pretender creep freak codependent slut blank parasite appropriator worthless empty doll."     "It's barely even a girl. Prosthetic. But that's okay. It's okay if you can get use out of me. That makes it okay." The hushed murmuring, the clinging, the way she absorbs and misinterprets Lilian's words as if no one else could be around for them to be directed to, is all unsettlingly similar to the time Petra was at Nova Heliosanctis. Dragged off into her own little dimension, Petra keeps rambling to Lilian even after the fighting dies down, oblivious to the presence of the audience.
Petra Soroka	"'Tomorrow'? It's happening again? Okay. I'm sorry. I'll be there. I'll do better. I won't make you do it alone. I'll fight too. Tomorrow and every day." Finally, the words slow, soothed by the pressure of Lilian's hand on the back of her head. The ticking, at some point, faded into inaudibility, leaving just Petra's own voice with Lilian's words as she calms down. "'Come up with something useful', you said, but not... smooth or inspiring. That's good. I can do that. You really, really... get me, Lilian. I can be useful."     "I can be useful." That phrase seems to become her quiet mantra to herself, repeated as long as she needs it to stabilize her within the low normocausative pressure fields of that glass. It seems like she can't even see anyone else besides Lilian for now, much less acknowledge them. It seems kind of wrong that you're able to see her.