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Rita Ma      There's a river in the middle of the ocean.

     Of course, that isn't the first thing you see. There's the artificial warpgate again, leading out onto the refurbished deck, and harpoonists (including that blue--haired couple) are crowded around the railing just like last time. But the atmosphere is completely different: hushed, anxious. Bota and Kana are at the bow, and she's just as she always is, but the tension in his shoulders is visible from behind even with his robes.

     Approaching, you can glimpse the 'river'. At first glance, it looks like a dark wavy stream cuts across the sea, three Busan-lengths ahead and at least ten wide. On closer inspection, you can see it 'wiggling' as it flows from left to right. And with a bit more attention than that-

     Oh no.

     Bota turns around for uneasily-smiling handshakes. Kana keeps staring at the water. She speaks before he can dispense his greetings. "We found it last night. A migration, following an ocean current to the hive. We'll have to punch through." The 'squiggliness' of the river seems to make following alongside unappetizing, given the time limit.

     She only halfway turns to point at the task force's other ships. "Union Busan is the biggest vessel. We're the spearpoint. New Jersey-" to the right, a refitted destroyer that even has a few guns- "and Manhattan-" to the left, a cargo ship troop carrier with Miller and goons at the bow- "will guard the flanks. Akroma, Benin, and Port Oasis's smaller ships will be protected in the center. They're ablative mass later, but we can't be losing them already."

     Finally, she turns around. Her arms are crossed over her stomach. "Daylight burns them somewhat but it won't do all the work. Our goal is to survive to the other side and keep the engines unclogged. We hope for minimal expenditure of ship munitions. Protect the other ships if you feel able. Any questions?"

     Already, the Union Busan is starting to move forward. It'll only be a minute until impact now.
Redshift Operators     The Redshift Operators haven't left the boat. They're sticking aboard it, aside from a few detour stops to handle business around the Icebox. "Territorial sons of bitches if I remember right." The gunman mutters. He leans over the edge, optics narrowed. "So we're guessing they'll take a shot even if there's no organized strike. Well, I know where I'm working. Gonna stick near the engines and make sure we don't got a chance ot getting stranded in the middle. Good spot to defend the other boats a bit too."

    The ninja is busy meditating. Phantasmal versions of herself spread slowly in several dozen lookout positions, peering around to get an idea of things and precognitively predict (and hopefully avert) the worst of the first wave of disasters, as well as get a decent idea of where, besides her leader's general angle of "near the engines", it would be best to do their work.

    The astronaut and giant work on their gear. Armor and rifle respectively. Though each check in with Ishirou to get some of that water mobility, in whatever form it takes. No reason not to layer up, even if they plan to work primarily from the decks.
Ishirou Ishirou watches as what is pointed out to them is... well that, pointed out.  The river of sea monsters stretches far, and it appears that every single beast in the world is moving towards a singular spot.  That's utterly creepy, when thought about for too long, but Ishirou's seen what Rita can do to monsters of a similar nature before... it only makes sense that her mother would be this but even more powerful.

Already, he's activating the RESCUE unit, and from it, OPTIONs fly out to those who need them.  These are specialized in ocean combat, able to go pretty deep but not to the abyssal depths that others are more specialized in.  It'll definitely help on this mission.  These OPTIONs will grow into suits, that cover the head and body, projecting a similar (but specialized) suit to the RESCUE.  

They'll be able to manuever in the water with ease and have special weapons suited to the water.  

Ishirou himself dives over the side, as the RESCUE transforms into the Flight Unit configuration, but with special aquatic features to allow him to dive in the water and do quick swaps from aquatic environments to aerial ones.  Over the edge he sees the mass of monsters and starts giving out data, trying to find a pattern or at least weaknesses in their travel...

Something that's easier to punch through, or something that's able to be taken advantage of so that pushing through can be made easier.  Once he has that, he sends the data back to the team, giving updated HUD signals on the quality and veracity of the monsters, as well as the density of the biomass.  

Specifically, Kale and Candy's RESCUEs get the first updates, attempting to provide them either up-to-date tactical data, and a place to lay down shots... or a boost in power as the OPTION provides focused fire down their line of sight.  
Kukuru It's finally time to set out. Months of planning, preparation, and training have all come to this, and Kukuru's joined those coming to aid the efforts of those aboard the Union Busan. She's shown up dressed for a fight, too, donning a tight gray jacket for warmth over a borrowed wetsuit in bright yellow to avoid the pains of getting her usual clothes all waterlogged and such. She's even sporting her claws over her hands well ahead of the impending battle,  although their bulk isn't enough to stop her from passing around light snacks to keep hunger at bay without sitting too heavily in everyone's stomachs.

It's meat, of course. Some kind of meat that's safe for human consumption, even, but it's not clear what animal it came from.

"Sounds like a plaaan... Oh. I'll focus on keeping everyone alive, then, so do your best." She chimes in with her usual sleepy-sounding tone, not asking a question at all so much as she's just commenting loudly to try and keep spirits raised. "Nobody's gonna stay hurt too long on my watch. Hmm... Oh. One thing.."

She looks over at the ships further out, then strokes her chin. "Should I be fighting in the water, or... On the ships? I'm fine either way." She asks with a light stretch of her arms behind her, then in front. She doesn't have any actual diving gear on, and it doesn't look like she's in a rush to grab anything else.
Kale Hearthward Paladins Search and Rescue VTOL: East Wind, deployed!

On the outside, it's the smallest vehicle here, not any bigger than a large military helicopter. Inside, it's... well, it's still relatively small, compared to many of the giant ships here, but it's still pretty big! And every inch of it (aside from the cockpit and supply areas) has been renovated and refitted with this mission in mind.

... This mission, which is forecast to have the largest casualty count of Kale's career.

The three-person crew - pilot, medic, and paramedic*, stand ready. There's dozens of triage beds, dozens more recovery bunks, medical supplies for untold numbers of injuries, and finally, there's the... hmm... well....

On the budget and requisition forms that were filed with the Paladins, it's labeled as a morgue, which is not normally something you'd prioritize space for in a disaster response unit, much less one going into battle. Dead bodies typically don't get any more dead, especially relative to living bodies (which can rapidly become much less living if untended to), and the typical necessities for preserving corpses on a battlefield don't match up with the necessities outside of a battlefield - for example, autopsies and forensics, since the cause of death and perpetrator on a battlefield is immediately apparent (homicide, and the enemy, respectively).

In reality, it's not really a fully-functional morgue, but 'a place to safely store corpses until Kukuru can make them non-corpses' doesn't really roll off the tongue, and is somewhat harder to explain on the paperwork - hence, just calling it a morgue. Hopefully, it won't need to be used at all, but... it's there nonetheless.

The East Wind's taking a spot a few dozen meters above the center of the fleet, keeping pace with it. Kale Hearthward himself is flying in a loose orbit around the ship, eyes peeled for wherever the first attack is going to come from.

He's restless. He's more used to making the first move and setting the pace - being on alert like this isn't something he has the patience for.
Dysnomia      Dysnomia arrives through the warpgate already bristling, struggling to keep a scowl from pushing through the line of her mouth to the surface. She walked across the newly-sundered Union Buson along with the trail of elites toward the bow of the ship, where Kana and Bota stood.

    "So, we just need to hold them off until you can push through." She said, as though it was the simplest thing in the world. She wondered what they were, exactly. They looked a little like earth animals, but none that she'd ever seen before.

    Filing that away for later. She tapped idly at a holo-screen above her forearm, and her suit began to hum, connecting her potential into its telekinetic array, lifting her from the deck of the ship as white bands of light illumianted around her wrists, knees and ankles, carrying her into the air. "I'll support port and starboard best I can from the sky." Dagger-sized lines of white-hot plasma appeared in her outstretched hands.
Tamamo     Tamamo showed up ready to get wet, though it's questionable just how well that wetsuit was going to work for her, especially if she had to go much further down. Her body-shape is a bit harder to fit snugly into something that won't slow down too much in the water. With relief, she accepts some help from Ishirou, instead. Changing out of her own gear only takes a moment -- with a sparkling flash, her wetsuit is replaced with some moderately flashy beachwear, the smaller swimsuit providing no impediment to then being covered up with the Option-provided diving suit, this one (magically?) conveniently providing space for her tails, as well as rigid support over the shape of her ears, with a correctly positioned internal headset.

    Now much better suited for jumping into the water, Tamamo... doesn't. She holds the helmet in one arm, and looks out over the water. "Miss Kana, we only wish to pass by, yes? In this case, should we be able to place something to redirect that, ah -- 'river' around us, that will solve our issues neatly, no? It is rather a large area to cover, but I do have some tools as will aid us in this, if they can be held in place. A lack of land in which to bury them makes things somewhat more complex and difficult."

    Reaching into a protected pouch, Tamamo draws out a fistful of strings attached to more little cloth bags than could have plausibly fit in there. "If these are arranged in a line, activating the magic will produce a sense of 'turning' in those that approach, leaving them unaware they have turned to the right or left. It would be best to form the line some distance to the side of the ship, rather than directly against it, though I am less sure as to how we might accomplish this."
Hibiki Tachibana     It's not truly time, not yet-- but the tension on the Union Busan is palpable, contrasting the emotional farewells that were going on last time. That's perfectly fine though. Preferable in a way, even. Compared to how plenty of things went before - some still leaving a bit of a dour shadow over her face - a fight is more than within her ability to handle. That sort of thing is easy to think.

    But pacing up to the railing, watching the 'river' moving along its writhing, worming-along way, the small squint and frown on her face says plenty enough. Still, nothing for it.

    "...Being the spearpoint is one thing I can help with," Hibiki utters back to Kana, stepping away to stand fully upright while putting a hand on her hip. "Fighting in water is always rough, but it should be fine. It's punching through to the other side, not trying to deal with all of them," a comment mostly delivered to herself, as if a reminder. Her mind goes back to the massive beast they contended with previously at sea.

    That was one thing. Enough of the smaller ones to make something like this is another.

    There's a deep breath in, and a slower exhale out, followed by a glance over her shoulder, first in the vague direction of the (some familiar) harpoonists, and then to Kana and Bota. "With them so focused on getting where they want to go, it should mostly just be weathering the storm, right? Or do you think they're might turn and try and swarm the ships once we're in there?"

    They might've abandoned all their attacks on humanity across the world, but she's not sure what they might do when populated ships are actively trying to cruise right through them. But she sincerely hopes its the former. Either way, even still untransformed, she's not exactly hiding what her intentions are going to be.

    She'll be staying right at the front of everything, of course.
Angela Most of the Disciplinary Team (don't get excited it's like six people including Nonon and Shajo) are present helping with this operation due to how IMPORTANT Lobotomy Corp sees it. Even the Manager is concerned with containing the Union Busan situation since the last thing the Great Lake needs is more sea monsters.

The Gebura pad has been passed on to one of the newer Disciplinary Corps members Max--who doesn't even have EGO gear but is geared with local armaments and a harpoon--

But that's largely so Nonon and Shajo, the best fighters in Disciplinary, can fight freely without having Gebura in their way. The Disciplinary Corps, outside of Shajo's recent mixup with Stanley, is still a disciplined force that obeyes instructions and has practiced with the local gear day in and day out during the journey.

Nonon is in local gear as well, even carrying a Harpoon, but that's all OVER her EGO gear--same as Shajo. Shajo has been quieter since Gebura disciplined him.

Nonon gives Bota a good comradely smack on the shoulder and Shajo offers a fistbump.

"Y'know, we've got out share of underwater beasts back home." Nonon says. "You don't gotta worry about us."

"Please take this seriously Nonon. If it's even half like it is one the Lake we're in trouble, and if it's worse you can expect some hard choices." Shajo mutters back, his mood still pretty dour.

''Daylight burns them somewhat''

"Huh! Well that's a new one. But thanks for letting us know." Shajo adds, to the special weakness.

"Nonon. You're more experienced in the sea than anyone else here, including Shajo." Gebura says. "I expect you to look after the rookies."

"Aye aye, Captain!" Nonon grins, hefting Shajo up onto her shoulders piggyback style as she readies her harpoon.
Candy      Candy is wearing, rather than one of the local diving suits, a suit of mechanized armor. Looking fresh from the pages of an early-century science fiction magazine, it is a jumpsuit in dull grey--overlaid with thick, riveted armored plates in art-deco bronze finish. A heavy, bulky-looking jetpack rests on his back, as an aerodynamic finned helmet rests atop his head.

     He leans upon an obsidian-tipped spear, its haft planted firmly onto the Busan's deck. The farmer uses his free hand to beckon to Ishirou, flagging him down for some assistance via OPTION. When the little drone flies over to interface with him, he lifts the spear and motions towards the jetpack. "Back there, ah?"

     A little port on the jetpack seems to fit the OPTION perfectly. When it plugs in, a soft hum sounds from the armor, the jetpack grows a tad bulkier, and Candy's helmet forms a sealed faceplate perfect for undersea operations.

     "I got your back, Bikki," says Candy, offering a thumbs-up.
Petra Soroka     Petra, after bullying Dysnomia off the radio, shut it off herself, having enough experience in broadband bickering to know when the conversation was over (and, of course, enough bad habits in broadband bickering to continue it an hour beyond that point, until it's unsalvageable). Fifteen minutes later, she's curled up in a tucked-away corner of a corridor in Control Department, joining Cinder on a pile of sleeping pillows, totally missing the Union Busan's call for help.

    Despite that, somehow Petra(?) is here anyways! Petra(?) cheerfully strolls out of the Warpgate, jacket tied around her waist to reveal her smooth arms. Her blonde hair is dyed with metallic purple streaks, flouncing around along with the wooden beads around her wrist with her bouncy gait, hairclips pinned on either side of her face, black-gold collar around her neck.

    It's Qetra! Having somehow wormed her way through a reflective surface, she's slipped out while Petra is asleep, here to save the day even without the proper Elite's presence. Qetra is one of the only ones to accept the Busan's offer of a wetsuit, sticking her tongue out at Ishirou as she does, and then scurrying away to change into it after giggling.

    Now she's properly equipped to combat the sea monster threat-- except that she does not have any weapon at all. Seeing Hibiki arrive, Qetra (Wetra?) skips up behind her, giving absolutely no warning before placing her chin on Hibiki's shoulder.

    "Heyyy~ Bikki! Do you have that *thing* I forgot to put back on, after our little *meeting* before?~" The sluttily-vague affect could only be Qetra, not Petra, but it's still a shock to have that voice and hair projected into the corner of Hibiki's vision all of a sudden.
Lilian Rook     Discussions of the Kana the last time they were all here flit through Lilian's mind. Obliviously, she feels the pang of wishing she had a giant robot to do something about this sight. Subtly, she stifles down a similar, more realistic wish.

    'A migration, following an ocean current to the hive.'

    "A marching column. Let's call it what it is; they're reinforcements.Everything we see here, we'll have to kill later." says Lilian. 'Or be killed by' is simply left without vocalization. Given that negotiations, strategy meetings, gatherings and goodbyes are done, and the convoy is well underway, she sees no need to arrive in pristine ship-living form now of all times; that much last time had been for Kana's and Bota's reassurance as much as anything else. Here, she arrives fully armoured, only the inner layer of which bears resemblance to a wetsuit.

    "I agree that-- No, you're correct that punching through is our best option. The Queen doesn't need any to return to her to deliver the message; she'll already know. And even if they all turn and follow to take after us, having them bunch up in our wake is an ideal killing field." She does her best not to grimace at 'ablative mass'. Briefly, Lilian tries to envision an inkling of what it must be like to be heading into a battle where you fully intend to die, as a given, knowing exactly how it will happen, and utterly fails. She traces scar again with a fingertip to focus. Coincidentally, like Bota should realize he was just taught. "Don't be hesitant to fire a little here and there. I can replace a small amount on short notice." she says to Kana.

    'Any questions?'

    "None." says Lilian, then, "I assume no sign of Rita, and no sign of the Seven Devils; or what's left of them."

    Walking away, Lilian sighs and mutters to herself, "Convergence types are just the worst. I hate them." then, just before she's out of Bota's and Kana's earshot. "Still, those two, all those Harpoonists, have been fighting like that all this time, so I can't complain. All I can do is dig in."

    Then she raises her voice for everyone else. "Those who can't return to the ship under their own power in the worst case; don't go near the water. Defend the flanks from boarders, but don't prioritize them; the Busan's flamethrowers are there, and oil is cheaper to replace than engines. Don't dedicate everything we have to the Busan, either; Clark's crew should be able to handle their own ship, and there are plenty of experienced Harpoonists here."

    "The New Jersey and escort ships will need you most; try to wall them off from slipping around us into the center and picking them off, or massing on the right flank. Use all the wide-range firepower you have; they have to come close to the surface to attack, so the water won't provide much cover to anything actively dangerous. And don't hold anything back; fight until you can't stand if you have to."

    Lilian is, of course, one of those who takes the talismans from Tamamo, replying warmly "Good idea." and then taking off by enormous, elegantly weightless leaps, from railing to railing down the decks. There's still time to do so with only a little bit of her stamina as a resource, so she races along the ship's starboard side to line up the spell in a now-familiar cooperative way.
Meika Kirenai     'Months' feels too short a descriptor for how long it's been since she last saw the landing of the Union Busan's warpgate, and it tugs at Chevalier Vermillion's stomach that she barely recognizes it. It'd feel wrong answering a call to action still in her Sunday best, more so than wearing it in the first place, let alone stepping through the gate with a crutch and a cast covering her leg-- Bones are healed enough to hold, anyways. --so when she steps through, balancing on ringing metal skates, it's only moments after the flash of her transformation subsides.

    Stepping up to the railing (wherever she can awkwardly peer past the crowded harpoonists her shiny armor and ribbons clash against), Vermillion shields her eyes and stares out over the water at what's caught attention. As distant as the writhing mass is, it's her first time seeing real live sea monsters. She gasps. "They're... grouped up close, right? Do they stay that way?" She taps metal-clad fingers against her clutched hockey stick, nerves on the fritz. "I can do a lot with stuff close-in to one another. That's... aha. Not even a silver lining, is it..."

'Nobody's gonna stay hurt too long on my watch.'

    Vermillion bristles, slightly, at Kukuru's claim. "Do you see how many of them there are, out there, Miss? Is... optimism like that really kind?" Her tone doesn't quite match her more-hostile posture, still fairly soft.

    It does shift, though, when she notices Dysnomia- by voice, not by looking her direction, even to speak -and whispers a few words her way, otherwise inaudible. {"I hope you'll be trying harder to stay out of people's heads, here."}

'...though I am less sure as to how we might accomplish this.'

    "Can any of it be held in the air? That might not be- not too much of a problem, at least." Absentmindedly, Vermillion clicks a skate against the decking surface. "Might- might even be able to pin them there, for a little bit, if you need them *kept* in shape."
Dysnomia <J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "I might be able to hold some of those talismans in place."
<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Oh, truly? Might you hold them somewhat still in relation to the ships, as we move?"
<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "As long as I can keep focused on them, should be."

    Dysnomia descends to deck level, collecting several talismans from Tamamo. A thin stream of smoke began to circle from her wrist, small, ethereal claws materializing to seize talisman after talisman.

    She rose into the air, turning her eyes 'upstream' of the river of beasts, as the mist spread out, like a line of linked buoys, talismans rapidly growing small in the distance.

    Words echo in Meika's mind as return, harsh and sharp. "Save it for someone who needs it."
Meika Kirenai 'Save it for someone who needs it.'

    Fully out-loud, Vermillion turns towards Mia as she touches back down. "Huh?!? What does that mean? Get out of my head!" Holding her hockey stick, still, she crosses her arms across her chest. Her words may be mistruths, but the slight reddened embarrasment on her face is real. And really, she's not saying any of it for Mia, but for anyone else around them to overhear. "That's- that's so messed up of you to do, after all that on the radio bands. Just leave me alone."
Rita Ma      "Should I be fighting in the water, or... On the ships?
     Bota, smiling weakly around his Kukuru-gifted snack, suddenly winces. "It's going to be like a blender down there. Maybe you can handle it, but... don't unless you see an objective, okay?"

     "Or do you think they're might turn and try and swarm the ships..."
     "They'll smell blood," Kana answers Hibiki matter-of-factly. That there will be blood is something she takes for granted. "We just have to hope they'll lose interest once we're out the other side."

     "If these are arranged in a line..."
     Kana's eyebrows lift. She shifts from one leg to the other, thinking it over. "It might be too much of a stampede to shift, but it's worth a try. Keep one for the disengagement, too."

     "I assume no sign of Rita, and no sign of the Seven Devils..."
     "None, thank goodness," Bota says- implicitly about both. "Gordic and Vajra are the only unaccounted-for ones. From what I hear, we'd see them both a mile away."

     Ishirou and White Dwarf reach about the same conclusion by different means: the left side of the Union Busan is going to take the worse beating by far, simply because of the direction of the migration. Melee combatants should be on the left side of its deck, ranged on the right.

     Kana turns and gives a thumbs-up to the upper decks. The Union Busan accelerates.

     The talismans have a clear effect when deployed, and yet, just barely an insufficient one. The leviathans within the magic's range swerve away just as intended, but they're bludgeoned and shoved forward by the mass behind that didn't get the message. Some measurable percent of the migration torrent is deflected to the side, and some amount crushed by their own three-dimensional stampede, but most are simply forced through to the other side by the herd's momentum, dazed and battered but alive.

     Everyone on the Busan has just enough time to savor the fact that they won't be spared a fight. Brune sucks a breath in through his teeth. Sonia pouts, but it hides dread.
Rita Ma      "Attack" isn't sufficient to describe it. "Impact" is closer.

     The Union Busan groans, violently jerks right as its bow hits the underwater torrent of fish, and then- despite its immense bulk- palpably lists under the sheer continuous force slamming into its left. Like a thousand-car pileup, seamonsters force each other upwards against its hull, thirty, forty, fifty feet, until they erupt over the left side of its deck in a wave of truck-sized gnashing bodies. Even low fliers aren't safe.

     Five seconds since contact, and the Union Busan is already in chaos. Kana slices two clean horizontal strokes through the entire cresting wave of monsters. It amounts to a brief hiccup in the onslaught's momentum. Bota follows her lead, whipping his sword's blade in an enormous cable-swung arc to bisect who-knows-how-many. Half a hiccup.

     Then it's a frenzied melee. Some monsters sluice right over the deck and off the other side, sometimes carrying a screaming harpoonist in their jaws. Others stay, thrashing and snapping at anyone in reach with alarming terrestrial mobility. It's hard to find a friendly face through the swarm, and the keening shrieks of the monsters (they sound uncomfortably almost like pigs) drown out shouted orders.

     Brune's piston-driven fists and Sonia's arcing shortsword create overlapping bubbles of relative safety as they fight side-by-side. A helmeted diving-suit-wearing woman halfway scales the garden dome and fires down at encroaching monsters with an automatic needle gun. Those are small points of light.

     The monsters that survive for more than a few moments start to sizzle and blister in the sunlight, but they don't seem to heed it.

     New Jersey and Manhattan haven't yet hit the stream. Busan's propellers finally contact flesh and become corpse-jammed with an audible grinding crunch, and its progress markedly slows. The water might be turning red, but it's impossible to see beneath solid snapping jaws and white froth.
Hibiki Tachibana     Candy gets a thumbs up back, genuinely. No matter what might be hovering over her mood, having him fighting next to her is something that takes the edge off considerably. With that in mind, she seems a little more ready to take on the challenge ahead of them, until--

    "Pet--!?" The contact of chin to shoulder gets her to jump in surprise, and the words make her naturally go to the same person she was only just hearing on the radio. But a step forward so she can turn around, followed by even a moment to think about it, makes things settle in pretty quickly and have shock go back to neutrality. "...Qetra."

    There's no comment one way or another on if she's disappointed, but the frown is still there and more than obvious either way, so maybe that says enough. For a few reasons, but primarily because she remembers exactly how fragile and easy to break Qetra felt, when they fought before. A complicated expression comes to her face.

    "...You shouldn't be here. These things aren't going to pull punches, like any of us. If one of these things gets ahold of you--" Her voice starts picking up, just for her to stop, take a deep breath, and reach into her jacket--and after a delay, pulling out the fabled, undeniable form of the Banana Gun(tm). Was she expecting to hand this back at some point, and held onto it all this...?

    Hibiki roughly pushes it forward into Qetra's hand. "Here. Keep back from the railings, and stay behind the harpoonists. I'm serious. If you're going to be here, don't put yourself into any troubl--" That's exactly as far as she gets before the Busan balks, she staggers--and disaster erupts, forcing her to glance back as the monsters begin scaling the ship. There's one last look to Qetra.

    And then she's off. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron!" A flash of light, and the metallic portions of her Symphogear are locking into place just in time for her Hibiki to leap into the middle of the mess, turning her running momentum into a leaping kick meant to send several of the beasts sailing back into the water at once before they can snatch away one of the harpoonists.

    From there, she's muscling her way into the thick of it, because it's better she gets their focus rather than any of the others-- while she might not be operating directly alongside Brume in the same way Sonia is, she'll certainly be taking after his example with every piston-reinforced punch intending to send these things scattering.

    Alongside Candy, she might even be able to make another relatively safe zone for the less durable combatants to not get overwhelmed in. Might. There's so many of them...
Candy      "Qetra? Who the fuck is--SHIT fire and save matches," Candy exclaims as he loses his balance and slides down the side of the listing ship. The butt of his spear is promptly put forward, perpendicular to the deck, used as a fulcrum to propel himself into the air. The turbine on his jetpack spins up with an audible whine, and the smell of diesel wafts through the air around him as he takes to the sky.

     Sparks fly as the razor-sharp tip of the weapon drags across the deck, before the spear's head combusts outright and is wreathed in roiling flame. Candy rockets forward and makes a superpowered shoulder-check into a boarding monster, his flaming spear plunged into it just a moment later. The spear creates a violent explosion after its insertion, the weapon evidently meant to detonate its prey from within.

     His boots planted on the deck, Candy twirls the blooded spear overhead, and stray embers from the explosion are drawn to it as if magnetically, quickly reigniting the weapon's lethal edge. Snapping it to a position at his waist and held just under his arm, he makes a two-handed thrust, hands spaced evenly across the haft.

     A jet of fire roars furiously down the deck, aimed to intercept some of the monsters going after the harpoonists knocked off-balance by the initial impact. Candy lets out a battle cry, lifting his spear high and chasing down the monsters Hibiki scatters with bursts of rocket-powered speed, his metal boots shooting up sparks as he uses them to bank and brake. What his augmented strength lacks compared to hers, he makes up for in expert use of his weapon's reach and shape, battering slavering maws away with well-timed haft strikes and capitalizing on exposed throats and vitals with vicious jabs and swipes that employ his hips, legs and shoulders.

     When the weapon's head manages to pierce, Candy's grip tightens as it had before, causing internal fiery explosions to greatly exacerbate the damage it causes.
Redshift Operators "Shit! The mass is so fucking thick!"
"Back up. Back up."
"Can't afford to focus on anything but the engine. Moving forward."
"We're about to lose that!"
"Ahhh, shit-- Focus! Get to the propellers!"

    The Redshift Operators are battered, gnashed, sometimes simply bowled over by passing monsters. The giant doesn't hesitate to simply tear in half any that focus on the team, nor does he hesitate to lift their massive bodies as ablating flesh shields against the surge, but it's not enough to keep his team from getting bruised and bashed in the rush. No precognition could help even an expert ninja evade this. But she cuts the right path towards a vantage point over the propellers.

"Can't even see the water, the bodies are so fucking thick..."
"Let the sea run red with them! This environment is wealthy with targets!"
"How do we get them spinning again...?"
"Dumping grenades! Newt, refresh me!"
"Resupplying. Focus everything on the engines."
"We need the propellers spinning again, right...?"
"Right!"
"I'm going for that. I hope these horrible monsters leave, they'll hurt me if they're too close to all of that..."

    An entire bandolier of chemical incendiary grenades falls from the gunman upon a mass of monsters so thick that they won't extinguish under the water. Maybe fire's at least a little of the way towards an even harsher sunburn. A jetpack's thrusters blast in the air as a titanic mass of steel and muscle descends down upon the mass, enduring strikes where needed to reach the propeller blades, brace against the boat, and physically turn them himself with unbelievable amounts of raw strength, while the astronaut resupplies new waves of grenades, and blasts away at the more menacing targets with their rifle.
Ishirou Ishirou is working to try and find where the worst of it will come, and how they might best weather through it.  This is revealed that the wave will hit the left side of the boat first, and he sends this update throughout the HUD network so that people with a melee focus can be there, and those with ranged weapons can be on the right to both back them up, and to shoot down into the water for those who didn't get washed up on the ship to try and crash down.

Unfortunately, for Ishirou, he was too low, and the tide was too high!  One of the Shark-like monsters grabs onto his torso and drags him down into the deck, crunching down and breaking through his ablative armor.  He's about to scream, when he grabs one of his knives, and slams it down towards the shark's head.  He then propels it with his electromagnetic energy to send it FLYING through the head and to break off the attack from the head up... leaving him lying down in half a jaw.  

Hissing, he grabs some spray, and sprays it over the suit, right when he gets a call from Red Dwarf.  They need help with the engine, and he detects that the Busan is slowing down.  He jumps up to grab a Talisman from Tamamo... and feels something through it.  He takes a breath, not wanting to explore this feeling right now, having come too close to death via being eaten, and flies off towards the South side of the ship.  

He uses the Talisman on himself and dives toward the engines, aiming to hover right above the water, before putting himself into aqua-form and dropping in.  He aims to try and stick the talisman on the outside of the engine to try and dissuade them from going towards it, but then also starts generating waves of electromagnetic force to try and launch what beasts he can away from the engine's so that they can start getting speed again...

All while trying to not get sucked into the propeller itself.  
Angela MOst of the Disciplinary Team takes a tumble as the ship is bashed into. Nonon and Shajo are seasoned sailors, however, and managed to hold their ground even after the impact. Nonon grins like a maniac (because she's a maniac) the whole time, a mania with just a tint of homesickness.

Nonon rears back with her harpoon and sends it barreling like a truck towards one of the monsters trying to drag someone off the deck. Nonon is a team player and was told to be one but one of the Disciplinary Team Agents just gets swallowed whole in an instant while they're recovering from being bowled over by the impact. Disciplinary now has Five Agents upon the Busan and Shajo's yelling of 'FUCK' is the only sense that it even happened.
Shehajo swings his axe at any beast that gets close, but is largely transferring orders to the rest of the team.

"GET UP, LANDLUBBERS!" Shajo shouts. "Stay back from the edge, support the Elites don't be a hero! No point in being here if we all die BEFORE we get to the big battle!" Shajo shouts.

Nonon sighs, "I always love when you talk pirate."
Kukuru 'It's going to be like a blender down there. Maybe you can handle it, but... don't unless you see an objective, okay?'

Tapping her chin, Kukuru nods slowly at Bota's words of warning and the fairly obvious concern before smiling softly in turn. "Okay. I'll make sure not to get myself hurt too bad unless I gotta, then. It'll be easier to keep everyone alive that way, and then..."

Her gaze goes distant for a moment, and a more pleasant smile comes across her face. "I wonder what tasty stuff she'll make once we meet up again." She comments with an almost carefree lilt in her tone, although it's hard not to see that there's some concern creeping into even Kukuru's expression there.

'Do you see how many of them there are, out there, Miss? Is... optimism like that really kind?'

"Mm... Hm!" She answers Vermillion confidently and without further explanation at first, seemingly not thinking too hard about it as she starts closing her eye. Moments later, she abruptly starts speaking again in that same, pleasant-yet-inappropriately-chipper tone. "If I say someone's gonna live through this, then they will. Everyone's fighting to live and make it back home, so they-"

Kukuru pauses to slide a whole chunk of jerky/steak right into her mouth and gobble it up "-gotta go into this knowing I'll be there to pick them right back up." She looks up and over at the East Wind knowingly, then back at Vermillion with that same smile. "Then we can all do our best for everyone, you know?"

Hearing that Rita's not accounted for yet does have her worrying visibly, though, and it takes a fair bit of willpower not to just teleport herself atop the Union Busan to try and spot any signs of her from such a huge distance. Instead, Kukuru busies herself with just making sure her claws are on right, her pockets are easily accessible, and that she knows where to focus her efforts with so many things that could go wrong.

Shortly after teleporting down to join those fighting on the LEFT DECK, things start looking like they're already going terribly wrong as the Union Busan gets slammed into by way too many fish and fish-like monstrosities. It's hard for Kukuru to discern any one of them from the other compared to just seeing it all as a mass of bodies, and she briefly finds herself overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of them biting right into her.

She still remembers what she promised so many people, though, and Kukuru's focus starts to finally exist. As so many of the creatures sink their teeth into her, she starts closing her claws around them, crushing heads and thrashing about to cleave through those directly on top of her. Once she gets a little bit of space, Kukuru actually doesn't press forward into the melee.

Instead, she forces those healing nanites outwards in a massive burst of regenerating power. Rather than pulling them back into herself to mend her wounds, however, she sends them outwards, flowing around her fellow Elites, the harpoonists, and so many others on that left deck to start granting them regeneration of their own and a sizable boost in raw physical power to boot.
Kale Hearthward Kale's prepared. He's been preparing for this mission for months. He's been building a team. He's been running drills. He's ready.

And then contact is made.

He's not ready. He's not prepared. Of course he isn't. Who could be prepared for this chaos? The ship's going to be overwhelmed. The engines are going to be clogged. It's all going wrong. It's all going to go wrong-

<J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "Who's got engines?"
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou gah!!! "I'll head to the propeller if nobody else is going. I have an idea..."
<J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators | Red Dwarf says, "Working on that-- need backup on it!"
He snaps out of it.

The others have it. That's right. Everyone else is here.

Focus. On one thing at a time.
One piece of the puzzle.
The thing you're good at.
The thing you prepared for.
- There. That monster that's got a harpoonist in its jaws - that one. Kale kicks his jets into high gear, and beelines for it - sword out, going to carve it open, grab its quarry, and toss the harpoonist back onto the Union Busan.

And then Kale focuses on another one - going to get them up out of the water. No time to bring them all the way back to the East Wind - simply to safety, to whatever cover there is, to hope that they'll still be alive once it's over... and then onto the next target of opportunity, all while staying agile and in motion, as it won't do anyone any good if he gets taken out himself.
Dysnomia <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Hold -- hold the talismans, if you please! They will slow the flow, even so."
Dysnomia <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Hold -- hold the talismans, if you please! They will slow the flow, even so."
<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "Ngggh...Copy!"
<J-IC-Scene> Dysnomia says, "I'll need to keep eyes on starboard, to keep it up...!"

    Angling down, Mia landed hard on the starboard the daggers distorting into a long, violet lance that she threw through the body of a five-eyed shark, as its teeth gnashed on the deck. And behind that, another another, that she clawed open with her bare hand, and behind that, too.

    They rushed over the deck, like a rising methane tide of flesh and blood and teeth. Her focus split between the talismans and the tide of death, she felt teeth wrench hold of an outstretched arm. She glared at the beast with a black-toothed snarl, SLAMing it against the the rest of the oncoming tide of beasts, even as it tried to gnaw down on her arm.

    It wasn't long, before she found herself pushed back to back with Hibiki and Candy, glimmering violet plasma in hand, a bubble of fresh air in the ongoing tide of flesh. Mia's eyes kept darting starboard, feeling the push of the river, desperately clinging to her talismans as her focus forked and splintered.

    "I need a clear view of the sea," she told the other members of the Watch. "Or I won't be able to hold this for long." But could they keep it up, with these great wave of beasts threatening to obscure it?
Tamamo     The momentum being more than Tamamo expected, the effect is only to slow the flood, but Tamamo still shouts, "Hold -- hold the talismans, if you please! They will slow the flow, even so."

    Better to face one thousand than ten thousand. The farther out they can be pushed, the more it will break their approach, and the more time to turn the living river will have. It doesn't matter if the talismans themselves are lost, though any who tried to bodily carry them any distance forward surely would be. Even standing where she is, Tamamo is forced back, finding herself struck against her hastily summoned mirror and immediately needing to cede that ground -- or rather, that space of deck.

    Ishirou asks, and Tamamo provides, having prepared enough to cover a castle's perimeter somewhat comfortably, and now needing roughly that amount. Her voice is hurried when she says, "Yes, here you are."

    If it were not this world in particular, Tamamo might need to concern herself whether heat, cold, or thunder were more appropriate. Here, as is fortunately the case, she can use that which she's best suited to. From a different pouch, she draws and spreads the ofuda in front of her, papers dropping into air as if held up by a dealer's table. Each orients, then flies forward, bursting into purest, brightest sunlight, shining there for several moments more before burning away to a sputtering nothing. The novas, dangerous enough to leave searing marks on the deck itself, are long enough for her to find relative safety.

    With time to breathe, the next batch of the same are offered to others. tossed in the air but homing in on the hands of anyone who need to enhance their own weapons with the power of Amaterasu.

    There's a certain sense of rightness in... no, she shouldn't think about Susanoo, right now. Best not to dwell on why the Sun and the Sea wouldn't get along. She'll have a perfectly fine time on a perfectly nice beach, some other day.
Petra Soroka "...Qetra."

    Qetra makes a sunny noise and brings her hand up for a happy chest-height wave at Hibiki. The gesture would be awkwardly familiar to Rita's family, if not for the fact that they're probably distracted by the serious threat of sea monsters. "Yup! It's me!"

    She takes the Banana gun and marvels at it for a moment, as if seeing it for the first time. I'd forgotten it wasn't a real gun, ahaha. This'll do, though! Thaaanks, Bikki!~" Hibiki's squashed concern is met with an eyes-shut smile and the gun pressed into Qetra's cheek like a ditzy finger-poke, save that it's made more alarming by being a gun. "I'll be fiiiine. I'll be sure to make me being here better than not being here! I totally, absolutely couldn't stand it otherwise, ahaha."

    Tossed over her shoulder while skipping away to the supply of harpoons, her words are partly directed at Hibiki, and partly at Lilian. "Besides, if one of those things gets a hold of me, maybe you could learn something from them! Ahahaha~"

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I'm annoyed more than worried."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "What are you even doing here?"
<J-IC-Scene> Qetra says, "I just don't have guns, or EGO, or the transteam gun, or her sword, or training, or powers, or-- but I promise I won't be a burden. I really really won't."

    Lilian's disappointment, coinciding with but far more impactful than the river of monsters crashing into the boat, jolts Qetra out of her casual cheer. She yelps and ducks behind a railing to get a moment to adjust her grip on the yellow and black striped Banana gun in one hand, and the harpoon in the other, before the tide surges onto the deck.

    There is, effectively, no way for Qetra to actually withstand the onslaught of wet meat and inertia, nevermind the teeth, without being immediately swept overboard and turned into a red droplet into an ocean of blood. Instead, she displays a survival instinct for the first time in memory, retreating to the less-pummeled right side of the boat, and hopping up to higher ground, peppering disabling shots of potassium-fueled nervous overload into the fish as they come.

    This, purposefully, puts her near Tamamo as well. Already splattered in fishy blood, Qetra bounces on her toes while waiting for a gap in Tamamo's tactics, anxiously bubbling with adrenaline and skewering a few monsters with the harpoon so that her time isn't totally wasted. Then, once Tamamo's more important priorities (literally everyone and everything else) are briefly allayed, Qetra scoots up and requests some sun talismans of her own.

    "Yes ma'am! Thank you ma'am!" Being provided them results in Qetra giving Tamamo a silly little bow, automatic even if cut short by the urgency, before clambering up a set of metal stairs to get a vantage point. She pulls out a clip of those neuron-stunning pellets from the Banana gun, sticks out her tongue in focused aim, and then throws it into a clump of sea monsters, stunning them. When more pile up, making the traffic jam even more dense, she follows it up with the sun talisman, incinerating the whole group.

    She looks very proud, and transparently checks to see if Lilian saw.
Lilian Rook     The rocking of the entire massive carrier causes Lilian's eyes to widen. She shifts her posture to compensate as she arrives, sword in hand. Though her black suit and clean-silhouette blade stands out amongst the harpoonists arrayed along the left side, her preturnatural calm and tingling killing intent fit between Bota and Kana. "Just a second now." she says.

    The first scream makes her flinch. The knowledge that anyone could disappear in an eyeblink like this rattles her for a heartbeat, and is then crushed. The terror and dismay that it'd be them, so early, so pointlessly, that they must feel, is briefly, unusually considered, then brushed out of mind, if only because she can't possibly allow herself to feel it here and now, or the curses of the dead will paralyze her. The feeling that she can't protect them all goes too; as usual, it'll be doing her utmost, and having to live with whatever happens.

    The rest, though; the sight of slavering, brainless, expendable-by-the-millions monsters, dare sink teeth into the precious lives remaining on this planet-- from Rita's home-- brings up an old, stinging heat that she'd nearly forgotten.

    Idignation. Ragee. Pure hatred of the other. Something she'd thought extinguished long ago, flares up in her gut, and travels up into her heart, stopping there for sheer focus of will barring it from her head. Her breath comes hot in her lungs, boiling her veins; neural electricity surges in every limb.

    "Hey. Are you listening? I hope you're watching."
    "I hope you can feel it when I kill them. I want you to experience every single second I drown you in the blood of your children."

    The first fish monster to lurch over the side and come barreling her way is bisected clean down the middle by a sharp upper slice that carries through its entire body. Then the second, then the third, and the fourth and the fifth and sixth and seventh eighth ninth tenth eleventh twelfth--

    Without a gas-powered weapon, she can't attack swathes of leviathans all at once, but just this once, for the first time in years, Lilian is sufficiently committed to slaughter that she's willing to make up for it. Night Mist is a continuous blur of razor-edged speed. An unstopping, unslowing sequence of twenty separate and simultaneously gleaming reflection-smears all at once. When she begins moving forward, pushing into the surge, upstream against the tide, the sheer quantity of blood and intestines and bone shards and brain matter, flowing in a halo around her from the momentum of each strike, paints the walls of the ship.

    Not every cut is followable. Not every slash is even possible. Small disjoints build up as Lilian gathers steam and slips into the zone.

    And then, with only the slightest tense of forewarning, she blinks halfway down the length of the ship to hack through a double score-wide line of breaching leviathans flowing over the deck, running through the charge sidelong and sending heads and upper bodies tumbling through the air.

    Then she blinks back down the opposite length, leaping in the way of a harpoonist to skewer a fish monster through its open maw, twist its head apart with her wrists, and carve through a cluster behind it until the harpoonist gets up. The gleam of golden sunlight begins to follow her blade the instant Tamamo readies talismans, applied before she's even seen.
Lilian Rook     She flickers back to the center, the flashes into being at the engine, landing from on high with a spiral cleave that spatters so many leviathans into red goo beneath her, a single clean circle directly under her feet. To and fro. Here and there. A perpetual motion engine of violence. Lilian sparks up and down along the entire defensive line; soon literally, as the pounding violence of her retrocausal sprinting and leaping drives her boots and knees harder into the plated deck each time, scraping and skidding to maximize her course correction.

    Trying to follow her makes it seem as if she's in seven places at once. The black-red light-smear of her sword is more substantial than her actual presence. The hanging fog of her pounding breath, the glimmer of scattered sweat and fresh blood, hang in space longer than she does. The port side of the Union Busan starts to steam, here and there, with the buildup of invisible friction. Dull-glowing prints of boots and palms sear themselves into the deck plates.

    As headache-inducing as it is to try and watch closely, her path isn't random. Constantly keeping one eye on fractions of a second into the future, Lilian follows a continuous route of her own precognitive devising, knowing exactly when and where to be to save lives, prevent buildup on the engine, and most importantly, kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill and kill, until--

                -----[stop]-----
    Lilian staggers to a knee along the side. Her body slumps against the railing, unable to take anymore. Her muscles scream. Her feet ache. Her heart feels ready to explode. She feels as if she might stop breathing. For a while, all she can do is stare at the sky and let the oxygen fill her starving bloodstream, her body worked well beyond its aerobic threshold.

    Lilian fumbles for a rejuvenating talisman, slaps it over herself, and then reaches for another, trying to focus on the feeling of relief over the pain of motion. She stands, slowly, and winces; she can already tell that she's gone past the Lady in Black's tolerances too, leaving her skin starting to burn from causal friction underneath. She still has to limber up to keep herself from cramping. Ignoring how bad it feels. Ignoring how much she wants to stop. Shutting that angry instinctive voice screaming for her to run. Knowing that every drop of effort she withholds amounts to someone's death.

    "Bota and Kana have been fighting without any second chances this entire time." she whispers to herself, wiping sweat from her face and hefting up Night Mist again. "How are you going to look Rita in the eye if you weren't willing to give it everything?"
                -----[start]-----

    --nothing. There's no stopping. She can do this forever. Even if she can't, she will.
Meika Kirenai 'Everything we see here, we'll have to kill later.'

    "Should we- it's worth aiming to take as many down as we can, then, Chevalier Rook? Not just.. enough to skirt by?" It's a hopeful question, born of uncertainty of how vast the hordes to come are. Still, Vermillion tries to smile, with forced optimism in the last few moments before action.

    As the deck lurches underfoot, Vermillion's skates slide, with barely too little friction to stay steady, against the decking, grinding faintly-ringing traces against the surface until they stop, having lodged themselves a half inch into the material. With the orders to make for the left side of the deck, Vermillion kicks off, cracking further the plate and dashing across the still-tilted surface towards the onslought-facing side of the ship. Each propelling kick-off pushes Vermillion faster, closer to the up-pushed left of the behemoth carrier- and the unending fountain of monsters. The magical girl ducks and sidesteps rushing harpoonists and already-flying viscera of monsters, and with each passing second-- Breathe with each push-off. Keep muscles tight when moving. Draw up as much as you can, the first shot might matter the most -- the bright-red nova of crackling, roaring, discordant sound that heralds her powers builds up larger and brighter around her, a back-lit wreathe around extremities and her mismatched weapon.

    It's not far, at her speeds, until she's facing the wave head on. She kicks off once more, hitting air time, and braces to collide. No time for snippy callouts, no time for flashy-

    "°Vermillion Thunder : Sundered Horizon!°
Meika Kirenai     She hits with her shoulder, first, wet leviathan scales facing the first transfered brunt of her crackling magic. As its flesh starts to pop and crack under the force of her impact alone, Vermillion spins, midair, swiping with her hockey stick through the horde. Every leviathan touched- or at least, the residual pieces of them -becomes a nucleation point for that same red glow, quickly fading from around her and her implement. Mostly harmless built-up around her, the spreading wave of flesh-wreathing sound is far from it to others, cutting and cracking at flesh and chaining with the sound of deafening, endless thunder. It seems to catch Vermillion by surprise, even.

    And it's sound. Force transmitted through a medium as quickly as it can be. Any poor fish infected with the chaining wave of energy unlucky enough to fall back in the water will find no respite, there- even as the magic starts to fade, lingering, horribly long seconds and seconds after the impact.

    Suspended midair, standing still and taking heaving breathes, Vermillion has never faced waves of monsters that can bleed, and even if she's only carved a hole around herself for a moment-- Hopefully longer. Please... --with how a different shade of red is staining her, she's on the edge of being sick.

    Long, deep breaths burn through her time, the aura not yet building back up around her, and a small burst of sound (deafeningly loud, and a whisper compared to her first impact) catapults her a dozen meters higher up into the air, where her skates catch her, as if she'd landed on a nonexistant platform.

    "R-round two's gotta come some time, huh?" She calls, shaky, down towards the horde that can't and wouldn't answer back. "Come- come and take it. Come on. B-build up again..." Sea wind makes her shiver, as adrenaline lays shocking in her veins and blood spray sucks heat from her, a faint ugly f-f-flicker to her body as she stares down at the hordes below. It's both them and herself, she's talking too, as the first sparks of that red glow start to sputter up around her. It's- Come on. No time. Keep tempo, don't let it-

    Another f-f-flicker and it's like her footing gave way, the girl falling back down towards the hordes below. Still, the glow builds up, and up, and up, until-

    A writhing mass of bodies is, in essence, a fluid. On her impact with the wall of monsters, it cavitates.
Rita Ma      The rank-and-file are struggling, but the veterans all keep their rhythm. Brune settles into a tacit rhythm with Hibiki, controlling space to give her easy access to juicy targets, and at one point just hurling a monster for her punch out of the air. The helmeted woman on the dome starts timing controlled bursts to daze the targets Kale swoops for. Sonia breaks from her dancing partner to weave in with Nonon, guarding the agents when she lunges and flurrying when Nonon draws back.

     Bota exerts a broad swathe of area denial with an even blend of frenzied lunges and whip-blade-assisted slashes, forming a sphere whose limit is defined by arcs of blood and sizzling light. That gives mangled rank-and-file harpoonists mended by Kukuru a chance to find their feet and reload their guns.

     Lilian's the only one able to consistently catch glimpses of Kana during their shared gruesome work. To most watchers, it seems like sea-monsters just explosively splatter in streaks for no reason at all, and maybe catch a blur followed by lingering gas-sword steam if they're lucky. Each time Lilian stops time, she can catch Kana taking advantage of the previous opening she made: there off the side of the boat in midair, every tendon straining with the buzzsaw pirouette; there standing near-vertical on the bridge's glass, haloed in sweat droplets while decapitating a beast going for the captain.

     The propeller, after the sea-monsters are driven back just long enough to reach it, and after titanic force is spent to wrench it back into motion, shudders to a start once more and disgorges the ground-up corpses. The ship's deck lurches as it starts accelerating again. A harpoonist screams down from the deck "Hey! Get out of the water! Now!"

     Flamethrowers on the Union Busan's sides flicker their pilot lights on. Whoever holds the switch times it for just after Meika's monumental blast paints the left side of the Union Busan's hull red with monster guts. She detonates the sea-monsters currently scaling the side after Tamamo psuhes them back to cluster them up, and then the enormous gouts of flame that linger on the ocean's surface as burning oil keep them from surfacing.

     Order, given a breather, starts to force chaos back. When the sea monsters come again- because of course they do- they don't have quite the same momentum. The ship's harpoonists repel them more reliably, with better cohesion and renewed confidence.

     Off in the distance, Clark- formerly leering from the Manhattan's bow- springs into action to its defense, weaving a tapestry of bloody polearm-strokes around the front quarter of his ship. It's not quite time to celebrate, but in the quiet moments, there's space for a breath of relief.

     That's a mistake.
Rita Ma      Kana's the first to notice it, but others might not be far behind. "BENEATH!" she howls from atop the Busan's bridge. She turns, sprints, and leaps off the back of the ship. Following her drags one's gaze to the smaller fishing boats of Akroma and Port Oasis, at the center of the formation.

     The center, of course, is still exposed from below. It's not like anything could've been done about that.

     The gun-toting harpoonist survivors of sunken Akroma and the poorly-armed fishermen and divers of Port Oasis do what they can. It isn't much. A single sea-monster is half the size of any of their two dozen ships; several of their boats are in the process of being torn apart outright. A man from the New York meeting, with his topknot and pencil moustache, sprays his gun into a monster in the process of dragging him overboard; it isn't deterred. A fisherman struggles with another for possession of his arm.

     New Jersey can't fire its big guns into the melee; Benin's slightly larger troop carriers move closer and their harpoonists fire down into the water too, but it's a meager help.

     It's a hundred-foot horizontal leap from the Busan's deck. Kana makes it, somehow, kicking off a lunging leviathan midway across; she lands on a fishing boat's roof and scatters its assailants in pieces like a whirlwind. But that's one out of many. Her plea for help is implicit. A lot more are screamed out loud.

     Here, at least, the swarm is thinned enough to see the color of the water.
Ishirou 'Get out of the water!'

Ishirou flies out, offering Red Dwarf a hand if he needs it.  His water wings swap back to flight ones as he soars above the boat.  He hovers a moment, as things seem to die down.  It's a brief moment... but then...

"INCOMING!" he shouts out, detecting it before seeing it directly.  Even with that warning, it wasn't enough.  He goes flying into the air as the ship smacks him straight up into the air and causes him to spin out of control. Ablative armor cracks under the stress, and seconds later he's in the water where more sea monsters are on him.  

A knife flies out from his right hand and drives into the head of one, while another flies across and smashes into another nearly ready to bite on him.  He's dizzy and disoriented, and barely able to keep this up.  His mind whirling with pain and trying to figure out where to go...

Finally, he gets ahold of something, gripping onto the side of the large monster, and commands the OPTIONs to head for the L-corp agents to assist them.  He has a plan they can do...

Which is to take one of the mines and drag it towards the giant serpent.  Then use a cable to spear both the serpent and the mine together.  He dives out, indicating on the HUD for Nonon to shoot right where he needs her to, hopefully, to hit the mine and set it off in an area he's just weakened on the serpents back.  
Kukuru 'Use all the wide-range firepower you have; they have to come close to the surface to attack, so the water won't provide much cover to anything actively dangerous.'

'Maybe you can handle it, but... don't unless you see an objective, okay?'

Lilian had warned everyone about the danger in the water. Bota warned Kukuru about not going into the water unless it's necessary. Indeed, she's comfortable staying right where she is on the left deck, and for several moments, it looks like things are starting to settle into a comfortable-ish flow of death and destruction on the side of the Union Busan. The bloodshed doesn't seem necessarily one-sided, but it's enough that Kukuru does, in fact, take that moment to sigh in relief. As long as she keeps up with the healing, even the rank-and-file might get through this without too many casualties!

Her timing is terrible, of course, as the warning from Kana comes when Kukuru's at her least aware. Although Kukuru does notice the subtle movement from below, her reaction speed is still her reaction speed, and she can't quite stop or do anything to even try and stop the attack on the Akroma and Port Oasis.

What she can do, however, is try and cut it off before it can go too terribly. Launching herself off the deck after Kana to join her, Kukuru aims her own descent at the water itself. Even with her claws held in front of her to help punch through those sea-monsters coming up at her, however, she can't clear her way through all of them without getting bitten and cut up in the process, and a stray tail-whip launches Kukuru sideways into what could become a head-on collision with the Akroma itself.

A well-timed teleportation cloud solves that problem, however, taking her from a near-collision back into the sky to hurtle faster towards the sea. She cuts right through it, barely even slowing down in the water as she comes back into what might as well be a natural habitat for her.

Shuting the warnings to the back of her mind, Kukuru starts thrashing about in the water while turning her nanites inwards to start growing. She may not be able to dwarf a structure like the Union Busan, but turning herself into a massive underwater target is just what she wants to do when so many of those harpoonists are still clinging to survival above the water.

Naturally, Kukuru's strategy has not changed one bit: Using her hands, but on a greater scale. Instead of having to use both claws for one creature, open-palms/claws are able to smash into two or three of them at once. In the sea, she can even start swinging herself around to aim around herself at odd angles to cleave through so many of those sea-monsters at once, purposefully leaving the rest of her body undefended to draw others in before she whirls herself around to rend another bloody path in the water.  Any that try to get clever and aim for Kukuru's face, meanwhile, are faced with the very real threat of her just biting into them and grabbing on with a claw to tear the rest of their bodies away from her.
Tamamo     It's impossible to avoid the melee long enough to feel safe, but Tamamo does her best. It doesn't really help things that she's not, by her own admission, exceptionally brave. Being in a life-or-death situation like this would be incredibly foolhardy if there were any option otherwise, were one not heavily invested in the present cause, in the lives of the people here, in the need to halt the spread of this world's cataclysm to others, or else...

    Really, it's just the fact that Lilian's here. She's everywhere she needs to be, almost before she needs to be there. After every time Lilian has dropped whatever she was doing to see to Tamamo's safety, and after every time she fussed over her injuries, even as they healed... how could Tamamo believe she'd die here, even faced with these odds?

    Kukuru's presence doesn't precisely hurt, either, even if there isn't space for that at the forefront of her mind. Keeping many things in mind at once isn't her strongest suit, either.

    That makes the destruction of the rest of the fleet all but inevitable, with her narrow vision limited even further by the press of bodies, right up until Meika and the flamethrowers and all the rest push them over the side. Even so--

    "A better view -- a moment, please!"

    Tamamo leaps from deck to deck to tower, climbing her way by improbable applications of lower body strength until she's reached a high enough vantage to spot not just Kana's new position, but the entirety of the flotilla. Her mirror, the manifestation of the Eightfold Blessings, lags slightly behind her.

    "A curse can reach any distance, though the grasp of the naraka may be slow to close. What, then... yes, I suppose it must be this one. Is there any divine punishment less subtle than the misfortune of lightning from a clear sky?"

    The talismans flash into nothing before flying far from her, the resulting arcs of light chaotic in appearance, yet unerring in striking only the leviathans crowding aboard the smaller ships, and not the human sailors.
Angela There is a moment of calm. Lilian's contribution to the battle actually gets the surviving Agents to cheer and whoop. They hear her talking shit to the monsters below and seem to take some courage in that--and even more courage in seeing her dash around zwee-fighting the beasts along with Kana. And part of their job here is to be part of the Dame Commander's 'Hype Crew' as per orders from up top so that doesn't hurt either.

Shajo sings a sea shanty as he swings his axe around. He may have in fact been an actual pirate before joining an L-Corp if a shortlived one judging by his relative inexperience with harpoons.

"Along the Lake of Waves Untold
Our vessel quaked and shook!
But nevertheless we sailors bold
Put our faith in Commander Rook!"

Shajo doesn't get those manic grins that Nonon gets, he's always got a relatively serious expression while working with the fury of his eyes being what show his true nature. Courage can only take you so far in the Great Lake and they are inclined to believe it works the same here but hanging back gives them some breathing room from further Leviathan chomping.

"With Harpoonists aplenty!
And Kale flying up ahead
Some kicks I guess from Bikki
Keep us from being dead!"

"Loving the improv, hun." Nonon says as she is gestured by Ishirou to aim for a mine. She doesn't go for her own Harpoon, it's too high quality to throw it at a MINE, but luckily an Agent got devoured and she can just steal up the one he dropped on the deck in her free hand. "HA HA HA LOVE IT...! Stupid as fuck let's do it!"

She rears back with her arm and flings the harpoon for Ishirou's mine.

Before Shajo can get to a third verse he nearly gets gutted by one of the monsters and has to push it back with his axe, screaming back into its face and swinging his axe at it like, well, a slasher movie villain.
Redshift Operators "It's moving! Up! Go!!"
"They have much the same idea as our leader."
"Oh! Uh, moving up!"

"That fire will burn for a while. Looks to be thinning them out."
"Great, down from tide to swarm. Big step up, but that can still kill you."
"I can barely see what half the people are doing..."
"Their best. We need to do ours."
"It's actually called 'zwee'. A level of speed, brought forth by only the most dire disasters. I often suspected Kana was capable of it, but to see it at this level... Wait. Wait."

"Report. What's happening?"
"Not happening yet... Flanking! From below!"
"Where?!"
"Central ships!"
"Fuck! We thought they were all blind zero-strategy!"
"I'm going to the vulnerable ones in the center!"
"We're going too."

    The giant finally slams onto the surface of the boat again after retreating, just in time to take off at a stomping run that leaves dents, smashed bones, and crunched deck in his wake. The only moment he stops is for the ninja, who needs a sudden launchpad maneuver to boost her straight into the fray, and then grabbing the gunman and the astronaut, one on each shoulder, for his own big leap.

    The burst of flanking monsters emerges under them like a flood. A savage, feral rush of flesh, rimmed by fire and overwhelming in number. When they land, they land exactly where the precognitive ninja was aiming for, in the future: A perfect four-part formation, precisely surrounding Kana. Two long guns flanking, a ninja who can't keep up with her but can certainly predict where to be next, and the giant to convey and protect those two gunners so Kana doesn't need to. She asked for backup without words, and it's provided without them too. Nobody has time to speak when it could be used to kill. And they need to focus on the slaughter, because the flanking monsters are beating the absolute shit out of them.
Lilian Rook     Lilian is glad to have such experienced help, but she barely has time to form the proto-thought. The veteran harpoonists are being appreciated by her in the sense of tactical opportunities and covering ground she doesn't have to. The regulars holding rank, for delaying the surge even a little bit. The pods of shoulder-to-shoulder fighters are better than a thinly spread line; funneling the leviathans between holdouts is easier to manage than a wide range constantly verging on collapse.

    Here and there, as she passes, Lilian spares single moments of convenience. Spare magazines dumped at the helmeted woman's feet, snatched from corpses along the way. Multiple leviathans directly behind Sonia pulverized with stepping force from above as she crosses. Slicing the heads off those in front of Brune so they tumble to a halt and back up those behind them into a single punchable mass. There's little at all she needs to do for Bota. And nothing for Kana.

    At her next sidelong collapse on the deck, gasping for air, shivering in pain, broadly overextering her wish on reality, Lilian takes a moment to grimly absorb the fact that Night Mist steams where it touches the deck, overheated from sheer use to the point of barely beneath glowing, and then a moment to thank Kana for existing, as she sees her not far away like this. The only one who gets to.

    Even though she isn't really here, and this didn't really happen, experiencing being in Kana's presence, being able to see her intense expression and tireless muscles, puts her a little more at ease. Enough to drink her canteen and toss it while she can. The less she moves, the less reality notices her defying it, but at this point, even sitting still aches a little bit. Dimly, she notices the sweat she wipes away is pink.

    For the hundredth time, a tiny part of Lilian wishes she'd never given up that perfect body. She'd have ended this all, if she wasn't so small, and so human. The rest of her is focused on abandoning extraneous thoughts and desire, and returning to her feet, sword in hand.

    But it isn't long before she hears

    'BENEATH!

    There isn't space left in her mind to panic. Since she'd resumed moving, Lilian is barely able to think outside of terms of position, distance, speed, time, bodies, angles, cuts, steps, routes, living, and dead. A moment of order as the flamethrowers kick in is a moment to relocate at a less straining pace, and an attack at the center is a new place to fight.

    She's already on the topknot man she recognizes before she even consciously realizes she picked him from dim familarity. With the ability to do anything she wants, any time, never too late, grasping as much as she can stand touching with her burning hands, she pushes on to refuse this one grisly end, instantaneously turning the monster dragging him into so many irregular triangles. The fisherman, doomed to die later, is left with teeth in his arm and a few ragged chunks of bloody fish connected to them.

    She can't do anything about the boats, unable to un-puncture them, but Lilian's trance can only be taken as a sign for others to rescue the lives she preserves for a little while longer, and carry the doomed away from their sinking boats, just above the sea of jaws. Any little bit. One more life. One more kill. Even if she loses every last bit of strength and can no longer move, Lilian has already resolved to use all of her remaining magic. The dedication inscribed her her sword is roused to full burning flare: Death to Those Who have Wronged my People
Dysnomia     The scent of burned ozone stung nostrils all around Mia. Her smoking, fingers almost transparent. With each step, she a violet mist sprung up around her, twinning around her, Hibiki and Candy like a living thing. It LASHED through the air, bisecting an eel that lunged at the three of them over the side, even as Dysnomia cut what seemed like an anglerfish, with another row of hungry teeth where its lure should be.

    Everything felt faint, distant. She was too spread out. She knew that. Her claws still clung to Tamamo's instruments in the sea, hanging desperately on, making everything around her that much more foggy, faded. Everything felt slower. Piloting what the rest would call her 'body' felt too slow and muddled.

    Sheltering under Hibiki and Candy's defensive formation still wasn't quite enough to leave her unmarred. Cuts across her body bled smoke, hissing like steam. It all felt so far away.

    Somehow, still, her eyes drifted downward, following the trail of primitive minds with psychic senses. She turned, mildly, to Candy and Hibiki, eyes as wispy as her fingertips. "They're below."

    Mia grabbed hold of the railing, even before the ship pitched, the plasma falling from her hand. Her body dissolved further, eyes half-shut, as the thin strand of smoke defending them swelled, roiling over the sea.

    "Protect me." She pleaded with the last threads of her awareness, swaying from side.

    It dove into the water with a splash, as Mia hummed under her breath. Claws materialized from the fog, ripping at fish that dared the leave the water, all while leaving the harpoonists and their vessels untouched.
Kale Hearthward Kale gives the helmeted woman a thumbs up, in passing, and then focuses again on his task. One thing at a time. The others are keeping the ship floating and the engines clear. Kale goes to dive down again, in pursuit of another target to rescue-

> "Hey! Get out of the water! Now!"

- He grits his beak - but pulls upwards, getting clear. This is part of the training he went through, and frankly a part he needed - knowing to not be a hero, to not second-guess a shot-caller. If someone's saying to move, you don't stop and look around to see *why* they're saying to move, or confirm whether they're right or wrong. You move, end of story. The person you get clear of the collapsing building might be you.

The oil ignites. If he *hadn't* moved, if he'd decided to ignore the call, go in for another attempted rescue or another kill...

... Best not to think about it. Though, that wouldn't even be the worst outcome, if they'd delayed firing because he dove in- no, best not to think about *that* either.

There's a moment of peace. Kale needs it. He touches down on the Union Busan's deck, to take a breather-

> "BENEATH!"

"No-"

Kale kicks his boots back on. He's out of position. He's still out of breath. "No, no-"

He can't get there in time.

... But the East Wind, still holding position above the center of the fleet, can.

There's a crackle in Kale's ear, on the teams' internal comms channel. "Emergency override, Gobo circuit on! Dive!"

The East Wind drops from the sky, tilting nose-first as it does so - and the wings of the ship opening up and unfolding, forming two long mirror-shiny blades hidden beneath the armor plating.

The ship dives - down, then forward, the wings leaving shiny afterimages along the surface of the water as it skims around and across the space between the ships. Anything jumping out would be jumping straight into a field of sharpness.

Kale can't get there in time. But the ship he built, the crew he trained, the preparations he made - can.
Candy I need a clear view of the sea or I won't be able to hold this for long.

<J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana shouting over the chaos, to Dysnomia, "--I'll make sure you have one!"

BENEATH!

    "FUCK! Hold tight, I'm moving to the center!"

    Candy takes a moment to compose himself. One instant stretched impossibly thin is held suspended all around him. Streaks of scarlet hang motionless in the air from the weapons of harpoonists and from their injuries. Hibiki's blow against a monster flung by Brune is cast in silent relief, the impact of her gauntlet spread out across the beast's flesh. Mia's plasma is a brilliant, motionless burst of light in her hand, like looking at a photo of a star.

     The farmer slips a spread of five playing cards in between Hibiki's fingers, each one bearing an image of an explosion on the back. The added force should help significantly in clearing the deck for Dysnomia. Candy then takes a running leap off the deck, his jetpack firing up and carrying him over to the fishing boats, where Kana hangs silently mid-leap with her usual gravely determined expression.

     He falls through choppy, bloodstained water frozen in place, his passage leaving only a halted dimple in its surface.

     Time resumes.
-Hibiki and Dysnomia hear fast-forwarded bootsteps on the deck.
-Hibiki feels a rapid-fire sensation of five cards gently slipped between her fingers.
-The sound of a jet turbine hiss-whining by echoes over the Busan.
-A plume of water shoots upwards with no evidently culpable object.

     Below the fishing boats, Candy's spear no longer burns. Instead, the tip has become the focal point of an intense, localized whirlpool. The turbine on his jetpack switches direction, the technology altered thanks to Ishirou's OPTION. Now an impeller, it empowers him to dart through the water towards the encroaching monsters.

     Here, his spearwork is just as proficient as it was on solid ground, seeking eyes, underbellies and throats above all else. In absence of solid ground to generate momentum with his hips and shoulders, he creates his own using directed blasts from the apparatus on his back, and from the whirlpool at the tip of his spear.

     Where his spear finds its mark, it is just as merciless as it was in its prior configuration. The difference now is that rather than cause internalized explosions of flame, now it rapidly spins up instead, using the very water the monsters breathe to implode and tear them apart from the inside. Sweat trickles down Candy's forehead from the exertion of fighting so hard for so long--but his teeth are grit in determination and his eyes burn with anger stoked anew. He flickers across the murky depths, using his own temporal manipulation much as Lilian has been, to prioritize harpoonists in need.
Candy      Muttering under his breath about 'goddamn thieves' to keep himself going, the water is polluted with illusory copies of him, some with punctured suits and red clouds of blood trailing from their 'wounds.' He breaks the surface of the water carried on pressurized jets of bloodied sea, his spear drawing the backwash into itself to carry him through the air and on a bloody path to (and through) the monsters attempting to overwhelm the fishing boats. At several points his position abruptly, impossibly changes, excess water falling like the cut strings of a puppet.

     The tear in the abdomen of his suit--

Losing blood! Moving this fast making it worse!

     --had appeared at some point during the fight. Maybe it was the one that looked like a bloated alligator. Maybe the shark with too many eyes--

Fade, ressst a moment and tag Hearthward or Hibiki in.

    --Candy grimaces as his vision blurs at the edges and the--No. Fuck that, fuck you and especially fuck these sons of whores. Deal with it or we're all dead.

     "WHEN I FINISH WITH YOU, YOUR THIEVING SHIT OF A MOTHER IS NEXT, YOU SONS OF WHORES!"

     A foamy scarlet double helix forms behind Candy as he twirls in the air. The water and the sky, the boats and the clouds, form a dizzying repeated mosaic as he twirls. He hurls the spear into the water. Drawn to it, the spent seawater coalesces and forms an outline several times larger as it rockets down to the depths, impacting the surface of the water as if it had fallen from heaven.

     A shockwave of lacerating force races outwards from the point of impact, cutting into the monsters below the surface with all the force Candy's magical reserves can muster. He lands aboard a fishing ship, a new spear manifesting in his hand from whorls of roiling smoke--just in time for him to keep from falling over by propping it against the deck.
Petra Soroka     Looking towards Lilian, and actually *seeing* her, instantly changes Qetra's expression from pathetically needy for validation, to unabashed adoration. No matter how unacceptably bloodthirsty or unreasonable Lilian might feel about herself afterwards, Qetra's eyes track each flash of Night Mist with sparkling awe, reinvigorated back up from 'anxiously distressed', but to a different kind of energy than her previous silliness. Qetra clenches her free fist, huffing in a way that would seem overacted if there was anyone to be an audience.

    To the barely-real girl whose every cue and schema has to come from outside, Lilian's furious butchering of the sea monsters is the ideal image of a 'hero'.

    Qetra hurries closer in to the center of the massive ship, unsteadily clambering up on railings and hopping from landing to landing rather than going the long way around. As the monster tide slows, she has to creep closer to the port side of the ship to keep up, resisting the instinct to avoid more physical exertion, as clambering gets exhausting quickly without any superhuman endurance. Support is provided from above, once she's put herself close enough to the melee to assist the Harpoonists and others with timed stuns of monsters threatening to break their defensive rhythm.

    After Meika's thunderous boom and some whining complaints that Qetra isn't able to hear through her ringing ears, she finally lowers her sad little weapon, leaning against the railing. Arms folded together to support her head, sweat, seawater, and gross-smelling blood staining her body, Qetra takes a momentary rest the best way she knows how. "It's totally unfair that I'm out here *sweating* while Petra sleeps. This sucks. No way I'm not just smacking her awake next time."

    She looks over at Lilian, sweating and steaming in a halo of leviathan pulp, and props her cheek up on her hand. "But maybe I'll help next time, too...."
Petra Soroka     "BENEATH!"-- isn't something that Qetra can help with, not at all. She's not fast enough, can't make the jump, and would probably just be snatched out of mid-air by one of the monster's jaws and dragged beneath the waves like an overly curious seagull anyways. But with Kana, Lilian, Hibiki, and... probably some others, but Qetra barely notices them, all rushing to the center-ships to take on the most urgent threat, the delicate triumph of order over chaos on the Busan risks being overturned.

    Qetra does what Petra does best, when she's doing her best. She hops over the railing, down into the bubble of frontline left empty by the relocation of the best fighters, and chooses to keep up the secondary, supporting objective instead-- the engines of the Union Busan still need protecting, all the way until the river is crossed.

    Qetra hits the ground with a little wobble, aching impact numbing her shins, which isn't a good start, and she knows it. She huffs, kicking her leg to return feeling to it, before flashing a peace sign to the departing fighters and murmuring a cheery 'good luuuuck~ brave warriors' to keep her silliness quotient up. She can't really commit fully, to doing something this grimly unpleasant, though watching Lilian work makes it much easier.

    Then the deterrance of the flamethrowers runs out, and sea monsters splash up over the side, forcing Qetra to defend herself and the exhaust to the engine. Dual wielding her harpoon and stun gun, and now actually using them simultaneously, Qetra fires into monsters' jaws to disable their gnashing teeth, letting momentum and slick gore carry them harmlessly off the other side of the boat, choosing not to finish them off so that her other weapon can skewer more active threats. Banana pellets extend windows of vulnerability, letting even the clumsy Qetra land killing hits with the harpoon, barbed spearhead pulling out chunks of stinking viscera to a-- breathlessly?-- mutters chant of 'ew ew gross'.

    She's still not trained or equipped like Petra is. In addition to bite and claw gouges through her wetsuit, and general wear and tear, one sea monster clamps the tip of its long, grasping jaw onto her forearm while she twists away, tearing a solid fist-sized chunk out of it. Qetra's yelp of pain isn't any louder for the grievous injury, though, and even though she *does* bleed, as every scratch on her body demonstrates, the ragged removal of so much flesh doesn't bleed any more than usual. Closer inspection, including brief fascination from Qetra herself, reveals that she only actually bleeds skin-deep, and all the other exposed gore is hazy and nonspecific, like a kid's depiction.

    Eventually, Qetra slumps over, letting both the Banana gun and harpoon slip to the ground before following them, planting herself ass-first in a oil-filmed pool of blood. She isn't fully certain that the attack is over-- but she's kind of done with it.
Hibiki Tachibana     Every opening Brume creates, Hibiki is sure to seize-- a stomp forward into the hiss of machinery priming back, just to pound back into place with a deafening boom that pastes innards and sends the body flying wholesale. Another step to the right, to shouldercheck a creature still clambering on, and knock it into range of Candy's spear. When Dysnomia asks for space, she steps in further nearly outside of the circle of control they're making, sweeping her leg around in a thruster-sped roundhouse to clear the area ahead.

    Before she knows it, her breath is picking up. Her heart's pounding in her ears. Splatters of blood arc through the air. They're managing to protect everyone around them, Kukuru is healing and will even being able to bring deceased back, but that's not enough. Even with everyone here, I can't save all of them, can I? It's all I can do to protect the ones I can reach--

    That painfully, painfully limited reach. Qetra's teasing comment gets a flash of what that would actually would be like to rush through her head, and she finds the next punch she throws entirely caves in one beast's body before sending it spiraling overboard.

    The chaos reminds her of when they fought the nighttime attack on the shantytown--maybe worse, in some ways. And it's only going to get worse. This is nothing, compared to what they're going to be dealing with soon. When the time comes, is everything she can bring out going to be enough? Even as the injuries that come with throwing herself straight into harm's way again and again begin piling up, the only thing on her mind is that she has to put in even more--until the tide only momentarily breaks, as the flamethrowers fire, and things reach something of a calm 'stability'.

    Hibiki doesn't. Still high off raw adrenaline, 'below' is enough to get her to spin on her heel, eyes wide-- and then immediately hit a dash down the length of the Busan. "Hold it down here! I need to go help, too!" A hasty and rushed call back to Brume and Sonia, before she sprints for the back of the vessel, passing Dysnomia and registering her words along the way, and only then realizes in her rush, the cards held between her fingers.

    Without even thinking about it, tightening her fist and securing her hold on them, she punches straight ahead to /blast/ a sea-beast out of the way. And another. And another, forcing a path through the second wave that's hit the Busan's deck and buying time for Dysnomia. When she hits the railing, her other hand grabs it, and she leaps directly down the ship's back.
Hibiki Tachibana     Where she grinds down its hull, metal boots sparking, to blow away all of the monsters still in the process of trying to climb the ship as she undergoes her gravity-defying descent--the extra force behind every blow bludgeoning bodies inward before they're sent splashing back into the ocean. "Out of--the WAY!" Right before she hits the surface of the water herself, sure she's stemmed the tide for the seconds that Dysnomia needs, her knees buckle in.

    And Hibiki springs off the Busan's hull forcefully enough to leave indents in the steel, crossing the hundred-foot distance in one go, straight towards one of the fishing boats still in need. A leviathan threatening to capsize it is bodily rammed into, before she slams her fist into its body and uses the recoil of a card-enhanced piston-punch to not only take it out, but send herself tumbling back onto the deck.

    Where she falls into a blurred flurry of blows, sending massive bodies flying dozens of feet away before they can take the harpoonists on board. Even when it's clear, the first thing she sees trying to fill the gap and clamber back on--

    --gets one of those cards thrown straight at its maw, before she drops her heel onto it to send it all the way down to the seafloor.

    She'll be at this for a while. Until they finally stop coming.
Meika Kirenai     Wind whistles past as Vermillion falls, light glinting off armor that would be resplendent were it not for the smeared and trailing droplets of leviathan blood joining her streaming ribbons in tracing out her dive. Each impact battering her as well, as she descends into the horde, but her magic results in popping and crushing hell in the endless enemies, until they're less endless, and-

    Weight low. Bend at the knee and the hips, before you hit the ice- Momentarily distracted, it's not ice she hits, as her skates find paths to ramp down through the air, until they just nick the turbulent waves below, and the boiling hot ocean air starts to-

    Vermillion lets out a frantic yelp, realizing at some point in her descent she'd closed her eyes, and missed that the ocean surface was more unsafe than had it just risked the presence of sea monster jaws. Shapes and mass are easy to echolocate- but there's little difference between flaming accelerant and splattering, aeresolized blood.

    The water's surface recoils as the magical girl launches off, eyes shot wide, staring around at the-- Their eyes have pupils and are filled with fluid. They have mouths with teeth. They have bones that can shatter. This isn't like Temptations, it's not like subduing Courage, they're even more flesh and blood and proper even than- --hellscape surrounding her. She barely makes it above the hungry tongues of flame, before her gasping, shaky breaths slow her action and thought.

'BENEATH!'

    Every clashing, splashing, ripping and smeared-away ugly scream sits a hair's breadth out of grasp from Vermillion's focus, too much all at once to shut anything at all out. She can feel it crash against her, and forget that she's standing still, a few yards in the air, unable to pick stimulus into perception into reaction. She clutches her hockey stick with both hands, as she starts to drift closer to the waves. Automatic motion, carrying on, is all there is- her heartbeat is up, there's a fight, so she summons up more of that wreathing, red energy. People are dying, so she has to move- But nothing's guiding it, save for panic and overwhelming, nauseating shock, the girl simply gravitating nearer and nearer to the metal side of the Union Busan's stern. It nearly seems like it's in reach when her foot catches on something-

    A monster clutching at drift-scrap in the water, even burned and injured, clips her foot with its jaw. The transferal of her built-up magic is instant, and the leviathan pops like a depth charge, but- Vermillion's aerial trajectory is redirected to 'Swimming', immediately. She flounders at her newfound situation, and the cold, brick-brown water, too saturated to even clean off her armor, shocks her into a screaming mess.

    "G-get off of me!" She shouts, at the monster that's already paste- she f-f-flickers, shifting through the water like it's butter, for just a second. It's just a few yards closer to the ship, the-
Meika Kirenai     It dawns on her that she's running. Abandoning duty. Maybe it's okay to fall back, if she'd just be another victim, but she shouldn't be that. Bitter, acidic feelings claw at the inside of her throat, and choke at it, leaving her thankfully unable to call for help like she wouldn't deserve.

    Vermillion can sense another pair of jaws shoot up, from beneath the water, the motion giving tactile warning enough that- The water surface erupts into splashing droplets when she kicks at it, and that's a few meters closer. Metal. The hull is metal. I can use that, if I can get there, if I can make it- There's no time to charge her magic at all before the next teeth find her.

    It's far uglier watching her transformation collapse, the colorful flash happening nearly in reverse, inwards and searingly bright still- guarded, in that moment, from clashing teeth and claws, residual energy popping her just-free enough to slip out, to reach out and graze the ship's hull, but-

    A normal girl doesn't get to use magic, and in her fading moment of still-glowing consciousness, of reaching for it, Meika's hand f-f-flickers, stretched and smeared out just enough, for a fraction of a second to-

    Sound moves through metal at a breakneck pace. Copying that movement for a mere moment is enough for Meika to pull herself up from the near-water hull skirt, into god-knows where *inside* the hulking ship, and collapse there, unconscious.
Rita Ma      The swarm here isn't as thick as it was on the Union Busan, but the footing is worse. There's nowhere more solid than the lurching decks of tiny fishing boats for a hundred feet around. The scores of endangered and questionably-trained footsoldiers- many of them not even harpoonists at all- are as much obstacle as help too. The rank-and-file Busan harpoonist was good for two or three of these monsters; Port Oasis's fishermen have to gang up just to deal with one.

     If you only cared about killing monsters, it'd be an easier fight. Unfortunately, everyone here cares about saving lives too.

     Kana's bladework manifests a red blizzard where monsters can't exist, and Bota uses his cable-sword like a grappling hook to snag the passing East Wind and swoop over to join her. In the grand scheme of things, they can't cover too much- but with a dozen allies each doing much the same, it starts to fill in the gaps.

     Physical force, whether delivered via spear or sword or claw or the wings of an aircraft, proves as effective as always at stilling matter and hueshifting the ocean- electricity, just as much. Except for the occasional plated or cartilaginous monster providing a nice variation in the texture, or an overgrown one for a bit more chew, they all splatter the same. Some bits of them float. Some bits don't. After a minute, you can barely see the water again.

     That isn't as remarkable as the fact that the people start to cheer. Moments after they're saved from having to fight for their lives, they recover from stunned silence. "Who are-" "The offworlders?" "It's Kana!!" "Oh, thank-" "YOU CAN DO IT!" "WE'RE ALMOST OUT!" "Come on!!" "Th-THANK YOU!" The tan red-haired fisherman Lilian saved manages to struggle back to his feet, grab a Candy-designed mine from the deck of his fishing boat, and hurl it overboard to electrocute the nearby monsters by way of help.

     Clark Miller, to his credit, uses his gas-spear to vault off the Manhattan and land on a Benin transport nearby. He takes only a moment to savor the carnage (cold eyes make that leer look even more unwholesome) before throwing a loop of harpoon-wire around the struggling ships, then hurling his spear into the sky while connected to it. It intercepts a bolt of Tamamo's lightning, curving the electricity around all the smaller boats and forming a wall against reinforcements.

     Hibiki's card-explosive attacks, and Ishirou's detonating mine, and Candy's enormous spear-impact go off close enough together that they collectively crater the ocean. It crashes back in and erupts in a spout, raining blood-pinked seawater down.

     Then, finally, you're out the other side. The constant rumble of fish striking hull stops, deafening in its absence. Some sea-monsters pursue, but they're beaten back with gunfire, and even more effectively with talismans should anyone choose to deploy them.

     The blood-rain doesn't form a rainbow, but it feels like it ought to. Survivors fish each other out of the water, discovering what they've lost to teeth. The howls of the wounded are finally audible. Flotsam from crushed ships is left further and further behind.

     Bota falls to one knee on the roof of a fishing ship and breathes hard, leaning on his sword. Someone hands him up a handkerchief to wipe his spattered face. Kana steps down and walks along pieces of floating wreckage as if they were a steady bridge towards the nearest cluster of Elites. She's scratched, but hasn't lost her breath.

     "Good work," she says, and anyone who's heard her talk for a minute knows it's utterly sincere. She spares a coolly hostile glance up at Clark, some hundred feet away, before continuing: "It's good experience. At the end, we'll do this again, but worse."
Redshift Operators     The gunman falls to one knee near Bota as well, but then falls onto his back, suffering the sense of exhaustion more. As a long-experienced combatant, he knows how to deal with this sort of thing, but this is ten thousand times more bodies in more motion than he's dealt with before. He's used to operations on starships, on space stations, in places where you have to deal with ten hefty mechas and not a hundred thousand ravenous monsters. He's mentally overloaded.

    "We just *crossed a river*." He mutters, optics flickering as he struggles to re-center himself. He wrings his hands as he speaks. "That wasn't us dealing with a main force, we just stepped on the toes of the slowest." The hands he was wringing fall across his own chest limply. "Jesus. What a mess. Well... we'll keep going. Gonna make it one way or another." He pushes himself up to sitting. "But I think I need to take a look at our payload. Gonna need a whole lot more boom for a hive with this kind of density..."

    "Then you go get back to Union Busan." The cyborg says, hoisting him up and supporting him a little to steady him. "I'll go start seeing to these wounded."
Ishirou Ishirou, after the explosion that craters the water, after the rain of blood and the last of the creatures being driven back to their trek to the same place they were heading sinks against the hull of the ship on deck, absolutely spent.  The RESCUE unit disappears, while POD floats around him, trying to tend to his wounds the best that it is able.  Not enough to patch anything severe, but enough to keep him together long enough to be seen by a real doctor.  

Bruised and cracked ribs, bitemarks all over his body, and some destroyed articles of clothing due to the monsters...

He pulls his knees up to his chest and buries his face in them.  God that was a disaster, they're all hurt and... already so early into their journey and they lost so many ships.  That wasn't even a main force... just the slowest of the beasts.  What would things be like there..?  

Could they even do it..?  Was he going to die?  God, he couldn't even take time to think during that whole mess, it was disaster after disaster... crisis after crisis... he wouldn't know if Candy was alive or dead if not for his connection to his OPTION.  Worse, he doesn't know if he can do it.  He got to this point, everyone telling him that he should want to live... and acknowledging that.

Now that he wants to live, how can he face death like this..?  He looks up at the sun, then back down into his legs.  How did people believe in things like this..?  It was really really hard being brave... Exhausting even.  He... really didn't know how long he could be brave if that was going to happen again.    
Dysnomia     It's not like breathing out, but breathing in, after forcing your lungs to empty, and holdin it there, for so long your lungs scream. Relief shudders across her body as they cross the river, and she draws it all in.

    The violet mist rolls in, over the deck and into her, the fuzzy edges of her body...and her vision...filling rapidly in. In just a few moments, there's no sign it happened at all, except in the way her body leaned on the railing. The light in her eyes flickered faintly, as the feeling of sensation flooded back into her body.

    She floats down, back to where Kana had begun to walk, flexing her fingers as sensation came back to them. It wasn't her first battlefield, and it wasn't the most horrible thing she'd ever seen. But, surrounded by these bodies...

    Dysnomia shoved her hands into her jacket pockets, to hide their shaking.

    "Not just payload. I'm worried about your propulsion too. I don't know if she could adapt well to thrusters," she looked back to the Union Buson, considering. "But it might be worth installing some for an emergency boost in a pinch, if they try to get you stuck like this again..."

    Her eyes slowly wandered to Candy and Hibiki. She stared for a moment, chewing on something, before offering both an acknowledging nod.
Candy      Candy pats the harpoonist who'd dropped the mine on the shoulder, leaving a wet handprint after. "Good work," he says. "Thanks for the help." The faceplate of his helmet, vaguely resembling a diving helmet of old, recedes into the helmet proper as Candy removes it and tucks it under his arm.

     He flops backwards onto the deck, sitting with his back against the fishing boat's rail, and his spear laid across his lap. Sweat trickles down his temple, as teeth marks in his exposed abdomen slowly bleed.

Exerting yourssself that hard wasss unwissse.
I know it. Just let me catch my breath now and we deal with it when we get to the queen.
You'll be fighting her at a disssadvantage. More ssso than implied by numbersss alone.

    Candy resists the urge to grimace, instead letting his face convey a mask of exhausted relief. I know. I just... can't stand those goddamn things. How they stare with their bug eyes and drool. How they don't know, or don't care, what they're doing when they attack. What they're taking. I just thought if I could kill enough...

     He waves to Mia from the deck of the fishing boat.

     "You mind if I catch my breath here a minute?" he asks the fishing boat's captain.
Angela Another cheer rises up from the Agents as they make it through. Even Nonon kinda sits her butt down and takes a breather, giving Ishirou a thumbsup from her position on the deck. She laughs heartily as ever as she hears the folks cheering the Elites on, throwing her fist into the air--a gesture Disciplinary (minus SHajo) mimics.

"..." Kali frowns on her screen. This WAS good practice but from what she's seen of Disciplinary...

A fair chunk of them are NOT ready for what comes next. She sighs and lights up a cigarette, breathing it in.

"Shajo, do a rounds check. Make sure nothing snuck on board. Nonon, once you've taken a breather I want you to put the team through balance training. They have some catching up to do."

Nonon gives a lazy smile and says, "Finish the song why don'tcha, Shajo, while you're goin' through it."

"Maybe next battle." The Captain says.
Lilian Rook     Foggily, it strikes Lilian that seeing the fisherman she saves go straight to throwing mines is deeply rewarding in another strange sense; two for two in this world. A half-formed thought like 'if only everyone I saved tried to make it all easier' crosses her mind in the nonexistent lulls in the carnage and violence. Everyone she can't make it to, she makes herself forget about by remembering the four that she can and did. In the haze of heat and gore and rocking steel and expended air, it takes the lightning strike from Tamamo and controlled by Clark to actually snap her out and serve as a signal that the worst is over.

    Lilian crumples to her knees on the deck of the Busan. This time, the clatter of her armour, and the ragged gasping of her attempts to replenish her muscles on the verge of anaerobic damage, are obvious to anyone looking. The lines of her armour throb with dull light in time with her wild heartbeat. She's soaked from head to toe, but less of it is blood than one would imagine; unlike the seawater, she'd mostly struck vital fluids at too much speed to smear into them. Physically steaming, she gestures to the nearest harpoonist in clear demand for water, then wipes back her hair, flicks blood from her fingers, and chugs down whatever she gets.

    Moments later, she spits a thick wad of red on the deck, then forces herself to her feet as Kana comes along. Shockingly, she seems to have taken as little damage as the harpoonist has; from the enemy. She moves with the obvious tenderness of someone who overexerted themselves.

    'Good work. It's good experience. At the end, we'll do this again, but worse.'

    "I had to show I was serious, after you spent an hour fighting upside down underwater." Lilian says, with too little levity. "I'm sorry, Kana, but at the end of this, it might be a little easier." She stops to cough into the back of her hand, then breathe. "That is, I've already decided what I'm going to do."

    Lilian levels an uncommon glint of eye contact, bright and shimmeringly lucid with dread and determination, sharp and hard. "I'll save everyone I can before then. But making it back will be their own responsibility. When it comes to the Queen, I've already decided that I'm going to focus everything I have into defeating her. That's the only way it won't be too much." she says. "We both know there'll be less to cover and fewer people to protect, come that time. Aren't you planning to do the same?"

    Allowing herself to finally exhale, Lilian turns and kicks a railing with the toe of her sabaton just hard enough that it dents, and winces as if she didn't quite mean to. "I'd be lying if I said it doesn't piss me off a little. We must have killed ten thousand of them, but they didn't even notice. I know that a percent or two is a difference that matters in the end, but it still feels . . ." She lets the last word, undecided, die between her teeth.

    Instead, the dark compulsion to laugh quietly in the back of her throat, let the painful tension bleed out of her spine, and whisper aloud in hot and uninhibited tones, slips into the lead for just a moment. "At least, just a tiny bit, it feels good when everything wrong takes the shape of a monster you can hit back and kill. That doesn't always happen."

    Lilian stops and rubs her face, then dimly becomes aware of the fact she's still gripping her sword by how her right hand is slower to arrive than her left. Habitually, she flicks the blood down its length and onto the deck, but some of it is burnt on, and needs to be scraped off later. Like a little reminder of the tainted place she went. Her eyes wander, fall on Clark, and she can't help but clutch her arm and draw in on herself.
Lilian Rook     "You were incredible as always. You've been keeping the Busan safe, Rita and her home, safe, for so long like that. It barely feels as if I deserve to be helping at this stage. I expect to see you and Bota, at least, after all this."

    "I have to go check on Tamamo. And Meika, I suppose. Excuse me."
Hibiki Tachibana     At some point they make it out. Hibiki only stops striking when she realizes there's nothing left to hit, her head snapping up on a delay to register that anything that was following them has been forced back, and they're out of the storm. The sounds of everyone picking up the pieces, both metaphorical and literal, is all she can hear. It's over.

    For now.

    With adrenaline fading, her buckling knees finally betray her, and she staggers against the side of the fishing boat, getting some oxygen back at last. Her lungs feel like they're burning. Right. That was just a sample of what's to come. A single river out of a whole sea of these things, waiting for them at the end. If she can't even handle this much...

    ...Rita, which one deserves a happy future more... "This isn't nearly enough... next time...I have to..." Rather than letting herself fall down and rest, her grip on the boat's side tightens in as she grits her teeth, and Hibiki slowly pushes herself back to a stand. She still hasn't pushed herself close to as much as some of the others. What does she have to complain about?

    After a few heavy breaths, she throws a hand up towards Dysnomia to show she noticed, does a once-over of the small ship's crew to make sure they're all still here...then looks back in their wake. She can't let herself rest yet.

    "...Get together anyone hurt!" At least her voice carries pretty far. "We're going to get everyone patched back up!"

    She can take it easy after everyone else who needs care gets what they need.
Meika Kirenai     Waking up hurts. Half physically, and half the remnants of adrenal nausea and shame. Each inhale tastes like blood and seawater. But her lungs still work, her heart still beats, and blood staining the once-neatly-pressed grey plaid dress she's tolerated since morning Mass will undoubtedly get cleaned. The bleeding's already stopping. As Meika's eyes flutter open and worn-out electrical light fixtures beam down at her, she flinches, seeing a face- at first one she fears she doesn't recognize, until his voice rings with a growing familiarity.

<J-IC-Scene> Boss Huorong pauses, then quietly sighs in relief. "Breathin'."

    Her eyes squeeze shut for a short moment, out of embarrassment, and a hope that while busy radioing in her status, he missed her stirring. She's only met a handful of people from this world, and one of those few wound up having to see her. Maybe he doesn't recognize me. Why would he. It'd be better if-

    "...'M Okay. I- I got it. I'll-" Her cast-clad leg clunks against the ground as she swings it over to stand, eyes opening for good, this time. A guilty expression rests on Meika's face when she finally looks up at Boss Huorong, and a murmur-quiet 'Thanks'. Her hockey stick makes do, where a long-left-behind crutch ought, in helping her stagger to her feet.

    "Is the fight still going? Are- Do people still need help..?" Her words sound as sunken and guilty as her stomach feels, still scrambling for something to make it all up. Standing, if only just, her shaky hands reach towards a tightly-wrapped shoulder bag, before stopping. It's too quiet for fights to be ongoing. Another transformation would just be a waste.

    When she goes to walk with the man up towards more familiar decks, Meika realizes her face isn't just wet from seawater, and that rubbing her eyes on her waterlogged sleeve does little but smear her face. It hardly matters that he'd be ignorant of much context, for Meika to still blubber out a summary "I'm- I'm sorry" towards Boss Huorong, the closest ears she can reach. They'll have to do.