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Desire Stars	FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO                                   It's a quiet early spring afternoon in Tokyo. Clouds drift lazily across the sky. Cars, buses, and people trickle down roads and streets in a steady flow, just a little bit after the lunch rush.     One of those streets is a narrow row of businesses meant primarily for pedestrian traffic. There are several local Warpgates within driving distance, or within walking, if one's up for a bit of a trek--but the closest one isn't on anyone's mind.     No one, that is, but four people on this street:     NEON KURAMA, a wildly successful streamer, mid-stream, holding a selfie stick and filming herself up against the wall of a bookstore. She's dressed in a short-sleeve yellow blouse, navy floral print skirt and matching pumps, surrounded by a half-circle of admirers. A lavender rolling suitcase rests beside her, packed to the brim. "Today's the day I'm going to do it," she announces to her audience with a bright smile, her, her brown locks bouncing with her enthusiastic head-bob. "Today's the day I escape from home and start my own life!" The chat ingest on her phone scrolls rapidly with hearts, cheer emojis and other such praise, as the crowd around her echoes the sentiment with enthusiasm.     GORO YURA, an amber-haired man with the bearing of a delinquent behaving himself. Shopping in a little corner store the next building over from Neon, his leopard print jacket, silver earrings and especially his black leather gloves do little to dispel the notion that he's no stranger to rowdy brawls in back alleys. The cheery green handbasket he holds as he browses the shelves doesn't stop the other people in the store from subtly edging away from him. His phone vibrates, the lock screen bearing a lunar eclipse, a token of sympathy for (and sometimes, need of) the Watch. He answers the message tapping one-handed, and returns to his shopping.     LEITH OF DEBARIA, a lean, tall redheaded woman with her hair tied in a tail and a leather eyepatch over her right eye. She wears a heavy brown duster over a matching tweed vest, with a black bow tie. In short, she looks like she stepped into the small soba restaurant from the frontier of the American Old West. "I didn't know they let ass-kissers through the Gate," says Leith, without looking up from her soba.     MERLE OF HAMBRY, his waistcoat and bowler implying a shared world of origin, is shorter, more portly, and more given to chortles. "All things serve the Beam, Leith-sai," he says. "Long days and pleasant nights," Merle adds, doffing his bowler and revealing a head of balding brown hair.     "May you have twice the number," Leith rotely repeats. "Care to join me?"
Desire Stars	NOW                                                                 Appearance of the Jamar Area                               Chaos reigns. The sky is darkened by a massive helicarrier, its cannons shelling a part of the city. It looks like something from a science fiction movie, a blend of sleek grey technology and overgrown plants, with the aforementioned cannons wreathed in thick vines and very possibly made from them.     Faceless footsoldiers with inhuman, bulbous bone-colored heads march in squads through the streets in grey digit camo. Armed with vine-handled combat knives, leafy pistols and carbines, they chase down fleeing civilians, killing indiscriminately. It's only because of Multiversal connections that panicked calls for help are received at all--that Leith, Merle and Goro happened to be in the right place at the right time. No one is reporting on this--conspicuously, not even on user submitted platforms like social media.     The closest Warpgate isn't far, located in an alley between two buildings a few blocks away. According to your contacts, they're holed up together with a couple of civilians in a bookstore they've barricaded. But there's a problem, immediately visible on the approach, before you can even get to the street in question. A red forcefield bars the way further, flaring up whenever someone tries to pass but invisible otherwise.     "Elites, huh..." You're not alone on the approach--a man hops off of a red motor scooter, removing his helmet. Long, red-brown hair falls about his shoulders as he turns and frets over the forcefield. Coming to a conclusion, he steels himself, looking over his shoulder. "I'm glad you're here. My friend is in there. I wish I could take you with me... but I'm sure you can find a way through!" Reaching into the pocket of his sky blue windbreaker, he procures what looks like a deck of cards, holding it out and looking into the rear view mirror. His reflection wears what's unmistakably a Rider belt, which is then projected from the mirror onto him. "Henshin!" he calls, after striking a pose, sliding the deck into an empty slot at the center of his belt.     KAMEN RIDER RYUKI, a fighter in silver plates over a red leather bodysuit, disappears into the mirror of his scooter, emerging a moment later from a shard of shattered storefront glass on the other side of the portal. His helmet, a shuttered silver frame over two wide red lenses, dips in recognition. "Good luck!"     Just getting on the other side of the forcefield is only the first hurdle, though--Ryuki's entrance attracts a squad of those inhuman soldiers, and they open fire on him, sending him vaulting over a handrail and running down a back alley for cover. Riflemen are posted on the roofs of a small cafe and the arcade opposite, their attention shifting to you as you cross the threshold. A firing squad of soldiers similarly armed with those leafy pistols kneels in the street and levels their weapons at you as a detachment breaks off to hunt down the red Rider.
Ishirou	A contact gives them a warning about the attack, the gunship firing down on civilians while the media remains /suspiciously/ quiet on it.  However, the second part can't be handled now, not while people were attacking the city for seemingly no reason at all.  Their contacts, thankfully, were safe.   Almost immediately upon entering, there were people with machine guns firing, and a red forcefield blocking the way.  Ishirou catches sight of the Kamen Rider, who wishes them well but is going ahead.  "Good luck, fall back if you get overwhelmed!" he says to the already-leaving Rider.  Regardless of who he fights for, right now they are allies.   Ishirou changes into RESCUE, a battle suit that protects him in operations like these.  For the first part, he avoids direct combat, using his speed to dance around the machine gun fighting attackers, and lets others handle them, while instead focusing on the force field.  He looks for emitters and attempts to reach out to attempt to hack them remotely.   His goal will be simply, to short out the power in the emitters so that the forcefield can come down, or failing that, attempting to weaken their output so that someone can punch their way through.  Either way, his goal is to weaken/disable the forcefield, VIA the emitters!
Phantom Thieves	Limelight? Phantom Thieves? Who? No idea who you're taklking about. There's only Clover Delamonte, normal girl with normal thoughts (that don't get picked up by anyone), here on the scene because she heard a famous podcaster was here, shooting a special episode. Maybe she can get on camera, or get an autograph. And then there's suddenly a forcefield, with armed monster guards. Huh. "I'm sorry - what?" she says to the sudden appearance of the red rider. "Oh no! People are getting hurt in there! We have to help!" There might be something valuable in there. Clover tries the entrance, pushing against it. "Our own way in - how are we supposed to...?" "... Oh! Maybe there's a - crack in this forcefield or something, I'm gonna go look for one!" She runs off down a side street - and as soon as she's turned the corner and gotten out of earshot, her phone gets pulled out. "Got anything for a forcefield?" "Forcefield - try setting seventeen. That did something... waveform modular, when I tested it." "Right." Clover pulls a black box out of her pocket, fiddles with it for a second, and presses it against the forcefield. After a moment of pulsing, a hole appears briefly long enough to let her inside. "Got it. One of these days we need to figure out why cause and effect are reversed when it comes to you and inventions." "Your guess is as good as mine. Good luck with whatever you're doing, and remember there's a paper due monday." WIth that - Limelight is in! Er, wait, that is - Clover Delamonte, normal girl is in. Time to go hunting for whatever treasure's up for grabs! ... Scratch that, time to dive for cover as a squad of soldiers comes onto her. She might need rescuing! I'll see if I can't dupe someone into running interference for me by playing defenseless... If I'm fighting constantly, I won't have time to treasure hunt.
Aidan Proudpick	@emit It's hard to keep a good squirrel down. Saving an entire kingdom? Navigating complex social situations? Weighty and complex. Helping to just save the day? Aidan slams into the red forcefield at full tilt, running face first into it and bouncing off. He lands on his keister with a grunt, pressing his hand across his face to soothe the ache. He is sitting on his butt when the red motor scooter wheels swerves into view. He has seen the Timespace Riders work, but only in the heat of battle. Watching the new Kamen Rider work, watching the Rider Belt appear, the squirrel's eyes widen. His mouth hangs open in awe-struck silence, watching the mighty pose. Watching the Rider suit appear, then disappear into the mirror. "Fuck me, they are so breezing amazing." Orange eyes roll up around the dome. And the people struggling behind it. That random girl is going to get shot at! He nods at Ishirou, watching him work. So he starts muttering under his breath. "We can work miracles, we can work miracles." The first window sill is an easy grab. His back arches like he was a pool noodle or a slinky, and he gets his feet onto the ledge with the ease of a contortionist. In a rush, it's like Aidan is running on all fours up the side of the building, grabbing at bricks and ledges with his hands and pushing himself back up into each leap. Within a bare few seconds, he's on top of the roof. Then a leap to a taller building, tail twitching behind him to orient his body, and another, well, there's nothing else to call it but a scamper. At the top of the highest tower, Aidan backflips off, holding his shield over his head and letting out a whisper of his breath. Like a red comet, he is suddenly shooting at the forcefield, the Aegis letting out a mighty ROOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAR almost akin to a jet engine as he dives at the forcefield, trying to take it down by pure force.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	SHINMYOUMARU SUKUNA did not expect to be here today. But she's a member of the Concord now; still new enough that she's pleased just to be called in, if only because nobody has ever really *asked* for her to help before, and eager to assist. She's proud just to be on the list! Though, she has to admit that she wasn't expecting to walk into a battle scene. Even if the battle is on the other side of a forcefield. Shinmyoumaru, who looks like a four-foot-tall girl in a fancy kimono-derived outfit, shows up carrying what looks like an overgrown sewing needle in a carrier made from scraps of cloth, and a wooden mallet riding at her hip, painted with very stylized trees and practically radiating magic. She stops for a moment when Kamen Rider Ryuki addresses her (and everyone else), slots in the cards - "*SO* cool," is Shinmyoumaru's slightly squeaky verdict. But she can't teleport through like he can. She has to get her own way in. Shinmyoumaru approaches the forcefield. She sticks her thumb up against it for a moment to watch it flare and shimmer, pressing hard and getting a feel for it. And then she pulls out that little wooden mallet... and prepares to make a wish. "Be a door!" It is, in fact, an ordinary Japanese-style sliding door like all the ones Shinmyoumaru grew up around in the Shining Needle Palace. Right in the forcefield. Right *through* the forcefield. She slides it open, steps through, and lets it close behind her (which actually means the forcefield reasserts itself and it goes away). Of course now she's on the far side and there are weird people armed with plants pointing them at her like they were guns. Still holding her Mallet, Shinmyoumaru wiggles her other hand's fingers in a funny, almost mocking wave before detouring into an alley at top running speed. They aren't likely to spot her in there, because as soon as she broke line of sight she returned to being about an inch and change and is currently sitting underneath a Dumpster, where the wheels lift it up to give her enough clearance to do that. She regrets this decision immediately, judging by how she's holding her nose. Once she's given them enough time to look in and not see her, Shinmyoumaru stands up, steps out, returns to being about four feet tall and goes back to running deeper into what she is thinking of as The Zone.
Odette Raskins	A lone EMT jogs on through the Warpgate, half-distracted by the PDA in her hand as she taps furiously through so many screens to sort through those calls for help and whatever little she can figure out about what's actually going on. Nothing from social media feeds, just a local connection barricaded somewhere with who knows how many injured, dying, or dead already. As Odette slides the tablet back onto her belt, she realizes she's about to walk right into an ominous red barrier, and she yelps briefly before throwing herself back on her ass to avid finding out what actually touching it would do. Hopefully, nobody saw that. Unfortunately, there's a guy on a scooter right there, and she doesn't even know who he is! At the very least, he's not her contact, and he doesn't sound like he's responsible for all those calls. "F-friend? Through? Wait, do you-" Her eyes go wide as Ryuki undergoes his entire transformation, nodding absentmindedly in agreement with Shinmyoumaru and suppressing a noise in the back of her throat. By the time she manages to call out with an anxious "You, too!", he's already about to get get fired on. Odette isn't keen on just letting him handle all those strange-looking soldiers himself, but she also isn't in a position to actually help him when he takes off in another direction. Plus, she sees those riflemen aiming at her and everyone else that's showing up. Getting that deer-in-the-headlights look, Odette takes only a second to grab the nearest thing (a trash can lid) and flings it into the air past Ishirou like it might help somehow before sprinting in the opposite direction. Even though Odette's mind is stuck in flight mode, however, she doesn't go back through the Warpgate. Instead, she starts running for another alley in hopes of finding another path around that won't take her directly in front of more of those soldiers. Unfortunately, the alley she takes is leading right towards Clover the normal girl and however many soldiers might already be there, too!
KNK	Violet is the first to answer the call. A woman of strikingly ninja-like appearance might have one believing she couldn't possibly be -- surely a ninja wouldn't look like a ninja? Surely she wouldn't be this flashy, even more so than her partner, who follows up after her silently transmitted all-clear. Perhaps she's thinking several steps ahead--     "Hi! I'm here. Oh, did you call? Hey, are you a cowboy? Hey, mister, what kind of hat is that? It's like a soft-hard hat. Oh, we're heading this way, right? Are we in a hurry?"     "Yeah. Violet, go ahead. I'll set up from here and update you. You lot, now's the time to -- hold up, you're not local, are you?"     Violet doesn't wait for an answer, but heads out on her own, disappearing the moment she leaves sight, and not reappearing afterward. One of the strange-headed goons is picked up by an invisible force (shaped like a pair of hands and arms) in an experiment to check if the forcefield will open up for one of their own -- that is, the goon is carried bodily, at high speed, into it, while still in that grip.     Rose needs a little set up time to make a separate attempt, during which she waits to hear any potentially useful information. That setup time is how long it takes for her to fiddle with an odd cube that gradually unfolds into a quadcopter, and to arm a breaching charge for it to carry into the forcefield a couple stories up. She figures it to have been constructed mainly with attempts to charge through at ground level in mind, but if high explosives don't work, there's always the route of higher explosives.
Angela	Yuri! Of the Control Team! Perhaps you already know her! She is a young woman with long reddish-pink hair with grey eyes. She wears the Snow Queen EGO Gear Frost Splinter--a dark blue spear with a thin icicle like blade a little over a third of the length of the shaft. Her EGO Suit is is dark blue with a white tie with a dress jacket of pale blue darkening around the sleeves. The Control Team armband is wrapped around her wrist--a red armband with a white M at its center. Normally Lobotomy Corp isn't going to rush out to lend a hand with some new problem involving people they don't really know, but...Why IS she here? Well it turns out that Hod is a big fan of Neon, finding her escape attempts from her home to be INSPIRING and alleviating of the constant anxiety she feels! So she asked Yuri to see if she could get an autograph or at least tell Neon just how much her streams mean to her! Yuri asked if she wasn't sure she wanted her to help Neon escape and Hod was aghast at the very idea. 'I-isn't that cheating?' Yuri supposed she couldn't argue with that. But by the time Yuri arrives, this is decidedly not what Yuri was expecting. She considers just leaving back through the warpgate the way she came. "N-no! She might be in danger! You have to help stop this...! That's what a good person would do, r-right?" "Why are you asking me...?" Yuri sighs. "Okay. well I can't fight this alone so maybe--" She sees Odette rushing off in one direction. "Hey--hold up, you're a medic right??" She jogs after Odette. If her target got shot a bunch she could at least have a healer nearby. "Don't rush off--You're an EMT right? I'll take the job of being your bodyguard and get you to where you can lend a hand, arright?" Yuri draws and gestures with her spear. "Sound good?" She really doesn't care if about potential CRIMES and isn't really on the look out for them.
Phantom Thieves	It's good that she doesn't care because the Phantom Thieves aren't here. Just Clover Delamonte, normal girl.
Dark Horses	A COUPLE MINUTES AGO      Keiwa Sakurai, a currently unemployed young adults, sulks inside a popular soba shop as his sister, Sara, attempts to cheer him up.      "Hey, hey, look! Sooner or later someone's going to take your application. There's no point in sulking about what happened now, especially since your soba's going to get cold."      Sara's attention flicks up from her brother to the phone in her hand, which is currently playing Neon's stream. A defeated Keiwa tries to say something, but is cut off by a fan girlish squeal. It doesn't bother him, however. That's just how his sister is when she's watching Neon, and the moment she's calmed down, he finally speaks up.           "Yeah. I guess you're right. So, do-" NOW      Just as the man seemed to be chearign up, a couple of jyamato flood into the shop, knocking over tables and causing customers to flee in panic. Keiwa gets up to see what's going on, and the understandably upset owner does as well, going over to check what's going on.      It happens in an instant, but just as Keiwa's processing what's going on, the owner is struck down, his lifeless body lying on the ground right in front of him. He immediately turns around to grab his sister and flee, but a barrier erects itself right between them, preventing him from reaching her. She screams, but there's no time to assure her that he'll be okay. He's gotta get out of there!     Without much to defend himself, Keiwa simply flips a table at the group of jyamato, the piece of furniture doing little more than to distract them given the lack of force behind the flip as he bolts out the door and into the streets.
Hibiki Tachibana	"I'm glad you're here. My friend is in there. I wish I could take you with me... but I'm sure you can find a way through!"     "That guy's a Kamen Rider...?" Hibiki murmurs, running into frame exactly as Ryuki is finishing his henshin and entrance past the forcefield barring their path - it's not much surprise that a disaster on this scale, and also one as /weird/ as it to boot, would get her to drop whatever she's doing to take the quickest warpgate here.     "...And he has a friend in there, he said. Whatever's going on, it doesn't care that who knows how many innocent people are getting wrapped up in it..." Including everyone's contacts. Her head tilts up, towards the helicarrier overhead. The fact there's somehow no media coverage on any of this is striking, but that's one of the last things on her mind right now. She focuses forward on the shimmering, crimson barrier blocking entry.     And gets a running start. "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron...!"     A burst of golden light envelops her body and shatters away, resolving into her Symphogear - the gauntlet of which she immediately puts all her momentum into /pummeling/ fist-first into the field at the same moment her thrusters fire. "Haaaaaahhhh--!" The internal piston, priming back ahead of time, slams in on impact for a one-two blast of devastating, ground-uprooting force on one concentrated point.     Extremely predictably for her, she's taking the most straightforward route and simply attempting to brute force her way in, and even if only for an instant, break through a portion of the forcefield so she can get inside. It doesn't matter to her if it shuts right behind her after - getting in is a lot more important than getting out.     "Tch... who even /are/ these guys anyway...?" Assuming she gets through, Hibiki's way of dealing with the oddly greenery-themed mooks trying to gun them down is just as equally straightforward.     She's going to keep on moving, make a big enough leap to try and land on top of one of the buildings they're posted on, and plow through as many as possible and send them toppling off while continuing to move ahead. Assuming they get to the trapped contacts in the first place, the way back towards the warpgate is going to have to be clear for them to escape, too.
BB	|> A Commonwealth attache to the Japanese National Diet... ... turns out to be a hopeless addict to several phone games and digital idols. Some of those digital idols are more literally digital than others, and so... Two women in 'strange' touristy clothing that isn't terribly out of place but is an odd match 'approach' the forcefield. Or, imply to approach it - there's certainly a final step to 'up' but it's fuzzy when they arrive. One is an islander woman in a impossible to put on logically white collared leotard and a wide-sleeved coat-cape-high-collar-cloak about her arms and back that holds itself up on two red claws. With long lilac hair reaching near to the ground, she would not breach 5'2" without the fierce red slipper heels she wears. The other is a rounder, softer woman of just about the same height, in sneakers, jeans, a pale cream shirt, and a bright red button down Hawaiian shirt over top, with a white lei-silhouette pattern printed across. She wears glasses, a handbag, and a dazed look. The first woman seems distracted, disinterested, disgruntled. The second, hopefully, takes a few steps forward only to bounce right into the forcefield. "You think this is the next big thing?" The impossibly leotarded woman interrogates her mousier companion. "Y-yes, I heard about it through the local Diet." Stammers out the softer spectacled woman, only for-- The woman in heels and a cape that thinks it's wings lifts her leg as if to step, and then keeps lifting, before slamming the mousey brown-haired woman against the forcefield with her foot, mashing the soft-cheeked face of her companion on the glowing forcefield. "There's a f-o-r-c-e-f-i-e-l-d in the way, what do you want me to do about that, hmm?" The red slippered avatar of sekuhara demands, leaning in on her Advanced Kabedon to ask the smush-faced accomplice: "The transforming man and the giant bomb are through the portal. But where's the d-o-o-r?" She spells it out, angrily, agitatedly, like someone having their very worst day and now the elevator doesn't work. The brown-haired woman points at Shinmyoumaru's hammered-open doorway. --Suddenly both women are at the door right as Shinmyoumaru's portal is snapping shut, the stepping woman thrust kicking her companion through the shutting door and sending the brown-haired hawaiianed shirted woman bowling into a crowd of soldiers, tumbling and bouncing as she siderolls and bleeds off speed by pingponging around until she comes to a halt in the center of the street just past the barrier. BB, just as swiftly pulling her leg free of the forcefield before it closes, crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. "I have BBetter things to do than help the-" She adds a snivelling, disparaging tone to her voice. "Kamyn Raidurrs." MEANWHILE... Given smoke cover by how epic her gaffe entrance was, Jinako Carigiri looks up and scans the area, pushing the cracked frame of her glasses up her nose. "I'm in a situation." The brunette understates, sniffing and squinting. "Better run after that Rider guy. He definitely knows what's going on." And doing so isn't fighting! Win win! Dashing right in after Kamen Rider Ryuki, Jinako tumbleass pratfall parkours around, graceless yet effective. "Hey! Hey what do you *mean* good luck? And why are they *shooting* at you? Can I get the motives? Maybe a tutorial?!" Bullets ping and ricochet nearby her and she emits a stressed out 'aiee!'
Lilian Rook	This is still an awful fucking time for this, but the world doesn't just stop and wait for you to get better when you need it.     Or rather, it only does for Lilian at a certain rate. Perhaps one day she can fit a month into a day. She's working on it.     And besides. Her physical wounds have more or less fully healed. The symptoms of deeper erosion, expressed outwards on her skin or not, are much more stubbornly inconsistent about their retreat, and sticking to her day to day routine doesn't help any more.     There's so much empty space in it right now that she has time to think, after all. The anathemic opposite of forcing one foot in front of the other until existing feels natural again.     'Protect a member slash associate of the Paladins' is something trivial to turn her brain off and just do, and so, back up to public standard, Lilian makes the time to arrive immediately. The bandages still visible peeking up under the collar of a loose winter blouse are only for coverup. There's no longer any need for additional makeup as far as her face goes. She'd look like a well-to-do foreign civilian in this chaos, were it not for something indescribable about her gait and posture, and that little scar that is ever too clean to be from an accident.     'I'm glad you're here. My friend is in there.'     "My apologies, but we're here to rescue a specific individual as a priority directive. Civilian rescue will commence afterwards." Lilian says, inside her own head.     "Name and description." comes out of her mouth instead; and she stops to look softly surprised about it.     'I wish I could take you with me... but I'm sure you can find a way through!'     "Beg pardon?" has her briefly scrambled thoughts and running mouth operating back in dual unison.     'Henshin!'     Lilian watches the rider speed off with the flat, unblinking affect of someone who had no idea what to expect except something strange enough that she wouldn't know. She contents herself with a long-suffering sigh, and "Ah. I see." As if 'Kamen Rider' was all she needed to form a troublesome opinion.     Hearing Rose's voice makes her flinch on a level that needs a microscope to see. The appearance of a sliding door has her focusing on walking towards it instead, only for it to suddenly close again. "I see. I've begun expecting things to be easy." she says, switching to perfect Japanese for reasons she will never, ever admit. "Then . . ."     Of course it's time to test the barrier herself. It appears to be thin, straightforward, and extremely solid. The sensible thing to do is to stop existing for a second. A flicker between possibilities too quick to see as much more than black smoke and a glint of something brightly beyond visible red. Lilian appears to have no thoughts in particular about stepping into the line of fire, save reaching for her necklace under her top.
Meika Kirenai	Earlier:     An overheard distress message meant for someone else shouldn't be a good enough excuse for Meika to dip out of the few, sparse commitments and responsibilities she has left in the whole of Kagoshima- but no teenager has fun cleaning out their school desk after expulsion- and it's an excuse Meika's sister can't take quite as easily or quickly, with the eyes that're on her. There's no discussion or agreement, as the radio message Meika isn't meant to hear makes its way to her anyway, she's just out the door the moment anyone's back is turned, towards the central warpgate. Now:     Chevalier Vermillion, magical girl and- and nothing, steps through the besieged city's warpgate with her heart already leaping up to try and tear itself out of her throat- the sensation worsened by looking up at the looming shadow of the flying carrier and its staccato burst and shell-whistling cannons. Even when distant impacts resonate, Vermillion shivers, unsteady. Familiar faces and voices snap her out, somewhat, of the wide-eyed worry, until adrenaline starts to lower the threshold for action to an uncomfortably comfortable level.     "Oh, there's-" Awareness of so, so many gunshots resounding through the city streets, and their impacts, provides her an aching queasiness that's hard, but not impossible, to metabolize into anger. The inside of her cheeck is raw once she's stopped biting down on it. "-Civilians." '... But I'm sure you can find a way through!'     "Your friend is- Where? At the- the bookstore?" There's not more people in trouble, somewhere else, right? Come on, don't- The sharp popping of gunfire rips through the air, and she flinches, missing the split second as the rider makes his way across the barrier, but not that he's entering into danger. "Hey! W-watch *out*, Mister!"     As loosely familiar as she's been getting with that genre of suited hero existing, it's scary to watch anyone dive into danger like that- but the barrier doesn't yield as she slams against it, even if the echoing noise from her doing so is nearly as loud as the cannonfire. Ugh! Let me *through*, you stupid- A second to breath and plan, and halfway through thinking, she's already braced to keep moving.     Vermillion's armored fingers press against the barrier, following it and following it, as she kicks off to circumnavigate a distance- until an abandonded car sits across it. There's no time to fist pump the air, with the jury rigged solution she's pleased to actually see- instead, her knuckles rap against the car, and she shoulder checks it-     -And Vermillion f-f-flickers through the body of the vehicle, with- as a thunderous *CRACK* sound, followed quickly by shattered headlights and window glass clattering down to the asphalt. The same f-f-flicker echoes in reverse on the other side, reconstituted out of nearly nothing, and hitting the ground skating once more. All sound really needs is a medium- immaterial, if that medium spans the barrier, so can she.
Meika Kirenai	Asphalt cracks, dead silent, as Vermillion launches off ground-level streets to the arcade's rooftop, en route to the bookstore. A silent, instant prayer of relief that the enemy soldiers don't look human crosses her mind as spear-like shards of intangible force manifest in her grip, just to be thrown one by one at the squad of rooftop soldiers, -arms then torsos, it'd work with bullets, right? -knocking them around and pinning them against anything they hit with an awful, unceasing, gut-churning din. She doesn't notice until she's scanning back out, checking her route, how many of their shots cracked against her armor, no doubt leaving bruised or broken skin beneath-     Can't be too bad, I'm breathing fine. Hunched at the arcade rooftop's edge, tapping fingers against the barrier as paralyzed soldiers, she takes just a precious second from that higher vantage point to path out wherever that mentioned bookstore might be, ready to vault over as soon as she- or anyone else who's filtering through- spots where it is-     Never mind that she'll have to duck back below it's edge as bullets collide with concrete and masonry around her.
Petra Soroka	Petra has no direct way to receive any of these factional warnings. She's not, despite what people might think, given access to any Concord channels, despite her employment. Her Watch connections have long since evaporated, even if she tried to sneak her way into a Watchhouse or something. She's often *around* Paladins, not that Lilian is incautious enough to let her overhear potentially sensitive information, but if an alert for something unambiguously heroic as this comes up, occasionally Lilian will just tell Petra to come with her to help.     And for a lot of reasons, Petra would never say no! It's only rarely that those reasons include the uncomplicated desire to enact heroics for strangers, though the urge does strike her sometimes; more often, it's because she gets to enact heroics for *Lilian*, both in the performative sense of 'helping people while she's there to see' and the direct sense of 'helping Lilian help people'. Petra is only really a hero for one person, as she's fond of saying, but very often, helping Lilian means lessening the burden of helping others off of her.     All those complicated topics of heroics have to wait for Petra to desperately attempt to tidy herself up before heading out after Lilian. Her efforts are partly foiled by intentional sabatoge on Qetra's part, concealing aspects of her reflection in the compact mirror. Petra shows up in the alleyway with her bomber jacket half-zipped, hair frantically brushed, and smudged mascara still around her eyes, scurrying in the direction of the bookstore before being stopped by the forcefield. "Henshin!"     Petra is coming up from behind when Ryuki transforms and then jumps into a mirror. How dare he! That's her thing! Not that she actually jumps into mirrors, but *Qetra* does, and *thematically* you really have to give it to her--     "Vaporize!" Petra isn't jealous of the fact that two Elites (whom she doesn't recognize) both express awe at Ryuki's transformation and teleportation, but she does draw out her transteam gun before even assessing the threat. She slams the Silver FullBottle into the slot on the bottom of the gun without slowing down, and when she shouts and squeezes the trigger, dark, glittering fog pours out of the gun, coating her as she runs through it. The fog seems to cling to her for a moment as an amorphous cloud, before exploding outwards with a bassy blast, leaving Petra in the black and yellow armor of STING SILVER, quicksilver rivulets running down her arms.     Petra has no good way of getting through a forcefield, besides the hard way. Without the time to collect enough morphmetal to form into a proper weapon, the dripping streams of it just cling and coalesce on the end of her fist like a stalactite to form a spike, which she swings into the forcefield as hard as she can. Sparks fly and she reels backwards, repelled, and she makes an annoyed little whine before going in for a second punch, coinciding with Ishirou weakening it, and maybe just as importantly, Hibiki doing the exact same idiotic tactic.     Once through, Petra's spike shatters from the impact, disintegrating into a cloud of flechettes that she sprays into the frontline of the jyamoto. Petra hurries after Lilian, after Lilian got through so much earlier and easier than she did, taking the occasional swing at the gunmen as she does, but the sight of the Normal Girl Clover being in clear line of threat makes her veer off.     Petra is the easiest possible girl to dupe. The squad of soldiers coming after Clover is split in two when a wall of morphmetal shears up from a puddle on the ground, forcing them to stumble and give Sting Silver herself time to jump down from the roof with a repulsor-propelled kick to their heads.     "Are you alright?"
Desire Stars	Forcefield - try setting seventeen. That did something... waveform modular, when I tested it.     Clover's gadget does the trick--based on her and Robert's understanding, it absolutely should just be 'for a moment.' The hole stays open--which must mean there's either a flaw in the focefield or that someone is keeping it open. Odette can get through, accordingly,as can her bodyguard, Yuri, and Petra, as Sting Silver.     Either way--the hole opens up in an alleyway near a certain bookstore. The soldiers do indeed open fire on the three of them, the leading officer pointing her out with a hand signal and a cry of "Ja! Tobesebu!" Why doesn't the Understanding parse it? Either way--they has bigger concerns than linguistic, as a curtain of gunfire chases her further down the alley.     Another squad, chasing after Shinmyoumaru, joins up with them, after failing to spot the inchling. The first squad kneels, coordinating a harrowing screen of gunfire, the one at the front even throwing a fruit that must clearly be a grenade. Shinmyoumaru can slip past them easily if she desires, given her size and their determined focus on Odette, Clover and Yuri. She can also wait them out, and either way, it won't take long, whether she stays under the dumpster or decides to sneak past.     Help is not far--from the rooftop, a Rider looking entirely different from Ryuki aims a lime-green crossbow. His white helmet looks like a polar bear, with the lenses a circle and a star. Explosive bolts of green energy pelt the soldiers that Sting Silver doesn't catch, sending them flying before they themselves explode, just as the ones she'd impaled did (more on that in a moment)     The Rider leaps down, more of his armor revealed--matte black bodysuit with a matching chestplate, save for a green strap and an asymmetrical plate over one side, bearing a cameo of that same crossbow. "You two--and you, there! Stick with me," he says. "I can get you to the other end of the Area--if they're busy with the others here, they shouldn't follow. As for the two of you," he says, to Sting Silver and to Yuri, "We'll have better chances if we work together." A few steps down the road, and he pauses--a staredown, between himself and RYUKI, who is armed with a dragon's head on one arm.     "I don't want to fight," says the polar-bear Rider to Ryuki.     "Neither do I," answers the dragon-themed Rider.     A moment of silent understanding between them, followed by a nod. Is fighting the usual, or something?     "...good. If you don't want trouble from the others, you should stick to these back streets."     "Thanks," says Ryuki, evidently surprised. "You're the first one that hasn't just attacked me right away."     "I'm a firefighter," answers the polar bear. "Saving people is what I do."
Desire Stars	Hey! Hey what do you *mean* good luck? And why are they *shooting* at you?     Polar Bear and Ryuki turn around to face Jinako.     "Um... that's really more his thing," says Ryuki, pointing awkwardly at the Polar Bear like a student scolded by a teacher. "These guys usually shoot at me too. Except for the Fox guy, but I haven't seen him around."     The other Rider sighs. "They shoot at everyone," he answers. "It's our job to keep them from erasing this area." As if that explains anything. You lot, now's the time to -- hold up, you're not local, are you?     "No," says Goro, answering for Leith and Merle, via a video call on his phone. The quality goes in and out. "They're from some place called Mid-World. The lady is some kind of psychic; the short guy is a pencil pusher. Neither of them are that great in a fight." Muffled protests from behind him. "There was some streamer girl here, too, but she bailed before I could talk her into staying put. I saw her run off with some guy from the soba shop across the street. I can take these guys one on one, but I'm getting tired and they're persistent. We put up some barricades, after the streamer bounced. If your people can get these two out of here, I can manage a way out myself."     Violet, attempting to see if the forcefield will open for the weird soldiers, finds that it won't. Could it be something put up to keep them in, as much as keep others out?     Rose is more successful, allowing a staticky hole to be burned in the field just long enough for her to get through. She'll need to get down from her vantage point quickly, however--the explosion appears to have drawn fire from the helicarrier overhead, inaccurate but deadly artillery rocking the ground with every blast!     Meika emerges on the other side of the barrier just as Violet's experiment is done, finding herself near a gaggle of soldiers dazed and recovering from sudden, hard impact with the forcefield. They turn to face her after the loud crack, one of them priming a fruit-like grenade and throwing it at her after barking a command in their language. It sails above the arcade in a clumsy arc before exploding.     "JAA!" cries the jyamato solider who'd thrown it, after being skewered by Silver's spikes. They explode a moment later.     Much as Clover had seen, Hibiki and Lilian might get the idea that either something is wrong with the field, or that they're deliberately let in--it's almost like who or whatever is controlling it wanted to see how badly she wanted in. She finds, as did Rose, that being up top tends to draw a lot of attention. While the soldiers may be on the ground, the helicarrier is providing air support. A solid stream of near finger-sized bullets chews through concrete rooftops as it chases Hibiki down, followed by the hiss of rockets. Their attention drawn from the carrier's assault, soldiers on the ground take potshots at her as she leaps from building to building!      Ishirou, meanwhile finds that the emitters for the forcefield are spitting out garbage data about where they're actually located. He's able to connect to them, and has access to disable them--but receives a message from a user named ADMIN. While we cannot stop you from disabling the forcefield, please be aware that Jyamato are hostile to human life, and will attack humans to the last if even one is allowed to escape. The forcefield around the Jamar Area is for the protection of Earth and the convenience of our Kamen Riders. If you are here to assist with the Jyamato, you may enter. The entryway will be on your twelve o'clock.      Sure enough, a rectangular opening slides open in front of Ishirou, closing behind him.
Desire Stars	The route to the bookstore, for those present on behalf of the Paladins, Concord and Watch assets, is down the main street--as is, for Yuri's interest, the path to Neon, whose stream went down somewhere not far from that bookstore.      Neon herself is in the company of KEIWA, and the two of them are being kettled in by a squad of Jamato brandishing combat knives.                                    MEANWHILE...                                       Far away from Tokyo, out of sight of anyone, there floats a temple; an inverted black pyramid, trimmed with gold, flanked by hovering ivory columns. Atop this inverted pyramid, a woman in a black-and-white, stylishly asymmetrical ensemble muses over several monitors hovering in the empty air. The carnage in Tokyo is broadcast on each. "Mr. Buffalo and Mr. Polar Bear are working hard... so where's our other player?"     That 'other player' is a man in a navy-black two-tone windbreaker, branded 'DGP.' He rests his black sneakers on a plush red ottoman, his arms spread wide across the back of a matching red chair. The lounge, in truth part of that same 'temple,' is empty, but for this man and another. The other man, dressed in an all-white three piece suit complete with a bow tie, has the air of an usher or butler. He brings over a tray of freshly made tea.     "You seem relaxed," notes the man in white. "Shouldn't you join the fray?"     "No need to hurry," says the one relaxing. "I've got an ace up my sleeve," he adds with a smile, holding up a metallic red object with a handle like a motorcycle's accelerator.     The man in white smiles courteously and bows, leaving the other to ruminate on his 'ace--' and upon a golden coin, stamped with the likeness of Augustus Caesar. Smiling at the coin, the 'other player' flips it with his thumb and catches it, tucking it then into his pocket. He reaches for the tea on the table and takes a sip, savoring the taste. "Now should be good," he decides, after another sip. He stands up, and makes his way across the polished stone tile, up a set of stairs. After a short jaunt, ACE UKIYO, a man with short, parted black hair and a smug smile, finds himself atop the inverted pyramid, looking out over a vast expanse of blue sky above and desert below. He presses a black rectangular device with a circular slot in the center to his abdomen, and a grey belt spools out, fastening it...                                   DESIRE DRIVER!                                                                   BOOSTRIKER!
Desire Stars	Beside him, a motorcycle materializes in a cloud of blue pixels. It's a red racing machine, with white trim and a bulky looking engine that extends well behind the driver's seat, culminating in three flared exhaust pipes on either side, annealed at the ends from heat. Ace climbs astride the bike, places a DGP-branded helmet on, and guns the ignition, driving off the edge of the inverted pyramid. His descent to the desert below is halted by a ring of blue light which envelops him--     And deposits him high in the air over the main street, the wheels of the Boostriker touching down on the wall of a high rise apartment complex moments before a shell from the helicarrier shatters the wall. Racing the falling rubble as his DGP longcoat flares out behind him, he reaches the ground a split second before the heavy concrete would have crushed him. The bike ramps off of a set of stairs along the street, landing in the middle and crushing the Jyamato menacing KEIWA and NEON under its weight, before Ace leans in and drifts, tires squealing as the bike comes to a rolling stop. Removing his helmet, he flashes the both of them a smug grin.      "Just my luck," he says, approaching the two of them. "I went to all the trouble of making a cool entrance, and here I see you've already got a boyfriend."     Neon's face screws up in a mixture of confusion and offense. "He's not my boyfriend!" She exclaims, pointing at Keiwa.      "Oh?" asks Ace, striding calmly through the carnage to wrap his arms around Neon and Keiwa. "So you're saying I have a chance."      "Just who the heck are you?" asks Neon, pushing his hand from her shoulder and stepping aside.
Phantom Thieves	Odette gets a grimace at the leading-more-soldiers-here antics. Looks like Limelight - er, that is, Clover Delamonte, is going to have to fight after all. > "Are you alright?" "... Oh!" Petra's recognized, though it doesn't go the other way. Clover's voice is different, her mannerisms are different. She's put considerable effort into making sure that Clover Delamonte and Limelight the Supervillain have little to nothing connecting them. "Thank you! I wanted to help, and then - and then there were all these armed soldiers running after me, and I didn't know what to do..." If a hand is offered to be helped up, Clover takes it, or just stands up either way. "I took - I took some mai thigh, do you think that'd help?" She means muay thai, she's pronouncing it wrong on purpose. "I can - I can kick pretty well, I one drove off a mugger by kicking him in the-" "-Bear! I mean - a polar bear!" Oh good, the polar bear guy doesn't want to fight. I wonder if that helmet is worth something. "Right, uh - why *is* the forcefield here? And the armed guards? And everything? My first guess is they'd be... protecting something?" Like a treasure. "I bet if we find it, then the armed guards will go away, right? So - let's go looking for it!" Petra gets a tug on the arm, as does Odette and anyone else looking sufficiently elite. "Can - can you lead the way? I'm kinda... kinda overwhelmed." Though once the battle is rejoined when coming onto the next group of jamato, Clover turns out that the 'mai thigh' isn't just talk - she can snap-kick hard enough to one-hit-KO, as well as evade attacks - albeit somewhat (purposefully) clumsily. Could she be... ... Could she be an unknowing and undiscovered elite?
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru abruptly has someone using her door. Two someones. "Hey, that's my door!" is her objection. "You could have asked." Granted, the answer would have been 'yes', so the result's the same either way... though given she is (usually, anyway, where people can see her) about four feet tall and she was imagining it as *her* door, it probably required them to duck a little bit. Or get kicked through it. That works too. Shinmyoumaru winces in sympathy. Part of Shinmyoumaru wants to stick with BB solely because she is new and interesting, even if she DOES kick people around, but she *was* asked here for a reason, and she'd like to actually find Leith. She knows more or less where the bookstore is, but there's a lot of Jamato between here and there... "You can catch a ride if you want," she informs BB, before hopping onto the Dumpster she was just under. (She's back to being four feet tall again.) Pushing against the wall, Shinmyoumaru gets the Dumpster rolling out of the alley before she switches to using her giant needle like a pole, speeding it up as it rumbles down the street. And with her other hand, she has the Mallet out again. She reaches down and raps it against the side of the Dumpster several times with a booming cymbal-like noise. "Be bigger!" That's barely a wish; changing the size of things is what the Mallet is best at. And so as the Dumpster rattles, rolls, and rumbles its way down the street, it grows; shifting from the size of... well, a Dumpster... to the size of a particularly chunky van. The trash is all extra-large too, but that's beyond Shinmyoumaru's care. She's not going to pick it up; it smells. But the jumbo van-sized Dumpster is very, very good at rolling through Jamato while Shinmyoumaru poles it along, as if it was a raft on a river, balancing on the outer edge of it. Her destination: the bookstore!
Ishirou	Ishirou gets a message, right as he's about to open the forcefield.  He pauses, reading it once, and then a second time and frowning.  He sends his message back.   'Very well, I won't shut it down but I will confirm your information on the 'Jyamato' first, but I'll also send this information to the other elites... in the future we should try communicating better so we don't have any unfortunate misunderstandings going forward.' With that, he takes the offered door into the force field and dives inside.  He also takes a moment to relay information to the others here.  "The attacking force is called 'Jyamato', and they are hostile to all human life.  The forcefield was more about containing them as opposed to keeping us out!" This gets him into the crosshairs of a few soldiers, as he attempts to avoid them.  To his credit, he does a pretty good job at that, though managing to get pelted only a few times.  Painfully, but not crippling, he keeps pushing forward, aiming to try and get as close to the bookstore as he can.  As he flies by the 'Jyamato' he attempts to scan them to confirm their behavior and try and figure out just... what they are.   This happens while he is also firing blasts of laser firing at them through POD, while making his way towards the Bookstore.
Odette Raskins	It's not until after Odette's already heading down the alleyway Clover picked that she realized she's leading more of them that-a-way, yelping as she dives for cover behind a dumpster. "S-sorry! Th-this was the only other way!" It wasn't, but it was the first one her fear-addled mind picked. "Hey--hold up, you're a medic right??" "Don't rush off--You're an EMT right? I'll take the job of being your bodyguard and get you to where you can lend a hand, arright?" Odette's initial response to Yuri (a startled half-screech half-"Huh?") doesn't come out quite the way she wanted to, largely because she's still in panic-retreat mode. It's only when she takes more than a second to actually look at Yuri  and recognize that familiar-ish Lobotomy Corporation armband that she finally spins around in mid-sprint and promptly tumbles ass over head. "H-huh? Wha... Ow. Y-yeah, that's right! Sure, I''ll... I-I'll stick close, then. We'll have an easier time getting anyone hurt out that way!" With her head back on, Odette has just enough time to scramble back onto her feet and start running before she hears another familiar voice in a thoroughly unfamiliar form: Petra and Sting Silver! "Miss Pe-gah!" In her haste to not run right into that wall of morphmetal, Odette swings herself aside just in time to trip over one of those ground-level soldiers. The timing is rather fortunate, though, since her tumbling maneuver puts her close enough to the ground that the gunfire passes right over her instead of through her. Clutching that duffel bag full of medical supplies in front of herself, Odette's already looking pale by the time she gets back up to see the crossbow-wielding Rider helping remove that first wave of soldiers from the equation. There's so many questions running through her head, but first... She has to gawk at Petra's and that non-Ryuki Rider's armor. Her eyes gleam for a moment at the spectacle of it all, dazzled by how seemingly easily they dispatch those soldiers, but her focus shifts back to the task at hand once the Rider leaps down and addresses the alley crew. "You two--and you, there! Stick with me," "I can get you to the other end of the Area--if they're busy with the others here, they shouldn't follow." "R... Right. Once we're in, leave treatment of the wounded to me. I-I'll make sure nobody else dies on my watch!" Odette announces with about as much confidence as she can muster, perhaps surprising in the way she sounds confident at all. She still gets distracted by the arrival of yet more Riders, though, and she gawks at each and every one of them between Keiwa, Neon, and Ace. As much as she'd like to watch them, however, that tug from Clover gets her attention back on the task at hand. "Lead the way...?" Swallowing lightly and buying the Normal Girl act entirely, Odette realizes she didn't actually catch what Clover was saying a all. Still, if she's looking for someone brave to lead the way... "Oh.. Uh. Y-yeah! We'll have an easier time finding them as a group." Trying to keep a brave face, Odette keeps moving along towards the bookstore while rustling around in her bag of stuff. Each time the Jyamato draw close, however, Odette's reactions are anything but brave. She screams, she swings her duffel bag packed with stuff around wildly, and she tries juking around and underneath them to try and throw off their focus just long enough for someone else to capitalize.
Aidan Proudpick	Gritted teeth. A prepared shout. Air rushing into Aidan's lungs. It'll be a sudden impact that rocks Aidan to his core. He has to be ready. Flex with it. He's prepared. VWOOP Right through the barrier, Aidan goes. With a squeak of surprise, the shield's energy cuts out, and Aidan lifts his arms up behind him. Tail once again moves, as does the rest of him, twisting in place to land in a roll. He does not stick the Black Widow landing. A sudden flurry of bullets and a ... is that a banana? Aidan has his shield up against the bullets, ducking behind it. The bullets neatly slide off the shield, plowing into the street around him. He does slowly peak out from around the shield to look at the banana. "What the f-" BOMB!! The rush of force and hot air pushes Aidan back, bowling him ass over teakettle. His recovery is excellent, rolling up to his feet with a quick bounce. He just needs to... Hesitation. This is a warzone. A battlefield. Soldiers are lying in ambush and he needs to clear them up. He's been here before. He's done this before. Fuck, what if someone dies because he didn't set up a wall? A hand thrown out, palm outward, pushing out a windwall in front of the Bookstore. A powerful sheer plane of gale that slows bullets down to a harmless speed. Aidan snaps his head around. Looking for... what. Enemies? Civilians. What would- Fuck. No. The squirrel is left standing there too long, frozen by indecision. He finally thrusts his hand out, pushing a heavy group of the Jyamato back. Odette. An anchor. Something he can focus on. She's a medic. That's an important thing to do. Aidan suddenly pushes towards her, thrusting his palm with each breath to create more walls and lead the Jyamato back towards him.
Hibiki Tachibana	Hibiki and Lilian might get the idea that either something is wrong with the field, or that they're deliberately let in--     "Did they let us in...? But why would they..." Hibiki murmurs to herself while moving, her mind briefly on their entrance (and on once again having the same idea as Petra). In the first place, the field was sort of a weird thing - if this city was under attack by invaders, why do they have something like this on hand to contain them already? Why did they have to get filled in by contacts instead of a military or anything asking for help?     The total media blackout as if nothing is wrong doesn't make sense... is it like what goes on in the Holy Refulgence, and people outside of this barrier /can't/ know?     And what about the people who are stuck inside of it?     Ishirou filling them in only sort of leaves more questions - but these are all questions that are above Hibiki's grade, when there's a ton of human-hating monsters covering this portion of the city.     And also when she's being barraged from the massive airship overhead. "Nobody's going to be safe as long as that thing is in the sky...!" The words get hissed out through grit teeth as she slows down only to meet the assault of bullets with repeat punches and whirling kicks, battering away every bit of ordinance she can't outrun on the rooftops. When she makes another hop to the next building over--     Both the potshots from the ground, and several rockets all converge on her at once. Whirling around in mid-air, Hibiki impacts one of the ballistics with her boot and crunches it in half, knocking it into the other to blow it up early.     And she rides the resulting shockwave further down the street, hitting pavement in a tumbling, slightly smoking roll before springing back up to proceed onward. Now on ground level, every Jyamato soldier barring her path further towards the bookstore is going to be on the receiving end of her fists, and she ducks and weaves through fire to bash them aside before moving on to the next.     On top of needing to clear the escape route anyway, every Jyamato focused on her is one not going after hiding civilians, so she'll happily run the gauntlet to their destination the hard way.
Angela	Yuri isn't exactly eager about this but she's here, she's queer, and she's used to it. Just like she's used to being greeted by gunfire. She throws herself to the alley wall, Frost Splinter lashing out to freeze numerous bullets in midair before letting them drop to the ground as a freezing chill erupts from the EGO Weapon. "Whew." She looks back to Odette in time to see her tumble overass over head. "Yeah," She says, "Good thinking." She winks, once towards Odette. She takes a moment to marvel at Clover's martial arts and whistles lightly--she doesn't look augged up far as she could tell. That's the multiverse for ya. She waves a hand towards Petra as well, now that she's here. Sorry, now that STING SILVER is here and she asks Petra, sincerely, "Should I be using a codename with the fancy suit I--" She looks back to the now downed soldiers and gives 'em a bit of a wave too before kicking one in their side for a little extra insult to injury. ''I'm a firefighter.'' "Oh...That's why you're a polar bear." Yuri says. "...And I guess I'm also ice themed! So that means I'm sticking with you. Bet we'd work well together." She seems a little wistful at his statement of saving people. "That's cool. Ice to meetcha. I know I seem chill but--it'd be nice if we could help everyone out. What should we call you two?" She asks of the dragon Rider and the polar bear Rider. "I'm Yuri." Yuri's style is best centered around dueling due to it being the sort of weapon she had to win a duel to obtain, she moves in on the jamato, cornering one and slowing their movements down with Frost Splinter before quickly mopping them up and moving on to the next one. She fights like she's pretty accustomed to violence and though there's tension throughout her body, there's a ready sense she's done this plenty of times before. "If you need us to slow down to pick someone up, Odette--let us know alright? I'm gonna be focusing on fighting a lot so I might not see if someone needs help." She hasn't seen her actual objective yet but she isn't exactly too invested in that mission. "You do this stuff all the time when you're not working with us?" She asks Petra. "Parker isn't 'too much' is she?"
Dark Horses	KEIWA SAKURAI hadn't really paid attention to who exactly he was with. He had just sort of zoned out and entered a survival state at this point. That is, until Ace's rescue and comment, which snaps him out of it. He takes a moment to recognize the face in front of him, realizing it's the streamer his sister watches, he causes him to blurt out.      "Huh? You're!!!"      "I see you've already got a boyfriend.      His brain continues to catch up, and he immediately joins Neon in denouncing the claim.      "She's not my girlfriend! Wait..."      Keiwa feels like he should be at least a little insulted that her first response in this situation was to deny their relationship status. It's TRUE, but still. Though honestly, he can't find it in him to be upset.      KAMEN RIDER BUFFA, also affectionately known as Mr. Buffalo, finally shows up, though not in a triumphant or heroic way. The wall behind Ryuki crumbles, a pair of horns bursting through as a warrior clad in purple armor barrels through.      Much like the animal he's based on, the rudely introduced Rider immediately charges the Dragon Rider to the opposite wall, pinning him there as he places a hand against his throat...      And then let's go, shoving him aside and turning around to face the rest of the group as he clicks his tongue. There's no point in going through with it, there's too many people here that'd give him problems, especially the fireman.      "Tch. With such awful timing, I'd have sworn Geats sent you all here. Well, whatever."      Buffa then points to the flag that's strapped to his back, followed by his fellow riders, including Petra.      "You. Fireman, get the civillians out of here. Dragon guy and whoever the new girl is, you stick around and watch my back and I'll make sure that none of the other riders jump you. Sound fair?"
KNK	Violet's attempt to get in proves mostly-fruitless, but that's fine, because it turns out they needed to clean up out here, and grabbing anything the forcefield missed was necessary for mysterious reasons. (She thinks it sounds like an alien invader setup.) She almost follows in after Shinmyoumaru, but BB and Jinako are already there, and she hesitates a moment too long at the incongruity. There shouldn't have been anyone around fast enough that she couldn't even pick up the replay.     Speaking of fast -- Rose is, too, and little escapes her notice. Not Petra's smudged make-up, and not Lilian's bandage. Searching her memory, she can't come up with another case of seeing Lilian going in injured. To her, it's out of character. Vaguely unsettling, even. Rose doesn't dislike her enough to bring that up for no reason greater than making someone uncomfortable, but Petra is another story.     Violet had that talk with Candy, already, so there won't be a surprise objective-shift to assassination of a responding elite, today.     The breaching charge works, and Rose tracks, analyzes, and estimates the forcefield's recovery time in the barest fraction of a breath. She's already moving, feet crashing to ground in a momentum-preserving kick-off. It's the shockwaves from the artillery blasts that get her, beyond what she was expecting. Delicate internal mechanisms move slightly out of place, and she instantaneously compensates, vaulting through the hole in the field just ahead, then has to stop and cautiously adjust -- while under fire.     Violet, fortunately, is already there behind her. Gunfire is intercepted with implausible precision through uncanny motions of her curved blade, the sparks and loud impacts disrupting her cloak enough that she swims into view like a heat haze.     "I got you! What next?"     "Thank--yeah. Extraction. Coordinates tracked."     "Okay!"     Both sprint for cover, bursts of blurred motion that trail neon glows of energized blades. Rose's is only for out for breaking her way into the nearest building, carving through a door to give herself an easily defended position from which she can disappear at the same moment as Violet does. While Rose focuses on plotting an exit course, her feed on Violet's visuals helping her position hostile firing lanes, Violet focuses on reaching the bookstore. Once there, the two of them can clear a path from opposite ends to get Leith and Merle safely out.     With 'extraction' listed as the objective, they're ignoring anything not in the way of that.
BB	At the entrance to the Jyamar Area, just past Shinmyoumaru's door, BB crouches down and waves, smiling emptily. "Could I have asked and gotten through?" She asks, and implies quite clearly, with the door swiftly closed, that she could not. Standing, when the little inchling goes for the Dumpster, BB shakes her head. "I can't ride on trash cans or I might be lost in the recycling bins forever." The leotarded woman claims, and gives her cutest lean forward and wave as the dumpster turns enormous and zips away. Only when the Inchling has disappeared on her magic trash can of careening chaos does BB wear a full, toothy grimace and a flash of red in her sakura pink eyes. "That pathetic elephant is probably too hapless to get caught up in any funny business, but a final boss like myself should avoid any trash can adventures with..." Her eyes squint, features darkening. "... powerful gag characters. Or I'm finished!!" Unfortunately, Jinako may ensure that such a meeting comes to be. MEANWHILE... The hawaiian shirted brunette looks up at two extremely suited men on a catwalk, one in a gorgeous dragon costume in fiery red, and the other, in a suit mostly of black with such stark bright white. It's-- It's-!! "Kamen Rider!!" Jinako hoots, fists punched in the air, cheeks flushed as she looks up and sees Japan's Heroes, the incredible Masked Rider!! Which the master otaku 'jinaKO' is immediately gushing over seeing two of the national treasures in action in any form, with such classic lines and killer backstories and--! In a full celebratory 'waHOO!' that ends in a sourceless elephant trunk 'nfkeeeeeern!' in her proximity that entirely misses the point, Jinako's lunatic display of fandom is immediately drowned out by a whole building going full tokusatsu pyrotechnics behind her, sending the celebrating Jinako out of the alley and scene transitioned up, somehow, into a wide rooftop that's good for shooting on, immediately being grabbed and menaced by a bunch of the Jyamato. They can't seem to do much to her, but they're trying. And there's a Shinmyoumaru on the loose. Crashed through (with a loud 'bDOoonk' of stone on crunchy metal impact and sent flying once more, a droolycheeked Jinako sails into a paver-cracking frontal slide in towards the bookstore, an absolute mess that parabolically crashes through some Jyamato and into the near-enough-for-shooting-action-shots range on the periphery. Coming up on her knees, with an ugly grindmark on the front and side of her hawaiian shirt and top from braking, cheeks still flushed, arms still pumped, nose bleeding slightly, Jinako Carigiri is READY for action. "I'm going to help Kamen Rider! Outta my way, extras!" She declares. Then, from her knees, she then checks her phone instead of getting up. "Huh? Enemy of humanity? Well that's not allowed either! Thankfully, I'm a master hacker!" She has been punted around only up until this point. Rising but not putting her phone away, Jinako points her hands in an index-and-thumb L fingergun and takes a casual aim while trying not to look at the arrival of KAMEN RIDER BUFFA. From the tip of her index finger, a red-gold crackle-glow develops at the point. "Try my, uh, kill process!" Jinako's glowing fingergun proves lethal as zappy spirit gun bolts fire out. Now she blushes while she looks at the REAL Kamen Rider that she's helping out! Her otaku heart soars! She's so cool!
Meika Kirenai	Vermillions's arms come up to shield her face, as the grenade gets tossed into the air- for the briefest of moments, she wishes she'd managed to bring a bat with her, as base familiarity with the object's motion and a baseball connect in the back of her mind. The thoughts fade as the mind-blanking concussive force of it actually exploding, midair, rocks her, loud and white-hot and aching and-     Asphalt crunches as she grinds her back foot's skate an inch and a half deep into its surface, cracking it further- and before she can check her surroundings, and pull up the coalesced magic for a counterattack, Silver flechettes pop the grenadier like a carnival balloon.     "Ay! Good shot! Thanks, Petr- W-wait, is that... 'Sting Silver' thing..." An awkward, mid-combat pause as Vermillion steadies herself, and properly retaliates! Flowing magic, chaotic and achingly loud, snaps from ambiently building up around her to coating a chunk of asphalt crater rubble she's digging her hands into- and serves as a vector for it when the chunk is launched searing-fast at the squad, the magic snapping and splashing out with rock fragments to stick and cling to the other Jyamato until they, too, start to pop like balloons. "I know you're- you're the other thing, but... is that what you're called? When you're like this?"     After the mid-fight aside to Petra, Chevalier Vermillion is dashing off again- the skates she wears trailing faint red scratches and mars through the air and street with every kickoff. A car-vaulting jump lets her land with what should, if her motions were in the skating rink environment they'd fit best, be met with a rasping hiss of scraped up ice. Instead, even as asphalt dust and pebbles spray, it's silent. Odette and Clover, near the Kamen rider from before, and the new and improved Polar Bear Kamen Rider, seem close enough to civilians to want to escort- and Vermillion even bothers giving the EMT a little wave- It's not particularly cheery, nothing is, when the sky rains down explosives -as she slows to a momentary halt, catching the conversation between the Riders. 'It's our job to keep them from erasing this area.'     Vermillion's gut twists, hearing words put that way. Oh. There wasn't much question in the slight similarity of heroics-roles, but that's enough for her to set her teeth. 'R... Right. Once we're in, leave treatment of the wounded to me.'     Odette's just-barely-overheard reply to the firefighter gets Vermillion to pipe up, swallowing down awkwardness and still mid-fumbling with pulling out her handgun. "It's- it's important you get there, yeah?" She scans back across the other few gathering elites, serving as slight escorts. "Stay safe and let everyone cover you, yeah? You're everyone elses safety, too. We'll break the way through."     A hesitant pause, held up with a bit of genuine discomfort at the idea crossing her mind. "Miss Odette? If- if you need to get there fast, I can thro- *Carry*," She quickly corrects, "I could carry you.." Her back foot taps on the ground, as if indicating the magic skates ever-present in her costume. To give room to consider- and because the world hasn't yet stopped exploding, she ducks aside, behind a streetside trash can, to waste some of her still precious-few bullets (and a lot of concussive bursts that aren't bullets, just force,) on the Jyamato. 'Oh...That's why you're a polar bear.'     "Mister Polar Bear..." Vermillion mumbles, half-aware, as she tries to line up a pistol shot across the way at encroaching soldiers- fully unknowing that she's echoing the terminology of that oh-so-distant pyramid's newscasts.
Petra Soroka	Petra's recognized, though it doesn't go the other way.     Petra herself is in full-body, masked armor! Though her voice isn't altered, so it's not like it's impossible to distinguish her as Petra. She doesn't even think to offer Clover a hand in getting up until she's already halfway made the motion to do it on her own, and then awkwardly drops her hand and tries to pretend that the motion was for a totally different reason. "I took - I took some mai thigh, do you think that'd help?"     Petra sounds audibly dubious, though Clover can't see her squinting through the mask. "Mai Tai? Like the cocktail? You mean, you're drunk? I guess it probably is scary, as a civilian?" "-Bear! I mean - a polar bear!" "We'll have better chances if we work together."     Petra turns around with a morphmetal spear already acculumating in her hand drop by drop at Clover's shout, expecting some bear-themed suited monster, and instead only sees a bear-themed suited human. Without letting the spear dissolve, but lowering the tip to seem less aggressive, Petra makes an uncertain sound at the polar bear Rider, looking over her shoulder in the direction of the bookstore.     "Yeah, I mean, we might have better chances if I knew what the fuck was going on? Like, I'm just here to support Lilian and stop some people from dying. I should kind of get back to that, actually, instead of 'sticking together'." "I bet if we find it, then the armed guards will go away, right? So - let's go looking for it!"     Petra hums in thought, looking between Clover and the polar bear Rider. "But didn't this bubble *just* appear? I feel like my enclosure idea is more right... but I guess they're probably being enclosed *here* for a reason. If-- *shit*--!"     A spray of explosive fire rakes across the street towards Elites, including the one that's evidently a civilian who's specifically saying she's distressed and needs help. Petra throws out a domed shield of gleaming metal to catch some of it, the semifluid surface rippling with the impacts, but-- in assuming that Clover does *not* have those lightning-fast reflexes, blocks the rest with her body itself, diving to catch Clover and roll with her so that Petra's armor is hit instead. Rather than letting go of her after the attack, Petra just lifts her up with an arm under her back and under her knees, princess-carrying. "Best place to look first for something like that would be the bookstore, since that's where the contacts are. And I'm going there, and I'm not just going to leave you to wander around, so--" "It's our job to keep them from erasing this area."     Petra, still with Clover in her arms and feeling a little bit better with Odette's approval in the corner of her vision, lets a tendril of morphmetal rap on the ground hard enough to crack asphalt to fill in for her own inability to gesture. "Well. It'd be fucking great to know how to *do* that. Is, uh," Petra doesn't know Clover's name, "Is she right about there being a, thing, or place, we have to get to?"     The tendril spears out to impale a jyamato through the chest, and Petra huffs at being unable to show off her transteam gun while her arms are occupied. "I'm Kamen Rider Sting Silver, by the way." That technically answers Yuri's question, but Petra almost never actually asks to be referred to by that name when transformed. She just feels a little bit left out, surrounded by all these other Riders with their unspoken history, and wants them to be forced to focus on her for a bit.
Petra Soroka	"You do this stuff all the time when you're not working with us?"     There comes a point where Clover's insistence that she can walk, fight, and kick on her own sways Petra into actually putting her down, letting her blast jyamato away with her transteam gun while responding to Yuri. "Well... pretty often, yeah. I mean, you've-- you've seen it, before." Petra, behind the cool-looking, silver-black armored mask, is blinking back tears because some of her messed-up mascara got in her eye and irritated it, but she can't rub it away while suited up. She's almost never seen by most people with mascara on. "I do lots of stuff."     On Parker, "She's fucking terrible. I take her out of the facility *once* and she already embarrasses me. No more of that. I've got some other, cooler agents, though. Not Shinra." Much like the animal he's based on, the rudely introduced Rider immediately charges the Dragon Rider to the opposite wall, pinning him there as he places a hand against his throat...     This is something to pay attention to. "Dragon guy and whoever the new girl is, you stick around and watch my back and I'll make sure that none of the other riders jump you. Sound fair?"     "Right!" Petra jumps to the opportunity to be recognized as a Rider and working in a team with them. Obviously, the moment Lilian interjects, she's doing whatever she's told, but this is a little fun to indulge in for a bit.     "I'm Sting Silver, by the way." Petra chatters while affixing the rifle extension to the end of her transteam gun, giving herself yet another gunblade. She fires a concussive blast at a group of jyamato, blowing them in different directions, then glances at Buffa's back. "Wait, do you mean 'watch your back' literally? I don't actually-- I'm an offworld Kamen Rider."
KNK	Rose does a quick infosphere news search for anything connecting 'erased' with words for 'a populated area' -- district, town, city...
Lilian Rook	'Are you alright?'     "You're late." says Lilian, responding to the sound of Petra's voice and nothing else. "And you look-- Well, never mind." she adds. "No one will care before long." Did she mean 'notice'? Petra is about to put on a whole suit and everything, so that would make sense.     The fact that the 'jyamato' are enclosed in this area, too, bothers her too much to focus on it. Even passing through had felt too easy. She's hearing it trickle in from the radio; that the current state is meant to contain the enemy to an area that can be disaster controlled and radio limited, but having her finger on her earpiece as she struts down the street is only making her expression harder further. "It's doing an equally good job of containing civilians." she says, both into the radio, and out loud to herself. "They aren't meant to escape?"     'Did they let us in...? But why would they...'     "The same reason there are Kamen Riders here, imbecile." Lilian mutters offhandedly at Hibiki. 'Idiot' has now fallen out of her lexicon when dealing with her. "It's not as if you'd do anything about it if you knew. Focus on what little you're good for and punch whatever walks in front of you." It's pure narrative coincidence that she breaks off on a route that converges earlier with KNK than it follows Hibiki at all.     The way she turns her back and cuts directly towards the bookstore is night to the Union Busan's day; the way she was back then, saving every harpoonist she could reach, at her own expense, against the way she carelessly leaves screaming civilians to 'the rest'. She parts with the words "Swing those fists until you die, like a good little footsoldier." Two steps later, she's accelerating too much to keep up a conversation.     Having ranks of evil goons open fire on her isn't something that she isn't in shape to treat as cold and factually as she is. Knowing that they're some sort of 'hostile to all human life' entity is all that she needs to hear to turn her brain off about it.     Lilian hurtles straight towards the first street-level rank in her way, draws Night Mist in the blink of an eye, and a backscatter of bullet fragments hit the buildings around her in the same, very loud instant. She tucks her arms in and sharply lowers her center of gravity, the tip of her sword a centimeter from the ground, and ducks under the fresh wave of fire just before the violent close of her sprint. She passes by them through a gap in the line formed of suddenly airborne bodyparts, flicks a burst of bullets away with her trailing grip, and pivots down another alley.     Flashes of hot orange light track her progress through the back streets. Jyamato on the rooftops erupt in rippling balls of flame as she goes. Lilian dashes out across the street, and airship fire minces the asphalt behind her, but then she's already disappeared again. A pair of solid gold casings and a dripping trail of red is the evidence of her passing. Fiery pulses strobe around the corner.     A few blocks down, Lilian slows down in view of the bookstore. It's a short run for her, but she's clutching her side anyways, as if for a stitch; though it's too low to actually mean she's out of breath. Winter Crow, half-loaded, is now partially visible, for having been messily reholstered and pinning her skirt against her thigh. She hesitantly removes her hand just to touch fingertips to the (hopefully) shallow cuts on her lower leg, sparking black-gold before the surface bleeding instantly stops. Her sword remains gripped in the other hand the entire time.
Lilian Rook	"Petra!" she calls out, knowing she has to be around. A name on the radio causes her to breathe in sharply. "Meika?" she adds, audibly hoping to be wrong. "There are half a million Elites already swarming the area. Ignore the plant things for now. Cover an exit. It's your turn for point, 'Sting Silver'." she says.     Now that she's deep inside the area, Lilian tries her smart device again, using the Paladins emergency handshake protocol to verify her identity before expecting Merle to pick up. She intends to go the rest of the way there on the phone, snappily introducing herself in the usual, professional way, and indicating that he needs to gather up all civilians inside near the door, unbarricade it, and hold it shut until they can all leave at once. She gives a street name to tell that she's close.
Desire Stars	My first guess is they'd be... protecting something?     "They're protecting the people outside the forcefield from the Soldier Jyamato," says the polar bear. That word implies there's a theme at play here. "The only thing they're looking for is our flag, and if they get it we're all dead. Thankfully, they're not likely to take it if Buffa plays smart. All we have to do is hold out until the helicarrier has to refuel." That must be another rider.     "Nice one," says Ryuki enthusiastically, when Clover snap kicks an oncoming jyamato.     What should we call you two?     "I'm Ryuki," the red rider with the dragon gauntlet says, to Yuri.     "Shiro." That makes sense--even if it's not the most inspired Rider name. Polar bears are white, so he's 'Shiro.' White. "I'm actually not sure why I'm a polar bear, but it seems right when you put it that way."     A giant dumpster rolls down the main street, visible from the alley, and crushes another squad as it comes through. Shiro and Ryuki share a confused glance, long and quiet following its impact with Jinako, and hers with the bookstore. They're sticking to this alley for the time being; visible from the main street but not nearly so crowded. If they can help it, the plan is to stick down the backstreets, pass circuitously around the helicarrier, and deposit the 'civilians' at the extreme edge of the Jamar Area.     The bookstore is easy enough to get into--while it may be barricaded at present, it's almost as if someone inside were expecting Shinmyoumaru's approach. An overturned table is briefly moved aside, such that the inchling can squeeze in from the gap beneath the door and make her way past the barricade.     LEITH flips her eyepatch back down, just in time for Shinmyoumaru to see that she's not missing an eye--she has one human eye, and one compound eye, red like a fly's. "The one with the wishing hammer, aye?" Says the cowgirl. "Hell of a place to get your feet wet, Sukuna-sai."     "You got this one?" asks GORO of Shinmyoumaru, jerking a thumb towards Leith. Hopefully--he's sweating, and sporting a few cuts from close calls with jyamato knives. Rose and Violet can see, from the few seconds of clarity on his video call, that Goro probably isn't going to make it out on his own, despite what he said. He might make two or three more engagements--but the numbers here just aren't going to support an unarmed man fighting his way through even if he's discreet.     Either he's too proud to admit it, or badly brainpoisoned about the value of his own life. No matter which it is, he asks the two of them, as they cut through Jyamato, "Are they good to cut and run yet?" The biggest obstacle to that is going to be that APC--it's accelerated in an effort to drive around Aidan's air wall, and as long as it's still operational, it'll demand attention. Rose's search, meanwhile, turns up nothing--which is impossible, for a city of this size. It's likely that the information is being suppressed.     Meanwhile, short man in the bowler rushes over to the barricade and pulls the table a little further back to let Ishirou in as he arrives, having spied them through the gap Leith made. MERLE beckons to the both of them in a panic. "Inside, inside! Oh, thank the Beam you're here--I see they didn't send just anyone." He awkwardly reaches for a handshake from him, a mix of starstruck and shellshocked. "Oh--one moment!"      Merle answers his phone, edging away from the hole in the wall Jinako made. "My friend Leith and I were enjoying 'soba' one minute, and the next, bang," he explains to Lilian, slamming a fist into his thigh as if she can see it. "That poor young man," babbles the short man, sweating profusely, "He and his sister were separated by that forcefield. She got out fine, but..." Merle swallows nervously. "It all happened so quickly...!"
Desire Stars	"Ah--" the street name is given. Turning to Ishirou, "It's Dame Rook! She's close by! Let's make a run for her," he says, gesturing towards the hole in the wall and hustling over there. His 'hustle' isn't terribly fast--Ishirou would probably get him to Lilian faster carrying him, honestly.
Desire Stars	Outside, Shiro and Ryuki attempt to lead Odette, Clover, Yuri and Silver through the back alleys--but there's a problem. The growl of a diesel engine has Shiro immediately press his back to a wall, motioning for Ryuki and the others to do the same. "APC," hisses Shiro, motioning for the others to get quiet and keep low profiles as it passes through the alley. The sound of loosed bricks clinking against the ground implies that the jyamato driving are forcing a square peg into a round hole, but it's not like this is their city.     Ryuki... sneezes. The APC stops, and for a heart-stopping moment, the mounted machine gun up top swivels down the alley to face them from the next block over. The gunner presses the paddles of their vine-wreathed LMG--only for the bullets to be stopped cold by the wind.     "...weird," says Shiro, uncertain of what stopped them but not intending to waste any time. "Move! We'll have to cross the street!" Unfortunately, Ryuki doesn't get to cross--because a rampaging buffalo shoulder checks him into the opposite wall.      Shiro wheels around, ready to fire, but lowers his crossbow when he sees it's Buffa. Is she right about there being a, thing, or place, we have to get to?     Shiro shakes his head. "All we have to do is make sure Buffa doesn't lose our flag. Well--all *you* have to do. I'm getting these two to safety. As long as the Jyamato don't take our flag, everything will go back to normal, and it'll be like this never happened." You. Fireman, get the civillians out of here. You're everyone else's safety, too. We'll break the way through.     "...sure," he says, nodding. "Okay, paramedic, muay thai, mahou, with me. The... fangirl made an opening for us, so let's go!!" Crossing the street is periloud--but the jyamato in front of the bookstore, between Ace's arrival and Jinako's spirit-bolts, are soundly handled, long enough for Shiro to lead Clover and Odette across.     Into the alley opposite, Odette finds someone who wasn't so lucky. Recently dead, middle aged--probably an office worker on break, if his clothes are any indication. There's no pulse, but he's still warm. Must have gotten caught on his way out of that soba place a few buildings down. "What the hell is Geats trying to pull?" Shiro muses to himself, watching the entryway while Meika works. "He can't seriously be thinking of taking on..."
Phantom Thieves	Clover, unexpectedly, gets swept up and carried. "Whoa!" Hey. Hey Sarracenia. Look at me. Look at me. I am the princess now. "Ah - heh. Wasn't expecting this!" "Uh - I think you're supposed to buy me dinner first? Or I'm supposed to buy you dinner first - I don't know how this works..." says Clover, looking flustered. > "Is she right about there being a, thing, or place, we have to get to?" > "The only thing they're looking for is our flag, and if they get it we're all dead." "Yeah, see, something important being protected." "... Um - could you put me down? I'm not... *entirely* helpless." And then Clover goes on the offensive. Maybe she should ease up - she's drawing looks. This is a bit too much for 'I took mispronounced muay thai classes at the mall'. Even out of supervillain guise, she can't resist showing off a little. To cover, Clover instead focuses on backing Petra up - making sure she's got a clear shot via callouts or kicking targets into tighter groupings. "Go get them!" And then later: "Oh wow! How'd you learn how to do that?" And other light bits of praise and encouragement to start grinding up that social link.
Ishirou	Ishirou enters the bookstore when waved in, taking a moment to shake Merle's hand and blush a little under RESCUE's mask.  "Don't worry about it, we're here to get you out and then stop whatever... this is what's happening.   'Ah--" the street name is given. Turning to Ishirou, "It's Dame Rook! She's close by! Let's make a run for her,' Ishirou moves, picking Merle up and running forward.  He's exceptionally faster than Merle, and with the address given to him and generally knowing where other Paladins are on the battlefield, he moves towards Lilian as Merle wanted first.  While his instinct would be to destroy the carrier flying over them first, securing the POI is the priority.   He avoids the main roads and sticks to the back roads to avoid the main line of the troops, and has to double back a few times or throw his back to the street to cover Merle and protect him while taking damage instead from the gunfire.  During this, he's throwing attacks from POD.  Large beams of energy fly out as he has to face down the main roads and use the beams to clear the way toward Lilian herself.   Once there, he sets Merle down in front of Lilian.
Desire Stars	On the main street, Ace smiles as Jinako's spirit bolts do their trick. Several more squads of approaching Jyamato approach. "Let's sweep away the old world and usher in the new one," he says, placing himself between them and the two civilians as he procures a white greeble. It's not his 'ace up the sleeve.' Rather, this one looks like the cylinder of a revolver, with the chambers outlined in red, resembling magatama prayer beads.                                   Set! MAGNUM!                                       Ace inserts the Magnum Buckle and turns to the left, his right hand swept in a circle and held before his downturned face like a performer reaching for the brim of his hat. With one knee slightly bent, he turns his head to the right, facing the oncoming Jyamato, extends his hand, and snaps his fingers, activating the Buckle with his other hand. "Henshin."      The same black underarmor as Buffa and Shiro appears--but his helmet is white and red, a fox. MAGNUM! calls a bass voice, as a hardlight crosshair appears beside him, with the same word displayed at its center in red. A hardlight manipulator arm pulls a white breastplate and gauntlets over his plain black armor, the neckline of the breastplate displaying that same revolver-magatama motif.      The front line of Jyamato charge in, surrounding and encircling Geats with combat knives. "So... it's like that?" A white handcannon with a red charging bolt at the back rests comfortably in his hand. "Still," he says, as one directly behind him strikes, shifting his head and avoiding the stabbing knife by inches. "Not good enough," he opines, angling it behind him and pulling the trigger, blowing the offending Jyamato away. He leaps backwards, soaring high into the air, a white-red scarf billowing dramatically behind him as he pulls the charging bolt.                                   BULLET CHARGE!                                        His finger feathering the trigger, Geats rains explosive blasts down on the Jyamato which encircled him just a moment before, and on the amassed troops behind, sending them scattering for cover. Landing, he retrieves his 'ace,' the metallic red BOOST BUCKLE. Holding it up to his armor's faceplate, he kisses it, before inserting it and revving the motorcycle-like accelerator on the side.                           Set! DUAL ON! Get Ready For...                                                         BOOST! & MAGNUM!                                      The same manipulator arm from before pulls red greaves and sabatons onto him, the sabatons sporting exhaust pipes exactly like the Boostriker's. Revving the accelerator again, Geats sends a gout of flame rocketing from the side of his Driver, before taking off with an ear-popping crack. Rocket powered kicks crash into Jyamato like a moving truck, sending them flying so quickly and so fast as to crater concrete walls and crash through windows. His gunplay is maintained through this assault and sometimes even mid-kick, until the crowd is gone.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"At least I'm not standing in the garbage," Shinmyoumaru replies to BB, which is technically true as she's standing on the rim of the Dumpster. "But suit yourself!" Shinmyoumaru *may* accidentally have rammed into Jinako. Oops. Fortunately she seems... okay? Okay-ish? And either way, Shinmyoumaru doesn't really have the attention to spare for her, for two reasons. Surprisingly, the less urgent one is that she hears shots spang against the side of the Dumpster, and it vibrates under her feet as it starts to get holes smashed through it - though the vibration could be bumps in the road too, as the rattling of the overloaded trash container is getting pretty intense. Because, increasingly urgently, Shinmyoumaru is learning something. Normally what she pushes around is her enchanted rice bowl, and she's really good at that! But there's one critical difference with steering a giant Dumpster around the streets of Tokyo: Dumpsters don't float in the air. They do not hover, glide, or drift. They have weight, and so they have momentum. And now that she's got it going, it is increasingly hard to steer... or stop. Shinmyoumaru is not entirely sure how she's going to stop once she gets to the bookstore. Jabbing her needle into the ground seems like a good way to get thrown. Well, there's one way. "Be little!" The Dumpster rather abruptly becomes its normal size - wait, less than that, as it shrinks down until Shinmyoumaru has one foot on each side's rim and is really working to balance without putting her foot on trash, the whole thing no larger than a wagon. Maybe less. NOW it's light, and the next time it hits a bump it launches into the air, gets about ten feet of air distance, and slams into the wall of the store next to the bookstore. Which it doesn't break, because it's barely a handful of pounds at this point. The shrunken Dumpster breaks instead, practically folding in half and scattering miniscule trash (and Shinmyoumaru) all over the sidewalk - but Shinmyoumaru manages to tumble with it so she lands on her feet, more or less. Her knees, at least, and bruised, but alive, and it's like they say: any crash you can walk away from is a good crash. "Ta-daa," she says - but quietly. A few moments later, and Shinmyoumaru has found the tiny entrance in the barricade; she slips in, no bigger than a mouse, and returns herself to her more 'normal' four-foot size when she's inside so she can actually talk to Leith and the others without having to wave to get their attention.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	"Hi!" she says, brightly. There's more people coming in, too; Ishirou at first, who she looks up at for a moment before turning back, but keeping on eye on *everyone* who comes in. "That's me. I can give, um... probably just one person a ride, so - yes! I've got her." She can certainly get Leith out, and apparently other people know (or at least have contacts with) some of the others. Shinmyoumaru pulls out a rice bowl from up her sleeve. It's a nice rice bowl, at least; black, with some gold patterning on it, complete with lid. Shinmyoumaru takes the lid off and lets it expand to the point that she can wear it as a slightly angled hat - which she does. "Let's get outside. And you can stay in the bowl," Shinmyoumaru says to Liath, before looking at the others. "Can you help them? I can't really steer it if it's big enough for more than, like... me and one other." Shinmyoumaru opens the door, sets the bowl down, and expands it to the point that it's a coracle - a small round boat. It's a tight fit for two humans, but even enlarged, Shinmyoumaru is only about four feet tall and so it's at least a little more comfortable; it also has high sides, so that Liath can use it as cover. Once she's in, Shinmyoumaru pushes off! She's a much better... sailor? Rafter? in this than she ever was on the Dumpster; she makes good time and has pinpoint precision, turning sharply with a spray of phantom water as the 'boat' 'floats' in the river of the air. And as she goes, Shinmyoumaru clears a path. No Mallet this time; Shinmyoumaru just uses a sweep of her hand, emitting a ring of dozens of little energy bolts that spread away from her in all directions, repeatedly. Ring after ring... The rings are 'anchored' by larger spheres, which slow down and drift erratically if you get too close, so the way to avoid them more easily is to be brave and dodge through the gaps this leaves without getting tagged by the slower, bigger energy balls. She doesn't think the Jyamoto are smart enough to figure this out.
BB	It doesn't matter if the last second was terrible if the next second contains sweet victory. It can be fine to try a bitter or spicy snack if there's sweet cola and a favorite candy ready at hand. And as she bounces and deflects off the earth and rolls into frame with some of the great heroes of the world, Jinako's eyes widen behind her cracked glasses. There's another one. And another. It's like the myths of Japan, where when a big enough giant floating land-threatening object in the sky and a rain of strange humanity-hating enemies appear that masked heroes will arive to defend the people. It's like the great guardian spirits of Tokyo have come to life, with the inchlings, and the incredible Elites besides, and she doesn't have time for a photo or an autograph or to ask about moves or or or or or!!!!! Jinako can play it cool while lifting her hand from aiming to 'cool down', trying to sweep her eyes 'coolly' and mostly doing a normal sweep of her eyes with a smug face under a cracked glasses lens. Her invincibility of fangushing, of immediately breaking from firing fingergun blasts to help to watch Sting Silver do her own special attack, is lit by the bitter moment of being summarized callously. '-the fangirl-' "Hey. . ." Jinako pouts, not sure how to feel about shooting literal magic bolts from her hands at humanity-hating enemies and getting a rude moniker, but, she also doesn't know what to expect and so poutingly doormats instead. A sad, deflated nasal 'awwwwhn' escapes around her again, but before she even has more than a few moments to get mad or struggle with a Jyamato that jumps her, something *really cool* happens. One of the 'civilians' once again: turns out to be Kamen Rider. And this one is the slickest of them all, immediately deflecting a whole crowd of onrushing knife Jyamato with slick shootingwork, leaving the humble pointer finger of Jinako truly shamed in every gamer statistical way. And it's beautiful. Free and unmagiced hand to cheek, Jinako beholds the latest Rider rush into battle, and hops to her feet. "I'm *not* a fangirl! I'm--" An otaku isn't better. The truth is very weird. "--a wwwitch!" Is that better? "-and I'm here to help you!" Not even 'get out of here'. She's a little frothingly overstimulated, but, noticing the opening, rushes towards her own created hole, actually seeing the straight path to guide the people away from danger and let the Riders work! It also puts Jinako in the perfect position to look at Riders doing sweet kicks. But that's totally not her *top* priority. The humans are important too!
Angela	"Well--yeah, though usually--like, a lot of the time we worked together it was because we got pulled into it or it was following up something we got pulled into or it was because you knew someone involved. This time you're just helping people you don't know. It's cool." Yuri tries her best to explain her reason for bringing this up in the first place, though it might just be her attempting to make communication. She might have a rich interior life but she keeps a pretty firm grip on it. Yuri nods to Ryuki, then again to Shiro. "I'm not knocking it, polar bears are cool." Yuri says. "Nice to meetcha, Shiro. I have an ice spear because I keep a cool head--heh" Yuri shakes her head. "Nah, I just got lucky in a duel." A dumpster rolls down the main street. Yuri raises an eyebrow, "Now that's not something you see every day. Good to see you out here, Kamen Rider Sting Silver. I'm Kamen Rider Yuri Ice." "That's not how it works, you can't just say you're a kamen rider, Yuri!" Hod protests. "Oh, nah? Sorry. Uh. Just Yuri." Yuri falls in with the group rather than chasing off to take point or anything. She seems inclined to stick close to Odette-- --but she wasn't actually expecting Odette to find a corpse... "Ah fuck..." Yuri crouches down. "Doesn't seem alive to me but I'm not really an expert--" She only has one ampule so she has to rely on Odette here--or really--she doesn't think there's a real option to help the man. "Ressurection's expensive..." ''We've still got time.'' Yuri blinks in surprise. "Shit, really? Figured you'd need a facility for something like this." She nods once. "Arright, I'll cover for ya." She holds the HP Ampule in her free hand. "I got some healing chemical shit on me, but it's only good for one use." Yuri explains. Any jyamato that threatens Odette's work is gonna get a spear, but otherwise she's just there to protect her and give her the time and space she needs to save a man's life. Which does feel kind of good really.
Hibiki Tachibana	It's not as if you'd do anything about it if you knew. Focus on what little you're good for and punch whatever walks in front of you.     Swing those fists until you die, like a good little footsoldier.     "I don't have any plans to! Just go do what /you're/ good at already instead of screwing around with me! Neither of us have time for it!" Of course, by the time Hibiki is shouting this back to Lilian, they're both taking their own paths, so it's a mostly moot retort to make in a moment of lost patience while getting shot from all directions.     Of course, Hibiki is Hibiki, so it's not in her to just brush off even an offhand comment like that without being affected at all. Although both of their ultimate destinations are ensuring everyone can evacuate from the bookstore, the Symphogear user is the one who remains in the thick of it - and that also means a lapse in focus hurts.     A lot. One of the ground Jyamato catches her with a stray shot, and it leaves her open and in place long enough for one of those aerial barrages to descend on her position and engulf her in a hail of high-budget explosions and shockwaves. "Agh--!"     In the midst of the cloud of dust and general destruction raining down, she takes notice that the bookstore is getting opened up, and people are beginning to shuffle out-- and also, there's someone else at the end of the street. What in the world is that guy...?     Set! MAGNUM!     Part of her understands instantly - and so her body moves before her mind, breaching out of the suppressive fire to throw herself knee-first into the closest Jyamato, sending it toppling head over heels. "Whatever's going on here, with the Jyamato and all these Kamen Riders--" She pushes off to go elbow-first into the next one, leaving others in her wake to get caught up in their own airship's attacks.     "--I'm not just standing around!" Thrusters fire, and when her fist collides with another trooper, she uses its body like a battering ram crumpled by the gut at her fist to plow through the rest of his platoon, just to kick into a spin to send him flying off and away. Like she's gotten a second wind, she's blurring between squadrons of Jyamato littering the roads and sending them scattering every which way in a storm of bludgeoning force.     It's not close to as flashy as Geats' performance though, even if effective-- and as the tide finally begins dying down, she skids to a heaving and panting stop out of her movement to first ensure there are no civilians still lagging behind, and then towards the white-and-red Kamen Rider some distance away.     "...This guy... he looks totally used to this..."     Her head tilts upwards to the ship still filling the sky. Her fist tightens up, and she bunkers down as if getting ready to jump. "...Hah... but now we gotta do something about that thing, don't we...?"
Odette Raskins	"If you need us to slow down to pick someone up, Odette--let us know alright? I'm gonna be focusing on fighting a lot so I might not see if someone needs help." "I hope there aren't, but if there's any on the way... W-will do, Miss Yuri!" Odette calls out in response to Yuri, slowing down briefly to duck her head down and take a quick look around. In all her haste to not get shot, she's only now remembering to take a look around for the wounded or dead! Thankfully, the Jyamato exploding means she probably doesn't have to worry about confusing them with civilians! She just has to worry about the the sheer quantity of explosions going on all over the place instead. Unlike Jinako, Odette can't even get her head into the 'cool, Masked Heroes!' state, and she's still freaking out a fair bit even with so many reliable fighters nearby.  Seeing Vermillion skating on nearby, the EMT brings a hand up in a quick wave and cap-hold to keep it from blowing away in the wake of another explosion, then looks over when she hears Vermillion speaking. "Miss Odette? If- if you need to get there fast, I can thro- *Carry*," "I could carry you.." Luckily for her, Odette doesn't actually catch the flub and the following correction. It might not seem like she missed it at first, though, as- "That's not a bad idea, but..." Is that apprehension? Not if the quick nod that follows is any indication. "If it's not any trouble! And if we find anyone hurt, then that'll help us find 'em sooner! Er. Th-them." After taking a moment to suppress that, she adjusts course to join Vermillion, standing around awkwardly as she's not sure how to best stand to get carried by someone. Should Odette be climbing over her shoulder? Jumping/falling back to get picked up? Holding her arms out to her sides? However it goes, Odette's careful to keep herself relatively still, trying not to disrupt Vermillion's movement too much. Depending on how quickly Vermillion moves, though, Odette might still end up screaming quite a bit. It'll be pretty obvious within seconds that she's not a fan of heights or fast movement, although she's surprisingly decent at going dead-still (if it's not just a survival instinct). When the APC turns that gun towards them, though, she has only a moment to process way too much in her head.
Odette Raskins	Did she move too slowly and blow their cover?! Did she somehow sneeze without realizing it?! By the time she realizes that it was actually Ryuuki sneezing, she's already in mid-yelp and getting hoisted by Vermillion, stammering out several confused noises while staring in confusion as Aidan's wind wall keep the bullets from tearing right into her. She's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she's not about to tell Meika to let her down. Just holding on for dear life, she doesn't even look down after hearing something slamming Ryuki into a wall. It's only when Shiro turns with that crossbow and doesn't fire that she realizes it might be safe to look, opening on eye slowly to realize another Rider's arrived in the form of- "Buffa? What a cute name..." Odette murmurs to herself in a brief moment of calm (screaming in transit notwithstanding), then takes some time to breathe as Shiro provides more much-needed direction. "Opening... Fangirl? R-right! Every second counts!" She murmurs, still not fully understanding what's going on and only loosely recognizing that Jinako's alright somehow with strange displays of physics she can't comprehend yet. Despite all that, Odette still has enough sense to keep her eyes on what actually needs to be done: Finding and treating the injured and dead. Spotting that dead man in the alley, Odette breaks into a sprint and practically slides over to get to him a moment sooner, already unzipping her duffel bag in one smooth pull and twist of the arm to get it opened up. One hand goes to check the man's pulse, and the other pulls a small scanner out of her bag to start waving it over the man to start identifying where his injuries are. "... Shit. No pulse. Temperature's... Not cold yet. We've still got time. Thanks, Vermillion! Thanks, Yuri!" Odette states, swallowing once while trying to sound calm and collected as she drops her bag next to him and opens it up entirely to reveal a whole pile of syringes, bottles, and assorted tools for field triage. She eyes the HP Ampoule briefly, then turns back to the body and her pile of stuff. "Next time. I'll need some time to.. Figure those out next time. Gotta close these up, stabilize, then shock and..." It sounds more like Odette's talking to herself rather than Yuri or anyone else the more she speaks and trails off. She's already focusing entirely on trying to revive the man with a combination of chemical injections, wound stitching and bandaging to put as much of his body back together as she can on short notice, and a generous application of shocks and CPR.
Aidan Proudpick	Just. Do. Something. Do something. The APC. The windwall flexes with the sudden force, and Aidan tries to layer on another. And another. Bullets hit the layered wind, like ballistics gel, they slide through, slowing down until bullets rain down to the ground, harmless. A moment. A breathless moment, just watching. He did that. And he's always done that. He could always do that. Fear recedes, drifting back towards where it sits among the Visages of the Holy Trinity Of Aidan's personal Self Esteem issues like a coiled snake. Another full tilt run to get underneath the APC, then simply aim himself upward. Say something. Fuck, no, it would be dumb. There are so many people watching. Blessed breeze, I want to be like one of them so bad, though. His radio updates with a bit of tracking, and Aidan swivels his head up, skipping back with an easy push to put him lined up with Rose's tracking. Self Esteem relents, but only a degree. Aidan mutters the quietest attack shout known to man, whispering the first thing that comes into his mind. "Comet Ender." The shield roars into the sky, pushing aside air, calling gravity a bitch and friction a coward. Energy swirls around it, a curtain of force pushes aside it can do the only thing it is meant to do. Shockwaves thrum out from around it, a growing whisper of rattling air. It builds, each quiver of air becoming louder as the Aegis batters it out of the way. Where as Aidan can't bring himself to shout a mighty attack name in the face of watchers, the Aegis has no such compunction. THWOOOM A crack of the sound barrier as Aidan and his shield hurtle into the side of the APC, the Aegis hungry to simply plow through to the other side and continue on for eternity.
Meika Kirenai	'All we have to do is make sure Buffa doesn't lose our flag.'     "... Flag? Like- like 'capture the flag'? Or is that some sort of- of military thing..?" A pause, and then in a more hopeful tone, "Go back to- will people get better, too? If they're hurt? Does it actually-"     She cuts her own words off by biting the inside of her lip. Don't hope for that much. What's it matter? If it does, nobody would be fighting like this, right? And if it doesn't... A short cough, and she relaxes, just a bit. "Doesn't matter, right? Nevermind. Um. Good luck." 'I'm *not* a fangirl! I'm--' '--a wwwitch!'     Vermillion stares, confused, at Jinako, across the way. Are witches all odd? The only other one she knows is, and she's plotting two points to draw a little line, at least between behavior that's confusing, to her. It's not something to waste too much time pondering, though- she's helping, it'd be bad for Vermillion to avoid that just to rubberneck. <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "Miss Vermillion? That's not a bad idea, but..." <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins pauses for just long enough to make it potentially awkward, then says, "If it's not any trouble! And if we find anyone hurt, then that'll help us find 'em sooner! Er. Th-them." <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai says, to Odette, "... What's the 'but'?" <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "The 'but'...? Oh! Um. I mean, I might be a little heavy, so..." Pause, then she adds hastily "... B-because of the gear!" <J-IC-Scene> Meika Kirenai says, "Heavy? Oh." A pause. "Won't be an issue."     Vermillion pauses for a second, not quite sure how to actually carry someone who isn't unconscious or otherwise resisting help- back of the shirtcollar works one-handed, safe enough. Awkwardly, she sticks out an arm, bent at the elbow, pauses, retracts it, and just crouches down to scoop her up onto her shoulder, like a crate. No matter the gear, the motion is unsettlingly effortless- as if any strain or exerting exhale is added in just for it to make more sense. Odette gets the sense it might still be this easy if what she was hoisting was a car, or heavier.     "See? What'd I tell you-" The magical girl goes dead-silent even before the APC lumbers into view- the echoing presence of it alone shooting fear down her limbs. Nigh motionless, the metal-clad arm Vermillion stabilizes the EMT on her shoulder with squeezes tighter, unconsciously. How fast can that gun turn-     It freezes, shouts to move, and keep going echo out, and Vermillion whispers a quiet "Hold on..." nearly the same moment she kicks off. The magical girl doesn't 'fly' in the way stylized cartoons and action heroes do- that's evident with the forces involved. Instead, it's as if every surface (or empty space she treats as one) is perfectly solid and frictionless- so each change of direction comes with harsh jolts or smoot but disorienting helices, as Vermillion ascends up and out of the hunkered down area, over the street, and dives towards the alley across the way even as chaos and bullets still flit through the air-
Meika Kirenai	-Where she immediately skids to a halt, at Odette's noticing of the not so lucky civilian. She ungracefully (and effectively making good on her previous word bumbling) tosses the EMT off her shoulder, spinning around to cover with her still-held handgun. "If- if you need another pair of hands, Miss, I can help, okay?" 'Meika?'     Standing there in the alleyway, Vermillion flinches as she hears Lilian's distant words. Oh. Her hands rest against a building's wall, focusing around herself for approaching soldiers- and as it touches, it f-f-flickers, in tandem with the gut ache that flares up as she processes the Dame Commander's tone. I should've been quieter. In and out and maybe she'd never have to- Eyes squeeze shut. She doesn't need them to keep watch. This is a *fight*. Why *that* name..? I'm not- 'Doesn't seem alive to me but I'm not really an expert--'     "They're *erasing* people. Does that person look erased?" She snaps, again, incorrectly misattributing the behavior of Temptations to the enemies here. Sometimes, corpses don't just look like evaporating dust. "... Good luck." She whispers, Odette's way, tone softer than the frustrated worry that came before it, silently mouthing out a short prayer.
KNK	Violet is very, very sneaky. The way she simply pops into view at the bookstore suggests that long, trailing scarves in her namesake color don't interfere with being a ninja, after all. She may be a little more shaken up from the constant shelling, but it's not enough to show on her, or to sound in her voice. "Hey~ I'm here. Let's get everyone out of here, alright? Oh, whoops, we just have to wait for the signal."     With or without an invitation, she heads right in, giving a little wave to Ishirou, a smile to Lilian, and only afterward focusing on Goro.     "Hey, you sure you...?" after a moment's thought, "...need to make for a second exit? We can just take the same one. Less trouble all around, and split after. Oh, you got some cuts. You got bandages for that?"     She doesn't, herself. Weight's a premium, at her acceleration. Violet pats where a thigh holster or hip bag would be, if she had either. The sound really does resemble that of gloves on skin.     "Maybe she does?" gesturing to Lilian, "or... huh, wasn't there a medic nearby? Well, it's not that big a deal, probably! Anyhow, let's get ready to go on the signal." She pats Goro's back as if he'd already agreed.     Outside, Rose is setting up, after putting aside her (most recent) frustration with the Internet. Pulling another squat mass of metal from her pack, she unfolds it into a little spider-limbed, center-wheeled drone to send zipping outside, up the building on the opposite side of the street, and digs its spikey limbs into the walls to have a look around. The camera itself is the most useful to her, but the gun barrel that folds around and into place, hiding the drum magazine underneath it, is what lets it set up a killzone together with her.     In her own body (not thinking too deeply about how literally the drones form an extension thereof), Rose angles her favorite fuck-off-sized rifle out a barely opened window. She's less concerned with the street level, knowing that her bot will tag targets that somehow aren't picked off by other elites. She's focusing on more distant points, engaging in several layers of redundant caution by aiming down her scope at every place where she'd sit to snipe someone using this particular street for a getaway, then zooming out to spot the more obviously situated enemies.     The rifle's retort is loud. There's no way around that. Like lightning, the impact occurs before the sound can reach a target's ears.     "Move."     Elsewhere, "Alright! Let's go!"     Another breaching charge will already be in place, ready to go, by the time evacuees reach it.
Dark Horses	KEIWA SAKURAI looks at Ace as he puts an arm around his shoulder, the gears in his head turning as he tries to figure out an answer. Should he say no for Neon? She clearly doesn't like it... But then he'd be talking to some random internet celeb, and he really doesn't want to be associated with that kind of culture... Apologies to his sister, who can't hear this.      It's a rather similar situation if he did say he had a shot as well, so honestly, the only winning move for him to do is to just awkwardly laugh until he can quietly slip out from his grasp.      KAMEN RIDER BUFFA meanwhile, just places his forehead in his hand for a bit as he thinks.      "Kamen Rider Sting Silver? Seems like a bit of a mouthful, honestly. Pffft. Probably why you don't go for the full title."      That's honestly the least important thing he could be thinking about, but his mind did briefly go to the fact that the people he's working with don't know the full stakes or have any sort of team cohesion. It was immediately chucked out however, as he's already stressed enough as is.      The stress only mounts higher as he finally sees Geats off in the distance. Great. The round is almost over. He once again clicks his tongue and turns around, ignoring his fellow riders as he begins running off.      "Change of plans. You're on your own. Or you can follow me. I don't care."      Is he breaking a promise he just made? Sort of. He however, isn't breaking it to really screw them over, more than he is to salvage an increasingly dire situation. He's also still giving them the chance to follow, so really, he didn't do anything wrong.      With that rationalization out of the way, Buffa immediately begins looking for civilians of his own. There's got to be at least one left...      He finds what he's looking for in the bookstore. A lone man. He looks dangerousthe kind of guy who does the same work he does.      Buffa, despite knowing this, doesn't care. He simply grabs Goro by the arm, using his superior strength to pull the man towards him as he begins ushering him out.      "Make this easy for me or I'll just knock you out. Choice is yours."
Petra Soroka	"This time you're just helping people you don't know. It's cool."     "Well, I mean, Lilian told me to come," Petra loses track of what she's saying mid-sentence when distracted by the presence of the APV and trails off for a few seconds before emphatically shaking her head and adding, "On this mission. With her. I'm not a hero. You know that." <J-IC-Scene> BB | Jinako Carigiri says, equally as frothy as for Ryuki and Buffa for Sting Silver, an echoing "Yeah!" and then a sotto voice 'the *lady* rider noticed me!!' and a somehow sotto elephant toot. Toot volume: 2/10. "Oh wow! How'd you learn how to do that?" <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins audibly flinches at Petra, then says "S-sorry! It's just how I was taught, so..."     Petra is being absolutely spoiled by recognition. Preening under the praise, spurred on to show off with martial and morphmetal tricks to take down swathes of jyamoto, Petra handily takes on the duties of finishing off clusters of enemies that Clover bundles up, sniping at soldiers that try to ambush Buffa for his flag (sniping both with her array of guns, and with morphmetal, taking the hit to efficiency to occasionally make a presentation of sending a jyamoto into an explosive meltdown with a single, precisely aimed flechette curving through the air), and otherwise providing the brute muscle of the group. "Petra!"     Petra is already running around a corner, the moment she became aware of where Lilian was, skidding and using her calf-repulsors to redirect at a sharp ninety degree angle to close the distance without losing momentum. Before even being called for, Lilian slowing down and being hurt is enough cause to abandon her previous task with so little warning that she barely communicates an 'oh--! Lilian--!' before bolting away, regardless of Buffa's flag. Petra stumbles to a halt beside her, discorporated swarm of quicksilver trailing far behind her in the air to try to catch up. "It's your turn for point, 'Sting Silver'."     "Yes! Yup! I can!" Sting Silver's head bobs up and down in a fervent nod, even more single-mindedly eager to follow through on orders than usual, in this state of mind. Petra falls easily into the bodyguard role, flattening morphmetal into a reflective sheet to pull a group of ratbots out from where Qetra stores them, each equipped with some sort of clunky weapon that it floats with effortlessly. The point of spreading out the small bots is less to take out higher numbers of jyamoto, and more to harry them back with laser fire and buzzsaw-prodding, adding an exterior layer of defense before even getting to the metal barriers Petra can throw up.     Explaining aside to Lilian while she's organizing the civilians, since she remembers how Lilian found the original ratbot cute, "I gave Pence away as a gift to a kid, a little bit ago, and with, um, Quicknest, I figured I might as well start producing a bunch more. So I took a page out of Doctor Eggman's book and started just, like, giving them weapons. They're cute, though-- that's why, you know; I showed you the flag?"
Petra Soroka	Between the ratbots, Petra's morphmetal barriers, and her own ability to be shot or crumple the shooter into a little ball, Petra circles the cluster of civilians and Merle that Lilian is guiding out of the enclosed area, keeping watch on both ends of an alleyway, and the rooftops above for good measure. Her own suit is meant to take the stray shots that make it through, barely even flinching besides the spray of sparks. Having so easily abandoned all the other Kamen Riders the moment Lilian called for her, Geats himself is reinterpreted as a kind of ambient environmental effect that coincidentally is useful for completing the task Lilian gave Petra. It's only when the civilians are nearly out of view of Geats again, hidden in the alleyways, that Petra looks back and vaguely connects his armor to the 'Fox' mentioned earlier, and filed him away as notable.     The APC is being blasted around by everyone, but it's durable enough that even the scattered efforts of multiple Elites leaves it as a threat. When Aidan slams into the side of the vehicle, Petra slips a pool of quicksilver beneath it like a hydrophobic river across the street. Without waiting for Aidan to *stop* charging into it, the morphmetal collects into a shivering lump between the wheels of the APC, situated under its belly, then slams upwards into a spike precisely aimed at where its fuel tank should be. The force alone throws the vehicle up into the air before the fireball has a chance to bloom fully, maybe even giving Aidan a short window to get away from it, in her infinite generosity.
Lilian Rook	Merle reminds Lilian of the little pleasures of working with non-Elite Paladins. People who are smart enough to work for 'the right side', and normal enough to have some consideration for their fucking lives. Being received with confidence and appreciation, responded to promptly, obeyed to the best of someone's ability, and trusted implicitly, does a lot for her; the passive tension of uncertainty etched into every single ligament, gets a reason to leave.     "Good. We're right on time." she says, allowing herself to smile at the corners of her lips seeing Ishirou hauling someone over like that. "Well, there's room for improvement, but seeing as we have the objective in-hand, we'll save that for later." The attitude doesn't match how she feels, but it goes over well with groups in a state of panic. What might seem condescending to those trying their best comes as reassuring to those who don't know what to do. "That said, there are an unusual number of Kamen Riders already in the area. I haven't known them to . . ." Lilian fails the roll for a better word. "Swarm like this. Perhaps you'd all have been safe already, but I don't like how contrived this feels."     What Rose hotmics into the broadband mirrors something else she was thinking. Lilian glances halfway to Ishirou. "Come to think of it, how did word get to dispatch anyways? I was only able to connect once I was inside."     'Maybe she does?'     Somehow, Lilian knows exactly who 'she' is supposed to mean; or has very misguided reflexes, at least. Looking back to see Violet, the little squeeze that settles into her body isn't quite as hard to see as the first time. "I do." she says, warily, already reaching for something the size of a syringe case on reflex (and in fact containing a small auto, amongst other things). "It's just a little Paladins standard issue . . . But why did you expect . . . ?" Somehow, Lilian isn't sure how to finish her question; or what it even is. "Of all the people here?" She chooses to glance away to Goro instead. "Who is he?" she asks, then shakes her head lightly. "I suppose it doesn't matter.     Goro doesn't get to argue about it. Using her gifts hurts a little bit as she is now, but Lilian has time to apply topical sealants, painkillers, and biological grafting scaffolds, walking away while closing up a cap.     Regardless, just because she'd asked (ordered) Petra to stand up front (admittedly, her legendary durability doesn't translate well to escort) doesn't mean she doesn't intend to help. Keeping her head up as a Paladins professional means working together and looking good about it, not running off in search of mysteries and petty rivalries. She moves, ideally, in a triangle with at least Ishirou (given it's his job) with their given civilians-- and any along the way-- at the center, warding off jyamato with preemptive gunshots and swift deflections, kicking away grenades and covering empty space with genuine omnipresence. The explosion of the APC compels her to--     "Why are these dim creatures dressed up and equipped as military?" LIlian asks Petra. "Did any of your new little friends say something? I'd understand if they had some sort of interdimensional plastic taxi cab, but this is just weaponry; ordinary and serious."     'I gave Pence away as a gift to a kid, a little bit ago, and with, um, Quicknest, I figured I might as well start producing a bunch more.'     That gets through just enough for Lilian to slow and say "Oh. That's a shame. I think originals are sort of special." offhandedly enough to be unquestionably sincere. "At least you're getting by well."
Desire Stars	Merle, to his credit, doesn't freak out when Ishirou picks him up, even if he does cover his eyes with both hands when the beams start flying. "Oh, bless you, Ishirou-sai, Lilian-sai," Merle profusely thanks the both of them. Yes! I've got her.     Goro isn't the type to say 'what a relief,' even if it's written on his face despite his efforts to conceal it.     "Thankee-sai," says Leith to Shinmyoumaru. "The bowl's just fine with me." She's at least a little more useful in danger than Merle is, and, squinting her human eye shut, can guide Shinmyoumaru away from the most thickly patrolled areas--once, even away from a shelling, though this seems to be her limit, given the way she rubs her temple in pain and puts the eyepatch back on.     For her part, Shinmyoumaru is kind of correct about the Jyamato--the rank and file aren't that smart at all, and need the much more limited-in-number commander-types to be truly effective in more than just application of brute force. Between her own experience in weaving between projectiles and Leith's foresight, the two of them can get out and to the nearest boundary wall mostly unscathed. You got bandages for that?      "Bandages..." He doesn't have any bandages. Everything happened so quickly that he doesn't seem to realize what he's being asked, for a moment. "No. No bandages." It's just a little Paladins standard issue . . . But why did you expect . . . ?      "...Thanks." Who is he? "Goro Yura," he says, with a polite little bow that's very at odds with his appearance and the bruises on his knuckles. "Bodyguard and chauffeur." Ah, so it's like that. The pat on his back from Violet helps, a little. Buffa's entry (and forceful manner) are enough to stir him from his adrenaline come-down, with a nod. Make this easy for me or I'll just knock you out. Choice is yours.      "Right. Let's go."      Rose and Violet aren't players--but the proximity to Buffa is enough to pick up a little more of what's going on. When the buffalo-themed Rider assists in escorting Goro to the nearest wall of the Jamar Area, there is a pleasant ding, and a notification from a specialized, hardened cell phone that plays once Goro is safely on the other side of the hole made by those breaching charges.
Desire Stars	SECRET MISSION CLEAR!                                    Buffa's phone displays a score leaderboard, placing him in first place for clearing "ESCORT MULTIVERSAL ASSET." Perhaps you'd all have been safe already, but I don't like how contrived this feels.      While Merle isn't by any means a combat-capable Paladins asset, he wasn't chosen for his position for no reason. He frowns, holding his bowler in both hands and squeezing the brim nervously. "It is... a bit strange, isn't it? The 'Puter Girl," he says, probably referring to the 'streamer' Goro mentioned to Rose, "She couldn't reach any of her people. But Goro-sai and Lethe-sai, and I, we could all reach *you.*" He chews his lower lip. "I'm just very glad you came."
Desire Stars	I'm *not* a fangirl! I'm--a wwwitch! And I'm here to help you! I'll need some space. Gotta close these up, stabilize, then shock and...     "No worries. Take your time. I'd say I'll cover you, but Geats and the 'witch' are doing a pretty good job keeping eyes off of us." Indeed, whatever Geats didn't get with his seemingly reckless assault is mopped up by Jinako, swiftly and decisively. Still--Shiro keeps himself pressed to the wall, on the lookout, energy crossbow at the ready.     When Odette's efforts prove successful, the middle-aged officer worker utters a coughing sputter. It does draw the attention of a Jyamato sniper--but Shiro puts the sniper away with a well-placed green bolt of energy. Flag? Like- like 'capture the flag'?      Shiro nods, but whatever he says in response is drowned out by the crack from Aidan's attack on the APC.      Aidan's shield, and him behind it, crash into the APC with a sound of rent metal, the armored plating dimpling as wood and leaves fly from its exterior. Lifted off of its wheels, the gunner is the first to suffer, flung from their seat and hurled into a wall so hard they explode, leaving a person-sized cavity in the brick wall of the neighboring building. There is a momentary sound of those inside being rattled around, striking the interior with loud thumps, before the vehicle crashes into what's left of the building the gunner impacted.      Aidan has moments to escape before the vehicle is buried under a mountain of dislodged bricks.
Desire Stars	Following the crack of Rose's immense rifle, a section of brick is then cored, the singular brick then crumpling to pieces and sliding down the exposed portion of the APC. What's left in its wake is a hole, from which can be heard a last-gasp cry of 'Jaaa.' Something acrid fills the air--the shot also seems to have pierced whatever counts as the vehicle's fuel tank.      Petra's morphmetal spike then pierces it a second time, and that's curtains for the vehicle--a massive fireball envelops it with scarcely a moment for Aidan to escape (or otherwise take shelter behind his shield), all but vaporizing the bricks which moments ago buried it.      The moment of quiet that lasts afterwards is just long enough for Silver, Yuri, and Meika to hear a notification from Shiro's phone. SCORE UP, it announces, causing him to check it. "Can't win them all, I guess," he says, sighing. Apparently, covering Odette while she worked was worth 'points' of some kind--but not enough. "Well. We're not out of the woods yet, but I like our chances. If Sting Silver can keep that up, with those rats..." 'That' is keeping the quickly growing curtain of Soldier Jyamato from advancing with hemming laser fire. It's working well, especially once the commander-type catches a stray and goes down. Disorganized without the leadership of a smarter jyamato, even more of them catch strays, and some even break ranks and run.      "Oh--you've got to be kidding me," he says. "He's *serious,*" the Rider utters in disbelief, looking down the street at Geats.
Desire Stars	The source of Shiro's disbelief is quickly evident, to anyone with a view of the main street.                                   BOOSTRIKER!                                          The motorcycle runs over what few Jyamato of that crowd remained standing, arriving at Geats' location just in time to see him high in the air from another backflip. Geats spins the Desire Driver--                                    REVOLVE ON!                                        And the Boost and Magnum armors switch places as his body rotates clockwise, the former now providing his upper body with rocket-powered bracers, and the latter evidently providing his lower body with leg-mounted cannons.      "EH?! He rotated...!"                                    BOOST TIME!                                          One hand on the steering column, Geats holds his shooting hand out, bent at the elbow. "Just like way back when..." he muses to himself, as the exhaust pipes on his arm spew flames and lift the motorcycle into the sky, just long enough to see it climbing the same bombed-out apartment complex he used to arrive. Geats' wrist-rocket provides extra speed, and his pistol blasts Jyamato crewmen as they run to man the cannons.      The Boostriker ramps off of the skyscraper just as the helicarrier draws near. It almost looks as though Geats might fall--but another burst from that wrist-mounted booster enables a sprint towards a landing bay, the doors rapidly closing and automated vine turrets swiveling to blast. The form of the distant rider is occluded by an explosion, and then, silence.      "It blew him up..." Neon mutters hopelessly.      Not so--inside, loading lights rush past, as the Boostriker, back in motorcycle form, races along twisted corridors and flattens Jyamato crewmen, barreling through walls as Geats picks off would-be sentries. "The easiest way to take down a fortress is from the inside."      Ramping off of the stairs to a narrow catwalk, Geats stows the Magnum Shooter, that bulky white handcannon, just in time to snatch a flag--blue, opposite the red one Buffa carries.      Neon and Keiwa only have a moment to ponder Geat's fate, before one of the turbines carrying the giant verdant machine violently explodes, Geats exiting forcefully on a gout of flame. Kicking off of the Boostriker, Geats twists the accelerator on the red buckle twice. The motorcycle transforms into a mechanized fox, its six exhaust pipes resembling 'tails.' Geats lets out a cry of effort, as both wrist-mounted boosters fire, and the Boostriker runs at-pace behind him, its footsteps leaving brief patches of fire in the sky.                           BOOST. MAGNUM. GRAND VICTORY.                                Geats flies through the other engine of the helicarrier like a bullet, a giant emblem of his Rider mask appearing before his extended foot shortly before the impact. A moment later, he lands, the helicarrier lists to one side, and goes up in flames, exploding into pieces behind him as his red lenses briefly flash.      "It's Kamen Rider Geats, by the way," he says to Neon and Keiwa, twirling the flag around an index.                               SECRET MISSION CLEAR!
Desire Stars	Buffa's phone displays Geats' entry on the leaderboard, climbing once more above his.      "Oh!" he startles in place, as Jyamato bodies begin disappearing. "Wait a sec," he warns Neon and Keiwa, adopting an awkward leaning posture as if waiting for an explosion. The Boost buckle shoots off of his Driver like a bullet, heading straight for Keiwa as if it had a mind of its own.      There is a sound of a bell chime, which everyone can hear. Rubble, destroyed buildings, everything here which might have been put out of order by the Jyamato is swiftly enveloped in blue light, lifted and reversed back into place.      Far away from here, atop that inverted pyramid, virtual fireworks are projected onto the sky. The woman in black and white dances a merry, excited little dance, as ACE UKIYO - WINNER!! flashes in large print on the air behind her. "Yaaay! We have a new Desire God!"      On the street, everything begins to wash out, as all throughout the Jamar Area, damage is undone. Blue turns to blinding, washed out white. When you can see again, everything is back to normal--no soldiers, no crashed airship, no bodies in the streets. Odette sees the same businessman she saved enjoying soba in the restaurant, if she bothers to look. No Buffa, no Shiro, and no Ryuki--however.      A blimp passes by, playing an advertisement for designer cologne. Ace Ukiyo stars in the commercial, given the overly lofty appellation 'Star of the Star of the Stars,' smiling at the viewer and making an affable finger gun, dressed in an expensive tuxedo with a matching white shawl.      Several blocks away, out of the view of anyone without supernatural vision, Ace Ukiyo observes the city, dressed in fine clothes that cost more than most people make in a year. "Welcome," he says, largely to himself. "To my new world."