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Priscilla     An administration building exploded.

    Several of them did, actually. Twenty kilometer tall buildings that are cities unto themselves, gathered up and stacked upon themselves to be arranged into single columns of human habitation, in which people live their entire lives, have lost considerable chunks within the past hour, some sized down by as much as a kilometer or two off the top.

    These buildings, still for lack of a better alternative word, are all uncoincidentally towers of industry that stand out amongst the others as gleaming spokes of both thrumming, purposeful activity, and more literal shining gold and glass. They're amongst the first points of occupation to be converted to the King's new standard --the places chosen as the crucially necessary hubs in which to gather all competent workers, pass down the work to be done from the ziggurat palace far off, drum up teams, stockpile resources, and convert the surrounding area up to specification. In the landscape of squalid concrete and plasteel, smog and rust, ancient crumbling steel and polymer, literally an ocean deep and just as broad, they're shining pinpricks of culture and purpose, snaking out into the upper city like synapses growing together.

    The undercity is quite literally the abyss of said ocean, down to a similar depth, and with a near commensurate level of darkness to it, inhabited by human societal parallels of sluggish, ugly, and specially adapted bottom feeders, and host to an oppressive, crushing, ambient 'pressure' just from the feeling of being buried in the blackness of billions of tons of city overhead, lit only by what electrical lights and crude gas lamps the scavengers can string up while squatting under runoff pipes as large as skyscrapers. It is, in contrast to the city above, exactly the same. Possibly even worse. Since last anyone was here, if they were, it feels like there are more people, somehow. Fresh faces, covered in grime already, but regarding their surroundings with apprehension and fear instead of animalistic alertness or drug-fueled nothing.

    The two are related, you see. Within a short time after several marks of the new King's glorious reformation have been bombed, responsibility has been claimed by several different, ostensibly related guerilla groups, with the King's many eager informants (that being almost any given citizen of the upper city) telling of their movements from the undercity, up the towers, and back down again, sneaking like rats through accessways forgotten centuries ago.

    It's been long enough in the series of orchestrated attacks that the rest of the obvious targets are starting to be ready for it. Whispers of a new group of filthy, deranged, hive-dwelling terrorists having disappeared into the base of another nu-government tower have already reached the emergency channels.

    This would be open and shut for local responders, if the tower weren't twenty five kilometers tall, three across, and only efficient and beautiful vistas of marble and gold and brand new space alloys at the top, with klicks of ludicrously dense and dangerous construction trickling down from it, amounting to town-sized vertical chunks of terrain being giant mills of moving metal, blazing torches, screaming saws, and ancient robotic lifters --and then below even that, a Ridley Scott-esque dark and claustrophobic coffin nexus, turning more brown and corroded and toxic the further down it goes.

    The Planetary Defense Force has major thoroughfares locked down with portable turrets and blockades to supplement the green-looking men in refurbished uniforms and rifles, as well as some motion trackers and cameras elsewhere, but how on Earth anyone is supposed to stop (or contact) crazy undercity rats in all this is very much 'your problem, figure it out' to anyone purporting to help.
Phobos     FACTORUM RENATUS, ??? AGO
    "++And this'll work?++" the Chaplain asks, back hunched to inspect a broken, glowing magical core hooked up to an unholy abomination of a generator.
    "That, or kill us both," Phobos singsongs as she inserts the last panel onto the side of the beast. "Are you ready to learn or die?"
    The Chaplain takes a few steps back. "++Erm.++"
    "Of course you are!" Phobos says, as she pulls a lever all the way down. No lights go out, because the factorum is lit entirely by candles. But the incessant droning of the conveyor belts stops, and the broken core only glows idly.

    Phobos crosses her arms, glaring at it.
    "Back to the drawing board it is. Stupid, Psyker-like power source. How did they even..."

    Someone barges into the generatorium room.
    With news of explosions.
    Phobos throws her arms up.

    "I gave them weapons! And augmentics! Can't they handle a little noise by themselves?"
    She turns to look at the Chaplain. "Floor's yours. Figure out what I did wrong. I want a stellar, powered glow by the time I'm back, not a lukewarm pop and a loss of power."
    The Chaplain's mechadendrites snap excitedly. "++Of course.++"

    NOW, AT THE TOWER

    Phobos breaks through the barricade of guardsmen like they aren't even there. She's looking for whichever sucker has the biggest, most prominent hat in the bunch, and given her pace, she seems entirely unamused. Thankfully, those red robes and obvious mechanical limbs give her all the pull she could possibly want to do this.

    "You will explain immediatly why my factorum should keep making you weapons, tools and chunks of buildings when you can't even keep a few unhappy peasants from interfering with construction."

    She's not alone. A dozen servoskulls flutter in behind her, like an escort of human skulls jammed full of electronics and defying gravity.
Sanary Rondel Somehow, Sanary doesn't look nor sound surprised at the news of explosions. IF it had been any other situation with a new ruler extending his reach over her home, she'd probably be right with those people blowing things up and causing a mess to undermine the king's rule.

Alas, this King in particular has her on the payroll, so she's not above beating a few skulls to secure a paycheck forherself. Besides, she's gotten to know a few of the people around here, and the smell has even become mildly nostalgic. Mostly nauseating, but still nostalgic.

That's why, when the news reaches her, she's already making her way through the undercity streets, ducking around crowds of beggars and staying out of sight of the wandering PDF soldiers. She's trying to draw the attention of those responsible for all this, after all, so what better way to do that than to slink around like she's up to no good herself and keeping an eye open for other people that look like they're up to shady business?

Trackers or fancy vision, probably, but she's not quite clever enough for that. Maybe she'll figure it out one day.
Solomon Lau Part of the Paladin response, Solomon Lau arrives quickly. He's been keeping tabs on the Narsine situation since he got involved in the Undercity, and to hear that a group from down there is killing thousands in the process of detonating buildings is horrendous. So, he's going to fix that.

Dressed in a suit jacket and slacks, kind of like a gangster detective vibe, Paladins badge pinned to his waist, carrying a briefcase and having several pistols holstered to him, Solomon had gone to get the information from the PDF, and then headed down. Down was where he was most comfortable, where he could get the most information...and where his certain set of skills came most in handy. Down towards the innards of the building that'd be blown up.

Once he was in the Undercity, Solomon went looking for the biggest fish of this side of it. Where people crowded, where people huddled, where there was security, where someone would have Information. He was going to get that information and then relay it to whoever was actually higher up in the building itself.

And then he spotted Sanary in the streets, acting overly suspicious, and sighed. Tapping a radio, knowing that she was One Of Them, he speaks up as he continues. <"Eyepatch girl, the hell are you doing?">
Staren     How the hell is Staren going to search a 20km tall building by himself? Well, he's not alone, obviously...

    Staren flies down to the top of the building surrounded by a swarm of small quadrotors. He asks for access to camera feeds from the building security, and starts allocating drones -- some entering vents right away, more going down one or more floors and THEN entering vents and maintenance shafts, searching to map as much of the facility as possible under automatic programming, with Staren and several copies of his support AI supervising to look for anything weird.

    He doesn't just search from the top. When news of the attack reaches Staren, the factorium's new nanofabricators insert an order into the priority queue -- and so when Phobos sets out, her servoskulls are followed by another swarm of drones, which fly to the building and begin the same search pattern, bottom-up.
Mortimer Balman      Down in the undercity, waaay deep down, old Morty is watching debris come crashing and raining down. Despite his wish to do so, he is not interfering with anyone's work or even chipping in to organize the survivors. The PDF must handle that, it's a good test for them. What he IS doing, is recording absolutely everything. Muttering into a box that is attached to his shirt, under the great hooded cloak he wears to hide his blatant inhumanity. The box records everything he says, and sees with its camera. Modern technologies are wonderful like that.

     He'll walk away from the chaos of the explosions though. He wanted to talk to that ex-Cadian 'Commander' who was trying to parade about like a real authority. This act of terrorism was costing lives that Mort did not want to see wasted. Even if he wanted to beat the blonde out of Gilgamesh, even if he didn't trust the little golden king as far as he could throw the prat- these people are not him. They do not deserve to suffer unduly. It will not stand. The 'Commander' would be a useful source of information, at least in theory, if he could get past Mort being a 'mutant', then perhaps more people could be spared these atrocities. Though if that man was responsible.. Well, his miraculous recovery from Raziel's assassination might turn out to be a waste of time.

     Mortimer hates it when life is wasted, especially those of innocent civilians and military personnel. In this, he shares common ground with the Imperium- wasting lives is a blasphemy punishable by death. Someone knows what has happened and who's done it. Someone is going to tell Mort what he wants to know, or people are going to start being found in alleyways burnt to a crisp.
Kirito     Kirito... is quite out of his element here. Counter-terrorism operations against agitators and disgruntled underdwellers are the furthest thing from his style. He'd much rather be fighting a big damn daemon or something....

    ... because this is a conflict between men, and that means he might have to kill.

    If he was smart he'd have vamoosed, but Kirito's that particular brand of stupid that isn't quite able to just bail when looking at the casualty count here. So he's done the next best thing and swapped out his sharp blades for a small handful of new options currently kept in his inventory for when they're needed.

    He absolutely doesn't want blood on his hands over this if it can at all be avoided.

    But then again, he has no robot army. He has only his own eyes and ears... and his wings.

    And it's those wings that he's using to swoop this way and that around the buildings, keeping a lookout for anything at all weird. This probably won't get him anywhere - but the moment someone ELSE finds something, well, he can reach them in a jiffy, right?
Nameless      This city is a curse.

     It's a place of evil by necessity. The undercity is full of the wretched and the dispossessed, the angry and the hungry. They bleed for every scrap, and then are told that they will have no scraps. It's a nightmare on a planetary scale. The Counter Force would have a field day; it's a nightmare that guarantees human survival, no matter what. Even a complete catastrophe couldn't end this world.

     But there was so much evil that wasn't by necessity.

     One of the buildings was his fault. He had set up the bombs himself. He had gone through and found the weak points. He had gone through and found the damage. He had set down the bombs bit by bit and then walked away and blown it as he left. It had rained down, collapsing on countless innocent lives - and countless wicked ones. The math checked out. Kill a thousand to save a million. Kill a hundred thousand to save a hundred million. In the end, the damage they caused would've been worse than the damage he caused.

     The Nameless gunner is here, now. He's walking the lines of the undercity. He's riding the elevators. He cuts a bloody swath through the undercity, leaving corpses in his wake. Most of them are guilty. A few are innocent. He's not looking for information. He's looking for targets. He's looking for the place where the evil is the worst so he can bomb it out of existence.

     There's so much evil in this city.

     There's so much cancer to burn out.
Lezard Valeth      Lezard Valeth is present for a number of reasons. Gilgamesh is a big boy and doesn't actually need his help or the help of anyone else here, but a good king does know the value of delegation.

    Lezard isn't here to be a delegate, he's here to get an idea of what the resistance forces are like and what their nature is. Thus, while others send drones or begin scouring the Undercity, Lezard invests himself in his own way...

    "I am he who hath entrusted his soul to the eternal vortex of time. Ye know me! And if ye do not, ye shall be MADE to know me! It shall be engraved on thy very soul... LEZARD VALETH! If ye shall accept the brand of Hel upon thee, thy sanctions shall in turn be lowered. I shall grant thee the deliverance of thy soul, and ye shall come now before me!"

    The words, called out with confidence and power, reverbrate through the air. Black and purple portals tear open all about him, and inhuman creatures begin pouring in, demons that crawl, lope, and slither through the area. While the PDF covers the thoroughfares, the undead and demonic creatures are sent en masse through the back alleys, the sewer paths, and forgotten paths. Every so often, one of their eyes flares crimson, as Lezard surrepetitiously shares their sight until switching to another set of creatures.

    The innocent will run and hide. The guilty will strike. They are bold enough to attack the King, why not some zombies and minor demons?
Priscilla     As is Imperial custom, the soldier with the biggest hat is indeed the one with the most authority. Phobos tracks down a PDF soldier with the level of hat afforded to 'someone who actually left the planet as a guardsman and came back and is now too old to go for a second tour', who is in the middle of looking very haggard and very cross in the middle of directing scores of hapless rookies around the place. "Where do you *think?!* The load bearing columns! Were your brains replaced with the rankest part of a grox's ass?!" Similar inspiring platitudes are delivered by the single marginally competent veteran.

    "Look-" he starts, before double taking at the appearance of who's talking to him and the presence of a dozen servoskulls, then smoothing down the front of his uniform. "These buildings are a thousand years old. There aren't any master blueprints. Nobody knows where most of the rest are. There are shafts and pipes nobody's been in for decades. I'm talking about shanty villages in ventilation crossways nobody else can find. That's what all this construction is for, supposedly. Ripping it all out and documenting the damn thing. If you can, I'd ask you produce about a thousand more competent men instead of more weapons for the greenhorns."

    Even for Sanary, staying out of sight of the undermanned soldiers really isn't hard. In a tower with the population of New York, the per-capita equivalent of a coast guard can't be in every hallway and thoroughfare, never mind alleys and interior buildings that connect to their next door neighbours. The Nameless Gunner can just walk right past the majority of them, even, and wander about in the open --a trick the PDF as a whole has yet to catch onto in the brief and bloody confusion still continuing. Given the stretch of partially stripped and gutted building, it doesn't take a demolitions expert to figure out where to stick any more bombs he likes, but that is, of course, the main hive of military deployment now.

    Quadrotor drones are woefully insufficient to search the whole place. It's a helpful drop in the bucket, comparatively. There are plenty of unnecessarily massive vistas and view lanes, though, where multiple floors have been removed, so Staren does have a commanding view of anyone who moves out into the open to blow up the construction zone.

    Lezard's demons and undead have their desired effect crawling and shambling into the heinously unsafe bowels and arteries of the tower. Several of them are just killed instantly by the floor giving out to tremendous falls, being fried by arcs of exposed and pest-eaten wiring in the walls, or chopped to pieces by stop-start industrial equipment, but the squatters they find flee the course immediately before them, packing up their things and running as fast as they can. This results in filtering out any crowds that would-be terrorists could blend into.

    So, eventually, this does get one. Two, actually. Teams of scraggly, rag bundled, pack-carrying nobodies. One clambering through a series of dust and grime choked pipes used to pump water to a habitation floor that hasn't existed for 150 years, and the other mechanically ascending the counterweights of an elevator system on the opposite side, with a dead end at the top and bottom, both proper entrances and exits filled in.
Mortimer Balman      Swift as a shadow, Mortimer appears in the Commander's office. "Problems have arisen.. 'Commander.'" The man squints irritably. "Yes, I am aware. What do you want, *mutant.*" A pointedly aggressive tone, but that's to be expected. "Someone is responsible for this. I want to know whom. And I want their head on a pike." Whether he finds Mortimer intimidating or not, the old badger IS quite clearly genuine about it. "...I don't know. But I want to as well. And I also desire a head on a pike, barbaric as it may be." "Help me find out. Perhaps that will prove to you I am a friend to the Imperium. Anything you can spare, I will not waste, I swear it." Help is always nice, after all. Even if it is help from a strange mutant from another world. Manpower is short. "...I have a platoon of juve gangers I've been putting through Whiteshield training. They don't have a lieutenant yet, but they can follow basic orders for the most part." "Thank you for your progressive thinking. I will do my best to reward it." The man grunts. "Just don't ruin my privates."

     Ten minutes later there's a pack of teenagers in knock-off Guard equipment that would make the old PDF laugh following after the old man in his cloak- most of them have, at best, stub pistols and one lucky girl has her very own shotgun, the rest have short combat knives and a grenade or two. As militaray forces go, these kids would be a joke if they weren't a juve *gang.* And really, they're not there to help Mort that much. They're more there to keep an eye on him. Which is fine! Let them report his every move to the Commander, it will only vindicate him later. "Come, children. We have work to do. And time is not on our side."

     Back to the site of the chaos and explosions and- a pause. He feels them before he sees them, and then he starts seeing them. "Behind me, children! Quickly! Enemies are near!" A very large knife is drawn from under the cloak and his eyes start to glow red under the hood. "Filth.. Always more filth.." Undead too.

     Mort's eyes widen briefly and then narrow. Is this the work of the Plague God? If so this whole place may need to be burned to the ground. No. "Form yourselves as I say- those of you with out guns, at the forefront. Those of you with guns, take up positions behind them. A wall of bullets and blades to keep yourselves safe." The youngest juve briefly looks up, "But what about you?" "Don't concern yourselves. Just stay alive, understand? Do not die. Now do as I say, and quickly!" Smoke billows from under the hood as Mort walks, marching toward what he believes are agents of Chaos, not knowing they are under Valeth's sway.
Sanary Rondel Finding those tangentially responsible for the bombings is proving harder than Sanary was hoping. It was to be expected considering the sheer size of the place, but... Really? She's all but given up on trying to actually stay out of sight when it's clear that it's easy even for someone like herself, and she starts reconsidering her approach when people on one side of the street start exploding in blood-filled geysers, and people on the other side of the street start running away from demons and zombies.

Classic Lezard. Classic... She needs to figure out a better name for him than Nameless.

In the ensuing chaos, though, Sanary finally gets her break when she spots some suspicious nobodies heading into pipes! Not one to shy away from gross places, the pig farmer hurries over to get herself into those pipes, chasing after the nobodies to try and catch up. She's not being particularly subtle about it, though, boots and axe alike banging off the bottom and sides of the pipe in her haste to not lose them.

She's not attacking, though. Instead, Sanary raises a hand in greeting, grinning broadly and nearly slipping on some grime in the process. "Oi! Hold up, what's the rush? If it's exciting, I want in!"
Phobos     "Thank you for volunteering your men, officer," Phobos drones out, optics lighting up bright green. "I expect the bodies at my factorum before the first patch of rot has set in. Let their union with the Omnissiah's light show you that I take all feedback AT HEART."

    She taps her chest with her thinner, clawed hand.
    It clanks heavily, predictably.

    "Now, you said no master blueprints. But you said you knew where the load-bearing columns were? Might I make a radical recommendation?" She pauses, for effect. "We don't need this building. Drop it on their heads."

    A mechanical tendril slithers out of her robes, holding out a pair of black steel, green-runed grenades. "A thousand year old building requires a thousand years of maintenance. It's a small cost to pay to be rid of these idiots. If it's going to go down, make it go down on your terms. We can rebuild it, and use the bodies for much better purposes than whatever they're up to right now."

    Living, presumably.
    Disgusting.
Solomon Lau Solomon hears gunshots, as he looks for someone big. He sees bodies. There's a killer moving through here. Possibly connected to their bomber? The demons are weird, but that's apparently an ally, so he just sucks in a breath and starts following the trail of bodies until they lead him to a killer. One, by one, by one.

Solomon draws a large pistol, and once he finally reaches Nameless, possibly planting a bomb on load-bearing supports, he aims it as his back as he speaks up. "Paladins, hands in the air and no sudden movements." Solomon wonders if he did that right. His stance is confident, though, as he keeps his finger off the trigger and holds the gun with an air of 'someone who knows how to hold a gun', not just a random enforcer.

"I assume you're the bomber? Or at least one of them. Killing people in the streets...you've really racked up a problem for yourself." He starts to approach, slowly, if Nameless doesn't turn around and start shooting him. The briefcase is still held tightly in the other hand.
Nameless      'Hands in the air.'

     The Nameless gunner stops. He's not holding a weapon. He's got the bomb that he's tossing in his other hand, a simple plastique designed to blow up pretty efficiently. Minimal electronics, maximum explosive force. It's a pretty fair assumption that he's one of the bombers.

     The Nameless gunner tilts his head back slightly. His eyes are bright gold. Golden light runs along his face like circuitry, like circuitry holding something broken together. There's something uncomfortable about those eyes. Those eyes aren't the eyes of a hunter. Those are dead eyes. Those are eyes without hope or mercy. Those are eyes that do not know how to care.

     'Hands in the air.'

     The Nameless gunner laughs, a short bark of a laugh, more of a scoff. He smiles, tilting his head back down, and raises his hands in the air. His eyes sink shut. That doesn't matter. He can hear everything around him.

     "You know how to hold that," he says, in a dead, monotone voice.

     "Have you ever killed anyone with it?"
Staren     Progress is disappointingly slow. He'll never get the entire building in time this way.

    Oh well. Maybe Staren will get lucky. He positions himself at an open window, ready to fly down to wherever someone IS located. Hopefully SOMEONE will spot the bombers and radio it in. He's not willing to be as proactive as Phobos is.
Solomon Lau The bomber, the gunner, he responds. He puts his hands in the air, holding a plastic explosive. Solomon approaches, intending to take him in alive. And then he pauses, briefly, as the gunner asks an important question.

Solomon tightens up. He grimaces. It answers the question for Nameless before he even answers himself.

"More than you would never know. Now come quietly, and perhaps the locals will be willing to give you a commuted- ah who am I kidding, you just murdered thousands of people. You're going straight to Hell...but perhaps in these last moments, you can redeem yourself. I'd believe it. Do you have conspirators?"
Lezard Valeth The casual losses to the rusting, degraded city are to be expected. The undead begin disintegrating once they hit the ground or are shredded, their forms vaporizing and returning whence they came for those who are killed by the hazards of the place.

    Lezard cares nothing about them. These accursed souls are simply there to deal with the tedious part....

    There.

    The disturbingly nondescript, blended malcontents are exactly what Lezard is searching for. Removing the crowds they can hide in probed to be fortuitious. As the tro groups begin to make themselves known, the Necromancer gestures, transmitting a silent order.

Immediately, the horde of creeping slimes, flapping harpies, shambling zombies and wispy ghosts split their number in half. working to surrounde and begin closing in on the others, stalking the ragged malcontents. While they lack finesse, they have numbers... And soon both teams begin to find that they're being preyed upon by the demons, the creatures working to strike and drag off members of the team to have them delivered up unto the others who want to interrogate them.

    Lezard, meanwhile, waits to see if there is a threat that requires his personal attention, his smile growing slightly as the game is afoot.
Nameless      Going straight to hell.

     At that, the Nameless gunner laughs. He laughs, hard. It's a derisive laugh, a self-loathing laugh. One of his hands goes to his face. Going to hell. Going to hell.

     "That's right," he says, and now there's some amusement in his voice, and it's dripping with a disgust that can only come from the self, from the little dark parts of the soul that tell you how worthless you are, how pathetic you are, how meaningless you are, how little you've accomplished, how stuck you are in your dead-end life and your dead-end body as your dead-end soul rots away. It's that same tone, but vocalized instead of kept silent, pointed squarely at its owner.

     "That's right," he repeats, his head tilting down, "I am. I'm going to Hell. I'm the biggest sinner of all."

     "But I'm going to drag every last one of you monsters with me. My work isn't done. I can't stop now."

     "Trace, on."

     The plastique goes up. Lines draw in the air at instant speed. The gun falls into his hand, a horrifying black-and-white bladed affair that could be used to cut or stab or shoot or kill in any number of unpleasant ways. As the gun forms it's already pointing over his shoulder, aimed without looking, without seeing.

     It is a distraction, because what he's actually doing is whipping his foot around in a cartwheel kick to smash the plastique directly at Solomon.

     And *then* shoot it.
Priscilla     The captain gives Phobos the crinkle-eyed, pursed lips, prototypical old man squint --that of a slightly out of touch armchair general briefly trying to comprehend whether the slang a subordinate is using is disrespectful or just newfangled. That's clearly not his actual conflict, of course, but it's an easy sort of generational military confusion and discomfort to read.

    "I can't say I much like the idea of thwarting terrorists attempting to delay and destroy good Narsinian work and craftsmanship by doing exactly what they're out to do, before they can. That'd take a year to fix, and billions of credits. My orders are to keep this place in one piece, not level it to squash a few rats. If we trade a tower for a hundred of those sewer scum every time, we'll run out of towers before they run out of scavengers. Besides, it'd take hours to evacuate the place first. The terrorists would be long gone by then."

    He eyeballs the grenades warily, half-reaching for them, but then deciding not to. "What are these supposed to be?" he dares ask anyways, despite his orders. At least they're agreed that the undercity dwellers are subhuman, probably mutie scum.

    Speaking of which, Sanary tracks down one of the two packs of them. Effectively 'downwind' of them, she is *assaulted* with their collective stench. No doubt that in of itself would give them away, once they get to the floors near the top that are actually habitable.

    She has a dozen guns pointed at her in an instant. Despite being swaddled in layers of decade old cast-off detritus, with cobbled together, barely functional, or clearly black market electronics for obscuring the rest of them, the blobs of rags and ammo and goggles and explosives and an odd, shitty prosthetic hand here and there are clearly hard men, who shoot first and ask questions later. One of them actually does, discharging a shotgun blast near Sanary's head before someone else pushes him down, coming dangerously close to knocking her skull clean off with how blatantly illegally overpressured it is.

    "You smell like a top dweller." one of them garbles in a rough and barely intelligible dialect through a low quality synthesizer. "You don't want any part of this. Give us a good reason not to pump you full of lead right now." There's about two minutes until Lezard's demons are all over them, judging by the sound.

    The other group, meanwhile, is being accosted by them already. Larger in size, numbering about thirty, it takes about four losses before the rest realize there's actually something out for them, and it's not just the expected casualties from climbing architecture this unspeakably ancient and poorly maintained, callously designed with complete indifference to the humanity that is meant to occupy it.

    Once they do, the mob picks up the pace tremendously, cutting open an access hatch and breaking out into the open to avoid being in such close quarters with fantasy xenomorphs, rushing into the visible portion of the kilometers long construction site, and bulldozing their way up catwalks, ladders, ziplines, and grav platforms. The fact that they immediately gun down any workers in their way is enough to easily attract Staren's and Kirito's attentions.
Solomon Lau As the gunner laughs, Solomon gets nervous. As he says 'I'm going to drag every last one of you monsters with me', he gets prepared. The briefcase is brought forward, instead of a shot from the gun. It's not fast enough.

The plastique goes up, and a bladed gun is summoned, fired blindly over the shoulder. It cuts along Solomon's own, ripping his jacket and shedding blood, but doesn't embed, even as flesh is torn. But the true threat is the explosive.

It's kicked backwards at a lethal range, and Solomon has to act fast. He takes the briefcase and slams the plastique with it, trying to shunt it to the floor. His own feet move to slide him backwards as he flicks the latches of the briefcase open, and then swings it upwards, dislodging the contents. His hand drops the briefcase, grabbing the stockless MP5 that's inside, as Solomon rolls backwards probably right as the explosive detonates. Whatever blast there is will graze him and burn him, but won't be head on due to his movement.

"You play hard. You've been in this business for a long time, I can tell. I just got out. You're one of those righteous men, aren't you? You don't have to do this."

Two shots, one from each gun, fly at Nameless from different angles, aimed for his center of mass as Solomon coughs, trying to get to cover. Pistol and submachine gun are used in tandem with a skill that shows that this is a man who absolutely killed a bunch of people this way. A sheer master of just wielding two guns in close quarters.
Nameless      One of those righteous men.

     Nameless hits the ground on threes. His gun hand is the only one that doesn't touch the ground. Solomon calls him a righteous man, and he laughs, right before one bullet punches through his chest and the other through his stomach. They pierce through his skin. They sink into his flesh. It's a killshot for sure.

     The dark-skinned man, shot twice, lunges forward. Solomon has shown him exactly what kind of fighter he is. He surges through the smoke. It trails around his gun.

     His two guns.

     One white and black. One black and red. Both bladed. Both wicked. Both murderous.

     Solomon might have time to glimpse the bullets being pushed out of the dark-skinned gunner's body. He might have time to notice the strange knitting of muscle and bone. He might even have time to see the bullets hit the ground.

     Before the Nameless gunner is in his face in the span of a breath, golden light flowing around his legs, golden light trailing down his arms. The blades snap forward, slashing and sweeping. They're aimed at the guns. Restrict the weapons, restrict the movement, restrict the opponent. That's how this works. That's how he fights. Gold eyes never waver. Gold eyes never flicker. Gold eyes never turn from Solomon's. He wants Solomon to see what he's dealing with.

     There are no righteous men here, Solomon Lau.

     There is only a necessary evil.
Phobos     "If you make them understand you're willing to trade a tower and thousands of lives to crush a hundred of them, you'll send a real message. You putting up with them like this? It isn't accomplishing anything."

    Phobos withdraws the offer, her tentacle slithering upward as two of her skulls produce little clawy arms to seize the grenades. And then she produces a half a dozen more, and another set of skulls pick them up.

    They fly off, into the tower.

    "They were gifts, but now I suppose they're quite the opposite for you. Don't worry, I'll respect my end of the bargain. You'll have top-notch combat Servitors by next week. Competency won't be a problem anymore."

    The servoskulls begin exploring the tower. Support pillars. How hard can it be to find them? In a building that size?

    They don't need to collapse them all, just the right ones. And those gauss grenades could atomize armor, so never you mind what they'll do to concrete and steel.
Staren     The bombers(?) make the mistake of attracting attention! Staren's soon on his way. He'll go through windows if he has to. And sure, they've been able to gun down random civilians, but are they really a threat? If they're not wearing armor, Staren pulls out an SMG with taser gel bullets and sweeps it across the group so he can maybe ask them questions later, see if they're part of a bigger organization. If they have armor, he opens up with the particle beams first.
Mortimer Balman      The undead and demons are closing in. There's too many. Mortimer briefly glances at the juves.. Then at the monsters trying to encircle them. That's bad. If they're surrounded, they're dead. Well, the children are at least. No, he doesn't want them to die. "Fighting retreat! Do not let them get around you!" The juves are terrified, naturally. This is beyond them. This is not what they signed up for. They're just supposed to fight rebels, traitors, and other human beings. Not undead! Not the fell forces of the Ruinous Powers! They're completely out of their depth. "FOCUS!" Mortimer's voice booms at them, forcing their attention.

     "Melee fighters, do not break rank no matter what! To falter is to die! Guard your friends if the enemy gets close! Gunners! Careful aim, and fire! Do not waste a single shot, make them all count! Now shape up, focus, and fall back! DO YOU GET ME?!" Fear is a powerful motivator, as is a large monster of a man roaring orders. The juves slowly shake themselves out and begin to obey, with Mortimer moving to their flank and producing his secret weapon-

     A bolt pistol. While he is not a very good shot, the fact that he HAS one at all is symbolic, and at these short distances even a poor shot like Mortimer can score killing shots. "Keep moving! Do not stop, do not break ranks! Shotgunner, that one, it's trying to get in close!" B-KAM! "Excellent shot, just like that, center mass! Headshots are too risky! Keep moving, we'll get through this!" The bolt pistol rings out it's own cacophony against the fell creatures, and the great knife is soon slick with unholy blood. "We're almost there! Keep moving! Keep firing!"

     Civilians obviously try to flock past the old man and his retinue of child soldiers, some of the only ones there keeping any sort of discipline and making a hole through the carnage.

     This is so much uglier than what he wanted. But as long as he can maintain them, they can probably get away from Lezard's pets.
Kirito     It doesn't take long before a streak of black zips across the vision of the mob that's forcing its way into places it shouldn't be, and racking up a body count along the way. That blur whips around like nothing else, and promptly SLAMS into the walkway hard enough to kick up what might be a half-year's worth of dust and send a rumbling shockwave through the footing.

    When the smoke clears... Kirito's standing there proudly, holding some long black rod covered in odd silvery protrusions as he normally would his sword. Thankfully, he's managed to banish his wings before the dust cleared, so only his slightly pointed ears are a giveaway that he's maybe-not-quite-human... and that's hard to spot at a distance.

    "That's MORE than far enough. You guys just reached the end of the line! What is this, some kind of sick joke? Shooting and bullying your way to wherever you waant? You guys had a chance to get with the program.... why blow it so cruelly? Is this rampage REALLY worth it?"
Sanary Rondel Even after being so used to pig smell, foul people smell is still something that takes Sanary off guard. Between holding in a gag and trailing after the group, she doesn't react right away when they bring their guns up. Indeed, she doesn't even look like one of them between the (now covered in grime and hopefully-just-grease) white coat, the weathered axe that is distinctly not a gun, and the lack of goggles or other gear on her.

To really cement her place as an outsider, the healer barely even flinches hen that shotgun goes off. The debris scattered by the shot nicks her face up quite a bit, but she simply waves her hand by her face to show off with a bit of magical healing to stop the bleeding seconds after it starts. "Yeah... Uh. That's because the assholes pissed me off. All their high-falutin' talk about making things better and they can't even fix shit down here."

What was that name they kept throwing about? Best not to fudge something up royally and just go with what she can BS with right now. "... Plus, if you shoot again, you're gonna draw more attention this way." She jerks her thumb back at the sounds of Lezard's swarm coming from further behind them, glancing back once before approaching agian.

"Walk and talk. What're we hittin' first?"
Solomon Lau Solomon made a kill shot. But the man's glowing. He's confident, but not as confident as he should be, and in the smoke, the gunner's still alive. The bladed guns come sweeping forward, as Solomon mutters a curse, and they slash into his own guns. The submachine gun is hardier, but the pistol is damaged - it won't be firing without the time to replace it with another of his body. But it still has a use, even as Solomon's hands are also cut in the slashing.

"No...no. You're worse than a righteous man, shit. You're a /monster/, a self-aware one. The guys they keep on leashes. Where's your leash, rabid dog?" Solomon's bloody hands sweep up with the guns, twisting and twirling them against Nameless's Kanshou and Bakuya. Slapping them aside, probably several times as he moves the guns with speed. It's not just shooting - they're martial arts weapons, as well, as Solomon tries to jerk the pistol up to smash into Nameless's jaw.

The submachine gun, meanwhile, goes to be slammed hard into a soft part of the gut, trigger pulled in the process to do extra damage and maybe force Nameless back into a gun battle. He doesn't /need/ a gun battle, but he doesn't want to be this close to the dead eyed man.
Nameless      That's right, Solomon. This is a monster.

     This is a monster that knows what it is. No rabid dog, this; a machine, a machine for killing. It is evident in the way the monster moves. It is evident in the way it ducks under the first sweeping strike, in the way it tilts backwards under the second, in the way it knocks away the third. The monster parries the parries. The parries are parried, and then parried again. It goes back and forth until Solomon's pistol finally breaks through, catching the monster in the jaw.

     The Nameless gunner skids back as the submachine gun hits his stomach.

     His abs harden in an instant, gold light flowing across it. But it's too late. It's much too late. The submachine gun rattles him, and while a few bullets fall to the wayside, the majority of them dig into his belly as he skids backwards to minimize the impact. Those reflexes are superhuman for sure.

     He's bleeding. His gut's full of lead.

     It doesn't stop him.

     The Nameless gunner opens fire with one gun, moving behind a pillar to take some form of cover while he heals. It's just a hail of bullets, nothing special - although the gun's just hovering of its own accord now, temporarily suspended and firing regardless. There's a flare of golden light from his right hand.

     He picked it out of the hill of the red-clad arm. The swords that stretched on under the unchained sky. It was a simple thing, but an effective one - a poison blade that would work no matter what. Guaranteed by Unferth to never fail, annealed in venom and tempered in blood. It would do the first part of the job.

     Then he would finish it.

     The sword twists and compacts in his hand. It is a spiralling, twisting bullet, black and red. He slots it into the gun and grabs Kanshou. Nameless holds his fire for only a moment before he rolls out from behind cover, surging forward, one arm trailing behind. It looks like he's going for a melee attack-

     -and then he darts to the left and fires.

     "Lost Hrunting."
Priscilla     "Wait, what, you can't-! Someone stop them! You! Shoot them *down* you paste-eating vermin!" The captain's response to Phobos taking it upon herself to ignore him and promptly try to bomb the building he just told her he has orders to protect is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to try to protect the building.

    Big vital struts aren't exactly hard to find, especially with the next 150 floors being largely gutted down to the superstructural skeleton, so the servoskulls get to make a straight beeline for several elevators and emergency exits. They're accosted with hails of lasfire from behind, as the PDF forces they swoop past turn to chase them and take potshots in panic. They don't seem to really process the danger of shooting at the glowing green grenades. It's a captain said-so emergency and vile alien tech. The squad around Phobos all train their guns on her, including a quadruplet of auto sentries at her diagonals, as the captain marches forward. "Who are you?! Present some identification!" He is clearly suspicious of her Mechanicus credentials now.

    Staren can't tell what armour anyone is wearing at a glance because they're all covered in five layers of identity-obscuring ghetto hazardous environment insulation, looking like the world's shittiest, poorest, trash bag desert drifters. They're wearing enough of it to conceal all sorts of physical deformities and genetic taint that could send them packing to the undercity, so things like body armour are completely invisible. Splattering taser gel bullets over them is a lost cause either way; layers and layers of rags and rubber sheeting and plastic bags don't conduct, which is part of the point of navigating around places where power conduits haven't been maintained in centuries.

    Military particle beams work well enough, as there's absolutely no chance that hivers are kitted to handle that, dropping several on the spot and sending them tumbling into the industrial abyss, whereupon twenty guys with wastelander-style overpowered and highly unsafe automatics and shotguns put Staren instantly on blast, running as they shoot to reach a major column.

    Kirito intercepts them just as they reach a gigantic instacrete pillar carefully cut into the middle to reach the main conduits, looking to stuff it full of homebrew plastic explosives. One of them with a throat cancer voice weakly croaks to him "Really? Have we? Last I checked, only the people who already live on top of the pretty towers got a chance to do anything. You see any of that 'reformation' happening down below? Hail the new king, same as the old one right? Except this time they're all fucked in the head and goose stepping along to a gilded witch and everyone's just alright with that. Nobody looks at the fact this place isn't going to hold a tenth of the people it does right now? Where the others gonna go, you wonder? What's with the squads already being sent to wipe out the wretched souls already stuck living in the boilers? You blind, boy? You a puppet too? You don't see anything a little strange about some creature killing off the governer and now all the updwellers are begging to kiss the new one's boots even while he's planning to kill them off? Shove it."
Solomon Lau A machine, not a rabid dog. A monster, through and through. The bullets slide into Nameless's gut, but nameless moves behind a pillar and fires with one of his guns. Solomon pulls back to another pillar, discarding his pistol and grabbing another from a leg sheath. Taking it with the submachine gun, Solomon dives out for counter fire, taking several shots to the side and shoulders. It is at that point that Nameless fires at him.

It's not a normal bullet. Black and red. Made from a sword. He thought it'd be a melee attack, but he was wrong. Lost Hrunting comes forth.

It impacts with Solomon's gut, staggering him backwards. Despite his injury, Solomon can still fight - he'll need a doctor after all of this, but he still has quite a bit of fight left in him. Until he feels what Lost Hrunting does, that is. Blood starts to drop from his mouth.

Solomon's hands quiver. His accuracy lessens, as he tries to fire as many shots as Nameless as he can before he gets back into cover. Power over accuracy.
Lezard Valeth     Everything is working as planned. The fools taken are basically dragged along. Whether they live or die isn't his concern, but they'll either be delivered up to one of the people trying to preserve these scavenger scum, or to Lezard himself.

    They will probably prefer the former. Lezard does not require someont to be alive to talk.

    When Staren and Kirito lock in on the other group, however, the demons break off, leaving the flushed group to deal with the two Elites. Lezard expects the pair can handle themselves.

    At least, they would, if someone didn't decide to lead a heroic charge into the midst of them. Mortimer and his retinue smash into them from the side. Mortimer isn't the target, but demons will react as demons do, and the battle is joined.

     Some of them appear to be classic zombie undead in Viking gear, draugr that shamble about with rusted swords and axes that strike with inhuman strength and resilience. But zombies they are, and they die like zombies. Bolters work just fine. Harpies shriek and dive in on Morimer's kill team, using their aerial maneuverability to try to pluck the soldiers from the gantries and hurl them into the abyss, letting them fall to their deaths. They, too, die under gunfire, however. Whatever these things are, they bleed, and they die.

    Perhaps more dangerous are the actual crimson-skinned minor demons, looking like some classic horror from Hell, batwinged and clawed in the traditional fashion. They move quickly and strike hard, the most dangerous of the group as their eyes burn with hunger and fury.

    Sanary isn't getting the second group of backup. Lezard scowls as he senses the rampant reduction of his forces, and he raises his hand, beginning to incant as he teleports to the location. Some distance from the battle, a circle of light begins to draw itself...
Staren     Staren stumbles back as his armor and forcefield take a hail of gunfire. Discs short out and he's got dents and scratches on him, but his defenses can take more than that. He shoots any that go for the pillar, but otherwise listens, and has to think about that for a moment. Ultimately, he shakes his head. "You claim you see Gilgamesh as the problem, but you attack others instead." He throws a concussion grenade at the group. Not good for anyone close to it, but ones father away might get stunned. "So you're lying or crazy. Either way, I can't let you do this."
Priscilla     The smaller crowd audibly scoffs at Sanary's kind of lame attempt to sympathetically project that blue collar grudge along with them, but after a lot of glancing back and forth and garbled/murmured communication, they seem to decide to take her along anyways, involving plenty of suspect glances.

    "Alright. You can join in." Garble man throws her a pack of extremely unsafe basement brewed plastique. "There's four columns we gotta hit on our side. The other guys have the other. Big ones. That's why we cooked up this. Don't drop it. Hehehe. Seriously. It'll shorten this whole thing by a couple of floors if you do. We're doing it all on one angle of the thing so it topples over like a cut tree. You ever seen a tree? Like in a picture book or something."

    They seem to recognize the basic wisdom in not sticking around to be mobbed by zombies. When they start cutting them off regardless, they employ their black market heavy armaments, including some hideously outlawed third-rate pirated bolt weapons, to try and blast their way through, but they clearly expect Sanary to help out (and quite possibly will need her). They reach the same stretch of construction in the main shaft, but don't have to enter out into the Death Star-esque vertical abyss, instead spreading out within the walls and plastering stuff along as they go, covering a kilometer of ground over a long, brisk jog, wheezing through respirators to make the journey over the impossibly huge section of neolithic wall.

    "So what'd they do to get you huh? You look like you'd fit right in up here. What's the point of blowing it up? King said you were too ugly? Hahah."
Phobos     "Really? I go and save you all that trouble and you just..."

    Phobos makes an angry clicking noise, less a tongue and more a hard drive head. She seems calm, considering the amount of firepower trailed on her.

    "Think about the time and resources this saves you. The food. The supplies. The real estate!" She almost snarls.

    As she stalls, her remaining servoskulls, the ones that were left behind, fly low and hit up against the auto sentries. And then deploy a nasty mess of writhing wires, entirely too alike a mass of worms or snakes. They dig in, penetrate the steel and wrap around cogs and circuits. To seemingly no effect, at first. Does it smell like incense and oil, just a bit?

    As the servoskulls sustain several hits, one goes straight down, setting off its charge of awful, heretical green lightning in a flashy mess. The others just set crash courses for the pillars, suddenly covered by--

    The auto sentries, which as if alive, turn upon the men gathered around them. And open fire, indiscriminatedly, save against Phobos and the older man before her.

    "I'm Phobos. It's not actually very nice to meet you. If you open fire, you're dead, by the way."
Nameless      This isn't in Solomon's favor.

     Hrunting's poison is extensive. It's thorough. It throws off his aim, and that means that the Nameless gunner can take advantage of it. He goes sailing forward through the bullets, whirling and dancing. His blades carve through many of them. He spins past some of them. Some of them catch him in the shoulder. One of them goes through his throat.

     He does not stop.

     Closer and closer. The monster machine of a cruel and wicked justice advances. It's step by step, winning each step with sheer skill.

     At last, he's close enough.

     A sword appears in mid-air. It is a twisting, spiralled thing, a blue-and-gold blade in the shape of a drill. As the Nameless gunner spins into another arc, the sword warps into a bullet in mid-air, a spiralled drill of a golden-blue bullet.

     He deflects another shot as he spins.

     The white gun's back opens.

     He snaps the bullet into his gun as it starts to fall.

     He takes one knee, levelling the gun over his arm to steady it for a brief instant at Solomon's chest.

     "Lost Calad."

     The bullet discharges. It twists space as it goes. It warps the air around it, distorting the view behind it, distorting the world around it. It does not cut through the air so much as twist the air around its existence.

     It will probably hurt a lot.

     But that's nothing compared to what's coming.
Mortimer Balman      No. Too many. They're going to be overwhelmed. Several of the juves are injured, two of them badly so. Sixteen teenagers and an old man with a few fancy toys will not be enough. "Grab the wounded, fall back! Fall back NOW! Get to that piping over there, take cover! I will handle this! MOVE!" Roaring still, Mortimer cracks a demon over the face with his bolt pistol's grip and caves in its skull. Too bad no health drops will come of this. There's only one option left if he's going to keep these children alive, which he promised he would do. But it would tip his hand a bit earlier than he planned.

     Magical runes carve themselves into the air as Mort begins chanting an incantation of some sort. The symbols are geometric in nature and drip a black ichor that reeks of death. "Vengeful souls of those who have fallen before us! Your children cry to you for aid, will you not take up arms once again? Thy legacy is not yet forgotten, drown the enemy in spiteful rage!"

     And then.. An unearthly wailing is heard. Skeletal, wraithly hands appear from the ground, followed by clattering skulls whose empty eyes sockets burn with a rage that only the Dead can muster. They grasp at the assorted demons and undead, and their touch is an enervating one to the extreme. And in a hive city? Such spirits are truly legion.

     "He's.. He's a fucking hair wizard!" "The Commander sent us out with a bolt magnet! A throne-damned PSYKER?!" The juves are now far more terrified of Mort than of anything else out here. They might not know the difference between psychic powers and sorcery but what they know is that he's a psyker. And psykers are one of the most dangerous things in the galaxy, as far as they know at least. That part, is okay with Mort. But there will be other repercussions later..

     But for now. Battlefield control. Time for the old man to put an end to these wretched things.
Solomon Lau The Nameless gunner pushes through Solomon's many bullets. He summons another sword, and Solomon starts to move backwards, but Nameless moves too fast. The sword is loaded and fired. If it hits his chest, it would rip through his heart and kill him.

Solomon rolls, but not fast enough. The bullet lodges into his right shoulder. It tears through it, causing the MP5 to drop to the ground, as Solomon's arm acts up. He'll be able to fix it with some rest and care, but the nerves are spasming. Throughout his body they're spasming, thanks to the poison. He's slower. Less defensive, even if he's trying to be on his guard. But Solomon doesn't give up.

The pistol is raised for Nameless's head. Solomon breathes in, as his eyes narrow. He's a professional killer taking a shot. He doesn't want to kill Nameless. But he feels he has to in order to survive. Even if the injuries aren't as bad as they could be, Nameless won't spare him if he's unconscious. He'd just shoot him in the head.

The pistol is unloaded. Bullets fly with breakneck accuracy at Nameless's head, and if he starts moving, the pistol is shifted subtly to account for it. Neck, shoulders, head are all aimed for in an attempt to kill him. He probably won't hit him in the head with his skill, but if he's lucky, he'll damage something really badly.
Sanary Rondel That solves the little issue of not getting shot in the face easily enough. But how can Sanary use this to secure her paycheck /and/ get more much-needed information on these dissidents? When did she even learn that word?

She probably heard someone else say it once. Catching the explosive and not dropping it somehow, Sanary turns it over a few times curiously to get a better look at the thing. She doesn't really know what it is at a glance, though, only realizing what she's been handed AFTER Garble suggests that she not drop the thing.

"Huh. Good stuff... I remember seein' a tree once. Didn't do anything, though. Just stood there all tall and stuff." Playing up the hick voice effortlessly, Sanary finds herself needing to draw her axe when they come across that horde of zombies. She's hesitant to attack the creatures at all, knowing where they're from and all, but...

Well. She's got an act to keep up at least for now, so she'll just have to make it up to the necromancer later. "Four, huh? I getcha... Get it all jacked up at the weak spots so they get all wobbly... Ain't this gonna kill more of the people down here than the jackasses up there, though?"

Not wanting to show off the tech in her eye too early, she sticks to wading in and just swinging her primitive chopping implement around, holding back in her swings so as to look the part of a less experienced top dweller rather than herself. Part of it is also to buy her some time to actually figure out a plausible reason for why she's even down here.

Granted, she wasn't expecting to get asked these kinds of hard questions. "Psh... As if the King could handle me! Nah, one of the upper crusters didn't like that I-Gah. Tough bastards, these things... That I didn't give 'em a discount and started makin' shit up about me!"

Another swing of her axe, another adjustment of the plastique under her arm to keep it covered and stable, and then she finally starts asking questions of her own while taking in all the sights of the pseudo-labyrinth. "Wish I had one o' those guns.. Where'd you even get those things? Reckon I could be a decent shot if I had a one of them."
Nameless      Impact.

     The first bullet goes right through. It tears through the head, emerging from the other side. The second does not. It catches in the skull. The third goes into the eye and ruptures it, blood rolling down the cheek. The fourth pierces the neck, right through the jugular. The shoulders. The arm. Very nearly the heart.

     He's still standing.

     The Nameless gunner might be dead. He might be dead and standing. Solomon might even hope that, for a brief moment, considering the hole right through his head and the blood rolling down his eye.

     And then the swords appear.

     Tiny, endless swords. His muscles are swords. His blood vessels are swords. They build, one by one. They knit, one by one. Countless knitting needles made of lethal weapons tying flesh and bone back together.

     The monster takes a step forward. He's venting mana. He knows it. He has one more shot, and one more shot only, and then he'll have to retreat, or the red hand will start to break free. The red hand will break free and he'll die a painful death and he'll vanish back into the Throne only to be called again. Because the work isn't done.

     Another step. The blade is a complicated one. The red hand comes up. Blue light surges. He's never done this before. Not since back then.

     Purple hair flickers in his memory. The smell of cherry blossoms in bloom. The scent of her smile. The taste of the cherry balm on her lips. The feel of her curves pressed against him under the covers. The tears of joy rolling down her face. Somebody loved her. Somebody loved her anyway.

     It is a memory that would be pleasant to any other man.

     For the Nameless gunner, it tastes of blood. It is a necessary component.

     The sword forms in his hand. It is not a sword. It is a twisted diamond. A hunk of crystal in the shape of a weapon. It can cut nothing. It can stab nothing.

     His free hand starts batting away bullets. That hand is covered in gold. He doesn't have time for two guns right now. He has to build. So he bats away bullets, accepting what fire he can. His head is fighting to rebuild itself fast enough as he assembles his thoughts. Hard to think. Hard not to hate. Hard not to hate himself. Hard not to hate the taste of her.

     Around the crystal blade is a shell of stone. It is a club, a wicked club of a sword. It is long and horrible. It is big enough that no man could wield it.

     The two collapse into one. The bullet is crystal and stone.

     He's knocking the bullets from the air with more precision.

     The gun forms around the bullet, around his left hand. It is black and red and white, yin and yang in one. He points it at Solomon's chest.

     It discharges.

     It splits. Nine bullets. No, nine shards of crystal. Nine shards of crystal that fly towards Solomon. They are not dangerous on their own. They are not dangerous until the words are spoken, until dark lips part, and if they miss entirely, they will not even harm him.

     "Nine Lives Lost Jewel."

     Light. There is light. There is *power*. Infinite mana. Infinite power. It pours in from everywhere. From everywhen. From other worlds. From other times. It is a fractured, broken blade, nine pieces of infinity pouring nine times infinity through the body of its victim. It blows out the back of the building. It blows out the back of the next building, too. It may tear Solomon to shreds.

     It will certainly, certainly hurt like hell.
Kirito     That explanation has Kirito's blood boiling, fast. On several levels. His eyes narrow hard, quickly. He raises the 'stun saber' and points it almost a ccusingly at the one who spoke. "It's true that this city... this whole planet... has problems beyond anything I've ever seen. No doubt you guys have lived in some terrible conditions. I doubt they're just or fair. But... if it's the new governor you have a beef with, I'll march you guys all the way to the steps of his palace. ... not that it will do you any good. That guy doesn't even need his guards to turn all of you into bloody smears without even BLINKING. ... Even so, that isn't what you're out to do, is it? No, you're using him as an excuse to just cause some mayhem! You're dragging people into it who probably aren't any happier about this situation. So.... there'll be no sabotaging these buildings on my watch. If you cross that line, there's no helping you guys."
Solomon Lau The Nameless gunner takes horrific damage. Shots through the skull. Through the limbs. Almost through the heart. But he keeps moving. He's /repairing/ himself. Solomon's eyes widen. How does /he/ kill this? All he has is firepower. He doesn't have superpowers like some people. He's just an ordinary guy with extraordinary skills. He can't view himself on Nameless's level right now.

Another blade is created. Or...not a sword. A diamond? A crystal. A horrible club. Nameless knocks bullets aside and keeps moving. Solomon starts moving backwards, raising his gun to fire again, but it clicks, empty. He should have known there were no more rounds. He's getting sloppy.

The nine bullets fly out. Solomon is fast. He moves to swat them away. He moves to bend back.

Nameless says the words. And there is power. The blast comes forth. Solomon...has reflexes. He's fast. He's clean. He can't avoid all of it. But he can avoid most of it.

Solomon dives. The surging light rips through his jacket at the back, grazing the top of his head and burning a swathe in his back. It won't be fatal, or even something that paralyzes him, but it'll leave a scar. A nasty scar that he'll be reminded of when he sees the mirror. His flesh is burning. Everything is burning. But...

Solomon rises, after the blast clears. Slowly. He's clearly in pain. He clearly needs a hospital visit, even if it's not horrible damage. But he keeps standing defiantly. "You're not without hope. I almost told myself you were hopeless, just a moment ago. But if you are, then I am too."

"And that's not true. Because it's us who decide if we can be redeemed. Not anyone else." Solomon says. He raises the pistol again...and then discards it, moving to take for the pillar, and then from there, walk away, out of shot from Nameless. If Nameless wants to kill him, he'll have to pursue him.
Nameless      Solomon's speech is a brave one. The building is crumbling around them. The building next to it, too. Collapsing inwards. Chunks of plastic and metal fall around Solomon and Nameless as Solomon rises to his feet. Those golden eyes never waver as Solomon speaks, even as the building shakes, as people upstairs on both sides flee. One of them tilts into the other. The floor begins to give way.

     It's us who decide we can be redeemed.

     Nameless's hand goes up to his face. He starts laughing. It is a horrible, horrible sound, a laugh forced through a larynx repairing itself with blades. It is a scratching, vile thing, a distorted, painful laugh. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs, not at some humor but with derision, with the dark spite of a man who has already had those same words told to him a hundred times, who *told others* those same words, and saw their futility, and fell into being a beast of wicked justice.

     The last thing Solomon sees is those golden eyes, peeking out between the fingers of that dark-skinned hand; is the red-clad hand bulging and surging; is the laughing, self-loathing, self-mocking lips; and then the ceiling collapses, and the gunner is gone.
Lezard Valeth     Mortimer and his team sustain the casualties they are wont to. They're not prepared for something like this. No one is, really, unless one happens to be a warrior born, and these are... well, not. Still, Mortimer acts to protect his charges as best he is able, delving into magical incantations in order to do so.

    The dark powers answer, and the demon swarm is assaulted by the magical force, the hands, the Dead coming for them... and Dead are savaged by the Dead, as the wraiths tear into the demonic horde and shreds them into pieces, leveraging the nexus of suffering that such a place is.

    It takes only seconds for them to be slaughtered to the man, the twtiching pieces dissolving away as they are banished whence they came. All is once again at peace...

"Fire Lance."

    Death answers death as a salvo of burning javelins of flame rain down, shredding through the construction to turn the area into a sea of flame. There, silhouetted against the fire as he stands atop a nearby mass of half-broken machine, Lezard's glasses glow with flame reflected, a dark smile on his face. "Looks like we have a traitor in our midst, hmm?" Lezard states, a dark smile on his face. "A pity. Well, have the wages your sins deserve." Power erupts around Lezard, another circle of power drawing itself around his feet as he begins to marshall a followup to his bombardment.

    Sanary, meanwhile, hacks into the horde. As much as she depreciates her own ability, she is certainly sturdy enough to brawl with the beasts, the zombies and demons beginning to roar and take large gashes to that axe. Still, she's holding back, and they press upon her and her erstwhile 'allies'. The guns help, the pirated weapons blasting into dead flesh and giving their new associate openings to strike. It's rapidly turning into a bloodbath... Even if not all of the things fighting have blood. If nothing else, however, it is certainly making Sanary look good, perhaps.
Priscilla     "Yea I'll just take a run up the temple steps gov'nah no problem. Be a right quick little skip up the two hundred mile stairs, pop in through the door, say 'ey I think you're a bit rubbish y'know' to the witch on the throne, box his ears around a bit and that's that. What an easy problem to solve. Can't believe I didn't think of that. What a productive course o'action that'd be. Very legally distinct from waiting around for 'him to order me killed and all."

    One of the underdwellers takes the time while struggling to reload the belt back into his impossible old and dilapidated heavy machine gun to spit white hot sarcasm in lieu of bullets at Staren, his personal vox making it stand out over the gunfire. "His shiny shit. His brainwashed lackeys. His personal army. Nah, don't matter a bit. Leave 'em alone. No impact on us right? No impact on 'him. Bit of a daft idea when you think of it, right?"

    One of the big bruiser types --the ones that are arbitrarily two feet taller than everyone else and absurdly barrel chested-- dumps what might be a stripped down flak cannon on Kirito. "Aren't any happier? Go turn yourself inside out you arsewipe. They're marching right to the beat aren't they? Scurrying up and down like busy little ants, welding gold to the walls and floor with a yes sir thank you sir three cups full sir. Seems to me like it's only us who still have our right minds about us. Maybe he figgers there's no point in brainwashing folks he plans to kill off anyways, eh?"

    "All this shite. Him. You. This is all just like the church types always preach isn'it? Never believed 'em myself, but staring it right in the face now. Demons running amok. Witches fiddling with people's minds. All the people turned to slaves. 'mans work torn down and replaced with wor-ship-ful gaudy shite. Aliens running around in the streets gunning down people who resist. I woulda took 'em more seriously, back with all their heresy and the emperor protects fire and brimstone, had I seen this."

    Pinned between him and Staren though, there's not too much more progress they can make. Several are taken out by the concussion grenade on the tight catwalk, and Kirito can probably down the front ranks with his stun saber even after being shot several times. The others in the middle work quick to plaster the main column with explosives, committing to at least taking out one main support if they can't get all four.
Priscilla     "Naw. This piece of crap won't make it halfway to the ground before it's nothin' but gravel." a woman with a nightmarishly scratchy throat replies to Sanary. "Worlds apart. An ocean of metal and rot and dead between 'em. Two houses forever something something. Don't you worry."

    "Secret!" a scrawny guy more rag than man cackles to Sanary. "'spensive too! Sure you won't break your arm off girly?!" he screeches, despite his arm being proportionately mostly bone as he wildly discharges big, thumpy, oversized explosive shells out of his handgun, rolling the dice each time on whether one of them jams and blows his head off. "Maybe if you do what you're told and come back alive love." the woman replies.

    With Sanary just . . . flat out actually helping them, the group makes rapid progress. An Elite on their side and the other one against them carefully folding his cards to play keikakudoori, they triumphantly blitz the last city block-sized pillar, whooping and hollering war cries as they worm their way through multiple layers of outer wall reinforcement peeled off for maintenance, blow through the last two, and start rappelling down the side. Someone crackles their vox, indicating the all clear to the group still in combat.

    Meanwhile Phobos ruins everything. The brave, excessively green soldiers, just recently sworn to the King, barely react with more than a couple of snap gunshots at Phobos from their sharper members before the merciless sentries guns bleep in their direction and gun them all down screaming in mechanical cold blood, bathing the floor in crimson, slick and chunky, mixed with bits of brittle bone. Realizing that they aren't actually shooting him, the captain with a self-preservation instinct is stuck glowering at Phobos, laspistol drawn, but unable to fire, in checkmate. "You'll regret this when he finds out." he assures here. It's neither vengeful or patriotic. His voice is tired and almost sympathetically belligerent.

    One of the Gauss Grenade abominations wipes out a good little small town from a section of the great tower, causing an area three times the disintegrated sphere to crumble into a meteor shower of dangerous falling debris, plummeting right down the endless construction shaft, and menacing Staren and Kirito with much two-ton shrapnel. The other escapes the overwatch fire gauntlet and hurtles dead into the second main support, gobbling a section out as if a giant had took a giant, glowing green bite from it.

    The tower groans, developing a slight list. It's not like the groan of a ship. It's the groan of the entire world --the Earth itself, titanic and old and unfathomable-- tilting all around, and threatening to, somewhere and somehow, break. It is impossibly loud, and deeply unnatural, the sound akin to the rust-drenched death rattle the planet, for all it matters in this enclosed world of steel.
Staren     Staren dives for cover. His own speakers keep volume with the bomber's. "Ah yes. Funny how if you cared so much, you didn't spend all the time before building something, making the world better. But the moment someone ELSE takes action, here you are with bombs." He then braves a faceful of machinegun burst to blast the machinegun itself with a beam. Heavy bullets lodged in the front of his armor now. Cracks in his faceplate.

    "Kirito! Cut the wires!" Staren pulls from his bag a riot foam sprayer and flies around the central column, trying to cover all the explosive so that the bombers can't set it off any other way.
Mortimer Balman      Wait a minute. That voice. That's.. Lezard? Were those HIS demons? Judging by his statement and the look on his face there, yeah. Yeah those were likely his, and not the agents of Chaos he had assumed.

     Well, fuck. Fuck this, then.

     Looking around for a brief moment, Mort adjusts his hood ever so slightly and.. Begins emiting *atrocious* amounts of smoke. Thick, acrid, cloying smoke that sticks to the flesh and clothing in the most unpleasant way. This smoke screen is not too terribly hard to dissipate of course- it's literally just a vast cloud of foul smelling smoke without the use of any fancy magics. A man of Valeth's skill no doubt has the power to blow that away within a short period, he's a powerful magi after all.

     Just, once the smoke's gone, he'll notice that so is the strange robed figure. Mort would have grabbed his young charges and run them all the hell away as fast as their legs can carry them, piling the wounded on his own back to make good their escape.

     Insert classic 1960s cartoon running sound effect <--- here.
Priscilla     Despite the detonation conditions of the plastic explosives including 'being breathed on' and 'being looked at funny', Staren finds the most expedient means to insulate and isolate them before the squad on the catwalks is cleared out --mostly non-lethally as well, so they can be questioned later (or more likely executed by Gilgamesh (indirectly)). This results in their given side only suffering the severe damage to one the one support pillar courtesy of Phobos, and the further work by the Nameless.

    Anymore and the whole thing would definitely collapse and crumble inwards, folding upon itself like a hellish kalaeidoscope of metal and sweat, grease and blood, inside out from top to bottom, after 'Sanary's team' makes a clean getaway and blows their whole series of charges along the eastern wall's columns, miles from start to finish. The sound of the monolith stressing before pales in comparison to the resonant, exponentially multiplying screams and heaves of the abyssal ocean of ill-maintained construction around them, where the entire floor shifts three degrees as the top several kilometers of the hab tower tilt on the partially useless meber of its four sides.

    It takes several minutes for all the squealing and screeching to stop, as the sheer size of the thing means that the kinetic waves take minutes to travel all the way up and down from the blast site and back, making trillions of tons of plasteel and instacrete ripple in grinding, torturous slow motion. The construction is, most certainly, fucked. It'll take weeks to sort it back out, and specialized machinery to pull the top back upright before workers can fill in all the missing mass (a fewprobably falling off the side or being crushed in the process). The work at the top is intact, but the King's plans are severely set back, which ostensibly buys the undercity the time it wants before his crosshairs swivel to them.