Scene #7097: HOTD: Chapter 1

Owner	Pose
Tina Natsumi	(MUSIC: https://youtu.be/v1zvTWS5Qn4) The nearest warpgate takes Elite responders to a town square that's already swarming with zombies, fresh and old. Bodies litter the streets from both the recently slain and fallen zombies alike, gunshots ringing out in all directions as the local police struggle to stop themselves from being added to the dead and undead body count. Further ahead is the mansion itself. It's massive compared to the town, easily several acres long, complete with gardens visible from a distance, fountains decorated with stone statues, and even a moat from its time in past centuries when it had originally been a castle. Today, however, the mansion is not quite so photogenic what with all the corpses and the screaming and such. It's an absolute shitshow here as civilians and researchers can still be fleeing from the mansion. One of them is in the middle of being bitten as a man in a trench coat shoots the zombie making a meal of the researcher. Another is being hoisted overhead by a massive zombie as it shambles towards the edge of a bridge, enduring multiple gunshots to the head from a blonde girl in a cowgirl hat and a bomber jacket. Things will probably not go well at the rate they're going.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry Princess steps through the warpgate, dissonantly pretty and pastel in her hybrid superhero-and-magical-girl costume. A pink, winged wand is in her hand, with an ugly nuclear reactor bolted to it like a mechanical tumor. There's even a little smile on her face. "Hello, everyone! I'm here to..." Then she gets her bearings properly; notices the screams filling the air, the civilians brushing past her to escape. Her demeanor shifts in less than a second as she sucks a breath in through her teeth. Oh, shit. This is a warzone already. Her thumb flicks a red button on her wand. The reactor whines to life; filling the air with a high-pitched keening, a subtle tingle, and a taste of metal as the plutonium inside starts cooking in earnest. The red timer display flickers on, counting down relentlessly as plural pounds of matter are burned off into raw energy: 04:59 She bends her knees, and an instant later wings of white sparkles erupt from her back and launch her hundreds of feet into the air. As she reaches the peak of her ascent, Strawberry's eyes shut behind her visor, and hundreds of invisible fragments of her awareness dissipate out through the entire town and its surroundings- it's as if she's seeing through a thousand pairs of eyes at once. Where are people most in danger? Where are the zombies most concentrated? Where are they coming from?
Shyra	What's that? An attack by ZOMBIES? Shyra is immediately on the case. Not only are there wounded to deal with, but she can use her powers to stop the undead and bring them peace! And so the brave and mighty Holy Healer charges onto the scene... By which we mean she tags along behind Strawberry Princess, running along behind her with her robe swishing about as she bobbles with her staff over her shoulder. She is also pink and purple! Blends right in. Hold on! I'm coming! She calls. Of course, the situation is horrible, and Shyra immediately sees that there's a lot of work to be done. There is a wash of green sparkles as Shyra attempts to heal the fallen to try to get them back up so they can escape! While Strawberry rushes into the air to try to figure out where to best help people, Shyra provides support from the ground! Just tell me where to go, Strawberry! I'll be right there! She says, trying to stay within sight of the magical girl.
Note	The warpgate shimmers and disgorges a... a kid. A young girl who, despite being in her early teens, is on the short side. She's dressed in loose-fitting clothes suited for martial arts, and strangely sporting a monkey tail that sways freely about in her wake. But this child feels something WEIRD. Something she's felt once before. And that leads her attention towards Strawberry Princess the moment she activates that reactor. A SHIVER runs through the little girl, all the hairs on her tail standing briefly on end, but despite the weird surge of nauusea and unease. Seeing Shyra tagging along behind though, that sets her a little bit at ease. The weird boxes that appear wehenever the pink-haired speaks are REALLY weird, but just get Note to curioiusly poke at the air a few times before dismissing the phenomenon. There's way more important things to deal with here. "Hey! You two! Don't you dare run off without me!" Note's tail lashes at the air in emphasis as she drops down low like a sprinter about to take off dashing.. and then-- WHOOOOOSH! Instead of sprinting, she ROCKETS along the streets, propelled like a rocket on a wind all her own. Note moves like a bullet, simply ZWEEEEEEOOSHing out of sight and reappearing briefly at a few spots of immediate crisis and delivering crushingly brutal practiced side kicks and elbow strikes that turn the undead into projectiles... often into other brethren, but sometimes into building sides. This might not exactly be the most efficient way of dealing with zombies, but a zombie that's been pummeled so hard that all its bones are broken is far less threatening than the shambling kind. That said, one should better watch out. 'flying zombies' are now a minor hazard, weird though that might be.
William Pauwel	ZOMBIES!? In THIS neck of the woods!?!?! ... Honestly, William Pauwel has never actually been to this place. The Multiverse is kind of huge, and the probability of winding up in any particular random town square is astronomically tiny. However, this one had the good fortune to have access to a wide-band emergency beacon! It's surprising how many towns /don't!/ A motorcycle explodes out of the warp gate at a frankly irresponsible speed. Its rider hangs on for dear life as the vehicle slams into the pavement and drifts into a power slide that sends it careening in the direction of the MASSIVE ZOMBIE MANSION. Some kind of EVIL RESIDENCE that is obviously spewing out an unreasonable quantity of zombies! Will whispers some rather uncouth language under his breath and hits the gas. Armored tires scream across the quaint cobblestone road, straight for that FAMILIAR-LOOKING COWGIRL. "Howdy pardner!" William Pauwel, Ace Sci-Fi Cowboy, drawls in an accent so old western that it's probably wearing rawhide. His plasma weapon, Terminal Judgment, whirls out of its holster. He aims and fires in the same breath, launching oversized fireballs of sunfire right into the Big Zombie's face. "You here t' lend this place a hand, too? What's the situation?"
Tina Natsumi	Strawberry Princess' and Shyra's arrivals draw several few confused looks from the responders that are still alive. Why wouldn't there be? They're so... Colorful and not dying. At a glance and from Strawberry Princess' vantage point, the zombies are concentrated mostly around the mansion, having spread out towards the town in a somewhat disorganized clump having followed the screams and blood. Any newly appearing zombies, meanwhile, are coming from the mansion, and it appears that there's a massive number of shambling creatures inside the mansion as well bordering on excessive. There's also a large number of living people and machines alike in the mansion, but the former number is dwindling fast (presumably because of all the zombies inside). There's even a few winged dogs and birds searching for targets as well. One of those winged dogs even comes for Strawberry Princess! There's still plenty of people shouting and running away from the zombies on the outside, but relatively few injured still lingering about on account of probably being dead already by that point. Shyra does manage to find a clump of injured police officers, though, and she's able to close up their injuries as well as delay the spread of any infections they may have suffered. "Thank you... Ugh. They all came so fast!" One of the officers groans before getting back up to resume firing at the zombies. Another officer snickers, earning herself a light whack on the head before adding yet more covering fire to the mix. The researcher nearest Trench Coat collapses as that zombie biting him finally goes down. "Others are still inside. Save them...!" The man wheezes with his last breath, and Trench Coat takes a moment to glance around at the carnage before reloading his pistol and taking note of the new arrivals. "Reinforcements? Great. AMS Agent Tho-...Sophie?" He squints briefly towards the mansion before jerking sideways and whipping his gun around to dispatch a pair of winged dogs jumping out from behind a nearby rock. For some reason, they make jaguar noises when they get gunned down. As Trench Coat hurries towards the fountain, Note speeds by to slam a zombie into another zombie into another zombie, causing a nice little chain reaction of bodies getting pulverized against each other and also a wall. It's rather disgusting to look at and especially to smell, but it's not something anyone here is particularly worried about compared to the alternatives. One of them takes the head off the statue at the fountain, drawing a startled yelp as a woman in a red business jacket and skirt by thefountain stops playing dead and pulls herself up to her feet. "Rogan...? It's you!" She exclaims, running towards Trench Coat while keeping an eye on Note in case she decides to launch some more bodies around. Before they make contact, however, a winged imp-like creature swoops in from above with blinding speed, snatching Sophie up in its feet and cackling as it ascends rapidly. "Nobody leaves here alive!" It makes for the mansion immediately afterwards, somehow moving astonishgly quickly despite its size, cargo, and just straight up disappearing once it reaches the mansion itself.
Tina Natsumi	"Sophie!" Rogan charges towards the mansion, shooting at zombies on the way towards the mansion's doors. Meanwhile, William's motorcycle bursts out of the warpgate as he beelines towards Cowboy Hat, the big zombie's face getting absolutely melted between the combination of sun-gun and handgun. Cowboy Hat lets out a relieved sigh as the researcher gets dropped, then shouts "Persona!" as a red, white, and blue robot appears behind Cowboy Hat to fire on some more zombies in the waterway below the bridge. "Dang.. That coulda been bad. Thanks for the hand, pard! Heh... Oh. Y'alright?" She checks on the researcher, the telltale red glint from the phone on her breast pocket indicating that she is recording all of this. Of course Tina would record this, but the researcher doesn't seem to care as he shoves a key into her hand. "Thank you! There's still people trapped inside..." He gasps out before hobbling away. Tina's about to join Rogan at the front gate, but he just shoots the locks off the door and kicks it in instead of waiting for the key. "... Well. That works, don't it? I dunno what the situation is here, to be honest. Heard there was a big dustup 'round here, and before I knew it, things all went to hell like some kinda old-timey zombo flick." Tina explains, then keeps firing into the waterway as zombie pirahnas start leaping out of it to try taking a bite out of her and William. Rogan, meanwhile, is backing away from the front doors as yet more zombified people shamble out of the mansion's front door, de-legged zombies crawl towards the grounded not-zombies to try taking bites out of them, and burlier zombies start hurling zombie frogs at the fliers!
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry's eyes open again as she lifts her wand, shouldering it like a rifle. Control rods slide out, sending her wand's reactor into crackling overdrive ahead of the shot. A blue searchlight of Cherenkov radiation paints the roof of the mansion as she lines up her angle, coordinating it from a dozen different vantage points inside and outside the building itself. Tricky to hit the undead and spare the living, but she's taken harder shots. "Firing, medium!" Her finger hovers over the trigger- And a flying dog blindsides her, grabbing her arm and hurling her off-balance. A pink forcefield flares between its teeth and her skin, but it still bruises deeply as she tangles with it in the air. After a second, she manages to draw a Glock and fire twice through the canine's head, whirling back to face the mansion before it's hit the ground. The wand is shrieking now, held at full charge for too long. She whips it around and pulls the trigger before it can explode in her hands. "-Ghh. Firing!" A beam of unbearably bright light pierces through the mansion, blows through the greatest mass of zombies inside that she can line up, gently curves around the still-living scientists as if bent by Beckham himself, and continues on to bore a sizzling hole deep into the ground and rock behind. Those close to the beam are treated to a deafening concussion and searing three-dimensional sunburn. But it's better than being eaten. 04:43 Back near Shyra, a peculiar... ghost? Materializes. Or perhaps it was lurking nearby all along. It looks like a girl carrying a staff, all softly glowing translucent pink. Her face is featureless but bleeding from a gash, and her left arm is twisted in an unnatural way. The ghostly girl doesn't speak, but holds out her good hand and tilts her head towards the mansion. If Shyra accepts, she'll be scooped up and flown at high speeds towards the building- and then, once she's back on solid ground, the ghost dissipates again.
Shyra	Shyra waves to Note as she is yelled at. Hello there! Are you here to help! Thank you for-EEP! She eeps when that WOOSH happens, Note blasting through the area as Shyra crouches, cowering a bit at the phenomenal power of the half-Saiyan. The motorcycle doesn't help either! At the moment, however, Shyra is in fact colorful and not dying for the moment. The healed policemen get a nod and smlle from Shyra. Be safe! Find a place to defend yourselves! The reason why the other officer snickered just goes right over her head as the healer turns... And is confronted by the ghostly sprit. Shyra stares at the pink girl for a moment, the bleeding gash causing her to gasp and reflexively raise her staff... But she doesn't. Somehow, it doesn't seem like it would do any good. Not like this. Instead, she smiles and takes the girl's hand. I believe in you. She says. Let's go together. A moment later, she is wooshing through the air to the mansion... She ends up right in the middle of the confrontation between Rogan and the horrible situation unfolding there. With a squeak, she ducks as the winged zombie swooshes past to watch it get pasted. Oh... OH! Wow! That's amazing! She calls before she straightens up. Somehow, the massive beam hole that is likely in the mansion is just completely missed by the Holy Healer. The embattled Rogan gets her attention, and Shyra raises her own staff! LIGHT2 A series of sizzling beams fire out from her staff, bending and swirling through the air as they seek out targets! Zombies are targeted, the holy-elemental beams raining down on them and blasting them with undead-banishing power!
William Pauwel	There's something about the reek of smoldering flesh. It's not a good something. Burnt skin smells awful. Especially burnt ROTTING skin. Will grimaces as the big zombie topples over, pockmarked flesh still sizzling and steaming. "Well, that ain't the prettiest sight in the world, but..." At least the researcher it was clinging to is in one piece. More people trapped inside, though? /Why/ are so many people trapped inside? There are so many mysteries to solve, and far too many zombies to shoot through to solve them...! "What, so there was a thing goin' on 'fore the zombies even started showing up? That's kind of... Okay then, I guess! We just gotta go in that there mansion and poke around till we find something, right? Right! Provided that a certain Strawberry Princess doesn't straight up obliterate the thing first. "Dang, even the /fish/ are turning zombie?" Will comments as he fires a blast of pure electrical energy into the standing water. "Come on," he says, moving up to join the others and showing a distinct lack of concern for potential radiation poisoning. "We gotta clean up this mess 'fore we can do any real sleuthing. The assortment of zombies bearing down on the local populace is something of an issue. Killing the zombies (again?) before they have a chance to spread their terrible zombie plague(???) isn't the hard part- making sure not to roast the people in the way in the process, that's where things get difficult. Will's expert gunslinging is put to the test as he turns Terminal Judgment on shambling corpse after shambling corpse, aiming to precisely obliterate their brains without injuring the people they're assaulting. "So uh, just to check," he asks of Tina, "Are these zombies the kind what make /more/ zombies if they get the chance to chomp on you? I think this is kind of important info to know."
Note	Indeed, Note's means of taking down the undead are resultingly messy... but thankfully the zombies are splattering far away from anyone. They're expecially not splattering all over HER, which is what would happen if she fought them in a more typical manner! Once the immediate clumpings of them are thinned out into just stragglers... "Huh...?!" Now there's new monsters! And a hostage is being hauled off?! Note looks over her shoulder after landing in the street at the goings-on, and the triumph on her face rapidly pales to deep concern and worry. Looks like this ain't going to be so simple. But when Shyra just gets Spirited Away quite literally towards the manor, the shorty girl then turns to speak up - and sees William speaking what's already on her mind. The mansion's the next place to check out! And so when Will starts moving, she swoops low after him. "Ugh. Fighting these things sucks. They look like people, but they're empty. I can't feel them... they're not hard to beat, but it's..." She doesn't even need to say it. All the gore. Grossssssssssssssss! And then there's the bite thing that was just mentioned. "... S-so melee combat is bad!" Wow. Good to hear about THAT now. Not that any zombie would be fast enough to catch her. The fact that she can't sense them.. has her worried. And so the tension and a bit of panic begins spreading harshly on her face. With a single rush of determination, the youth tenses her everything and lets loose a kiai! ... And she's floating maybe ten feet away from Will. This is perhaps not ideal for Will, since golden light brilliantly pours from the girl in a blinding flash, all of it igniting with a KRAKAKOOOM and storming about her as a very visible, tangible, filmy aura of obvious power. In the rush, her silky black hair rises upwards and splits into spikes, the light filling every strand with the glow until it appears golden as well. This makes her ponytail into something like a morning star of spikyhair, floating out behind her head. With fierce now-green eyes she solemnly nods at Will. "Don't worry. I've got your back!" And as proof of this, Note raises her hands, aiming her palms at Zombie after Zombie. Bluish-white light balls coalesce in under a second and launch themselves straight for zombies with sufficient power to vaporize them. A few bystanders people might get knocked on their asses by the explosions and perhaps showered in disintegrated zombie, but...
Tina Natsumi	Strawberry Princess' nuclear deathbeam does quite the number on the zombies! Although radiation sickness isn't a concern for them any more, getting obliterated is, and obliterated they do get. Their prior targets have significantly more self-preservation instincts, and those that get burnt have enough sense to stay away from the death beam even as they run back to safety while screaming in horrible pain. RStill better than being eaten. Plus, there's now a new entrance for the ground team! Shyra's own beams don't have to try particularly hard to hit their shambling targets, the zombies proving to be quite susceptible to that holy magic as their insides melt into relatively sterile piles of flesh rather than decaying and zombie juice-filled piles of flesh. Once the ground team finally get into the mansion proper, things are still rather hectic. Upon entering, screaming zombies leap onto the chandelier above the entrance, swinging it back and forth while Rogan tries to plink at them with bullets. One gets nailed in the face and goes down, but the other one gets that chandelier falling down at those entering. Tina and Rogan both manage to dive out of the way in opposite directions, then sart firing at each other to dispatch zombies on both sides coming down the stairs on each side of the main foyer towards the intruders. One of the mansion's caretakers hangs precariously off a railing between the stairs, but is saved when William's sun-gun helps neutralize the zombie about to take a bite out of that person's arms. "Pretty sure these are the types to do that, yeah. Saw a guy get his neck chomped out before, and he got right back up to start goin' at it with everyone else checkin' on him." Tina chuckles, then grimaces as a likely unpleassant memory from minutes ago comes back to her. She doesn't elaborate past that or anything. It's just probably a really disturbing memory for someone that's not used to seeing corpses up close. Luckily, with Note shifting to a more blasty-strategy, it appears that getting bitten or worrying about someone turning into a zombie is going to be less of a concern now! Sort of. As the ground team proceeds further into the mansion, they're besieged by a distressingly large number of zombies coming from multiple angles. Doors are carved apart by zombies with machetes, zombified birds crash through windows to try pecking at the Elites with maggot-infested beaks, and more agile jumping zombies even leap off ceilings to try and pounce on the Elites from above! To make matters worse, their attention is going to be pulled in multiple directions. Not only are the zombies coming from multiple directions, they also start encountering more and more researchers in precarious situations. Trapped underneath fallen bookcases, chased by zombies with chainsaws, locked in cells and forced to run laps just to keep the simple-minded zombies from getting too close for who knows how long... There's also the matter of that strange imp creature taunting the group about letting nobody leave alive. The Elites certainly have the firepower to obliterate every zombie in their path, but it's going to take a while due to the sheer numbers ahead of them. They could be THOROUGH and ERADICATE everything to get through safely, ensuring that the researchers they come across survive. That relies on actually finding living researchers at that pace, though, and there's no guarantee that anyone inside the mansion will still be alive by the time they find wherever that imp went with Sophie. They could also MOVE QUICKLY and PRIORITIZE the zombies in their path in their search for survivors and Sophie. There's likely to be a higher chance of actually finding survivors, but it could be for naught if the survivors have nowhere to escape or end up being liabilities to the Elites as they rush through the mansion.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry expands her consciousness throughout the mansion again, pouring it through rooms and around corners like an invisible amoeba- a thousand minute fragments of scrying sight. There isn't time for "searching", not with her timer ominously ticking down, but they may not need to! It fills every nook and cranny of the sprawling complex that it's able, singling out the trapped and still-living as it permeates everywhere it's able. 04:03 As she locates the living, she levels her wand to ash a hole straight through walls, floors, and zombies towards them, turning the maze into a series of known destinations and clear-cut sizzling paths directly to them. She can't, of course, deal with all of the zombies herself- in fact, the meditative far-focused path-sniping she's doing means she may need to be defended herself!- but this ought to effectively eliminate costly searching. And if she happens to find that imp in the process, it gets the same treatment- unexpectedly wallbanged with a searing beam of unbearable, tingling, blinding light.
Note	As soon as they reach the mansion, Note realizes... this is going to be a problem. MONSTERS pouring out of every corner and none of them can be sensed, now that has her on her toes. But unfortunately for the monsters, transformed as she is, the beaks of zombie birds and the teeth of regular zombies can't really... pierce her skin. Meanwhile, a single errant backhand will splatter any such creatures of mildly enchanted, rotten flesh. It's messy and horrible, and Note's going to need one HELL of a cleanup after this... Of more pressing concern though, is her state of mind. The incredibly gory, turturously traumatic mess of it all has her on the verge of tears, despite the sharp words and barky attitude she's prone to hurling everywhere. A single glance is all it takes to see how this place is RATTLING her. Around every corner, something else that's disgusting or just plain awful. ALl of this pain, suffering, and panic. It has her incredibly jittery and ever more pissed off and frantic by the minute. She quickly gives up on any order to this though, instead reaching out with her mind to pick up on life signatures, however faint. Though she can only home in on one at a time, Note basically becomes a living wrecking ball, just PLOWING THROUGH ceilings, walls, and doors on her own rocket-powered energy. It's messy, it's going to make navigating the place a bit hazardous, but it allows her to begin systematically locating people in trouble and splattering anything threatening them or breaking down doors or rocketing down hallways SUPER KICKING everything into one big pile against a wall. Not too different from Strawberry Princess's plan, really.
William Pauwel	All those people trapped under all that rubble, some with zombie bite marks, some without. And apparently these are the infection-y kind of zombies, so who even can say how many they can actually save, but... Damnit, they've got to try! Even if it means getting bogged down in the eff-- oh nevermind we're doing speed strats "You know!!" Will winces as two of four party members suddenly decide that they're going to be blasting through the walls as quick as possible, and one of four goes full shine spark right in his peripheral vision. Good thing he's got eye protection. "Most houses! They aren't made to keep standin' without walls! Or support beams-- dangit, okay, nevermind, gotta go fast I /guess./" Will sticks a couple of fingers between his lips and whistles. Somehow, inexplicably, his motorcycle rumbles up from behind him, and he wastes no time in... wandering around to make use of: x1 grappling hook cable xMany piles of scrap lumber xEven more grappling hook cable. ...And in so doing creates a makeshift sled leashed to the back of his ride. Job done in record time (apparently, making makeshift transportation is something Will has practice with), the cowboy wastes no time in mounting up. "Alright y'all! I've got room for one more on the seat of this crazy iron horse! Everyone else needs to hop on the back! Who wants a ride? I'll drive, y'all... I dunno, blast? Heal? I jus' would really rather make sure nobody gets caught under a collapsing ceiling or something!" "Jus', be careful to hold on," Will warns as he revvs the cycle's motor, "Thissun's gonna be a bumpy ride."
Shyra	It's nice to be useful! The sight of the zombies falling apart into piles of dormant and non-infective flesh is a good feeling to the Holy Healer, actually having a place to be offensive for a change. Undead aren't exactly super common in her own world! However, there's the matter of the mansion. Shyra immediately falls back onto instinctive responses upon seeing the chaos inside, erecting defensive barriers for Tina and Rogan so they can push in with more confidence, though the chandelier almost beans her too! She quickly floats up on a wave of sparkles to help the mansion motorcycleetaker off of the ledge and bring them down to the floor, smiling to them, and helps them get away with a quick barrier spell for them too! Shyra continues to be supportive where she can, allowing them to focus on killing zombies while she focuses her efforts on saving and healing and protecting. As Strawberry blows up holes through the place to allow them more direct movement, Shyra stares. So much power.... she gasps in shock, her hands at her mouth, but this opens up other opportunities. While Note plows into zombies and Super Saiyans them into the ground, the healer hops onto the sled on the back of William's motorcycle and waves. Everyone get in! Let's go! She calls, and hunches down, providing another magical barrier for the motorcycle itself! Hopefully it'll stop some initial zombie rush while she can help load people onto the sled as they pass through, getting people out!
Tina Natsumi	As holes start getting punched into the mansion outright courtesy of Strawberry Princess's stupidly big laser and Note playing the part of the human-sized battering ram, things start getting a little.. Lot shakier. On the plus side, extra breathing holes for the mansion means it's child play for the group to locate and outright see where the clumps of zombies and survivors are. Getting to them will be fairly easy at this point, and being able to shoot from long distances mean Tina and Rogan can concentrate their fire on the zombies closest to the survivors. Note charging in helps to give the survivors an extra target to hide behind as well, although it puts her at direct risk of getting something angry and shambling biting her, scratching her, or throwing heavy steel barrels at her that the mansion just has lying around for some reason. On the other hand, being able to see where the survivors are goes both ways. For the zombies that haven't been obliterated by nuclear and sungun fire, they don't really have to search for their quarry. Zombies start zeroing in on the survivors and Elites alike, making it harder to physically get to the survivors or to make it further up the mansion wherever the imp has gone with Sophie. Strangely enough, though, it doesn't appear that the imp is anywhere nearby. Also, the mansion's physical stability may be in question if this continues which could prove to be rather awful for things like people that don't enjoy having roofs cave in on them. Indeed, there's already a fair number of rooms that are little more than rubble at this point, although it's not clear if those rooms were populated by zombies, survivors, or a combination of the two. The survivors that still live are easy enough for Shyra to heal and keep alive, though, as the crew blasts apart zombies with overwhelming firepower. Where there isn't any blood, though, there's survivors scrambling desperately to get away from the zombies even now. Luckily, keeping the survivors in the immediate area alive becomes even easier as the ground team gets a ride for both themselves and their living cargo when William turns his motorcycle into a makeshift pickup. The survivors have few qualms about climbing in the back, and Tina and Rogan both climb in to focus more on shooting rather than maneuvering AND shooting while Shyra turns the motor-sled into a motor turtle bike sort of thing.
Tina Natsumi	After some more driving and gunning, flying and gunning, flying and punching, and driving and healing, Sophie can be seen in one of the still solid rooms along with another group of survivors. Rogan's already looking antsy about waiting in that vehicle that can probably move faster than he does on foot. "We need to hurry and rescue Sophie. She'll know more about what's going on." Although he sounds calm as he relays that message, his shooting is anything but as he focuses his shots more on the path between them and Sophie's room while Tina focuses on keeping the immediate area around the survivors safe. Eventually, the ground/vehicle team reaches the room Sophie is in, and Rogan scrambles out of the vehicle to get to her while doing a fairly bad job at not looking impartial towards the other surivvors hurrying to the safety of that vehicle. "Sophie! Are you okay?" As Rogan helps Sophie to her feet, though, Strawberry Princess can see something larger moving from a nearby room. "I was so scared..." Sophie murmurs anxiously while looking towards her rescuers. Before she can say anything further, though, a massive zombie clad in armor leaps through one of the holes in the ceiling and lands behind Sophie, brandishing a giant bardiche of all things! ( MUSIC: https://youtu.be/y7Nf8xysEWw ) TYPE 27: CHARIOT The armored zombie swings the weapon, slamming the woman into a nearby wall before groaning and charging at the group with the bladed stick. It's not terribly fast, but the armor means that it's going to take quite a lot of firepower to put the creature down even with that exposed red spot on its chest!
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry rests her legs on the sled for a little while, taking more relaxed pot-shots at zombies and protecitng the rescued survivors as the vehicle trundles along. Eventually, though, they reach the room with Sophie- and Strawberry can barely yell a warning in time before flaring her wings and flinging herself away from the charge. "LOOK OUT!" With a practiced gesture, she creates a bubble of translucent pink force around the sled, hopefully shielding the rescued survivors from the Obvious Boss's depredations! The wand is leveled once again, but the light builds and builds, control rods pulling out of the core with a series of grinding clunks until the tingling and metal-taste are palpable and it shrieks with the agony of thermally-tortured metal. The wand in Strawberry's hands is dangerously close to becoming a dirty bomb. But she can't find a clean angle. The spotlight of Cherenkov radiation jitters as it tries to track the monster's weakpoint; the one time it lines up, she hesitates, unable to fire because of the woman behind it. 01:43 "I DON'T HAVE THE SHOT," she yells over the growing keening wail of the engine. "PIN IT DOWN!"
Shyra	Shyra is in for a hell of a ride. The sled screeches all over the place while they bang and blast and do all kinds of maniacal things. This is.... kind of bumpy! She says, as opposed to more accurately describing it as 'mind-shatteringly terrifying'. Still, they screech into Sophie's room, and Shyra hurries to help people onto the sled for the moment that they're stopped... And Sophie gets promptly plastered to the wall. OH NO! Shyra says, completely taken off guard by the giant zombie appearing in the house full of zombies. Still, she immediately moves to help Sophie, using a large fountain of green shiny healing sparkles on the fallen woman and trying to pull her back over to the sled to get her out of the path of the deadly combat raging around the boss!
Note	After hearing William's warning, Note mentally kicks herself. Of COURSE the house could fall over. This puts quite a dent in her plan to just 'beeline' for survivors and pulverize whatever's making trouble for them. She has to watch out for anything load bearing. No more busting through walls. With a frustrated growl she focuses hard and the glow surrounding her dies down several notches, though she remains transformed. She emerges out in the hallway after punching down a door only to have a zombie CHUCK A BARREL AT HER. "WUAH?!" The absurdity of this buys the zombie's plan a good second a half of wide-eyed gobsmackedness. And that's enough for Note to get BARRELED. WHGOOOOOOOOOOONG! She... isn't knocked over, though. Instead she just splutters out some minor ouchies... And from there, proceeds to SLAM a knife-hand into the barrel, and actually TEAR the entire thing apart. The noise of the metal screaming in protest is hell on ears, but she swiftly has an assortment of shards and scraps... Which she then proceeds to simply and casually HURL at hyper velocities, or finger-flick smaller pieces with freakish precision. The physics of this is exceedingly deadly to say the least. Might as well be firing a railgun. Far less damaging to the building, though. Then she rounds a bend just in time to see William go zooming past and decides to follow along all the way to where Sophie and the others are kept... But.. it's no great reunion. For all the rescue brings a brief smile to her face, it quickly turns to unease when ominous NOISES herald the approach of a thing she can't sense. A big, leathily armed zombie. And from the way Note's eyes narrow at that blade, it seems she respects THAT thing as a threat far more than bird beaks and-- And THUMP. Down goes Sophie. Note... hisses FURIOUSLY, eyes tearing up. It's been quite a bit beyond 'too much' for her to endure all of this gore, the pain, and the panic. Even three minutes or whatever Strawberry's timer has clocked up so far is far too much. "I've had EEEEEEENNOOOOOOUGH OF THIS!!!" Note howls, raising her dukes in pure outrage. That's when the aura she worked hard to suppress earlier bursts back to full fury with a howl and a few staticy sizzles of electricity curling through it. There's another mighty KRAKAOOOOSH as all of that PURE TANTRUM boils over and her ridiculous hairstyle splits into a fancier, higher-reaching array of spikes... And that's when she simply VANISHES FROM SIGHT. But she's definitely still here - a few blurs of motion as she rains down blow upon pulverizing blow on the armored monster from seemingly EVERYWHERE at once - including its glowing red spot - are proof of that. All the motion does kick up quite the winds though.
William Pauwel	For a while there, Will's plan works out remarkably swimmingly. The makeshift field hospital-slash-mobile firing platform-slash-affordable utility vehicle charges through a cavalcade of gore and viscera. Will handles the thing as well as he possibly can, given the completely awful road conditions, but he can't exactly stop the sled from shaking all over the damn place whenever he goes up a flight of stairs or something equally absurd. It works, for a while. For a while. Until they find Sophie. ...And the gigantic armored zombie living inside it. "Why," Will asks of the universe, "Why d'you gotta make me do this? Ugh, this repair job's gonna be /awful./" That kind of line-- that's the kind of line that suggests that Will has a PLAN. It's not a plan that involves increasingly angry punch-monkeys, fortunately. It does, however, count on something else. "Miss healer," Will says, driving his cycle over toward Shyra (and by extension Sophie) while Note has the monster distracted. "I'mma gonna need you to keep that shield thing up 'round these folks and make sure none of you end up gettin' hurt. Alright? It'll all be fine, promise!" Will then looks Strawberry Princess right in the eye. He glances to the back half of his motorcycle seat. Back up at her. To the seat. Back to her. "You'll fit fine. Hop on, hold on, and get ready to fire soon as I give the word." Will aims and fires, deftly shattering the piece of wood anchoring his grappling line to the bike. Then, he turns the cycle around, accelerates a short and safe distance away, and then slams a fist down on something that looks dangerously like an overdrive button. It's not an overdrive button. That would imply it's making the motor go faster. He's not going to be using the motor, because that's not an overdrive button. That's the bike's jump jet activation button. "HERE WE GO!" Will grits his teeth and floors the pedal. His motorcycle- the Mistral- undergoes sudden and explosive acceleration. Its tires scream as they desperately try to maintain traction as a set of PLASMA THRUSTERS unfold at the back of the vehicle. He's driving it... Right at the giant zombie's big glowing weak point. This is a rail shooter, Will's in control of the rails, and Strawberry Princess can't miss if her entire firing arc is taken up by the target's S2 Organ.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry glances down at Will, his face reflected in her opaque visor. Her lips tighten. A less PG-rated hero might say 'fuck it'. Strawberry just says: "Okay. I... I trust you." She doesn't stay in the seat of William Pauwel's Wild Offroad Ride for long: as the zombie gets close, she actually stands up on the back half of the motorcycle seat, then steps forward to plant her boot on the handlebars. The wand is levelled, not as a rifle, but as a lance. 01:33 The tingling becomes unbearable. The reactor glows with heat. The skin on Strawberry's face is tinting red. Every surviving smoke alarm in the building simultaneously goes off from the background radiation spiking. As its prongs touch the zombie's core, there is a light that is unbearable to look at even through one's eyelids. The beam shines through the mansion and up into the sky. Outside, grass flash-burns under its path, ignited by the light of the blast like an ant under a magnifying glass. In the room, inconsequential bits of paper and cloth catch fire in much the same way. An instant later, delayed like thunder after lighting, is a jarring shockwave of air that might almost pass for a sound.
Tina Natsumi	In this part of the world, it's pretty obvious that people with the power to obliterate walls with lasers and/or their faces isn't really a thing. A suit of steel armor would be great for stopping bullets fired by the likes of Rogan, and the glowing red weakpoint is likely more of a failsafe for whoever made it than anything else. Unfortunately for the Chariot, it's not being shot at by just Rogan (who's apparently a crack shot as he keeps sinking bullets into that bleeding wound). Tina and Uncle Sam are both letting loose with their own Thompson submachine guns, peppering it with bullets and keeping it staggered long enough that it can't really advance beyond flailing that bardiche around and missing a lot. Strawberry Princess' wand of fiery death turns the bardiche to slag and melts a great deal of that armor directly onto the zombie, causing it to scream in... Pain? Pain. Whoever made the Chariot appears to have just left in the capacity to feel pain for some odd reason. Even if she can't hit the weak point necessarily, she's certainly doing her part to immobilize it as Note moves in to pummel the everloving crap out of it. What armor hasn't melted into the giant zombie ends up getting cracked and jammed into its flesh, and holes even get punched into it. The holes in the Chariot reveal smorgasbord of organs wedged together and jammed into places that they probably shouldn't, and said organs quickly get removed from all those powerful strikes jarring them out of place or knocking them out of it entirely. Where those organs came from is a question for another day. That maneuver from William that helps seal the deal. His wild driving not only ensures that the researches are safe from the Chariot, but that zombies trying to break into the room have no chance of reacing them as Uncle Sam and Tina about-face to mow down any potential interlopers. As he drops the cargo off, Rogan continues shooting out the Chariot's legs, chunks of flesh and armor popping off to ensure that it can't avoid what's to come next. Strawberry Princess gets to unload her weapon point-blank into the giant zombie's face, impaling... No, impaling implies that there's something physically capable of getting stuck on it. The Chariot simply melts from the heat radiated from the nuclear stick, and there's little left of it by the time the beam is finished. Once the Chariot is little more than ash and melted, irradiated flesh, Rogan runs over to check on the fallen woman. "Sophie!" Luckily, Shyra's been keeping a close eye on Sophie and closed up those horrible bleeding wounds she's suffered at the hands of the Chariot, looking more shaken than horrifically maimed at this point. The survivors, not knowing what it is the healer is doing, simply gawk in awe. Tina's even gawking at that healing magic on display, chuckling a bit while wiping some sweat for her brow. "Good thing yo came along for this, eh? Could've been real bad if there wasn't a healer 'round to take care of her or a whole bunch o' these folks." Opening her eyes, Sophie grasps Rogan's arm while pulling herself into a half-seated position. "You must stop Curien.. Or else something terrible will happen!" She warns the group, coughing a few times before lying back down on the sled. She closes her eyes, and Rogan actually looks panicked despite his earlier cool-trench-coat-guy facade. "Sophie!" He reaches towards her, but stops when one of the researchers that was in the room places a hand on his shoulder. "She needs rest. We can get you the codes to Curien's laboratory. It'll take a while, but we can get you access once it's safe to get back to our computers." The zombies outside are still a problem, but at least they're not a massive problem like they were earlier. Maybe. Hopefully. STAGE 1: CLEAR
Note	The sudden wild transformation has Note in one hell of an nigh-uncontrollable emotional state. There's a pretty good chance she can't really process anything anyone's saying during all of that pummeling. ... Not that anyone could hear ANYTHING over all the gunfire, screaming, and supersonic PUNCHING going on in this little room. But something gets her attention. A feeling of dread. Unease. Something... unhealthy? A power that's just enough to strike her senses as spiritual and yet... something about it sends a shiver of fear and nausea through her that penetrates even her Super Saiyan rage. Note backpedals from her assault on what might well just be pure martial artist's honed instincts. Golden power carries her out THROUGH A WALL and very much out of the way of the incoming RADIOACTIVE MAGICAL DEATH BEAM, letting the Chariot take the brunt of it and just gazing on in respect, awe, and more than a little unease. "Th-there's something freaky about that technique..."
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry tumbles off of the Radical Bike with the recoil of her shot, bounces off the floor a couple of times, and then rolls to a groaning stop. As she pushes herself up, the wand clicks and crunches as its control rods all plunge in, hastily SCRAMing the tortured reactor. Ordinarily it'd be good for a little more juice, but it's been pushed past its limits. 00:00 "I'm sorry," she says- first to Note, then in general, babbling a bit as the horrible tension wears off. Her lips are a little cracked, her skin already looking worse-for-wear for being too close to the business end of her own weapon. "It's... I shouldn't- use it, near people, like this. But it seemed..." Her gaze drifts down to the Chariot's ashed 'corpse'. "... less bad. ... Thank you. Will, Shyra, Note- everyone. Things could've..." The swiss cheese'd mansion chooses this moment to groan ominously. "... could've been a lot worse."
William Pauwel	Will's plan! It was a success! Well. Kind of. If 'being covered in fried zombie guts and also radiation burns' qualifies as a success. Fortunately, most of Will is actually covered by protective plating built specifically to absorb this kind of energy! Bad news: Will's face, excluding his eyes, is not. He had the foresight to flip his scan-visor down before Doing the Thing, and to do everything he could to NOT get fried, but... Well, being point blank to a massive radiation spike, it's not fun. "AUGH MY FACE," Will yells as he tumbles out of the driver's seat. His bike obediently skids to a stop nearby, but that doesn't change the fact that Will has ALL THE BURNS, OH GOSH. He's... probably going to need a heal or two. Possibly also some aloe vera. At least he's coming away from this with a nice, healthy tan???
Shyra	Shyra does her best to keep the shields up on the sled. This is probably why she and Sophia (and the other survivors) don't end up getting some radioactive flash-baking. As it is, even being on the periphery of the massive blast causes crackling arcs to surge over the barrier, Shyra being pushed to maintain it and divert even a fraction of the power out of the way. But the beam ends, and the Princess cuts the power on the rod. The shields fall, the survivors escape, and Sophie is reunited with the Trenchcoated Man. The healer takes this opportunity to pose and smile for Tina, doing a cute little bow for the camera. Once that's done, she immediately runs over to the loudest guy in the room, that being William, and she bestows upon the man a wave of healing sparkles to try to repair the radiation burns on his flesh. Also a status-healing spell too. Just in case. That might help prevent the formation of tumors later.