Scene #8014: Fireworks in the General's Front Yard

Owner	Pose
Cantio	The dust has finally settled on the not-named city in Africa that had once been peaceful, escalated to urban warfare, and settled down once again following the intervention of the Elites called to this location by Cantio. It's an uneasy peace right now, however, as another impending battle looms not far north of the bombed out square. It's still quiet at the general's residence, despite the rather obvious military presence standing guard outside the manor's walls. There's cyborgs patrolling the area with all sorts of high-tech guns and melee weapons, turret-bearing APCs undoubtedly holding more of those same cyborg guards, and all sorts of mysterious tarps and closed-off entrances most certainly hiding something that'll be relevant later. They're ready for a fight, and Cantio is as well. She's spent the last few hours getting food, medical supplies, and protective gear distributed to people living in the ruined city. After a few phone calls, she's once again called for aid from those willing to take the fight to one of the sources. Thanks to the efforts from last time, there's already a significant safety buffer provided by the presence of the fortified treatment building/distribution center/landing zone bearing so many different logos and colors on it. Unlike last time, this is an active attack on someone's base of operations rather than simply fighting to curb further destruction. Knowing that some people may be opposed to this sort of thing, she's already arranged for payments to be made for prior assistance in the form of direct deposits, wiring funds to named organizations, or even the delivery of gift cards with extremely large balances good for use in Cadenza and its affiliate locations. "Reinforcements will be coming in behind us to keep this area from becoming a warzone again. Once we're dealing with the general, they'll watch our backs and make sure that nobody else tries to slip in while we're busy." Cantio assures the group, as she leads the way towards the general's place on foot. There's still time to ask questions or make other preparations before heading there, but it's unlikely that there won't be a fight at the rate things are going already.
Ishirou	Ishirou shows up with the power armor they typically ware when dealing in combat situations. They're also in the flight unit configuration as opposed to others. He's spent a few moments discussing something on another frequency...then confidence in the assessment of the situation turns towards Cantio. "Alright, one moment.." he says to her, and starts a wide area scan, centering it on the stronghold itself. Trying to find out some important information. What forces were allied against them, what was being kept in reserve to spring on them, any hidden traps or surprises, and lastly where the General himself was. Speaking, but without looking at anyone in particular, "Gimme a few to suss out where things are and if there are any hidden surprises. Then I'm going to start hacking their IFFs and HUDs. It should mess with their ability to fight us. However, make sure to tell me if you need specific data or telemetry."
Staren	Now that the patients are all taken care of, Staren falls back to being Another Person With Big Guns. And a robot army; TWO can play that game, General. She stands at the head of a couple platoons of constructs -- many humanoid robots in riot gear with assault rifles, but also a few ten-foot-tall concrete statues with solid metal kanobos, and a back line of quadrupedal constructs with missile racks on their backs. Towering over the bots are walkers piloted by robots, like an armored car cab on legs with two little arms under the cab ending in heavy machine gun mounts. There must be an enchantment on her coat making it billow like that in the nonexistant wind. And also one amplifying her voice: "Attention! I am Staren Wiremu of the Concord... just ONE of the elites supporting Cantio. I am also the one who had to personally attend to and undo the mortal wounds you dealt to the innocent. Come out and surrender and this doesn't have to end in bloodshed. It is more than you deserve for what you did to..." And then she begins listing every patient the field hospital treated and their injuries.
Tamamo	Dressed in her 'lighter' fantasy miko outfit, Tamamo still stands out pretty well. She has to see the area before she can come up with something fitting... but it looks like they won't really have time for that, anyway. Lots of bright colors don't tend to go as well with her own coloration, too. Respectful fashion-matching is a difficult art. "It will necessarily involve a fight, is it? I suppose there are many ways one may avoid any danger of being convinced otherwise. I am rather concerned with what shall happen when there are no obvious leaders remaining, as this is the moment in which surprises occur, as others seize power. And yet, it does present the best opportunity to change that outcome, yes? Let us go, then, and see what we shall manage."
Xion	Xion had been sending Cantio vague text messages and voice chats about dreams and deeds for days now, but kept trailing off. There wasn't a deeper meaning to the pauses or length of time between messages: Xion just ran out of dialogue, so she stopped talking. That is, until Cantio started putting out fully-fledged compensated questing in the area of RUDE DUDES and CYBORG CREEPS. While Cantio sets up in the ruined city, distributing the aid and supplies to the people there, Xion portals in to one of the broken rooftops, watching with some amusement. > Hey, Cantio. > You're doing pretty well this time. When it comes time to actually assault the local warlord by walking directly at the enemy's base on the overland map, while FMV of Every Cyborg Bastard And All The Closets They're Going To Leap Out Of, In Sequence, Xion drops to street level and falls in, grinning. She wears black leather pants and boots, a red t-shirt, and a white-black checkered motorcycle jacket with a yellow scarf. "You know, you really have a knack for finding places that are full of... dudes, you know? Cantio, are you used to that too?" Xion asks, her only question one of concern for their 'party leader' and her skills, preferences, or, perhaps, bad luck.
Persephone Kore	"Are you sure this is the best thing to be doing, Cantio? It feels a little..." Persephone seems concerned, but in her distant and floaty way. "Well, no. Haha, it's not like I have a better idea. I guess I'm just still unused to things like this." 'Things like this' implicitly carries the meaning of: 'military interventions in foreign countries'. It's alright, though. I can feel everyone's hearts, can't I? I can tell what everyone's thinking. The people of this city want peace. And they want someone like their old leader back. I want to make everyone's wishes come true, don't I? So I know what I have to do. I just need to do it. Then why does it still feel bad? She waves to those she knows, one by one- Tamamo included- before rising into the air and summoning the Queen in Veils around her. It keeps pace with the rest of the group on approach; its serene gracefulness cancels out any advantage of its longer strides. "I'll try my best to be gentle. I hope you all will, too!"
Lilian Rook	<Tac-Paladins> 4 Ishirou says, "Huh. So what do you think about attacking this General first?" <Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "As strange as it feels to be engaged in a foreign intervention, suppressing rogue state elements attempting a coup d'etat and restoring peace is, in fact, within the core purview of the Paladins." Odd, but true. Lilian has thought about this one back and forth a few ways, and it keeps coming out simpler than it sounds. Seeing as this entire situation had exploded before she'd even gotten here, and the power struggle had risen up with more than suspicious prescience and celerity, applying violence to the political problem is actually just sort of the thing to do here. The bad man who owns all the soldiers has to be stopped, simple as that. Lilian, briefly, experiences the dimmest flicker of the idea that maybe this should be helping her learn something, like maybe she wouldn't have come to this conclusion a year ago, and then practicality snuffs it out immediately. <Tac-Paladins> 4 Ishirou says, "It COULD tempt more destabilization." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "A former general is a considerably more organized and militaristic threat by nature. His opposition is doing little more than paying their mercenaries." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Ishirou says, "That is true. Sorry I'm also trying to think of all angles here to see if this is the best approach." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Ishirou says, "This MIGHT get the hands of the prime mover moving...if they wanted a war, then not having a war would be a hinderance." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "It's the correct order. If we take down the treasurer first, the general will have an easy time doubling the size of his fighting force." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook says, "Vice versa only puts a bigger dent in his pocketbook." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Tamamo says, "I do feel rather more confident in my ability to convince a treasurer, rather than a general, to find my words reasonable." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Ishirou mmm. "That's true, even if the Treasurer gets more forces, he'll not have the experience to utilize them..." a pause, "Or someone...lets say allied to us with a lot of money could buy the mercinary contracts before they're caught up..." <Tac-Paladins> 4 Lilian Rook sighs, "Yes yes whatever." Then mutters something about bloodsuckers." After what'd happened the last few times Lilian had gotten embroiled in serious combat, she's arranged to bring her juniors and underlings this time. The young woman herself is properly bulletproofed up (with the odd emphasis on lower limbs as before) at the head of her V formation of Heatherettes and symmetrical ranks of power-armoured soldiers, but doesn't seem interested in charging in just yet. She's scanning around the area and sorting through a stack of elaborately carved and inked, ritually burnt bone fragments, splitting them up in her hands like a deck of cards. "Satsuki. Would you do the honours?" "Of course, commander!" The red-armoured girl steps forward, holds a smartphone-sized device to her lips, and then yells into it anyways despite it clearly amplifying her voice. "This is Chevalier Petty Officer Oda Satsuki, speaking on behalf of the Paladins joint crisis intervention and search and rescue special forces under the command of Chevalier Dame Commander Lilian Rook! This area has been declared a theatre of humanitarian crisis! Forceful intervention on behalf of the civilians affected by this conflict has been authorized! Disarm yourselves and stand aside so that peacekeeping talks with the General may proceed! Those involved in obstructing peacekeeping operations will be dealt with as paramilitary insurgents!"
Cantio	Cantio waits for Ishirou to do his scans of the place, and he gets quite a bit of data from it! The general's forces consists almost entirely of cyborgs with only a few unaugmented/modified people inside the building, likely other people in positions of power that would need to look less frightening to the populace. There's more of those Gekkos/cow-noise-making bipedal robots ready to spring out of the garages, a few tanks hidden under tarps, and an even larger bipedal machine beneath the main courtyard itself. The latter hasn't been activated yet, but the rest of the machines are already up and running while waiting for their time to shine. Further scans reveal that the general himself, meanwhile, appears to be in that lower area with the unidentified machine along with several other unmodified people and androids. They don't return the same pings and IFF signals that the mercenaries do, so it's possible they're non-combatants. Tamamo brings up an incredibly valid point, and Cantio furrows her brow for a short while before finally answering. "It's... Yeah, it's gonna be rough for the people living here. I've got something in mind for that, too, so it should be okay, but it's not going to be an easy situation regardless." She doesn't actually elaborate on what she has planned, but there's a distinctly troubled look on her face when she replies. Xion brings up another point, although it's one Cantio hasn't quite considered at all considering the everything else happening. "Full of... D-dudes? Used to what? Wait, there's..." She starts to answer, pauses, then crosses her arms while mulling over that with an audible droning hum. "That's.. Kind of weird, actually, now that you mention it. Do lots of places with lots of guys just... Do this?" Cantio will figure it out one day.
Cantio	Persephone's question, meanwhile, has Cantio /not/ hesitating for once before nodding. "Under these circumstances, yes. It's not the cleanest way of stopping the fighting, but it's the... It's the fastest way to minimize casualties." She replies, sounding both like she's utterly confident that she's right while also sounding like she needs to convince herself that she's doing the right thing. It's the only way the math checks out in her head: Kill the few here to save exponentially more. As long Cantio keeps telling herself that, she'll believe it eventually, and it'll help with the next phase. Staren goes up and makes her demands via big robot, and Satsuki projects her own through her maybe-phone. There's no response at first as the mercenaries out front raise their weapons at the approaching group and assorted robots (although they're not sure what to make of looking at the Queen in Veils). Before they start firing, however, the general's voice is fed into a speaker from that main courtyard along with several projections of his face from smaller projectors embedded in the ground. He's an older man, decked out in all sorts of medals and sporting plenty of facial hair. "Paladins, Concord... What the fuck is a Cantio?" Xion can probably see her cringing slightly at that. "This place wouldn't even BE in a crisis if you damned warmongers hadn't gotten yourselves involved! We'd still be safe, and the Prime Minister would still be alive!" There's plenty of venom in those words, and it's easy enough to see the anger in the general's eyes even from the projections. "But now you're going to act all high and mighty while swinging your big stick around, just like that? Typical Americans... You get on your soapboxes and shout about 'protecting the innocent' and 'preventing bloodshed' all day, but all you're doing is stroking your own egos and spilling more blood whenever someone doesn't throw themselves at your feet!" The general scoffs audibly as the projections cut out, and the ground rumbles. It splits open, and the machine Ishirou saw underneath emerges: It's bipedal with a wide head, and its torso looks more like a lobster's while its legs are bent backwards not unlike an animal's legs. Each arm is carrying a different weapon: One, a massive machine gun with a barrel as large as a person's arm, and the other is carrying what looks like a long shield with ominous openings at the front end. "You're not going to take over our home as you place, invaders. Now fuck off or die!" The general's machine takes aim with the machine gun as it starts laying down covering fire against the larger machines among the Elites while the cyborgs and the Gekkos bring out their own relatively smaller caliber munitions in a concentrated volley upon the group. It's loud, it's frantic, and it's a maneuver designed specifically to drown a smaller group in sheer bullet quantity.
Ishirou	Ishirou starts hacking immediately into their communications and HUD relays to try and cause trouble. Though he DOES relay all of the information back. General is under there with an unactivated robot, there are tanks there and there, everyone is mostly augmented, and some more COWs there. It was at this point when the General speaks up...and he pauses. "Are...you okay? Your country was using Mercenaries, now you're using Mercs. You got these people into your home, and we weren't involved in hiring them or whatever is going on with them. It's really ironic that you're trying to call us out when you're loaded to the brim with them. Also, did you not try and follow the money at all?" "I found out that all of the mercenaries that you are currently employed were informed ahead of time that something was going to be brewing here. None of them were involved in the assassination, as far as I can tell, but..." he says this, and sends the data he found over. "In case you decided that what you're doing is a ba-" Gunfire slams into Ishirou, who barely gets up a barrier in time. He is knocked a bit back and is forced into the air from the shot. Ishirou sighs and takes to the air now. He aims to keep himself on the wing and avoid another direct shot like that. He also activates all of his hacking at once, aiming to completely screw with their defenses. This includes things like having IFFs scrambled, weapons turning on each other, and generally making things easier for his allies to deal lasting damage. "So the hard way it is...just don't say I didn't try and warn you."
Staren	This place wouldn't even BE-- Staren points forward, imperiously, and as one all of her troops fire, rifle- and high-caliber bullets hailing into the enemy line. Missiles arc overhead -- if Ishirou has shared targeting data, she tries to foam garage doors shut and slow the deployment of the gekkos and the general's personal mecha -- ah damn, too late on that one, he's already deploying. The front line of robots goes down shooting. The next line raise shields; the taller constructs duck as covering fire is laid down. Staren is uncovered, she crouches slightly and spins as she summons her armor, this one with a bubble head that shows her face and a long white duster over the armor for looks, styled like her labcoat. A forcefield protects her while she changes, but it spiderwebs with cracks and flickers as bullets spray into it. Thrusters in Staren's boots assist her in leaping towards one of the gekkos, a shotgun appearing in her hand and spraying ice magic to try and freeze its machineguns. Staren's amplified voice continues listing names. It gets a little louder when the General starts calling them invaders.
Tamamo	Tamamo is staying well back for this one, not wanting at all to get shot, especially by mecha-sized weaponry. That doesn't like a good time at all! And besides, it tends to make Lilian worried, even if worry for Lilian is part of the reason Tamamo comes out to missions like this. Not just keeping to range, but multiple barriers interfere with the incoming gunfire. Wards are quickly erected that confuse her apparent position, tricking aim in the same way as travelers on hidden paths are turned around from finding hidden sanctuaries. Other talismans cause enormous pillars of ice to appear in the way, shattering under even stray fire, but only slowly. For the moment, nothing at all reaches Tamamo, herself. It makes for a good defensive position for others to take, as well, should any need it, drawing a line between two nearby buildings. She can still provide support from this far back, which is what she does. Her talismans never quite obey gravity properly, instead flitting through the air as if homing projectiles, carrying curses of misfortune that are potent enough to jam machinery and cause -- eventually, indirectly -- vital damage. "Well, now, that does seem a fine objection, but is it based upon a true image of what here occured? What would happen, should no others intervene, and who would most benefit from those affairs?"
Persephone Kore	Very quietly, to Lilian, Persephone asks: "What's an 'American'? You've talked about them, right?" The Queen in Veils walks gracefully towards the giant lobster-like machine, accepting its fire. Bullets pit, chip, and shatter its white plastic; in the next moment those wounds are gone, reality smoothed over by something stronger-than-reality insisting that it is not so. It does not attack. Instead, Persephone shuts her eyes and focuses. Inside the manor, she can see the little stars of people's hearts. Which one belongs to the general? What is he thinking, feeling? She says out loud, but also speaking to his heart: "I don't know who assassinated your Prime Minister. It wasn't us. The people here really loved him, didn't they? And he was deserving of that love." "Think about the mercenaries. The ones you've hired. They knew something bad would happen, down to the hour. They were ready to be paid, right then, to tear this country apart." "We want the Prime Minister's accomplishments to be preserved. We want this place to be peaceful, like it was before. The people to be happy, like they were before. Do you think you're someone who can do that?" "Do you think this is the way to do it? Letting them pick everything over? It's making me sad."
Xion	Xion doesn't really get it. She's here to help Cantio - which can mean deciding that Cantio's gone off the crazy end and needs a firm holding with finisher-quality hands. This time, however, Cantio seems to have driven right to the point of things. "Okay. I think I've got a handle on the situation. This 'General' guy is ruling via force, right? Well, to change some people's minds, first you have to break them down and prove certain preconceptions wrong. For example: That force can overcome the will of people, forever. That's not true, right? Even when it's strangled and smothered, people want consistent things. Things they're not getting. If we can shatter that notion, and show a better way--" Xion's pleasant reasoning towards Cantio's thoughts (shared with Persephone) that she just has to kill a few people and then a lot of things will get better gets interrupted by the massed fire out of Staren's drone forces, the chaotic exchange of fire from the General, and the absolute bedlam that cyber-mercenaries getting missiled creates. Jumping through single frames of motion as she tries to transition through the instant battlefield at army scale, Xion dodge-hops behind one of Tamamo's ice barriers and leans her jacketed shoulders against the pillar, sighing. "This really is the worst. But if there's going to be a lot of robots - I'll use a target-eliminating power!" The nobody draws a white medallion from her coat, which flashes and twinkles as her checkered jacket loses all the black in a dripping smear. At the corners and seams blue highlights appear. "And I'll do it at Mach Speed!" In a bullet-bending blur of gravity eddies, Xion bends a white-smear path through Staren's drones and Ishirou's bombs to sprint right at the General, jump, and deliver a corkscrew divekick to the large robot at meteoric speeds and force. "If your force becomes questioned, this fight's over!"
Lilian Rook	'It's... Yeah, it's gonna be rough for the people living here.' "Then protect and see to them. And if you can't, I will. Fretting over consequences like that is for small people with small reach. The point of growing strong --at least as far as I care-- is becoming someone with enough reach and weight to simply say 'no' and not let it happen. Isn't that what you're after, in your own way? To become big enough that people can live in your shadow?" 'You know, you really have a knack for finding places that are full of... dudes, you know?' Lilian spares a princess wave and an uneasy smile for Xion. She thinks for a moment, about Xion and the way she reads people, and then forces her smile to be a lot less complicated. "Doesn't she just? Still, it's a sight better than what most of her company ends up magnetically drawn to. Colliding with societies in need is a mixed bag, but it's not a curse, and it presents plenty of opportunities." 'It's not the cleanest way of stopping the fighting, but' "It is if you're strong, clever, quick, and decisive enough. Nothing ends a fight more cleanly than simply winning. And the more you outclass them, the more you get to decide how they lose. They orbit around you, rather than you orbiting around each other." 'What the fuck is a Cantio?' Lilian just flicks her wand out like a switchblade and holds the glowing point between the helix of the tip to her throat, accomplishing projecting her voice via a cantrip. "Some purple girl. One who is currently in partial control of the territory you've been fighting for. And at the very least, better at it than you, general. Now are you going to sit down and talk, or am I going to have to filter you into the problem list? I've been finding out it's quite an efficient process. I don't have surplus goodwill to waste on you." Of course not. The projection pops out, and all Lilian has to show for it is a frown. Arina beats her to it. "Um . . . is anyone here American? Why would he say that? Did . . ." Satsuki puts her amplifier away and sets her jaw. "Yeah. Most likely. It looks like they're blaming a local American nation for the assassination of the Prime Minister; and it definitely looks like one. But it's not like he's just a victim trying to hold the country together. He won't come together with the rest of the cabinet at all. They're just in it for themselves; don't be fooled." Satsuki draws the black-bladed, pink-edged odachi from her back. Arina flicks her antlered mask into place. "Yes . . . yes of course. E-engaging the enemy!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Ishirou. How much damage will cyborgs of that grade survive?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I'm roughly assuming only the brain is off-limits, but I'd like to be certain." <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Mmm...most of them are full con, so the brain case is the only thing you need to avoid. Some are lightly augmented to not augmented. It should be obvious but I'll mark them on the map." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Thank you."
Lilian Rook	Lilian dials orders in through her holo window (more StarkTech than requisition at this point), then slashes a hand through the air. Anointed runestones clatter over the ground and burst into magical flame. Asphalt is torn asunder as the earth beneath it heaves and thick embankments of subsoil and weathered rock burst upward, held together by tangled roots suddenly overgrown in seconds. The soldiers armoured in all-black rush up behind them, taking cover, bracing squad weapons, and opening fire along the line. The wards woven into the structure of the embankments causes enemy bullets and missiles to veer away completely. Probability --fate and causality-- is subtly adjusted for most shots to miss completely, while guided munitions encounter spooky electrostatic distortion and spiral out, and carefully placed rounds are blown off-course by protective aid of the winds. The Paladins fireteams are justified in being confident in their protection. "Center mass! Walk fire low and stick to fragmentation explosives! Sword eight, sword sixteen, left and right vantages. Sword five, ten, fifteen, twenty, suppressing fire on the infantry. Sword three, six, nine, twelve, focus anti-materiel fire on the mechanized units. Arina; expand third-line wards forward, treat any wounded. Satsuki, focus on the general. Tamamo, I'm staying in the back this time, so please prioritize the others." Coordinated streams of blue-white tracer fire begin scything through the enemy ranks, simply pouring ammo into the mercenaries and spraying casings into the intersection at maximum volume with total impunity. Two troopers fire surprisingly powerful thrusters from the back of their armour, bounding to the tops of the two closest buildings and breaking in through windows. Loud cracks of fire from powerful marksman rifles follow, picking out high-rankers that Ishirou's callouts indicate, shooting out launchers on heavy mecha, and taking the odd shot of opportunity below a fatal zone where organics have been marked, too risky to blast with automatic fire by Lilian's preferences. 'Daisy cutter' grenades are thrown out after, a line of explosives clinking over the hard ground and erupting into dense, flattened fans of high-velocity razor sharp shrapnel at waist level and below. Anti-material explosives are fired at tremendous velocity without rocket propulsion from a handful of shoulder-mounted launchers, mainly aimed at the Geckos. Arina begins redoubling the strength of Tamamo's wards in concert with her, and then forms up on the bunrei to start supporting with her healing magic too. Satsuki flash-steps into the fray, seeming to contract the space between her lunges until she's blinking around almost as fast as Lilian, easier to follow by the luminous cherry ribbon and fluttering particles of her sword's motion, cleaving through cyborgs and mecha alike. Arcs of Lilian's magic burst like tiny suns and explode as overlapping two-dimensional planes of shearing disjunction, aimed at covering Satsuki to scythe down cyborgs in her blind spot. The two Immunes are steadily closing in on the main robot as the obviously intended target.
Cantio	"He's trying to take control by force, yeah. There's a whole.. Power vacuum thing, too, but that's pretty much it in one!" Cantio confirms for Xion with a quick thumbs-up, then deflates almost immediately at Lilian's response. "Beggars can't be choosers, I guess... I'll take the praise where I can get it." And then Cantio gets right back into the fight to prove that she's still relevant during this chapter. With so many mercenaries and smaller machines present, though, she focuses her efforts on weeding them out rather than targeting the general's machine, providing some convenient cover for everyone else to focus their efforts! Ishirou's hacking efforts bear fruit fairly quickly. Although the cyborgs are able to communicate easily without even taking their hands off their guns, doing so when they can't trust what they're seeing or hearing makes things far more troublesome. Some of the cyborgs even start turning their guns towards each other thanks to the hacking scrambling their vision and their control over their own limbs, but they cut that problem off at the pass by discarding their guns outright and audibly shouting at each other to ID each other from their actual targets. They've also got melee weapons, of course, but that won't help with flying targets. As they start heading towards Tamamo and Lilian/Lilian's crew while getting waylaid by Cantio, the General is left to handle the more air-capable Elites. "Mercenaries are a necessary evil. So long as they're around to fight, our people don't need to. You're damn right we'll hire them to keep our people alive!" The General's machine twists and turns as it braces its gun against its side, sweeping it forward suddenly to try and smash it through the grounded crew before taking aim with the weird holes in its shield. "You think I don't know they were ready for this? They're always ready for situations like this. They'd be stupid not to, after seeing our country falling apart!" Ishirou can confirm that the data comes through, but he doesn't get an answer from the General yet. Staren gets the next answer, instead, in the form of an annoyed noise while she starts picking apart the Gekkos and turning their legs into crunchy bits of mixed flesh and machinery. "D... Do you really think you're making a point now?" A volley of missiles promptly comes out from that shield-like weapon, each one swerving around and exploding once they hit something near the Elites or, in the case of the larger machines, exploding just from mere proximity. The missiles coming at Tamamo, weirdly enough, explode long before they reach her after slamming into those icy barriers. Perhaps noticing that, the biggest biped fires off another volley of bullets her way before starting to stomp forwards to bring the fight closer to the Elites trying to stay further away from the gunfire. It crushes one of the Gekkos underfoot in the process of losing control again, but rights itself soon after to start giving chase properly and even trying to stomp on the Elites that stray too close. "If nobody interfered, the fighting would've been over by the end of the day. What does a treasurer know anything about warfare? All they know is how to manage finances, not command soldiers or defend a country!" The Queen in Veils' approach is confusing enough for people that have already seen it in action, but seeing it for the first time has the General throwing more and more bullets at it to try and halt its advance. While it does so, Persephone searches for the General, and... There he is. Not in the manor, but piloting the machine itself. He hears her way too close for comfort, and although the machine continues launching more and more bullets at hers, what she hears from his heart doesn't quite match the vitriol coming out of his mouth earlier.
Cantio	The General already knows that the mercenaries got in too quickly. He knows that there was foul play involved from the very start, but he doesn't know what. He knows that the people desire peace, and that he's not the right person for that job. He's someone that knows how to fight, how to defend, how to control how many people get hurt. He knows he had the support of the people, that they would support him over the treasurer any day as a war hero. He doesn't know any other way out of this, but he doesn't believe that listening to Elites that would be in league with those that started this is the right way. All he knows is that even he would be a better leader for this country than letting an Elite have their way. The white smear of Xion's movement does not go unnoticed, as the Grand Lancer (identified at some point by Ishirou's hacking shenanigans) swings its machine gun up to try and parry her oncoming kick. It misses wide, however, and the divekick cleaves right through one of the large things on the side of the Grand Lancer's head. "Is force the only thing you people have? Don't you underestimate our will, either!" As it whirls around to try and catch Xion in those giant crosshairs again, the cyborg mercenaries working for the general are themselves torn to shreds by Lilian and the Heatherettes (featuring the Blacksuit Boys). As indicated by Ishirou earlier, it's really only the brain cases that are vital to each one's survival. Their bodies, once removed or otherwise torn apart, explode shortly afterwards as if intended to prevent retrieval from an opportunistic opponent. Things are already looking not-very-good for the General's troops. His machine is still standing strong despite missing a chunk of its face, but the cyborgs are getting whittled down steadily while the Gekkos and APCs have to give up ground even as they keep firing into the Elites' ranks. That does give the Grand Lancer plenty of room, however, to start blasting rockets all over the place. The explosions from each one are massive, and they're mostly aimed at the ground near the Elites rather than straight at them. Even now, the General's not going to risk firing one that winds up careening into the city itself.
Ishirou	"So hold on...we're 'American Dogs' because we're foreigners, but you're using Mercenaries, who are also foreigners. We're trying to set up relief for your people, and stop the fighting. The Mercs have a vested interest in keeping the fighting going. You have the proof you need to squint at the merc outfits, because they were ready, to the hour, and were forewarned." "My guy...I hate to tell you this, but you can only stand on that soap box if you weren't already inviting foreign interference into your lands. This is this and that is that is a piss poor argument for someone trying to lead a country...though I suppose it's right on target for politicians." Still, the moment Ishirou sets in to get a more intensive scan going, he's blasted by the General's machine, and goes into a nose dive. Warning lights are all over the pannels as Ishirou forces the flight unit to pull up at the last second and soar back into the sky. It was risky, but he does have what he needs. He keeps the interference pressure on the soldiers, which will definitely help them. However, the General's armor is very dangerous and he does not like it shooting at him. So this time, he tries plugging into one of the COWs again. He aims to remote hack it like before, but as he circles around, he switches out of fighter mode and sets in humanoid mode. The Machines attempt to connect to each other as Ishirou takes direct control of the COW itself. Then he runs it into the General's unit directly, aiming to knock him over. "Alright, what weapons do we have to work with.." Ishirou asks, trying to get a feel for what he has to work with.
Staren	Staren glances at the general from the gekko she's clinging to, struggling to try and disable it without getting too beat up in the process. She keeps listing names. She gets louder when the general says 'defend a country'. Eventually she sighs. "You just tune it out, huh? But you'd tune out whatever else we say, too." Is force the only thing you people have? Don't you underestimate our will, either! Staren frowns slightly. "Force is--" She glances back at the Queen in Veils, then to the General. "I haven't learned how to make dreams stronger than force yet. But force was enough to put those people in healthy bodies. And force will help stop you from hurting any more of your people." Rockets rain down. Staren leaps off of the gekko, her proximity to the shockwave making her forcefield flicker briefly into visibility, but her constructs don't have that option. Rockets take out several of the smaller ones, and they scatter. Staren issues new orders. Most of the robots spray covering fire at the enemy forces, just being one more thing to defend against and react to. The missile launchers in back focus indirect fire on the general's mech -- conventional explosives and HEAT warheads this time. The walkers fire high-caliber machinegun fire at the general's mech, testing that armor, probing for a weak point. A couple squads of rifle-bots team up with the kanobo-wielding constructs; firing at cyborg mercenaries to force their focus while the larger constructs charge in and try to bash those cyborg bodies (but not the head) with their big metal clubs. Staren herself turns her attention on the general now -- repeated fire from her arm-mounted plasma cannons sends streams of projectiles that look like tiny comets which 'splash' on impact, superheated fire spreading and seeping through any cracks her robots have made almost as if searching for anything burnable. Yeah. Something about fighting like this feels like old times, when she was a wide-eyed optimistic teenager... But it's Ishirou who's arguing with the general, not her. Leaping this way and that trying to dodge the mecha's counterattacks, Staren ducks behind some cover for a moment and looks up at Ishirou. <"Does it ever work? Pointing out their hypocrisy, the logical flaws in their plans?">
Tamamo	'So long as they're around to fight, our people don't need to.' "Oh, dear. Are you not worried that relying upon others for your own defense shall present an opportunity for them to seize greater power for themselves? It is not an uncommon event in Earth history, as you may know. At times, a general of the army decides that the proper ruler would be... ah, pardon me." With Lilian calling shots from the rear, Tamamo focuses on fouling the approach of anyone on their position. With this much support, it's not nearly as hard as it might otherwise be. She uses Ishirou's telemetry to keep an eye on where everyone is, coordinates with Arina for healing, and uses her own talismans to refresh walled areas, set up a light but effective maze of confusing wards to foul the senses of the cyborgs already confused by Ishirou's hacks and being cut by Lilian's black-gold power, and intersperses wind blasts to toss around those who stumble onto the 'correct' path through to her position. The bipedal robots are harder to keep off, but her ice pillars can appear from beneath them, too, knocking the armless machines onto their backs to make them more vulnerable. She can keep this up for a while yet, though it's draining on her mind, especially, to look in so many directions at once. Hopefully, they'll get through to the general before she tires enough to make grave mistakes. That covers their immediate defense, and gives more time for her curses to work. They've already been sent out, ready to nudge here and there at critical moments, in the manner her Fate-manipulating ability tends to best work.
Xion	"It's easy to feel like you're a good person, just making hard choices!" Xion shouts, heel impacting across the Grand Lancer's 'head' armor and crumpling armor plate as she passes in her falling spiral. Landing in a sliding heel-forward crouch, she rolls to fingertips and hooks her hands into the ground. For a moment, the smear of white is a noirette in a jacket gathering sparks in a slide, and the heavy autocannon of the Grand Lancer ranges her as it traverses. "It's easy to believe that they'll understand, in the end." Springing forward, Xion's drift force of sparks becomes pure forward velocity. The borrowed power of Kamen Rider Mach sounds combustion engine 'vrroom vrroom!'-s as the Nobody peels out untouchably, skipping across the heavy autocannon rounds like riverstones to somersault-kick the heavy cannon arm and gain enough air to clear the Grand Lancer's head. Above the chaos, the missile strikes, and the gobs of Cyber-Dudes, Xion pulls from the world. "But at the end of the -day-, the people are still hurt! They're still hoping for someone to help them! It could be you!" "But it's not! It's not you, -right now-, and that's all there is to understand, where force is concerned!" The pull draws a glint of metal from the atmosphere into Xion's hand, as a large object forms and opens around her right arm - some kind of metal battering-ram. "I'm freeing you from a life of force! Become a man of the people, a family man!" "Bionic ARM!" Xion finishes shouting in Tokusatsu Time-Spent-Talking-While-Performing-Finisher-Cutscene, the ''real'' power she gets from the Showtime Rider, Mach, unleashing her skyward haymaker of cybernetic strength down the centerline of Grand Lancer.
Persephone Kore	The Queen in Veils reaches out and grabs the Grand Lancer's 'wrists', holding them up and to the sides as if they were about to waltz together; the guns, then, point uselessly up into the air. Its touch is gentle. Its grip is utterly inescapable. The weight of a spiral galaxy holds its fingers firm. The doll-mech's gaze rests exactly on the Grand Lancer's cockpit, as if to make eye contact with the General through so much intervening steel. "Even now, you're trying your best not to hurt the city you love, aren't you? Haha, it's really beautiful. You would make a better leader than us. I'm okay with that. We want to just see it lifted up, whole, and shining too. But these mercenaries don't feel the same way." "You know it's strange, don't you? They're the only ones who stand to gain. And they were already ready when it happened. Think about it. These mercenaries are the ones in league with the Prime Minister's killers; not us." "We'll pay a visit to the Treasurer next. All we're asking... is that you stop emptying your coffers to pay these people to tear your country apart. It really does break my heart." A liberal dose of her mind-melting aura helps drive the point home. While she's focused on that, the Queen in Veils acquires a few more bullet-holes, but that's nothing to be too concerned about.
Lilian Rook	'Mercenaries are a necessary evil.' "I'm not convinced there is such a thing." Lilian replies to the general, voice still amplified, over the chaos. "If it's truly necessary, it can't be evil. If it's evil, then it is by definition unnecessary. Is hiring mercenaries evil? What harm does the choice itself cause? Is hiring mercenaries necessary? Who was going to die if you didn't? Obviously, as someone appointed to power by the people, the lives of your people are more important than the lives of strangers. So which is it? Discarding the obvious conspiracy now come to light, did you feel at the time that what you did was necessary, or evil? Calling it both is the refuge of those who know they should have done better." It's an odd thing to ask while her forces are absolutely mopping up the opposition; or maybe that's exactly why she has the luxury. Her men are genuine crack troopers, not disposable robots. The marksmen are far too stealthy to return fire on. The fireteams are too well-armed and coordinated to hold position against. Lilian's and Arina's combined magic (not to mention Tamamo) already protects them so well that their armour isn't even a factor. These are units that have drilled together for this, and don't need to exchange words. As the number of enemy units shrinks, Satsuki narrows her spiral path of carnage on the giant mecha, and Arina switches over to healing. A line of heavy calibre fire comes for the defensive line. Satsuki appears in the way with a dull thump and a soft wave of air vapour. Lilian blinks into existence. Between the two of them, the mecha fire goes nowhere, heavy projectiles shattered apart by outright supersonic swordplay, a missile sliced apart by-- actually it's not clear how Satsuki did that, just that the fucshia particles are hers. Lilian returns one back the usual way. The fireteams don't even take cover, trusting in those two. Satsuki blitzes back forward again. Overlapping crescent moons of cherry light reflected from the hamon of her sword intersect with the mech's leg armour and phase through, doing nothing so cheesy and obvious as 'aiming for the joints'. Lilian points her black wand to points that Ishirou has scanned, does the esoteric math in her head, and causes spacetime to rupture in pinpoint locations with her characteristic combination of magic and causal control. Shredding-vapourizing spherical hitboxes simply spawn out of thin air and core out whatever is overlapping them a fraction of a second later. It makes it easy for her to sever ammo belts and puncture hydraulics. "It's unfortunate that you'd be so stubborn as to make everything this difficult. What my subordinate said earlier wasn't a bluff or an excuse; this would have been so much smoother if you were open to talks before having your PMC attachés thoroughly crushed. However, I'm rather upset at being mistaken for an American, given my impeccable English. I'm forced to suppose that it'll take us chewing up your forces until you're simply forced to stop, listen, and accept that we're a Multiversal peacekeeping organization here on legitimate business." Lilian stops for a second, as if struck by great insight. "Oh. That's what--" Satsuki yells "Talking with your fists means! Haha~ You're getting it~!"
Cantio	"We're doing this out of necessity! We don't have a dedicated military like the Americans, but we still need to protect ourselves. And if someone's going to take control of things after that tragedy, it should be someone the people trust!" Indeed, the General's motives are a mixed bag at best. Although there's things he already knows he can't do and things he'd rather do differently, there's still the undeniable fact that he stands to gain a lot from taking control of the country following the Prime Minister's death. "The risk of these mercenaries seizing power is all the more reason I should be the one to take over after his work. The sharks have smelled our blood already, and I'm the only one that knows how to handle it. The treasurer doesn't, and I doubt any of you would!" Further scans from Ishirou reveal a few more telling things about the machine: It's got a lot of armor in the head region, and there also happens to be a lot of power routed to that area for some reason. It probably has something to do with how the General is able to maintain so much air time and see so many things going on around the manor-turned-battlefield at once, but there's definitely something vital up there in that weirdly half-circular head. Hacking a Gekko, like before, is still a relatively simply matter after doing it the first time. With the cow-machine under his control, he can sprint it right into the Grand Lancer, nearly toppling it over in the process. Only by pressing its shield into the ground does the machine stop from falling over outright, but that gives Staren ample times to blast plasma into its relatively less armored torso. The general doesn't have many cyborg allies left to rely on, either, as Staren's constructs and Lilian's squad don't quite whittle down their numbers so much as they bulldoze right through them. Although the mercenaries are well armed and well trained, they're still largely acting independently. Against proper squad tactics and full-on magical bullshit, they don't stand a chance. Tamamo's curses and rearguard support, meanwhile, means that they can't even trust their own senses (augmented or otherwise) to show them where they need to shoot or where their opponents are even coming from. Those who don't hesitate before firing wind up causing more friendly fire incidents than they'd ever admit later, and those who do hesitate are summarily brought down by even more concentrated and coordinated blasts and shots. What may help Tamamo's concentration, then, is the fact that there's nobody coming up to harass her or attack the group from the sides or from the rear. As promised, Cantio's arranged assistance arrives after not too long to watch the group's back. Ironically, it's more mercenaries coming to do that same thing, but they're all from the same single company rather than the mishmash that makes up the General's forces. The difference in coordination is stark as well, with Cantio's hired guns largely focusing on stragglers and opportunists trying to sneak around the chaos up front towards their back lines. There's a wet cough coming from the General's speakers, and the Grand Lancer sweeps its machine gun forward once more. "They... We're all going to get hurt no matter what happens here. If it means evading death, then it's better that I'm the one to hurt them and stop everything before it gets worse!" Once again, the words don't fully match the heart, and there's considerable things hidden in the back of the General's mind. He wants the fame. The glory. The money. Despite his own desires, though, he also wants the people of this country to survive. To do that, he truly believes he's the only one that can get there, as deep-seated as his mistrust of Elites is.
Cantio	He hesitates, and Xion capitalizes. Before it can fire off another rocket at the ground besides the squad of soldiers, constructs, and Elites gathered with them, that somersault kick snaps that cannon towards the ground. It's only the General's control over the machine that stops it from blowing its own leg off, but that moment is all Persephone needs to capitalize. It's a mobile weapons platform, after all, so it's not built to get its arms forced up like that. As that metal creaks and groans in ear-piercingly painful ways, it's left open to that followup dive from Xion as she slams her giant long fist into and through the lobster-like torso of the Grand Lancer. The sheer force of it all even punches through and rattles the entire machine, nearly knocking it onto its back while the back of its head splits open and reveals the ominous glowing weakpoint. Lilian's targeted ruptures finish the job in cracking its legs wide open, leaving it sprawled on the ground. The battle is almost to a close now. There's only a few Gekkos left (not including the hijacked one), one APC whose driver is focusing on recovering the fallen mercenaries' heads, and the General's Grand Lancer. Despite being on its last legs, however, the machine still hasn't powered down. Despite that mindmelting from Persephone, the General hasn't surrendered. Strangely enough, he's actually stopped yelling and speaking for a while now, as though some of all those words have finally gotten through to him. The machine gun goes up, the heavy cannon goes up, and they both start firing simultaneously as the machine drags itself towards the Elites like someone in their death throes trying to take down as many people as they can with them. First, bullets and rockets. Once the rockets are out after the first five or so, they're quickly replaced with pure flames. When the machine gun runs out of ammo, it's hurled forward, and the flames keep going until the Grand Lancer has to resort to just swinging that heavy cannon around like a bludgeon from its prone position.
Ishirou	Ishirou is forced off of the COW the moment the barrage smashed into it and his unit. Flying awkwardly, before smashing across the ground. Providing the telemetry has caused Ishirou to forget his own situation, and instead get blasted for it. Still, he managed to flip off the ground, as the armor itself looks damaged but not /destroyed/. However, the Unit braces instead of going on the wing again. He uses the connection to the COW to try and force it to try and embrace the General's own machine, to try and grapple it. With that, he attempts to establish a connection between himself and the head, with all that data flowing around it. Then he attempts to hack it directly, trying to find the connection, or why there is so much data swimming around here. Trying to either connect to the other side or find out what exactly is there...and maybe what exactly is going on. It's a bit risky, but he'll have to trust his allies to cover him.
Staren	"All this talking, and you still haven't said a thing about HOW your people won't keep being hurt when you're in charge the way you and the Treasurer are hurting them now..." Staren retorts as the General justifies his actions and goes on about Americans. (Staren is an American only in the continental sense; she isn't even really Canadian, either; neither country has existed in centuries by her time.) "I hate agreeing with Lilian, but she's right. If all you can think of to do are 'necessary evils', then stand down and let us handle it. We don't all know what to do, but..." She glances towards Persephone and Lilian. "...Those of us who can find a better way will, and the rest of us will help them make it happen." > it's better that I'm the one to hurt them Staren's expression darkens. She can't see the general's heart like Persephone can. She takes the words at face value, as she dodges rockets (her robots aren't so lucky) and then the flames come out. That's okay, she has a countermeasure for THAT! She holds out a hand at the oncoming flames, imperiously: Wormhole link established. Deploying prototype... COPY 1: Pramanix [ ] 7582 Winter Wonderland - Super-chilled wind creates a cold hazard (also ice/snow buildup) or helps resist a heat hazard/attack. Error: Requested prototype unavailable. Reason: Donated to Concord R&D for additional research and investigation into applications. ^O_O^ Oh, right. FWOOSH! Staren's armor is scorched black, only a few tattered rags left of the ornamental coat, and tears in the armor plating are sparking. But she doesn't need to retreat yet. There's still a little bit more to do here... She scans the lobster-bot, combining that data with her own robotics expertise to pinpoint a likely location for the power source. "No. We stop you here. This fight will no longer physically harm your people, at least." Staren charts the entry point for the shortest path to reach that power source. Fires HEAT minimissiles from the rack on her armor's shoulder, charges to the point of impact, deploying a vibroblade and trying to cut a hole. Then... Deploying prototype... Her right hand is covered by a slightly oversized mechanical gauntlet; the back and fingers (each ending in a vibro-claw) are painted red while the palm and underside of the fingers is polished to a mirror sheen. Gems set in the back of the gauntlet light up while a little reservoir pours extremely corrosive dust into the palm, before magitech projects and focuses small but extremely fast air currents in her palm, a compact vortex of tearing and shredding which she tries to shove into the side of the robot and use to shred a path straight into the reactor! "You sent a robot against a roboticist! To stop you, I can do this much...!"
Persephone Kore	"Please. I know you want the same things we do. Your heart's in the right place, isn't it?" Or something close. Wanting money, fame, power- belonging to the Concord, Persephone can't criticize those things so much, especially when they're couple with good intentions. "Once the mercenaries are out, we-" And then, abruptly, she stops. The Queen in Veils' spine goes stiff. A shocked little gasp leaves her, barely audible over the din of battle. "No, no, wait. Hold on. Not like this..." Everything between her and the mech's cockpit is neatly disassembled by telekinesis, individual bolts and plates and circuit-boards hovering in midair as if laid out for an exploded diagram. In the center of that gleaming constellation is the General, in a truly grave state. She levitates him out, as gently as possible, and hovers him above the Queen in Veils' cupped palms. "Stay with us. Stay with us. It'll be okay..." As long as the light of his heart isn't completely extinguished, I can reach out to it, rekindle it. This isn't who you are- bleeding, damaged, almost beyond repair. You have a story; it's not supposed to go this way. I really won't allow this awful ending to come true! ... But if he's already unconscious, there's only so far that "sharing psychic gifts with him" can get. The doll-mech, still being intermittently pinged by bullets, walks back to Tamamo with the General held reverently in its hands, bends down, and carefully sets him at her feet. "You said you could do something, right, Tamamo? If you can get him awake again, I can help, but..." She sounds genuinely distressed, for the first time since they've been around each other.
Xion	Splitting the mecha-wrapping the General resides in open with the gathered force of silicon and cybernetic strength within the place, Xion bounces weightless for a second at the point of impact. Gravity and Xion resume their relationship, dropping the racing noirette to the ground between Persephone and the General's literal and semi-literal mecha selves. Her size - relative to the war machine - is her constant advantage. Standing in the ample cover of 'victory', Xion strikes a pose. The Grand Lancer keeps coming, and her cover becomes a massy object bearing down right on her. Sheer volume and mass still lurching in throes of automatic attack even without a controller, Xion is caught by surprise. "Wait -- what?" 'WHAM!' crashes the fist across Xion's guard, the ground cracking around her. Metal creaks and wails while Persephone makes her extraction, and Xion - and her enhanced-strength Big Arm clashes three-fingered against the straining and damaged metal. "None of us -- are talking to some automated hate-system!" Xion shouts, offended. Metal gathers around her left arm from the defeated Gekko and chunky cyber dudes, the Nobody cocking back a second powered fist, and does her best impression of herself from a few seconds ago, left hooking the structure into Staren's pattern attack.
Lilian Rook	Lilian is very very serious about keeping her own men (and girls) safe first, and then not inflicting fatalities only one step removed from her hand if she can help it. Machine gun bullets are continuously repelled by the blade wall that is her and Satsuki. Heavy cannon rounds are diverted by ill-fortune and their explosions slam against the unnatural embankments. Gunfire pours onto the Grand Lancer from all sides, battering its armour to pieces from closer and closer range, until fragments and stray bullets spall into its insides and inflict damage. The wave of flames is partially handled in unison by Lilian and Arina, the former with runestones drawing up the groundwater from below and the latter emphatically calling for a sudden deluge from above out of a blue sky, drenching the area with constantly renewing buffers of cold water to repel the heat as steam. 'And if someone's going to take control of things after that tragedy, it should be someone the people trust!' "Indeed. There's nothing at all wrong with benefitting at the same time as you resolve a critical situation. As long as you've done your utmost to fulfill your obligations and ensure its success, whatever else is in it for you is incidental. Why should someone not get something out of doing the right thing? Does it have to be sacrificial to not be suspect?" Lilian is largely thinking out loud, up until the exact moment she isn't. 'The treasurer doesn't, and I doubt any of you would!' "Oh, I'm afraid that's where you'd be completely wrong. This is exactly why I wanted us to speak with words before blows. How are you going to learn anything about us --about what's going on-- if fighting gloriously on the frontlines and dying on the hill of battle is your first resort? If you really feel a duty to your people, you should put the machismo aside and think about the sequence of actions that is best for them; this isn't it." And when the robot goes down, and Persephone starts panicking, Lilian feels she's had enough with just using her words. While the Grand Lancer is peeled apart, she focuses her attention inwards. An unnatural ember sparks under the colour contact in one eye, as she brushes up against the General's consciousness, and grips his mind's ear with her fingertips. "You've fought enough. This is enough. You did everything you could. No one could accuse you of being a coward. No one could say you sat back and didn't try. Stop. Don't die for your people. They still need you. Stop throwing away the strength you'll need, and live. Stay with us, so that you can fix this." Arina is already running to the General, fumbling with her satchel and her staff in a near-panic that doesn't quite rob her of any coordination. She's flanked by a couple of powersuited combat medics, rushing to join Tamamo in healing the dying man.
Tamamo	There's a wet cough coming from the General's speakers... "That did not sound healthy," Tamamo says, in-between wondering what Ishirou's findings could mean. Did someone strike the pilot, or did some damage to the machine carry through to it? Was the general already unwell? She's not very familiar with this sort of machine. She can trust, at least, that Persephone won't want him to die, and has the power to extract a pilot without (physically) harming him. Past that, Tamamo trusts her exactly as far as she can throw her, Queen in Veils included. "I do not begrudge your actions. In your position, perhaps, I would see no better choice, and it is unhelpful to speak of things better or more cleverly done. Let us force the issue, then, and each do as we believe best, and let the results prove our intent. I hope you might serve your people under better circumstances, after this, in as far as they give their trust to you, as well. That future shall await us." Whether he's awake enough to hear is in question, but she gives the words, all the same. With Cantio's reinforcements covering the flanks and Lilian's well-drilled troops manning Tamamo's mystical defenses, it's just enough for Tamamo to still manage to do a few things at once, each competently. Flames are something she's particularly suited to resisting, and that same resistance is something she can share within the range of her wards. Fire is not, for the most part, an effective means of harming the Sun, even if the fiery-haired fox is only a small part of it. Next, with Persephone bringing the general closer, she moves forward to tend to him. There's no need for him to be conscious, nor in any particular state but 'alive,' for her healing to work. Restoring energy as well mending wounds is within her skillset, and with so little having reached her, the reserves she keeps for her own health are almost entirely intact. "The cycle of rest and growth shall not end so easily, as surely as the world turns. Have no fear. Here -- Arina, of your own taught style, I am less familiar. Keep him conscious, if you please, and I shall do the rest." With the right preparations, any space can immediately be enchanted as both operating room and diagnosis ward. Magecraft glows golden symbols, traced through the air with her fingers, as she looks through to find the particular problems. Sustainment is handled by the wards, themselves, as well as aligning the fated path of those within the small space toward, very specifically, success in 'healing.' Along the way, Tamamo finds time to take Lilian's hand, squeezing it together with pressing a charm to her palm. Quietly, "For finding the centermost point of danger, around which others tangle. Let it be unraveled, and show us that gentler chaos that ripples outward, as the violence of battle falls away." It's a prophecy for her, for him, and, if the Grand Lancer is not stopped by the removal of its pilot, for the machine, as well.
Cantio	Without its legs, the Grand Lancer is impossibly easy for the Gekko to latch onto. Although it thrashes in that hold, it gives Ishirou the opening he needs to hack in again and see why so much data started blasting around so recently: It's the Grand Lancer's AI controlling the machine now rather than the General piloting it. Without its legs, it needs to find the best way to survive. If it can't survive, then it only has one goal: Inflict as much damage as it can on the Elites before they destroy it. Whether that thrashing is because it's trying to actively harm as many people as possible or to eke out a chance for survival is less clear. With the cockpit pried open, though, it's easy enough to see that the Grand Lancer is no longer being piloted once Persephone's power pulls the General out of there. Piloting a giant-ish robot at his age isn't easy, especially while fighting a whole host of spry youngsters that can do just as much damage with their hands. It's little wonder, then, that he couldn't quite last in there between fighting and yelling, but he's no longer in danger of getting exploded within the machine as he's passed from Persephone to Tamamo and Arina in turn. Thankfully, it's largely just 'regular' whiplash and other expected cockpit injuries all over him rather than any weird tech-human fusion that they'll need to work with, so figuring out where the internal bleeding is and mending those wounds should be fairly straightforward. At most, they might have to set some bones that have probably fractured or gotten bruised if they really want to go deep in there. Even the AI can't predict the gambit of doing the same thing twice in a row, and it's helpless when she slams that meaty metal fist right through its surface and launches it right into Staren's shredding vacuum fist. The combination attack does wonders against the robot's open torso, practically splitting it apart and tearing it to shreds as though it was caught in some kind of overpowered spiralizer specifically for robots. Those shreds might even provide more fuel for Xion's metal-stealing fistpower if she's inclined to keep it going for whatever reason, too! Staren's words, meanwhile, receive no response largely because of how not conscious the General is. Lilian's verbal ones don't, either, but reaching deeper does actually manage to break through the barrier that is being knocked the hell out. There's something vaguely resembling stirring, but his body's too worn down at the moment for him to manage a proper verbal response. Those that can hear deeper than what's on the surface, though, can hear him mutter within that subconscious. '... Fine. You'd better not be jerking me around, though. I was supposed to retire in a few weeks if it wasn't for all of this, but you pe... They killed him. We don't have anyone like that anymore.'
Cantio	Seeing their paycheck soundly defeated, meanwhile, results in a noticeable shift in the remaining (General's) mercenaries behavior. Rather than continuing a losing battle, they lower and holster their weapons while raising their free hands to indicate that they're no longer fighting. They don't surrender in the double-hands-up-and-waiting sense, though, instead just starting to back away from the manor-turned battlefield and heading into their respective company's APCs to start filtering out of there. Cantio, clearly still present throughout all of this, makes no moves to stop them. She does raise an eyebrow when some of the mercenaries passing by exchange brief greetings with the similarly dressed mercenaries under her employ, but she doesn't stop them nor seem too surprised by their behavior. Instead she continues directing the security efforts with her own group, ordering a few of them to check for other remaining machines inside the manor before turning to the crew of Elites. "I think... That went a lot better than it could have. Thanks, everybody! Now all that's left is..." She takes a deep breath, then looks off towards the southeast with a weary slump in her shoulders. "... One more. Hopefully. And then this area'll be sorted out finally."
Tamamo	Once she's set everything up, even if her pride were the only reason, Tamamo can't help but give a stellar level of care. More than setting bones and preserving life, she's going to leave him in perfect shape. Even if he had just been trying to kill them all. Well, he'd had a reason for that. As she said, she can't really disagree with it, either. Even if he'd been making a power grab for his own sake, it wasn't just for himself. Asking for saintly selflessness from a military man is just unreasonable, as it would be to ask for no one to be a military man. She wouldn't even ask it of a knight. She does frown, on noticing that the remaining mercenaries of the losing side aren't 'surrendering' so much as 'peacefully leaving.' That's not common, in her experience, though it's not like she'd want them to be punished further than having many of their bodies destroyed. Soldier prosthetics are surely a significant expense. She's not really sure what to do with people reduced to heads but 'otherwise fine,' herself. It's a level of unnerving perseverence that reminds her too much of oni.
Staren	Staren smiles at Xion, not expecting the combo and appreciating the help in disabling the mech. After deactivating the gauntlet, she'll even give Xion a high five, big metal hand to big metal hand, before running to the next crisis. Which is... the General. It's strange to hear Persephone worried, and strange to think of someone dying here that they don't want to. She's already thought of at least two ways they can save the guy and she doesn't even know what Tamamo does besides curses and wards! Abilities she's not accounting for likely mean there's so much redundancy that there's no point in worrying about it. "Persephone... Don't worry. With the combined elites assembled here, he will live. You believe in us, focus on that." She's not worried, but Staren does fly swiftly over to where the medical team is working, landing out of their way and watching, listening to them work to stay apprised of the patient's status, standing by. If they're able to stabilize the General and get him conscious, then Staren and any plans she can come up with are among the redundancies with Persephone here. When the mercs stop fighting, she has her own forces lower their weapons, too, although she does glare briefly at any enemy mercenaries who happen to catch her gaze before she returns her attention to the medical team.
Ishirou	Ishirou tries to push hard against the AI, trying to confuse it as well as force it to shut down. Especially with the General out of it. However, the strain becomes too much, and moments later Ishirou drops like a rock, hitting the ground but hopefully doing enough. It looks like it when the other unit falls, and Ishirou rolls out of his armor. He looks more exhausted than overly hurt. He leans against the flight suit and groans. Alright...well.. He looks as the Mercenaries walk out, as well as their glances at each other. He looks for any communication that wasn't obvious and attempts to see if he can intercept that. He feels they know more than they are letting on, but it's not exactly every single merc that might know. Eventually, he just slumps, god he's so tired he could just die.
Xion	Xion's large bionic arm is already in high-fiving position in the space between her repeated high-speed super arm finishers and the dismantling-shrug of her dismissing the oversized armaments. 'Pah!' claps her hand to Staren's powerfist, and Staren gets the idea that high fives are not plus on parry. A dangerous vulnerability. Stretching out as the medallion power borrowed from Shijima Go wears out with a wavering checkered-flag reassertion across the finish line fashion of her jacket, and the gravitic aura of speed leaving her. Cantio's 'this went a lot better than it could have' draws warm nod and a thumbs-up from Xion. "Yep! The best way to have things go better is co-op with capable people." "Are there a lot of dudes in the next place, too?" She asks, bracingly.
Persephone Kore	Phony, via the Queen in Veils, watches the medical proceedings with a hand-wringing degree of anxiety. The doll-mech has no features but shaded glowing eyes, and yet it's never been hard to read her emotions from it. When the general seems to be stabilized under Tamamo and Arina's care, it slumps with visible relief. "Thanks," she sighs. Simple, but heartfelt. The mech shimmers out of existence once the mercenaries are gone. Persephone finds a nice little spot to sit down where she doesn't have to look at the wreckage of the battle. Breathe in, hold it for five seconds, breathe out. "Yeah," she says to Xion in a knowingly regretful tone. "There are probably going to be a lot of dudes."
Cantio	Fortunately for the head-only cyborgs, most of them are collected by their co-workers. They don't even pretend to be remorseful for anything as they scoop the heads up, maybe brush them off once in a while, then carry on their merry way. Despite not having visible eyes thanks to their face plates (which actually state what company they're working for), some of them even do a few double takes when they see who they've been fighting. It's hard to tell why with those full face plates on, but everyone can somehow kind of guess that there's a stark difference between the looks Tamamo is getting and those Staren is getting between the incredibly slight brow raises for the former and the less slight chest jumps and muffled noises for the latter. Ishirou gets to just cheat and hear their communications to each other as they're leaving after the fact. A lot of it is just numbers for some reason, others are discussing weekend plans, but there's a few choice bits about jumping ship to just work with the crew here instead. They're probably talking about the mercenaries Cantio hired to stand guard around the stabilized parts of the city. Xion's question gets right to the meat of their next target, and Cantio furrows her brow while squinting. She can't actually see that far, though, so she stops after a few seconds. "That's harder to say. I mean... We've shown what we're capable of here, and how much force we have to bear against theirs. I don't know many people that'd be willing to fight such a losing battle even for a paycheck." Persephone predicts there will be a lot of dudes, and that has Cantio approaching her with a sympathetic frown. "Yeah... I-I mean, we don't know! Maybe they'll see the writing on the wall and... Not?" She suggests while squatting besides Phony, reacing around to wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold her gently. "You don't have to fight if... If this sucks too much." She gestures towards the new set of mercenaries starting to stand guard in this region, getting their own vehicles into position. "They'll be around to help protect the civilians, so the next fight should be our last one here. Then everything'll be okay, and the people here will be able to sleep easy again!" Cantio states confidently. That gives her an idea. She brings out her drones, sending them to a select number of street corners, then relays her voice in as soothing a tone as she can manage. "Attention, everyone! This is Cantio speaking, from the manor of the general. We're in the process of getting things cleaned up here, so please rest well! We're going to get things sorted out for all of you very soon, and then you'll be able to start rebuilding and getting your lives back on track. This is my promise to you, on behalf of Cadenza and the Concord in affiliation with the Paladins and..." Cantio's done sponsorship ad reads before. It still never sounds not awkward as hell. "... And with Desperado Enforcement. Take care!"
Lilian Rook	"H-huh?" Even Arina can respond to Phony's unusual tone once she's done. Her fingers are a little bloodied, and she wipes them off on the bone mask like a bachelor on denim jeans. "Of course? I would have done it unless the Commander ordered me not to, and I don't think she ever would. Is this your first time?" First time what, Arina. "Oh, there definitely will." Lilian sighs deadpan to Xion. "The fact that this place has no standing army whatsoever is unusual. Even for a world with highly developed, massively corporatized private military. This has an intentional foreign coup written all over it. Sabotaging sovereign efforts to militarize followed by tipping off the PMC companies they're forced to rely on. Mercenaries are loyal to money in the end; they don't need inside information, just a timely promise of a massive paycheque. We won't find out anything like this until we've had time to conduct a proper investigation." Lilian smiles faintly for Tamamo, feeling the familiar warmth of her hand on her own, even through an armoured bodysuit. "Thank you. You're stretching your legs an unusual amount today. Did something about this strike a particular chord?"