Scene #8641: Holy Refulgence: Evident Through Fire-1

Owner	Pose
Meika Kirenai	Kagoshima, Late Afternoon: A dull rock crashes through glass to a chorus of giggles. Hands brush against each other, and shoulders, and footsteps and chatter echo down empty, half-lit halls. Backpacks are left around, and nervous whispers exchanged. Tinny metal rings against tile. Kagoshima, Early Evening: It started from off in the mountains, out of sight, with so little warning. Reaction time is a choking wire, tightening it just kills faster. Metal creaks and bends, and footsteps crack concrete foundations. bright flashing colors light up skylights from below, even as they're torn off and clatter into water below. Screams and shouts echo as a sign of lungs that still draw air, carried on the rushing wind. A monstrous hand, and its sloughing-clay flesh opens, a clinging patina of fine, familiar dust the only prelude for it to split down the length of itself in a gut-wrenching display. Now: "Sister Kurokawa speaking." A call comes in, parallel across offworld distress frequencies. The voice of the church's liason for Kagoshima's magical girls is curt and rushed, as if tugging at the constraints of a practiced script, and underpinning her plea. "On behalf of our representative Chevaliers, the Diocese of Kagoshima's Order of the Holy Refulgence places notice of an emergent disaster. Our Cherubim bring word of an uncontained, and we request urgent aid. Coordinates to follow. Please bear in mind the nature of our world, and the harm more panic will cause." The woman clears her throat. "And please come qucikly. Lives are on the line."
Meika Kirenai	Paired with this message is a quick report, pointing towards a recreational athletics complex up in the foothills of the mountains surrounding Kagoshima, just skirting the edges of the city's suburbs. Late in the evening, busses still amble their way near it, trains and trams service the rest of the city from the downtown warpgate, and civilians go on with their lives in the peaceful quiet. There is no ongoing disaster in the minds of the everyday resident, here, not one they could notice, nor remember. There is no panic, and the citygoers offer up no understanding glances towards those who might sow it in response to that unknown threat- only fleeting glares and shocked confusion. Any and all echoing sirens are from the mundane noise of a busy city. Life goes on here as it always has and always will. That dissonance is aching. It's long after-hours at the athletics park's facilities, and the orange sodium glow of streetlamps illuminate the empty parking lot and its potholes. Bugs still flit about in the cool fall air, and breeze rustles the leaves in trees both near and distant. The wide sports fields flanking the lot and the streets up are empty and smell of freshly cut grass, handwritten signs cheering on various children's sports teams decorate their boundry fences. Nobody ought to be lingering around a quiet space like this, not even janitor staff, given the lack of cars and chained-off facility golf carts, and yet. The distress call could clearly only be referring to the park's singular indoor center, even if all things about it seem at first glance to be in perfect working order. Light streams through the sparse windows from the bare minimum of kept-on fluorescents, and no poolgoers nor yoga students nor basketball players filter in or out of its wide glass facade, or linger around the covered entry plaza waiting for a ride. A low brick wall outlines planned events, and bushes in need of either a bit more or a bit less watering flank it in riverstone-filled plots. There's just one thing far from ordinary in this plain suburban complex:
Meika Kirenai	Just outside the recreation hall's front entryway, a tiny black-and-white striped humanoid creature sits at a plain metal bench, kicking its legs back and forth. The strange pattern stays static in place as the little limbs move, and while from a distance it could easily be mistaken for a lost doll, as the Elites approach, the Cherub ruins any illusion by hopping down into a crouching stance, and shambling over towards the group. A sound like nails on chalkboards leaves the creature's mouth, displaced a half-second from being parsed as words. "Drop, I- I need you to.. gather the others, so-" A ragged, atonal mimicry of a cough rings out. "S-so you can guide them.. in here. Don't dawdle, or play games with them. Please..." While a few present may have seen Kayoko's Cherub before, Meika's, evidently named 'Drop', has been scarce until now- but the way the message is relayed, spoken in her speech patterns if not her voice, might give a bit of hint as to why. To others unfamiliar with the magical girls here, and their companion creatures, the Cherub offers up no unprompted explanation of its existence, beyond a few hacked-up noises halfway between snickers and coughing. With a twitchy head tilt, the Cherub beckons the Elites with overlong fingers, turns, and scampers towards the building's glass doors- no, through them, via a jagged hole in the panes. It's not really odd not to have noticed it before, or the rock a meter inside that Drop has decided to perch on, but there's still an intrinsic sense of trepidation in looking at, or thinking on, the entry point more than is necessary. The Cherub waits there, tapping fingers, and finally dashes further inside when enough people get close enough to watch its route. Staying just a bit ahead of the group, Drop's gait when playing tour guide to the group shifts from a lumbering two legged, to three-limbed, to down on all fours, with seemingly no pattern, and finally stopping at an already opened door. In the same way that sealed off doors in hospitals and large stores radiate how much of a trespass it'd be to step through them, watching Drop hop across the threshold comes with a gut-pull of wrongness, and- "It'll go away once we're inside." The scratchy-nail voice rings out once more, borrowing Kayoko's words of assurances about that- Actually, even for those that have recollection of her comment months ago, it's fuzzy to think back on why and what she'd been reassuring about. But it is true, still, that with each step through the opened doorway, with each step further down the hallway with nothing left to sit against the wall, and each step past its signs directing towards the main pool, the feeling passes. It's good that it makes way, considering what's to come.
Meika Kirenai	Seeing the first evening stars, and the dying dredges of orange sunset in atmospheric clouds would be pleasant, were it not through a gaping hole in the corrugated ceiling of the olympic sized lap pool deck. Sheared off I-beams impale the concrete floor, sticking up from the three-meter deep water like a flooded forest. Rock dust floats in eddies on the surface, lane markets float, severed in places, and too-smooth gouge marks carry through crushed bleachers on down through the pool's coping, against which the water frantically laps. A structure that used to be a highdiving board is collapsed, bent in half and sheared from its foundation. Where slabs of concrete are cleaved off from the walls, the rebar poking out isn't just stressed or sliced, but twisted and bent into chaotic shapes. The diving tower's beams, too, look as if shaped into ripples. Cabling from fallen fluorescent lights coils around metal railings, sparking as if still powered even when detached on both ends. What's more, the ceiling is not stable. Loud groaning and creaking foreshadows showers of dust and shredded screws raining down, cohesion being lost faster and faster the more of it falls. Down in the blue-cast chlorinated water, trace clouds of blood drift off as an ugly, muddy red-brown, from where it drips in from diluted puddles gathering at the edges. Only a few of the puddles stem from unconscious bodies. The rest don't. "Hurry! We- we don't have much time! They- they need.." Chevalier Vermillion's voice rings out without her even having turned to face the arriving backup, frantic and weary. She's kneeled over one such body, her arms and shoulders rising and falling in rhythmic desperation to keep a stopped heart moving, up and down, again, again, and again. It doesn't look like someone who could be much older than the magical girl is. "It split. T-the Temptation split. We need to- if we don't- both of them already could be s-so far- it's-" It might be a sniffle that cuts her off, or a body-jerking wince, but her train of thought gets forcibly derailed for a moment as a flickering trail of dust starts to rise up, starting at the hand of the teen she's trying to assist. "No, no, no! Stay with me! Come on! Not when help's already-" Before there's anything much to be done, like smoke drifting away, the body is just gone. Chevalier Vermillion tries to stand up, jolting, and buckles, her leg giving out under her with a silenced yelp. The pain is still obvious on her face for that quiet moment. "...It's not safe here." For a myriad of reasons. The ceiling is collapsing, people need medical attention, and there's active threats which are no longer on site. Drop, ever-helpful, finds a steel girder to pounce up on, and hang about, watching with beady eyes and a still mouth, parrots once more: "We- we don't have much time!"
Ishirou	Ishirou heard the call from the sister, remembering what conversation almost happened recently, and... honestly sort of glad in hindsight that Lilian was there to handle the situation with the two sisters, though more of his concern was on Meika than Kayoko. Kayoko had it together and knew what was going on, or at least it seemed to him. Meika seemed more lost and... unwilling to say what was wrong in a way he could understand. Or perhaps, he was unable to hear..? The thoughts are set aside for now. They needed help first, people needed help and that was why he was in the Paladins, right? Ishirou flies in but keeps his flight high enough that people on the ground can't see him without some high effort, and mimics the signal of an aircraft supposed to be there to local forces. He does this for anyone who comes this way with him, using both illegal and... somewhat stretching rules methods to make sure people aren't alerted to what might be going on until they can get on sight. When he lands, he starts directing traffic the best that he can. OPTIONs deploy, but instead of hovering near people, they appear around the field aiming to try and stabilize structures and search rubble for wounded. That was the purpose of the RESCUE, both as an all-terrain suit, but also as a means to actually provide aid to a disaster site. It's just... most people only really see the first part more than the second. Honestly, the person who's seen the other features of the RESCUE the most is probably Kale. Who he's still not speaking to unless it's work-related. Ishirou himself follows the most disturbing little creature, mimicking Meika. Enough that they finally reach her to watch a person die in her arms. He takes a breath and doesn't approach her. Instead, once more deploying OPTIONs on the inside to try and keep the integrity of the building upright. He's had some practice in this (Thank you Nephra) lately, so has some ideas of what he's doing. "It's not, but we have to rescue the people here first, right? Then we can track it down," Ishirou says, trying to keep himself calm. He's no stranger to disaster zones, especially ones left in the wake of monsters but it does hurt his soul every time they lose someone. "Let's start by seeing if anyone is left here to save..." he says, swallowing. "I can switch to trying to trail them once I'm sure I'm not needed here and I am likely faster than they are." Nevermind that... given how they work he might not be ABLE to track them... but that's a whole different situation for later.
Angela	Despite Angela's situation with the Kirenai sisters being precarious at best, Lobotomy Corp did agree to help with the Temptations--even Angela herself did--and they're not going to go back on that promise particularly since the Kirenai sisters--particularly Meika--have assisted Lobotomy Corp in the past. When Kurokawa asks for aid, L-Corp makes a decision to help--headed up by Tiphereth, as Angela is hesitant to make a personal appearance, even through a view screen. The Central Command team headed by Tiphereth or Central for short seems to be the team that Lobotomy Corp tends to send out to deal with 'Magical Girl' problems. Carol, Nikki, and Rose have all arrived with the intention of lending a hand today, Nikki in particular--still in Funeral for Dead Butterfly Gear--seems anxious for reasons that might be evident but Carol also seems nervous since she hasn't been the Team Captain for many missions yet. "Isn't that...Meika's voice?" Carol asks. "Fuck, fuck, not again--" Nikki immediately thinks it's the Queen of Hatred who is responsible for this and rushes off ahead, Rose pulling up her scarf as she chases after the other two, holding onto Tiphereth's pad.
Angela	The Queen of Hatred is already present and is wearing a different outfit today. Gone is her over the top Madoka-esque pink and white corset and skirt combo--she is distinctly less anime, wearing a black suit jacket, a white shirt, a loose black tie, and black slacks along with some black gloves. She still has her heart-shaped hair ornament in her hair, however. She is wearing a white and gold mantle cape with a pink ribbon and a quetzalcoatl insignia clasp across her chest. She is crouching down over the body, a pink glow emanating from her hands. "My healing isn't working...!" She says. "I don't understand why it's so weak--"--but soon there is nothing to be done. The body vanishes. "Oh no....No.... Oh no oh no!" She says softly, gradually increasing in volume as the true horror starts to really sink in. "Was it you?" Nikki asks. "Did you do this?" "Not NOW Nikki--we have to..." Carol draws out a pistol filled with HP Bullets only for there to be nothing to even use it on. "Fuck! We are too late!" Rose pulls her scarf up quietly, "Sorry pardner..." She says softly to Meika, snagging Carol's pistol and approaching her, "This should help." She pops her with the HP Bullet without waiting for much of a response right now because as Meika herself said--there's no time. In spite of that, Rose is going to try and help Meika up and start guiding her to the exit. "We'll track them down and stop the varmints before they get too far." Tiphereth on the screen says, "Hurry up! We can't stop this if you're crushed!" The Queen of Hatred is a little slower to get up. She didn't expect to feel ... so shitty. She stands herself up and moves to one of the other bodies to make her way over. Carol and Nikki move to help hopefully just unconcious civilians with the latter's own HP Ampoules. "Thanks for coming to help," The Queen of Hatred tells Nikki with a sad smile which stabs Nikki right in the heart but thankfully only metaphorically. Nikki curls her hands into fists and moves to escape the structure as well along with the rest of the team with whomever they can gather up and escape with.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	"S-senpai? Miss Jeanne? We've got new orders." "Mhm, mhm. Kagoshima again? Out by the mountains... Oh. We can pick up some obscure junk on the way back, then!" "That church really has the nerve to call for help? Why should we-" "You get to rub it in their faces if we do really good." "Er. I don't think that's why-" "Deal." And so, three more people have arrived to answer the distress call! Considering the locale, the trio from Chaldea are actually dressed appropriately for once. Ritsuka and Mash are both dressed in clothes of a backpacking tourist and the sightseeing tagalong, respectfully, complete with suncaps and shorts to keep the sun out even though it's the completely wrong time of day. Jeanne, meanwhile, is only marginally playing along by wearing her usual dark blue jacket, but with a similar visor of her own (in black). The dissonance from what they've heard and what they're seeing is certainly something that puts them all on edge. They're glancing around as they head further into the park, looking for whatever it is might be the actual problem, and Jeanne in particular looks just about ready to shout some kind of blasphemous things to the heavens just in time for them all to see... The striped thing. That strange noise and its approach has Jeanne and Mash both bringing their arms up in preparation for a fight, but Ritsuka halts them with a quick dash and raise of her arms to keep them from following through with that. It's just in time, too, as the Cherub provides that message instead and guides them towards the jagged hole. "I dunno... Think we can trust it?" "It might be a trap. If it can mimic the Chevalier's voices or anyone else, then it may be luring victims into... Whereever that leads to." "Yes, yes, whatever. Anyway. Let's go. If it's a trap, we'll kill it from the inside." "Yeah, sounds good. Come on, Mash!" And thus, they head in through the strange doorway, following Drop with both Mash and Jeanne standing in front Ritsuka. The wrongness has all three of them lurching initially, taking a good bit of time to try and adjust their movements until they can start moving without showing too much outward discomfort. It's important to look like they're stronger and more in control than they are with things as messed up as they seem. As usual, Mash and Ritsuka are the first to move, but Jeanne eventually joins the former before long. Mash and Jeanne actually manage to work fairly well as a unit when it comes to sweeping the perimeter to find whatever injured people they can, carefully (sort of, in Jeanne's case) hauling them up onto their backs to start hurrying outside the building with them. Ritsuka, lacking their raw physical girth everything, takes considerably longer to carry anyone out, eventually staying outside to start using healing magic to try performing something akin to first aid for those that look like they're in the worst condition.
Kale Hearthward	Kale Hearthward is here. No fancy dropping in from the air, this time. Just arriving, on foot and with his 'human' disguise on. Nothing fancy, no theatrics, no indication that he's anything other than a normal human arriving normally to do normal human things. Normal, normal, normal. He's making a point of staying and looking normal. ... He immediately regrets putting that extra, somewhat spiteful effort in when he sees what's going on.... and hears what had happened. "It split..." "... Getting my team in here now," he says, jamming his finger on a speeddial button on his radio. "Do we know... targets, locations, anything?" His team arrives at a run. There's a pair of shorter humans - entirely normal humans - who immediately fan out and start doing triage, grabbing medkits from their entirely normal backpacks "Okay, this one - stable for now, this one needs..." says one of the entirely normal humans with medkits, as she flits from casualty to casualty. "Might need the ship here..." "Bringing in the East Wind is going to cause a stir - I'm going to commandeer some ambulances, fire trucks, and whatever else I can get, and make sure they'll be in the right places," he says, tapping on his radio some more. "Our cover story is we've got a Commonwealth VIP who's making an unexpected visit, and the security package calls for extra civilian protection on call. Nothing too strange about that." Kale gets on the line and starts making calls. He's going to rally whatever local support he can get, albeit under fabricated pretenses, and start coordinating efforts. At this stage, they might not know where(?) the Temptations are, but he can get support forces on standby across the city for when he knows where to send them.
Kayoko Kirenai	The collapsing building is barely held together by pillars of light, mushrooming out at the top to clumsily buttress disintegrating fragments of ceiling. Streaming with color as if it was actually fluid, the hardlight structures are thrown together erratically; a dome spreading apart bleachers from caving onto an unconscious teen, sheets of light pressed up against cracked walls like a desperate leaning torso holding it up, pillars and boxes and platforms, bathing the interior of the rec center with chaotic, shifting colors, all reflecting off of Chevalier Cobalt's armor to, counterintuitively, make her almost invisible. Cobalt's armor is dented, scraped, dull, coated in settled dust, as she crouches over another victim, mutely shuffling through their pocket. Faint gold motes of light drift around her, circling towards the person on the ground, but fading out before they reach. Her head hangs at an awkward angle, not quite looking at the wallet that she's now opening up to get at the ID inside, but not looking anywhere else in particular either. She fumbles with it, clumsily, fingers jamming into the floor like she's puppeting her body with half of her attention. The arrival of the Elites makes her flinch violently, somehow not noticing them until the last second. She stumbles away from the unconscious civilian, dropping the wallet like it burned her, and makes a hoarse high-pitched noise of surprise that scrapes in her throat as if she's burned. The light filling the room with its haphazard structures pulses in negative for a brief moment, warping like refracted lenses to curl around the Elites, and then snaps back to normal when Kayoko responds. "Hhh--! I-- I've been tracking th-them." She's still not raising her head to look at anyone she's addressing, but that doesn't give off the impression that she doesn't see them. "There's-- tagged them with glowing-- so we can keep track. They're glowing." Kayoko coughs, her voice reedy and choked with dust. Her distracted attention suddenly snaps into focus when Meika squeals in pain, immediately swinging to the side and gesturing with her golden sword to bring a blue hardlight platform into existence around her, stopping her from falling onto the concrete. The effort of doing that, in concert with everything else, makes Cobalt stumble, and every light-support dims momentarily, causing chunks of concrete to break free and crash into the ground, shattering with a spray of debris. "Meika! Don't put weight on it! I'll-- I'll get to you after, but you need to not--" Cobalt clutches at her knees, hunched over, and tries to authoritatively direct the incoming Elites in Vermillion's place. "We need to save as many as we can. But we can't let the split ones go for long. If they-- if they keep splitting, then that's, impossible to deal with." "Chevaliers," Cobalt straightens up, looking to Ishirou and Kale, and at the same time as collecting her posture, the dents and bruises of her armor automatically smooth out. "If we can get all the wounded out of the building, then I can focus on directing parties to..." She winces, looking off into space. "Both of the Temptations. While ambulances arrive." Kayoko sways, then leans down again to heave the unconscious civilian she was identifying earlier onto her back, and before managing to straighten up again, she collapses to her knees in a coughing fit violent enough to choke out bile. She forces herself back up, then out with a second person added onto her back.
Lilian Rook	Lilian knows better than to provoke the scandalized flinches and exasperated glares of strangers over nothing. Even if life is in the balance. Even if people might die. It's not as if they would-- could, help. They don't have any power to. Bothering them, stoically ignoring them, isn't fighting back against anything. They can't even notice what's going on. It's not their fault they don't get it. Let them go about their business and ignore it. §I'll handle it myself, as I always do.§ But she'd be lying if she said that it didn't make something familiar twist up a little in her guts. The city makes her arms tingle cold, begging to be rubbed together. Her jaw aches from the effort of holding her teeth still. No one would ever know by looking, of course. They never would. She doesn't allow them to. Not anymore. When Lilian reaches the rec center lot, it's in full armour, sodium lights gleaming off the black mirror surface like highway lights on a luxury car. Her loose hair flows behind her, between the thorns of her black antler circlet, and her heels click authoritatively over the ragged asphalt. Her eyes are fixed ahead so intently they almost glow in the dark. The corner of her lip twitches in a suppressed grimace at Drop's speech. It bothers her a lot, in a way she feels like she has to recall, rather than articulate, but as the Sister said; there are lives on the line. "No wonder she doesn't show you off." says Lilian, striding past, sword gripped in hand, perfectly still in contrast with the natural motions of her gait. "You're a piece of work, aren't you?" Whatever Drop is talking about, Lilian shows neither recognition or rejection. Her laser calm, like an athlete preparing for their olympic run, maddeningly betrays absolutely no sign that she notices or doesn't. Whether it's painfully obvious or satisfyingly invisible. She'd never be one of those who knows the signs by heart, and she'd never be so virginally lost and confused as to not know about them. Those facts radiate from every angle of her body. It's perhaps odd that she'd wait to ask the question burning a hole in her pocket until she sees Meika, rather than getting it straight from the Cherubim, or even the Sister, beforehand. "Uncontained?" comes first. Then, "How many and where?" Temptations? Victims? Coming up on Meika, Lilian crouches down, reaches for the black hardcase belts thrown on over her armour, begins with-- . . . Lilian stares at the floor where the dead girl was. Her face is blank. Her blinking only really betrays confusion. The lines of 'what was I doing again?' She stands back up as if nothing happened, too graceful to show the disorientation, as always. "Hearthward. Ishirou. Confirm your workload, then pinpoint all casualties you can find, and relocate to the lot. I'll move them." Already back to business. "I'm going to verify traces of the Temptations. We'll want to bring them back into a single combat area to limit damage." It's only Meika's special hearing, as a magical girl of sound, that caught when Lilian's teeth creaked in strain and her heart slammed hard enough to make her sick, just seconds ago.
Lilian Rook	"Vermillion. With me." Lilian says, gesturing the desperate teenager to stand up, then waving her close. Anything is better than letting her panic by herself. "Cobalt. You as well, the second I leave the building." she says, finally calling out to the other girl struggling with so much. She hesitates only a moment, caught in some visible indecision, before expressionlessly turning to Meika, and finishing what she was doing earlier; withdrawing the Paladins issue medical supplies from the wallet-sized pack at one hip, looking down her nose at Meika, and stands back up again while putting the cap back on biological foam sealant and painkiller autoinjectors. She hesitates just a moment longer, before saying "It's clear you've been trying very hard. So I'll thank you for your good work. I'd like you to see your duty through, but don't push yourselves. It's fine to let me handle it from here." Right now, even more than usual, Lilian feels like an eye of adult calm in the center of the storm; focused directly ahead, not around, and thus safely apathetic to any oddity or deviance outside her view cone. She has the abundant advantage of time to individually extract and move injured children to the parking lot. There aren't so many it'd stretch her, and their injuries can't be aggravated if she just mentally contextualizes them like the environment, static and inert, only there to support her presence, which makes her ideal to relocate them somewhere the Paladins medical can treat. Beyond that, though, her pretense to 'checking traces' is bullshit. Kayoko had been abundantly clear about the glow, so all she really needs to do is to get height. There are probably giant obvious distortions in the surrounding area to show her where to start, too. Going outside is something she only does as far as anyone knows once the children are relocated, thus the signal to have Kayoko spare her strength in trying to keep the building up any longer. She plans only to close her eyes and stop breathing for a minute to decide.
Hibiki Tachibana	Whatever Hibiki's latest interpersonal troubles with Meika (or otherwise) might be, there's absolutely no doubt that would ever stop her from responding to an emergency call coming from Kagoshima. If that were the case, she wouldn't have been here when the two Magical Girls were causing trouble...and having spoken to Sister Kurokawa the one time before, hearing /her/ voice now bearing that narrowly-contained edge of distress incites a certain kind of worry. The kind that has the expression on her face dire and anxious enough to draw eyes, even as nothing more than an entirely normal-looking girl sprinting for the hills at full speed, the complete calm around her even when there's a crisis going on feeling--stifling, in a way that it hasn't on her previous visits. There's a horrible sensation building in her stomach, pushing her way up into the park and then the center's interior. "Meika--?" She hears the hacking impersonation of her before she actually sees Drop; she's passingly familiar with Kayoko's Cherub, whom fit the bill of what she thought one might traditionally expect to be 'a magical girl's companion' to be like. Which is that much more reason the ear-scratching speech and lumbering around catches her off-guard. But the actual words click an instant later, and her legs are already carrying her further inside, shoving down that sickening pit in her gut coming from more than one source. At least some of that should have left when moving into the room they're heading towards, with the effect on their perception leaves. Instead, it only gets worse as she lays eyes on the utterly ruined state of the place--and Chevalier Vermillion, just in time to see somebody not that far removed from their age turn into dust on the wind. They were told what Temptations do, before. Seeing it happen in person, this close, is... It really is just like them...isn't it? I'm going to be sick. "--Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron!" There's no dramatics to her transformation in a sudden flash of light, and not even a surprised look towards the Queen of Hatred, or a greeting towards Rose. Hibiki darts around the edge of the pool, hurriedly dropping to a knee to check the injuries of the first body she can find to ensure they're safe to move. Everyone still here can still be saved, because the rest would have already... Her heart goes from stopping for a moment to thumping loud in her ears. Even Lilian doesn't get an overlong look from her - she falls in with the rest of the rescuers, leaving anyone too obviously at risk for moving physically to the one best suited for it (with quick callouts of 'here!') every time, while she takes advantage of the Elites supporting the structure to quickly hoist fallen debris off of anyone who might be trapped without risk of further destabilizing the place. Get the ones hardest to retrieve all out into the open, and then they can all get them to safety in the lot. ...No matter how much she tries, she just can't look at this as calmly as that, moving a mile a minute with clenched teeth.
Touta Konoe	When distress messages are sent out on all available frequencies, it's apparent that the situation is dire before it even ends up mentioned. He's never been to the world where the request is coming from, but it just sounds like the situation is dire enough that if anyone is willing to provide aid they're willing to accept. Compared to others that might pass through the Warpgate, Touta likely seems not all that noteworthy. Just a young man in his early twenties with a kendo bag on his shoulder. Nothing assuming there to note. Going through the city, it's apparent that whatever is going on that's so serious isn't meant to be noticed by the public. Likely just as was mentioned in the reports for any potential aid that was to be provided. Yet even what lies beneath this peace is unveiled as the Elites make it to the recreational center. It's here where Touta's unfamiliarity ends up nearly having him make a mistake. The entity of white and black that goes into its crouching stance nearly has Touta ready to pull his blade from its kendo bag. It's only in seeing how the others respond to it and the way it seems to be delivering the voice of another does the tension ease. At the very least, it seems like he isn't the only one disgruntled at the sight of it at first as he takes notice of the Master Trio that arrives. Looking at the three for a moment he finds himself looking to Ritsuka. "Honestly, I couldn't blame you for thinking that thing's trouble. Was nearly ready to try and split it." Drop continues guiding the others, and while it seems to have no proper voice of its own, it conveys the messages it needs to with little issue. It isn't until they reach that opened door is there...Something that lingers. It's hard to describe the sensation. As if crossing the line was something that simply seemed improper and yet... ' 'It'll go away once we're inside.' '
Touta Konoe	The words are enough to keep pushing through, and as warned, the feeling does eventually subside. Though...If it was between that feeling and what was to follow, even Touta couldn't help but wish for the former. Ample destruction is all around those that arrive at the pool area. There's simply no other way to describe it. The ruin of the complex is one thing, but what really stirs the stomach, that makes one truly feel unsettled is when one's eyes drift to the clear waters that become smeared with that red. "Damn it..." It's a bitter sight, and it only becomes more so to see Meika as the person in her arms doesn't just perish...But fades.Touta's hands start to tremble for a moment, but quickly tighten into a sturdier fist. It takes little time for him to begin trying to do what he can to make sure that as many people can be evacuated outside. That's certainly the priority in this situation but even now, Meika's concern of 'splitting' feels like it can't be ignored. "If just two caused all this..." Even more would be a disaster if given the time to spread. Touta continues to try and aid the evacuation of anyone he can. But, just this isn't enough...He can't help heal wounds, and he can't evacuate them as efficiently as the others. If that's the case... "I think we're far enough away from the city at least..." From what he recalled, the complex was still on the outskirts of the suburbs, still within the foothills. If that was the case there wouldn't be too much commotion. Touta bites into his thumb as he lets the blood spill to the nearby floor. He continues walking, not thinking much of it at first, continuing on his path to vacate. Though in due time there would be a forming of black fog that slowly rises out from the pool area, ascending out into the sky from the hole that was left. From the outside at worst it might appear like there were some dark clouds lingering above the center, maybe even some smoke...But within those dark vapors a bird's eye view would begin trying to scour the surrounding area trying to see in which ways the split off temptations were going. If they can get a headstart on containing these things, it was clearly something that should be done.
Meika Kirenai	'You're a piece of work, aren't you?' Drop's head tilts, momentarily, following Lilian's motions like a swiveling camera. "No wonder she doesn't show you off." 'Did you do this?' "N-no! She was helping! Don't- don't accuse her, just- just help us!" Meika throws a pained glance at the Magical Girl of Love, pausing for just a moment in the bile-tasting dullness she knows the other girl must be feeling too, watching the dust rise and fizzle away. I'm sorry... 'Let's start by seeing if anyone is left here to save...' Wincing from something, Chevalier Vermillion wipes her face with a gloved hand, and offers a shaky reply. "If.. if there's still a body, there's- there's still a chance. Or- Yeah. Y-yeah." Again, she tries to get up, and again, her leg buckles. It's clear that a good amount of the blood in the puddle she was kneeling in is her own. "Time's not- not just for that... they'll start to be able to keep memories, if- if they wake up, or we linger too long.." There's more panic in her tone than perhaps there ought to be, in an eventuality that has survivors. Kayoko's efforts to keep the roof is eased by Ishirou's deployment of his drones, fortifying breaks and helping the blue magical girl buy time, a precious luxury, holding, catching, and deflecing plates of metal and concrete that fall harmlessly towards the water, even when they do manage to slip through the hard-light supports. It's a window to help and to evacuate the scant few remaining civilians. With the number of assisting Elites, there's more than enough manpower to carefully move the survivors- teenaged, the lot of them -to more stable parts of the building, and out towards the parking lots. Medical attention is the next most crucial thing, beyond imminent safety. Kale's organization of ambulances and emergency services is itself the tourniquet to this bleedout of time and safety, and a few distant sirens can be heard echoing off the rolling foothills in the quiet air. Fabricated pretenses may fall apart, but that won't change that those injured will get what aid and transport they can. Assisting with triage until they get here will, itself, save lives. 'This should help.' "Wait, what are you-" The magical girl is in no shape to dodge a gunshot, but the way she squeezes her eyes shut and holds her breath could easily clue in that she's anticipating something far more lethal than a healing bullet. A ragged exhale comes in surprise, as it seems to help the pain- until Rose tries to physically get her up. In her regalia's armored boots, and their somehow still-undamaged shape, it's hard at first to see how her lower right leg is bent and twisted, but easy to see the blood filling up the boots from the inside. Again, her face twists in silenced pain, as she sucks in air. "P-please! Save it for the others, I'm- I'm okay! I'm s-still in it!" She lets Rose help her up, but pulls away the moment she starts being guided. "W-wait. Miss, p-please, we need to see this through. I can't- we can't leave t-them until everything's..." Vermillion's breathing is already hoarse and strained, but with teeth gritted hard enough to hurt, she manages to let go of Rose's support and stand upright on her injured leg well enough. She actively cranes her neck around to look back at the rubble-filled pool, and the injured people around it. "I need to see this."
Meika Kirenai	'Vermillion. With me.' Chevalier Vermillion throws a nod Lilian's way, and limps over, picking up her discarded hockey stick from where it lays in a lightly-reddened puddle, and using it as a makeshift crutch. "Okay." She gives a smal nod to the command not to push herself, almost visibly deflating. Her free hand trembles, and she clenches it tight the moment she notices its instability. It doesn't help, but it feels like it should. As the last victims, and last rescuers make their way outside of the pool deck and back through the eerily quiet, eerily serene hallways, the soft rumble of the roof's collapse, no longer supported, becomes easier and easier to pass off as highway noise, or nighttime construction. The parking lot is darker, but far busier than on entering- bodies, technicians, and frantic Elites fill the curb, as sirens grow closer. Meika struggles to stay standing upright with her fellow Paladins, even as Lilian's painkillers start to take affect, still in no fighting shape. 'There's-- tagged them with glowing-- so we can keep track. They're glowing.' And tagged they are. There is very little due west of the athletics park, and very, very much due east. It's not particularly hard to see the the start of the tracks the Temptations have left, out from the pool building, One set, like a single carved rut, traces southeast, nearly straight through a hole gouged in the corner of the pool deck's wall and out down the woody hill behind it. Kayoko, Touta's blood clone, and Lilian, from the high vantages she has all the time she needs to find, can spot out the carnage left by the southeast one easily, and in the distance, its halo of brilliant light, a handful of kilometers away, gouging a line straight towards a diverted river canal amongst suburban housing. Northeast, however, mark tracks in a slightly different way. Bare footprints against soft soil, knocked down trees from crossing hilly woodlands, and in the distance, the same sort of halo is refracted a dozenfold, dancing like fractals across... it's hard to tell what, with glittering reflections moving like a whirlwind. It's as bright and easy to see as the city itself is, glowing down by the coastline, but similarly far away to the first- a few kilometers, in nearly the opposite direction. Forces will have to be split, even if the intent is to corral them closer. And, as the sirens approach, flashing lights dancing up foothill streets, it's abundantly clear that the effect suppressing memory around Temptation attacks no longer shields this area.
Ishirou	Between the hard light structures and Ishirou's intervention, the roof will stay uncollapsed long enough to prevent future deaths due to debris. A few pieces will slip through, but OPTIONs are on hand to shoot these falling pieces with beams, that slow down their descent and arrange them on the ground in a safe pile. Love blames herself, but Ishirou shakes his head, "We all do what we can try with everything you have and... that's all you can do," he says, having remembered those words said to him at his worst moments. He wants to do more, and he knows it. He gives Hibiki a glance and waves only passingly to her. Not enough time to do everything. Lilian's orders come over the radio and Ishirou nods. Once the civilians are out, Ishirou rises to flight again, switching into the flight Unit and then switching THAT into wing mode. While on the wing, he tries to get a scan of each Temptation, thanks to Kayoko able to mark them. The very first thing he looks for is... Where are they going exactly? Using telemetry data, wide area scans of people in the area, and trying to compare movements. If they're not just randomly attacking, they have to have a purpose in their attacks... and he wants to know where that is. The rest of the data is secondary because right now they are in crisis mode.
Kale Hearthward	"There was a gas leak." That sounds... plausible? It's better than the first lie Kale comes up with, at least ("A bomb went off") and much less likely to cause panic. "There was a gas leak." Keep it simple. Don't fabricate some giant story. Touta's cloud of... stuff, is possibly going to add some perceived veracity to that lie. "The explosion gave off a lot of weird stuff. Don't breathe in too much if you can avoid it, it might cause hallucinations or memory issues." And that should, hopefully, give some cover to anyone here who doesn't have their shit together and is about to go flying off uncloaked or doing something else impossible in front of the civilians. Kale is certain someone is going to do something stupid along those lines. "I don't care if it doesn't look like a gas leak explosion - that's the investigator's job to figure out, either help or get out." And the arson investigator's findings... that's a bridge that can be crossed when it comes time. Kale has options for that, and some of them are even not unsavory. Once he's reasonably certain that the 'Gas leak' lie has taken root (or has taken root as much as he can manage), he sets off towards the northeast, at the best land speed he can plausibly manage.
Angela	Nikki flinches at Meika's words but obeys instructions. She wonders if the Love--The Queen of Hatred, she corrects mentally stubbornly--actually did change back. Nobody's going to argue with either Kayoko or Meika right now, not during this tragedy. Rose says, "Sorry ma'am, not much time for please and thank yous--" But she pauses as Meika pulls away. And she nods first, frowning at the wound not quite healing right. "Shit, I've seen that fix bigger wounds than that," But she nods to the request and will help look for others. Either way, the Queen of Hatred (who feels revealing herself as Chevalier Love right now would be real bad timing) assists the Agents with healing and evacuation as they can. They'll take hits if they have to, even stay in a collapsing building if they have to, but fortunately there's an even bigger job yet to come--so they can't take that risk. Once they're out, details start coming in as to where the Temptations are heading. There's one heading towards a river canal, and one more downtown to the northeast. Fortunately, this is where Lobotomy Corp arguably shines. They can split their forces reasily. "Carol and Nikki, you're the ones with leadership experience." Tiphereth says from her pad. "Split up. Rose will go with Carol, Nikki--you go with Love." Nikki doesn't argue or accuse this time. Nikki jogs over to the Queen of Hatred and says, "You heard her. Coastline will be better for my gear. Let's go." "O-okay! I'm heading after the one heading northwards with Nikki, Meika-Chan! The otheres will head the other way. We'll...make sure nobody else gets hurt!" The Queen of Hatred is less banged up than Meika, at least by appearance, but she is still winded from the fight that she's already been in. She darts off down that way, Nikki following close behind. "Arright, we'll head up towards the river." Rose says. "I promise, we'll do our best, Chevaliers." She nods once and Nikki and Rose rush off in that direction. They're more concerned with destroying the threat than mantaining the masquerade but they aren't wholly giving up on it. Fortunately, they all look like they could be local except for Rose who has to use a scarf to obscure her face.
Lilian Rook	'I need to see this.' "Very well." says Lilian, opening her eyes, after a slight delay. She blinks away black-gold motes of dust in doing so, and turns back to the injured magical girl. "I'm not heartless. You've worked hard and risked a lot, so you deserve to be listened to." says Lilian. "However, I won't tolerate you hurling yourself into the line of fire like at Lobotomy Corporation; I have the power to remove you if I foresee an intolerable risk." She doesn't even add an 'am I being clear?' It's all said so matter-of-factly that it's like a favourite teacher explaining something difficult in a way that seems simple. "Thou shalt not--" Lilian begins, in a way that seems familiarly biblical, before she reaches out to Meika. "--deny thy brothers and sisters that which they hath earned." Thoughtlessly, Lilian pulls Meika's uninjured leg out from under her, slides her arm under the girl's shoulder, and hoists her up into a nominally injury-safe princess carry. "Thou art responsible to thy blood first above all else, both the blood of thy line, and the blood shed for thee." she continues to recite, settling Meika firmly against her body. "Fifth and First Code." She glances back just to check Kayoko is with her. Her eyes are visibly scanning her armour and little else; professionally assessing the condition she's in, and the honour with which she sustained the injuries she has. Seemingly satisfied, she says "That goes for you as well, Cobalt. Of course, I expect you to shoulder more risk, but only within your limits. Don't overextend." A beat goes by. "You're not fighting for two people anymore." says Lilian. It comes out so softly that, under better circumstances, it might make someone cry. Under these circumstances, though, Meika feels herself being absentmindedly held like a woman she knows nothing about. She can feel just how trivially Lilian's arms support her weight. She can body warmth clearly through the armour, almost as if it were Lilian's bare skin. The salient lack of upper breastplate has nothing to do with where a keyblade once unlocked the heart of the Lady in Black, and everything to do with her being held tight to where she can feel Lilian's heartbeat through something soft, glowing such a soothing dusty gold over her breast. That Lilian isn't even looking at her is such a small mercy, and a little bit of a cruelty. "North and South. Their targets are an apartment block and a convenience store respectively. Extreme electromagnetic disturbance. Extreme inertial frame disturbance. Demon-class, likely Gold or Crimson. Personnel specialized in physical combat, head north. Personnel specialized in sensitive technology, head south." says Lilian, in absolute, unwavering confidence. The way her hair whips out behind her on the breeze as she turns east is borderline choreographed. "Don't split evenly in number; split by ability to contain damage and prevent them from moving further east. At worst, that will allow the Chevaliers and I to eliminate both." Lilian taps the toe of her intricatedly fitted black sabaton to the tarmac, and dark static separates her from the ground. "Drive them back west, if you can. Stay in constant radio contact." Then she leaps, in a grand, weightless, smoking black arc, out hundreds of feet to the-- south?
Ritsuka Fujimaru	'Honestly, I couldn't blame you for thinking that thing's trouble. Was nearly ready to try and split it.' "It's a reasonable guess, right?" "Nobody would blame us if it hadn't stopped." "No, no... You're thinking about this all wrong. Mascots have to be a little weirder. That's what makes them work!" Aside from that brief aside with Touta, the trio are hard at work trying to get the injured out of harm's way or patched up (mostly the former). The severity of the situation being impressed upon them with how the Temptations could split to unmanageable levels, however, keeps them focused on getting more of the children out before they wind up being forgotten to reality as well. Sirens sound eventually, but perhaps not soon enough considering what's already happened. Ritsuka and Mash are both looking rather shaken with the sheer number of victims already, but seem to be holding it together for the time being as they follow the leads of the more experienced Elites. Jeanne, meanwhile looks like she's more irritated than anything else, and she breaks into a fouler scowl when she recalls Vermilion's protests from getting healed at all by Rose earlier. "Watch your own ass first if you want to be useful for anyone." Jeanne snaps as she shoots another angry and vaguely frustrated look at Vermillion, then turns to the direction indicated by the tags pointing eastwards. "And you two!" She doesn't look at Mash nor Ritsuka, but they both exchange quick glances as if knowing they're being addressed. "Keep up." Without waiting for them to actually keep up, Jeanne leads the trio in heading to the northeast to chase after that light. They'll run if they must, but Jeanne isn't above commandeering a motorcycle or two to force Mash and Ritsuka onto something that'll conserve their endurance for whatever fight may come next.
Kayoko Kirenai	The moment that Kayoko is directly addressed, all the rest of the scuffed edges and bleary, exhausted battering vanishes. She straightens up and stares at Lilian, posture-perfect without a waver or a spasm, but nothing can cover up the flimy, ragged quality of her voice. "We're seeing it through. Rather, at least--" She glances at Meika, still half-supported by her hardlight crutch, and purses her lips. "I and Love will. The original Temptation manipulated metal, so Meika's leg got..." Again, no illusory guise covers up the sympathetic and disgusted choked sound, deep in her throat. Following Lilian out, Kayoko's head gradually droops back down, marching out of the ruined building and hopping through shattered walls like she knows them with her eyes closed. As she said, she has eyes on the Temptations, no matter how many kilometers away they are-- and it's apparent from the way she carries herself that she's seeing everything close by just as easily. Exhaustion and split-focus distracts her from maintaining the illusion that she needs to move her head to be looking at you, rather than actually distracting her from seeing. Once Lilian gives the go-ahead-- even though Kayoko could far more easily sweep the building for stragglers herself-- the hardlight scaffolding winks out of existence. The ceiling collapses from the inside out, concrete pouring like water down into a thundering crash and plume of dust, and Cobalt is back in business before the sound even fades. "They're split up too far for us to all stay together. Love and I will split between each of the groups." Kayoko nods at Love, grip tight around her sword enough that her arm is shaking. Meika's already been written out. "I can't heal Vermillion without losing track of them, and-- she can't be here when the ambulances arrive. I'd prefer if none of us were. Even you, Chevalier Hearthward." Kayoko takes a breath to stabilize, as if this little interaction is as taxing as fighting and triage. "After what happened before," With the Queen of Hatred, the Knight of Despair, and zero Temptations to smooth it over. "There's no cover story or memory erasure that could possibly keep quiet something like this, with an entire building destroyed, and someone claiming to be from the Commonwealth right beside it." Kayoko is snapped out of her professionalism by Lilian hauling Meika onto her back. She raises her hand up in automatic mild objection and surprise, but just as quickly settles down again. She swallows and nods at Lilian, and the way her eyes fall to the ground looks a little different from before. "... I trust you to keep her safe, Dame Commander." As for everyone else, though, Kayoko can make the decision whether they're visible to the emergency personnel for them. Vision around the school bulges and inverts, flipping into itself as a blue dot in a sea of blackness, blueshifted by magical force. Everyone is invisible and blinded simultaneously, erasing them from view before they have a chance to be seen, midair, on the ground, with the casualties, or otherwise. Images of each of the Temptations current locations are displayed in tiny, perfect detail, directing them towards each target so that they're not lost while blinded. Despite her own earlier instructions, Kayoko heads north. Wordlessly, Lilian's supercede her own, even in her own world, even as the most experienced magical girl still in fighting condition. Lilian and Meika head south, so Cobalt joins Love flying northward. Rays of light guide the way towards both Temptations, impeccably tracking every individual Elite's progress through the hunt no matter how far away Kayoko herself is.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "The south Temptation will eat you alive if you rely on physical weaponry, equipment, or close proximity." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "The north Temptation will do the same if electromagnetism interferes with you in any capacity." <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "We... should probably all switch then." <J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana says, "...I'm moving north." <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "that puts a lot of fire power on the north side if Jeanne continues that way..." <J-IC-Scene> Jeanne Alter groans. "Fine. But I'm not returning these!" Ritsuka and Mash both look only mildly concerned and considerably more pleased as Jeanne takes a detour to head for the southern signal instead. Jeanne, meanwhile, looks like she wants to strangle someone even harder than she already did.
Hibiki Tachibana	The most that Hibiki can do is ensure that not a single person is left behind, and she's unsurprisingly one of the last out from within the crumbling building as the artifical support it's being given is retracted. Outside in the lot, she double-checks to make sure that every face she recalled seeing inside is accounted for and still breathing. Lacking the kind of skillset that can do anything about wounds directly, stabilizing has to be left to those who can - and greater care can be trusted to the emergency dispatchers that Kale has called in. Dispatchers that she knows for certain they shouldn't be around to even see, nor see them, with the blaring sound of approaching vehicles rapidly getting closer. "...Two becomes four, then eight, then sixteen..." She murmurs under her breath, under the local chatter talking about the Temptations splitting. Kayoko explained back then, didn't she? They get to their target, split... 'and that just keeps going'. And for every time one of them does it, someone... ...Like she told Kale, she doesn't intend to be around here for long enough for any cover story to matter. With the Temptations' effect gone, the best thing they can do is not be here - so as soon as Lilian has given her summation of the Temptations' capabilities, and all of the fuss over dividing up their forces has been settled, she gets a running start to the north. And jumps at full force, a high arc into the sky that'll carry her well above the height of the city skyline and just as far forward, plenty high enough that she'll be able to keep track of the distant Temptation between the shining halo and Kayoko's directions. Even without the masking the magical girl can give them, she shouldn't be anything more than a barely-visible speck high overhead set against the rapidly darkening sky. "Ishirou...are you sure you're going to be fine up here after what Lilian said about them...?" While closing range with leap after leap, she can't help but ask.
Touta Konoe	"That thing's definitely more than a little weird for a mascot though..." It's the only thing he can help to say to Ritsuka as she tries to defend her stance, clearly siding with Jeanne and Mash on the matter. With that little back and forth finished though... It's from Kayoko's aid that spotting the Temptations becomes as simple as looking at stars from a high vantage. It's from this he can spot the two locations. He starts communicating over the comms, "Seeing the first one heading towards the river near the suburbs area. Other one's going north east...But that one's.." He can't find a proper word to describe it, though Lilian ends up not just knowing the cardinal direction but the exact spots the Temptations are headed. "How does she even...?" It's a question for another time. Definitely another time. All the same, while there's eyes in the sky, the Touta on the ground tries to look at Kayoko as everyone would begin splitting off. He knows that words probably can't alleviate what's going through her head right now, but at the very least he gives a brief nod. As things stand, an agreement of where each group should go is decided upon...And then another agreement is decided upon! "North it is." In truth, he doesn't mind the change much; he thinks he can work with Hibiki well enough, and Ishirou trusts her just as much. Though there's other issues to handle now too with the notice that the way in which this world conceals its anomalies is no longer going to be the case and even now Kale is starting to bring in emergency support. At this point Ishirou and Hibiki have already jumped off ahead of him, or flown off entirely. Though that was fine. For the black fog he had sent up was already up in the clouds heading north. At this point it really did just look like a thunder cloud overhead. In fact, like a thunder cloud it even starts to rain. At least for a moment, a very brief sprinkle if that. During the time it has Touta receives a notice on his comms and with it...He steps out of sight from back in the pool area of the complex. When the emergency teams start coming in to provide assistance...A trace of him is never found. *** Back in the North, Touta's already made his way there. He had attempted to reform himself somewhat close to where he recalled seeing the glowing halo, along with the location of what Lilian mentioned to act as a beacon. "Hibiki, Ishirou, I'm here, gonna start trying to get ready to cover the area for when we find this thing..." Even as he says it, he's already starting to form that black fog again, though only at ground level thus far, making it seem like it's a mist that's just slowly accruing in the area rather than something that spontaneously was going to pop up.
Meika Kirenai	'I have the power to remove you if I foresee an intolerable risk.' "Und-" A ragged, staccato cough she can't quite stifle, before continuing, quiet and more breathless. "...Understood, Chevalier Rook. Thank you." The tone disarms any stubborn rebuttal, and just as she cannot dodge a gunshot, Vermillion is in no shape to dodge being bodily picked up. Even in her dinged-up armor, and as trivial as it is to lift her, the girl is still surprisingly light. Carried, the Vermillion goes stock-still, muscles tight even as breathing relaxes. The heartbeat echoes close in her ears, a metronome to drown out the surrounding strife and chaos. With eyes still flitting about the room or squeezing shut from the still-sharp dregs of pain, her face reddened by embarrassment and a held-back urge to flinch away, or otherwise protest, futile as it would be. As Lilian walks with her as cargo, Vermillion's suspended ice skates ring like windchimes against the air, nearly drawing traction from nothing as shimmering trails of their magic trace in the air. 'The original Temptation manipulated metal...' 'Extreme electromagnetic disturbance.' "Y-yeah. Be.. careful. Aha.. even got to some of the pins in my leg..." It's not clear if it's the pain or the painkillers causing her to let out a little laugh at that. Despite what a metal-controlling Temptation could do, whether to things inside a body or just in ambient surroundings, the Holy Refulgence's magical girls, as worn and dented as they both look, ought to be far more injured from the metal they garb themselves in. Vermillion, at least, has not seemed to notice that discrepency. Ishirou's scanning confirms mainly that both Temptations are heading in as straight of a line as seems possible, judging by the moving lights marked on them by Kayoko. Relaying this news would be unexpected to her and Meika, it's the continuous habit of Temptations. Predicting targets from immediately observable data alone is only as feasible as 'someone, somewhere, in a specific direction'. Still, it's easy to see that in both cases, they are heading towards areas of higher density population- that's a risk regardless of target, Temptations don't mitigate colateral damage caused in their transit. East, whether due, north, or south, is further towards the city proper, with more souls and more risk. The call to push them west, if possible, where undeveloped hills and lower-density neighborhoods sprawl, is a good goal. '...Two becomes four, then eight, then sixteen...' "Won't- won't be more than two. We can't let it be. Ever." It's somewhere between an assurance and a 'don't you dare keep thinking about that'. 'There was a gas leak.' 'There's no cover story or memory erasure that could possibly keep quiet something like this.' "Chevalier Hearthward, please... fibs like that don't- don't work too well. They'll come up with what they will if they just- just stumble on the helped victims. And I- I can't... wait here to fix it if you go forwards with that...." Suspended as she is, it may be hard to take Vermillion seriously, but her tone is pleading. 'Their targets are an apartment block and a convenience store respectively.' A surprised noise escapes out of Vermillion, as Lilian states that. "How are you so- so certain..?"
Meika Kirenai	As the sirens scream closer, and 'Everyone is invisible and blinded simultaneously, erasing them from view before they have a chance to be seen, midair, on the ground, with the casualties, or otherwise', Kayoko's executive decision guards frantic paramedics from contending with the shock of this multiversal group's presence, and the group from the reaction the approaching ambulances have to the laid-out victims of the disaster. It's hopeful they'll make it. Right now, though, the danger is elsewhere. En route to the south, once Kayoko's invisibility and guiding star fades off, Lilian, Jeanne, Mash, Ritsuka, Carol, and Rose will have no trouble following the gouged-out trench the Temptation's path created, as intersects streets blocked off by downed trees, and dispite the knowledge of what exactly is being hunted, wouldn't it just make more sense for this all to be from a recent flood tearing away foothill soil and asphalt, through a quiet neighborhood like this? Where it passes through spaces that could have fit homes, Meika gasps, not tearing her eyes off of scraps of stucco-clad siding or sheared bricks. Lights in second-story windows are still on, with people watching whatever commotion might be drawing a crowd, and making people's commutes difficult with closed-off streets. They don't see the wreckage of a monster's journey as something so blatantly unbelievable. When the Southbound Elites come across the banks of the river canal seen from above, the Temptations's progress has already been slowed by a quirk of its kinetic field. Instead of simply stepping up the banks on the other side, the carved path carries straight, making less time the more material gets slogged through. It's still a ways past, but the halo is glaringly visible around the humanoid monster, as it towers over surrounding houses a half-dozen blocks inwards from the canal, tall even from standing in a few meter-deep gouge, and throwing up a choking cloud of wet dirt and pebbles into the air behind itself. En route to the northeast, craterous footprints mark the trail in lieu of such an obvious gouge, but Kayoko couldn't possibly have any trouble tracking the brilliant display offput by her marker on the towering Temptation she, Touta, Hibiki, Love, Kale, and Ishirou are all tracking, let alone with help from the sky. Bypassing sparse suburbs and wooded hills is easy to do without much attention, as is steering clear of the shorn and twisted electrical poles amongst both, that seem to go unnoticed save for the blacked-out streetlights and buildings near them. It just makes the swirling array of sparkles around the Temptation all the brighter, glowing as it slowly climbs, and stumbles through, a quarry it's found itself at the bottom of. Beyond it is little distance to a set of apartment blocks, as warned, giving only scant breathing room- worse, as metal-framed blue-glass panels swirl in a storm around the temporarily-stopped monster, approaching it and the cyclone of torn-up solar cells it's collected is bound to be a nightmare.
Ritsuka Fujimaru	The plan is set, and the target has been.. Sort of found! It's hard to miss the trench dug by the Temptations movements, and it gives Jeanne and Mash a convenient path to follow in the new motorcycles that they got from unnamed sources that were incredibly reputable and not at all stolen. They're both driving at a rapid clip, too, with Ritsuka hanging onter Mash for dear life as the vehicle keeps bouncing from side to side thanks to the trench being a trench rather than a proper road. Meika isn't the only one that notices the shorn buildings, either. There's an urge to stop and check on those that might've been injured already, but quick snaps from Jeanne keep Mash's eyes on the trench and driving forward the whole while. Eventually, though, they come back onto proper road, giving them a clearer view of the Temptation in the canal. When it looks like the coast is relatively clear, Jeanne and Mash both don their proper combat armor and materialize their weapons, but neither goes on the offense just yet. Instead, they (Jeanne included) turn to Ritsuka as she puts on some fingerless gloves and nothing els to signify that she's geared up for a fight. "Remember. Our job's to push back to the west so we can really let loose. We can't really do it here, or things'll get real bad for those Chevaliers!" "Right, Master. If it's something that's a problem at close range, then.. I can focus on keeping you and Miss Jeanne defended." "Yes, yes, say something we don't already know. Are we going to get started yet?" Ritsuka and Mash both still look mildly bewildered by Jeanne's cooperation. Jeanne still hasn't forgotten her deal with Ritsuka, so she stays put until given the go ahead to begin the operation.
Lilian Rook	'How are you so- so certain..?' "Because they're completely and utterly predictable." says Lilian. "There are senses other than sight and hearing, you know." she adds, with peculiar emphasis. "Their targets are two girls. Teenagers. I don't know how they're related, but I know roughly where they are. If necessary, I'll relocate them to steer the Temptations away from the city. I assume they simply 'know' where their targets are, so we wouldn't have to show the general populace, if it came to it." 'Chevalier Hearthward, please...' Lilian pauses. "Please listen to Chevalier Vermillion, Hearthward. I know you mean well, but that isn't a replacement for . . ." She stares off over the cityscape for too-long seconds. Her jaw works silently with two false starts. "They've been doing this, almost all by themselves, for all this time. Having more general life experience . . . Knowing it isn't quite the same as living it. So, for all their youthful flaws, please take them seriously this time." '... I trust you to keep her safe, Dame Commander.' She spares a gravely serious smile for just a moment. "I'd lose respect for myself as a knight if I couldn't promise that much." she says. "I don't believe in giving up on people just because they're a little difficult." is added without immediately group-digestible context, before she leaves.
Hibiki Tachibana	"... ...Just making sure." Hibiki responds to Ishirou, casting her glance forward once again after, both hair and scarf beating behind her in the rush of aerial movement. "You know your equipment better than I do." If he thinks this is the better one to fight against, she won't be the one to tell him no. Touta, down at ground level, is given a nod during one of her dips low to make another leap. Won't- won't be more than two. We can't let it be. Ever. ...She hadn't replied to Meika, back when she had said that, and she didn't look especially reassured either. But looking down at the trail of destruction left in the Temptation's wake, she doesn't want to think about it either. The painfully familiar sight of the monsters' victims barely having a trace left behind is where her mind has to cut off similarities with her world's problems to these; Noise disintegrate along with their targets. Temptations do the opposite, splitting apart again and again and again still. "...Can't let that happen, no matter what..." She echoes Meika unintentionally, and if the ruined power lines aren't enough of an indicator of what these things are capable of just as collateral when reaching their goal, the sights of the pool center will be sticking with her for a long time to come. But she'll need to push them out of mind, for the sake of not letting it happen again. "...There!" Once they close in, Hibiki can see it, from overhead...a quarry is good, actually. It means it doesn't just have free reign to just keep marching forward. There's still time before it reaches the apartment block-- how /did/ Lilian know their exact destination...? --and get it somewhere else. "Shoving it back west it is...! Cobalt, I'm going to make sure it doesn't go a step further!" Part of her might be thankful it's Kayoko here and not Meika, still sore from their last interaction. Another part might see it from the other way around. But either way, she gives the magical girl a warning before she starts moving to angle her fall from above. She knows the shortest and quickest way to get where she needs to go, swirling cyclone of wrecked panels or not.