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Rita Ma	Clark Miller is dead on his knees on the edge of the Manhattan after his betrayal, some few hundred feet away. Rita has vanished beneath the waves after being grievously wounded, status unknown. Her monsters are scattered; absent her control, only the space-whale calves circle overhead and croon mournfully.      "RITAAA?!" Bota lunges desperately at the railing like he's going to dive after her into the monster-infested waters. But--
Rita Ma	https://i.imgur.com/jpwuPiw.png      CRUNCH.      Vast tentacles, each individually as thick as a house, burst upwards and effortlessly gouge through meters of solid steel. Munitions and fuel cook off in their wake, to devastating impact on metal and little effect on flesh. Up on the bridge, every alarm goes off at once; nobody hears them over the deafening shriek of tortured metal. Huge portions of the main deck are simply gouged off, leaving the cargo bay with its bombs open to air.      The Queen could rip the Union Busan apart with the slightest flex. Even withdrawing would utterly doom it to sink. It might take a second to realize that the only reason she doesn't is to keep its bombs from sinking too.      "Ah. There." The voice is soundless, inside your head, but you know that if it were audible it would rattle in your bones.      A thick, incredibly durable fleshy webbing wraps around the cargo door, holding it shut even where the metal yields.      "I wondered when you'd finally take care of that little parasite."      Another house-thick tentacle punches up through the center of the now-open-roofed cargo bay, then grotesquely blossoms open. It forms into a shape that some people have seen before, at Akroma: a grotesque hybrid of a pregnant woman and a hammerhead shark, trading legs for a fleshy stem and arms for white-and-red tentacles.      "But even though you've been so kind, I can't show you any further mercy."      There is, after all, something of Lisa in the curl of her lips.
Rita Ma	Brune and Kana are the best-oiled pieces of the Busan's monsterslaying machine. There's raw dread in his eyes, but he still rises from the cargo bay's tentacle-woven ground, shrugs off a fallen piece of metal debris, and charges in with a yell inaudible over the tortured steel. She looms over the edge of the first deck's tattered remains, still dripping from Mia's rescue, and her chilling red eye blazes through soaking bangs. She leaps down, blades at the ready.      He cocks his fist back for an uppercut at the Queen's stem. She draws her blades in and twirls for the buzzsaw decapitation strike. They connect--      --with a thousand spikes, and are horribly impaled.      Each of the Queen's tentacles extrudes a hundred sea-urchin-like thorns as big as two fingers, extending to lance through metal and flesh alike in all directions. There is nowhere to dodge. Brune reflexively covers his vitals with his gauntlets; they skewer through his legs to nail him to the floor and punch a sucking chest wound through the gap anyway. Kana whirls to parry as many as she can, but three lance through her shoulders and abdomen, suspending her in midair with a slow drip of blood.      Sonia, up on Rena's bike, draws her sword with a yelp too slowly to block the majority; she catches one through the leg and two more in the ribcage, shearing her off the bike and nailing her to the wall. Even Sea Monkey, prone with her gun on the lip of the overlooking deck's remnants, is stabbed several times up through the floor. It's hard to see how bad, but her face twists in an inaudible scream and blood drips through the metal.      Bota is nowhere to be found, but it's certain he's wounded too.      The entire floor, now, is such a dense forest of chitinous spines that it's hard to even approach the Queen. When the cookoff-explosions and rattle of falling debris stop, it's deathly quiet for a moment. Brune gurgles defiantly, and Kana hisses in rage, but not even sea monsters are battering the hull.      "Oh. Was that all?"
Ishirou	In the water, the warning is barely there as he detects the tentacles, but... Just isn't fast enough.  They dive in, trying to impale him, and he backs up just enough to not get COMPLETELY impaled by the jellyfish-like stingers on the end, but they do connect tearing through armor as they pass by him.  He looks shocked, surprised by just how vicious the attack was, and just how barely he escaped dying. Damaged, but not defeated, Ishirou's armor configuration shifts once more into flight as he dives into the air to try and put distance between himself and the Queen.  His heart is in his throat, his breathing is labored, and he's /absolutely terrified/ of what just happened, but... He takes a breath.  No, he can't fall like this, not like this... not while there are still people there to fight, not while he has people to support.  Right at this time he sends OPTIONS out to people.  Trying to figure out who's even still up, who's even available to fight... he's trying to coordinate who's still around. He finds Lilian.  "L-Lilian!  Telemetry incoming!" he says, before turning toward the Queen and firing a barrage of laser blasts from the armor, trying to keep suppressive fire on her.
Aidan Proudpick	MINUTES BEFORE, on the East Wind: There's one ship in the fleet that has a hospital. It is also the ship filled with Galeans. And captained by Kale Hearthward. It is also, thankfully, not in the middle of a monster's belly. Aidan flops onto the deck like a landed fish. A minor flesh wound along one leg. But the other twisted, tibia broken, and the tiny important bones in his foot broken. He grabs the railing with one hand, getting his good foot underneath him and pushes himself up until he is actually standing. White hot pain flashes up his leg, causing him to sway against the railing. Pride keeps him from falling back down. His breathing hitches, but thankfully, he has that much. Through gritted teeth and pain, Aidan speaks with no hint of irony or shame for asking people he may have shot at before. "I need medical help. I have to get back in the fight." NOW, On The Union Busan: Immediately, a tentacle rips through the Union Busan just underneath him. The strength of the limb smashes across his armor, keeping him from simply dying instant. The armor crumples in the middle, a soda can crushed by the force of the tentacle. It smashes him up against the wall, driving wooden splinters into his arm, blood rushing down it. Aidan clamps a paw around it, trying to staunch the bleeding. The Busan. Destroyed in an instant. He casts his eyes upward with dread. His stomach churned at the sight of Rita Ma. The things that she must have gone through to become what she is. And what she is. The horror of becoming something like that. Bile rises in Aidan's gorge, the sight of The Queen enough to freeze Aidan's heart into a block of ice. Not just tremendous. Not just an amalgamation of parts. But that those parts don't seem to resemble anything. Powerful folds of flesh here. Claws there. Flapping limbs and muscles that randomly connect together. Aidan leans back, mouth agape. Terror. He finds his voice in a croak. "I don't know if I'm going to return, guys. Sorry." He presses forward, like against a head wind, pushing his leg forward, willing himself to take a step against the beast. He brings up his GUN. A lengthy steampunk contrapation that acts as a semi-automatic, condensing wind and energy to fire bullets. Holding it in an unsteady hand, he doesn't have to aim. He just needs to start clearing out tentacles.
Redshift Operators	Of the four Redshift Operators, only one is able to see what happens next before it does. Something about the Queen is temporally aggressive, causally violent. She defies prediction, just enough to make it hard to know what she's going to do until seconds before she does it. And even with massive amounts of focus on precognition, the precognitive ninja in the group only gets a second before the big squeeze.     "LOOK OUT!!"     Smash. Crash. Squeeze. And impale. In the chaos: Red Giant is slammed on the right side of the head by one of those tentacles, ripping away the new repairs. Neutron's rifle is smashed to shreds when they use it as a barrier to stop a shot, flinging the astronaut through a wall of the Busan. Red Dwarf's breathing is finally interrupted. A gut slams into an armor plate and cracks it, then the impact transfers straight into his solar plexus as he's thrown to the edge of the deployment area. White Dwarf skids back, sparks flying from her blade, screaming with agony as the spikes graze near the base of her prosthesis.     She stays on her feet. She manages only a single breath, using the moment to jab a hypospray into her neck. She doesn't have time for anything more. She recognizes: Failure to move will be death. There's a sound like a gunshot. With human eyes, you can see a wide, shimmering trail of blurring red and three thin lines of green, zigzagging between shattering spikes and straight towards the Queen. If you have eyes that are even better, you can see the small splatters of blood. "No, no, NO, NO! We're so close to how things are supposed to be -- to Rita being...!!" She's screaming in desperation.
Candy	"Rita w--*isn't* a parasite. You know -SHIT- from parasites," Candy spits at the voice in his head. Denial burns in the back of his throat as he fights tears.      Despite his injury from Clark, manages to stand quickly and without incident, from sheer anger. "You goddamn thief. You, and your fucking ugly, slack-jawed, drooling glassy-eyed children have run up the mother of all bills, and that shit comes due today. You understand?" Candy racks the bolt handle on his rifle and stands up from the spot he'd shot Clark. The spent casing gently 'pings' on the deck.      A split second after, the deck beneath him and Sea Monkey blossoms outward as if it were a tin can in the hands of a bored child. What good is stopped time when death can come so quickly? Candy's armor is torn open at the abdomen. A frozen scarlet ribbon hangs in the air, stretched out several feet behind the farmer. Frozen inches from the nearest wall, it is a testament to the speed and violence of the queen's attack. Anger alone overwhelms the twisting daggers of pain in his abdomen. Oh? Was that all?      A cacophony of plated boots on metal, many footsteps compressed into the space of one second. Something cold, circular and metal is pressed against the Queen's abdomen, and then a deafening crack. Flame bursts from the muzzle even with so little clearance between it and the Queen--the barrel glows an alarming orange. The bullet itself spews a furious, conical lance of fire as it passes, and the bomb bay is thereafter awash in counterfeit Candelarios.      "Nope," all of them say in unison.
Kale Hearthward	--A MINUTE AGO ON THE EAST WIND-- "Hold still!" Hazelthistle presses the plunger on the needle. "That's adrenaline, that'll keep you going - ordinarily I'd tell you strict bedrest for a week even with the medkit, but-" "Ordinarily, I'd be dragging him off to an Empire tribunal," grouses Kale, nearby. He's been dealing with hauling bodies (alive or otherwise) out of the water, which is a noble but unpleasant task, so having someone to take his frustrations out on is a necessity. "Well, neither of us is part of the Empire anymore, so I don't see-" --NOW-- > "Ah. There." "What-" Kale looks up. "The Queen." He's spoken to her before - or at least to a fragment of her being. Whether or not he recognizes the voice, there's really only one person that can be. > "I wondered when you'd finally take care of that little parasite." "Oh-" Something happened to Rita. Did Kale miss it? "Wait, take care of- did someone else-" The spikes impale the East Wind. "Stale winds - Proudpick, either die or get moving, I don't care which," says Kale as he runs back out the loading dock. There's... the Queen. Well, there she is all over, really. That part that looks like a person might be her core, or it might not, but there's a lot of tentacles to deal with. Kale pulls Periactus and kicks his boots into high gear. There's no more time to think about what happened to Rita, only to attack.
Stanley Padgett	Stanley Padgett has spent the better part of an hour desperately shuttling survivors out of danger, up and down ropes, across teaming seas full of nasty beasts and critters, and there's just... so much the young Fool can do, honestly. Even trading encouragement with Hibiki was just enough to keep his morale above water, so to speak.     But then it all happens at once.     Rita's shot. Clark's dead. The Queen is here. The Queen is here.     Stanley barely gets Ishirou's warning before the tentacles arrive, before the spikes come out. "Aaaaaaaa shitballs." And with horrible, awful precision, Stanley Padgett's life- flashes before his eyes. His danger sense flickers in. Time dilates, as his speed kicks in, his momentum flares. Hands and feet clamber and climb, his body twists and shifts, flickers in and out of existence, desperate to avoid death by pointy spines.     Each time one gets close, he's not there. He's somewhere else, already having to avoid the next one, and the next one. Over and over, in a horrifyingly close scramble     The effort is... a success, at least. No punctures. No gouts of blood. But there is a hazy digital frizzling at the edges of Stanley Padgett. Mercutio, as it manifests behind him, is glitching in and out of reality. "Sound off if you can hear me!" He's calling out to anyone close to him, anyone at all, as he starts to traverse back down the spines, back down the tentacles, towards the bomb bays. If The Queen wants to stop what's coming to her, he'll be more than happy to indulge her the effort. Adreniline surges in him, energy once more radiating from him to anyone close by, as the young man RALLIES.     "ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL." ...wait, that's not Shakespeare. Don't tell Stanley, though, as his saber and Mercutio's massive longswords start to chop and slice, cutting open a path towards the cargo hold. "MAKE A HOLE, GET THOSE DOORS OPEN!"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine is hauling herself up a grappling hook attached to a chunk of Union Busan's surviving deck railing, Nonon climbing up just behind her, when the tentacles extrude a forest of spines. The huntress hears the spikes punch through the bulkheads a split-second before they emerge from the hull, and kicks off the hull to swing away, into the open air. This spares her from total perforation, but a jumble of spines does not make for an easy landing. After extricating herself from various impalements Madeleine resumes her climb, this time using the spines for (admittedly quite hazardous) hand- and footholds.     Once she arrives topside, she looks down into the exposed cargo bay and grimaces. This isn't good. Madeleine readies her bow and lines up a shot through the spines, directly for the queen's distended midsection. She already knows it isn't going to be that easy - but it will force a tentacle to move out of place. That alone may be enough to give someone an opening...
Angela	Gebura has seen three members of her team die today. Almost half of her crew. If she was there, she wouldn't have lost anyone. Will, Sammy, Jenna... Gebura has learned to harden her heart against such losses even within the facility, let alone here at the end... But... ...Her gaze slants towards the railing, no towards the sea. Rita fell into the ocean. From that height ... No, she's strong enough to endure the fall but Clark was an expert Hunter. He had to have known that he wouldn't have a lot of time to kill her and so any blow he inflicted would have to count. "Rita..." Rita Ma says, "You're really funny when you try to be, you know." Gebura says, "Eh? Me?" Rita Ma says, "Mmmm!" Rita Ma says, "You." Gebura says, "Carmen said the same thing." Rita Ma says, "Carmen?" Gebura says, "Yeah. I told her I wasn't trying and then she laughed harder." Rita Ma tries her very best not to laugh harder. Rita Ma fails. Rita Ma bubbles, "I'm so sorry, Ms. Gebura, you're just..." A contented sigh follows. "You're kind of sweet, aren't you?" "...Fuck you for making me think you'd be one who stuck around." Gebura murmurs under her breath, relying heavily on her composure as a Fixer so Angela can't see how she feels (Skill Check Failure). She only has a moment to take it in. "Nonon get back to the Busan. We're out of position. If you don't get back the rest of the team will die, including Shajo." Nonon has been staring over the railing where Rita fell, she was one moment too slow. She makes a decision, then, and brings a foot up to the railing. She's about to jump over into the water after her. It's suicide. Even her bones would shatter. But she could slide down and even if it's impossible to see through the carnage she'd find a way, she'd find one and-- The call comes in from Gebura. She'd have ignored it if it wasn't for Shajo. "......Mother..." She spins around and punches a crater into the Manhattan's side. "FUCKER!!!" Her arm drops down to her side. "Rita, Rita had people waiting for her... You better... you better fucking hope that she survives this or you're next...!" And so snarling, she takes Madeline's help to get back to the Busan because her line is broken. Meanwhile Jenna is destroyed, torn in half. "Fiend. You meet your end today. Avec pitie ou sans." Ceri says. She dives forward swiping her axe, tearing apart spines in an attempt to make her way towards the Queen as Max bounds over the spines, ripping free one of them as he lunges for the Queen hoping to stab her own bone into her body. He doesn't say anything. He just needs to live long enough so others can tear her down. Tweed and Shajo arrive nearer the end and Shajo sees Sea Monkey first. He reaches for his second to last HP Ampule (though Nonon has the other one) and injects it into her first. "Fuck. FUCK. Nonon was supposed to be tanking!" Though it's doubtful even Nonon could tank all this. "Don't die, don't die--we can only reverse death so much this far from the facility..." And over the sea, ansi87, A dream of a shark) wails in fear and sorrow and kicks off the mourning space calves to dive into the sea below. "Mommy! Mommy!! Wahhhhh!!"
Kukuru	Everything happens so fast, and Kukuru's vision becomes a blurry haze as she sees what happens to Candy. She hears what happens to Rita. She looks up and over at the smoking gun where Candy had gotten shot from, and then she looks past the screeching metal towards the smoking guns of the Manhattan. The only thing that stops her from turning her growing rage towards Clark and the Manhattan is the fact that Clark is summarily slain by another's hand, and the Queen's voice ringing in her head. It's a familiar feeling in the same way she's heard other voices in her head, but unlike those other voices... The source of this voice isn't friendly at all. This isn't the voice of someone trying to comfort her, someone trying to instruct her, or even someone trying to discipline her. This is someone far worse, someone that's orchestrated so many of her family and friends getting hurt in ways that she couldn't possibly deal with all at once. Her only mild solace is knowing that of Rita's family, only Kana and Lilian are still here somewhere. Bota's location is still unknown and Rita... She saw Rita far off in the water. If she can just teleport over there, she might still be able to- Get impaled before she can jump into the inky cloud that appears in front of her, then fizzles out of existence when the tentacles' impact smash her into the opposite wall. "No time for you... Where's Rita?!" Grasping the tentacle pinning her to the hull, Kukuru spits out a blob of blood as she digs her claws into the appendage, ripping into it to free herself and land on that spiny floor instead. The landing isn't any cleaner, but Kukuru's ready for it this time as she slams her claws down to brace herself, then snaps her head back up to direct a more horrid gaze right at the Queen. She desperately wants to just go after Rita immediately, but with everyone still in immediate danger and the Queen right here, she has to force herself to trust that Rita will be okay. And so, Kukuru goes on the offensive. With her nanites still running low after that previous sprint, she can only afford to send some Lilian's way while throwing herself at the Queen straight on. She drags her claws across the floor of spines as she sprints low to the ground, pounding those metal-covered fists to launch herself a little faster before whirling her claws around like a human-sized buzzsaw aimed at the Queen's center mass.
Dysnomia	Dysnomia hears garbled voices over the radio. She catches Rita's name, and 'betrayal.' The shifting mass of her body quivers in the air, spots turning toward the side of the ship, beginning to coil outside.     Beginning.     Then, the Union Busan is shredded, and Dysnomia screams. It's not a sound. It's a feeling, like threads of glass crawling through veins. The Queen's murderous intent slicing through her mind, her soul, her self.     The ethereal mist of her presence began to dissipate into the ether.     Oh? Was that all?     You worthless-- Something in the mist growled. I can't let you win. Rage buoyed resolve. Resolve buoyed will. Will warped the world.     The growl rose to a roar, the air thickening with her as her eyes blazed bright again, barely visible limbs shifting in her roiling form.     "Parasite...?" Claws of plasma scythed through the air, in multitudes. "You're the parasite, you damn leech! And you'll be EXCISED like one!"     Violet plasma curved through the air, sliding around the other's attacks, anticipating them, sometimes before they even start to happen, losing herself in the mix of intents as she tried to batter the tentacles that might strike down white dwarf, that tried to rip open the flesh that Candy had torn into his with his gun, widen the wound. And more.     She let herself flow, tasting the minds around her, flowing into the negative space, becoming what they needed. A burning ghost in a nebula, everywhere and nowhere.
Combaticon	So much happens so quickly in so many different places at almost the same time-- The sudden turn of the Manhattan's guns against their own ally at the front; the responses to Clark Miller's betrayal; the explosive arrival of the Queen ripping into the Union Buson.     Onslaught floats back from the impaled ship, ejecting a spent energy cartridge from his blaster. In the seconds of blessed silence, he flips the weapon back into his forearm. Heavier weaponry is going to be needed. To either side of him, Blastoff and Vortex convert out of their vehicle modes, staring pensively through the wreckage for any signs of life not associated with sea-beasts.     And then the shredded remains of hull explodes outward with thousands of chitinous spears.     Blastoff acts first, rapidly thrusting back and ascending, trailing thin streams of black smoke. This gives him the narrowest possible profile, such that he's able to weave between the projectiles as they spread out the further from origin they get.     Vortex-- freezes.     Acting quickly, Onslaught snatches his subordinate and whirls, presenting his back to the mangled Union Buson to shield the smaller Decepticon with his own, more heavily armored body. Needles dig into metal, several find purchase and stick. One bores through the back of his shoulder and keeps going; nearly ripping Onslaught's right arm off completely. With a burst of explosive bolts, the hanging limb is ejected along with some other parts.     "Commence the attack," Onslaught commands, releasing Vortex and straightening his posture. The sparks and oils shooting from his severed limb don't bother him as much as the state of his back cannons, now perforatd by multiple needles and rendered useless. His bright white pupils lift from the black helicopter robot to the distant battleship, "I will secure additional artillery."     "R-right!" A stunned Vortex backs off from her damaged commander, then ascends, "Blastoff! Let's go! It's up to us 'til Big Bot is ready!"     "Right. Of course he'd leave it to the best!" The jetbot descends beside his comrade while Onslaught floats back and away, gliding smoothly straight for the Manhattan. Raising his forearm, fingers clenched into a fist, he adds, "Think shooting the weird organic is all we gotta do?"     "No way it'd be that easy," Vortex flips up and back, converting back into a helicopter, "Isn't this whole organic mass her body? ..." An idea strikes her with an audible pip, "I have an idea. We gotta break those doors open!"     "Uh? Yeah, okay. Drop the bombs anyway?"     "Something like that!"     With Vortex leading, the two aerial Decepticons close on the mangled ship. The helicopter switches to flying sideways, moving swiftly. The rocket pods flip out under her wings, hammering the tentacles blocking the bomb-bay doors but also not being nearly as careful about hitting the ship's hull directly compared to before.     Staying in robot mode, Blastoff fires a pair of harpoon missiles at the door's uppermost corners where the main hydraulic hinges should be. True to form as a jet, he doesn't fight while hovering, instead streaking through and then banking up and away.
Hibiki Tachibana	She doesn't see it coming.     "RITA--!" Catching herself on the Union Busan's railing, Clark Miller's betrayal is caught too late, with Hibiki's desperate eyes going out to sea just in time to see the harpoon run her through. Everything that happens after that is a blur. The sounds around them are drowned out. Even the vengeance taken against Clark by half of them, even Rita herself, feels distant.     The only thing she takes in, like a train wreck she can't look away from, is Rita disappearing beneath the body-filled waves. Her mouth falls open in a wordless scream, and Bota isn't the only one who seems like he's about to dive headfirst overboard.     And then everything goes to hell.     Screeching metal, screams of panic, the listing ship as it's gouged through from unimaginable angles. Hibiki doesn't know what's even going on until she finds herself thrown off her feet, slamming into the deck repeatedly until she just barely avoids falling into the now-exposed cargo bay. Her heart is pounding in her chest deafeningly loud, looking down at the awful, horrible form of the Queen.     But she can hear one thing loud and clear. It overrides any overwhelming feeling of fear, despair at being stopped so close to the finish line.     Did she... just say that about Rita...?     Before she knows it, Hibiki is pushing off and /lunging/ down into the ruined hold herself, eyes wide and teeth bared beneath trembling lips, fists clenched as she descends from above and--     --gets ran through, again and again.     Pupils dilate and a terrible choked, bloodied gasp leaves her throat. Thorns tear through her left shoulder, the right of her midriff, scrape a brutal gash across one leg and nearly stab through the other, gouts of red escaping in vicious arcs. The only reason it didn't do worse, that only one of her Symphogear's headphones shattered rather than getting impaled through the skull, was because of a last-second instinct-driven shift of her body.     Her momentum and attack get completely cut short, leaving Hibiki speared mid-air and heaving for breath, one eye forced shut from pain. But the other one is glowering, and her voice is quivering, on the edge of breaking. "D-Don't you dare... make light of Rita-- what it took for her to come all the way here... her feelings about you, herself... and everything that's happened...!" A hand grips onto one spike, and uses the leverage to /wrench/ herself off of it.     The motion is used to /rip/ the rest of her body free right behind it, flinging herself down like a messily fired, still-bleeding bullet down towards the Queen, swinging wildly in midair just to properly reel back an arm.     "YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH ANY OF THIS, YOU SHITTY MOTHER!"     There's not a single thing refined about it.     She's just going to punch Lisa in the face, hard enough for both herself and Brune a dozen times over, like she's trying to send her down to the same depths Rita is sinking to right now.
Petra Soroka	Rita remains resolutely on the near-outside of Petra's vision, right up until the sickening gut-drop of a tonal wrench, sensed in the atmosphere before the cannons even fire, jars her out of the bloodbath by the cargo doors. She whips her head up just in time to see Rita with her hands around Clark's neck, spear impaled through her chest; even with the Cognition Filter, her blue eye is alien and unsettling, wide-open despite the wound. It's against the rules, but she can't help watching as Rita falls-- smacking against a sea of wet monster flesh and vanishing beneath the tide.     Eyes, gut, and heart are at war over how to respond. Looking at her, at Rita, off but not unrecognizable as a cute chibi, the drenched-red harpoon and subsequent plunge are a certain death sentence. She's strong, Petra knows that, and it's not a dangerous thought because there's no reason she'd be here otherwise, and 'tough' naturally follows, but being practically torn in half and thrown into a feeding frenzy from horizon to horizon would kill anyone, maybe even Lilian. Her gut is where the dangerous thoughts are; that there's no way Rita would die just like that, because it just wouldn't be fair to the narrative, to have her torn out abruptly, in front of everyone. It rationalizes explanations, which all have to be crushed like thumbs on spiders before they can clot in her mind.     Her heart doesn't take either side. It's just sick, stunned, and angry.     Tonally, Petra expects a brief gasp of silent horror over the battlefield. That's what happens, right, when one of the heroes is unexpectedly betrayed and shot down from the sky, just as victory seems imminent. Instead, Petra's narratively-imposed moment of silence is broken by the sounds of metal tearing on too large a scale to even be described as screeching, practically *roaring*. The impact knocks her clean off her vantage point beside the cargo doors, helmet crashing into metal before she's flipped into the sea.     Where she was, was likely the luckiest place to be. The cargo doors needed to stay undamaged, so none of the tentacles hit Petra directly. Even without that, the effect the assault had on the Busan as a whole was enough to launch her away, head ringing, already sore and tired from the long fight earlier, landing on what is-- against all odds-- the *second* luckiest place to be. The snout of a writhing leviathan, just barely above water, right as her Sting Silver armor disippates in a swirl of smoke from the abuse.     Gripping onto its fin by instinct, Petra shrieks and chokes on the salt-blood froth, suddenly no longer filtered by the mask, and then shrieks again when the leviathan shifts as if it's about to dive with her on it. With Sting Silver out of commission, the distance between her and the Busan, much less her and crossing back over the flesh-sealed doors to rejoin the fight, looks impossible to cross, and in a fit of desperation she tugs her revolver-gundagger off her hip and jams the bayonet into the sea monster's hide, pulling the trigger to spear it a foot deep.     Just as she'd hoped, it rears up like a kicked horse, snapping at her to get her off. When it's pushed up into the air by its own muscular efforts and the press of the leviathans beneath it, Petra yanks the gundagger out of it, draws its matched pair, runs a few steps up the monster's back, and leaps off its head towards the Busan. One shot with one revolver, then one shot with another, twisting in the air to aim both down in order, gets her the rest of the way to the edge of the hole torn through the cargo bay's former roof. She stumbles when landing, the clang of boots on metal seeming disproportionately loud to her despite the deafeningly messy battlefield.
Petra Soroka	"Buh-- bitch." Inspiring words from Petra, as she staggers to her feet up above the Queen, debelted to only be equipped with her EGO suit. After absorbing the sight-- Cognition Goggles broken, though Angela had lent her a second pair just in case that happened, there's no reason for her to put them on with Rita out of commission-- of the Queen and her skewered prey, Petra grits her teeth, exactly in tune with Hibiki for once.     "I know what a fucking parasite is better than you, freak. Fucking first hand experience. And-- and Rita works harder than anyone, to give to the people around her, instead of taking anything at all for herself. Even the ones who don't deserve it. So you thinking she's-- she's a parasite, says more about you."     Petra takes a few steps back from the edge of the hole down into the cargo bay, then charges forwards to leap in. Mid-air, she slams her two guns' mechanisms together, metal rods and springs sliding past each other in the improbable way that only Eggman can manage, to form the two-handed shotgun with a greatsword bayonet strapped to the bottom. Raising it above her head and squeezing the trigger as she falls, the blade explosively racks out to full length, and she brings it down to slice through the spikes impaling Kana in the air.
Meika Kirenai	It's almost like a bouquet of flowers, watching the ship that served as the home for thousands, and grave of hundreds, get pierced through and through with the Queen's tentacles. But as momentarily captivating as it is- it's heartbreaking, too. We were close, it was going to- Immediately, getting inside is the priority, and that's something able to be achieved nigh-instantly for the magical girl, cracking straight through the metal of the hull to the networking, squealing corridors within.     Too bad she only has a moment, once inside, before the air becomes thick with spears.     When Chevalier Vermillion's cuirass catches handfuls of stray, blind-fired urchin spikes, on her rush back through the twisted coffin that the Union Busan is becoming, under the Queen's grasp. No fragments of metal fly off, even as the metal creaks, cracks, and f-f-flickers, even as blood spray from just a glancing blow traces out the arc Vermillion gets knocked in. That shattering them with her magic is automatic and instant, to tear herself free, spares her no end of damage,leaving her free still to actually move- and to be pinballed away. No sound, no scream echoes out from her mouth, but her jaws still have to fight to clench, practice and gut instinct helping her soften the follow through and-     Where she should impact a hole-ridden corridor wall panel, Vermillion instead f-f-flickers and clips through, appearing in a sudden peal of thunder-ish noise meters and meters away, once more on her feet. Blood still stains drips from her torso, and the earlier bite on her leg, some of it melding into the color of her costume, but the actual armor isn't even cracked anymore. The shimmering glow of her summoned up magic dances like the aurora up and down her limbs, as each metal-scratching skate kickoff gets her moving faster and faster towards the action. There's no thought nor worry spared for the structural damage her movements cause, the occasional burst of concussive magic echoing through the already deafening surroundings- Vermillion doesn't even need to make holes in the ship's bulkheads to simply skip distance through them.     It's a funny feeling to just launch *out* of the wall of the ripped-asunder cargo hold, into daylight, and into something as gutwrenchingly terrifying as Hell itself. The forest of spikes, bomb detritus, and the hulking horror in the front and center of it all poses no safe spot to land- Don't need one. Don't think. Just- Her eyes squint shut, to not see the broken and battered injured strewn around, and the magical girl twists, violently stopping her momentum mid-air with a spray of intangible red sparks from her skates scraping up against nothing. 'Oh. Was that all?'     The Queen's soundless voice echoes, taunting and ugly, like pressure behind the eyes. Squinting them shut as she is doesn't help the feeling- but as her own thoughts feel like they're being rattled loose, half-distracting the magical girl from figuring out her next move, thoughts of home fall out. Kyou likes strawberries, right? I can't believe I forgot to ask before suggesting them. Maybe Cobalt will. But if I make it back I'll be sure I-     Wind whistles through her hair as she starts to fall- no, dive, down towards the stretched-out bed of thorny tentacles, her magic flaring up around her like a searing red star. "°Vermillion Phantasm : God, just be *quiet*!°"     Twisting at the bottom of her descent, Vermillion brings her white-knucle clutched hockey stick around full circle, spreading her sticky, deafening sound magic through the structure of the Queen's tentacles- while it still pulses and cries like discordant thunder, it's intangibly thinner, outlining the chitin in a vibrant, obstructing glow instead of crushing and cutting at it. Outlining all of the chitin.
Lilian Rook	Watching Rita fall into the ocean is one of the worst things Lilian has ever seen.     It feels the worst. She's seen plenty that others would consider horrifying, but . . .     That's Rita. That's not a random person. That's her.     Is it the look of relief that came over her, just then? That alone is enough to suck the strength out of her.     Perhaps it's the moment where she changed her mind, and decided to fight back, that's worse.     Remembering that she wanted to live at the very last second. After some contrivance of fate, once again, took the choice for her anyways. Again. Yet again.     In some shock-blanked stretch of her mind, Lilian realizes she should scream. She should call out. She should cry. She should be making some kind of sound, even just Rita's name, even if it's only to curse Clark. The stinging that should be in her eyes and the rasping that should be in their throat; their absence at this moment feels like icy numbness. Like being paralyzed, even as she is still moving. Too much of her is reeling. Enough to collapse inwards; and the direction is predictable.     §How. She was right there. I was watching everything. I don't want this. I was thinking about her the whole time. Always her. This is pointless if she's not here. What was everyone else even doing? Why didn't I see it about to happen? It wasn't just a detail. Rita is the only thing that matters. Is she still there? Can I still get to her? She has to be. This shouldn't have happened. Why did no one stop it? Why didn't I? What's wrong with me? Who is going to be next? I have to get to--§     The entire world tearing at the seams underneath her is just north of the bare minimum needed to get attention. Bile recognition that her precognition had warned her here draws attention to her heart slamming against her collarbone and taste of nausea in her mouth. Her rifle is instantaneously crushed against the ceiling and split in half by a tentacle passing up through the deck where she just was. The five rapid quarter steps back and around, weaving between breaches, feel automatic. §Too easy to dodge. She's not aiming. A random mass attack? Then the whole ship must be in danger.§     The silence after is what gives Lilian pause. §Where is it? All she has to do is pull. Surely she could shield the nest even if the bombs fell by now.§ Herfocus snaps towards the bay. §That--§ Lilian finds the nearest cargo access door already folded messily in half. A sharp kick sends it flying from its mangled hinges and crashing into the echoing dark, drowning out the rest of that thought. The pulse in her ears competes for attention with the banging of her sprinting on metal.     It's fortunate that the Queen can't read any thought she doesn't deliberately project. She'd know just how barely that Lilian is holding it together at all, which would undercut the psychic reply that lances back along the same channel and fragments into audible shards to the others she can sense; a glimmer of bright, cold moonlight, briefly pricking through a leaden ocean of smothering clouds.     §<<'Parasite'? Is that any way to be talking to <The Queen>?>>§     §No point trying to intimidate her. She's practically already won. But she reacted to this back on Trash Island, too. She sees us as nothing, but Rita . . . Does she even think of her as human? Really?§
Lilian Rook	Her armoured hand claps against the cargo bay's mangled railing. Her legs vault clear of the twisted edge, arrow-postured, and Lilian throws herself into the room with the Harpoonists. Kana is already on the attack; that inspires confidence. Even Brune is taking it seriously, and working in tandem with her. Including Sonia and Sea Monkey alongside Bota, Having five additional experts is better than she'd hoped. She--                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian's breath catches in her throat, and she freezes still in front of the spike an inch from her eye. Her hand claps to her chest, as if willing her heart not to explode. She struggles to remember how to exhale for several seconds, then overcompensates with a subtly terrified inhale that makes her dizzy.     Looking down, she finds another at her breast, one on course for the organs in her upper right abdomen, and one actually grazing her left hip. A slow look to the left, then to the right, then above once again, confirms that it's no better in any direction she can go.     Hacking away the extrusions crosses her mind, and is thrown aside; they're continually extending from the queen so all that does is make them blunt. There isn't room to place an entire human body, no matter how ludicrously she contors herself. Going back the way she came like this would force her to hack and slash her way back in. She'd used up all the magic she could wield to burn it away with a counterattack. With a certain amount of dread, Lilian exhales at the recognition of one feasible option.                 -----[start]-----     --slams into the cargo bay wall so hard that it dents around her shoulders. Black-gold sparks pop from the impact with her armour, shed from the closed circuit of defensive distortion she can no longer replenish. The air is silently driven from Lilian's lungs. Her hair whips across her vision as it accelerates just slightly late. One spike scrapes the plating on her upper thigh, two embed under one arm and by her throat, and the last embeds twice; once on either side of her, as Night Mist's perfectly turned edge splits it down the middle. Her fingers ache from holding it.     'L-Lilian! Telemetry incoming!'     --send some Lilian's way--     'And-- and Rita works harder than anyone, to give to the people around her, instead of taking anything at all for herself.'     Lilian hits the bottom deck boots first, wobbles, then successfully breathes in again on her feet. She doesn't have it in her to feel complicated about the strain in her hands fading, nor to think twice about the data appearing in the corner of her visual AR. Little metallic scrapes come from the repositioning of her toes against solid ground, correcting her stance. The sense of power-- of poise, focus, danger-- is coming back, bit by bit. Because Rita would.     "You really did get that sense of Mercy from Lisa." says Lilian. She doesn't have the energy to modulate her tone. It's hot and raw and smoky in the way of choking on it. "If it were me, I'd have made sure to hit you properly."     Night Mist clicks in her palms. The black glints reflected light. The edge flashes red. A thin, eerie ribbon passes through a four meter cluster of spikes in the same instant as the words "--earradh Fola!"
Rita Ma	Sea Monkey, revitalized, heaves herself up out of her blood puddle while snapping off the spikes stuck inside her, flashes a sloppy thumbs-up to Shajo, and staggers to a new position. Her machine-gun-like harpoon gun rakes a quick line across the Queen's eyes, gouging several of them out.      Kana's canny enough to stop trying to wrench her way free when she sees Petra incoming. Sliding off the severed spikes is a smoother extrication. Her legs quiver on landing, but she braces herself with a sword while sparing a tiny grateful nod in Petra's direction. Her stare is softened, but its collateral damage is still scorching as she speedruns the stages of grief straight to anger.      Then she whirlwinds through the forest of spines to slam into the Queen's stem on the opposite side from Kukuru and Kale, nearly in tandem with White Dwarf. "Unforgivable," she rasps, every tendon straining to dig the twisting blow a little deeper, and ducks a retaliatory blow before the density of attacks forces her to pull back. "All my life... It was you. This planet. My family. Rita."      The Queen's body fractures where it's impacted, like coral or a massive tree. Parts you wouldn't expect to be are woven with bone harder than steel, and others are jelly-like flesh, effortlessly allowing attacks to overpenetrate. It's hard to get a feel for where her vitals might be, or even if that matters.      She does feel pain. That's evident in the way she mentally shrieks- "Khhahh!"- and lashes out with flat crushing tentacles when hit. But the only things she's protective of are the bomb doors, and her green-glowing belly. Shooting them isn't pointless- she intercedes with other mass, inevitably taking the hit on a tentacle- but it won't be that easy.      "Hhhah. You're still trying to win? Worry more about your own survival, worms."
Rita Ma	Sonia, with her one good arm, manages to cut herself free of the spines with a knife. She drops twenty feet to the floor from the wall where she was pinned, staggers over to Brune while hemorrhaging horribly, and cuts him free. "Come on. You promised me," she whispers desperately into his ear.      "Mmm? Tender, for filth."      His face tightens. Then he roars into action again, leaping into the air alongside Hibiki to deliver a crushing combo punch. "DON'T YOU FUCKING LOOK DOWN ON US! YOU TOOK AWAY OUR CHANCE TO--"      She rises from where they've slammed her against the floor, and a tentacle crushes him against the wall hard enough to dent it with his body. Brune slumps, unresponsive. Sonia stances up in his place, choking back a wail and drizzling blood.      "I'll- k, ki-i-" "Kill? Me? You haven't learned a thing. 'Excise', 'punish'. I am an infinite being." She tilts her head contemptuously, and her wounds start to flow back together. As long as she's rooted in her vast pipeline of tentacles, she just pumps biomass in from elsewhere to fill the hole.      "If humans could stop me," she says with her mind while her body rattles, "you'd still have land."      §<<'Parasite'? Is that any way to be talking to <The Queen>?>>§      The Queen instinctively snaps to look for the source- mental communication grabs her attention better than physical. "WHO-?!" A telepathic sound like a rasping teakettle follows. When she fails to find the source, instead her tentacles all pulse and squirm unwholesomely.      The house-thick ones all impaling the Union Busan start to split and bifurcate, writhing and 'striking' like serpents at anything that moves before branching and crawling to engulf and constrict. It's like slime-mold veins. It's like crawling centipedes. It's every clammy thing that's brushed against your ankle in a lake, but it could crush the life out of you, and it will. Every second you stay entrapped, it grows further around you, and nowhere is safe.      "She was a failure. Like the rest of your wretched kind. I should've known better than to give you a graceful end."
Ishirou	The tentacles come down like hammers, he can't escape in time, and he goes down into the water from the blow.  Staggered by the pure force of the blow, he looks around dazed for a moment.  However, he can hear her, talking about Rita, talking about them.  Groaning, he tries to pull himself back up and swaps the parts back to aquatic mode.  He won't be escaping the water at least. "Shut up.." he says to the Queen.  "You have no idea how strong she was, how kind she was, how... good she was to us, what she meant to her friends.  You don't even know what we can do if we work together..." he says, straining as he surfaces again.  Diving up he hovers across the water towards her again.   "Meika, incoming telemetry.  Lilian, energy coming your way!" he says, unable to watch everything across the battlefield.  Two OPTIONs light up, and fly to Meika and Lilian.  Lilian's surges with energy and sends energy into her body to try and keep her able to keep fighting at her hardest.  Meika's on the other hand gives her enough data to know where to put her magical girl strikes.   Ishirou, on the other hand, doesn't dive towards the Queen, instead taking a back foot and trying to hammer her form with rockets and missiles.  He's trying to open up places for others to strike, trying to scan for weak points or places that don't heal back as quickly, he's trying to do anything he can to make sure they can all survive and avert the end of this and all worlds.   "We're not just going to give up, don't you understand?  We /all/ want to live to see tomorrow.  Nobody taught me that more than Rita... and if I have to risk my life to make sure I can see it... then I'ma risk it!"  Ishirou says, understanding the true meaning of that lesson from so long ago from Rita.
Aidan Proudpick	A splint and a heavily wrapped foot keep Aidan on his feet. The Adrenaline keeps Aidan from feeling the bloody wooden shrapnel in his arm. But it isn't courage that fills his heart. Or love, or hatred. It is a deep wrenching base desire. As he watches Kale rocket up right towards the Queen, the need to protect his pride is what fills his heart. "I'll show YOU move," Aidan snarls. He leaps off the side of the boat, bringing his buckler out in front of him. With a single breath, it unfurls into the Aegis, lion's mouth roaring with flames. He can't fly as ACCURATELY as Kale, but each turn lets him pick up speed so he can match pace with Kale. And then outpace him, the Aegis pushing the air out of the way. "Don't be so slo-GRAH!" Aidan's snap at Kale is interrupted as the tentacle comes in. Even just taking a glancing blow rips against him, the Aegis sliding it back only to crash into his legs. Again white pain shoots up his legs as the splint holds, but only just barely. It's a struggle to stay conscious. Grey tinges the sides of his vision as he fights back the pain. "Go high!" He shouts over at Kale. "I know one thing about Rita Ma! She tries harder than anyone I know!" comes the shout back at the queen. He aims right at the green glowing weak point, watching as the thick tentacles move in front of it. Aidan drops as the shield suddenly stops, plummeting down from the sky, angling his body like any good squirrel. The shield burns a sudden red once more as Aidan drives upward towards that green abdomen.
Kale Hearthward	The Queen attacks. Kale goes to move. He doesn't entirely get clear - a grazing blow, but one that succeeds in knocking him off course, and getting him to drop his sword. People are going down. Brune's unresponsive. How many of the agents are left? And Rita's gone. Just... gone. I'm going to die here. He shakes that thought off. Move. He moves- getting back into motion. > "Go high!" "Why is it *him*?" mutters Kale as he maneuvers, and comes in from on high as Aidan comes in from below. His other sword is drawn, and he swings, trying to time his assault with Aidan's to split the Queen's focus. "We're going to see who's a failure! I'm too stubborn to just give up right here!"
Redshift Operators	The ninja is screaming, glowing red blade singing through the air. Those retaliatory strikes behead lost timelines, they impale phantom selves, but she manages to evade, battered and bruised and scraped and sliced for all her troubles. That glowing green mass is the one she always blocks in every future, and so every future turns to face it.     She's screaming something in particular: "'Infinite being?!' 'If humans could...!'" Slashing, stabbing, desperate maneuvering. A noise like a gunshot with each step, as she bounces around the unwholesomely writhing roots and striking tentacles. They bruise her in motion. "Stop, stop, just STOP! RITA WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE A REAL FAMILY!! WE WERE INCHES AWAY FROM ALL OF THIS *FINALLY BEING OKAY!* I don't care about infinity, or wretched humanity, or anything like that! I don't care about your mercy or your harsh kindness! Go tell the other Queens on other planets whose Devils still talk to them, go tell the church gossips and the Sunday book club how your kindness got spurned by people who weren't grateful for cruelty! But don't tell *US!*"     The red trails and green lines sharpen. Bouncing around the Busan and back to the Queen, they're a bristling starburst of shining lines and sparking clashes, all from her most heated efforts to land slashes and stabs on the green core. "YOU'VE STOLEN HAPPINESS, AND LOVE, AND KINDNESS, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, FROM A GIRL WHO DESERVED IT MORE THAN ANYONE, WHILE YOU BRAGGED ABOUT YOUR MERCY AND YOUR KINDNESS!"     "APOLOGIZE TO RITA OR *DIE*!!!"
Combaticon	> "Hhhah. You're still trying to win? Worry more about your own survival, worms."     "Big talk for a disgusting, sniveling organic," Blastoff chides the voice back as he soars clear, "I'd be scared too if I had to fight me." He arcs high against the sun, flipping blasters out of his forearms that keep his hands free.     From this high vantage, Blastoff sees with terrifying clarity the expanse of the roiling monster-infested sea and the sheer scale of the Queen's body lodged against the Union Buson. He can see the tentacles piercing it begin to separate and fan out. With a buzz, his faceplate slides up to cover his mouth while his forehead piece slots down to protect his eyes, "Slag."     Vortex is far too close to really have a good angle on what the rest of the Queen's body is doing, focused instead on hammering the flesh protecting and jamming the doors with streams of rockets in a pattern that draws them back and forth. Something snatches her left wing, dragging the helicopter down and aside, and she finally realizes the mistake she'd made.     "Caught! I'm caught! Blastoff--!" Rapidly, the decepticon converts and reduces her size, slipping the noose and ascending with whirling blades on her back. With a rapid pair of SHING sounds, she promptly switches from a four-bladed rotor to a two-bladed one, catching the ejected blades in either hand as swords with which to cut herself a safe path out.     It doesn't go well. Soon, Vortex finds her movement restricted, then restrained, even her rotor tangled. Metal creaks as the tentacles tighten. With a grimace, she flips down her battle mask as well.     Blastoff to the rescue-- keeping well clear of the mesh of interwoven flesh, he divebombs the knot tightening around his comrade, slashing into it with beams of violet light. Once he's convinced it's safe enough, he finally breaks into a hover; just to turn his jets on max and engulf Vortex in flames until she can fly free.     "Any other bright ideas?"     Vortex answers him by ascending, smoking and still in robot mode, opening up with a wrist-mounted minigun on the ever-expanding mass. Blastoff closes his optics with a shrug, then brings his arms up to add violet-tinted blaster fire to the mix. Meanwhile...     Onslaught lands on the bridge wing of the Manhattan. The rusted hatch doesn't slow him down-- he tears it free, frame and dogs and all, with a screech of aged steel and throws it overboard. The men still inside likely expected a sea monster. Instead they see a damaged, crimson-eyed robot towering in the doorway.     "I am seizing command of this vessel. Are there any objections?" the Combaticon commander states in a firm, authoratative tone. Ducking to enter, he strides into the bridge with the heavy sound of metal feet on metal decking, "Train all functional weapons on the Union Buson. If you value your insignificant organic lives, you will do as I command." The crimson glow in his eyes brightens with an audible noise for just a moment.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine hops back from the hole in the cargo bay's roof, and takes Clark's spear off her back. She pauses for a moment to inspect the congealing blood on its broad head. The blood of her friend. The huntress focuses long enough to ask a single question: how close is Rita to death?     Then Madeleine runs forward, leaps over the edge, and falls into the writhing mass of tendrils that threatens to engulf the room, leading with the spear of her friend's would-be killer. She is a whirlwind of blades and blood and fury, teeth gritted in a snarl as she lops off thicker and thicker tendril segments to work her way down, down, into the cargo bay. Those who chance to look upward as she descends see the flashing of Clark's blade first, but behind it is not his cold ruthlessness but the boiling anger of a huntress scorned. As she grinds her way toward the Queen, blood showering the floor below, she mutters to herself in a volume only she, the queen, and those who are *really* listening can hear:     "Failure? Do you see how I carve your flesh, *beast*? This is not your hour of victory. Rita Ma is greater than you can imagine. Let me tell you why: it is not because she has evolved the strongest venoms, or the fiercest claws, or the toughest hide. It is because she has evolved *us*. It is the humanity in her that draws us to her, that draws us to fight for her, fight beside her. That is a humanity that you will never know, monster, no matter how you may mock its shape."     Finally, Madeleine cleaves through the thicket of tendrils, close enough now to their bases that they cannot easily grasp her, and she falls to the floor of the cargo bay a short distance from the queen. Where exactly Madeleine is looking is obscure at the best of times, but she does not raise her head to meet the Queen's eyes with her own. She does not even slow her assault, aiming her next strikes at the flesh of the Queen herself.
Dysnomia	The tentacles writhe, grasping hold of harpoonists, swallowing them--and cords of nebula twist around them in turn. The bay fills with a spiderweb array of smeared lines, lines of plasma forming and slicing through flesh, strugglign to carve harpoonist from fleshy prison after fleshy prison, except in a bubble around Petra, where the smoke grew erratic and wild.     The Queen has no problem catching Dysnomia--it's HOLDING her that's the problem. The moment the tentacles grapple onto a piece of her, Dysnomia stops trying to sustain it, letting it rip off and dissolve, only to reform again, and get right back to work. They pushed and pulled at each other, Mia cutting off more tentacles, getting caught, and vanishing like smoke as her coils curled around them.     Spread thin, she was little more than one smoky tendril at the heart of many, marked apart from others by two eyes and fiercely defended.     Just, as Mia realized, the Queen was set on defending her own belly.     She had no foresight, but she could taste White Dwarf's intention, the earnest flare of compassion and rage and--"She's tried so hard. She's thrown away so much--I won't let it be for NOTHING!" Smoke flanks the ninja on all sides, manifesting plasma knives the size of swords to try to head off the Queen's tentacles before they reach her.     "When Rita staggers, we fight for her. When you stagger, you have NO ONE."
Candy	Tentacles all across the bomb bay split off and strike. The many illusory copies of Candy draw their strikes, for the movements they make--and each of them are summarily dispatched. Where each is struck, they ripple, before dissipating into motes of light like fireflies. I am an infinite being.     Blood trickles from the real Candy's nose, as tears roll down his cheeks. The wall sports a dent, and a concerning red stain, where he was flung forcefully into it. Constricted, coughing, his brown eyes burn with hatred.     "You're gonna wish you fucking weren't," he hisses.     *Real soon.* Time stops, again. Candy's talk earlier of bills coming due is true of him, before it's true of the Queen. Nonon is able to see, and move, in this stretched-thin instant, by his choice--she can see both his impossible 'blink' escape from his constraints, and the toll of his repeated temporal chicanery. Candy retches and dry heaves, collapsing onto the floor. He curls onto his side, shivering, sucking in breaths through gritted teeth as hacking coughs rack his body. "Shoot me with one of them doctor bullets. And then let me see the next spare you got. We're gonna need more." "...You ... You're the one that got Clark ... Alright, but I don't got a spare. This is the last one." "Then hold on, before you shoot me with it. We got time." "You...you got it chief."      Time resumes. -A susurrus of hacking, coughing, retching, and conversation is blended together in one nauseating instant. -Hammer strikes and mortar-pestle grinds sound in fast-forward. -Three gunshots sound. Candy, Sonia, and Brume are hit. Their wounds begin to knit together. -A 1900s-era automatic pistol with a fresh seems to fly perfectly into Nonon's waiting hand.      With a similar pistol held to his hip by a new holster, Candy holds a spread of five playing cards in his hand. He flings them with a furious shout, and they head towards the Queen's glowing green stomach, each one rapidly igniting. The flames grow until each projectile is a fireball unto itself, each easily larger than a human head.
Stanley Padgett	dead until proven otherwise     That rattles around in Stanley's head as he continues his mad dash downwards, his sword, his pistol, Mercutio's form, all of it aglow and aflame and buzzing with whatever horrible residual energy he's running on right now. Each Harpoonist he rushes past gets a pat on the shoulder, a whispered word to keep going, and a burst of his remaining energy.     Lilian Rook says, "Sorry to say but in the face of an Eighth Devil or worse, one fresh Rita or Kana is more important than a hundred half-exhausted Padgetts or Proudpicks."     Stanley shakes off the words, shakes off the doubt, the fear in his chest as those TENTACLES move again, only this time not just move, but pulse and split and inhabit the space he's trying to get to. The dodging gimmick is working less and less well each time he has to do it. He's using his saber, Mercutio's form, to wedge himself around and through and past and phase through and not-be-there but he's getting slower and slower, as he gives more of himself to the crew.     Finally one of the Queen's attacks properly makes it though, past Stanley's awareness, his speed unable to keep up as three tendrils combine in arching motions, smacking his knees out from under him as he turns a corner in the Busan, just meters away from the hold, only to be pancaked into the deck by two more tree sized appendages. He screams in agony, feeling something give way inside, something breaking. Ribs? Arm? Shoulder? It all hurts. Everything catches up with him. All the pain, the exhaustion of rescue, and-     "She was a failure. Like the rest of your wretched kind. I should've known better than to give you a graceful end." Stanley struggles under the tentacle, twisting, feeling whatever that was wrench and dislocate. Screams, wordless now, as he panics and starts to chop with his saber.     "Mr. Stanley, is it okay if I have a look at the back of your head? I'll make sure it's bandaged and everything. It's just... distracting me."     "I'm sorry. This is kind of a lot all at once, isn't it? And you've been through a lot, too."     Stanley catches himself and teleports out from under the Queen's grip. His breath is watery and shallow. A kick for good measure, before he shoves his way with the good side of his body into the cargo hold, to see the damage, so see what he has to do. For Rita. For everyone.
Kukuru	The attacks aren't worthless, but Kukuru can see the Queen's regenerative powers in full effect as she draws her claws back in time to see her wounds mending and that flesh merging together again. In any other context, she'd find this beautiful and enviable, but she's feeling anything but envy over the Queen's powers right now. Her mind is still clouded over, but the anger is already starting to subside as the desparation starts to seep right in. Rita's still hurt out there. Until the Queen is dead or fought off, Rita's still going to be in danger. It's always easier said than done, though, what with that immense regenerative power and more of those tentacles pushing into the Union Busan until Kukuru can barely even see the sky anymore. "Infinite...? Stop lying. I already know someone with a bigger heart and a bigger presence than you could ever have, and she's not here!" Despite the simply stated boast, Kukuru isn't faring quite as well as she sounds. Although her nanites are starting to regenerate and keep the blood back inside her body, there's still so many other people here injured and struggling just to survive. Once the bleeding stops, Kukuru sends them out to try doing the same for Sonia and Brune, a last ditch effort to get them back into the fight rather than worrying about healing herself entirely. After colliding with the Queen, though, she slides off the spiked floor and arrests her movement with both claws digging into the floor below her. It's not quite enough to stop her from getting trapped in the growing walls that are giving her and everyone else even less room to move by the second. She strains and pulls, but she can't quite get the leverage she needs to free her limbs from their bindings. "And don't you dare call Rita a failure... We're all here because we believe in her!" Instead of trying to rip the tentacles apart with her arms, Kukuru resorts to twisting and biting them off with her sharklike teeth. Her neck is still free enough that she can swing with each bite and gouging with her teeth. As she finally dislodges one arm, she keeps eating the bitten-off tentacle while tearing the others off to finally land on that spiked ground once again. "We came here to make sure she's happy! That her family's happy! If you're gonna stay in the way of that, then...!" Recalling that the Queen had tried to protect her belly, Kukuru executes her classic maneuver of teleporting behind the Queen. She swings both her arms and legs forward to try latching onto the Queen, then constricting with her entire body in an attempt to pin her down with brute force. She even tries to twist and angle the Queen towards those incoming strikes, personal safety be damned if it means making sure they can hit that glowing green point.
Angela	Angela isn't sure this IS winnable anymore in which case she just sent most of her best fighting Agents to die because ... she let herself care about someone, someone who barely knew her and couldn't help her. It was folly, she thinks. She was promised she could be kind but did she give more than she could out of desperation to be helpful to people she barely knew? She gave extra HP Ampules. She should have given twice as many as she did. Thrice as many, maybe. Gebura stops giving orders. There's no point. It's over. Either they miraculously pull ahead or they all die. She remembers. She remembers being surrounded by monsters. They close in. She kills them all. They came back... And her life hasn't changed at all since her death, she realizes. "You can't kill her." She tells the Agents. "So remember Disciplinary Team's real job." You can't kill them. They won't die. So instead your job is to... "Make her every moment a living hell to your last breath." And that seems to be that. Ceri is too slow to escape a tentacle wrapping around her but Max has been waiting for this opportunity. He tackles her out of the way and the tentacle grasps around him. His EGO Gear is very strong as far as hugging and being hugged goes. He strains against the tendril for as long as he can, ultimately wrapping his arms around it rather than trying to slip free. Every second he stops this tentacle from skewering someone is more time the others get to live. He reaches out with his Bear Paws strain at the effort. Ceri strikes rapidly at the tendril to no avail, every blow she inflicts heals back twice as fast. "It's...been my pleasure, Ceri... To see a true Fixer at work. I know you don't remember... but you defended me a long time ago in a duel... Now I get to... pay you back!" He shouts. He pulls on the tentacle, tearing flesh apart as he screams and screams. He manages to rip it about half way before his bones give and with a singular CRUNCH his body collapses to the deck, draining quickly. Ceri screams but her axe is just too small. She cries out, "I remembered, I remembered... You damn idiot!" FOUR DISCIPLINARY TEAM MEMBERS REMAINING, ONE HP BULLET REMAINING Nonon drops down onto hostile terrain. She is woefully needed backup in this moment, tearing apart bone and flesh as she makes her way towards Shajo and Tweed who are closing in on the Queen. Tweed's weapon is a gun and she aims towards the Queen's face as she fires bullet after bullet. It's going to be more annoying than damaging for someone like her but she keeps her distance. Shajo takes a deep breath and asks, "If I keep carvin', will I find your heart? All I've got is an axe left but none of us expected to survive." He's going to die, he thinks, but Nonon can still escape through a portal, hide out somewhere. He doesn't know any--He hears her voice in the distance, but not distant enough. This hope dies. But the nice thing about being hopeless is that there's nowhere left to fall. Peace fills Shajo's heart as he loosens his grip on his axe... APOLOGIZE TO RITA OR *DIE*!!! Shajo mostly got along with Red Dwarf and Red Giant, but he remembers White Dwarf's voice. He remembers Red Dwarf's plan to build a Free City. He remembers Red Giant's gentleness. He doesn't know the other one at all but three out of four isn't bad. His hand tightens against the shaft of his axe. "Yeah," Shajo says. "That's right. You're just...another Wing Head. And I've always wanted to dig my axe into those greedy fucking sons of bitches. Telling us we should be grateful as you FUCK OUR LIVES... Yeah, you might be unstoppable, but so are they. Far as I'm concerned..." He lunges forward, swinging with his everything towards that glowing belly. "THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! SPLITTING OPEN A FAT BELLY!" Don't hold back, even if she's in the way? Okay, he won't.
Angela	Nonon is about to rush forward into battle but gets stopped by-- ''You're gonna wish you fucking weren't'' Nonon stops and runs to him. She doesn't question stopped time or her ability to move in it. There is never enough stopped time. They have their conversation in frozen Time and then Nonon lets him take a look at it. After he does his thing, Nonon then promptly shoots him in the neck with it. The initial imprint sucks, but soon his wounds start to reverse themselves! HEALING BULLETS REMAINING: LOTS! "You're a fuckin' genius." She says, grinning though there isn't much light in her eyes. "Go on, man, save the rest. I'll cover you!" She moves forward and shouting, "If you're dyin,' slow down a moment longer! We got more Bullets here!!" She takes a breath and murmurs under her breath, "You gotta live, Rita. Just live..." ''It is not because she has evolved the strongest venoms, or the fiercest claws, or the toughest hide. It is because she has evolved us.'' Nonon starts crying and doesn't have any cool to say after that. Big globby tears even as she's forcing her biggest smile yet.
Hibiki Tachibana	Feeling the Queen's body relent under a tightly clenched fist feels good. Brune's blow, and her own, coming together to elicit one of those shrieks of pain out of her feels right.     But it's not satisfying. Not really. Because it won't do a thing to help Rita now.     And it won't do anything to save anyone else now either, as evidenced by Brune being sent flying, and Sonia's attempt to hold back the sound of her own despair. Even that choked sound, more than the gruesome sight of the Queen's body forming back together, gets Hibiki briefly hanging in mid-air from the recoil of her own attack, like she's dazed.     And she's wide open to when the masses that have ruined the Busan split and attack, too slow to turn and beat more than one away with a punch that nearly threatens to rend it in half. In the time it takes Hibiki to do that, another one, and then several more behind it come together to snap her limbs to her sides, lock her in place, and /crunch/ in to instantly squeeze the air out of her lungs.     "Rita...? A failure...?" Even croaking out words on empty, forced through grit teeth, the incredulous tone still comes through. She can't move. It's disgusting, it's slimy, hard to brute force, and it's only getting worse. Even so, muscles strain and blood seeps from her prior wounds from forcing herself to try, again and again.     She won't accept that. "The same girl-- who's so kind, who's so stupidly tough, who never ever deserved /any/ of this..." Forming sentences hurts. But she doesn't stop, voice pitching lower and lower. "...who had to put on so many pained smiles, who felt like she had to do so many awful things nobody should have to, who was just about to finally get to come home again after so long--"     "Who the hell are /YOU/ to say what makes /HER/ A FAILURE!? YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY YOUR SELF-RIGHTEOUS CRAP LIKE IT'S TRUE!"     That hoarse shout is what gives her the drive to break free - for the hydraulics in her gauntlets to prime back on their own, then /slam/ back into their moorings and release that trademark shockwave of absurd kinetic force straight forward from her restrained wrists. It oblierates tentacles inches ahead of them and blasts others away, giving Hibiki just enough room to rip herself out of the mass and back out into the open.     When she tries to get snatched at and constricted again, she just uses the tendrils as something to kick off of, injured leg shaking but working-- and throws herself back at the Queen yet again, arm primed back.     The massive, obvious weak spot is ignored. Going right for the head yet again, even after it's been proven to simply regenerate back without any damage done-- an open palm goes to smash into her head, grip into it tight enough like she's trying to pulp it.     And let momentum carry through to try and topple her towering body over and crush her head into the bay floor. She feels pain. Giving the others even just a few more seconds to hit her where it hurts is coincidental.
Petra Soroka	Even getting Kana free a moment sooner is a win by Petra's standards. Kana is a particular brand of strong, scary woman, whose effect on Petra's brain is such that she's certain-- and might even be objectively correct-- that five seconds of Kana's fighting is worth more than she could accomplish over the entire battle. Tactically, she's rewarded by Kana responding to her efforts, implicitly acknowledging it as a helpful choice. Emotionally, she's rewarded by a nod! It's important for Petra, to feel useful.     The more the Queen mocks and monologues, the more distanced from the context of the fight Petra becomes. Itching builds on her skin, beneath the wetsuit beneath the EGO, as if the rubber is punctured with a million shimmering plastic splinters, but none of her words reach even that close, much less into her mind. Infinite though the Queen may be, all her divine condescension is stopped cold by one homophobic girl.     She's kept safe from the dangerous talk of Rita as Queen, but not from the tendrils. At first to Petra, it seems like her efforts at driving her gunblade into the heart of a tentacle and point-blank shelling it to tear it apart was working better than expected, but when the split and charred miniatures flex and snake towards her, her pleasant, bloodthirsty surprise is replaced with a little yip of alarm. She rips her sword out of the remaining tentacle trunk, sweeping it to the side to maximize tearing at the wound and slicing a cluster of tendrils, then squeezing the trigger twice to shred the others with leadshot and fire.     Lightfooted across the ground, Petra tries to get some distance from the nearest tentacles, even though there's nowhere *safe* to go. Slick coils of alien flesh writhe and reach for her ankles, and she instinctively stomps at them before remembering that she both has and needs a gun. The gunblades disconnect from each other as smoothly as they connected, twisting in her hands to form a pair of revolvers, and she trains each one on different tangles of root or tendril, charring each attempted attack into unusability before they can fully unravel. With both her hands occupied, she uses the tip of a bayonet to flick open the Silver FullBottle, morphmetal reaching across her back and wrapping around Pillar of Creation in a fluid parallel of a tentacle herself.     Skidding boots on wet metal bring her to as near Lilian as she thinks she can get without being a liability, panicked expression. "Rita-- we still have to-- kill the Queen and get *down* to get her, right?! Who can? I-- I-I'm blanking, but someone-- have to delegate it to-- *fuck* I wish I had my fucking *mech*!"     Despite its eminent suitability for underwater diving, being a near-unclassed submarine on top of everything else, despite Petra having done that exact thing in this world in that mech before, the Kana *still* isn't what comes to her seizing-up mind. She imagines spearing through layer after layer of slavering sea monster in the Beauty of Ash, purple blood streaked along the transparent exterior, diving after Rita-- and for the first time ever, the vision of the glass mech covered in genuine combat refuse snaps into her mind as making sense, in a way it never had. Just in time for her to freak out and kick herself over it, desperately searching her mind for some other solution.
Petra Soroka	"YOU'VE STOLEN HAPPINESS, AND LOVE, AND KINDNESS, OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN, FROM A GIRL WHO DESERVED IT MORE THAN ANYONE, WHILE YOU BRAGGED ABOUT YOUR MERCY AND YOUR KINDNESS!"     That's right. White Dwarf is what refocuses Petra, teary-eyed with frustration. This happened on purpose. This is someone's *fault*.     Clark Miller might be dead already, but he was only ever a tiny, insignificant part of this whole horrible thing. The Queen, struck mute by Petra's aura, barely registered as a living thing rather than an environmental hazard to hack at and kill, but now she focuses right on the green core alongside the others. "It is because she has evolved *us*."     A tentacle sweeps down towards Petra, following through after blocking an attack towards the core. She drives both of her bayonets into it as handholds, dragged up into the air with it, the morphmetal-coated EGO spear telekinetically floating above her back. Barely keeping her balance as she yanks the knives out and jams them back together into a shotgun, leveled at the core as she's lifted past it at sickening speeds, Madeleine's words affect her in a way she can't quite name, before she pulls the trigger.     "... Half a dozen of the strongest and best people I know are here, for Rita." Nevermind the fact that there's four times that many total. "Because she deserves that. She's earned the best people in the world. So *you* don't have any fucking *chance* at taking down what Rita built!"     The shotgun fires, but it's only a feint, albeit one with shot sprayed towards the core up close. Simultaneously, though, the morphmetal contorts into a rippling sheathe along the haft of Pillar of Creation, then plunges it through the air below the defending tentacle, driving towards the Core.
Meika Kirenai	It's a constant fight to shred the endless waves of lashing tentacles before they can latch on and constrict around her, with the outflow of her eardrum-shattering magic into every arm that gets too close, and skate-blade kicks that serve both to knock the limbs she can't break through away, or push herself away from them. But try as Vermillion might, magic and muscle aren't enough to stave off the full tide. Wherever they grab around her, trying to crush and pull her down to the deck, Vermillion's armor starts to crunch and--     Let me go! Don't touch me! It hurts, I'll-- Vermillion's armor starts to f-f-flicker and fade at the edges. Smearing fuzzy, like fresh graphite, cracked armor and Vermillion's flailing limbs are harder to quite differentiate for a second- each f-f-flicker like that skips her through and out of the death-grip of the Queen's fractal arms by just the hair's breadth she needs to stay moving. The thunderous sound, too, smears and smudges with her in that heartpounding panic, drumming like sticky raindrops and crumpling like paper.     Eyes wide, Vermillion screams, properly screams, frustrated and angry and beyond terrified. It's lucky she hesitates enough when Ishirou's OPTION appears in the air beside her, noticed before her eyes even swivel to glare daggers at it. It doesn't stop her from grabbing it, grip tight enough to crack its frame. Half of a mind is given to the telemetry analysis, and less to trying to translate what any of it means, before a large enough portion of her resonant magic skip-jumps across her arm and into the drone to make its internal cavities hum and scream like a tortured brass instrument. The other half of her mind is on cocking her arm back, and aiming to throw the helpful piece of robotics at the Queen. 'She was a failure. Like the rest of your wretched kind.'     "*Whose* kind!?! She's nothing like m- she's a monster, so she's nothing like the people here! Even if she's- she's just- Argh! Shut up! S-shut up, shut up, a-and-" Furious and trembling, perched mid-air on shimmering skates, still leaking out drops of blood, it's quite a rough time to get distracted mulling over the bitter, guilty, messy feelings the magical girl holds over Rita's more-or-less everything. So she doesn't! She just blurts it out loud instead, being loud and frustrated about it, to boot!     The cocked-back arm releases the OPTIONS, leaving a crackling, thunderous trail of red-shimmering light in its concussive wake. The impact itself hits at the ground near the Queen- itself meteoric, resounding in the hollow metal of the makeshift arena- but the magic she'd left stuck to it spreads out into the roots and membranes of the forest-like protective webbing, shattering all it can latch onto and chain off from, on and on.     "Eat that! Just- s-screw you, and be *quiet*!" Her free hand, in the moment she burns to catch her breath, goes to squeeze at her temple, the overbearing pressure of the Queen's words resounding in pseudo-duplicate, just slightly overheard.
Lilian Rook	§I wish fighting Rita either of those times had prepared me more than this. I hate that she's right. They're on a completely different scale.§     As much as she wants to get to Sonia, to Brune, even to Kana, it's all Lilian has at the moment to fend the Queen off of herself. It isn't lost on her what's going on: Even outnumbered to this extent, the Queen's sheer scope ensures that her jogging pace can fend off twenty Elites at once indefinitely. Soon, they'll all run out of stamina, and that will be it.     §Is this why nobody else seems to notice what's wrong with Rita? I could almost believe it. That it's just a few tentacles, nothing more.§     Lilian dispenses with her occultic link attacks almost immediately; no matter what she slashes, there's infinity more, and the only thing that might possibly be a weak point isn't connected to anything else, adrift inside a biome of flesh unto itself. A wide area burst technique-- one she'd used not long ago-- is abandoned after a single successful execution; she can't cut the Queen hard enough, split between enough places at once, to do more than temporarily clear space around herself.     §It's been bothering me this whole way here. What's been getting to me like this. Looking at this thing now, the sheer number of enemies, the resources it has at its disposal, those words coming from thin air . . .§     Racing ahead of the lashing tentacles, Lilian ducks, twists, slides, and vaults over each harrowing in turn, approaching for a focused strike on the Queen's central body timed to align with Madeleine, just after Kale's and Aidan's distraction, only to have to parry dead-on at point blank, and be thrown all the way back to the start, barely catching herself from being thrown to the horde, and diving to the side before the next wave of attacks. The sound of frustration she makes carries too much raggedness to not be starting to tire. Her body hurts from before. A hair too slow.     §I'm practically fighting the planet. Every enemy, every hateful thought, almost every living thing; it's all gathered here.§     Lilian almost doesn't hear Ishirou over the sound of the Queen's biomass rushing throughout the ship. With open areas rapidly contracting, and the Queen's control of the battlefield expanded, she's driven back to rapid loops of rolling defensive cuts to hack away the enroaching tangle. Clearly trying to conserve energy until she can think of some plan, she is only able to recover a little from the OPTION before it's caught and crushed. Her pulse spikes further. She glances back, and can barely see the army of teeth beyond the bomb bay doors and the Queen's own growths. The Queen screams back at her, about punishment and failure and her self-awarded magnaminity, and Lilian is too busy fending attacks from all directions to reply.     §All of this world that hates, isolates, immiserates, kills, without thinking twice, forgetting after, and now smiling about mercy during it.§     She desperately hopes that Dysnomia is wrong. If she's right, then it'd only be natural for the Queen to be able to take their combined worst. She desperately hopes that Dysnomia is right. If she runs dry, Candy will be there. If she gets hurt, Kukuru will be there. If she loses her nerve, Tamamo will be there. But Candy is helping someone else, Kukuru is going berserk, Tamamo is still getting here; and despite that, an Agent dies right in front of her. The splatter of blood freezes her for just an instant, and Lilian pays for it with another sparking blow to the shoulder. Her left arm goes numb.
Lilian Rook	'If humans were stronger, they'd have land'; once again, an ugly little synapse recognizes that dark mirror; 'If I were weaker, I'd be dead'. 'She's a failure' hits even worse. Rita did fail. She was gone because she hated herself a little too much, and tried to trust humanity more than she should have. It'd make her sick, if she had time. She has time, still waiting for a productive use, but there's no opening. She's hemmed into a shrinking circle, all on her own, fighting off every single side at once, while Hibiki throws her desperate, straightforward-as-usual attack, and Meika punches a short-lived hole. A tentacle grazes against her neck, staining her hair behind with blood.     §This is absurd. What good is any of that rage and indignation going to do? She doesn't care. She won't remember. You're all spitting into the void. We're not fighting a monster. We're-- I'm fighting the entire world.§     In the silence caused by Petra, a spark ignites somewhere inside her at hearing one other person thinking about after. In that silence, White Dwarf reaches her ears. Lilian's eyes light up. Her stance tightens up. Energy rushes through her. A whirl of her sword cuts back the growing encirclement to ten meters, and she breathes in, slowly and measured.     §That's a relief. I've seen myself win these.§     Lilian--                 -----[stop]-----     --looks carefully. Minimal motion. Minimal friction. Minimal loss of energy. Hibiki in mid-grapple, the flensed flesh left in Meika's OPTION attack's wake, Petra taking a second angle with the Pillar of Creation. She cautiously notes Kana's position, estimates Nonon and Shajo's momentum, then slowly paces around, ducking and shouldering through the tentacle forest to shade herself behind Candy's screen of fire.For once, White Dwarf's futures are being examined by someone else.     Just the right timing. The exact moment the Queen is extended to her limit in that area, and can't see or sense Lilian at all. That narrow corridor of destruction is something she can take advantage in the second it'll take to regrow like this.                 -----[start]-----     --appears in the Queen's face. Precariously low, crouched into gliding aerodynamic profile, sword wound all the way behind her, the backlighting of Dysnomia's plasma and the cloud of Candy's flame --suddenly broken and swirling in the wake-- casts her into deep shadow, leaving only the glint of her eyes visible, next to the blood arcing behind her blade. Footprints flash-sear themselves into the deck plating in a single frame. The sound of the airburst catches up a split second later.     Cleasanna Lilí Dubha ~ Scéalta sé Éigeandála Síocháin     Ambient wavelengths compresses into harsh black and white. Lilian crosses over with White Dwarf, and her intersecting line presses light and dark together, collapsing into exo-red at its borders, across and splitting into ourfold overlapping arcs. White Dwarf's green light trail, at the point they meet, flowers into patterns of lacerations that tint vantablack and glow with radioactive heat. The wounds themselve crackle like static at their edges.
Rita Ma	Manhattan, at Onslaught's behest, fires its remaining missiles on the Queen's tentacles where they're far enough from the Busan to be safe. That cuts down sharply on the weaving, constricting attacks targeting the others, and makes the Queen convulse in pain- but it had better be worth it.      A second later, a house-sized tentacle erupts from the water at whipcrack speeds and bucks the Manhattan thirty feet in the air while slicing it in half. On crashing back to the water, it slowly starts to submerge beneath the snapping waves. The Queen isn't willing to sink the Busan just yet, but that doesn't apply to other ships.      Madeleine gets her answer: Half-dead. Glimmering on the edge of consciousness, and ebbing slowly. At least she somehow hasn't been torn to shreds yet.      "I have everything," she answers Madeleine and Mia with fake disinterest. "I am the world. You have what scraps I permit you, insect. I see I've been too generous."      Brune, nearly succumbing to the constricting coup-de-grace, regains consciousness with a shock. He forces himself forward, pounds the deck, and uses a powered gauntlet to rip the remaining tendrils off himself.      Sonia looks down at herself with alarm, but she doesn't have time to question her and Brune's healed wounds. She dashes in, practically back-to-back with White Dwarf, and presses the offense through a half-dozen warding tentacles. Mia and Kukuru stagger them and hold them back. Even then it's too much. Just when you've fended them all off, they bifurcate or she simply grows new appendages; near-infinite ablative mass.      "Khhh. And why are you so loyal to her? Don't you know she created me?" the Queen rasps unwholesomely. Half her eyes fix on Madeleine; the other half on White Dwarf. "Lisa died bearing her. If only she'd never been born..."      But Kale's sword slices the Queen's face open as Aidan's shield jars her chin. She shrieks and lashes out again, but Bota's shadow falls over her. Leaping down from the top deck, white robes soaked red with shrapnel, face glossed with tears, he's briefly silhouetted against the sun.      "It's not you."      "Wh--?!"      His blade carves neatly through her neck with a flash of sunlight, and he lands on the far side to lean against Kana breathlessly. Her head hits the deck, tentacles spasming to give White Dwarf an opening, but she's already growing a new one. "Lisa's the one who told me not to hate her for it," he says, queasily hollow.
Rita Ma	And so Hibiki catches her with her new head still soft and boneless. The Queen shrieks again at the indignity, but her head crushes on impact with the steel. That bears her down on her side, bringing her green underbelly in arm's reach.      A dark shape squirms inside it, half-hidden by the glow. It writhes around White Dwarf and Sonia's gouging blades, retreats when Shajo swings his axe and she howls so terribly you can't hear yourself think while gushing glowy-green liquid into the deck. When Petra's spear bites deep and strikes it too, that indistinct shifting shape screams in its own harmonizing voice, just distinct enough from the rest of the Queen to hit a different octave.      The webbing starts to embrittle with Meika's magic, and its own connectedness works against it. While the Queen's on the ropes, Brune seizes a different opportunity: he charges towards the cargo bay door and slams it with all his nanite-augmented might. The tentacles there start to give way under his barrage. "Come ON! Help me!"      Kana takes yet another tack. When Lilian dashes in, she throws a handful of Tamamo's freezing charms to embrittle the stem with frost too, then rushes in with a twist from the opposite direction Lilian's slicing. Together they cut down to the deep, splintering heartwood- only a little further and the Queen will be cut off at the root.      "The Fish Disease. Genod. Jako," Sonia breathes hoarsely, with a cruel tilt to her lips while she twists the blade in the Queen's gut. "Bad enough when I thought it was just nature. But it was always nature that was someone's fault. You. You worthless--"      She's too close to see it coming. Sonia is immediately impaled a dozen times over by another omnidirectional spike burst, one straight through the throat, and anyone else too close might meet the same fate. At a distance, the spikes change tactics: they braid around each other into leg-thick spears that curve as they extend to 'home' in, two or three per combatant. Kana sucks in a sharp breath and leaps backwards, gouged along the side; Bota dodges one and tries to block another with his arm, and it just might have broken.      Sonia goes slack on the spines. Her eyelids flutter.
Ishirou	Tentacle explodes again, Ishirou and the RESCUE manage to just BARELY avoid the massive crush of them, the spikes raining down but he just narrowly keeps ahead of the game.  He can't see what the next minutes hold, instead, he just keeps looking at the next few seconds.  However, he sees the shape of the creature.  Even as spikes skid across his hull and nearly pin him to the side of the Busan, he manages to pull himself up at the last second and only hit the deck at high speed. Another person dies, and he can only bring himself forward.  He can't think about it right now, not during everything.  He'll break down, he'll cry for Sonia because she was only ever looking out for people.  It's sad, it's terrible, but he can't let himself stop for it right now.  He takes a breath, fighting back tears from those they'd lost so far but it wouldn't make a difference if he stopped now.   He fires out more drones, but these are different.  They have spikes at the end of them and they fly in a pattern that he can direct with his head.  He doesn't have to hit the center of mass.  He has a plan, and that plan is to direct everyone else to where they need to go.  Even if he burns himself out for it.  More OPTIONs come too.  They fly to as many people he can reach.  Lilian, Meika, Kana, Kale, and Hibiki.  Each one surges, sending energy into them, trying to help them push just a bit more.   Then the spiked drones ram into as many of the tentacles as he can.  He holds his hands up aiming to put every bit of strength he can into using his electromagnetic power, in combination with those drones to keep her tentacles close to her OPEN.  Trying to keep them from any offense and defense other than trying to resist his assault.  He doesn't have to win, he doesn't have to last long... He just needs to buy everyone enough time to drive everything they have onto that stem.  Fight back against her regeneration, and save this world from its destruction at any cost.
Kukuru	"Why not? She's my niece." Kukuru declares for the third time in perhaps a week, wrenching more of those horrible tentacles out of the way and hissing sharply as another one tears a hole into her side that had just healed over seconds ago. "If she created you, then that's exactly why... You should be listening to her instead of doing this!" She twists and pulls, and she bites and slashes, all in an effort to get that opening for her friends and allies. She can't relax even though can see the green underbelly of the Queen getting carved up and run through, though, knowing how little time there is to actually finish the mission and save everyone she needs to. Leaving the stem to those with proper weapons, Kukuru starts moving to join Brune at the door. She just makes it over to where he is in time for those spikes coming right back in from behind, and it's only that noise coming from Sonia being impaled that Kukuru has enough reflexes kicking in for once that she recognizes the incoming threat, and she hip-checks Brune just in time to get a tendril right through her lower back and out the front. Thankfully, it's only in one spot instead of taking all three right through all of her spine if she had kept moving in a straight line like she was. She still screams, of course, as getting a hole torn into her abdomen is still terribly painful regardless of where it's doing that. Trying to close up all these wounds is wearing her down considerably, too, and trying to pull it out and close up such a large wound would just open herself and others up to more wounds that they can't really afford right now! So she doesn't take the tendril out. Instead, Kukuru whips her claw backwards to cut it off, then heals herself just enough to seal the bleeding in and around the tentacle that's still coming through her front and back. The rest of her recovering nanites are sent back towards Lilian to try and restore her injured arm, and that leaves Kukuru's personal focus on the bomb doors. Even with her body still screaming at her in pain, Kukuru clamps her claws against the edges of the doors. "K... Keep hitting it! I'll... This side!" She assures Brune with rapidly decreasing coherence in her words, letting her arms do the talking for her as she starts putting even more of herself into forcing the doors open. She can feel her bones straining, too, but there's little that can be done for it now. Just a little more. One more push, and they can save Rita from this world.
Stanley Padgett	There's a blast of digital noise from the edge of the cargo bay, a haze of green fire and hazy pixels as Stanley brings HELP. "FOR YOUR HOME! FOR YOUR WORLD! FIGHT BRAVE YEOMEN AND ARCHERS! FOR LIFE ITSELF!"     And behind him, through the corridors he's cleared, rushes dozens of Harpoonists. From the Busan. From the Akroma. From nameless little boats and escorts. A fresh wave of those who KNOW what's going on here. Carrying whatever weapons they had, could find, could scrounge, piecemeal armor. Some have lost arms. Eyes. Hands. All of them can still fight. All of them can still stand and deliver justice for those who can't.     Stanley's saber flashes green streaks in the air, as he starts making cuts and swipes at the places Ishirou and Lilian and the others have been hacking at. The din of the fresh wave of fighters swallows the room, as they immediately rush to start cutting and freeing the bombs, opening the doors, cracking open their future. Dozens of fresh hands.     "Sorry I'm late, but a bunch of experienced fighters and monster hunters were better than one half tired Stanley Padgett!"
Candy	Come ON! Help me!      "On it!" Candy crushes a playing card in his hand. It burns to ash, the smoke billowing far taller and more voluminous than it ought to, for such a small thing. It wraps around him in seconds, before thinning out and blowing away. He wears a heavy backpack, bearing the weight with ease thanks to the early 20th-century sci-fi exosuit beneath it.      Attached to the metal, riveted backpack by a thick rubber hose is what appears to be a water-cooled machine gun, of the size usually reserved for placement on a tripod. Two paddles on either side which would normally serve as triggers have been jury-rigged to a crude index-finger trigger, and the foregrip looks hastily added; bolted onto the ring at the end of the tank.      Sonia is impaled at the exact moment Candy pulls the trigger. *First Rita, and now--* "SONIA! You filthy, whoring--" He is impaled through the thigh by one of the leg-sized tentacles, dropping him to one knee and setting the tears in his eyes to splattering against the floor of the bay. "SHAMELESS FUCKING THIEF!" His aim goes wide, for a moment. What exits the barrel is not bullets, but water--pressurized to such an extreme extent as to cut a gouge into the bulkhead before Candy corrects his aim.      "I hope you *are* infinite," A near-constant stream of deadly white water flows freely from the makeshift water cannon, slicing away at the bomb doors to help Brune. He brings the cannon down upon the tentacle impaling him, tearing himself bloodily free. Shouldering the cannon, he shoots himself in the thigh with a homemade healing bullet, not bothering to unholster the gun to do it. Bringing it back to bear, he adjusts a dial on the side of the cannon's water tank. The backpack sounds like some sort of diesel generator, pushed to dangerous limits, rattling noisily and streaming concerning blue-grey smoke--     Kukuru moves to assist Brune. Candy's eyes sweep, quickly, to the Queen. "...'Cause dying just once would be TOO FUCKING GOOD FOR YOU!" The water cannon bucks wildly in his strength-enhanced grip, and he controls it with just as much of that strength as with sheer grit, guiding it towards the Queen as it threatens to push him backwards from the force of the expelled water.
Kale Hearthward	Kale's sword lands true. His followthrough continues onward - he knows better to linger after a blow, successful or not. Time to reassess, find a new target, pick a new tactic, and above all get clear- Not clear enough. Not nearly clear enough. The braided tentacles lash out. Kale gets stabbed - once in the side, once again in the arm. Once more - his sword drops, bouncing off the side of the ship and then down into the water below. That was his second. He doesn't have a third sword to spare. Another harpoonist goes down. Another bit of attrition takes its toll. Kale's out of options, and his defenses are being worn down bit by bit. All it could take now is one good hit by the tentacles, and there's plenty of those being swung around by the queen. I'm going to die here. I'm going to die here. "I'm going to die here," says Kale. For once, there is no internal dialogue to refute it. He casts. Wind flows between his hands, and he shapes it - twisting it, knotting it like string. It's quick and incautious work - Windswept tradition spells need to be literally thrown after being cast, requiring some amount of durability in the spellwork - and the one in Kale's hands couldn't possibly get more than a foot away without unraveling. He puts his all into it. When Ishirou's option recharges him, he just puts that much more of himself into it. The spell rages in his hands, like a hurricane compressed down into the size of a basketball. It's the biggest, angriest spell Kale's cast so far. "And if I'm going to die here..." He clicks his heels together, turning his jet boots up to maximum power. "... Then I don't need to worry about holding back!" He aims at the Queen's stem once again, and gets into motion - this isn't a passing attack again, though. This is a charge, straight at her. Everything's put into the approach, there's no plan for what'll come next - there's no thought given for what'll come next. Kale goes to get as close as possible, closing right into melee range if he can, heedless of the tentacles and spikes and hazards, and fires off the massive pressure bomb. At point blank range.
Combaticon	While the Manhattan's crew, clearly almost as terrified of Onslaught as they are of the sea monsters, sets about aligning the missile launches, the Decepticon watches on with his one remaining arm tucked behind his back. The launch goes off. The explosive impacts-- not nearly as satisfying as he would like.     The Queen slashes the ship in two; he steadies himself by lifting his hand to the ceiling, wedging his metal frame between the floor and the deck as the ship bucks up and to the side. The look on his face grows even more grim; he casts a look at the crewmen still with him, "Abandon ship. It's all you can do now."     Stepping forward, Onslaught ducks and steps through the bridge's broken front glass, resting a foot on the frame, "I will do my best to ensure the sea will not consume you immediately." and with that, he kicks off.     He ascends, arcs back, and passes over the superstructure until he lands on the aftmost main battery turret; abandoned when it was torn into and overrun by beasts. He enters with his blaster in hand, flashes of violet light illuminating the interior with the screeches of dying sea life. When all goes silent, the gun starts to move-- traversing towards the Union Buson and the Queen inside using what power remains in the section of the ship that still has the engines attached. Meanwhile...     Ammunition spent, Vortex ejects the spent canister and then jettisons the minigun entirely. It hits the water with a hiss of steam. Her thighs cycle open and she retrieves her laser blasters, giving them a twirl before taking aim. Before she can fire-- the cybertronian is impaled from three directions in a shower of sparks, metal shards, glass, and glowing pink energon, "Hrgh!" She struggles, pinned through the torso, calf, and arm into her side.     Blastoff reacts so much faster, as always. His boosters erupt, hurling him off into the sky again with such suddenness that the spikes intended to impale him collide with one another instead. He arcs around in a sharp, organ-crushing turn and hurls all that altitude into a high speed descent. His wrist extends a violet-tinted blade once again and, in his dive, he cleaves two of the tentacles lodged in Vortex.     She reacts the second her arm and leg are free, twisting her body using the remaining tentacle as a fulcrum until it's brought into contact with her rotor blades. Being as these are also her swords, it's a useful method for cutting herself free.     Still functional, the black robot ascends, dislodged parts falling from the holes gouged in her body, "Yeah?! Thought that'd kill me?! You hever dealt with the likes of us, have you!?"     "Vortex."     She stops her shouting with a surprised noise, raising her good arm to touch her commlink.     "Telemetry. Now. Before the Manhattan's stern section loses power."     "Targeting info? Right--!"
Combaticon	Back on the Manhattan... > "Kill her *now*! Don't let her recover! Die if you have to; I don't care!" > "Understood." "Vacate the Queen's proximity by two meters in approximately 13 seconds."     Onslaught lowers his hand from his commlink, completing the gun's traversal. Following the artillery plotting going on inside his own processor, he elevates-- compensates for wind; for wave action and the monsters shoving on the hull; the increasingly bad list to forward as the ship sinks.     When at last satisfied, the ancient guns aligned, he depresses the trigger. Only one of the turret's three guns actually fires, the other two hadn't been loaded when the gun was abandoned.     It takes seconds for the 1,200 kilogram projectile to cross the water between the two vessels, and those quick enough on the draw will realize Onslaught was not aiming for the bomb bay doors like his subordinates were, but at a specific point on the Union Buson's hull.     On board the Union Buson; there's a colossal crash as over a metric ton of metal tears through the thin skin of the ship, crosses the cargo hold space in the blink of an eye, and tears out through the other side. Some seconds later, it explodes outside.     And if Onslaught's aim is as accurate as he hopes, the Queen should be in the way when it happens.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine winds up with Clark's spear for a final, mighty swing at the Queen's abdomen. As the Queen howls in pain, Madeleine grits her teeth for this last effort-     -And her body is run through, seven times, by a flurry of spines. Only... that's not Madeleine. The decoy, still holding Clark's weapon (the real thing), teeters a little as the Queen's spikes hold it upright. And Madeleine is next to Kukuru, both hands pressed against the bay door, pushing with all her might, heedless of the dangers around her. "Come on!" she shouts. "We need a few more hands!"
Dysnomia	The air...It's getting thinner. The color in the air, less dense, more discrete. One by one, the tentacles slip by her. Her 'body' shudders as pieces of her fall apart and reform. like shattering and regrowing fingers, one after the other.     It's too much. It's too MUCH! Her body recoils into itself like a fog rolling in reverse, into a discrete, serpentine shape--     --And snaps at a tentacle coming for her, ducking down through the steel to buy herself a precious few seconds.     And it burst through steel like cheap plasterboard, zig-zagging through steel and empty space as flesh grasped behind her. The monolith of the Queen pressed around her, that spark of fear Rita had sparked in her rekindled, bright and terrible, in the face of this create that dwarfed her in every way.     She was going to die here, Dysnomia realized. She felt like screaming. She felt like laughing. Finally!     With a sharp upward swerve, she erupted up through the floor behind her, back in the cargo hold. Her body ballooned outward, abandoning self-defense as she opened her mouth wide. A last hurrah. A final defiance, before dying on her feet.     A thick arc violet plasma arced from her mouth, in an irregular line through the air as wide as a man is tall, hot enough to boil the sea, to reduce flesh to charcoal to melt through a station's outer hull to vaccum. Like a little sun spitting out a solar flare.     All of it, aimed right at the stem.
Angela	The fuck is that... Shajo thinks. Is that her core? Or a child? He goes for another swing instead of protecting himself. It doesn't matter if he can dig that axe into the core but Ceri snap pulls him back as he is nearly skewered by several tentacles in the moment. Ceri doesn't want to let any of her other friends die. She is a duelist, but this is well outside her wheelhouse. That was a close one! But Shajo says, "It doesn't matter, we have to get that CORE! Every second we waste is a second Rita doesn't have!" If she's even still alive. Nonon is about to go in as well when she hears a command from that guy who went to watch her fight with Red Giant. Right now, he is the closest of friends. May they live long love enough to become acquaintances once more. But it's what she needs to hear. Nonon loves nothing more than to be aimed. "Disciplinary." She says. "Cover me." Tweed mantains her distance, firing bullet after bullet as annoying cover fire. "You hear that, Red Mist! That howl is for you!" Shajo shouts. He has to rely on that Nonon will be safe because he can't just give up on the job now either. Gebura isn't getting a good view of the battlefield now. It's too fast. Too chaotic. Angela sees each tentacle pierce Sonia in slow motion. She can't shout to math her vision. She sees her go slack. People are dying every couple seconds now. Lilian can't win, she thinks, Gebura couldn't beat this on her own and soon Lilian will be. She'll lose Petra. She'll lose her closest friends. All those promises will be for nothing. Please, she thinks, just once let me be wrong. Let me be a damn fool who underestimated all of them so that her friends can have the support she needs. Please... Nonon makes a run for it! But not for the Queen. Rather, she is running towards Brune, deflecting tentacles away from her with her spear--but never quite enough. She gets stabbed and sliced across her body. She's a big gal, but she's taking hits. She's got the best defense against this kind of damage of the team, but she's still wearing down quickly--more quickly than she ought to be because she's got a goal in mind. "Brune!" She shouts, punching the tentacles twice. And only twice. Every third hit has extra oomph, and she wants all of it. "Don'tcha worry... I've been lifting my whole life!"
Angela	Ceri is a Fixer for the Cinq Association and was a capable enough duelist that she became a Director of one of its branches. She felt on top of the world and enjoyed all the benefits a woman of her station was allowed. What was the Cinq Association? Think of it as an assocation of duelists. They deliver challenges properly, they will fight the duels for you even if you are wealthy enough to not fight them yourself. Occassionally, they are picked to duel each other. Ceri thought it was as fair a system as the City could allow. She never expected to be asked to kill some punk teen from the Backstreets. "Sir, with respect, he cannot defend himself." He spilled COFFEE on my BRAND NEW SUIT. I'm giving him a better death than he'd have if I didn't hire him, he should be GRATEFUL that I'm generous and giving him a chance. "Don't worry ma'am," Max said, knife raised. "I'm happy so long as I die on my feet. Falling to a Fixer like you is better than I deserve--" Ceri nodded solemnly, raised her rapier and... When she remembered herself, her benefactor lay dead on the floor and Max had dropped his knife. She had killed the man who had hired her to protect ... someone who shouldn't have mattered. NOW Ceri interposes herself between the encroaching tentacles and those going for the bombs. She chops at tentacles with her axe before one stabs through her side. BLeeding from her mouth, she can't get the strength to swing her axe again--not properly--but she swings her arms up to block two more punching for Brune and Nonon, relying on her bones and flesh to slow them down just enough, to arrest their movement as long as her body holds. "You took Max from me, fiend... But I'll make sure... if nothing else..." She hacks out blood. "You lose your future." She grins like a demon. This pure spitefulness is as human as anything else, even at the edge of life. Nonon makes it to to the bombs as Shajo goes in for another strike against that green belly. "For Will!" "For Sammy!" Shajo swings Logging, the EGO Gear of the Warm-Hearted Woodsman. Show him your heart, show him your heart if it's there. He'll keep digging until he can find it. "For Jenna..." "And everyone else!" Nonon screams as she flings the full power of Gold Rush towards those bay doors. An eruption of light explodes out from her gauntlet. And... For all the friends we made here... Shajo thinks more than anything. For that future I can still see with them that I can't give up... Nonon sees her in her minds eye, smiling freely, being able to do what she wants to do. She can't know if it's too late, but so long as she can see Rita in that promised future she was gifted...)]
Redshift Operators	White Dwarf is consumed with indignant bloodlust and vengeance for Rita. "IF SHE'D NEVER BEEN BORN?!" Eyes flare. Green fire and light. "I'LL KILL YOU! GIRLS BORN WRONG, WHO DID SOMETHING WRONG JUST BY EXISTING, GIRLS LIKE THAT DESERVE THE MOST KINDNESS OF ALL!!" Ten thousand petals, phantoms of lost futures, blossom from the stem of time. Nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine are cut down in a storm of spikes and spears and needles and spines. White Dwarf continues, a perfect cut down her chee, between the goggles and the mask, flowing horribly after she winces just a little too much during the scream. It mixes with free-flowing tears that leak from the goggles. Is Rita really gone? After all that promising, after all that work and all that war?     The future is too hard to know. Maybe the present is worse than that.     She's deflected most of the spike assault with her rapid parrying. But those who can't parry are still there. The man who must bomb monsters finally awakens from his injured state at the edge of the hold, barely pulling himself together. "On your feet. Fuck. Fuck. On those goddamn feet." He struggles to breathe. Did something get punctured? He can't tell. "Please. Come on. Move." He almost stumbles to his feet, then falls prone, nearly passing out again.     He pulls himself forward. Towards a giant. Tugs himself with a good arm to his side and shoves him a few times. "Wake up... please, please, big guy, he needs help!" Nothing. No response. "I know you're tired. I know you're so fucking exhausted. Please. Please, just a little more. You won't even need to fight. We just need a little more." He's starting to nearly cry. "Come on man. Come on. Please... RG, you gotta wake up, you gh... you gotta help him...! We need you to..." The shaking gets more unsteady, then weaker, then it stops. "Please. Please, I need your help."     The giant's remaining eyes flare dull green as he shudders. Blood pours from the wound on the side of his head through the cracked open gash in his helmet. He doesn't speak. Is he even conscious? Somehow, his body rises. Then it charges. Straight for the door of the hold, both hands out. Not nearly combat capable, sure, but his massive strength, he'll lend to this in a single tremendous rush.     The ninja is continuing her battle all the while. "There's nothing you can ever say that'll make me stop loving her! All you're doing is showing me how *you don't!* IF YOU WON'T LOVE HER NO MATTER WHAT, IF YOU WON'T BE KIND TO HER NO MATTER WHAT, IF YOU WON'T EVEN BE *MERCIFUL NO MATTER WHAT*, THEN YOU'VE GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH LISA!!" That horrid creature in the green chamber, what can she do about it? Almost nothing. But if it's growing in there, she can do what makes the most sense: Use every piece of knowledge she has about surgery and anatomy to botch any chance it'll come out of this alive or healthy, with rushing attacks designed to butcher it. But more than that, if she and the creature dodge, to force it to tangle, to twist internal tubing, to make a terrible mother into no mother at all by force.
Aidan Proudpick	Why does it always come down to mothers who will throw away their children. Mothers who care more about their own goals than giving a single ounce of love to their offspring. It costs nothing. Aidan breaks from Kale. He's the one with a sword. (Which he doesn't use, but that's Kale). When you have a hammer, everything becomes a nail. And when you have a shield that can ignore physics, everything becomes a wall you can burst through. Aidan has a brief moment to see Kale unload with wind magic, then refocus before he can let that thought simmer. The twined spikes lash through the air. Ears twitch and tail helps to bring Aidan around in time to blow a breath into the shield. The first spike simply slides off, kinetic energy redirecting, like water sliding off an umbrella. The roof is off. He looks for a place to hit. Focus. All of Aidan's hatred for Lillian slides away in a thought. She is right. If he had to die anywhere, this would be the place it was worth it. He could die here and feel the same elation he felt in the Lotus Trap back on the Infinity Train. No. No, there are more people who need help. People he needs to go back to. The faces of the People's Knights. His father. Hazelthistle. "Suffocate all that." Speed builds up. Another twined spike slides off the shield. The squirrel becomes less and less visible behind the curtain of energy sliding off all sides of the shields. Only a comet with a fuzzy tail drives towards the Busan's cargo bay doors. "I am going to live!!" SHICK A spike, aimed upwards, at just enough of an angle to the waterfall of energy to pierce through rather than sliding right off, pierces upward. The spike tears off as the shield pays little head to its tensile strength, leaving itself embedded in the squirrel's chest. It is acting as a stopped to the wound. All Aidan can feel as his mouth fills with the taste of copper and the first bloody cough starts is terror. Just before the shield rams into the doorway. The shield has no pity for things like 'walls' and 'metal in its way' or 'riders that have had their lung punctured'. Instead, it simply seeks to do the one thing it was built for. Move forward in a single direction. Even if it shoves Aidan into the mass of the Queen on the other side.
Lilian Rook	'And why are you so loyal to her? Don't you know she created me?'     "I'm a failure too. Like the rest of my wretched kind." says Lilian, instants before the slash.     "So it's only natural I'd do anything to spit in the eye of a perfect, infinite being." she says, moments after. "I told you before, didn't I? That you'd kick and scream and take whoever you could down with you, sheerly out of spite; we're the same in that regard."     Lilian turns back to see the Queen collapsing. Head pulped, belly slashed, core pierced, guts mangled, it looks as if they might've actually done it. All thanks to that moment of perfect unison, brought on by their unanimous feelings towards Rita. It takes one entire second for Lilian to glance at Night Mist, glowing hot and slowly cooling, wipe the sweat and blood from her neck, flex her fingers to assess her temporal burns, and then see that single, miniscule sliver still connecting the Queen's body to her roots.     Her heart stops for a beat.     "Even that--?!" leaves her lips before she can think, and ends at the abrupt instant that Sonia unceremoniously dies.     Panic rises thick in her throat. The adrenaline of teetering right on the edge of victory and calamity mingles with the shock of yet another casualty, in the same rapidly unravelling battle, makes her body start to shake shake. She can't use any Cleasa with her sword in this state, and she'd just expended her acausal capacity so thoroughly that there is a brief window before she can act again; one that she dreads deep in every bone will still be enough for the Queen to make a full recovery. "Kill her now! Don't let her recover! Die if you have to; I don't care!" Nothing else is worth it. Animal instinct knows that this moment of her life is genuinely do or die.     Even then, combat is something pounded into every inch of her being; the second of two things, and the one that she forced in herself. She knows better than to make a straight line for the stem, despite her desperation. Her fand automatically finds Winter Crow's place at her hip again, even though she doesn't remember how loaded it was, firing only a handful of solar rounds before it clicks dry. She's already operating around the shrinking window before she has enough slack against causality to move again, even as her movement across the cargo bay becomes a recklessly flat-out sprint. And some part of her knows not to block with Night Mist in its current state.     --No, that part doesn't stem from relentless training. That part is the instinctive terror of losing a part of herself.     Lilian throws herself under one of the seeking spears, forcing it to fully turn around to track her. She leaps up over another, and is clipped directly in the shin. Motes of light burst from her armour like sparks, and go out. She stumbles forward over the impact, overextending, falling, and tucks in to hit the ground with her shoulder, rolling forward and lunging to her feet again. The third spear strikes her as she rises, straight under the ribs, nearly center mass. Two of the woven plates around her middle tear off, spang from the floor, and disintegrate. The spear is deflected along their former angle, and pierces into Lilian's right side.     Blood splashes against the deck. Lilian strangles a silent, agonized gasp. In the heat of the moment, she turns her body into the direction of the spear, rolling with its momentum, and the point goes rocketing past. Her armour scrapes against its side as she staggers forward alongside it, picking up speed. She brings her hands in close to her waist, as she runs, Night Mist only shallowly crossed over her body. Herr sword can handle it; just barely, and in only one eventuality, but she has to try.
Lilian Rook	A perfect, linear thrust, perfectly aligned parallel with the core of the blade. She has speed behind it, and adrenaline-fuelled strength over her usual. The heat of her weapon adds an edge too. Despite her injury, the lunge from the toes, the throwing of her weight down her arms, and the whipcrack extension of her sword are with them, are all perfect. But her sword is narrower than that regenerating sliver of stem. Lilian has thrown herself fully into a maneuver that is utterly useless without someone else making it through as well, in a gesture that means nothing unless the people she is defending will make it count.     Rita would.
Petra Soroka	Pence, still in the sky, still recording, finally drops down at Petra's command. A spike catches her in the back of the head, scraping her scalp and above her ear while she runs across the cargo bay. She stumbles over a tentacle laid limp across the ground, tumbling forwards from her momentum, and rather than stopping to take the fall and haul herself up again, she turns it into a clumsy somersault aided by a blast of recoil from her revolver, just to get to the door faster. She grabs Pence from mid-air, and slaps the ratbot onto the metal, hook engaging with the massive doors immediately.     Gravity manipulation generators whir up, shifting gears, snapping control over the slabs of metal held in place by the mesh. Then, murmured, like it's an afterthought, or maybe like she has a concussion, Petra adds, "Oh, watch out," before relative gravity for the doors is set to send them plummeting horizontally away from the ship, as if the horizon was the ground and they were at terminal velocity. "I'LL KILL YOU! GIRLS BORN WRONG, WHO DID SOMETHING WRONG JUST BY EXISTING, GIRLS LIKE THAT DESERVE THE MOST KINDNESS OF ALL!!"     Dazed, Petra mentally adjusts her opinion of White Dwarf back up to where it was before she last got made fun of by her. And then a few notches higher.
Hibiki Tachibana	Bota strikes, and Hibiki follows. It's only a few moments of primal gratification, once again, stumbling away and returning upright to be ready for more as the Queen's gut is sliced and wrenched apart. Just inflicting hurt to her already isn't enough anymore. "Ah..." Some lucidity returns in the haze of barely-directed anger, clearing up thought and returning focus, in the briefest of seconds where it seems like they have the upper hand...     ...only for it to be proven exactly why thinking that for even an instant is wrong. A gross feeling of dread and a flash of movement gets her body moving before she even realizes entirely why, but it's not fast enough for what really matters. "SONIA--!" Want some? I always keep a few for people who are okay-enough-I-don't-need-to-worry-about. So why...? Why do I have to be the one worrying about you now!? Why is all of this--     Closer to her right mind, all of the losses of the day finally hit, really and truly smack into her, like the delayed aftershock of what happened to Rita. Even if she could reach her, what can she do to help her? All she has are two fists. Even ripping every single spike out wouldn't undo the damage, and it's all she can do to only take gashes and rips into her own body rather than getting outright impaled herself. If she loses her throat, she loses her ability to fight. Protecting herself...? When someone is dying right there...? When they're so...     "SONIA! Don't you dare--" Stopping to speak gives a thorn the opening to lance through her still-bleeding shoulder wound, jolting violently with the impact and opening up another to pierce into her side. The teary wincing of her eyes isn't just from pain, and she's already gripping at them to rip them out in a rush of blood.     "--give up! Kukuru will get you soon! Or someone else! Just hold on a little longer! You and Brune-- had a promise, didn't you!? You /just/ said so!"     This isn't fair. None of this is any fair. And she can't do a single thing to--     No, there's still one thing. If they end this right now, if the Queen and her nest go up in smoke--     Hibiki whirls on her heel, expression scrunched back up and mouth open in an inordinate and directionless scream at the top of her lungs, a trembling hand clenching onto the piston of her opposite gauntlet. Overpowering hydraulics, she pulls it back and back and back further, past its reasonable limit.     So that when she sprints headfirst into the ongoing struggle to help Brune force the bay doors open, and her punch pounds into it hard enough to cave metal inward under the force, it can slam back in. And then rear back the other arm, half-numb as it is, and do the same exact thing at the same exact point. She doesn't even recognize that Ishirou's OPTION is helping make her have a little more to give.     She'll blast this stupid thing right off its hinges if she has to. Ending this right now is the only way to save anything at all.
Meika Kirenai	It's hard to keep her eyes open, in the face of the unstoppable fate so many combatants are facing. Agents Vermillion doesn't know the names of, struck down- the task jumps to her brain to check pockets for ID, before she can cognizantly push it out and remind herself bodies here stay. At least until anything hungry gets in. It's sickening. Adrenaline is the only thing deadening her guts enough to hold together, on practice- but the scale makes her tremble, still. A fight like this is new.     There's never, ever time to adapt to 'new', with lives on the line.     The winding, lancing braids chase with such ferocity that Vermillion's only feasible actions guide themselves on pure reactive instinct. The OPTION drone, the second one assigned to her this fight, gets grabbed as a desperate handhold- first, as something flying, to wrench herself just a bit far away by the benefit of newtonian physics. Second, though- as the first of the spears closes in, the magical girl twists midair- Almost a sit-spin. Aha... maybe I should have done figure skating instead... -and interposes the OPTION between her and the piercing tendril.     In the half second that metal screeches from the impact with the point, Vermillion f-f-flickers and skips nigh-instantly right to the other side of the OPTION- it's too small to buy much time from the arm's warpath, but getting behind its momentum lets her grind her skates down a bit of its length, leaving a trail of her clingy sound magic behind to pulverize its cellular structure as she careens. No mind is spared for if it'll stay intact- if it does, she's still bought time before it'd run her through. The second braided tentacle shot her way she faces head on, though. No choice not to. A pike-shaped shard of sound appears in Chevalier Vermillion's hand, pulled out of the general massless red aura surrounding her, and thrusts at it- freezing and pinning it without enough harm to stop it.     Again, though, that's the plan, because- <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Kill her *now*! Don't let her recover! Die if you have to; I don't care!"     It's really that now-or-nothing, right? I promised I'd keep safe. I did. So I hope this'll do. Please, God, don't let me make myself into more of a liar. Anyone watching can see how sloppy Vermillion's usually-graceful skating motions are, and if her hammering heartbeats and frantic breaths weren't silenced she'd seem tangibly more ragged than she looks. It's not her speed, straight ahead at the Queen, that causes her to blur and fray at the edges, that causes her eyes to smear out a faint red line trailing into the rest of her aura, but the distance gets eaten up, as silent but still bone-shaking concussive bursts behind her push her onwards.
Meika Kirenai	With a growing flare like a shooting star, Chevalier Vermillion tucks her knees up to her chest, and lets her breakneck momentum carry herself as a projectile towards the Queen, even with what remains of her nest. Her eyes shut before contact, but her mouth shapes out words- they don't resound, yet. Not while she's still in the air.     On contact, Vermillion's aura collides like a splashing liquid, jumping up and around the webbing. But where ossified tentacles don't shatter and spall on impact, she just smears through. It's a gunshot. It's nails-on-chalkboards. It's the air cavitating and collapsing back. It's a screamed-out plea. Every inch she passes through is another site for her magic to stick to, to spread from, to crunch and shatter ruin and break.Through the still-standing strands, a streak of hazy red light traces out the other side, dozens of meters beyond-     That's when her words echo out, the silly move-callout, the kind of eccentricity Vermillion still has half a mind to protest the necessity of, when fights are themselves all that really matter. It hits the group's ears only as the thunderous aftershocks fizzle out, only as she's frantically coming back to standing on the nothing-air her skates support themselves by, blurry and indefinite at the borders, like thumb-smudged linework, and clutching her throat to choke oxygen down once more.     {"°Vermillion Resonance : Bones To Dust°"}     As the words hit, the trailing magic erupts into the same spiky-red shards she uses to pin flesh in place- her own forest, carved up amonst the Queen's, fighting against her reach and strength directly. The cleanest path she can blaze is one straight-through, and if she's lucky, what burns on the way burns well.
Rita Ma	Ishirou restrains tentacles and Madeleine fakes them out; Stanley's harpoonists fill the Queen with fire, and a badly-wounded Sea Monkey directs them from above: "The eyes!" But even on the ropes, struggling blindly, she's ferociously strong. Hacking at her stomach requires getting in reach of whickering, thrashing tentacles that whistle through the air sharp enough to crush a skull on impact, and- for now- it's still regenerating after every hit. But it keeps her off the other crews.      "I've been betrayed. The human ingredient... Lisa... made me too soft," she seethes, barely able to lift her face from the floor. "If only I'd been merciless from the start. Lisa! LIIIISAAAA!"      The cargo bay door's steel rapidly gives way under colossal collective effort. The mat of tentacles hold far, far longer than they ought to, but eventually they're punched through or simply ripped out of where they've rooted to the ship's hull. Brune looks at Sonia out of the corner of his eye, drops to pure blood-chilled dread, and throws one last punch at the webbing as he turns to sprint towards her. Before Onslaught can fire, Brune smashes through the spines heedless of his own safety and tackles Sonia('s corpse) out of the way.      He stays there on top of her, making inconsolable noises, when the door's finally ripped open to daylight and promptly 'falls' out to the horizon. Something bumps the Union Busan from beneath and makes it gently list forwards- for a terrible moment it seems like it might be Gordic again, but whatever it is, it's helping. The bombs on their wheeled racks slide forwards into the water and tumble into the sea.      "No... NO! YOU SENSELESS VERMIN! HOW COULD YOU--"      The Queen's stem is almost incomprehensibly tough, regenerates uncannily quick, and only becomes moreso as it's hewed down to the final thread. It's meant to survive a supervolcano eruption, after all. But between plasma-fire and sonic impact and heavy munitions, pressure-bombs and slicing water-jets, it's winnowed down faster than it can heal. It's hard to even assign a final blow, but it might be when Kana deflects a final stabbing spear meant for Bota, and he takes the chance to sprint in with eyes blazing and mirror Lilian's slice.      "You... can't do this... to..."      All the vast tentacles piercing the Union Busan shudder and go slack just after her needles sonically shatter, torturing and cracking the metal one more time. The ship can't take much more. But that doesn't matter: the Queen (lying on the floor) is flaking apart, disintegrating instead of healing. The malevolent light in her eyes goes out. Bota trembles with relief. Kana drops to her knees and gasps. Stanley's rallied harpoonists erupt in unspeakable joy. Even Sea Monkey, cool and detached, makes a noise that's almost like a sob.
Redshift Operators	White Dwarf finally skids to a stop in her long rush. Bruised and more than a little cut up, she gasps heavily for a moment, taking long, deep breaths to recover. She and Red Dwarf watch the key part: Those bombs tumble into the ocean. No matter what, they can't all be stopped, they can't all be disarmed, and most importantly, they'll be enough to kill this nest. Won't they? Even if the Busan is doomed...     She turns back to the disintegrating Queen's corpse. "That was for Rita. *All* of that was for Rita." She says, choking up a little. "Every part of this. Every Devil we killed and every kilometer we sailed, and *especially* that. You... you...!" She clenches both fists, struggling to stop the trembling as she wipes away some of the blood and tears.     She only opens them when a badly wounded gunman at her side reaches up from his kneeling position and taps one balled fist with one of his last few incendiary grenades. "Clean all the rest out." He manages to choke out, gripping her hand for a moment. The anguished cyborg ninja nods, taking the grenade and approaching the disintegrating corpse, ready to turn the stem of biomatter into a funeral pyre. She's got plenty of painful feelings left to get out of her, to keep her mind off of Rita's conspicuous, agonizing absence. She lobs it at the horrid stump without even checking first...
Stanley Padgett	Stanley gasps and shudders as the Queen dies and crisps over and flakes and... And the bombs fall into the sea.     The bombs fall into the sea, and the Harpooners are cheering. The fact that these men and women got to be here for this. To save themselves, save their world, save everything that made them them?     Worth it.     He flops over on the decking of the cargo bay, and sort of wilts, his energy and adreneline spent. His tank is empty. All of him is bone tired, there's broken things inside him he'll have to think about later. His sword arm is working funny.     he stares up at the sky, and starts laughing.     He'll sort out why he's laughing later, maybe.
Aidan Proudpick	The tentacles stretch, flesh growing white as they are pressed from underneath by something. Flesh suddenly parts like a fresh gunshot wound, gore and blood rushing out as Aidan plows through the tentacles to the other side. He twists, struggling to get out enough air from one lung to push the Aegis back up into the air and to land on any piece of the Union Busan. Any thing he can simply lie down on, and hold the spike in his chest. The Aegis flatters to a stop as Aidan coughs up another rush of blood, sliding down his muzzle, staining the fur red on either side. The steel armor keeps the spike relatively in place, though his hand keeps coming up and down over it, trying to decide whether to pull it out or not. Every touch to it brings more pain and more blood to his lips. Not a directly fatal shot. But... The end of being an elite? Winds don't let that happen. Does Sarracenia have something? The East Wind would love to put him in a cell now that... Aidan stares over his perch, looking at the slowly eroding corpse, watching flesh slough off into the water. They did it. At a terrible cost, but they did it. It's hard to cheer, wound nonwithstanding. To cry out in joy over all the people who died today. Everything sacrificed. Instead, Aidan allows himself just a hint of a smile. "Sorry I couldn't look at you Rita, you didn't deserve that." He murmurs, casting the poor apology out to the sea.
Candy	You... can't do this... to... Time stops. Candy is 'broke.' so to speak--this has always been a trick that his vast magical reserves couldn't pay for alone, for long. 'Potential' only exists until it becomes 'actual.' Even the nature of its execution, of stretching an instant impossibly thin and squeezing as many events into it as possible, was a means of skirting the bill; hastily constructed by the subconscious of a frightened child soldier, years ago. The fit from before, with Nonon, seems almost a fond memory, by comparison. Tears for Rita, for Sonia, are intermingled with the tears brought on by the daggers in his lungs and his throat. His vision is blurred at the edges, not just for the tears but for the strain on his body. His leg, still healing from the gruesome injury the Queen's seeking spear inflicted, buckles beneath him, and his body seizes up. Red-tinted spittle escapes his mouth, as spasming fingers fumble for the pistol at his hip. The heat of the backpack is a static constant, the device held inches from catastrophe, yet still managing to sear Candy through the uniform. His uncooperative hands nearly drop the pistol. This overuse is doing more damage than the bullets can keep up with--but better to have their influence than be without. Even after the bullet pierces him, his hands still tremble. Candy grits his teeth, rolls over onto his side, and onto one knee. The cannon is used to prop himself up. Lilian is frozen in artful relief. With one hand, he tears the cannon free of the backpack, tossing it aside--after it passes an inch or so, it freezes, as if Candy's influence upon it were revoked. The same is true of his overheating backpack, when he hurls it at the Queen so hard he loses his balance. Time resumes. -A gunshot sounds. -The sound of snapping rubber; then a heavy metal clang as the cannon is thrown aside. The backpack generator's complaints reach a frightening apex, as it sails over Lilian, over White Dwarf, and behind the Queen. -Candy nearly collapses, his posture badly listing. His eyes burn like coals as he stares down the disintegrating form of the Queen. -Flames leap from the spent generator in every direction, melting it (and, hopes the farmer, the Queen's remains) in an instant.
Ishirou	Ishirou watches what happens with a look of awe and shock.  He wasn't sure they'd get this far, he wasn't sure they could win... but... When the monster goes down, cursing Lisa as she does, he slumps over to his hands and knees and nearly shorts out from the strain he just put his body under.  His arms can barely hold up his weight as he pushes himself onto his back, leans against whatever remains of the Union's ship, and rests.   And then... finally only then does he pull his knees up to his chest and bury his head in them.  His eyes water up as he starts sobbing.  Finally, it was done... and finally, he could greave for those they lost.  He could finally let it all out. He was sitting there sobbing while soaked in blood and seawater.  What happens next..?  He doesn't know, but right now... He just wants to let it out.
Angela	The tentacles go slack and Ceri slides off them. She collapses to the ground in a heap. Shajo is about to cheer but he sees that Sonia has fallen in the corner of his eye. His glasses feel foggy. "Dammit... Is it really too late..." Then he sees Ceri. He runs over to her and checks her pulse. "HP Bullets, fuck we're out of HP Bullets...!" "Victory..." Ceri whispers. "Please bury us...where I can feel... The Sun." And then her arm goes slack and her body goes still. Disciplinary Team Members Remaining: 3 Nonon sees the Queen has fallen and is disintegrating. Half of Disciplinary is gone. She sees Ceri. More than half. She sees that Ceri's corpse is smiling. It's a better death than most Agents got even if they aren't fighting an immortal queen with infinite murderous tentacles at the end of the world. It's over. Nonon's beaten up, Shajo's beaten up. Tweed took some cuts and nicks but this is the benefit of fighting largely from out of bounds. Angela and Gebura take a breath respectively though Gebura is still tense, Angela feels that her prayer may have actually worked. People died, but Lilian and Petra will survive. Her strongest Agents made it. The world, the multiverse is safe. And maybe Rita is alive-- "Disciplinary, Good work." Angela says, ignoring that Rita hasn't returned. Nonon gives Red Giant a pat on the arm, smiling at him before concern overtakes her and she rushes to the edge to look for Rita, getting ready to clamber onto the railing and jump down if she needs to. "C'mon..." Shajo approaches Bota. "Holding up okay, man?" He asks, remembering his promise to Sonia. ...He wishes he didn't have to remember his promise to Sonia.
Rita Ma	Outside, the near-white-noise of sea monsters thrashing and snapping calms. Bota's eyes are only joyful in the loosest sense. 'Disbelieving' might be closer. He looks at the green blood on his sword like he's double-checking if it's real.      "I can't believe it. It's finally... but Rita..."      It's easy to miss it.      It happens quickly as a gasp, with the most disgusting noise in the world: on some final impulse, the Queen's corpse extrudes just a handful of needles. One stabs through White Dwarf's incendiary grenade, pinning it to her hand. Another pierces Candy's backpack and shoves it away. The others drink. The collective slurry of blood on the floor, belonging to nearly everyone, flows into her. Her abdomen tints crimson instead of green, and then turns radiant white.      The flash is beautifully blinding. The noise is absolutely sickening. You can just barely glimpse something rip itself free of the corpse and take shape.      "Haaaah. Much better," a dreadfully familiar-but-unfamiliar voice says aloud.      You recognize their snow-white hair from Kana, or White Dwarf, or maybe Meika. You recognize its slightly-wavy shoulder-length from Candy or Petra or Madeleine. Their hands, subtly clawed, might be Kukuru's or symbolically Hibiki's. Those obsidian teeth could only be Dysnomia's, and their scary chartreuse eyes ring dead for Lilian's, still limned with red at the borders.      Their androgynous build is a matter of averages, and when their lungs unwholesomely glow with each breath, it feels like a biological mockery of Kale, Stanley, and Aidan. That their skin is an inhuman alabaster shot through with uncanny magenta veins derives from no-one but the Queen.      "You can't be," Bota says, eyes wide and voice trembling. They don't deign to answer.      They rub their own wrist and crack their neck, getting used to how the body moves, and smile unwholesomely. "Some of these ingredients are colder," they say. "If only I'd known I could banish Lisa's compassion so easily."      They breathe out air in the shape of a blade in their hand, then snap their fingers to ignite it into glowing plasma. Lilian would recognize the sword.      Thousands of feet down, the bombs explode, sending bubbles rising to the surface. The sea monsters are stirred into snapping frenzy again. "Shame about the nest," they purr with an insouciant tilt of their head and a broad gesture with the tip of their blade.      "But I've only got to kill you and try again in twenty years. 'What's gone, and what's past help, should be past grief,'" they quote, eyes landing on Stanley. "Isn't that right?"
Combaticon	The shock of firing the gun is the final death knell of the Manhattan, one last defiant shout against what claims to be inevitable. When the cannon's rumble fading, Onslaught disembarks from the ripped-open gunhouse, standing on the rapidly slanting deck as the ship succumbs. Eventually he starts to float, allowing the vessel to slip out from beneath him while he stares down at it, fading into the depths.     He gives it only a moment of silence before his attention snaps to the crippled Union Buson. His hand lifts to the side of his head, tapping the commlink.     "Vortex. Blastoff. Report."     "I think that did it!"     "The organic material on the outside's gone still, at least."     "I will rejoin you. Stand on overwatch until we are certain this is over. Do. Not. Lower your guard."     Near the Buson, Vortex drops her hand from her commlink with a sigh, "Yeah, sure." She leans forward in flight, then flips up and back. The characteristic sound of her Transformation Cog is mixed with an unsavory grinding, crunching noise but she does eventually become a battle-scarred helicopter once again.     Blastoff floats on ahead, circling over the exposed cargo bay. As Vortex positions herself above the ship, Blastoff descends until his feet touch the scarred metal deck with a light clang.     The look on his face isn't a particularly happy one, seeing the carnage in front of him, let alone how banged up he and his teammates are. His battle mask retracts and he raises a hand, just about to speak up when the corpse lurches to life. With a wordless shout of surprise, the Decepticon's boot jets and back thrusters rumble to life again, shielding his face from the flash as a New Being emerges.     "We are NOT done yet!"     "For bootin' up cold," Onslaught mutters to himself as he approaches the wreckage of the Union Buson. He taps his commlink several times until the shouting from Blastoff and Vortex quiets down, "We still have work to do. Get it together."
Stanley Padgett	Stanley's laughing... stops. It stops as he watches the body reform.     As he sees himself inside of the new Queen.     And as he sees her suddenly focus on him.     And then he's got the worst feeling. A horrible yawning sense of danger. Stanley, move. ...I can't, I've...
Kukuru	@emit It feels like an eternity before the doors finally get forced open. Kukuru's mind keeps swimming in and out of consciousness, and the blood loss... Well, the blood loss is kept at bay for the time being, but she's not looking forward to getting that tentacle pulled back out of her. She'd like to think of it as something to think about later, too, as she can still hear the Queen screaming at her allies. She's still bracing, too, as though she's expecting another tentacle to come right through her any second now, but... The screaming quiets down. The Union Busan feels like it isn't tilting anymore. Gasping for breath, Kukuru looks over at Bota and Kana, groaning in relief when it's clear they're still alive. The sight of Brune crawling over Sonia's body stabs her right in the heart as she realizes how close they must have been, and... No. She can fix Sonia later, right? Knowing that so many people would still need to grapple with the sgiht, though... She still hates this. Kukuru gaze goes over to White Dwarf working on burning the Queen's corpse after recalling everything she had shouted moments earlier. She sees Candy and Red Dwarf struggling just to get up, and she realizes that there's still so much work left to do. "Who's still...? Who's still alive? Make some sounds if you can... Please." No time to relax yet. Bracing herself against what was the frame for the bomb doors, Kukuru chokes back a strained noise, barely looking like she's even able to do that much. Nevertheless, she leans against it to support herself as she holds one arm out to her side. She's focusing more on getting those nanites out and flowing again rather than proper decorum as she sends that sickly green cloud around, stemming the bleeding as best she can, to try and get everyone in the immediate area around the cargo bay stabilized rather than trying to bring anyone back from the dead right away. "Gotta.. F-finish everything else. We still need to... We need to find Rita, and... She's not dead. She can't stay..." That's why Kukuru can't rest yet. She still needs to find her. She won't believe that Rita's dead until she can't find her. It's all- The Queen's corpse moves. Kukuru catches it from the corner of her eye, but she can't quite make out what it is just yet. By the time she realizes what she's looking at, though, it's too late to stop. They speak, and they glow in an utterly inhuman way that Kukuru couldn't possibly mistake for anyone else. It's only the way they move and tear themselves out of the corpse that doesn't send shivers through her body, but the way they speak certainly does. Reality starts to hit her. If the Queen isn't stopped here, they'd be able to spread the threat again even with the bombs destroying the nest. The only way to prevent that, then, is killing them here. Again. She's feeling so terrible about her chances right now, but everyone here is still counting on her. She can't lose her cool now. She really wants to.