Empiricist

コンバット•スタート! Please disregard this message. Just testing foreign character encoding for an archival script.

Julianne for her part follows a group of soldiers, content to play the role of the morbidly curious bystander. Though that being said, she didn't really have much in mind for what to do once she got there. Evading danger is a skill one simply must have to make it on the streets of Gaea, but that was a skill Julianne honed for herself. She didn't exactly have anyone else to look out for, and even if she did, they probably wouldn't be as heavy. That really was the main problem here, Henrietta wasn't really the fastest and she didn't really strike the peformer as being the kind of person who slips away easily. There are plenty enough ways to escape retribution here, the forests especially if only the elites are prepared to deal with what dwells within, and depending on the state of Kaleigan-Meracusian relations a trip across the pass could be all it takes to shake off any pursuers. Problem is getting her there would be easier said than done. So if they wanted to avoid a protracted fight, they would probably want to either do a disappearing act or finding a way to get her out and fast. With that in mind Julianne looks for something that could help quickly transport Henrietta away from any potential lynch mobs.

A chainsaw would appear to be the best bet here. A standard one would suffice. Would for the elites anyways. It was their livelihood, it was not Julianne's however, and whatever advantage she could get, she'd take. Reach would be the easiest, something long to increase her range, needs to be flexible too, can't let it get caught on trees and branches. Oh and it needs to do more than just saw and cleave. No, it needs to break and pierce, restrain and shatter. Soldiers fight treants and threaten their opposites. Julianne's group meanwhile had an assassin on its tail. It seemed silly to think there would not be more. If she herself was planning on ambushing in this place, she'd go for heavy armor, angled to deflect chainsaws, take a saw for the treants, and something with more reach for her targets. Rationale is simple enough - if your opponent's geared for treants, then come equipped to counter the norm for that. So she needed to counter that. The new weapon she commissioned was closer to a whip than a chainsaw, a flexible assembly of whirring sawing teeth good for cutting away at treants from afar and tangling up foes, all rigged together to retract and collapse into a staff-like form. No one was carrying something blunt around here, so a staff probably won't do much against a treant. But against manavi it should be more than enough to break limbs and injure through armor. In Julianne's hands at any rate. Commission the weapon.

Well that should be enough for a weapon, question is what kind of weapon? That, Julianne felt pretty confident in her ability to figure out. She looks through the marketplace ostensibly she's window shopping, in actuality she's examining the soldiers and hunters, observing what their typical loadouts are, the ones without bioaugs anyways. If they're stationed here, it'd stand to reason their weapons should be well-suited for the typical threats.

That's enough rest for now. Julianne flexes her new hand, carefully, experimentally wiggling her fingers and clenching a fist. Her quick-reel system should counter the tripping well enough. The treants themselves, that'd be more problematic, a rope spear won't do much good, nor a scimitar when it comes down to it. Well she was in th market for a new hat anyways. Head off to the marketplace, pawn off the valuables of the bandits, see if that's enough to cover the cost of a hat and weapon.

Julianne takes her place in the Nexus, positioning herself close enough to hear the conversations of the soldiers but far enough that she's not sitting right besides them. Replacing her arm would take some time, her hat some more time still, in the meantime then she may as well pick up whatever gossip she could.

Naturally, Julianne's first action was to check the cabins for valuables, mostly the pockets of the fallen but a few cursory glances into the hastily abandoned cabins wouldn't hurt either. There are three things, three simple things you need to survive in Gaea. Money's one of them, the lesser of them, but one of them nonetheless, and while you'll need an awful lot to be safe, it doesn't hurt picking it up where you can. With the bodies looted and lost belongings appraised (but not yet taken, a little too early to be making enemies after all) Julianne heads out for the Nexus.

That's enough rest for now, back to work. Julianne drops down, sprinting down the cabin towards the commotion. A tether fires out, snagging a fallen falchion and bringing it into her hand. The noises were coming from a cabin, Nemesis was aiming through the door. Entry points would the the window or the door. But that's too predictable. Go to cabin before. Expend steam. Put a fist through the wall and quick reel backwards. At the same time, fire a tether through the hole and drag the assailant backwards. Shift falchion into warding stance. A quick pull off balance in a situation like this, could very well be a death sentence.

"All three must fall, but Kimiko's sending another squad over to help out."

"Nope, pretty sure that was from inside the ship. The minions stationed there are well-equipped with a variety of debilitating weaponry and it quickly became the least favourite of the three fortifications. The castle seems to rely on more conventional tactics involving a mixture of mobility, armor, and firepower, and the cathedral is crawling with summoners!"

Matteo fidgets "About that... we, haven't reached the raid bosses yet - there's heavy fortifications at their entrances. But not to worry, I'm sure you won't have any problems blasting through! We'll try and follow after that, so no need to worry about anyone getting too jealous." Reaching into his jacket he produces a couple photos, handing them over for your perusal. There's really three locations you see in there - the lantern-lit gates of an enormous chinese palace sporting dancing tigers and eastern dragons, a sprawling night-bound cathedral city populated with figures that look somewhere between "cardinal" and "grieving widows", and uh, a japanese high school? Like it's really big and the front gates look pretty sturdy with absurdly forgettable students patrolling, but like, it's a fucking high school.

"Thanks! We looted them, it was awfully dreary in here before!" He spins around with a flourish to face Immanuel and shake his hand. His grasp is floppy and doodly, like a doodly stickperson arm. "Righty ho! Business! It's a slow day most days here, we've breached most of the ship, but there are pockets of resistance still at play. We've had some people try venturing in, but they're more trouble than they're worth. You'll want to assault them first to lower the barrier on the bridge."

Julianne remains silent, firing tethers laterally in preparation for a dodge. A few are angled backwards, a few more angled forwards. Good burst speed, better than her own, but if she commits for a kick that will limit her mobility if only for a moment. The girl's gaze shifts to the side of the train to the waters below if only for a moment. Two figures rise from the ruined carriage. Friendlies too. Well that changes things doesn't it? She steps back as foe lunges reels pulling her backwards. A feint. If she calls it and stops short then that's just fine, she doesn't know about the armor just yet, meaning a parry stepping parry with a kick to the leg should work well. If she does then she'll quick step diagonally forwards or to the side depending on what works best, bringing the armored blade of her arm against whatever claws come her way, and a fist and heel slamming into what opening she sees. Focus is on minimizing damage to herself though, aim to disrupt not to harm. There's plenty of harm coming this way anyways, she could afford to spend some steam. Of course if an opportunity presents itself, Julianne won't mind using a little more steam to get a bit of payback. Priority are the legs, then the arms, the head, and finally the torso.

Chapter 2 - Winners Use Drugs Everyone The behemoth streaks through the skies, black acrid smoke billowing from weeping wounds, a hail of ice screeching out from swivelling hill forts and battle-scarred trench lines. A double bastard mongrel, half winter wonderland, half demilitarized zone, with a build reminiscent of a whale and a bite reminiscent of a stratofortress. Through the deluge you can see the hole in its side, a great ulcerous wound ringed with necrotic earth and weeping with smoke and vapor. Blasted and burnt, poisoned and salted, that is your entry point. You begin your approach. A shell detonates near you, tendrils of ice erupting from a crystal coffin, scything and piercing empty air in a fractal pattern, three-dimensional snowflake that begins its life as a bullet and ends it as a spray of shrapnel. It'd be more fearsome if it actually hit. Faster and faster you race further into the barrage. Ice races to meet you, but the behemoth's aim is not what it once was, besides, you've faced worse, no thanks to a certain crazed bitch. Closer and closer you approach, the torrent beginning to ebb and fade, you're too close for many of the cannons to hit you and those that are, well, many of them aren't functional anymore, about as blasted and broken as the lands around them if not more so. The breach is a far cry from the faux festive veneer of the snowfields, little more than a barren smouldering land haphazardly littered with cruciform gravemarkers thatpulse with a strange and sinister energy. Little survived the initial breach, and what did had been stripped bare, looted by enterprising adventurers. Through this breach, festering in the depths of the shellship like a particularly boisterous infection is you destination, the main adventurer camp. Barren earth gives way to... well it's really just more barren earth, but like, way more colorful thanks to all the looted decorations sprucing up the place like a particularly colorful and focused festival. Portable camps and the like sprawl out from shops and quest hub pylons questionably dressed figures wandering about chatting, sulking, and getting embroiled in newer trashier variants of your classical love triangle. Really, you should be thankful, these guys have saved you lot an awful lot of work. The defenses are compromised, the ship's damaged, and what's left to oppose you have sealed themselves in the four remaining bastions. That's where you come in by the way, what's behind those is best left to a Godslayer to handle. Or well, an Aramitama. Or some rando going through a mid-life crisis in full plate armor. Point is, the place is besieged from the inside and you lot are to crush what remains. The Aramitama at the heart of all this? The one whose head you're here to claim? They're the son of a bitch that made those exoskeletons. Hmph, saddled those dumbass assassins with death traps but spared no expense for his own shell. Typical. Ain't the kinda behaviour that makes you many friends, and boy oh boy did they make the wrong enemy. Kimiko's pretty light on the details but well, she's the reason he's here now, stranded in the Aethertide, the realm of the lost, besieged by adventurers, and soon to be staring down the barrel of a gun or whatever the hell you people use. She was looking for someone to deal the finishing blow, how convenient he turned out to be the man you're after. But first, meeting your contact. The jammer in charge of keeping the defenses locked down. You find him near the center of town leaning against one of his crosses busy fiddling away at his phone, one of 'em gacha games you think. Pretty hard to miss honestly, given that he's y'know, a giant snake with magical cybernetic doodle arms and a dapper suit. Takes him a while to notice you guys in turn though. "Huh, wha- oh. It's you guys. How'd you like our humble abode? It's a bit messy I know, hope you don't mind haha."

Julianne holds onto her hat and just backs the fuck away, aiming to get further down the carriages back onto the next carriage even and crash inside, using as an opportunity to loop around and hopefully change the relative positioning of herself and her foe. From where she could try luring her into the line of fire of an ally on the way back. That's Plan A. Plan B? That consists of a few wires, a hat, and pretty damn good idea of how to strike. Here's how that goes: As Juliane's heading backwards, she's leaving wires behind, wires that should be near-invisible to the assassin, they'll be scattered wide so that they don't get clipped by the claws. More distance she can get, the better, gives her more time to build up steam. If or when the assassin goes for a lunge, three things will happen almost at once: Julianne will disengage the magnets on her hat if only for a moment before hurling it forwards to bait an attack or obscure her assailant's vision, her quick reels will engage slingshotting herself forwards and throwing any incoming attacks off-timing with some sidesteps and whatnot as necessary to help parry and avoid the attack, and of course she'll add her own counter to the mix, a trip or shadowless kick to the lower leg as she passes by to throw her foe off-balance, keeping her arm close to protect herself with the plated sleeves and the threat of a hard elbow strike.

Julianne salutes and walks towards the door, slowly, infuriatingly slowly. Whoever that was didn't sound happy, best take her time and wait for a scream or a counter assault. She waits for the figure to move forwards further, just a little bit further, further enough til she could see them, she didn't need much, just a glimpse, a glimpse of what she was up agains- Is that Tohl? Tohl, The Iron Titan? General Tohl Ashman? Well, here goes nothing. Spinning as she rushes forwards, Julianne unravels the spear wrapped against her body, the tip of the unfurling belt scything out faster and fast as her steam erupts through her systems with a final step and jump, the girl delivers a vicious kick to the "spearhead" sending it lancing out, aimed right at Tohl's trigger hand, or failing that, the side of his shotgun. With any luck, it could break something, a thumb, a trigger, or trigger finger even, muscled he may be, but it won't protect the smaller more delicate parts of his body. And if luck wasn't on her side, well, it should at least force the gun away, create an opening. Not that she was planning on using any, the others could settle it, they had guns after all. As soon as her strike connected, finger or gun, Julianne would be getting the hell out, quick reels hissing to life and hurling back out the same way she came in- through that gentleman's window. From there, who knows where she'll be, not Tohl, that's for sure. Expend stockpiled steam. Aim to break his weapon hand if it looks feasible, else aim to knock the gun away, reel backwards out the window so that in order for him to fire back, he'd have to swing his weapon back past his original position to fire upon Julianne.

As the bullets begin flying Julianne leaps out of her seat, scooping a scimitar off the ground and into her grasp. There's a flash of steel and a crash of glass. The window is broken, the girl is gone. Outside the train a black specter streaks through the air, swinging backwards, back towards the train, to the same carriage but a different window. Amdist the howling of air, there's a soft click as the two belts link together. A cloth spear to strike from afar, and a blade to strike up close. Not a bad combo. Twirling her new weapon in her hand, Julianne tests the weight and balance of the sword. It'll do for now. Wrapping the spear around herself, the girl comes crashing through the window feet-first.

"Nice to meet y'all, name's Juliane, Julianne Fairchild", the disheveled youth put emphasis on the last name, as if expecting it to mean something. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, she didn't seem to wait for a response either way. "I'm from Galazio, gramps used to run a dojo there. but that was a long time ago." She sprawls out that little bit more, now taking up enough seating for a whole two people.

Sometime later Y'all work your way through the crowds and away from the pubs and nightclubs over to more family-friendly territory. Owen is kinda still on the clock right now but, he's sure the boss will understand. Okay no, the boss probably won't understand, guy didn't understand why the hell the bouncer vanished the previous half dozen times, but he's figured out out by this point he could just place a stern-looking cardboard cut out of the lad with a sign assuring any would be troublemakers that if they stir shit up, he'll be back soon enough to settle things. It's pretty effective honestly, though then again the guy did hospitalize ten dudes last Friday by just standing there and letting them break their hands against his jawline so uh, it's probably pretty reasonable no one really wants to risk it. The curry house is warm and cozy, with soft yellowish lights and luxuriously cushioned booths assembled out of an assortment of second-hand furniture to give it that home away from home feel. Place is open all night and quite popular with salarymen and grave-shifters alike, nothing like a piping hot curry after work, speaking of which, that's precisely what the five of you have in front of you now, sitting at Marina's usual table.

Once Upon a Time in Gaea

Marina spins through the air, her wings spreading open to decelerate as she turns to face her pursuer. With a hard flap she launches herself right at them. Now a problem with fancy sweepy glowy sigil beams, is that your opponent knows exactly where it is and where it will be; Marina's explosions have no such weakness and as she approaches the danger zone, she peels to the side, grazing just past the expanding sigils as she unleashes her attack - a series of close ranged explosions. Her attack seems to burn with runic fire as it unleashes, but thanks to her totally fair and objectively much funner house rules of "go fuck yourself", her foe finds itself incapable of fully negating the attack and finds itself crashing deeper into the building. With a final explosion Marina launches her sledgehammer forwards. A finishing blow won't be that simple though: Theurgia's beams mark objects for sacrifice, and right now it's pointing them right at the hammer. It can't negate the attack sure, it can't fully burn the hammer either sure, but if it does both, well it's still gonna be alive and kicking. That's what the plan seemed to be anyway, one thing it didn't count on - Sasha. A crimson blur intercepts the hammer and like light through twisted glass the beams seem to twist away from the weapon, the weapon that was now slamming right against the construct's side. The hammer burns, the edifice of the building burns, the walls begin to crumble. Fine, no matter. The streak of crimson seems to turn a full 270 degrees, and worse, the turn didn't seem to slow it, no, on the contrary it had accelerated and was now coming at Ruin Knight head on. The motorcycle burns, the building burns, the pavement burns. But guess what? There's not much left to burn, Paulina's shit outta fuel, and shit outta luck. The rather questionably named Scarlet Heat breaks through the flames and breaks Paulina, shattering it ever so many fading motes of light. Ruin Knight Paulina is no more. Well Owen, you uh, you were really hoping maybe this was like, a game of strip poker gone horribly horribly wrong. Hell not even poker, blackjack maybe, something easy, something simple, but nope, as rectangular pink lens of the weird techno-monocle slides over your left eye you find yourself staring face to face with you foe's fucking stat sheet. Okay, it's not that bad, but it's pretty fucking bad. So firstly, what you see is a blue-framed card with a picture depicting your foe. Ringing the image in the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions are outward pointing arrows. North, Northeast, Northwest, and South are lit up in red, the other remain dark. Their name's at the top, Ruin Knight Theurgia, next to it is a uh, blank glitchy circle. Below the image is a description: [Warrior/Link/Effect] 2+ Creatures Whenever a zone this card points to is not occupied by a Theurgia Mark, place a Theurgia Mark on that zone. When a creature would enter a space occupied by a Theurgia Mark, Ruin Knight Theurgia can attack that creature. You think it barked out that last part the first time it teleported Below that is some glitchy text and something that reads LINK-4. Now you may be asking yourself, "what the flying fuck does this mean?" well don't you fucking worry, because there is where all the other goddamn pop up windows come into play with extensive rulebook extracts on what the fuck a zone is, what a "Link Creature" is, and why the fuck this even matters, not that it even does that much seeing as you also get a nice big error message ontop of the whole shebang helpfully informing you that unauthorized modifications have been made to this card, altering the specific properties of the resultant summon. In other words, whatever the hell this is, it probably doesn't follow the rules of its own game either. Wonderful. It's around this point where you decide that seeing as you don't actually have time to read all this shit in the middle of a battle, you're just gonna taze the thing and run them through the chest. You do that, it goes down like a bitch. Seriously, like it takes a few tries to pierce your blade through its armored form, but it also completely fails to do anything but spasm having apparently no resistance to being repeatedly tazed. Ruin Knight Theurgia is no more. Chise? Sasha's bolts didn't really help you, they were sorta like those thoughts and wishes posts humans make on social media in response to any large tragedy, remember those? The ones Elly showed you? Yeah. Like it's nice, but as it turns out Sasha is more a living embodiment of various vehicle-related offences than a functional CIWS. But thankfully you didn't need it either, the shots were kinda banking on the explosions turning your swing into a drop rather than y'know, a plasma-propelled flight. Spreading your infection along the ground, you catch Goetia inside the earth. It tries to flee sure, but it seemed to only sense your presence when your Invasion brushed against it. Caging it was simple. Devouring it was simple, simple and unsatisfying. It's empty, a hollow projection sustained by something that isn't physically present. 0 Stars, would not recommend. Ruin Knight Goetia is no more. So with all that bullshit going on around him Immanuel focuses instead on getting everyone the fuck out. First comes the railgun. Summoning it is easy enough. Next comes aiming it, that's a little more troublesome. You'd think that with the target being what it was, it wouldn't be a challenge to hit, and you'd be correct. The issue lay more in what happens if the barrier was, flimsy, what if the round overpenetrated. That, would be problematic, it's a busy bustling street out there. Plenty of people, plenty of cars, plenty of collateral damage potential, and you don't become a railgun toting de facto superhero without considering collateral damage. Responsible railgun disposal, that's optional, responsible railgun aiming, less so. Taking careful aim, he aims down an empty alleyway such that if the round were to say, be deflected wildly by the impact, it wouldn't hit some random civilian. He also aims it at less-than-perpendicular angle, didn't wanna risk hitting himself with a rebound if it came to that. Right, moment of truth. Immanuel fires, and there's a sound like cracking glass as the round crashes through the first layer, coming to a halt in the second. For a moment, the breach holds still, a spherical wound in reality like a bullet-hole in glass raised to a full three dimensions, and then it explodes open, the world shattering apart to reveal... The same fucking thing, but with less magic circles in the distance, and a noticeable absence of explosions. There's still the liquid metal bayonets, but, seeing as the constructs are dead, you guys don't have much trouble just leisurely healing up and smashing back into reality, back into the busy Sendo night life. The Card Caller is nowhere to be seen. Crow will probably wanna hear about this. Level Up!

The bomb detonates, Immanuel and Marina riding the shockwave. Liquid bayonets streak through the air like beams of light, the pair weaving between them. Immanuel spins around, dual handguns sweeping streams of plasma before Paulina's approach. Seeing her chance, Sasha sweeps behind the Ruin Knight as Marina closes in, hammer in hand. Paulina stretches out its hand, flames roaring outwards against the weapon's approach, but to no avail, as Marina shatters its arm. It did not need to stop the attack however, it simply had to stall. It was a split-second, a brief moment of deceleration that left the girl wide open for the next volley, a lance of molten metal piercing her sternum and forcing her backwards. Chise, you have more pressing concerns, namely the Ruin Knight phasing right out the building, lunging for your throat. With explosive force, you throw yourself out the way, your assailant's lunge turning into a dive as it accelerates towards the safety of the ground. As you re-anchor to a wall, you find Paulina's sigils intruding, or at least, attempting to. You keep little from your conquests, a fond memory of conquest, a banquet of souls down your gullet, fleeting sensations, hazy memories, nothing concrete. Your possessions are few, but what's yours, are yours, and what you take, you keep. And as the sigils soon find, you will not relinquish them easily. Their intrusion halts, fruitless. Owen, it was a good try. But it seems this girl's powers aren't all-encompassing, your wish fizzles, dimming to naught like any other in the face of an uncaring world. As your dart back, your foot lands on one of the many circles, and the next thing you feel is the Ruin Knight driving its blade in your spine. That hurt, but this could be an opportunity... it's close, close enough to touch, just a few more steps, just a swing of your arm, and your can give that son of a bitch a taste of lightning. Sasha, you think you know what's happening now, it's a feeling, the faintest of instincts, a fleeting thought yet to crystallize to words, an exclamation still unformed. Before you can say it, you hear it, everyone hears it, thundering in their ears. It is the voice of God, radiant, resplendent, rapturous. The maddening mandate of the heavens. It grabs your attention, and it wrenches, and wrenches it hard. The world spins and turns, your vision shifting in a direction with no name. Imagine you're standing on a pane of glass suspended above the ground. Imagine then that some fucking asshole proceeded to then build a machinegun nest on that pane of glass, and that you would really much rather be on the ground below, than standing on the glass. Now imagine that you didn't know you were standing on that glass because you had a stroke or something and forgot that you could look down and all you knew was that suddenly there's a machinegun firing at you. That, was your position, more or less. Except y'know, there's two panes of glass, and everything is one dimension higher. Yeah, you're all stuck in a paracosm, a constructed reality bristling with hostile magic circles, overlayed ontop of a second paracosm, overlayed ontop of the real world, with all this fuckery hidden in some fourth dimension that shouldn't even exist. Well now you're aware, so the solution is simple: you smash your way out, you level enough firepower against the damn glass and break your way through. Okay so, as it stands, the magic circles are now focusing fire on Chise, starting with explosions aimed at her anchor points and followed by volleys of liquid metal bayonets aimed to strike her as she falls. Paulina meanwhile chases after Marina, aiming to run her through with its lance and/or catch her with its sigils as it adopts a sweeping trajectory that sends it smashing through the building beside it, Theurgia meanwhile traces its path with its beams along that same building's edifice while it continues to y'know try to shank Owen more

The source of the explosion was a small pill-shaped device housing two chambers, one spherical, the other cylindrical. The reaction started with an implosion, crushing the contents of the sphere. The resulting energy was quickly converted to plasma and trapped momentarily within the casing. A moment was all it needed. A spark plug in the cylinder goes off, the contents compress, and the fireball is unleashed. Magic, is strange. Symbolism is at times meaningful and at time meaninglesss, but here? It's pretty meaningful. It's a symbolic recreation of a thermonuclear weapon. The group scatters. Owen lunges forwards from the faux-nuclear fireball, using the shockwave to launch himself at the Ruin Knights. He immediately takes three bolts of burning light to the chest. To their credit, they did manage to singe his shirt a bit. But it turns out it takes a little more than just laundry-related inconveniences to halt the bouncer. Beams of solid light roar from the skies gouging deep wounds into the false world, none even come close to Owen. And no, that's not just because he's a g, it's more just the Ruin Knights blocking their shot on him. Chise slingshots herself and her master into the air. There was no mistaking it. This was a Paracosm. An artificial reality. But that, that couldn't explain that strange feeling she felt when she entered. There was something else at play here. A beam crashes through the building next to her. Well, to everyone else it looked like a beam, like a ray of solid light. Chise? Chise saw something different - a thin lance of molten metal moving at absurd velocities. Sasha warps through the air probing at the fabric of this distorted world. Space is twisted here and not in any way she recognizes. On the surface level, on the level needed to use her powers, it's normal. But there's something hidden, some other unfamiliar aspect being manipulated here, and though she knows not what it is, she can sense it at some instinctive level. Whenever she twists space it feels as if something else is getting dragged along. Weaving through the beams of light she points her rifle and pulls a trigger, bolts of plasma joining Immanuel's own deluge, tracing across towards the summons as Marina hurls a volley of starry fireballs downrange at Paulina. Theurgia's beams left two lines of magic circles running down the street and a third line in front of itself forming a threshold of sorts. Behind it, Paulina's diagrams spread like wildfire, tracing out from their origins and growing larger and larger, the street below seemingly aflame with runic text. Those are sacrificial patterns, Immanuel's sure of it, he's seen them before in one of the tomes Rosario lent him, doesn't much thinking for him to conclude that he does not want those on him or his teammates. Across the boundary Owen leaps, crossing the threshold as plasma rains down from above and starry fireballs scream towards the foe above. Two voices bark out in unison. Harsh. Mechanical. Synthesized. Bearing the faintest trace of noise and static as if spat out by a tape recorder. "When a creature would enter a space occupied by a Theurgia Mark, Ruin Knight Theurgia can attack that creature." "When a creature your opponent controls declares an attack, you can detach 2 materials from this card to negate the attack." A patch of ground right below Paulina ignites, not with runic text like before but with tongues of pale fire. The symbols char away as the Ruin Knight meets Marina's attack head on, catching the fireballs with its free hand. The fireballs burn with uh, well, fire. Just y'know, different fire. Screeching louder and louder til nothing remains of them but embers of light. As for Theurgia, it vanishes. When Owen crossed the threshold, the circles beneath him activated and in that instant Theurgia teleported behind him, swinging its sword down at his neck. Its triple gimbal spins, tracing a spiralling array of circles around him, aiming to cut off his escape. Paulina meanwhile begins to rush through the air in a curving trajectory that leaves it skimming across the side of a few buildings, spreading its sacrificial markings across their edifice before sweeping its lance in a cleaving strike aimed at Sasha. Chise feels something else within the building - Goetia. It's rising through the concrete readying to lunge unto her. Immanuel and Marina find the circles going for a little suppressive fire of their own, aiming one explosion at each of them, with a barrage of beams aiming to catch and impale them as they dodge. Immanuel suspects that he only managed to evade the beams last time by surprising the adversary with his speed, they won't be surprised a second time.

[Now Playing: Emiya] Fort Jackass starts its flying elbow drop. It does not get to finish it. Countless belts erupt from thin air and race across its torso. Layer upon layers of belts, closing shut one after the other, until the infection was contained, until the skeleton was frozen in the air. Somewhere in the world Testsuya Nomura has just gotten a boner and doesn't know why. Maybe. You're not sure because you're not there. You're here, and about to rail this skeleton harder than J. P. fucking Morgan. See, everything Chise's Invasion isn't simply some sort of horrific controllable venereal disease, it's actually an extension of her existence, and where it is, she is too. So when she manually triggered her seal's emergency restraint system, it didn't just seal her, it sealed away every single object she had infected at that time, which included a good chunk of the gashadokuro. With the immediate threat neutralized, Immanuel is free to just leisurely equip the card, heal Owen up with a potion and fly up into one of the remaining subforts. Turns out it's full of exoskeleton-clad Mononoke. Turns out tinned cannon-fodder is still just cannon fodder, and soon enough the reactor's gone. Marina meanwhile makes short work of the final reactor, one of her four swords crashing through the tendrils and piercing in just the right place to impale the weird pastfarian monument. With some time to kill she then flies up and puts a sword through each eye socket. Hah! Suck it, you big dumb skeleton! With all of its power sources out of commission, Fort Jackass no longer had the power to resist Chise's influence. Really by this point, it was her influence alone keeping it in existence, well what few slivers of it she could afford to sustains, so it really couldn't struggle that much, thus drawing a close to this bizarre Pokemon spinoff. With Fort Jackass devoured the Sanctuary collapses, scattering dead mononoke and the decks of the missing Card Emperors across the street. [Now Playing: Nothing] Okay it's done. It's fucking done. You took down a giant mobile fortress, slew some bizarro Cu Chulainn copy, oh and killed a couple dozen punk ass mononoke while you were at it. One of your allies has apparently run off to fight Nazi forklifts, there's a confused bouncer tagging along here, and at least one of you has managed to become what amounts to a magical girl. This day by all rights should be over. You should be done. Should be. But no. Oh no, the world just keeps on piling more and more shit down. First thing you hear when you're back from the sacntuary? Laughter. Psychotic fucking laughter. The source, the source is like, the shadiest bitch ever. Just some lady in a dark cloak and hood, features basically just completely hidden and peering down at y'all from a nearby rooftop. She got one of those portal tabletop disks on her arm and two summons at her side, so they're a Card Caller ontop of being a fucking psycho it seems. Great. Oh and the summons aren't exactly cannon fodder either. Remember the things the two assassins fielded? It's not that. Which really is basically all you need to know. They take the form of headless suits of armor sculpted to look almost organic in appearance, giving them a slender and inhuman visage. Arcane inscriptions are holographically projected across their bodies, extending from their incomplete form, looking less like something they're emitting and more like another part of their body, no different to skin or hair. The first suit has a fireball for a "head" albeit with runic text in place of actual fire. A grand magic circle extends from its body like a set of wings and in its hands it holds a holographic lance. The second suit has a "head" comprised of a holographic ring lined with eye sigil. It is enclosed by three circles forming a triple gimbal and it brandishes a straightsword with a holographic blade. Look point is, they're bad news. But wait! There's more! As a limited time offer if your name happens to be "Chise Nomura", she'll throw in another fucking suit of armor free of charge! This one has a circle in the shape of a maw for a face and holographic conduits running across its body with magical circles floating at the back of its hands. Also it's phased into the ground. It's literally occupying the same space as the ground beneath your feet and presumable waiting to jump out and blow off someone's junk. Lovely. And before you can even begin to think that the world is done shitting on you, she just yells out something, a title, an epithet. "CLEPSIPHRON!" And at that, you all get fucking whisked away into another parallel copy of the city streets completely devoid of all civilians. At least this one's paid its power bills. Chise? Sasha? This uh, is not a pleasant process for either of you. You both come out kinda disoriented. This space feels wrong, unnatural, and all of your instincts are screaming at you that you need to get the hell out. Not that you needed them to tell you that, the magical circles drifting through the sky are already convincing enough. Worst part is, this isn't even a good place to fight the Card Calling jackass because apparently when she sent out invitations to this little cage match of hers, she neglected to invite herself. The only things in here are the damn summons. Perfect. Fucking perfect. Now before shit goes down, let's make the positions clear. You all are bunched together standing in the same spot. The first summon is ahead floating about three stories up into the air. The second summon has descended and is standing on the ground beneath it. The third summon is directly under your position, but only Chise knows about it. The magic circles are all up in the air and about half a kilometer away on average. Now that that's clear, here's how shit goes down. The first summon's "wings" are extending outwards further while conduits beam out of them like rays of light, striking the ground beneath it, staining them with arcane markings and making more runic text rise up from them as if they were aflame. With a swipe of its weapon it sends three orbs of energy streaking towards your general position. At this same time, four smaller magic circles appear around the second summon's gimbals, streams of runic text erupting from them. One sweeps across the ground in front of them, one fires directly into your midst, and the remaining two sweep forward along the ground seemingly trying to cut off your escape routes. Meanwhile the third summon is moving upwards, trying to stick its arm out of the ground and grab Marina's ankle. Also, several beams of light are now racing from a few of the circles towards your position. Oh and ontop of that, you all have a sinking feeling in your gut that you really don't want to be where you're currently standing, like beyond all of the above even.

[Now Playing: Emiya] Owen, you decide that two can play at this game, and as Cu wreathes his body in energy you answer in turn. Your blade resonates again and in accordance with your wish the clouds around you swirl inwards wreathing your body with numbing discharges. Even in a close fight like this, footwork is key, but you can't let it come to that, you can't let him disengage. You need to keep the bastard tazed and you need to to tackle this head on. he goes for the kick but you just go right in pushing yourself into an awkward angle and driving your lightning charged blade right into him. It, doesn't sink it. Why isn't it sinking in? Gae bulg clatters to the ground. At least, what was once gae bulg, as with its master it had transformed, become something greater, something more monstrous. Something thicker, something bulkier, something sporting a drum magazine that you could only presume to be proof that you needed to keep him here. When you rushed in, he dropped the weapon and with his now-free hand grabbed your sword. Your actual sword, the one that's metal and charged with lightning. Just being clear here. Now this couldn't actually stop your attack. You grab a thrusting sword and no matter how strong you are that shit's probably still gonna jab right into you. But the thing is, when he touched it you felt something happening, and it sure wasn't a good something. Spirit energy was flooding into your regalia, overloading it, impairing it. By the time your blade pierced his side its enchantments were so damn haywire it could no longer inflict anything beyond the shallowest of cuts. It was still conductive however, and lightning isn't that picky. Your body discharges with a thunderous roar forcing your foe's body to lock up. You're burning up too now. No matter. You release your blade, keeping it afloat via electromagnetism as you drive your fist forwards and follow through your strike, feeling the burning flood scalding your arm as Cu's ribs buckle and break. He's no slouch either. Doesn't even flinch as he just fucking takes it. A sharp jolt of pain announces that he's just jammed a combat knife into your leg and with another burst of strength he draws his pistol with his other hand, slamming the barrel right up under your chin. That electricity's gonna make it hard for him to pull the trigger, at this point, he can only resist it in bursts and well, you're pretty sure you can take a bullet to the throat just fine if it comes down to it. Immanuel staggers upright. Blood seeps from his wounded shoulder. The wound has yet to fully close, most of the magic spent fixing the internal damage, the internal damage Cu inflicted, the internal damage he himself inflicted when he tore the round free from his body, that barbed tangle of ivory and burning phosphor. He's unsteady. He's wounded, peering out from beneath that morphine haze. But he can think again. And that, that will be enough. An empty syringe falls to the ground. He crushes the barbed round with a gauntleted fist, the whole mess dissipating to naught. And on his good shoulder another railgun appears, energy pouring through its systems as he diverts power to it. There was no ominous hum, no crackling tendrils, no menacing glow. No need to telegraph the attack, no need to warn his target. Not that he'd notice anyway, Owen had the guy quite well distracted. Owen lets go, throwing himself backwards, and as Cu turns to follow the bouncer's gaze it really was much to late. The first round hits him square in the chest. The second right in the head. The two impacts happening almost simultaneously The results are, spectacular to say the least. It's just this fucking explosion of plasma as his upper torso is obliterated, his head is just gone while his arms and his lower body are just completely separated and blown backwards from the impact. The pieces flicker and the overlay fades, revealing a body made of straw and wrapped in cloth, which y'know promptly catches fire from all the heat and plasma before burning away. Guess that used to be one of the mononoke. A card falls to the ground. It's like one of the ones Tor used, it's like the one Marina is using right now even, except where hers is blank, this one has a name and a picture. Epithet Acquired - Cu Chulainn HECATUS Meanwhile in the skies above, Marina is conjuring a giant fucking sword. Because it always comes down to a giant fucking sword. This sword comes out, pretty generically honestly, your typically cruciform holy blade with a blade of shining silver. In terms of good places to bring it down, the whole arm being raised makes that a little troublesome, since everything is basically just going to end up being a diagonal cut. She eventually settles for about halfway down the forearm. The fortress is weak, weaker than it was, it's lost two reactors and it's actively trying not to succumb to the magical equivalent of a highly aggressive sentient mutagenic venereal disease but the actual slicing still proves to be rather tricky seeing as Marina wasn't especially well-versed in swords let alone giant ones, so strike down't do that much as it was mostly just gravity doing the work for her, managing only to kinda lodge the sword down a bit of the ways into the arm. Looks like it's time to improvise and Marina had just the thing. If you can't drive the chisel in you'll just have to hammer it in, and Marina had the mother of all hammers. And hey if she was already outsourcing the work to gravity, obviously she just needs to outsource it more! The rippling portals streak upwards, aligning themselves with the edge of the blade as the meteor shower just pounds against the blade and forces it through the damn arm. With the limb cut, the orb of energy loses all coherence and just fizzles as the fortress itself starts falling backwards to earth. Its body quickly reattaching the arm as it shifts in midair aiming to turn its fall into a flying elbow drop aimed at the pair still on the ground.