Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Kutsuuko Shiratori     Taking the warpgate is an unimpressive, and yet unusual sight. Any excitement for the breathtaking, grim or strange vista of a new world is strangled immediately at realizing the room it exits is pitch black. Judging by any sounds echoing off the walls, it's also very small, and the floors and walls are plated in metal. In subdued fashion, rows of sodium vapour light snap on one at a time, only so as not to be totally blinding, with a series of sullen clanks, and the buzzing of some whining machinery punctuates the sketchy silence.

    By the looks of it, someone found the natural warpgate and built some kind of vault around it. It seems purposefully too small for anything but small groups of people to enter, or perhaps to exit, and the interior itself is little more than prefab, sci-fi warehouse pieces stitched together to be traversible a few feet above the interior walls, which occasionally pulse with embers of dull orange between the black gaps in the plating. Anechoic properties isolate it from radio signals, the structure looks like it's suspended by shock absorbers in case of earthquake or bombs, and the only way to tell where it is, is by how it's so cold one can see their breath, and the accelerating thrum of the cargo elevator that awaits.

    Despite the utterly frigid welcome, as soon as people step out and multiple layers of reinforced doors seal behind them, interior comms crackle with the sound of an older man's voice; one that could be thought of as gentlemanly if it didn't sound so casually enthusiastic. "My apologies again for the state of our welcome wagon! We haven't set up a visitor's warpgate yet, so we're still restricted to the one we're currently guarding, come in, come in! Out of the cold!"

    The sight upwards is considerably friendlier. An adjoining ride to a personnel elevator through a glass tube shows the transition from dim vehicle bays, to what might be factory floors, to what looks to be some sort of massive, indoor apartment complex, and then finally people are left stepping out into somewhat spartan, but much more palatable arrangements.

    Despite a lot of it being faux veneers over more metal, they have white, interior walls, false hardwood and a real carpet over it, occasional benches, probably fake potted plants, even a vending machine. It looks almost like a hospital lobby, save a number of huge viewscreens overhead displaying some kind of map, a crapton of indecipherable numbers, and what looks like an airport flight schedule screen, except people's names.

    There is also a gargantuan twist of black cables as thick as fire hoses puncturing the roof and then down through the floor like an overgrown tree in one corner, affixed with a computer terminal of some sort that looks more like an armoured manhole cover with a big, glowy touch screen. Kutsuuko is standing by it, sipping the same gaudy pink can, and still looking like she doesn't actually enjoy it. She dumps it right away once people show up, giving a glimpse of the Fenrir logo printed on it, like it is on basically all mass produced things people use here, and a flavour called 'First Love Juice'? The heck does that taste like?

    "Excellent! The rest of my trainees are here!" She says 'trainee's with sarcastic, and yet unconcealed glee, even better the second time around. "If anyone asks, you went through every security station check. Got it?" She quickly glances up at the displayed map, making sure that the fourth squadron is out of the base for now. It's difficult to tell where the map is /of/, until one recognizes it as the coast of Japan, only shot through with hundreds of space-visible, perfectly circular holes.
Reinhardt Wilhelm     "HERE AND READY FOR DUTY." Reinhardt announces pretty promptly. He's about as subtle as a truck, as mentioned before. The towering knight is standing at attention, hammer in hand and helmet masking his voice. Popping his neck, the giant inspecting the gigantic map. There are a worrying amount of holes in Japan, Reinhardt notices.

    "It seems these creatures wasted little time in...well, what they do." He muses, trying not to seem insensitive to this world's plight. Reinhardt's beginning to understand a lot of what Kutsuuko says, now. "Nothing out of the regular routine occurred on my arrival." He nods grimly, before he pops his neck with a loud, satisfying pop. Oh god, the arthritis this guy must suffer has to be immense.

    "SO THEN, what are we killing here?"
Yuna Kagurazaka Yuna's already in her Light Suit when she emerges from the warpgate, followed closely by Elner, and less closely by Jiina, Marina, and Erina - all three of her 'doubles' in their armored forms. The artificial cavern around the warpgate is a surprise at first, but not so much of a surprise as the extreme chill - and Yuna is happy to hustle into the elevator. Hopefully having the whole group in one elevator will help warm everyone up a little faster than if they went up in two groups.

(Although if anyone has to stay behind, the androids will do so - and if it takes two trips *anyway*, Yuna lets others go ahead of her. She may be chilly, but it's not going to kill her.)

One elevator ride later, though, things are much more comfortable, and Yuna waves hello to Kutsuuko. "Every checkpoint, got it ... uh, what's the correct number for that, if anyone asks?" There's a faintly mischievous air to the grin which punctuates her question, and then she looks at Reinhardt, "The Aragami have been an issue for ... what, a couple dozen years?" she hazards a guess, glancing at Kutsuuko to confirm (or correct).
Nagato     Nagato's following along, the woman decked out in her rigging, blinded a bit by the light that suddenly turns on in the prefabricated warehouse like place. Nagato didn't like the area already, shaking her head from the light to clear her vision. Nagato gives a slight mmm as she watches the proceedings and the area's ... interesting decor. "Hmm." she mutters, her turrets at rest. Though, when Kutsuuko starts speaking, she gives a slight nod, "Understood." a woman of few words today, it seems. Though, the sight of Yuna and Reinhardt catch her eye... "Kagurazaka... Reinhardt. Good to meet you here, at least I know I'll have two people I can fully rely on."

    Nagato listens intently with Reinhardt's question and Yuna's response... "I've heard about them through radio interactions, but I'm not a hundred percent sure how everything works."
Mel Brock     A few things about Kutsuuko's world have filtered through the many chats on the broadband and certain other venues; enough for Mel Brock to know it's kind of a crapsack place to be, but humanity is at least getting by. She kind of feels for the people who live here, to be honest. So while part of her showing up is sheer curiosity, most of it is a matter of 'coming out to pitch in, even if it's just a little'.

    She's also the kind of person to be very aware of quarantine procedures, however. So rather than take the usual 'show up to a given world in the Chaser' option, she's parked it and come through the warpgate... only to immediately be hit by a wall of cold. Suddenly, the Marshal finds herself glad for the longcoat she habitually wears. The offer of 'getting out of the cold' is quite welcome.

    The much cozier upper floor is welcome, no matter how spartan it might be. And the amusing sights it offers are too good to pass up. "'First love juice'?" she says aloud. She's going to tease Kutsuuko about that without mercy. In more seriousness, she adds, "Don't worry about it, I know how to keep my trap shut. You might need a way to explain my, uh, 'God Arc', though." The marshal tilts her head slightly to glance over her shoulder at her blade. "Say hi, God Arc."
Heaven's Armory     Hravn is present on Mel's back, and able to communicate in perfect silence with her wielder. She cannot, however, communicate readily with anyone else, and this directive thus implies another. There's that little, quiet pushing-outward of air that Mel, at least, may have gotten used to, as the space the air had occupied is now taken up by a brunette in a flowing, yellow dress. She holds her arms crossed before her, and does as asked.
    "Hello! I am Hravn, a blade of Heaven's Armory." She doesn't visibly look around the place at this point, but she's noticing it all the same, with the senses of her true body. The same is the case for the others present.
Kutsuuko Shiratori     "Six." Kutsuuko answers, briefly sticking her tongue out at Yuna in a less mature fashion than her overall posture and voice would suggest. "About twenty four, so almost exactly a couple of dozen. They're an issue that we can only tentatively call 'under control' within the last couple however, after playing two decades of 'how many people will be left, if any, by the time we catch up'. Part of the reason you guys are here is seeing if we can get ahead a little. There's an entire Multiverse of things we haven't thrown at them."

    She waves enthusiastically with Reinhardt otherwise, smirking with faint amusement at his look at the map. That seems to get someone every time. "No kidding. They aren't the lazy kind. If you seem like you're kinda human, or built by a human, well . . ." Ony to choke with a half-laugh at Mel. "Oh right, you don't know the story behind that one huh? Let's just say it's godawful but it's kind of a tradition around here. Worst flavour they've ever come up with but it mysteriously keeps itself going." Though, she can't help but look a little surprised at Hravn. "Heaven's Armoury isn't a bad name for one, honestly. Little pretentious but, y'know. It's personal for everyone." Then, only a slow-spreading expression with too much tooth to really be called a smile towards Nagato. "You'll see~"

     Kutsuuko turns to the terminal in the corner, thumbs a large, circular slot affixed to both the cabling and the main terminal, looking like something a heavy charger with go into, and instead sticks her hand straight into it, up to the wrist. Some kind of machinery clamps down on her bracelet, which she then twists clockwise. The screen flashes a security clearance affirmation, and double doors at the end of a long, sterile hall open up. Kind of clever. The cables must mean the system doesn't have any wireless access at all, and if you have one of those and a matching profile, you aren't in any position to get up to funny business.
Kutsuuko Shiratori     The heavy set of doors part and allow the group into a rather spacious, and rather blank room, with very basic changes in elevation and small walls set all over it like an FPS arena map, and covered with scratches, scars, bullet holes and burns that have yet to be swapped out for new surfaces. The lighting switches on automatically, revealing an unoccupied observation deck, and a number of recording devices. "Live target, level one." Kutsuuko calmly announces to the room. A confirmation light acknowledges, and a slot in the floor extrudes some kind of computer tower-sized vial with metal caps banded in pulsing orange, with a spherical object suspended in some solution inside, matching frequency. The caps shut off and withdraw, the sphere goes down, and the next instant, the vial shatters into a million pieces, exploding from the inside as a torrent of black, viscous liquid spills from nowhere, spattering the floor in a wide, smoking circle. Another couple of seconds after, the smoke, and then the liquid, rises of its own volition; it seethes and hisses, exponentially multiplying in volume, and then a bipedal creature the size of half a tour bus climbs out of the pool as if it were a hole in the ground.

    The computer chimes "Development frozen at neotenal stage six. Combat allowance at level one." Yuna especially would recognize the silhouette as one of the hulking, stocky, raptor-like creatures she had fought before, with a third of its body being mostly an armoured, reverse saber-toothed mouth, and another third being a tail weapon etched like a gaudy oni mask. Rather than having a fully organic appearance though, it seems stuck in its weird, glossy, silver black stage, from its skin to its teeth to its now-featureless eyes.

    Nevertheless, it gives off the kind of rakish, throat tearing roar that seems like it might even be angry at Kutsuuko specifically, if it recognizes individuals. It accelerates from zero to 'oh god no' in two seconds flat and bears down on her much like the truck it is sized as. On muscle autopilot, the God Eater grabs it barehanded by the tusk and backhands it straight to the floor, manhandling it like she clearly has a hundred times before, given her immunity to touching Oracle Cells.

     "This guy is going to be your main training partner for today. His core is based off a mutant Ogretail we found a while back, but all this biomass is coming from an Oracle Cell waste recycling system isolated in this room, so don't worry about how bad you bust him up, 'kay? He'll put himself back together~" She then chucks the Ogretail a significant distance back, which bounces and rolls heavily over the floor, before righting itself with catlike agility, despite having no arms. It barrels back for the group at full tilt. "So try unloading on him to start with. Don't go crazy and blow each other up though. What you'd use in a normal combat situation."
Reinhardt Wilhelm     Reinhardt nods to the others present, inspecting Mel and Hravn curiously for a moment, before he gives Nagato a grin behind his helmet. "It will be good to see you in action at last, Admiral." He beams warmly, before he watches the doors open up.

    Suddenly it turns out they walked into THE DANGER ROOM, evidently. This is a simulator that even Winston would -yearn- to create, given how real it is. "Impressive..."

    He inspects Kutsuuko cold-cock the Aragami that is conjured into existence, reflexitively grabbing his hammer before it is taken out. "Just like that?" Shrug. Reinhardt will get first dibs, then! He lunges for the Aragami, his hammer hoisted up high, and issues a shouting charge as he takes a wide swing at the beast. "Raaaaaagh!"
Yuna Kagurazaka Yuna didn't recall the name off the top of her head, but she does recognize the silhouette as the Ogretail 'hatches' - or whatever you call it when an Aragami congeals from a mass of Oracle Cells - and the Matrix Divider is in her hands even before Kutsuuko intercepts the Ogretail and slams it to the floor; the blonde idol-turned-magical-paladin could almost swear she felt the impact more than she heard it.

The combat session officially begins, and Yuna is already shooting, taking slightly less than a second between shots and using that time to focus her energy into the next blast. She's probably not setting armor-penetration records with her blasts, but she's aiming to try and cripple the Ogretail - keep taking its legs out. At the same time, Yuna is evaluating what she knows about her teammates ... which is, in fact, not as much as she'd like. Reinhardt is clearly a melee specialist - and already demonstrating it; she ceases fire to make sure she won't hit the power-knight by accident - and she's not sure what Mel can do. On the other hand, Yuna knows full well what Nagato's specialty is - she's fought alongside the battleship girl often enough to see her cannons at work, after all.

If this were a real combat mission, Yuna would probably be trying to coordinate the team's efforts ... and ideally, the point of this is to simulate such a mission, right? "Mel, what do you have besides your sword?" she asks the lady sheriff. "And Reinhardt -" She has to raise her voice to ask, "What can *you* do outside of melee range?"

Besides, well, jumping *into* melee range.
Nagato     Nagato eyes that toothy smile from Kutsuuko, "Perhaps we'll see." the cannons upon her rigging load up with shells, armed and ready when the black liquid spills onto the floor and soon forms up into that creature. Nagato's eyes scowl as her eyes lay upon that beast... "Almost like an Abyssal." she whispers, looking towards the people that are with her now. Nagato's turrets aim towards the beast and the 'kathunk' of shells finally being loaded echoes through the chamber.

    Though when the beast is thrown back effortlessly by Kutsuuko... she takes a look towards her, "That's an interesting beast." she mentions, "Oracle Cells? Perhaps you have a report I can read later upon them so I can brush up my obviously lacking knowledge of them." she'll wait a bit at this time, watching everyone else. Nagato looks towards Reinhardt as he runs forward. Looks like she'll have some fun with this. "Cannons loaded, elevation five degrees. Ready... aim..."

    "Cover your ears. High explosive shells ready. FIRE!" she's gotten used to more agile people around her, as the eight cannons explode with a plume of smoke and a loud rapport echoes through the chamber. The high explosive shells, upon contact with surface or the Aragami, will explode into shrapnel and fire. "Reloading, type one armor peircing shells loading. Thirty seconds."
Mel Brock     Mel seems to consider Kutsuuko's naming advice briefly. "Hmm... I'd feel bad just using 'Heaven's Armory', there's three of 'em, with more to be found I understand." She turns to look at Hravn. "You don't have to stay materialized if you don't want, by the way. But how's 'Heaven's Raven' sound?" There, a proper God Arc name. As they move on, she regards the towering wall that is Reinhardt with a raised eyebrow. "...Boy, they don't make 'em small where you come from, do they? Mel Brock." She doesn't bother with anything more formal; they've heard each other on the radio already, after all.

    She watches the activation sequence with interest, but no particular comment, and then steps into the training room and immediately sidesteps a good couple of meters to the left, giving both the Aragami and her own group room. Kutsuuko's display of strength is impressive, to say the least. Mel whistles quietly, before holding out her right hand. "Alright, start like I usually would. Got it." Her coat shifts just slightly, and a sleek, high-tech looking pistol leaps from her shoulder holster into her hand; at the same time, she turns to Yuna and gives her a little smile. "I'm a cop. I've got a gun." She thumbs the selector up to maximum output, levels the weapon, and as soon as Reinhardt leaves her an opening the Marshal pulls the trigger. The sound it makes is best described as a sharp, 'FEWP' sound, somewhere between 'energy' and 'supersonic projectile'. It fires a packet of purple light, tightly-packed; telekinetic force, kinetic energy condensed and focused into a projectile that acts exactly like a bullet - except without any physical presence, and so without any drop-off or slowdown. Perfect accuracy and, at max settings, a /hell/ of an impact.

    Three shots are squeezed off in rapid succession.
Heaven's Armory     "Not a name of our own choosing, but the one that stuck," says Hravn to Kutsuuko, pleasantly. "Though I've never been called any sort of god, arc, nor eater." Mel suggests another name, and one brow rises. "Perhaps."
    Hravn's human form isn't going to stick around much longer, not because there's any discomfort in it, but because they are now moving into the training room. This looks dangerous, and it takes a lot of energy to recreate a body like that, if you lose it. Her disappearance is just the reverse of her sudden appearance, air closing back in over where she had been, while her true body faintly hums, the blade readying itself for a warm-up through some literal warming up.
    Though, if it's an enemy that can simply be thrown around, there might not be a need for her to be drawn.
Reinhardt Wilhelm     "REINHARDT WILHELM!" The giant calls in the middle of his charge. It pays to be polite when there are introductions, and Reinhardt is quick to give his name like it's going out of style.

    "It's mostly the armor, I assure you!" He jokes, laughing as he engages the Aragami.
Kutsuuko Shiratori     Kutsuuko takes a spot up at the corner of the room and leans on one of the most elevated blocks as if nothing taking place concerns her. She's logged countless hours in this room, and the rookie training Ogretail is such a fixture of it that she'd almost consider it a pet, did it not represent what she so vehemently and unswervingly hates.

    Despite the automatic ease with which the God Eater can anticipate its movements however, it is less trivial as a total unknown. It's barely gotten to its feet before Reinhardt is already on it, where it seems to deliberately turn its side to his hammer, and the Crusader feels roughly the same sensation as striking a ceiling mounted punching bag made of three inches of kevlar and filled with liquid lead. The thing flies off of its feet once more, taking a satisfying distance for how big it is, but it seems to instinctively know to present that angle to blunt attacks, as instead of having its entire flank gorily caved in, it staggers upright with what looks like a broken hip.

    Keeping it /at/ the range Reinhardt has tossed it seems to be an issue as well. Yuna and Mel begin firing on the thing in tandem, pelting it with fast, frequent, accurate shots from their respective energy weapons. The proxy Aragami rushes Reinhardt back down as if nothing had happened, and as it does, weaves back and forth to dodge as much of the gunfire as it can, and interposing the heavy, quasi-chitinous carapace helming its head where it can, to deliberately glance some of the bullets away. Despite that, a psi round catches it in the eye with a nasty blossom of blood and an infuriated roar, and two rounds from the Matrix Divider punch its legs out from under it. "Just like the last group~" Kutsuuko murmurs quietly.

    The thing writhes on the floor for several seconds while Nagato's shells load into their breeches, before very abruptly flipping itself upright on top of its ostensibly mangled legs, and leaping at its original target once again. It manages to clear Reinhardt's absurd eight foot height with ease, despite the amount of blood it splatters on him in the process, and effectively stands on his hammer like a falcon would perch on a branch, immediately attempting to savage his head with its massive jaws, detecting a vital point. As it does this, its tail swings over its head like a scorpion stinging at air, and buckshot scatters of arm-length bone javelins flash down on Mel and Yuna, impaling the floor all around them with frightening ease, and the two women about as easily, if they aren't quick.
Kutsuuko Shiratori     Anyone unlucky enough to get pegged with the teeth or the spines finds out why. Aside from the alarming physical forces involved, mere contact with their 'weaponized' edges finds that they burn like some impossible combination between a nanoswarm and fantasy acid, doing most of the damage in that way. In fact, even the Ogretail's drool seems to be bad for Reinhardt's armour, until Nagato fires the fragmentation shells and blows it clear off of him.

    The simulated Aragami lifts up, hangs for a second, and then thumps back to the floor with a wet smack and an explosive splatter of black ichor, rumbling and kicking weakly while its shredded body pours away its lifeblood. It very much looks like the group is done here, with their tough and brave little ugly mook being down for the count, until one sees the scattered gore starting to smoke again, followed by the creature's bleeding instantly stopping, and wounds pulsating, swelling, and then grotesquely splashing and rippling akin to a stone being tossed into a pool of shallow water. Its tissues are, very briefly, completely ruined and disassembled, and then immediately recompile into fresh, uninjured configurations, with skin becoming muscle, muscle becoming blood, blood becoming bone; it doesn't seem to matter.

    "So there you have the big problem. Aragami are, for the most part, are macro scale cell colonies. Even though they differentiate their cells into different tissues in function, they're all genetically the same and interchangeable, and intelligent at that. Our God Arcs use Oracle Cells in their construction to devour and reprocess Aragami biomass, so it can't adapt and regenerate, though of course this one regenerates faster than the ones you'll find out in the field, but even in our case, no Aragami will ever die until you extract or destroy its core; basically its brain. Remember that sphere in the tube? That's enmeshed deep inside that thing's body, macromanaging all the little thoughts the rest of the body is passing into it. This time, try aiming for the space inside its collarbone, through the neck. Knock its head up and take a shot down the throat, aim for the space under leg that intersects is ribs, or slip something behind its faceplate and before its shoulders. Also, don't get bitten." She advises helpfully. "Even as a training target, it can absolutely kill you."
Mel Brock     "Shit-!" Without even thinking about it, Mel snaps her free hand up, as if commanding the ground to rise. The space between her and the javelins seems to flicker briefly - and then when the projectiles reach that space, they're deflected upward, glancing off an invisible barrier of pure force angled to deflect them rather than directly stop them. The Marshal is rather smart about her barriers.

    And then it pulls itself together.

    Nagato is still reloading, and Kutsuuko is offering a lot of very complicated targeting advice, which, while helpful, is going to take a lot of practice to get down reliably. So Mel's response is to look at their 'trainer' and reply, "So what you're saying is, 'hit it really, really hard'."

    That is when Mel hits it really, really hard.

    Her SynapseDragon pistol leaps back into her coat, and with her right hand free, she holds it palm-out towards the Aragami, fingers spread. There is no warning, no leadup. Just a sudden, explosive *burst* of force, unleashed straight at the Ogretail. It's more of a test blast, but even a 'test blast' is still a full twenty metric tons of force, enough to splatter an ordinary person.

    At the same time, Mel reaches around behind herself with her left hand, carefully drawing Hravn. "Hope you're ready for the fun stuff, Hravn, we're gonna cover the boat and slap that thing around like an unruly perp."
Reinhardt Wilhelm     Reinhardt hobbles the beast, and the others do their part in putting it down. HOWEVER, this isn't over. Reinhardt finds out the hard way, as he gets a lot of burning, almost acidic blood all over him. That's not even the worst part.

    The worst part is flailing around weakly while the beast hops onto his hammer and bites down on his head. The armor might keep him safe momentarily, but it won't last for long with this creature's jaws. "AUGH! Get off of me!" He says, voice muffled while he tries to punch the creature in the face. This is definitely not going well for him, at least until Nagato's shells blow it right off of him. He pants hard, trying to fight through the pain inflicted upon him, and he gives a thumbs up to the Fleet Daughter Admiral when he can see straight again. "That was...not pleasant. I'd rather not have that happen again." He mutters.


Kutsuuko's advice does give him some semblance of an idea however, as the knight debates for a moment. "How likely could I wrestle its jaws open if I had the chance?" He wonders, before he charges again. This time Reinhardt swings his hammer at the Aragami's head and closing in with an attempted grappling hold, arms wrapped around the Aragami's neck.
Yuna Kagurazaka Fortunately, Yuna has a lot of practice at dodging - even when she's just in her basic Light Suit, without any of her alternative forms available: Jiina, Marina, and Erina stayed out of the training chamber, and Elner is hovering fairly close to the presumed safety of Kutsuuko's position. So when the Ogretail launches the barrage of javelins, Yuna lunges and dives, scrambling away from the Aragami's target zone and not worrying about getting back to her feet until after the shower of javelins has halted.

She does *NOT* want to find out how effectively her Light Suit could stop one of those things under a direct hit.

Mel's full-power TK blast goes off before Yuna can regain her feet, and by the time she's standing, Reinhardt is already trying to grapple the Ogretail. Yuna just winces, charging the Matrix Divider up for a blast of her own - the weapon's blade/barrel/general business end starting to glow, then to crackle with accumulated energy as she tries to remember where the core is in your typical Ogretail-type Aragami. "Watch your aim, Nagato, but try to keep it off-balance without hitting Reinhardt," she advises the battleship girl. (It's not an order; Nagato outranks her so she can't give Nagato 'orders'.)
Heaven's Armory     Hravn transmits a 'concerned' feeling to Mel at the incoming fire--she'd do something, but she can't. Without the wielder's will in it, her capabilities are strictly limited, so it comes down to Mel's own shielding effects. Being taken in hand doesn't gives fresher sensations, but not any more options of her own--it just makes it easier to synchronize, transmitting possibilities along that same channel. The targeting advice is now memorized, and Hravn gives Mel a sense of the start of each motion necessary to put it into practice, given her own physical ability.
Nagato     Nagato gives a brief nod, mentioning things upon the radio... listening to what is going on and how they work, Nagato's eyes go wide. "Don't let it near me. If it reaches my ammo casings, it'll cook them and I'll explode. We do not want that to happen." she comments, the idea about stagger fire, and then the avising. "Understood, Yuna." she thinks just a slight bit, radar pinging in her head. Don't hit Reinhardt... those AP Shells will hurt... and unbalance the Aragami.

    "Sequential fire. Fire one through four!" the twin barreled turrets twist a bit and aim. There's four loud bangs, three seconds apart as two shells per rapport, white shell spins in the air, aiming to crash around the aragami, to put it in a specific location so the rest are able to take it down. "Reloading, Type three anti aircraft shells. Area effect." she calls out over the radio after the rapport. "Thirty seconds."

    She uses the reloading time to move around, she gives a brief nod, planning her next strike. Out comes her double bladed axe. "I can enter melee in a moment!
Kutsuuko Shiratori     "Don't touch the jaws ever." Kutsuuko immediately shoots back at Reinhardt. "With an Aragami, you can expect the skin to act like skin, the hair to act like hair, and so forth, but when it comes to their mouths, or other devouring organs, every single cell in them is active and hungry. The entire mouth surface is a danger zone. Don't do it."

    The Ogretail proxy doesn't get a break. It gets less than halfway to throwing itself back into combat before Mel takes it head on like a freight train summoned by her mind. Its claws shred the floor as it digs them well in, only to be thrown away in an instant anyways, and crash against the back wall, though to the engineering team's kudos, it doesn't cave in around it. Before it can recover and fight back, it is pinned to its landing point by a quadruple barrage of shells, drowning it in spalling shrapnel and incendiaries that it intends to hunker down and weather through by exposing its armoured parts to them, and using the broad, armoured flat of its tail weapon as an umbrella over its more fleshy torso.

    Then Reinhardt rams right into it anyways, and has its thick, powerful '''''neck''''' clenched in its arms; a dangerous position considering its foul temperament, but he'll at least have a short while of being able to manhandle it with his power armour, bending its head back and exposing its chest cavity to the next round of shots.

    "I'd say this guy isn't worth the effort, but great teamwork~" Kutsuuko purrs. "This is /exactly/ the kind of thing I want to see when you start taking on large types. Hitting it hard isn't as important as hitting it accurately and in concert."
Reinhardt Wilhelm     "I'll take that under advis-NNNGH!-ement!" Reinhardt shouts after Kutsuuko. He grapples with the Aragami with crushing strength, his armor and GERMAN FORTITUDE helping him with holding the beast down. He hears Nagato about to get into melee, and he grins a little behind his mask. "I GOT IT!"

    He tries to twist the beast's neck as hard as possible, angling it in a way that Nagato will be wiiiiiide open to take it down with her axe, all the while attempting to keep its weak points exposed. "Hrrrrrgggghaaaagh!"

    Somewhere, years ago, Reinhardt did the exact same thing with Omnics back in the old days, his first real sortie involving him grappling them down for a lucky soldier to get in a critical shot with his RPG. Almost suicidal, but the Crusader suit was built for this sort of thing. "HIT IT NOW!" Reinhardt bellowed then, and here he does so now.
Mel Brock     "High precision isn't really my strong suit," Mel admits, already side-jogging her way over towards Nagato, where she can better cover the battleship woman until she puts that axe to use. "I'm much better at just hitting something like that until the 'weak point' is smashed along with the rest of it." She brings Hrafn around in a brief flourish, then adds, "...that was about a fifth of what I can do with my limiter still on. I'm really good at 'hit it until it stops moving."

    But enough bra- explanations. The Marshal finally deigns to put both hands on Hravn's grip, holding the sword in a practiced - if a bit unpolished - ready grip. She's waiting for any possible attacks from the Ogretail... but Reinhardt has it. And it's ready to take hits. "I've never tried this before, if I hit you instead, uh, I'm sorry-!" That last word takes a lot more stress onto it as Mel brings her blade up, and then /swings/ - and dips into the power of wind within it, to unleash a projectile that (despite her warnings) is actually fairly accurate.
Yuna Kagurazaka And that, thinks Yuna, is the shot she wanted.

There's a crackling, flaring surge from the Matrix Divider as Yuna pulls the trigger, and a focused, potent blast of concussive radiance erupts - not just from the Matrix Divider's tip but from the whole 'blade,' lancing through the air and tearing into the Ogretail's center of mass. If Yuna's recollection is accurate, *THAT* should punch through the core - the nexus of Oracle Cells which act as a hub for the rest of the Aragami's coalesced cells to organize around - and, if not obliterate it outright, at least throw it into enough disarray to keep the Aragami from recovering as quickly as it has been.

"Hey Kutsuuko?" Yuna calls out, not letting her guard down even though that was (she hopes) the equivalent of a kill shot. "Does Fenrir have a database of where different Aragami types hide their cores? Something that Elner could download and that we could all study up on?" She's not taking victory for granted yet; while she lets the Matrix Divider disappear, she appends another call: "Shugoseiheki!" In response, a kite shield materializes on her left arm, and - without such an invocation - a pistol forms in her right hand. Shield at the ready, she maneuvers to protect Nagato, ready to resume firing on the Ogretail - as well as to put herself in its way if necessary.
Heaven's Armory     The projectile Mel sends out, this time, has nothing to do with her TK powers. Its existence is directed by her will, but only as it flows through Hravn, and the blade does what she is made for. The manipulation of the air is pure magic, forming it into a solid mass that blurs the distinction between a whip and a sword as it cuts through from Mel's swing to the target at barely subsonic speed. Very little mass moves, but its potential damage isn't dependent on its force, but on its perfect sharpness, and the supernaturally controlled 'hardness' of the whip, as the magic forces the air to hold together like a solid--a very thin, long solid--even as it impacts.
Nagato     There's two people guarding her now. Her 'escort cruiser' Kagurazaka and now Mel Brock. With a nod she aims up once more. "Loading complete. Type three shells, aimed. Elevation thirty degrees, short timer. FIRE!" the shells arc out of her cannons in sequence once more, and at the top of the arc the shells explode in mid air, raining down magnesium and flak down, attempting to keep the aragami pinned to where it is so everyone else gets a good shot.

    "Alright, entering melee. Yuna, Mel, line abreast formation. Fire when you get the chance!" she grabs her axe in both hands and starts running, heavy footsteps hitting the ground as she takes off, "Graaaah, Like Destroyer Princess, you shall be sunk!" she shouts, "Reinhardt, I'm closing in! Duck!" as she gets close, she swings that axe horizontally, hoping that, indeed, Reinhardt ducks, bringing the blade hopefully against the Aragami! "Now SINK!" The blade is still just simple metal, even if it's something that Staren made her a long time ago.
Kutsuuko Shiratori     Even with the power armour assist, it seems the Aragami will tire of thrashing around long after Reinhardt tires of holding it, somehow; such a thing shouldn't really be possible outside of being an actual robot. Nevertheless, despite several futile attempts at chomping his arm, and several, somewhat less futile, attempts at hacking up his ankles with its oni-mask tail, Hravn's projection of wind hits the unprotected throat and splits it wide open, showering pressurized blood from the tension of its twisted neck; a very clear case for the dramatic difference in the right damage types being used in the right places.

    The gruesome injury exposes the dull, ruddy gold of the core pulsing beneath, connected to the surrounding tissues as if it were fused in a nexus of dense, fleshy cobwebs. Yuna has a direct shot, firing the Matrix Divider at full charge straight down its gullet. The beast instinctively protects its core, flipping the fearsome visage of its tail up as a shield, but the charged blast shatters the armour and blows the tail end clean off, and splashes against the core to leave a precarious spiderweb of fractures that instantly dulls its light. Nagato's axe, simple as it is, finishes the job as hitting a chisen into a block of fragile stone does, shattering the weakened organ, and immediately causing the Aragami to collapse, much like a puppet with cut strings, rather than exhibiting its previous vitality.

    Actually, /creepily/ like a puppet with cut strings.

    The remains only linger around for a few moments though, before its body begins to disintegrate, spreading into an almost microscopically thin puddle of black solute in such a way that it looks like the corpse is slowly tumbling into a hole, and then evaporating into inky smoke. "And there you have the second issue." The God Eater continues to explain. "Once you've broken the core's hold, the whole recognizes it's been cut off after a small timer, and disassembles. After a while, those Oracle Cells will find others, coalesce together, and form a new core, and a new Aragami. It's why a God Eater makes sure to devour as much of the body as they can."

    "On the plus side, that means it'll leave any inactive or inorganic materials that were in its body behind, so you can pick out valuable chemicals and metals that way; things only Aragami can process, as yet another advantage over us. Fenrir pays a ton for the core, a little bit for the cells, and a variable amount for materials; especially from the big ones. They're vitally important in upgrading and maintaining the Anti-Aragami Wall, God Arcs, our energy reserves, up to date Bias Factors, even machinery. I'll warn you though, in the stage where it disintegrates, every single cell is active again, and that means sticking your hands in them means you'll lose those hands, if not your life."
Mel Brock     Hravn will receive a thought that Mel would never dare voice aloud.

    'That... that was actually kinda cool.'

    She doesn't let her enthusiasm at her sword's newfound ranged technique show externally, though. She simply comes out of the swinging stance smoothly, as she's done a thousand times (quite literally, damn you, Reiji) during training, and gives the long blade a flourish before returning her to her sheath. "Cripes. And that was one of the /weak/ ones? In an extra-weak state?" Mel shakes her head, returning her hands to her pockets. "I run into one of those things in the field, I'm just gonna start hitting it as hard as I can." If a debilitated version of the lowest of the low can take a 20-ton hit and keep going, there's absolutely no reason for her to hold back out there.

    More importantly, though - one of them was in /melee/ with that thing. "Hey, Wilhelm. You alright, big guy?" He's brave and a hell of a fighter, she'll give him that. She'll also give him a concerned look-over, striding up to the towering knight to make sure he's not bleeding from anywhere under the armor.
Heaven's Armory     Hravn brings a light breeze to eddy around her. There's a certain feeling of satisfaction, to be in turn channeled to her wielder. This is, indeed, the sort of thing she was made to do.
    She could probably rematerialize at this point, but refrains. There's nothing in the room that would be both safe and interesting to poke at, and she keeps her silence more than her curious nature might suggest.
Reinhardt Wilhelm     Reinhardt does his best to hold down the beast, just in time for Nagato to give a warning over radio. He heeds it without missing a beat. "RIGHT!"

    He release the Aragami right before Nagato lands the final blow, avoiding her axe as he leaps away. He doesn't wanna get hit by blood splatter again, not when it actually burns THROUGH the armor after all.

    Then the beast dies, and Reinhardt gives a satisfied fist pump in satisfaction. "That's how it's done, right there!" he says with a laugh.

    Retrieving his hammer, the knight turns to Mel with a big grin as he removes his helmet, blind eye and scar not hiding his giddy demeanor one bit. "I've had worse, Officer Brock. I imagine this won't be anything the technicians and medics cannot treat." he says brightly, giving the Psi-Cop a pat on the shoulder. Despite his strength, he does pull his motions just in case. He knows from experience how easy it is to hurt people given how much of a titan of a man he is.

    He nods to Kutsuuko, suddenly turning grim for a moment. "THen in that case, we'd best prepare for the worst. I get the feeling we'll see for ourselves how dangerous the real threats out there can be soon enough."
Yuna Kagurazaka When Nagato calls for line-abreast formation, Yuna moves into place at Nagato's side, charging in next to her; the pistol is straightened out and a solid blade extends from what had been its muzzle, ready to be used in melee rather than shooting from a safe distance. But by the time Nagato swings her axe, there's no real need for Yuna to add her own melee attack - nor to interpose herself protectively in front of Nagato.: the Ogretail is 'dead' and breaking down.

Letting out a sigh of relief, or at least of relieved tension, Yuna permits her weapon and her shield to vanish again. "One of these days, we're going to run into an Aragami big enough that I really *do* need to summon El-Line," she remarks. "Everyone okay? Reinhardt? Nagato, Mel?"

And there's something Kutsuuko just said, combined with the way the Ogretail disintegrated, that makes Yuna start worrying all over again. "... hey, Kutsuuko? What media can Oracle Cells migrate through? Solid matter, liquid ... can they float through the air? Or through vacuum?" Her thoughts go back to the cold environment where the warpgate was, and she wonders if that was *natural* cold - or artificial. Extreme cold tends to impede most biological processes, and if Fenrir's resorting to refrigeration to try and keep Aragami away from a naturally-occuring warpgate ... just in case their fortifications AREN'T enough ...

You'd probably have to be watching Yuna very closely to notice her turning a shade or so paler.
Nagato     Nagato's axe strikes home and she holds herself still, almost as if she was in a skill stun. With the Training Aragami destroyed through the combined efforts here, she twirls the axe and sets it on a slot on her rigging. "Is everyone okay?" she moves to turn towards everyone, and gives a brief nod. "Well done, everyone." she compliments the entire group.. "I'm okay, no damage done towards me. Repair times will be nil." reassuring her escort cruiser.

    Nagato does turn towards Kutsuuko and gives a brief nod. "What special protections do you have for recovering the materials needed? For us without those protections, how are we going to assist outside of shelling and attacks?" a pause, "Though, the teamwork given here is quite nice, well done for everyone as well."
Mel Brock     "...You've got to be twice my age, holy crap," Mel remarks with both eyebrows arched up. Not one to mince words, is she? "I hope I'm /half/ that healthy when I'm that old." Reinhardt has just earned a fair measure more of respect out of her. And despite her slender figure, she's surprisingly solid - built like a special forces soldier, all wiry muscle. "Hell of a fight you gave that thing."

    Next she turns to Yuna, and adds, "I'm good. Didn't get through my barriers, never got close enough to take a swing."
Reinhardt Wilhelm     Those words lead Reinhardt to puff his chest up a little, chuckling heartily. "Hahaha! You are too kind, Officer." He says, before he rolls his shoulder. "I've been doing this since I was your age, if I were to guess. Possibly longer, I joined when I was nearly twenty." He shrugs that shoulder, wincing. Yeah, it's gonna be sore in the morning.

    Nagato also gets a bright thumbs up, "You fought excellently, Nagato. You should've said something about that axe before, you're probably going to give me a run for my money considering my age." Reinhardt teases, of course, but he definitely is pretty impressed. The Admiral's full of surprises, isn't she?
Kutsuuko Shiratori     "I wouldn't necessarily straight up call Ogretails 'weak'." Kutsuuko says with an absent wave of her hand as the room's Oracle Circuits start to drain off and repackage the scattered and evaporated biomass. "But they're within the class of Aragami that have to move and work in packs to be really threatening, and about as small as you'll see these days; they're mostly scavengers so consider them near the bottom of the food chain. They still evolved pretty damn well to soak up arms fire from regular old humans, and exploited that to charge down firing lines of old armies, run the soldiers and vehicles down and eat them."

    "Basically, you're operating without two decades of 'fuck Aragami' science to help you out. Our God Arcs are a huge leg up, but even with God Eaters, Fenrir prefers to deploy us in teams, and our God Arcs are built with common functionality for group synergy. While I have no doubt in your ass-kicking abilities, your gear isn't standardized or specialized for this, so you'll need to rely on preparation, coordination and teamwork even more than us. Thankfully, we have intel and equipment we can set you up with that should make fighting them easier than this little trial and error learning experience you had here, so don't sweat /too/ hard."

    Finally, she moves from that damn spot, shrugging as she walks. "Everyone's first time is rough. Aragami have a lot of unusual things to them that makes the learning curve really steep, and the newbie attrition very high, so we want veterans who've seen enough action to adapt to it before they get killed. In summary, try not to underestimate yourself, but take the threat seriously. I don't expect to see you turning tail and running from a pack of these things in the future, but don't expect we'd call Elites in for a job just one of them could safely take."

    "And to answer your questions though: why /yes/ we do happen to keep a tactical archive of this stuff. I'd be really, really happy if you read it. If I see someone taking a flamethrower to fight Aragami that evolved to eat molten lava, there are going to be words. For what they can migrate through, pretty much anything? The only thing they'll avoid are correctly tuned Bias Fields, and they definitely prefer to cluster together more than anything, but we've seen them have no trouble in space. And on the subject of recovery equipment, it's gear that gets the same kind of treatment we use for engineering back at the base, just 'light' enough to be portable. Barely. Mind you, Fenrir would much rather send God Eaters on a hunt or retrieval mission; whatever you recover is a bonus. You'll be getting called in for targets of opportunity, high risk/reward scenarios, and emergencies. All you need to do is focus on eliminating the target, got it?"
Mel Brock     "Intel's about the best thing you can hand us," Mel replies to Kutsuuko with a nod. "I might not be specialized, but thanks to my old buddy Isaac Newton, my psionics are pretty adaptable as far as a straight fight goes. Long as I know what I'm dealing with, I can come up with something." If it comes down to it, she can bring down the ruins of a building on something particularly beefy. But she's /definitely/ not gonna say that out loud.

    With her hands in her pockets, the cop finally goes walking back over towards Kutsuuko, adopting a more conversational distance. "You'll have to forward the data to my net address, I can go over it while I've got downtime on the Firestarter. I can spend up to a week or more in transit sometimes, so I've got plenty of time to go over it all." She pauses, then adds, "Come to think of it, I've got an experiment we can try some time, too. See if my telekinesis can hold up un-linked Oracle Cells, or anything like that. If that's the case I'd be able to transport the stuff safely. Maybe not now, but it's worth a try."
Yuna Kagurazaka "Got it," Yuna agrees with a nod to Kutsuuko. Being called in for specialty missions seems about right to her - but more importantly, the tactical archive. Yuna's likely to leave most of that to Elner, but she *does* want to study up on it; it can't be much worse than reading up on the known types of Grimm that haunt the wilderness of Remnant, can it?

(.... actually, yes it can, but she'll find THAT out the hard way.)

"So what do you need to generate Bias Fields?" she wonders further. "If that's something that non-Fenrir equipment could generate, we might want to distribute that data to the factions so we can help prevent Aragami from spreading, or to help fortify positions here ...."

Which is roughly where a singularly horrifying thought pops up in the back of Yuna's mind, only to be squelched without getting as far as being voiced, even privately. She looks at Mel instead, "Can you restrain things you can't even see?"
Nagato     "The fleet will be accepting of the information here to help forumlate battle stratgies in case we're needed to assist. We are better out on the long range in the ocean, however, most of us will be god at what you saw earlier." she gives a brief nod, listening even more, "If our focus is elimination, with the specialists cleaning up the mess, then it should not be too much of an issue then." she nods. "I believe we will be well equipped to handle things."