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Starbound Flotilla     This game zone for IFO, Interstellar Frontiers Online, appears to be a tremendous, shattered-open planetoid instead of an island in VRMMO Earth. The fractured planetoid drifts far above Earth, something like two thirds of the moon's size at least, and it glitters with a startling array of lights that indicate spots of activity, habitation, or perhaps even space colonization. Segments of the tremendous planetoid seem to offer strange mineral themes, conspicuous organic growth, or even obvious technological artificiality, depending on the nature of the individual fracture.

    Today's site of interest is far within the field of Altair V, near the center, where fragments of all sizes grow more densely placed and more dense in composition, where astroids are formed more and more out of rich mantle than out of crust, and where far more reinforced xenofauna, pirate bays, Von-Neumann fiefdoms, and FSC facilities can be found. Here's where one of the main Starbound ships have settled in, and where, after the brainstorming with the various parts of this strange effort, they've sequence-broke one of the last legs of this quest and come to the conclusion that there's an FSC facility containing the Alpha Agent, a valuable chemical payload they could use to find a weapon that will kill the Neurocores for good.

    The station itself is easily recognized. While infested, it's possible to see the aesthetic influences of googie architecture and flying saucers, with its atomic-age parabolas and boomerang shapes. It also bristles with an astounding amount of shiny raygun turrets, with heavy infestation along their length. These awful machines fire a mix of raygun shots and Neurovore chemical attacks at the deployment ship as it heads in, and those aboard may want to man weapons and keep the ship flying! Those who choose to fly in with their own crafts should likely do the same, to secure the path inside.

    The interior is just as ATOMIC AGE, but this one's badly infested. Rubbery biomass is jammed around tesla coils and the arcing beams, and there's a number of Neurovore Packmates here.

    The Starbound Flotilla have furnished the group with instances of three different devices: One is the NEUROCORE EXTRACTOR, which allows them to gain massively boosted drop rates on a consumable that will boost their own Infestation Index significantly; one is the TRANSLATOR MODULE, which will attempt to descramble Neurovore-mutated voices, but cannot translate back to mutated speech. The third is NEUROCLEANSE, which are fairly cheap consumables, small spray cans, used to clear out one's own Infestation Index.

    Get inside. Find the Alpha Agent. Figure out how to deal with Bennings. And figure out how the Infestation Index might be abused to deal with this whole situation.
Corona Arclite While the ship is making it's approach Corona climbs up into the cockpit of her loader, and once all the safety measure are secured in place revs the machine up. "Stampede's warmin' up and ready to live up to the name. Ya better get into position too, Hopalong." The clockpunk jackalope emits a mechanical click-buzzing noise as it climbs up onto the loader's shoulder.
Iria Hyper Blade approaches with Iria at the controls. She's got a determined look on her face, even if she's scowling. That's just her normal expression is all.

"This stuff sure challenges me," Iria comments. "But it doesn't match the thrill of hunting a bounty." She smirks a little before frowning again. "Nevertheless, there's a job to do here, and we're gonna take care of it!"
Septette Arcubielle      The DRIVE ME CLOSER whirls and careens unpredictably through the space between Altair V's chunks, almost effortlessly dodging incoming fire itself- but it can only draw so much attention, and lacking weapons, can't help to shoot down the wall of projectiles that come the main Flotilla ship's way! Just when it seems as though the dart-like fighter will make it through unscathed at the larger vessel's expense, it takes a sharp turn into deliberately intercepting a heavy raygun shot on its own hull in the deployment ship's place, exploding into a dramatic fireball just as it skids into the hangar as its fragile hull is ripped apart by the station's weapons.

     Septette ejects from the pilot's seat hard enough to land on the hangar's ceiling in a three-point stance, gouging sparking furrows into the plating's metal with her claws before bleeding enough momentum to remember that she can fall. Somewhere below, one of the neurovore packmates starts to approach her ruined ship's burning wreckage.

     She lands on the monster with both feet, two thousand pounds of mass squishing the monster in a spray of alien protoplasm as if it were a jelly donut. An instant later, she straightens up, unfolds both of her arm-blades, and roars a challenge to the packmates that remain in the hangar- a clear invitation for allies to join the fray!
Yuuki Konno     Squealing in glee, Yuuki continues to broaden her horizons. She's not really all that good at shooting things, but her reaction speed kind of makes up for that. Manning one of the deployment ship's turrets, her gunfire arcs out and about, spraying space quite thoroughly. She's not terribly effective at aiming and shooting enemy turrets. She's not BAD at the task, but someone with more experience gunning is going to be a lot better and probably able to destroy turrets before she can bring guns accurately to bear.

    Where she shines though is defensive fire. Targeting blasts of chemical shots, she picks the fast-moving things off as best she can, using her ludicrous reflexes to get the timing right, and pull off a trick ordinary people could only dream of.

    Once the group docks though, she's quick enough to shift gears back to her more normal mode: on foot. She's not terrible with ship-based guns. She's a gamer after all, and not all of it is about swords. Still, she really excels only at close-range combat. That and speed! She dives for the airlock and out into the hangar, sword at the ready, and immediately plunging in to attack Packmates. "Don't worry, I'll save you!" she shouts out in a ridiculously-overblown and dramatic manner, apparently riding an adrenaline surge AND a gigglefit more or less at the same time.
Silica     Silica's here, flying escort. While Septette's craft is built as a glorified Breaching Pod, the Swordfish-1 recently renamed to Leonaidas, is a more rounded machine. She opens fire on the cannon batteries, clearing a safe 'corridor' for the deployment ship to fly through. She's toting a plasma lobber, and a railcannon on her wing pods, using the latter to snipe out weakpoints on the cannons to cut their power supply. Even the infestation should have a tough time using a turret that's jammed on its bearings.

    Once she's got the flight corridor safe, she peels away and starts to dance with the turrets, weaving through their firing arcs in such a way as to try and make them shoot each other... though failing that, she's still firing with the plasma and railcannon.
Tomoe IFO here we go again for the Iron Lily aka Tomoe was ready to go again there was a new site to check out ans she was ready rather than bringing her fighter for this operation was her frame. She wanted to be better ale to board if it's needed. Which it will likely be so.

"Well now this is going to be a challenge isn't it?"
Starbound Flotilla     With Yuuki handling defensive fire against incoming shots using her powerful reflexes and targeting the closer threats, and Silica handling offensive fire against the turrets, it's easy to smash through and into the hangar of the FSC facility. Silica's and Yuuki's tactics are effective, stripping the turrets away from the exterior section, and honestly they're probably more effective than alternatives. The hit points on display here are dangerous; as a raid zone, everything seems to be a bullet sponge requiring a dedicated, brutal beating to get it dead instead of stunned. It isn't that it's impossibly challenging, per se, but it's sure as hell a gauntlet that requires very dedicated effort and care.

    This stays true inside. Starting at the hangar and branching out ina wide array, the interior is a stylish web of rooms and chambers. Interlocking systems of concentric rings present a system of raid-level challenges, ranging from short timed gauntlets in broken security systems, to miniboss fights against the massive Neurovore Hunters, those huge crawling foes, all interspersed with the small, canine, tentacle-headed Neurovore Packmates, and the little rubbery goopish Neurovore Cells for support, as well as infested Neurovore Warriors taking the form of dead astronaut workers whose helmet interiors are replaced with Neurovore Cells, all of which wield a range of melee and ranged weapons. The whole group may need to work together to solve each concentric ring of defenses as they go.

    But, each ring is locked from the others by some sort of huge Neurovore biomass, which the Neurovores themselves seem to have no trouble bypassing. Perhaps the infiltration idea might work? It starts when Septette lands on one of those Packmates: Since she has a Neurocore Extractor, the item drops at the end of the battle include something unusual. As each combatant kills their way through the gauntlet, the enemies will drop NEUROVORE CORES, godawful spherical organ chunks that they can consume to increase their INFESTATION INDEX. Is there potentially a way to exploit this? They'll have to figure it out among themselves as they run through the challenges of this area.
Corona Arclite "Yep, this is gonna be one big ol' mess, ain't it..." Corona murmurs a bit as the Stampede tromps out of the Flotilla ship after it's in the hanger. "First we gotta clear out some room." She shifts the controls, and the loader lifts its space-shotgun arm to open fire with it's scatterblast fire as soon as she's got eyes on Neurovores. "Light em up!"

The shout being to her 'pet' sitting on the shoulder. Hopalong kicks a backleg a few times, which sounds much like someone trying to rev up a bike motor. Which might not be far off the way sparks start to crackle and arc between the prongs of the mecha-jackalope's antlers, and then send a chain of electricty bolting at the aliens.

The more of them they kill now the more of the plot device they drop, right? Right.
Yuuki Konno     Yuuki's used to fighting Raid-level enemies, having spent a lot of time in Aincrad trying to use six people to kill bosses designed for nearly fifty. The difficulty here is roughly the same, though of course her current companions are easily the match of her Sleeping Knights. You need to be somewhat more alert and defensive with foes of this level, but Yuuki's offense and defense are up to the challenge. She carves into Packmates with wild abandon, cheerfully trading blows and worrying not at all about her infection index. That's surely going up quickly given her close proximity to so many of the Neurovores... but then, that's the goal right? Get infected, pass the bio-locks, then ... do something. She's not sure what. Maybe keep right on going through the facility hunting down the Alpha Agent, and maybe cleansing the infection so they can return to a more human type of interaction for a time.

    She pauses though, looking down at the item it drops on death. A Neurovore Core that is.... ew. It's consumable. Ewwwwwww. She's grossed out so much that she ends up taking a hit from a Packmate before she realizes it and swings back into action.

    Do we really have to EAT one of those things?" she asks in dismay, gagging at the thought. Then she shrugs. In a momentary break in battle she scoops up the 'prize' and chokes it down. She'll try anything at least once it seems! Go go infection! Go go gag reflex!
Septette Arcubielle      "Thank goodness you're here," Septette replies in equally-overblown fashion, covering her mouth with one hand to hide a grin even as she skewers another packmate with her other arm. Once she gets into the flow of things, her accumulated observations and experience with the more common types of neurovores shines through: wherever the packmates lunge, she's already fading back to ruthlessly exploit the opening; where they hesitate instead, she instantly presses the attack with whickering blades that rip through flesh and bone. When they've lost the ability to surprise her, they've very nearly lost the ability to touch her at all.

     The Hunters and Warriors pose a more substantial challenge, not merely because they're stronger, but because they're still unfamiliar: her analytical predictions have yet to dissect their 'patterns' completely, forcing her into a cagier, less-efficient style. Despite her preternatural resilience, Septette is still taking pains to minimize damage taken, even occasionally taking cover against the gun-toting Warriors! With little idea of how long this gauntlet could go on, she's very carefully shepherding her resources, in stark contrast to Yuuki's more cavalier approach. She's used to long slogs through hostile territory without any healing at all, and it shows in the precautions she takes.

     Her Infection Index rises swiftly as a result of her strictly-frontline fighting style, but even she recoils a bit when Yuuki tries munching on one of the Neurovore Cores! "Ech... I'm not cleaning up after you if you get sick from that stuff," the little robot teases. "I'm gonna keep my levels as low as I can while still making it through those gates. Lower infection index seems to mean they'll prioritize you as a target- awfully convenient for tanks."
Tomoe Tomoe gets ready with her own Loader now as they make their way into the hanger, she will jump into action. The energy spear come to life an she will be moving to jump into the enemy ranks even as the Neurovores are making to right. She also can't stand the tentacles and thus out goes her taunts and she moves to make use of her spear to cut into the enemy ranks as shes' going to wade right into the enemy hopefully drawing fire, so her allies can pick them off.

She would be ready to cut into them and leave the thinking to the others today but she does keep an eye on things.

She's also noticing the stronger strains too this is going to be an interesting fight.
Starbound Flotilla     Well, technically you don't have to eat the little berry-like constructs. Squeezing them enough that they burst in one's hands would release just as many infectious agents directly into the skin. But eating them /does/ work. And it... Doesn't taste bad. Rather, it tastes godawful at the start, and then very, very swiftly begins to taste extremely good. It goes from a bitter, acidic, chemical taste at first, and turns quickly towards a sweet taste that's like several parts of a delicious fruit juice came together.

    Yuuki is the first to demonstrate precisely what this does. While she, herself, does not see herself changing, she does quickly take on several unusual aspects in her shape as she does, and the others can certainly see it. It's emphasizing her agility and her reflexes; her posture will shift imperceptibly down, a little bit of strange mutation shifts through her jaw, and spiky protrusions along her body form dangerous angles. As Yuuki hits something like three or four units on the INFESTATION INDEX, her INFESTARCHETYPE is revealed: The SWIFT XENOMORPH, granting her increased agility and small-space dexterity, allowing her to maneuver around strange hidden passageways!

    If Septette allows her own Infestation Index to continue rising, she'll experience something similar, but quite visually different. Where Yuuki experienced a boost in agility and mobility, Septette's own boost is in resilience and durability. The growths of infested biomass trying to meet her body take the shape of the classic practical-effects alien biomass, looking far more like the mass of The Blob, providing layers of reactive bio-armor alongside hosting strange growths that build elemental charge. It's a boost to tanking and short range abilities! Once she reaches past three units on her INFESTATION INDEX, her INFESTARCHETYPE is revealed: The METEOR CREATURE!

    Their dialogue will require the translation modules the Flotilla have helpfully provided, but what they perceive will become warped in ways that are much harder to predict. As their infestation index grows higher, the infestation of godawful biomass in the FSC facility here seems to disappear... But ONLY in their perception. The facility's own construction seems to change, in fact; where the facility once looked like the works of Matt Jeffries or Robert McCall, now it's taking on many aesthetics of Ralph McQuarrie and even Syd Mead, shifting towards a modernized science fiction that emphasizes functional hard lines where the biomass once was. The Neurovore infestation seems to perceive itself as incredibly /useful/ and even utilitarian in some fundamental way. Even the biolocks become perceived as simple high-security doors that the newly infested individuals could operate with the push of a button, though if they were to push it, the un-infested individuals would see it far more disturbingly as some awful interaction between a massive nerve-tissue growth forming at their hand.

    God this place is a creepy as hell nightmare.
Yuna Kagurazaka It's been an inordinately busy weekend for the idol-turned-protector; she's still looking a little weary as she joins the group on their way into the station. She's outfitted in her Light Suit (as usual for these missions) and has the full Matrix of Light with her (also as tends to be usual); at the moment, the blonde girl has the Matrix Divider in hand and is blasting Neurovores which get too close or are charging too aggressively.

She'd be happy to just go full-out and blast ALL of the Neurovore, but number one, her allies need some, and number two, too much aggro may put a dent in the whole 'get infested, let the Neurovore perceive you as one of them' deal which is the *reason* why Yuuki and Septette are using the cores on themselves.

She'd probably be happier back in the recording studio, all things considered - but she DID promise to help out, and she intensely dislikes leaving her friends hanging.
Iria Whether it's the real world or the virtual world, the thrill of the hunt is the main thing that Iria lives for. Whether she's hunting down someone (or something) for a real life client, or she's taking in the enjoyment of a game like this, the adrenaline always gets flowing easily for Iria.

Neurovores are strange beings, but they provide a unique challenge for the brunette teenaged huntress. She has learned to adapt to this unique creature while finding new strategies in dealing with them in any way she can.

Just like Yuna, she's not about to blast them all either. Everyone deserves a fair shot at them, and Iria's willing to oblige. After all, it's not like bounty hunting where it's every hunter (or huntress) for themselves.

Iria looks around with narrowed eyes and a notable scowl. "I wonder what they've got in store for us today?" She hmmphs. "Whatever it is, it ain't gonna get the best of us!"
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite peers out of the Stampede loader's cockpit as a couple of people chomp down on the alien items, and if her fur wasn't already a pale tan it would probably be even more pale. "Now Ah've eatin' a lotta shit thin's in muh time to survive, but that's just sick an' wrong..." She shudders a bit as she settles back into her seat. "No offense guys--"

The loader pauses and swings it's arm to the side to blast a charging Neurovore with the high impact pistol arm without actually turning to look.

"--But Ah'm gonna stick to just shootin' the space varmits."

Idly a hand reachs down to make sure the special gun she put together is at her hip, just in case. This may be the only way for some people to find the Alpha Agent, but her paranoia is running high now and she's ready in case someone corrupts a little too far....
Yuuki Konno     Unfortunately Yuuki doesn't actually know that she can 'use' the infectious inventory item. She's used to games which are extremely hands-on and also have foods that people often eat to the point of neglecting food IRL. Not that she expects this horrible-looking thing to taste good, but then that's another of her minor shortcomings. She won't back away from a challenge just because it *might* be horrible. New experiences are always welcome even if they're kind of gross; witness her rather notorious affection for the insect MMO.

    She bites in, and immediately winces in distaste. Bitter, acidic, chewy and just totally unpleasant. She gags. "This is terrible!" she exclaims before continuing. Strangely there's a pleased look on her face. As terrible as it is, it's unique and not unbearably horrible.

    She doesn't notice her own change, of course. But as she changes, so too does the taste of her 'food'. <Actually this isn't that bad.> she says, though by this point anyone uninfected probably can't understand her without a translator module. For that matter they might not even recognize her, though the deep dark shades of her xenomorph form are at least somewhat reminiscent of her normal colour scheme. Besides it's not like she's appearing out of nowhere, and it's likely anyone present would be watching her shift forms in fascination. By the time she's formed predatory bite-extender jaws, she's devouring the organ fully, like it was the best meal she'd had in ages...
Starbound Flotilla     Corona and Tomoe are pretty useful here. Tomoe's co-tanking with Septette is going to be crucial in the gauntlet for Septette to amp up her own Infestation Index with selectively optimized exposure. And Corona's handling of scatterblast fire from her hulking Loader means she can give them a huge amount of stunning damage, though unconcentrated fire tends to require huge bulletsponging. Iria's logical coordination with the others and leaving each their own target turns out to be both sensible and necessary; in these gauntlets of progression, she'll find that the absurd amounts of hitpoints that these creatures take are the sorts of things that require focused fire.

    To refresh those just joining us, this raid zone is an atom-age industrial facility, badly infested with Neurovore mass! The concentric rings of gauntlets, each of which require running the whole length of the ring to open the gates to the next one, are found to have a certain bypass; by allowing oneself to become temporarily infected like Yuna suggested, as Yuuki has chosen to do and like Septette may be choosing to experiment with, the biomass-locked gates can be forcibly opened.

    The foes within are dangerous Neurovore Packmates, those awful canine tentacle-headed shredders; subversive Neurovore Cells, support units that revive fallen enemies and enhance their mobility; and Neurovore Warriors, revived human corpses using ranged and melee attacks, with Cells filling their astronaut helmets, leaving the devoured skulls floating within. Also throughout it are the sheer variety of challenges, ranging from platforming efforts, to short races against brutal security systems, to turret-management nightmares, to simple miniboss battles against huge crawling many-legged insectoid infested xenofauna. Just getting through the first ring is tough stuff! This is content meant for a guild's raiding efforts, and full economic motion, but if those here are cautious and determined, they'll be able to still push through.
Kirito On-foot action? Count Kirito in. He's quietly keeping pace with Tomoe, eying his own Neurovore-related items with an amount of hesitation and disgust mixed with mounting curiosity...

    But this is needed. They have a Player who needs help and only going Infestation can they possibly communicate with him.

    So Kirito 'uses' the infection item, thinking it dubious to pop such a thing into his mouth. Which is odd, since anything that looks REMOTELY like food he's keen on nomming on. But not this weird alien stuff!

    Maybe if it was alien meat, sure... but alien neuroblob? Not so much.

    *POP!*
Septette Arcubielle      Already adept at using her body as a weapon, Septette gains confidence in employing her new mutations remarkably quickly. Her Infestation Index builds to around 3.5 bars, and her appearance shifts from 'skelebot' to 'skelebot with alien flesh twined around it', filling out into a silhouette that ironically manages to look more human as her ribcage tops off with bizarre organs. "I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be more 'complete'," she says cheerfully as electrified fleshy tendrils whip out of her arm and fry a packmate, "though I'm not sure I'd stick with this method. It probably wouldn't work nearly as well outside of IFO, anyway."

     The little robot isn't taking the mutations quite as far as Yuuki has, just yet, dosing herself back whenever her melee frontlining bumps her closer to filling a fourth bar. She's accumulating the Neurovore Cores as she swaps back and forth across infection states, trying to find the optimal balance of aggro-drawing purity and corrupted durability for her role as party tank. Her voice would likely remain somewhat comprehensible to anyone not using the Neurovore-parser so far, but buzzing, thrumming, uncomfortable.

     When they clear out enough mobs and sweep enough rooms to reach the first of the heavy meat-gates, her face wrinkles up in a kind of uncomfortable grimace, like she's not a hundred percent clear what to do with it. She extends one hand to its surface uncertainly, but doesn't seem sure how to interact with it- if she even can. To the rest of the party, it'd seem like a sensible (albeit uncommonly cavalier) response to the fleshy structure- but to Yuuki, her corrupted comrade would seem strangely oblivious. Blind, almost.
Tomoe Given how these games are made off the use of certain story tropes from her home world. She has been doing her damnest to avoid infestation hence the use of her loader here to do her tanking. She's glad Sepette is here to also tank. Given how many hostiles are this is not a one tank job though her concern about the mechanics that Sepette is attempting to make use o does worry her. Right now she and Corona and her have to worry about other things. She'll just have to trust in Septette's experience in dealing with horrible things like this.

"Corona got any extra tricks you haven't shown the infested before?"

She meanwhile is starting to spin her Power Loader and start to make like a small tornado as she attempts to damage and hopefully enough to stun or break any cast bars the near by enemies have.

<<I'll try to keep them tied up but I could really use some aoe burst DPS right now!>>

Also to her horror she catches sight of Yuuki's transformation into something right out of a famous and ground breaking sci fi horror movie from the 1970s. This day just keeps getting more and more complicated. She however keeps fighting along side Corona and hopes her Loader doesn't suffer a failure where she's forced to get out. She doesn't want to think about how she might end up infected.
Yuna Kagurazaka "Really not liking this," Yuna mutters as she lets up on her firepower for a moment - just double-checking where her allies are, where the enemies are, and how the numbers are stacking up. One good look at the Neurovore Warriors ...

Is one good look too many, apparently; she blanches, builds up as massive a charge in the Matrix Divider as she can in a hurry, and just tries to blow the nearest Neurovore-packed spacesuited corpse back into voxels and light effects. To her credit, SOMEHOW she didn't just start screaming her lungs out.

Then again, she must have figured on needing that lungful of air for something - because the noise from her last attack has barely *started* subsiding when Yuna calls out, "Jiina, gonna need Powered Form! Erina, Marina, cover fire and then stick close to support!"

The three armored androids respond immediately; Erina (with her purple markings) and Marina (reddish-orange) zip forward on either side of Yuna, levelling their weapons and beginning to pick up the slack created by Yuna's momentary withdrawal from the firing line; between Erina's pulse blasters and Marina's mini-torpedo launchers, the Neurovore are unlikely to make any headway. Meanwhile, Jiina's green-and-white shape goes translucent and phases around Yuna's figure, then vanishes entirely with a large wireframe forming around the blonde Savior of Light. That effect is followed by pieces of a large exoskeletal battlesuit materializing, seemingly out of nowhere, and beginning to attach to the Light Suit, interlocking with other pieces as they manifest. Within seconds, Yuna's switch to Powered Form is complete, and the Matrix Divider reappears in her hands ... well, two of her hands - the two which are still Yuna's; that leaves two massive powered manipulator arms, one of which is swiftly ocupied by her kite shield, Shugoseiheki, as Yuna calls for it to materialize.

Even in her heavy armor, Yuna is still trying not to look *too* directly at Yuuki or Septette, or anyone else who's willingly subjecting themselves to 'infestation' effects. Fortunately, she shouldn't *have* to ...
Iria Iria takes a moment to reload, ignoring Yuuki and Septette as well. Getting infested intentionally may be a good strategy for them, but the thought makes Iria want to gag. Sometimes, there are times where going to extremes can be helpful, but sometimes it doesn't always work the way it's meant to. Even if there are benefits with it, Iria's not going to take that chance.

"Gotta deal with these things!" Iria exclaims as she continues firing. "We'll get 'em!"
Starbound Flotilla     Kirito, or at least those around Kirito, discover his INFESTARCHETYPE, which appears to be based on even older classics than some of those others! Those horrifying, violent insects from classics like THEM! or The Fly show off a little here, as "stingers" grow to slip around his blades and endow them with a harsh razor edge, and his own body bristles with harsh edges, exoskeletal growths, and reflex-enhancing antenna and multifaceted eye structures. Oddly, the changes, like Septette's and Yuuki's, still leave him looking mostly human, and he doesn't fall into the uncanny valley... Unless he was already there, like Septette was. He's acquired the SOLDIER ANT Infestarchetype!

    Progressing through the next areas is going to take effort, though. First, Septette and Yuuki have to get that door open. Septette will be able to learn how to do this after Yuuki shows her, a sort of... Horrifying gesture that causes the growths of weird nerve tendrils that link with the biomass. Uuuuugh gross gross gross. Getting to the next gate itself means going around a bit of that ring, but Septette is right here, by taking on infestation into herself, she doesn't draw the aggression of them... At least, not actively. If she attacks, they respond. If she shouts them away, Taunting the way Tomoe often does, she they attack. But at level three, they don't attack unless she gets close and stays close. And to those infested besides her, they seem... More natural. Like real animals. Like normal animals. The Packmates look sort of like actual dogs, at level three, albeit potentially hostile wolves.

    Yuuki and Kirito will both find, though, that their allies look very much like the infested does in reality. Which is to say, a variety of strange and mildly terrifying mutations. Aside from those already infected -- who look normal -- the others have a collection of mutations in their body that look just as unnerving as the infected do. Yuuki's reported insights are useful, and it confirms the Flotilla's experience wasn't a weird situation, but also that the infected actually perceive the uninfected entities around them to be what's wrong!

    Progression, progression. The next gate requires going deeper, or going around another horrible gauntlet. There's more Neurovore cores necessary to get deeper though, since the door seems to not want to open without more infestation, declaring to Yuuki and Kirito that they don't have a high enough "access level", and the others may need to pool their resources to infest their infiltrators more. Which means brutally slaughtering these aliens more! Stealth maneuver.

    The player count for participants in this raid zone bumps up by one during this. Bennings has likely just arrived. Those who seek to speak with him or capture him might do well to ready themselves.
Yuuki Konno     Yuukimorph ambles to the Neurovore gate in a perfectly natural four-legged stride, just as natural to her now as movement was when she'd been playing a warrior ant herself. Less natural is the gate-opening gesture, but she doesn't really need to think about it. It's like there's a sign that says 'swipe here to exit', only the sign isn't really a visual one. It's pheromonal or something, and while it seems to her perfectly natural to read such things, it probably seems pretty unfathomable to those without her level of infection.

    She leads Septette along, beckoning also to Kirito and anyone else she still recognizes. That is to say, anyone sufficiently-infected. The rest just look like unnatural two-legged monsters, twisted and mutated. She's aware they're companions but she doesn't recognize them any more. Fortunately, unlike the Neurovores, she has no particular compulsion to try to murder her former companions. She remembers their mission, even if she's not sure she could recognize what they need to find, not right now. She's changed, or maybe the entire game-world has changed... but to her, everything important right now seems familiar enough! Right down to her chitin and her body-piercing weaponry, yep.

    The downside to all this? Well, Yuuki can't tell between an unmutated friend and Bennings right now. They look equally unfamiliar and twisted. She's not going to be able to deal with him, instead being focussed on progressing further inwards with the other 'normal' teammates.

    Unable to progress past the next gate, Yuukimorph looks around. Remembering how she got here in the first place, by fighting Neurovores and killing them and extracting their cores, she quickly realizes what she's got to do. And now that they accept her as one of them, a little PVE ought to be a quick and dirty solution. Just a yank, a tear, a slash... the only problem is, do they look like normal folk to her now, or do they look like cute bunnies and puppies and kittens? She can gank NPCs, knowing full well this is just a game. But if they look cute and helpless, she's going to have a bit more trouble pulling the proverbial trigger!
Corona Arclite This is just all sorts of wrong. Fortunately she's already small, so no one can really see that Corona is practucally hunching down in the cockpit of her Loader to the point that she doesn't have to look at what her allies are subjecting themselves to for the sake of getting through this instance. Still, she's struggling with her own paranoia to resist the urge to put said allies 'out of their misery' as one might end up having to do in these sort of 'games'. Where does that line draw?

She's really hoping no one pushes this to having to find out. Corona is twitchy enough as it is.

About the only thing she can do is distract herself by focusing on the Neurovores she knows are the NPC mobs, and continue gunning them down so the infected can gathered up the space-giblets for themselves to get the doors open.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette finds herself using Taunt abilities more and more as her Infection Index steadily climbs from proximity to the monsters, decreasing their willingness to target her of their own volition. Unlike Yuuki (and, perhaps, Kirito), her behavior seems eerily unchanged despite her increasingly-grotesque gelatinous appearance: she even shows a bit of morbid fascination and perceptible revulsion at her own burgeoning mutations, even as she employs them to accrue more cores for Yuuki and Kirito in their little PvE quest.

     A trio of her spherical DRONES, now looking like slime-dripping head-sized FLOATING EYEBALLS, are dispatched to the nearby corridors, trying to seek out Bennings. Hopefully, their corrupted appearance will prevent the Neurovore mobs from aggroing on the frail 'bots- not to mention the fellow IFO infestee!

     Unfortunately, Septette completely misunderstands the reason for Corona's discomfort- it's not exactly easy to read someone's expression in a loader! She approaches her ally during a lull in the fighting, waving gregariously and smiling through the translucent layer of pink slime that coats her face.

     <Still doing okay, partner? You're looking a little nervous. Just stick behind me and everything's gonna be just peachy.> God, her voice is gurgling now. At least she seems conscious of just how weird it is.
Yuna Kagurazaka Corona at least has a proper cockpit to hide inside; Yuna's body is totally ensconced in Powered Form's heavily armored exo-suit, but her face is still *very* visible, and she is clearly *way* out of her element here. She's trying to keep her firepower focused on the known Neurovore mobs - Packmates, Cells, and Warriors - and blowing them apart with extreme prejudice; any item drops which hit her inventory are going pretty much unused; she's letting Elner keep track of where the party's various members are, and if any of her allies need help, trusting the robo-faerie to draw her attention (and/or Marina's and Erina's) where it's required. Particularly when it comes to the infested members of the group.

She caught a glimpse of Yuuki heading for the hatch a moment ago, and only barely reminded herself NOT to blast her. Septette may be less likely to set off Yuna's entomophobia, but she's no less disconcerting to look at by now - and gods help Kirito if Yuna gets a good look at him in his Soldier Ant form ...
Iria Realizing that there's a possibility of friendly fire, Iria pulls back for the time being, not wanting to wound an ally in the gunfire. Instead, she steps back to reload and survey the general area. She's trying to figure out the next best course of action so she can achieve more without hurting any allies.
Tomoe They need more fire, they need so much fire, they need to find where Chandra ran off to, the bloody fire lord and Raganros to deal with this. Maybe then they might have enough fire, but those options are sadly not available to Tomoe. SO she's going to keep to fighting. The bug like ones make her skin /crawl/, and she keeps fighting she now can she works with Corona and she looks over to Corona's machine make sure she's all right and keeps moving ahead to cut down the enemies who may get too close to Corona.

She'll also keep spamming the taunts from her Loader as she attemps to cut down more neurovores though she's got little way to tell those who have been getting the debuff vs those that are just the hostile mobs...
Kirito Kirito's never really been one to care much for how things look - with a few clear exceptions, namely his color motif. The fact that he can't see the freakish mutation that just occured to him might be a good thing though.

    He's sure that if Asuna were here, she'd freak out at him or something. Well, chances are she'd freak out many times over about PLENTY of things...

    He rapidly shakes his head at the rather terrifying thought!

    But the changes around him - or rather, his changed perceptions, the black swordsman reminds himself - are what's TRULY disturbing. A sharp breath marks his thoughts grinding on the implications and what the wayward player must think.

    Since the Neurovores aren't aggressing him, he doesn't go after them. Kirito is instead content to take in the sights of the strange corridors...

    Until, that is... the group comes across a barrier that they can't get through. "INsufficient access level...?"

    The Antmonster Swordsman aims a LOOK over at Zekken. And Tomoe. And Septette.

    "What should we do about this? Just go wild?"
Starbound Flotilla     Thankfully, the others are more than willing to deal with Yuuki's own hesitation, however much it may be exacerbating Corona's worries. The fact that Septette is proofed against these perception-altering influences is a bonus to the gains the group can make against these Neurovores, even if she might be denied insight into how the infestation "thinks" in some sense. For now, iria shouldn't have too much trouble avoiding friendly fire if she sticks to clusters that don't have any particular proximity, or keeps with Tomoe, whose Infestation Index remains low, but who still functions quite well as a tank.

    Looking around for Bennings gets traces of him, though. Nothing visible, not quite yet. A man at ten levels deep might be a sight that's unsettling even for Septette, but thankfully, those eyeballs won't see it quite yet. He's in the vents, of course; whatever abilities his infestation has given him, they've granted him some ability to climb around ventilation and tear through grates rapidly, as well as to slip through biolocks that the group wasn't even able to see yet. It's not a destructive path, though. He leaves a trail in his wake, a trail of biomass that actively grows.

    He's muttering to himself, a constant, gurgling, low series of tones, shifting in and out of human-audible ranges. "Can't let them get it. This is the only chance Earth has, the only chance to fix what's happened. I can't let them get this and stop it, I can't." He rambles, over and over again talking to himself about the urgency of this. He's been isolated up here for far too long.

    The drones will note him surging through the vents above and past the group soon; he's likely to try to intercept them in the next ring, past the biolock. What's their plan? With Yuna, Iria, Septette, Corona, and Tomoe all fighting through the raid-level foes, they'll gather enough Cores to bring someone up to access level... But someone will have to volunteer!
Corona Arclite "Ah'm fine, Ah'm fine!" Corona yips in response to Septette. "Just... Ah've dealt with enough real cosmic horrors y'all, no offense, kinda tweekin' a few nerves." Good thing they've got the translator doohickies so she doesn't mistake idle conversation for some kind of mutant threat.

"Y'all do what ya gotta do. Just stay outta the line of fire so ya don't get shot, an Ah'll keep fillin' nuff of the varmits full of lasers fer the cores for ya to gobble up."

There is no way in heaven or hell that you're getting her to take the infestation, but she'll gladly let the others take all the things for increasing their own levels. So.. uh.. teamwork? Creepy ass space infestation tricking teamwork?
Yuuki Konno     In the end, Yuuki gets over her reluctance to harm these nonhostile 'animals' by the simplest expedience. She remembers that they have valuable drops. And for that matter, not only are they valuable, but the remembered taste makes her mouth water.

    Of course in her current form, that means she drips slime from her jaws. Hopefully it's not too acidic.

    Abruptly deciding, Yuukimorph pounces one of the nonaggressive neurovores. It'd probably go defensive in a hurry, but even in this form Yuuki's an aggressive murderhobo. She doesn't just lance into it once; she slashes it repeatedly with claws and tears into it, not giving it a chance to counter or get away. Soon she's got another core and she tears into it eagerly. Pity anyone watching her who's still got humanity... but she'll quickly infect herself more, and push past this next obstacle into the core of the Neurovore zone. And if she needs to stealthpounce something again, well, at this point she's pretty keen to! After all she'd happily murder a Ragout Rabbit if it meant Asuna would cook it up. And this might be no Ragout Rabbit, but it doesn't need cooking and it's already pretty fine dining!
Yuna Kagurazaka Still no shortage of targets - which is good in a platonically-perverse sort of way; Yuna doesn't HAVE to focus on her infested allies, she can just keep blowing away the actual Neurovore mobs. The learned habits of tanking are settling into place again - she has the shield and the durability, and she's more than happy to make herself a center of the mobs' attention so that her less-armored, less-durable allies can focus on inflicting damage without receiving so much of it in return.

Granted, Yuna has rarely functioned as a tank in the actual MMOs she's played alongside the Gatecrashers - not when it was a *game*, at any rate; in a way, she's sorry that the game zones became part of the real world, since it denies her the chance to just be Kagura the Puca minstrel. But the potential threat to the Earth which Kirito, Yuuki, Tomoe and their friends call 'home' is more important than just relaxing and having fun; she wouldn't be here in her Light Suit, or in Powered Form, if it were a simple matter of play.
Septette Arcubielle      <If you say so, Ms. Arclite,> comes the inhuman groaning response. There's enough of Septette's original face still visible that a warm, cheerful grin can be seen under the oozing additions. <I've seen my fair share of cosmic horrors as well- but I don't think this is quite the same. There's no higher cognitive aspect to the corruption. And if there is... well, I'll keep an eye on them, okay?> Funny how she says 'them', as if she's not even remotely concerned with herself.

     As Yuuki opens the door, Septette scrutinizes her nerve-tendril-technique anew, hoping to glean how it's done for future gateways. She pops a couple more of the cores herself, now that they have enough to get by, and steps through the door as the tendrils of gelatin hanging from her skeleton writhe and bulk up from the extra bars of infestation. <Bennings may be ahead... careful, everyone.>
Iria Iria is more the striker type, hitting from afar and sometimes utilizing a hit-and-run tactic against her targets. She prefers to shoot at the Neurovore mobs from afar, utilizing what she does best as she attempts to keep the Neurovores off of her allies and clear out everything. "There's nothing to do this," Iria says with a smirk. "Too fun in my opinion."
Tomoe Tomoe is going to have to take Corona's word at it.

"Look if you ever need to pull back though there's no shame in dealing wit it. I think Cardinal counts as one now too."

Tomoe's feeling towards Cardinal and what it's done to her world, surfaces. Clearly she may have designs to kill a /god/ someday,m for now though they have to stop the latest thing that Cardinal has caused. Namely this out break.

"Great so how do w get past this..."

She keeps her weapon armed and looking at the ant monster Kirito she's inwardly twitching at this whole game zone. She presses it down and almost longs for the the troubles of Priscilla's world.

She buckles down and keeps back trying to make sure she won't end up hitting any of her currently infested allies at the moment however.

She catches the smile on Sepette's face, well what's left of it at the very least and seem to get the intention.

"The sooner this is over...with the better..."

Whelp if there was any doubt about that Xenomorph being Yuuki? It's down right gone now as it pounces one of the other creatures.
Kirito Kirito's heavily concerned about Bennings. As a Player whose actions are completely incorrect and borderline fanatical from a simple misunderstanding, he is INCREDIBLY more dangerous to Earth than this strange territory... or so Kirito desperately hopes.

    Because it's much easier to convince a player that things aren't what they appear than complete an ENTIRE questline.

    So he's keeping a sharp notice out for Bennings...
Starbound Flotilla     With a few more boosts to bring Yuuki further up into the infestation levels, she's able to "swipe in", though her perception of her friends grows more and more warped as she does. If Yuna's relieved about the surplus of targets, she'll be relieved about what comes next. This makes getting to Bennings a lot easier than it could be, thank goodness, and nobody has to ring around the entire damn raid zone for yet another concentric gauntlet of hell. Now that everyone's indulgence of infestarchetype is figured, things have settled, and now Septette is fully able to properly move through, she can push the group into what comes next.

    What comes next is actually too fast for most perception. Even Septette doesn't get to see most of it, since her mental defenses are guarded against the perception filters. A movement of a mass of tentacles, spindly boney legs, and thin, wire-like organic filaments rushes forward and attempts to grab the two deepest infestation infiltrators and yank them forward. An attempt was made to grab Septette, but the limb gives way long before Septette's density does, and a piece of flesh is left behind in the being's wake. It's marked as Bennings, that much is certain; the game UI is popped up over him, and he even has a non-PKer icon, but that's about all that can be seen before he's gone.

    Yuuki and Kirito see a short, young, long-haired american man, blonde and looking badly sleep-deprived, wearing an elaborate, armored astronaut's hardsuit with the helmet up enough to see his face. He rushes forward and tries to grab their hands in an urging way, like a rescuer, seeming terrified of the "monsters" that surround the pair, though Septette looks monster-like enough that he doesn't instinctively grab her. He shouts, "Come with me, you have to get away!! I'll explain in a moment!!" Before surging, with or without them, along through the raid zone gauntlet, through a path of clean, shiny white turrets that he's deployed.

    The others hear the mass gurgle the same dialogue, roar in a strained way, and try to yank the pair away, along a path of horrible, hostile biohazardous growth. Keeping the two from being, frankly, abducted might be difficult, but it might be the only chance they get to talk to Bennings or to learn more about him. The hazards, though, open fire; Bennings is a builder above all else, it seems, and he's built a hostile course of dangerous growths that spit acid and fire bone spikes at the group, trying to separate them from Kirito and Yuuki.
Yuuki Konno     Yuuki's surprised to see a perfectly normal young man, a player no less, come to grab her. She's unsurprisingly quick to go along, even if she's perhaps a little too quick to be grabbed. He might seem a nice normal person to her, but she's not really the type who lets herself be grabbed by someone she doesn't even know! Friends are another matter entirely of course, but she reflexively dodges this young man's advances as he makes with the grabby hands.

    Not that she'll actually refuse to follow him, mind. She just isn't about to be grabbed, that's all! Ducking and whirling, she moves deeper into the Neurovore infestation. "<Fine, I'll listen.>" she agrees cheerfully, moving away from the rest of the adventuring party if needed. She has no fear, not for her own safety. It's not like he's a PKer, or like she fears PKers for that matter. "<But we're not running from my friends, are we? I know they look hideous right now, but they're really nice people!>" she insists.
Yuna Kagurazaka "EEP?!?!"

... is approximately the sound of a terribly startled squeak/squawk from Yuna when two of their allies are abruptly yanked away and ahead - which is presumably where they WANTED to go - closely accompanied by the bioturrets opening fire on everyone who doesn't have an Infestation Index in the upper ungodly ranges. And with two friendlies plus an unknown in her firing arc, Yuna doesn't DARE cut loose with her beam cannons, much as she wants to eliminate the threat by the most direct method available.

Times like these are why she has her kite shield; the left exo-arm comes around in front of her, interposing the Wall of the Guardian Star to try and fend off as much of the turrets' barrage as possible - which isn't nearly enough to keep her from taking a whole bunch of hits, but it buys her some time. Hopefully it buys some time for the people behind her.

Maybe it'll even buy enough time for somebody back there to start tossing defensive buffs and healing at her.

She's about to REALLY need them.
Iria When Yuna takes the barrage from the turrets, Iria rushes in quickly with her rapid fire weapon ready to go. "Hang on, I'm coming!" She exclaims. "I'm gonna make these things regret taking you on!" She gets close to Yuna's shield and pops out to open fire.
Corona Arclite Nope. Nopenopenope. That's it. The glimps of another thing swooping in to try and snatch up the infected is more than Corona can deal with in her already aggitated, tweaked out state of mind.

Bio-turrents spitting out bone shrapnel and acid shots don't help the matter either.

"Enough playin' the game, time to purge this nonsense!" Yuna's got her sheild out, and the Stampede stands behind her and just opens up down the corridor with both weapon arms. Fortunately being the sharpshooter she is and the guntoting loader being designed to make, Corona's got a better chance at bombarding bullet hell across the turrets without hitting their colleagues being wisked down the line.
Kirito Having an unidentified player rushing him is a quick way to get Kirito on edge, but he recoils a half-step in confusion rather than going for his sword - and this gives the suiteded man the openin he needs to YOINK the Black Antsman and get him stumbling afterwards! "I-it's not as bad as it looks!"

    Kirito bellows out while trying to regain his balance from this awkward DRAGGING OFF!
Tomoe Tomoe is in a loader and thus not infested thus she's not going to catch much of this she's trying to catch up with her friends. She also gets if she can talk to them, she might be able to help. If there is another person whose been status effected to hell and back they should help them. She will move out in front willing to take hits for Corona as they charge on down. She will also take few shots with her secondary weapons against the turrets, at least those she can be certain are not allies or other people caught up in this.

"Guys! DO what you need to do we can't take this turret fire forever!"
Starbound Flotilla     Yuna does successfully manage to fend off some of the gunfire from those biological "turrets", and with her powered form she can match Tomoe's loader form, and the two of them can effectively tank the gauntlet. This means the group can only safely advance at Yuna's and Tomoe's top speeds, but that's still fairly quick, Iria and Corona link up with them, and swiftly begin opening fire on the "turrets", tearing through the flesh of the player-deployed constructions and bursting them into voxels.

    "<Look, LOOK at it!>" His sounds are organic, they're so organic that they're multiple types of organic all layered far, far too much. Things gurgle and roil and his and click, and Bennings brings them straight into a central area, where this Observatory is so stylishly clean that it must be an absolute meat horrorshow for anyone besides serious infestees. "<The game, the system, /CARDINAL/, it gave me a quest, a three-stage quest-- Did you get the quest? The agents! The Alpha, Sigma, and Omega Agents! It says-- Yes! You've gotten some Sigma Agent instances. The ones that cure everything-- I've built a perfect delivery system to get them there and solve the questline! I just have to get enough of it /out/ of the game zone and into Earth.>"

    He jams a fist into a large button on a console -- no doubt doing some unsightly, awful thing with neurons and tendrils in unfiltered reality -- and taps a few things on his player UI, and a huge series of CRT screens on articulated robotic arms descend, showing parts of the starry, spacey night sky. On one of them... Earth. Kirito's and Yuuki's home earth, making this one of the rare sites where it can be seen from IFO. It's an absolute nightmare. Every main landmass has been devoured by infectious, neurovore-like megafauna. The red oceans roil with something deep and dangerous that seems large enough to be seen from space as it moves in utter unison.

    All of this is, of course, false. The infection is affecting their minds the way it's affecting Bennings', and it's easy enough to disbelieve it. But there's the very palpable feeling that if they saw it without a screen between them, in an inverted, damaging version of the Overview Effect on the psyche, it would actually damage one's mind with traumas.

    What they also see is a tremendous ship, very FSC-styled, like a massive UFO cut in half, with some kind of high-scale chemical cargo container mounted between. "<The cure, this can do it. This can fix it, get all this spillover nightmare back into its game zopne and away from Earth, this can fix what they did...!>" Bennings rambles, gesturing urgently, and yet a little heroically, at the screen that displays his weapon. And in the infested filtered-view, it looks very, very clean. Yep, time to act maybe.
Yuuki Konno     Yuuki follows Bennings willingly enough, chittering with Kirito along the way. She gets some idea what's going on, particularly when enlightened by the rest of the group's information. She's seen what happened to the Starbound before, knows what the infection can theoretically do to someone. She doesn't sense it happening to herself, but then she's no idiot. She knows enough to realize she wouldn't sense it happening to herself at all.

    Even so, the view he provides is compelling. Looking at the infected Earth, she can't help but wonder if Bennings is right. Maybe the corruption she can now see is actually the Cardinal-induced invasion of their home. Maybe, if Bennings is right, using his cure will free her homeland from the VR gaming system taking it over.

    Oooor maybe not. What it really comes down to is who does Yuuki trust? Her own senses, or her memories, her reason, and her friends? Put that way, it's not much of a choice at all. "<Are you with me, Kirito?> she chirrs softly. Then, with the relentless grace of an alien predator AND the speed of the world's best VR duellist, she pounces with a fierce, alien hunting cry!

    Yes, she'll be rated PK for a time for attacking this guy, but it's for his own good and everyone's safety. The rating will go away so long as she doesn't kill him, and she's well experienced with the fighting system of the various ALO-clone games. Not even the xenomorph tendencies are going to overide her care here. He doesn't look like food after all; she's seeing him as an ordinary human, and so she'll only do the damage she intends to do. A lot of damage to be sure, once she gauges his health point total, but there's no reason for her to expect that he'll lose his life from her carefully-measured strikes!
Kirito That screen. THAT DISPLAY.

    Kirito stares hard at it. Hard. Because even though he's pretty damned sure that is NOT right... it sure does smack him right in the feels. It's a sight he wants to make sure NEVER EVER happens.

    "<What the...>" But this is weird, right? He's infected right now. WHY does this thing look completely NOT infected?!

    Seeing what Yuuki is up to though... he nods. And rifles through his menu, starting to use a few cleansers at an ALARMING rate and rushing up to swoop behind Bennings. Yuuki's handling this a little more VIOLENTLY than he expected and so he's quick to try dosing Bennings with TONS OF CLEANSERS!
Yuna Kagurazaka Somehow they made it through that gantlet of turrets ... if they can really be called 'turrets' when they seemed to be kind of alive. If Yuna were using a VR or AR avatar, her health bar would probably be critically low - and as it is, her armor is sparking and crackling dangerously, the Light Suit's defensive reserves critically close to full depletion. And given where they are right now, if the Light Suit *did* fail, Elner would have to scramble to teleport Yuna out to someplace safely away from the Neurovore corruption.

But for the moment, Yuna's still okay - and she can see the view on the screen of Earth as it should be, matching the view that she had on approach to the IFO gamezone. Given what she knows about the impact of infestation on other people's perceptions, she can only guess at what Bennings is saying - particularly given the manic desperation which seems to be driving him. She may not be able to understand what he's saying, but his frantic behavior, she can pretty well guess.

She can also see the containership, or whatever it is. She can only guess at its contents - but if Bennings is in a tizzy about Earth being 'contaminated' and the ship's cargo is meant to 'purge' that not-really-existant contagion, she can only presume it would do the opposite.

So while Yuuki and Kirito busy themselves trying to subdue Bennings and bring him back to himself, Yuna focuses her attention elsewhere - partly so she doesn't HAVE to look at her 'corrupted' friends, of course - and confers, almost silently, with the Matrix of Light. If there's a chance to locate that ship and check it independently, she wants to make sure of what's going on ...

And it makes sense, in a horrible way. If the Neurovore are driven by an imperative to spread, to infest what isn't already part of them, then people who are influenced by the Neurovore would perceive non-infected places as 'in need of cleansing' - of spreading, not 'contamination,' but the 'healthy' Neurovore. And it can turn somebody's mind around as badly as Bennings has been ...

For all Yuna's phobia of bugs and bug-like things, *this* terrifies her. Not just the game's plotline - but what would happen if it propagated outside of the game zone, no longer bound by plot or story or the balance of game mechanics.
Tomoe The deeper in they get the more nightmarish it gets, she's not so up with Bennings and the rest. She is getting some updates over the coms though. Which is helpful but it also scars the hell out of here. She gets more details over the radio, and she screams inwardly. This is very bad, this has to stop and she feels a dread for the other games that Cardinal might pull from, as someday, someday they won't succeed and something terrible /will/ happen.

She has thoughts much like Yuna is. It may call for some heavier firepower to deal with this. She may be calling up a certain Space Marine she knows.
Septette Arcubielle      Part of Septette wants to immediately dash down the corridor after her kidnapped friends, bullets be damned- but she saw how far-gone Bennings was, and strangely, that reassures her. She realizes he thinks that they're on his side: that's why he made an effort to grab her, too, albeit a lesser one! Before diving down that turret-filled hell-corridor, she pops all of her remaining Neurovore cores, the infestation deepening until a horrible slurry drips from her metal skeleton like a mixture of cherry jell-o and ground hamburger.

     With any luck, Bennings has programmed these meat-turrets not to attack anyone who's infested enough- and she's seen enough of how the infestation affects her, or more accurately doesn't, to be completely unafraid of diving into the deep end of the Infestation Index!

     With that, she races along of the rest of the group, her taloned feet tearing divots out of the metal floor with each step. The turrets may or may not still target her directly- regardless, she'll try to deflect as much of their fire from the front as possible by freezing blasts of acid and shattering bone-spikes, though she leaves the task of destroying the turrets themselves to those with better ranged attacks.

     Finally arriving at the room with Bennings and their kidnapped party members, Septette deploys her crackling and sparking blades, nodding swiftly to Yuuki and Kirito before dashing forward and attempting to strike Bennings from behind! <Subdue him! We'll get the cure into him when he's down!>

     Her horribly infested appearance might give Bennings pause- or it might not, since her true form as a horrible murderbot isn't very reassuring anyway. Regardless, she realizes on some level how horribly difficult it'll be to reason with someone like that! Better to make sure he doesn't do anything horrible now, and get with the talk therapy later.
Starbound Flotilla     Melee combat is rare in VR, but one doesn't become an augma user by being a slouch in the reflexes department. There's a light darkening on his HP bar, and a small drop on his HP, but nothing too significant when she tries to pin him. "<No no no! What are you doing, no! Are you-- You're not thinking straight, you're not thinking straight at all, we have to help Earth! Stop this-- AAAARGH!>" Septette actually looks quite un-mutated to Bennings, and so he's not on guard against her when she comes crackling along to strike at him!

    The others breaking in get a full view of what's going on. A horrifically infested chamber full of strange and varying organic and partially organic machines, some of which are holding up displays: One of a quite normal Earth, and another of a very, VERY large Neurovore... It's the Grey Area! That Class 7 Neurovore they fought to get the Gamma Agent! And of course, the man himself, Bennings, pinned down by Yuuki, with Kirito trying to dose him with the infestation cleanser consumable! In his hands, to the infested people, it looks ESPECIALLY vile, all twisty flesh and vile fluids.

    When it's sprayed, he cries out in pain, and it's a reasonable pain considering how much the cleanser stings. Even moreso, when you're this deep into the infestation. What they see Yuuki pinning down is... Impossible to describe. Not because of any impossible aspect of its construction -- whatever Bennings is, it's quite physically possible -- but because of how much thrashing and violence is going on, between the Yuukimorph and the strange mass of flesh. Thin filaments and wider bony limbs are so hard to keep track of that getting any bearing on what he actually looks like -- at least, in a sense that could be viscerally assessed -- is seemingly impossible. Other assessments are very, very possible, though; Yuna, for example, manages to link wirelessly to the remaining systems of the observatory, and find the location of that ship.

    The creature that was once Bennings roars, and in the view of the infested, he cries out a command, "<DEFEND!!>" As his infected growth boils away, a mass of buzzing drones whirls by, trying to strike Yuuki off of him. With just enough freedom, some sort of construction tool gets equipped by his many whirling limbs, and he tries to slice the floor out from under Septette rather than deal with her tremendous weight. He's a builder above all else, not a fighter, and so his way of dealing with the situation matches that. This doesn't mean he doesn't have the chance to bring a solid kick at Kirito to bear, though, trying to get away. "<You-- You were infected after all!! You're after the ALPHA!!>" He cries out. It's true that they've gotten some, in fact; hitting him with the cleanser seems to have stolen away some of his stocked ALPHA AGENT that he's been harvesting here. "<NO!! Get away!! You don't know what you're doing! I just-- Let me fix this, I just need to /fix this/!!>" His drones rush and batter, seeming to the infested like clean white stylish sputnik-styled personal combat drones, and to the uninfested like a mess of horrific insects. He's not hoping to beat them, it's not his way. He's fleeing! Back through the vents, and away, out to his craft, and off towards te Grey Area!
Yuuki Konno     Yuuki's not even honestly sure they CAN bring this guy back to himself. They can cure his infestation, but he'll just think they infected him. They might have to drag him away, kicking and screaming, and have him brought to some kind of psych ward for his own safety and the safety of those around him, until whatever broke his mind gets fixed.

    That's acceptable though, and it's a lot better of a solution than killing him! She wrestles with him, pinning him with claw and body as best she can. She's not actually completely a stranger to such fighting really. As a Samurai in Asuka Empire, she learned how to fight without weapons. She was never terribly good at it, but the lessons never vanished. Over the years, with her vastly-improved speed and the strength of her avatar, she's actually managed a certain degree of competence when it comes to unarmed fighting even if she'd never be considered a martial artist.

    The struggle is real, and who knows what would happen without Kirito and Septette here. Sure she could probably out-duel him, but that's not the goal. They have to get him dosed with cleanser WITHOUT killing him. And lacking items or spells to paralyze someone, it's a damn good thing Yuuki's got friends!

    With as much cleansers as Kirito's dishing out, Yuukimorph's gradually turning back into Yuuki. It'll probably come as a relief to her friends, if she's more her normal purple-armored self than a chitin-covered fiend with acidic slobber issues. As claws are replaced with fingers, chitin with armor, she adjusts her holds accordingly. She loses him a time or two, but quickly compensates and grabs him again before he can get away. She squeals as she's struck by drones, more startled than hurt, but it's enough to break her hold and let him get away. "We're losing him! He's got too many defenses set up!" she cries in frustration. So close!
Septette Arcubielle      Cutting away the floor is a remarkably effective way of dealing with Septette, it seems- with no flight capabilities and immense weight, the ground abruptly giving way is something she can't easily deal with! Her claws scrabble for purchase on anything they can grab as she plummets through the floor, and tendrils of gooey flesh whip out to grab at the lip of the floor only to snap instantly under her weight. There's a noisy clatter-crash as she hits something far below, followed by visible sparking.

     It's another moment or two before- thankfully- she's able to leap back up, having found a solid surface down there to jump off of! She soars out of the hole, twisting in midair and bringing up a magical circle around each hand to fire off shards of ice at the nearest corrupted drones, followed in each case by a a broader air-bursting fireball to trigger the SCIENCE! effect and deal plasma compound damage! An instant later, she lands on her feet, brandishing her blades and carving through any of the biomechanical monstrosities that remain within reach.

     <I don't think we can chase him,> she gurgles, shaking her head. <Even if you're fast enough- I'd bet that he knows this place inside and out, by now, and you don't want to get caught in those vents by one of his contraptions.> Glancing over at the monitors, she gestures towards the one that shows the enormous hermit-crab-like Neurovore. <Let's regroup, synthesize some of the compound, and cut him off at the Grey Zone instead. That's our best shot. And it'll satisfy CARDINAL's desire for a climactic battle quite nicely.>
Yuna Kagurazaka At this point, paradoxically, Yuna is too concerned by what she sees on the monitors - particularly the view of what, she realizes, isn't a ship per se but a *gigantic* Neurovore, as big as a spaceship in its own right - to worry herself overmuch about Bennings or her allies. She's cognizant of Bennings fleeing into the vents, but there's little she can do to help give chase - even if she were inclined to, or had the strength left to do so.

Extracting the coordinates of that giant Neurovore becomes Elner's priority - because if Bennings was staking his hopes on that, hopes which are diametrically opposed to the Gatecrashers' and their allies' goal, then they HAVE to go after the ship and take it out. Not just 'out of commission,' either - it has to be destroyed beyond repair.

They have to get out of this place first, though, and Yuna's not looking forward to fighting all the way out. Maybe there's a shortcut ...