Scene #6484: Urban Response

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	The emergency recall signal is different from the last. Before, people who had gone through the whole House of the Seven Worthies deal and got their certification as auxiliaries, have been called in a 'pager on' capacity to sort out an incident that had just occurred out in some satellite colony out in the wilderness. This time, it's an open alert to an 'ongoing situation'. Urban area; Fourth Ring. Classification: Encroachment/Convergence Threat: Crimson Beast The general area is the huge, built-up, capital sort of city nebulously in the southern British Isles (nobody really asked), but far from the gleaming high-tech towers at its center, or the historical, old world brick and marble construction in the privileged inner areas. It's on the very outskirts, where a wide band of civilization has been built up out of prefabs, instant cement, and various portable white eco-construction; clean and wired up, but ramshackle, cramped, and vertical, mostly powered on solar, with few, narrow roads, and a distinct dearth of panopticon cameras. It's sort of like a Kowloon feel, except bright and plain, rather than horrendously dingy and dirty and unsafe. Well, this part is horrendously unsafe, right now. Going north, towards the city center, eventually runs into huge, armoured walls that seem to have been folded up to keep the issue outside, and to the east or west, the same seems to have happened to keep the problem isolated to this sector. One can hope that all the civilians were evacuated (or are smartly hiding many storeys up, having locked doors and windows and blocked or destroyed stairs), because you don't see any on the way in. What you do see is plenty of blood against various walls and street corners, with a telling lack of any bodies. You aren't actually ambushed just getting to the rendesvouz point though, likely due to passing a number of street cordons manned by all black-dressed, faceless fascist technocracy helmet-wearing tactical police (or soldiers?), usually looking down streets covered in weird slashing bullet holes, and a number of thin, pale, translucent, coral-y spider-y things three meters, tall, cut to pieces by gunfire and littering said chokepoints.
Silica	Silica arrives to the area astride her wyvern, the beast giving a shrill bellow as it comes in to land near the rendezvous, the little Cait Sith slipping out of the saddle and patting the long neck of her mount before approaching for the briefing. She's not one of those that came to the proving thing, and she certainly doesn't look like much. Four foot nothing, pale caramel hair, cat ears and tail. Blue fabric and silvery metal armour plates, and a dagger sheathed at the small of her back. "I'm Silica... how can I help? Are there any wounded that need tending?"
Tomoe	Tomoe had been on the call list since she finished the whole Seven Worthies deal, and today she does get an alert. She checks the message looks at the type oh this was going to be bad given it was in an urban area. She's very glad she has flight as she comes in, the urban area does remind her a bit of some old images she saw of the walled city from before it was torn down. Yet a heck of a lot cleaner and bright. Well it's more unsafe given the threat facing it here she does come into the rendezvous points, she sees local forces have been getting some of the things as she sees some spider-like corpses but there's no sign of civilians bodies and she doubts sadly everyone was able to get away. She will come in for a landing. She pulls a wallet out of her inventory which does not really match up with the rest of her and she'll show her ID from Seven Worthies. "Tomoe, here what's the situation and Silica here is with the adventuring band I'm a part I'll vouch for her given we're in a crunch here." The towering Salamander is quite a contrast to the smaller Silicia. "Any intel you have would be useful rather than us charging in blind."
Zenos yae Galvus	Another call for help against the horrors of the world he had grown to show interest in, and another deployment of Zenos to pass time and to test his mettle against the beasts and monsters that threaten man. Dressed head to toe in dark steel armor, known on his world as 'Garlean Steel', and on his hip what might look like a golf caddy, but instead of clubs, it holds several swords. The massive form of the man walks towards the soldiers set up and observes the creatures that are lying dead in the street, torn apart by bullets in various kill zones. He approaches the rendesvouz point, head turning towards the soldiers before he considers the outlanders who seem to have answered the call without much in the way of understanding. "These are professionals, they will provide what we need to do the job," he says towards Tomoe. His hand was on the hilt of the sword the entire time.
Spider-Man	Look out! Here comes the Spider-Man! He's swinging this time, properly, because at least this area has some height to it. "Wow, already not liking the looks of these guys. More spidery this time. They're stepping on my brand!" Spidey calls out. The presence of blood and absence of bodies gives him worry and then gives him pause. "Uh oh, this looks like more Marrowlings." He says. "Alright, we gotta rendezvous before this gets too out of hand..." He's already flash-assembling more chemistry kit from the storage along his belt, another one of those breathalyzers that he needs to differentiate the infected from the uninfected. "Gonna need a lot of cartridges for this..." He looks for the rendezvous point as fast as he can, swings for it, and lands in there in an an ammateur's three-point landing, eager to see what all needs dealing with here. "Hey! Got webs and stuff, where's the places we need these things flypapered? Worked the last time, I bet it'll work now. Any people still trapped in there we need to go for?" He's ready to dive into getting some heroism done!
Rean Schwarzer	Rean was not present for the previous foray into this world, and so none of this place was familiar to him. Unlike the others, he's on foot, and just plain walking through here. Thre's a lot of blood everywhere, and no sign of anyone around. It's honestly creepy, and The massive guy in armor's got him feeling even more out of his depth. He takes a deep breath. Time to focus."So...what happened here?" Rean asks.
Lilian Rook	"It's a form of Bone Malus, as far as we can tell." says Lilian. She's just there somehow. She wasn't, and now she is. Spider-Man especially is probably . . . as used to that gimmick as someone can get, anyways. She's actually wearing the black tactical gear as well, differentiated by less plating and a long, patterned coat fastened around the waist, visor folded up over her head. She's holding her sword by the scabbard in one hand, rather than having it strapped on, and wiping a stray fleck of blood from her cheek. "Those things in the street are extrusions of it. A transmission vector. They aren't really Antegent themselves, but only procedurally intelligent fingers of it, like really dumb and really nasty termites that act like those chestbursters from that really old movie about aliens." she says. "That abstract art-looking thing? The white whorl? That's the Bone Malus itself. The one from before was destroyed already, but as far as we've pieced together the situation, a few people fled the colony before you got there, and one of the few of those who survived was already infected. Instead of following procedure, some family in the city smuggled him past the wards, and surprise surprise, he exploded into one of those." "The Fourth Circle is dense as all hell and pretty far removed from emergency response, so it spread everywhere within the sector pretty fast. The main problem is that it's spreading to gain a critical mass. Once there's enough of those, they'll come together and fuse into a new Bone Malus, and regain their coordination. Would be real nice if you could track that down. Look for another glassy bone swirly hive thing. Probably much bigger this time. There are also still plenty of undocumented civilians holed up according to whatever emergency procedures this neighbourhood follows, so don't nuke it if you can help it." "Keep an eye out and don't get jumped. These are just the infectors. The drones. If they catch and sting you, you're probably dead, but they're really weak; only an unenlightened civilian would get killed that easily. The issue is that the Bone Malus might have started building soldiers, or specialists, if it's gotten big enough. Since it's mostly just human tissue, tracking it down via magic is a pain, so we're having to go block to block." Lilian seems to suddenly remember something, and then projects an image of a young, skinny-looking woman with sandy blonde hair, a bronze-skinned frizzy-haired pudgy man a few years older, and a guy who is clearly the grandfather of the former. "Oh, and if you find any of these three, bring them in." she says. "There's only two other Immunes on-site, so you'll be on your own while I embarrass them. Good luck." Then she disappears again.
Tomoe	Tomoe was never professionally trained and it shows today as Zenos corrects her and also gives some very vital information on the things they are facing, Tomoe looks a bit pale given the nature of the horror. It could be very well there is no one left to save here. It could end up being an action to contain and burn out the infestation. With the aim to prevent more people elsewhere from falling prey. Given the things nature of infestation is known? Tomoe will switch her weapons, from her normal sword and board to a Naginata, given its reach might be important combatting these things. There was good news though, Spider-Man had a way to tell if someone was clean or not. Then suddenly Lilian with additional information and she'll file that away too. "Glassy bone swirly hive thing. I got it." So she had an idea of what she was looking for and an additional warning about more dangerous strains of this thing. She doesn't get time to ask about the two wanted people before Lilian vanishes again. The memory of the incident of the people trying to leave this world surface but in the end wasn't this different this was an infection based monster. Either way, there was a horror to purge, and she looks to Rean who is new to her and she'll size him up a bit before she'll move to fall in with Zenos. "You have more experience with these things I'll defer to you." She has her spear ready and will head out with the group opting to take point as they do. "Silica... let us get to this. We can not let this infestation spread." She will also keep tabs on Dean, he's new but if he answered the call for help he should have some decent level of fighting ability at the worst, right?
Spider-Man	"Woah, the guy got poisoned /then/ got smuggled? Wow, that luck is just all over the place." Spider-Man says, his goggles going wide. He seems to be joking mostly to ease up an intense distress at the amount of death already having gone on. "Alright, you got it! I'll try to pull apart the clustering and make sure everyone gets saved." The issue of cameoflage is a clear one for him, because the only thing he can use to detect them is his spider-sense. Getting into action, he swings out and starts taking the high road of aerial maneuvering just below roof level of the various structures of this area. He tries to identify a mid to high area, somewhere particularly vertical he can land at the side and really dig deep into his spider-sense, and get a sense of where the creatures are gathering by trying to tune to the sense of danger that each one exudes, through his sense of their subtle sounds, vibrations, and other feelings that make up what his Spider-Sense tunes in for. And, of course, he's searching for civilians to rescue and to protect, hopefully helping them out with some extensive flypaper defense wherever he can find them, or extraction if they're in peril. Oh! And the Immunes too. But they're cool and heroic and stuff, surely they don't need his help.
Zenos yae Galvus	"Hm...bigger and dangerous, because of what I tried to avoid happened. Unsurprising, but unavoidable at this stage. This time we shall stamp out the entire infestation and make sure nothing survives," Zenos says calmly, listening to the rest of the situation. His eyes look over the picture of the three and taps his helmet to save the image. "Do not split up and stay together. If you have any enhanced senses I would suggest making it known now. Be alert and careful. Do not assume anyone is uninfected until vetted and do not let them get near you until they are. Otherwise, I would follow Lilian's instructions as presented." Zenos moves, unwilling to wait for others to keep up, though noting Spider-man has already taken off. However, he does have the advantage of getting up high to look. He will move to the first area and start sweeping, aiming to try and find this monster and end it quickly. Though things never end quickly.
Xion	Another terrible crisis with marrow-spiders that crawl out of people and then are the people. Another terrible crisis that is filled with distress beacons and important people - heroes, of many worlds. Another terrible crisis that Xion absolutely did not intend to attend to, but is here anyway. The now-usually cliche PORTAL TO INFINITE TENEBROUS PATHS OF DARK DARKNESS AND BLACK BLACKNESS yawns just long enough for Xion to half-tumble, half-flip through before closing. Landing on the toes of her lightly heeled black boots, Xion perches on the ground while looking right at Zenos, a curious sort of intensity about her stare. Then Lilian shows up, explaining things. The effect of the BONE MALUS. The terrible truth of what being nice gets you. A city filled with... BONEITUS. "Wow, I guess you weren't kidding." Xion observes, still staring at Zenos. Terrible monsters... but... Miss Rook?" Lilian's gone in a zip, as if she was never there. "Oh... I was going to ask about 'no redeeming qualities'." So Xion really doesn't have anyone qualified to clarify! "What about last time, though? They..." Actually, they killed pretty much everyone else and were horrible. "... Nevermind. Going around hurting people is just being awful all the time." Rising to her full height - which is nowhere as tall as Zenos, a man in a giant suit of armor, who is also large himself - and following along quietly. "I wonder why there's no bodies left?"
Silica	"... oh... wow... okay..." Silica is clearly shaken by that.... those monsters were /people/... or at least parts of people. Silica taps the air and her wyvern vanishes into her inventory, replaced by a mid-sized boar, whose tusks are made from ice. "If you get hurt, I can heal... if you start getting overrun, I have some magic that can probably help." she says, then, before the group starts moving, chants briefly in false norse, and applies a barrier of interlocked blue hexagons around all her allies, which quickly fades out of sight. Silica's going to be sticking close to Tomoe, drawing her dagger and looking around, ears flicking to pick up any sounds that might be out of place.
Rean Schwarzer	Suddenly, a woman pops up out of nowhere and explains the situation. THe huge guy in the armor dealt with these things before, and There was some sort of parasite going around, creating the spiders and infecting others. Unfortunately, there was no way to save the infected, but they could figure out who was infected already and put them out of their misery. "Oh..."Rean sighs, disappointed. There really was no other way? Still, the faster they got rid of the head, the less likely it would spread more, and the more likely there'd still be someone left to save. "Find the hive and those three, don't get stung. Simple enough." Rean says, adjusting the tachi at his hip. Of course, there's no response because the woman's gone, and everyone else is leaving. So he follows after the huge guy, and the girl with the spear. The girl with the cat ears casts something that feels familiar to him. A defense art? "Thanks." he says, turning to Silica.
Lilian Rook	The radio crackles on over the local, as an encrypted channel switches bands to include the Elites. You can hear the tail end of something being said about Silica in a voice of very manly concern, and a "Whatever, she responded so she hasn't been killed by anything so far. She'd make a really tiny drone anyways." Lilian takes it with "Smuggled in, to be specific. People who leave the city don't get to come back in, period, without a lot of procedure and a pressing reason. We don't take fleeing refugees for exactly this kind of thing. The idiot's family members snuck him by the ward border. Now they're to blame for this." There's then a loud snicker-snack noise. Exactly that noise. Spidey finds that there is really no lack of verticality here. It very much looks like a place that was squeezed into a limited territory, and then had nowhere to build but skywards when more and more people just kept filling it up. When he reaches the top, he finds one semi-welcome semi-unwelcome thing: unlike the satellite colony where most of the creatures had gone into praying mantis-esque camouflage hiding to grab stragglers that wandered by, these ones are mostly still on the prowl, which means they sense plenty of prey in the surroundings, and haven't basically 'completed their job' yet. Going through the streets, the rest of the group can benefit by his senses. A lot of the things --easily twice as big as the corpses with their weird, five-jointed, flower stamen/spider crab-esque legs still attached-- are just outright patrolling the streets, leaning in low to peer into boarded windows with the singular, inward swirling hole in their abstract central bodies, or using their meshed pedipalps to tilt up vehicles or push aside booth doors, actively hunting for hiding spots. That means there is a central intelligence again, and it knows it hasn't depleted 95% of the area's available biomass. Plenty, however, are still being wall chameleons, or even sticking to buildings really high up like Spider-Man is. The former swivel and surge on the party when seen, charging them at high speed and in eerie quiet, with just the wispy taps of too many legs rattling across the pavement, before they set upon the responders, trying to snatch them up in their front leg traps and stab them with dozens of tiny tendrils that terminate in ridiculously fine stingers. The latter leap out from doorways, behind cars and mailboxes, or jump down from high perches, that they're mostly camouflaged against, aiming to pick off those furthest from the center of the pack (really, going alone probably would be suicide). The tactical assessment wasn't wrong. They're weirdly strong, in that insectoid proportional strength sort of way, but they're very brittle, And break to pieces under strong blows. Energy blasts sort of suck, though cutting, crushing, and fire trauma seem to work perfectly fine. No survivors rush out to ask for help, to hide in their number, or to ask to be taken to a more protected zone. They probably know better than that. Leaping around the rooftops though, Spider-Man can confirm many areas where people have taken refuge high up, bringing their neighbours into upper floors and sledgehammering or junk-blockading staircases, boarding over windows with sheet metal, and fastening roof access hatches, huddling together in large groups and staying quiet. There are likely some in basements as well; anywhere far enough away from the street to be able to put enough inanimate barriers between them and where the creatures will naturally look around when entering buildings.
Lilian Rook	There is the sound of a crying baby. This is because a mother has been pushed out onto the street with her bawling infant in her arms, no doubt kicked out by a group from one of said basements. Even if they can hide, it's pretty probable that one of these things could punch one of its pointy legs through some crappy sheet metal bolted down, if it hears something that obvious behind it, so it was either smother the baby or take it outside. One of those situations. She looks around desperately for cover, and then runs across the street to try and hammer on the door of the adjacent building, immediately drawing attention from four different drones, scuttling down the walls with those wispy, papery noises. It also seems to attract, from the opposite corner, a trio of something else. Exactly as the response team had forewarned of, the three new organisms are shorter, more sturdily built, three legged things, that run at an extremely agile, pounding stride, navigating urban clutter and vertical surfaces with that uncanny Boston Dynamics kind of gyro-balance. They've still just got those whorled holes for 'heads', but their legs bristle with barbs, and clusters of folded limbs hang under them. They turn on the group first, spotting them as more significant targets than a baby. Two approach directly at high speed, gouging up pavement under their leg tips and whipping out clusters of long, many-jointed, slicing and stabbing appendages from under them, basically hitting like a drawer full of giant mantis shrimp with knives for hands, and trying to skewer and drag people back and carry them off. The one that remains in the back actually spits something from that man-o-war-esque trailing bundle of tendrils and claws, throwing little projectiles that unfold out into hair fine tangles of threads, covered in stinging nematocysts.
Spider-Man	Spider-Man duels with the marrowling atop the building, at least not entirely caught off-guard. Bouncing and swinging, he tries a tricky maneuver to get out of the way of its patrol and then pin it firmly with some webbing, before crunching into it from the side to try to finish it. Then he focuses on the other civilian groups. Diving, he swings about, trying to slip up near places that he thinks are barricaded and then flick webbing into place to reinforce barricades and make them impassable for the marrowlings. The crying baby and mother get special attention. He dives low, going for them. "Hey! Didn't anyone ever tell these guys to rest in peace? The bone war isn't until next year!" He tries to bounce low, yank the woman and her child, and swing up. He wants to deposit them higher up in a safer zone of one of these buildings, and surround her with more of his clever flypaper. But he's already terribly aware that these things have a centralized intelligence. "Lemme just double-check..." Quick marrow-breathalyzer on the mother and baby, just in case they were kicked out for poisoning. He's heroic. He's not... well, /that/ kind of stupidly heroic. Not these days, anyway. Once everything's figured out, he checks back in on his allies, intending to hopefully move forward. "Can you guys clear the way forward? Those guys look a bit beefy for my webbing!"
Silica	Silica's ears pin down a bit. "They're so quiet." she says, giving a whistle to her pet, which fires icy spikes at the drones that come too close, aiming to pin them to the walls. She then hears the baby crying and without skipping a beat, kicks off the ground and flies up and over, using her dagger to fend off the skittery hunters. Unfortunately, she /is/ that kind of stupid-heroic, not really knowing any different.
Zenos yae Galvus	Zenos watches, carefully observing the situation as he notices the pockets of monsters and the appearance of the new type. Truly, a pathetic creature in the end. Only fighting for survival, it's survival and the destruction of another species. Unfortunately for it he is a species he is technically part of. Walking forward, Zenos simply moves ahead, blade whipping out as creatures try to attack, aiming to slice for those stinger-legs first, and them going for the kill. Even if one got away, then it would be disarmed of it's dangerous attack for a time. However... The size of the issue is simply one that is going to take far too long, especially if they are going to find the center of this hive. He slowly sheathes his sword, as the sword revolver spins again to a different blade. Dashing forward, he swings the blade down in a massive slash. Where he slashes, a massive tornado rips from the ground, while not doing much to the buildings, it attempts to change the terrain to work against the whispy creatures, and throw objects about...including themselves, and attempt to drag them to the center and make life more difficult for the bugs, and only slightly difficult for the rest of them.
Tomoe	With Silica close at hand she'll keep in formation with the group she's trying to keep alert she knows it's going to get worse before it gets better when takes notes of a few things. She will make note of the comments about Silica it rankles her slightly but she also knows Silica is an unknown here and hasn't had the full training, when this is over this is something she'll help Silica get done, for now, though Tomoe would take note of the behaviour of the drones as they go, they are hunting or people, it means there's a still those who are uninfected right? If they are openly hunting like this. She shouldn't have any real trouble lesser drone and things go well until well? The mother and the baby, she makes to move but Spider-Man is on the job with them. He'll figure out if they are clean or not. "On it!" She calls back to Spider-man as she will move to engage the bone horrors and will do her damndest to keep herself clear of the spitters attack for all she knows it's a new infection vector, she'll hack and slash at them using her weapon and trying to play it's reach for all it's worth as she attempts to give Spider-man his requested clearing of the road. "Silica! Let Spider-Man make sure they are clean!" She'll also keep tabs on Zenos, Xion and Rean as best they can should they need aid. Zeno's tactic helps Tomoe more than it hinders making it far easier for her to catch possibly more than one of the horrors with a swipe of her weapon.
Xion	There's two flavors of handling this situation: Zenos, and those leading in with powerful attacks that split the ground and tear apart all they touch. Spider-Man, swinging in with his web-fluid weapons, concerned with the fleeing civilian and her baby first. It's clear, to Xion, who needs more help. Whose path needs a nudge, a little help. Or, even, just a friend. There's not much verticality, but when Xion moves, she's off like a shot, stepping twice on the paved road, and then a surging leap carrying her across the square, landing on the slats of a window with her boot-tips to pivot over the group of Drones that Spider-Man starts Doing His Thing, the black-haired Nobody lunging down from above as her fingers close around a shimmering light and windchime twinkle of an amazing --- Steel pipe. Falling among the drones, she aims to combo with Spider-Man, fending off the striders with her length of pipe that arcs through the air with silvery paths of cartoonish arcs and star-spreading paths.
Lilian Rook	As per his experience, the drone Spider-Man crushes is pretty easily snapped to pieces with his strength and forewarning. The webbing doesn't particularly look like much, but it's actually pretty great for when something climbs over to try to take a look, it gets immediately stuck. It's probably nerve wracking to the people inside, but it works, especially (again, both nerve-wracking and also working) when Xion does her !attraction fly-by of all the windows and balconies, bashing and smashing mali(?) into jagged and unsafe pieces with a length of steel pipe. At least the entrances being plastered with pulverized drone is a decent signal to the others to ignore. Then he heroically sweeps a mother and infant of the streets; just like New York! A scatter of Silica's ice spikes punch into the encroaching drones, pinning three of them and taking a leg off the fourth, which comes after her instead, clambering over her boar like . . . it doesn't really recognize it's a living thing, actually. Like terrain. Slashing the attack legs for Zenos is actually sort of annoying. feeling like trying to chop a jumbled cutlery drawer in half with a logging axe; it'll mostly do the job, but some amount of knives are going to be inconvenient enough that it isn't neat or complete. These ones have thicker and more substantial skeletons too, more bone used on their construction. Even without most of its blades, it tries to just trample him over and rip him to shreds with the barbs on its legs, the two of them lashing out at everyone in the ground group around him. Tomoe cleaves apart the webbing easily enough. Doing so however, she notices it taking a huge chunk out of her naginata's durability bar, and any stray strands that hit her shield and armour do the same to theirs (albeit, much bigger bars). Even landing relatively gently on someone, the stuff is like microscopic barbed wire being dragged through the flesh. Hitting a regular human at close range and full velocity, it'd probably grid-chunk them. Good idea to keep it off the party. Spider-Man, on the roof, takes a lot of effort to get the panicked woman to understand what he's trying to say, and submit to the test, but both she and the lil' bab are clean. The baby starts screeching again when Zenos whips up a tornado in an intersection, causing so much urban clutter to crash together, even wrenching railings and signs of relatively cheap and amateurishly installed character out of their places, but the cacophony is so loud that only Spider-Man can even hear the baby anyways. Due to the extremely lightweight nature of the drones, a great many of them are scooped up from surrounding blocks, peeled from the walls like postes and pulled into the maelstrom, where they are promptly mulched by heavy metal debris. All the noise, of course, attracts a lot more. By far the largest density comes from the east. The front ranks, including a couple of the soldier types, approach closely enough to be swept up as well, but the rest all come to a halt after seeing the front row get turned into bone chips, picking up on whatever eusocial cue tells them 'danger' (or because the Antegent itself 'saw' it). They start fanning out over the rooftops, through back alleys, and basically going the long way around buildings that puts eco concrete and solar panels between them and the tornado, hunting for a source. The big surge also starts up the very obvious sounds of gunfire, also to the east. One of the cordons was probably activated, as some of the swarm stampeded into their chokepoint to get to the sound. It's pretty loud and sustained, like the kind of firing you hear from a bunch of guys in a Hollywood movie all shooting nonstop at the hero. A couple of explosions go off.
Zenos yae Galvus	The rush of the larger creature forces Zenos on the defensive, he can't avoid the larger beast, but instead moves to brace against the attack, and move away. Armor is dented and scratched, but luckily no puntures and Zenos moves his blade quickly, aiming to slash it into the legs of the creature, before bringing the blade around for another strike across its head. However, Zenos watches the insects start moving, and the group first starts getting sucked up as he planned, but others start spanning out and trying to come at them from multiple directions. Well...they have a better intellect, which makes sense given that there is more mass now. He thinks...and then changes his plan on the fly. Swords start appearing in larger intersections first, as illusions of his blades start appearing. They start sparking dangerously, and fill the area with electrical energy, aiming to fry insects that get too close. Once more, trying to create zones of danger and direct the battlefield in their favor. "Move towards smaller intersections, get ready to mow down anything that comes through them. Once this swarm is passed we push towards the east."
Silica	Silica is precient enough to wait for The Spiderman to give the all clear. The marrowling that comes chasing after her gets chased by the ice boar, and as it gets closer, Silica's face shifts into a steel-gazed frown, which is followed by her turning quickly and cleaving the offending thing in half with a short-range blade-beam. "Nana, you did well. Masamune, you're up." she says, tapping the air, and putting her boar away, while resummoning her wyvern. She goes to the mother and baby, shushing the child a little and smiling to the mother. "I'll get you out of here. You're safe now." she says, getting the pair mounted up, before mounting up herself. "Good luck." she says to Spiderman, and by proxy, the rest of the group before taking to the sky and angling to get out of the area.
Tomoe	The rate of durability damage from the webbing is noted quickly, she will have to be careful but she's managed to keep it off the rest of the party. So far so good no one on the team is dead or heavily injured. She does take note of the condition of her gear though she will need to be careful with her weapon or swap weapons as she fights. While there might be friction with Zenos and Tomoe? She is, however, listening to him as he issues orders. She will hack and slash her way through the bone horrors and does make note of Silicia getting the mother and child out. It seems they passed the clean test which is good for the pair's sake. As the battle rages on she will keep back from Zeno's weapons as he moves to help direct the flow of battle Tomoe at this point will move toward the smaller intersection and will cut down anything that will come through them, once the swam bone horrors is handled she will press on east as ordered. "Right, we crush this things head." As she fights she will throw several fire-based sword arts into the mix just to make sure she can cut the stronger variant down faster, as she does not want to dabble with these things and risk getting infected.
Xion	It's not precisely difficult to leverage absurdly cartoonish parkour logic to leap all over the place, up walls, and then down to drop attack one of the drones, gathering more on the way. With Spider-Man up and 'clear', and Zenos dropping big lightning swords that leave powerful AOE effects in the tighter street paths, Xion has a pretty clear order of operations here as she dash-rolls around the rest of the Drones she had drawn with her rather loud and pavement-cracking advance. With Zenos carrying the vanguard, all she had to do... Was keep up. "Sweet swords, Mister Zenos!" Xion calls, as she reverses her grip on her pipe, moving her foot out to 'step' on the length of metal and bend the end into an L-shape, transferring the pipe to her off hand and repeating the process (with another windchime-shwing sound) with a second pipe. Now dual-wielding bent hook-pipes, Xion takes a loose stance and leaps back into the fray, focusing not on actually doing any damage at all to the bony creatures, working her way alongside the Garlean badass to not directly attack but just command grab and hooktoss those creatures that got close into his thunder swords. "The roofs should be pretty bad too, but... Mister Galvus, just focus on hadling the bigger, badder ones! I can sweep up behind you." She salutes with one of her hook-pipes, a goofy smile on her face even through the awful horror of this situation. "I work pretty well in teams."
Spider-Man	"Hey, hey! Hey. Rescue! Good spider, not the bad kind. I promise!" Spider-Man assures them. But it looks like business is intensifying down below. He dives down, bringing the pair to Silica. "Woah, that is /so cool/, you have virtual animals or something? God." He stops, and winces. "I really need to feed my neopets." Then he's off, swinging into fresh action. A twister is something he's surprisingly capable of dealing with, though his inexpert motions slam him around a couple walls awkwardly. After a few times, he gets the hang of it; after a quick chat with Xion, he starts even using its rotation to basically wrecking-ball slam. And slam he does; with the speed, he starts trying to sling himself down streets and rooftops and crash into any clusters of flankers, skidding dangerously and sort of bouncing off his heels to crash fist-first into the gangbunches of these things. "I don't know how dangerous this one /big/ thing is, but if it /really/ is, maybe I can tune in on it? If it's..." He tries to surge forward past the forefront of the battle, trying to use his agility and dexterity and mobility to scout briefly, and tune his spider-sense to anything particularly large. Are they gonna get to that Evil Core soon? Or is it too far for them to manage just yet? He wants to help guide if he can!
Lilian Rook	Silica just gets to fly the pair out. None of the things here can fly, so there is no real pursuit. The things that could shoot at her at low altitude are busy for the period she climbs. Zenos adds a bug zapper to the tornado. It is a pretty nasty trap, all things considered, and delays the flanking action considerably as the drones and light soldiers start combusting into, well, charred bone, and collapsing in alleyways or falling loudly off the sides of buildings. There's already so much crap pulled into the twister and bundled together into a giant, spinning, metal wreck, that thwipping a web onto it and going along for the ride really isn't difficult, and kicking up ranks of those things that stop short and spread out pretty much immediately results in throwing them into the grinder. It opens a pretty significant hole in the dwindling net. Pushing the offensive and carving through with a good trio of sword (pipe?) arms and various fire and lightning and command grab judo throw attacks puts them on the other side easily enough, with few enemies at their back, and unlikely to chase effectively in such diminished numbers, given the prevalence of wings and super parkour in the group. Pursuing the source of the sudden surge, and the sounds of gunfire, the group does indeed find one of those cordons set up, with folding barriers, charged wire stretched across the street at low level, and small, portable automatic guns set up, with a good, beefy twenty or so tacticals behind it. A portion of the swarm in this area, while on the way to the tornado intersection's loud noises, has swerved off and come after them instead, and already expended most of its bulk. Ballistic weapons were kind of garbage fighting these last time, but the specialist ammo business in the city must be a big deal, because all the gunshots put big cross-shaped gouges in the walls and pavement, looking like fold-out flechettes become four-bladed arrowheads; they're significantly more effective in cutting into (and off) spindly legs and elaborate, spined meshes. It looks like they've spent a lot of brass already though (the sentry guns are in pools of it), and the crates open and emptied behind the barricade indicate they've gone heavy on the supplies to go light on casualties. It's not a situation that needs interfering with, it seems. They're pretty well-trained, and seemingly feeling not too scared where they've already cut down 80% of the mob after them. It's mostly the direction of all the bullet holes that shows where the wave had first come from. Turning down that way, you end up entering what the closest thing to a main street there is in this place --that is, actually wide enough to have two lanes to drive cars down in opposite directions. That road is significantly more bone-littered (and bloody, but that came first) as it seems the other Immunes in the area that Lilian mentioned had cleared out the main brunt in this direction at the same time. You can tell they're Immunes, even with their masks on like professionals, not just because of the coats, but because one guy just caused a straggling 'soldier' critter to explode into bits with a one-inch punch and a piercing white shockwave, and other is straight up a tall, lanky, wire-strong lycanthrope(?) . . . thing, that is mostly identifiable for having modified tactical uniform bits worn on most of it, and a unit tattoo visible on its shoulder (of course, standing in a mound of shredded legs and claws, visibly regenerating from incidental slashes). The tests had been crazy varied for the people who got certified, but they really do take all types from all secret societies, it seems. They flat out don't even acknowledge the Elites unless actively bothered. They're 'some other weirdos cleaning up this mess the stupid plebs caused', who look varyingly weirder and more powerful than Significant mooks.
Lilian Rook	The central space is obvious for the lack of collateral around it, at the center of a wide ring of battle damage, typically caused by when the big mob of monsters sorties out and first encounters resistance. It's also obvious for being pretty much painted in human blood, still missing any kind of corpses whatsoever, like the cafeteria had been as Ground Zero last time. Mostly around a specific apartment building. Unfortunately, it's not quite so uniformly red that one can't tell that there are a lot of signs of dead/dying/fleeing people being dragged back in through the ground floor exits or up the walls into open windows. Of course, the vast majority of the interior is just red, wrecked, and empty. The drones aren't in here; they're out on the streets hunting for things to bring back here. It's once you start getting up the floors, that you see that rough, white, semitranslucent, chewed-up-wasp-paper material again, in fine, hardened filaments extruding through the corners and ceilings of rooms, angled towards the direction that some central part is obviously going to be in. Just like grasscutter ants glueing together their suspended nest, it all pretty cleanly leads to a sort of central commons area on the eighth floor, which has been completely repainted in sticky crimson, chairs and tables scattered around with cards, pool cues, smashed radios, and other low-cost entertainment. Also, exclusive to this room: massive piles of clothes, shoes, wallets, and jewelry, scraped out of the way and piled into corners. The frozen whirlpool of whorled and knotted bone-glass is suspended in the center, in a nexus of those webs, this time the size that a human being could curl up inside it, instead of the size of a basketball. It doesn't seem to be defended by any active 'units', but rather, when one moves into the room, and passes anywhere close to the webbing, it manages to shoot out scores of tiny, stinging barbs quite a significant distance, like brushing up against a jellyfish except twenty feet away. They seem to be slow-reset though, and plausible to hack to pieces. If a bunch of people went in on their own to try and burn it out at the root, they'd all just be killed and converted instantly, normally. Except, oddly enough, the three from the photo, who appear to be trapped in some miraculously safe corner, where they've hidden behind a tipped over shitty bar counter where all the shelves collapsed in overtop, and none of the webbing had been spat out near it. You can recognize them by the blonde one slowly peeking up from under a broken bar glass cabinet, shifting the faux wood very slowly to get eyes on you, probably confirming it's not a creature dragging back another dead person.
Spider-Man	Hey, Spider-Man has his mask on like a professional. He's just... not professional. But now, of course, it's time to dive deep. Spiders, you know, are one of the natural predators of wasps. That must be the justification running through Spider-Man's head when he dives into things. His innate danger sense and his superior agility, surely, will be able to deal with and defuse these barbs en-masse. Right? Well, no, he stands a /significant/ risk of biting off too much to chew when he has to dart around incoming shots and into provoking other incoming shots. In fact, so significant that during his dodging, it might become a good idea for someone else to use his cleared space to work on burning out the barb-mass. But if someone else can get him some clear space and save his bacon, he'll be able to rush down the trio in that corner. "Hey!" He calls out. "Hey, I know you already regret everything! But I /really/ need to arrest you for your violations of bone law, so hold still over there!" If they comply, he'll get 'em with a little bit of wrbbing to the wrists. If not, he'll spray a little more thoroughly to try to get them with good angles from his agility.
Rean Schwarzer	The room looks like they walked into a slaughterhouse- no a slaughterhouse would be cleaner than this, wouldn't it? Rean steps in to clear out the barb things as Spidey's flipping around. He ignites his sword, swiftly moving to slice through each of the barbs as they move out and miss, while trying to not get hit himself.
Zenos yae Galvus	With that, Zenos turns the blade back and slowly slides it into its sheath. That should be enough to break through, and with that Zenos fades from view, appearing farther down the path with the rest of the faster travelers. While Zenos prefers a more leisurely pace, he can move when necessary. Following the tide of blood and bones slowly towards the source. The high rise building leads them through a hive-like structure. Walking through with the rest, he has his hand on a blade should anything jump out at them, or civilians clammer for him. He makes it clear that any that do will be immediately cut down, lest he thinks they are infected. They will likely need to be checked later, they are likely all going to die. It does not bother him, it is simply a cruel fate to be played on them. Then the core, the thing was much larger than the last one he saw. With a narrowing of his eyes through the helmet, he slowly reaches for a blade...and then draws it out throwing it towards Xion. The Sword is a blade that erupts with magical fire, hopefully, she could use it without burning herself. "Impress me," he informs her, and then returns his hand to his blade, looking up at the mess before them. Spikes tear through the area, trying to impale them and instantly turn them into biomass, but this time Zenos does not let himself take anything resembling damage. He dances back, swinging his blade to counter the blade as he pulls it straight out in a single swipe. Electrical energy surges through the blade, as The Squall, sparks dangerous and tries to send that back towards the main ball. However, he was far from done. Blades surge out around him as they stab into the ground, surging with aether as he collects it. Bringing a single blade up, he swings it in a massive wave. "REND!" he shouts, as the green aether tears through the area, trying to cut and tear apart a way towards the creature, before he brings the second blade out. "SUFFER!" he says, and swings this blade in another wave, aiming to send electrical energy towards the center of the creature in a massive blade lightning storm. "This time, creature, you will only know the peace of death. Not one of you will escape me."
Tomoe	Tomoe will not take to flight while Zenos very effective bug zapper tornado is tearing through the bone horrors ranks, she knows it's not over but it's certainly. With thing settling down just enough she knows its time to go through her wings flare out, and she'll shift to making use of parkour and flight to press on through, the local troops are holding things together very well. Also, their spending ammo rather than men is notice and thankfully their weapons after effects have left nice bullet holes giving them some idea of where to go and she will make sure of that. Tomoe takes note of the local Immune and their abilities she will leave them to their work. She keeps moving until they reach what can only be called a Charnel house, Tomoe is focusing as hard as she can on the mission. The worst of it is the central area she is feeling sick this truly is a living nightmare and she's turned a bit green around the gills she forces herself to swallow the bile and pushes towards the core. There are survivors in here? What the hell something ain't right about that, and it's the targets for the arrest too. The core is there and damn it's fairly big in Tomoe's mind. She also has to deal with the freaking spitters or something close to them again she does her best to avoid hits but still will get a few glancing that impacts her gears durability she's lucky to not take any direct impacts though that get past her gear. That said? She's going to be getting some serious repairs to every bit of gear she's had as on her hud it's all yellow and red at this point for them She does not want to think what these things would do to a normal person either. She will now not go to melee fire had worked against these other things. The possibility this thing is akin to the fungus that brain gonks ants to spread isn't lost on her and she'll start chanting. Golden runs dace about her body as she calls out the parts of the spell even as Zenos' masterful sword style is shown for all to see as he just aims to savage the core. The runes keep dancing about Tomoe and she holds the last one off until she has a clear shot and then she unleashed very intense and focused pillar of fire on the core intending to reduce it in part to cinders or at least help to enable allied attacks to futher wreck this thing that should not be. "BURN CREATURE YOUR FEAST IS OVER!" She will then follow it up with a second casting of the same spell. "BEGON!" Though there's no telling how effective her fire will be here, it seemed to work well on the lesser ones but the core who knows!
Xion	Xion slips into the background, her movements becoming more forgettable as she falls in with Zenos in the advance towards the Malus. For a few moments, if Zenos even bothers to look, Xion doesn't look like a black-haired and dark-coated cultist as she strikes out from the Garlean's shadow. In fact she looks like some faceless, dark-armored Garlean legatus or elite soldier, striking out not with pipes but long swordgun thingers. It's an odd effect! Blink and you'll miss it. Especially to Zenos, Xion's NPC-ery feels surprisingly right, one of those Fridge Logics that if he doesn't think too hard about will make perfect sense. When addressed, though, she steps to the fore as 'herself', the NPC-Lockstep illusion dissipated as her pipes disappear to accept 'The Blade' into one black-gloved hand. She spends a few moments not paying attention to the fight at all, turning the blade over in her hands, sighting down the line, and even placing the literal burning blade to her cheek. When she brings it away, with a soft sizzle, she is not burned, though her cheek is an angry red. "This really is an excellent blade. Alright. I'll show you what I've got." As Zenos begins unleashing his limit-breaking attack, Xion shuffles the blade around in her hands, using her teeth to pull off her gloves first by the fingers, and then at the wrist, inverting them in the process, balling them up to stow in pockets. With her then-bare hands, she grips the blade before her, settling into a stance as everything else goes on around her. The people, peeking fro their cover. The terrible stabby-poison traps that Tomoe burns away with her onslaught of fire magic. It's just her, her stance, and the blade, both hands making tiny adjustments in where they grip the long hilt of the overlarge blade. She raises up the flaming sword, and the flames turn white and lose their heat, instead gaining a fizzy, static texture and a buzzing quality like the first Antigent she had fought - the space destroying sphere. Then, with a single step forward, she joins Zenos' 'REND!' with one kendo-like Ichimonji slash, the space-distorting cut of her borrowed sword simply destroying the air it passes through and leaving a shockwave of buzzing 'vnnn' to either side of her across the entire path of the impossible step, across the entire room. Then, the moment ends and she back-leaps away, holding the Blade loosely at her side, its flames returning to heat and red-orange warmth.
Lilian Rook	There is, unfortunately (and deliberately), not all that much space to go swinging around inside the commons room and not get stabbed. By design. Spider-Man can easily trust his spidey senses to tell him when he's about to be, but there are only so many directions to dodge, so it takes not only Zenos tearing through the place, but Tomoe and Xion setting fire to the place to clear out some real space, and Rean specifically quick on the draw to hack through the supporting tendril-strut that almost got him. Of course all the noise and fire going on scares the three back into hiding, but when Spider-Man comes straight at them, the younger man shoves the wreckage aside and makes a run for it, dragging the blonde behind him, and rather unheroically leaving the old man to crawl out himself. Probably all three of them know they're in for it, and Spider-Man has to web the first two, before the old man just puts his hands up and surrenders to arrest. Deep in the web of burning struts and now aggressively flailing barbs acting on survival instinct, Xion sends a wave of that quasi-vibrational energy so deftly stolen from the being Alaq, turning everything that intersects with its volume into finely shredded particles, and buzzing through the main mass without slowing, to terminate the core in one fell swoop. The accretion wave of fine debris it carries along with it bursts out the other end, punching millions of tiny, clean, sand-grain sized holes through the opposite wall. The remaining creatures scattered around outside are the kind that collapse and cease to function while the core chars away. It's the orders that come in to drag the three out of the building and present them for examination. Specifically, the text message that comes in isn't for Spider-Man to do his infection test (though he probably will anyways). It's to bring them in on 'Treasonous actions of gross negligence, mass second degree manslaughter, aiding and abetting a satellite fugitive, and obstructing government civil safety procedures.' These would be the Patient Zero's direct family, then. The ones who 'smuggled him in' out of desire to keep him safe, before he turned into that thing in the middle of the room.
Zenos yae Galvus	With the destruction of the central intelligence of these creatures and the collapse of the hive, the blade of the Warlord finally is drawn back and returned to his sword revolver in a single motion. Making sure nothing else was going to try and spike one of them, he turns his attention to Xion giving her an examination. Walking towards her, he extends the hand for the blade, but he speaks. "Your skill with the weapon was surprising. I was expecting you to do more damage to yourself, but you surpassed my expectation wonderfully," he says, with that same calm appraisal. He motions to her to walk with him, as he moves to make sure the rest of the place is clean. "Have you given any thought to becoming a student of the blade? You have a natural aptitude for it. I am interested to see how far you can take it." Because Zenos desires strong opponents to test...even if he has to create them himself.
Xion	Xion doesn't do any broad flourishes with the blade, instead rolling it in her hands as Zenos comes to collect it to offer it 'reverse edge' towards the Garlean. "It's a nice sword. I probably didn't have too much to do it. Anyone could do something pretty impressive with that. It feels like I used something like it..." Xion's eyes unfocus, as the weight of the blade leaves her hands. "... A lifetime ago? Maybe." Following Zenos around to help clear the area, Xion resummons one of her hooked pipes, swinging it around more generically as a child would swing around a length of PVC or a cardboard tube. "Roxas has some serious skills too - like you! I'm just kind of copying what he does..." Xion trails off, before smiling faintly. "... because he's very important to me. My first friend." She returns to Zenos' question after. "I try to be a student of everything! Most things are worth trying once. As for the blade... Well, if you'd like, we can have a match in that new tournamenty-place, and I'll show you my normal routine."
Zenos yae Galvus	"Is he now..? Hm, I shall have to test his skill as well sometime. However, right now this is not about Roxas, but about you," Zenos says, walking with his usual pace, before deciding to consider her question seriously. "A lifetime ago? I do not understand what you mean by this." He says, and then to her challenge, "Ha. I like how you think, then yes, we shall battle on stage and I shall take a measure of your skill in person." "Even if you are copying, you should still take a measure of pride in the skill you have cultivated from it. I am curious to see where the depths of your skill can go, and because of you your friend's skill as well. I am someone who admires strength. A strong rival can create an even stronger blade."