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Lilian Rook     Despite half an hour to rest, scarf down MREs, check equipment, run diagnostics on the vehicles, examine minor wounds, and airlift the couple of men with non-life threatening but operation compromising injuries while the other task forces get to their midway points and re-synchronize time, the second leg forward doesn't feel any less intimidating. In fact, the communique between task forces having a lengthy period where they're each accounting for time lost and gained, and having to adjust digital clocks and analogue watches by up to half an hour, kind of especially doesn't feel great.

    The two Immunes have spent the entire period stalking the Bluewater Shopping Centre instead of resting, coordinating the seer's powers with the young 'hermit's prowess and eventually dragging a hunched, gangly, multi-eyed creature out in several pieces, after which the glass walls play no more tricks, and the feeling of ghostly presence disappears off Reiji's radar. The former requires some time to recover from all the ritual exertion. The latter leaps off to ten storey rooftops to survey the area ahead.

    In combination with the local specialist reinforcement, the way through Dartford and then Woolwich is only roughly as eventful, despite the increasing proximity to the city center, where the inverse tower of circling clouds grows tallest and deepest, the red haze grows thickest, and the weird infrared/ultraviolet flora grows most abundant.

    You *are* forced to detour around a field of glittering lights once they turn themselves into aggressive, swarming missiles that burn holes through people. You *do* lose a man in the blackwater tunnel, where you're stalked by uncanny wall graffiti for twenty minutes until it reaches past a 90 degree corner and pulls someone in, the ensuing violence rendered in so much spray paint gore before eventually the fact that shooting at the wall doesn't help becomes evident, and Sascha defaces the hostile artwork with scandinavian runes. There *is* a portion of somehow getting stuck in Charlton Park and endlessly looping back to the nearby hospital, until Chu locates the invisible entity responsible and tears it to pieces. The rest of the random monsters and environmental hazards, though, are easily shot or sliced to pieces, and frequent stops to consult weird occultic visions steer you around the worst of what might be ahead.

    Naturally, having twelve task forces start from the city edge and converge towards the center, with the miraculously intact 'Big Ben' tower as the navigational point, means that at this time, they start to meet each other. An additional one is diverted up from the south, from Lewisham, where the Glass Mill Leisure Center has blocked off further progress by infecting its surroundings and turned them into a shifting maze of stained glass cubes that phase through each other and crush anything unfortunate to get stuck between them. Though likewise stalked by urban art of misshapen, cold blue, feral and naked human figures, they are allowed to rejoin together without major issues.

    This is ideal anyways, for the fact that they now have to pass through the Royal Observatory park (which thankfully goes fine, outside of being pocked with a meteor shower of semi-organic crystal chunks of brain-hurting colours), and then come up on the Imperial War Museum, which is just short of the Vauxhall Bridge across the Thames, where you will eventually have to cross the river to reach Westminster. This is a meaningful risk, due to the tactical plan outlining that this spot on the map is host to 'the bones of the Third Titan'. Intuitively, the site at which the third of the eleven Titan-class Antegent that attacked London was felled.
Lilian Rook     As probably expected, the way up is a charred wasteland, where an entire path of upscale urban area has turned into a flat and level plane of melted and cooled glass and steel, but there's no sigh of air strikes or nuclear bombs; the complete lack of craters make it look as if it'd all happened just by something of tremendous ambient heat passing through. Coming up on the bridge, you find the road blocked off by the partial corpse of a creature of enormous proportions, far too tall to drive or climb over, though perhaps broken apart enough to find some passage through.

    It's hard to make out what it once was, given that it looks like most of its body turned to some kind of charcoal or pitch black diamond and crumbled apart once it died, but a sort of 'exoskeleton' of pure white porcelain 'bone' is partially visible in the ash and glass. You spot pieces of long, segmented tail, articulated, clawed fingers, corded black 'muscle' entwined around glassy spheres smouldering dull orange inside, and approximately half of a skull, split down the middle and partially buried, with a vaguely draconic visage, multiple inside rows of teeth, and twisted demonic horns, wearing shattered pieces of a 'white mask' over the carbonized flesh still clinging to it. For whatever reason, there is a fairly plain sword still sticking out of its brow, somehow still sizzling faint orange, as if sitting in a forge flame.

    Navigating a way through somehow seems marginally dangerous. Outside of the slagged glass and steel landscape having started to grow a veritable Eden of trees and grass and flowers, all of which are borderline indestructible and insanely sharp, there are still pools of bubbling molten liquid, an extremely high concentration of hazardous energy setting off sensor warnings, and lots of motion blips on the radar scurrying around the titanic remains, possibly having chosen to inhabit it.
Shigure     Shigure checks over her rigging, directing damage control teams and her onboard fairy crew to patch and retune the weapons for the shorter ranges of urban combat. "Secure the high explosive, only load armour piercing unless an emergency." she directs. Kuma does much the same, but with more kuma in her sentences, kuma.

    As the formation moves out, te two kanmusu take up vanguard positions again, relaying back data on the road ahead, opening fire on hostiles, and at least trying to assist the Immunes with their work, but without radar coverage, and only Kuma's little scout plane running almost constant patrols, it's hard going.

    And then they spot the Titan. Shigure's eyes widen slightly, and a brow quirks as she looks up at it. "Certainly lives up to the designation." she quips bluntly. "I think Kuma's scout has mapped a route through some breaks in the carcass... we will have to narrow the column to double-file. Partner up. Kuma an I will take point, one mech behind us. Two tanks, infantry, two tanks, then a mech bringing up the rear. Second column do the same. Keep your sectors open and your heads on a swivel."

    Shigure's voice is quiet, but carries amazingly well, and she acts like the commander of a taskforce... or at least tries to.
Reiji Arisu The combination of a vaguely Nordic seer and a (part-Russian??) Chinese Hermit certainly makes for an odd couple, but Reiji has absolutely no room to complain. He rooms with a centuries-old Chinese fox who might actually be the Daji in exile-slash-retirement. There are advantages for such a pair to have a diverse skillset anyway, as the two plainly demonstrate as their journey into the heart of cursed Londonium continues.

Not that this Japanese exorcist isn't pulling his weight, of course. Reiji's geomantic talents allowed him to be among the first to detect the strange invisible creature that had been twisting their path to progress. Though those same talents might in fact be partially responsible for some of the encounters they've had enroute as well. Arisu blood is /very/ tasty to certain species of monster, after all.

He's practically a Monster Magnet, in fact...!

Soon enough, after several delays, the caravan finally finds its way to what can only be the bombed-out skeleton of one of the beasts responsible for London's present state of disrepair. It's... Huge. Huge, alien, and honestly a little bit beautiful, in a grotesque sort of way. Reiji takes a moment to appreciate the fallen colossus. In a way, its remains have helped to restore some form of life to the surroundings, if the strange plants are any indication. Reiji takes to the ones that are particularly in the way with his favorite flame blade, relying on a potentially flawed assumption that what seems to be a paradoxical combination of wood and metal would be vulnerable to the brand of fire that he wields.

He eyes the sword in its forehead for a long moment as they carry on through. "So has anyone tried pulling the sword from the stone yet?" Reiji asks, looking to one of the uniquely helmetted commanders and toward their Immunes escorts. "It strikes me as a fairly obvious 'bad idea' but I know human nature too well to make assumptions about that sort of thing."
Sumiko The running back and forth was...fun?  Mikoto did not seem to mind, because it was like a /puzzle/ to figure out.  One that ended in one of the forces with them outright just murdering the monster responsible.  "Brutal," Mikoto says with some awe.  

Biomissiles and other shenanigans cause them to have to change their course until finally, they come upon the downed Titan, now an ecosystem onto itself.  She gives a whistle, clearly awed, even looking upon the sword still stabbed in the head of the dragon, smoldering.  She thinks about it but decides not to.  

It was likely a trap.

Instead, her own blade is hefted over one shoulder as she continues on.  She gives a look towards Reiji, "Man, I am the queen of the bad ideas and even I won't touch that one."
Staren     So it was all an illusion after all. But how did it know how to answer questions...?

    Tiny glittering antigents self-destruct to try and burn through people. "It's like Etria but worse!" Staren will try to save the graffiti victim if their brain is intact. Or rather, have nanites preserve the brain for future uploading.

    "I don't suppose these bones could be blown to powder by artillery from outside the city, could they? ...You'd just get horrible sandworms and antlions living in it, wouldn't you..."

    As they start to make their way through the maze of 'bones' and such, Staren tosses lights down any dark passages to give a little more warning of approaching danger. Riot Foam can also be used to form passable bridges through obsidian grass, assuming it doesn't abruptly grow anyway.
Riku     One might not expect to see the Heartbrand in a place like this. It's very much not in Riku's typical haunts. He has his reasons, however, and as both a Magic Person and an exprienced monster hunter, the teen seems to slot right in with the Immunes, acting as a fast-response unit and scout/skirmisher as he has in previous instances of dealing with organized forces.

    The task forces meet up, and Riku acknowledges the others with little more than a wave. Some are familiar, some are not. He seems to be more looking out over the area with a seemingly perpetual scowl, as if the environment itself offends him on some deep, personal level. "This is the kind of thing that should never be happening to people." He mutters audibly, but with the kind of bitterness that informs that he knows that is simply wishful thinking and that this happens far, far more often.

    He stalks forward along the path, carefully blurring and testing the environment to see if it interferes with his Corridors of Darkness more than any other particularly contaminated area, and simply speeds forward to work with the scout teams. He does make a point of stopping at the bubbling pools, producing what appears to be some kind of sample container and attempting to collect some of the fluid to seal it up.

    Success or failure, he'll move along to attempt to see if he can draw out some of the enemies into firing arcs and range of the columns. He does pause to take a long look at that shattered mask and simmering blade, however... And he waits to hear what the response on that comment is to Reiji.
Nova Terra     There's some rumbling in the distance. It seems to be coming from one of the edges of the charred path. And judging by the increased volume, it's getting closer. As it does so, it becomes clearer and recognizeable as the sound of an engine.

    Finally the wall of a broken building is smashed as a large vehicle pushes its way through. The tracks of the Heavy Siege Tank crush bricks beneath them as it drives down onto the charred path, turning towords the convoy.

    Behind the large tank, a squad of power armored troops follow, stepping over the broken wall as the move to join the convoy. Most of their armour matches each other, though a couple are a tad bit larger and look to have weapons mounted at the end of their arms, rather than held in power armour hands like their fellows.

    Finally coming up at the rear, a couple of three-wheeled buggies ramp up through the hole created by the larger tank, speeding into the charred path before skidding to a halt next to the rest of the Terrans. Turrets sit atop their frames, a small flame continuously burning at the end of their barrels.

    Riding atop the large tank, Nova stands up as it drives up to join the convoy. She points towards the group in general, saying, "Ah hah! Found you."

    The Terran troops move into formation with the convoy. As it begins to move off, heading into the maze of a dead titan, Nova jumps off the tank and starts to walk along. As she does, she looks over the state of those she's joined up with, before saying, "You guys look like hell." Of course, Nova's own troops aren't exactly pristine. Many of them sporting damage to their suits. And it's probably safe to say they've lost a few good men since this whole endeavour started.
Lilian Rook     "What, how often do you think anyone even goes here?" the sniper captain replies to Reiji. Through the radio, of course. The GDF troopers are smart enough to stay at the edge of the corpse zone. Judging by the melted Challengers, Bulldogs, Apaches and Lightnings sprinkles across the landscape, it's quite probable that most, if not all, hapless military mooks have already been culled from the global 'gene pool' long ago. The age of kaiju stocking stuffers is gone. Anyone coming here, indeed, would have to be carefully selected and highly trained.

    "Outside of strict orders to leave that kind of bollocks alone, yeah, nobody's too eager to go touching it." The sound of a scope being carefully zeroed, click by click, follows over the radio. "Food for thought. How much of this do you think was Antegent, and how much was 'them'? Titan class already means scorched earth is authorized, right? And eleven at once means even the capital couldn't pull it out. Who knows what kind of dirty bombs they had hiding in those vaults under Buckingham and London Tower and that big old clock? If the city's gone anyways, might as well try and take out near a dozen of humanity's biggest enemies at once, no matter the cost, right?"

    "Besides." the demo captain chimes in. "Probably if you came back with that thing in hand, one of the holy families would try suing you for nicking their heirlooms. Has to be a reason whoever used that thing left it here, right?"

    Reiji's elemental pentacle theory has some effect, though whether that's intrinsic or just part of his magical wheelhouse is up for debate. He hacks the tops and branches off inorganic flora, exposing porous 'bones' of red hot material sizzling inside of them. These are added to the samples that the science team is slowly amassing, in addition to them scanning and photographing the sword and corpse.

    The demo captain continues to answer Staren. "Unlikely. This one's uh . . . something something The Immortal. They give names to all the Dragon class and above right? I figured if it could be blown to bits by missiles, that's what would have happened, instead of some bloke with a sword finishing it off. Lord knows how many of his mates died 'fore he did." Riot foam turns out to be perfectly adequate for spraying all over the feet-shredding fields of blades (literally) of glass, creating big, crunchy, tacky looking bridges hither and thither. The answer to his question about Not Crossing the Thames is has been met with an approximal answer of 'another one of these died somewhere upstream', probably explaining its ugly and surreal outflow.

    The Corridors of Darkness here are indeed bent into terrible pretzels, but the thing is that there is just such a *tremendous* density of permanent entrances and exits here that it scarcely matters. It feels like almost every door and hall and manhole cover has its own story to it, stained with psychic impact and ominous history.

    The Kanmasu's take is filtered up the chain, the mechanized infantry captains consider it, then figure it's pretty much in keeping with the doctrine for cooperating with Immaculates, and starts lining up the convoy, with the urban mecha suits taking up the front and back, followed by the low, sleek, railgun equipped heavy tanks, and then the powersuited infantry behind them. The scout planes map out a viable path through the corpse that is its own natural feature, but it involves going through a winding crevasse between sheer walls that is just *begging* to be ambushed from, albeit, usually by human guerillas.
Lilian Rook     Before they get all the way there though, the efforts to draw out enemies begin to bear fruit. Specifically, Reiji and Riku apparently become immediately attractive to lightning quick six-legged lizard creatures, camouflaged black and white, which come surging out of the tiniest cracks like snakes, despite being each the size of a bull. Scores of them come out each time they approach a set distance, aggroing in waves. Plenty of the eyeless things with jagged maws that take up their entire heads simply charge right in to devour people whole, but many stay back long enough to vomit bullets of molten steel from their lungs. They're tough and numerous, and it takes the full concerted fire of several military units to slowly advance through them, including the help of Nova's siege tank and Terran marines, forced to have several troopers each concentrate their fire on individual monsters for entire magazines to bring them down.

    After more than two hundred slowly dissolving corpses carpet the ground, having become obnoxiously difficult cover for the remaining creatures, a chunk of what might have once been the Titan's hand stirs and shifts aside, and a much bigger blot of coal blackness crawls out from the cave formed by it, rumbling and stomping meter by meter. It seems to lack some of the definition of the basilisk-like creatures, almost flowing like liquid, and instead of charging the lines, it surges towards, and then into, the porcelain articulated 'plate' of a partial finger, fluidly occupying its inside.

    The new monster stands up, planting four trunk-like legs into the terrain to support its weight, and raising a vaguely humanoid upper half, putting it at a good thirty feet tall. A huge, clawed, reptilian arm hangs on one side, but the other arm inhabits the partial finger carapace as if wearing the arm of a suit of armour, with the huge talon at the end carving up the ground as it walks. The flesh in contact with it glows purest white, which starts to spread throughout the rest of its body. Its gigantic maw opens up, and then spews a white hot beam of incandescent, semi-liquid fire across the firing line, strafing it left to right, curving and coiling tendrils of molten something forking and chaining into the Elites and infantry alike. It then charges straight forward, trampling the inorganic garden and bull rushing right into the melee fighters, sweeping its 'armoured' arm through them, causing a gigantic, cutting pressure wave to cleave cleanly through the metallic terrain through its path.
Shigure     Shigure levels her cannons on the basillisk-like monsters. Kuma lines up and the pair continue to drop armour piercing shells on the enemy firing line. Kuma notices the shift of the skull, and turns her turret towards the black mass, lobbing shells at it while it suits up.

    The pair shout, "Contact! Scatter!" as that fire-beam sweeps in, burning up Shigure's side and causing the destroyer girl to scream in pain. She fires her other cannon, while the first one is hurled towards the charging beast. The damaged tonfa detonates as its internal magazine catches, sending shrapnel flying into it, and a concussion wave pulsing with the sheer amount of powder charge going up at once. This is folloed up by armour piercing shells from both ships, Shigure backing away and Kuma using her body to block the pressure wave, taking a solid hit of damage that flings her back against one of the crevasse walls.
Staren     Staren nods at the explanations. After the first monsters start showing up, he pulls a man-portable automatic railgun out of his bag and tries to chew through monsters with a mix of hypervelocity slugs and particle beams -- adding explosive-tipped gyrojets and increasingly large missiles against anything that's taking too long to go down. He has to do a lot of reloading.

    The giant monster is met with a salvo of missiles as soon as Staren can get a clear shot -- the breath has him activating his forcefield, and taking to the air to try and find a spot to dump the molten whatever clinging to it without dropping it on the GDF troopers!
Reiji Arisu     Reiji regards Mikoto with a long, disbelieving stare. "I didn't know we were in the presence of royalty," Reiji says, bowing his head in a manner so respectful that it's almost impossible to tell whether or not he's kidding. "But your highness, I know of several people who would see an artifact of such apparent power and immediately think to themselves, 'that would be an excellent addition to my wall of increasingly obscene weapons.' Greed is a boundless, timeless force in all forms."

"But you're probably right, and our friends raise excellent points," the exorcist shrugs. "I'm just happy nobody has had it in their heads to try and crown themselves the king or queen of this blasted land. I wouldn't be surprised if weapons bordering on thermonuclear or even beyond were deployed against these monsters. It would partially explain how widespread the devastation is."

But maybe... Maybe he's slightly underestimating the power of these colossal Antegents.

He certainly seems to treat the lesser forms with the requisite amount of wariness and caution, though. His enticingly delicious supernatural aroma finally seems to draw the attention of the locals. The exorcist takes to the front against the swarming basilisks, though even his defense isn't perfect against so many swiping claws. He counts himself lucky that he manages to deflect the majority of the swipes and every single one of their lunging bites. In his wake, Reiji leaves swirling clouds of natural elemental energies, plumes of flame and crackling arcs of lightning. Whether his presence is doing anything at all to push back against the corruption afflicting the land isn't something he can determine from here, but maybe someday, maybe a more focused attempt...

That will have to wait, though. Something much more... amorphous squeezes its way out of the ruins-- and seems to go to draw power from the slightest whole remnant of the broken Antegent. The molten metal beam rakes across the ground Reiji /was/ momentarily occupying, but the exorcist is already airborne. He uses a nearby chunk of bone to cancel his momentum and redirect it, leaping /toward/ the parasitic beast. He sweeps a sky-blue blade through the air, a cloud of frost immediately crystallizing lingering moisture in the air into what amounts to an ablative shield of rime and ice. It sizzles and flash-boils into a plume of steam when the molten metal breath passes by-- and yet, the exorcist behind is only singed.

Metal carries Water. Water extinguishes Fire.

And as he closes the distance, Reiji selects another one of his blades. One whose hilt is wrapped in artfully woven, deep-violet cloth. Darkdrift makes no sound as it leaves its sheath and traces an invisible arc between exorcist and monster. Even if it might block with that porcelein arm, even if its body is naught but amorphous shadow, Reiji is relying on Darkdrift's unique properties and proven effectiveness against such creatures to see him through...!
Sumiko "You didn't?  Well now you do, Mikoto Shimizu, at your service!" she says, with a slight (and polite) bow.  It's probably a bad idea though, for at least a hundred reasons, so let's worry about the fancy glowy sword la-"

Mikoto is already on the defensive as things start firing around them.  Her sword comes up, to try and block the shots from the weird slippery monsters.  They just come out of nowhere, and are super fast...how did they even get there?

Other monsters appear, but they seem to be other people's problems.  However, that OTHER one...the one that just seems to FORM...that's bad.  That's really really bad...

Mikoto thrusts her sword into the ground, as spikes of jade shoot up around her to try and shield her from the fire.  The spikes get REAAAAAAAL hot.  Easily baking her a bit in there, but as the attack subsides, the withdraw.  A slightly burnt Mikoto comes out, instead of an actively on fire one.

"Alright..going to avoid doing that again near him...unless I can't help it..." she murmurs.  Pulling out the machine gun given to her by Lily, she simply walks around the beast, keeping distance and peppering it with bullets.  "Hey, you!  Come and get this!" she says, trying to guide that maw away from the main host.
Riku Honestly, that response isn't really much of a way to dissuade Riku. But he has more important things to worry about at the moment. The entire environment here sucks. Riku hates it even more the moment he sees that the metaphysical backdrop to this location is effectively spaghetti, which means his portals have absolutely no reliability here. And unreliable when your life is on the line means 'useless'.

    Therefore he needs to ensure he doesn't need them. The mutant Doom Komodos begin to appear, complicating things. He leaps backwards, somersaulting over riot foam and working to attract each wave individually, working to pull them into the optimal fire range of the troops present before trying to stay on the flanks and out of the fire path. Friendly fire isn't. Riku sticks and moves, trying to hurl black flame at the creatures from his Eidolon as he works to back out of the way. Several of them lunge at him, which is something he's prepared for. The bigger problem are the ones that disgorge the molten metal. Even a glancing blow leaves sizzling, hellish pain along his arm, never mind any potentially toxic effects. Still, better him than the normies. The world becomes a rampant, semi-chaotic clash of pain and death and chopping and murder and fire. Definitely not something he would want to try alone despite his proclivities.

    And yet IT GETS WORSE. Of course it gets worse. The much more massive creature appears, forcing Riku to split his attention evem more to the major threat that's arrived on the field. Already dealing with a viscera-coated field and aching from incidental wounds, something like this isn't his idea of a good time. The horrible thing lashes out, beginning to blast at his allies. Riku charges forward, scowling. "Not so fast!" He yells, flipping over corpses as the massive black-fleshed thing that shares his shadow surges forward, the thing taking flame splashing over it in order to try to hyper armor through the blast in order to deliver a massive straight punch right for the thing's neck. It will probably defend, but he has to see the shape of that defense before he can work around it. The Eidolon begins to melt under the wash of annihilating fire, but that doesn't seem to transfer much to Riku himself.
Nova Terra     The Terran Marines are familiar with fighting grotesque monsters charging in waves. So when the six-legged creatures begin to encroach upon the convoy, the professional soldiers raise their gauss rifles and begin to unload the large metal spike ammo into the monsters. They coordinate their fire, slowly advancing as the monsters are driven back. Meanwhile the heavy siege tank occasionally fires into the charging swarm, the large shells exploding.

    Nova herself doesn't waste ammo as these small fry. Instead she calmly walks just ahead of her Marines. Any of those charging lizards that manage to get too close suddenly find themselves under her gaze, at which point they'll be torn apart or thrown away by the psychic's telekinetic grip.

    However, the sudden arrival of the larger, more monstrous creature, causes the Terran formation to halt. And as she sees the creature up its mouth, Nova's eyes go a little wide, "Oh shit!"

    The sounds of the Hellion Ranger engines rev up, the buggies speeding in from behind the formation. As they get close to the front, their frames suddenly jolt and begin shifting. Their wheels rise up, legs and arms folding out as the cockpit rearranges itself to accommodate the transforming machine. The mechs skid to a halt in front of Nova and the Marines, raising the twin shields on their arms in front of them.

    The liquid flames aimed in the Terrans' direction is mostly caught by those shields, the flame-resistant metals still managing to begin sagging under the intense heat. A few unfortunate Marines are caught on the edges, screaming out in pain as the white-hot fire burns through their more fragile suits.

    Nova swears under her breath at the loss of more of her troops, jumping up onto the back of one of those Hellbats. From atop her new perch she aims her sniper rifle towards the the four-legged monster. Her sights sweep up the arm with the talon, settling near the hopefully less armored shoulder. She then begins to fire into it, sending several of the large 25mm rounds repeatedly firing into the shoulder in the hopes of separating that dangerous arm from the rest of it.
Lilian Rook     Most of the 'adds' have been mowed down by the additional battle line of ship artillery guns, aerial missile fire, combined gauss rifle and tank shells, and spiked jade field hazards by the time the miniboss arrives.

    Though horridly fast and vicious, and no doubt likely to draw and quarter a man in milliseconds, the monsters do surge on the closest prey available to them, and are channeled into bands of obstructive terrain by Riku's maneuvering, wherein operators callin pulverizing strafes of autocannon fire from the gunship and missile strikes from the transports outside the city.

    Reiji holding the line at the front is eventually the recipient, of giant railgun slugs ploughing through the gathering masses ahead of him every so often, relieving the pressure on him. Eventually, Chu works his way up to the front to join him, pulverizing monsters into fine dust with two knuckle punches and knee strikes that project focused shockwaves of rainbow energy, and taking the exorcist's back. His partner sits this one out.

    The remaining enemies are mostly the infantry's problem now, hosed with suppressing assault rifle fire and picked off by anti-materiel rifles and rocket launchers when they try to move, coordinating the red blips on the radar and projected sight lines with Nova's troops to give them angles to flank. The engineers are even actually equipped to repeatedly reload Staren's stocks.

    That's good, because it mostly keeps them out of the Elites' hair when the big daddy (mother?) shows up, and immediately gains an immense powerup from wearing a tiny piece of the dead Titan.

    Body blocking its melee attack is, predictably, excruciatingly painful for Shigure. It doesn't feel like she was cut, so much as a slash-shaped section of 'everything in the way' just exploded in a wedge shape. Trading the bulk of explosions and point blank salvo of artillery shells manages to carve up the right side of the creature's body in exchange, though it spurts equally lethal, magmatic blood from the wounds in its coal black hide.

    It actually gets worse. Where its blood spills to the ground, even from the bullets fired by Mikoto and the marines, it gathers in hissing pools, cools into black slag, and then rises back up again, taking the shape of smaller, man-sized 'lizard men', wielding spears and lances of twisted, re-superheated blood. They leap right into the front lines with tremendous speed, pouncing on anyone in their reach, running along walls and skewering targets with their weapons. They scream and howl and laugh with eerily human voices, and then when *they're* killed, their splattered remains rise again as swarms of giggling, cackling, child-sized humanoids, which run wildly through the battlefield, throw themselves on the closest human, and then explode.

    It's doubly shit since the thing's blood is already some superhot liquid, so cauterizing injuries aren't really a thing. Instead, Reiji's Sorin hardens the cleaving gashes he leaves before they spawn more monsters, though it's small consolation. All the monster has to do to fend off the most threatening fire is brace its big white arm in front of it, and then even the railgun tank fire just breaks to pieces on the borrowed bone. Nova's 25mms punch meaty holes in the rest of it, but where they strike the flesh turned brilliant white, the slugs are vapourized instantly. Worse, the white light is spreading, overtaking more and more of the creature's body like an infection, 'corrupted' by the Titan's lingering power.
Lilian Rook     Mikoto has its attention for just a little, where it vomits fire on her again, but this time the stream twists like a living thing, arching over her cover and plunging down on her. It pierces the ground, and then erupts right beneath Staren, spearing up to hit him in the air even when he moves to what seemed like a safe distance. The stream is interrupted when Riku charges right through it, and the blow from his Eidolon snaps the monster's head back completely, breaking its neck before the creeping whiteness reaches it. Though that doesn't even seem to kill it, the spreading 'purity' stops after he does.

    It leaves a great big opening for him to go crazy with Heartbrand, as well as Reiji with Sorin, and even the martial artist Immune joins in with piercing chi strikes. Despite the monster's appearance, Hearbrand's Dark attribute seems to be equally as effective as Sorin's ice. Both cripple and stagger it, and Darkdrift phases through the white arm, allowing the rest to nuke it with all of their combined firepower, until the creature is finally turned to so much black and red mist. Only the partial talon remains, still pristine as it crashes to the ground.

    From there, it takes some time to mop up the remaining 'lizardmen', evac additional men by air, reload and resupply, and then thread the convoy through the route picked out by the Kanmusu's scout planes. Thankfully, they seem to have emptied the area of enemies on the radar, and they pass over the bridge, and the glistening black-and-rainbow Thames without issue. This finally results in arriving at Westminster, and its associated very old, very historical, very political buildings, all built up in gabled and arched brick and stone that is bewilderingly intact compared to everything so far. Double checking the objective coordinates, they align neatly with Westminster Cathedral --both an auspicious and mildly ominous place to find the satellite blank spot and mystery energy source.

    The streets have become exceedingly narrow and cluttered with war debris, though. It becomes nearly impossible for the mechanized elements of the convoy to advance, save the walkers themselves, and soon you're left navigating through tight, winding alleys, or else by air, harassed by swarms of indistinct biting things with human teeth, territorial as crows. Damage to the Cathedral's imposing Gothic front end has caused it to collapse on top of the Windsor Castle pub across the street from it, making for the strange eventuality of the best way in being --rather than the huge gates-- the old and classy, stained wood doors and upscale reception of a popular old pre-war bar. Entering a holy place past rows of miraculously intact, extremely expensive bottled alcohol, covered in dust, feels irreverently appropriate.

    Theoretically, you could also smash through the Cathedral windows. Looking at them though, all of the stained glass has completely lost its colour. Shining a light through them reveals that the interior is obstinately pitch black from floor to ceiling, making it impossible to even guess what would wait for you if you did. Weird, curling, unintelligible lettering strokes, easily mistaken for random markings, are roughly sprayed or painted onto all of the window frames. Similar alien alphabet is scrawled up and down the walls around the back room door of the pub.
Staren     It bleeds lizards which breed exploding babies. It's like Septette's descriptions of Etrian wildlife but turned up to 11! Staren tries heat-based weapons for cauterization but that's no good -- he wonders if he needed more cold-based weapons. Hmm.

    Once they reach the cathedral, Staren scratches at some of the writing around the door to try and aggro it if it's a monster. Before entering the church, he retrieves from his bag a pendant bearing a design of little connected gears -- it feels vaguely possible that anything drawn to a church might have interesting reactions with holy symbols.
Shigure     Shigure grits her teeth as Kuma gets sent flying by the monster's attack. She dumps her slagged cannon and sprints over, checking the cruiser over and calling it. "Fifth Fleet must disengage... Kuma has taken critical damage." she scoops under Kuma's arm, the cruiser looking dazed with a large wedge of matter cloven out of her body, showing her insides aren't exactly human. "Come on Kuma, stay with me... we'll get you to a repair dock and you'll be fine." Shigure says with little conviction. She's seen this kind of damage before, the only saving grace right now is they're not on the water.

    "We will provide artillery fire from the rear eschelon." Reiji replies, and the destroyer looks to Kuma. "... Understood." The pair then start to make their way to an evac point, calling in for an airlift out of the zone.
Riku If there are knock-on effects to Riku's shadow/Heart projection being melted in the fire, he doesn't show it. Not here, anyway. The Eidolon collapses back into his shadow as the fire ends, and he slashes out with Soul Eater, his Heartbrand, cleaving into the thing over and over again, using the Dark-aligned blade to cleave into the thing. The fact that it seems to be vulnerable to his attacks is notable. A Light-aligned beast, maybe? Riku isn't sure. As the thing crashes to the ground and disintegrates, Riku stands there, breathing heavily. "Elements are bullcrap." He mutters, making his own observation of the arcane portion of the situation.

    He eyes the fallen talon, gauging it for a moment, but the raw size and weight of the object clearly seems to serves to dissuade him from doing anything with it. Instead, he gets back to business, looking down over the Thames as they move across. The dark, polluted water gets a frown, but there is no time to really investigate. He might have to do so later.

    In the meantime, they get to the tight streets on the other side. Riku gets back to his job, which means he mostly parkours up onto the rooftops, supporting the air units with more blasts of magic, working to thin out the biting hordes with his magical power.

    He works his way to the Cathedeal with the others, however, and frowns as he takes one look around the pitch blackness of the windows. "This is a giant trap." He comments, not having noticed what Mikoto has done yet. "But for what?" Instead, he shrugs, inverts Soul Eater, and promptly tries to smash one of the windows. He can throw some flares into the Cathedral if something doesn't immediately try to eat him.

Something probably will.
Nova Terra     The Terrans attempt to hold back the rush of quickly duplicating blood lizards and small, cackling monsters. Large amounts of gauss rounds is joined by plumes as flame as the Hellbats use their top-mounted flame throwers to try and hold them off. The flames may not be the best option, considering how the abilities displayed so far. But it's all they've got in the way of weapons.

    Unfortunately several Marines find themselves being hugged by the smaller humanoid creatures, before parts of them get exploded. They go down, screaming in pain as those nearby try to drag them behind the front line.

    Finally the larger creature and its blood kin are all destroyed. Those Marines who are down but still alive are evaced with the rest of the injured before the convoy continues forward.

    Ahead of the Terran formation, Nova comes to a stop as the convoy starts getting into the more narrow sections of the path. She looks ahead for a moment, before turning to her troops, "Defensive positions. Hold this location." She turns to the siege tank, "Sergeant, prepare for artillery support!" Finally she looks towards the two larger troops, "Marauders. You're with me."

    Nova turns and continues forward, the two Marauder Commandos with their heavy suits of power armour trudging along behind her. The rest of the Terran forces dig in, the Marines and the Hellbats taking up a circle position around the large tank. The siege tank itself begins to change, its large tracks rotating outwards and stabilizers clamping down on the ground. The twin-barreled turret on top splits in half and extends outwards, the two barrels forming into its much larger Shock Cannon.

    As Nova and her two escorts arrive at the Cathedral, the Ghost approaches cautiously, lowering her visor down over her eyes. The alien symbols are briefly looked over. Naturally Nova can't read them, but she records video them anyway in case they can be translated later.

    Nova silently signals her Marauders to hold position as she moves up to one of the Cathedral walls, just beside one of those glass windows. Glancing through it, it's difficult to see what's going on inside. Nova's not just about to go charging in. Not without having at least some idea of what's in there. Focusing her psychic powers, she attempts to pick up on any minds that might be within the large structure. If she can get a good feel for what to expect, there might be an approach she can exploit.
Sumiko Mikoto's eyes widen...

"Oh cra-" the fire comes down, she can only react so fast.  Her blade swings up, she can't use the jade to block for her.  The sword can only cut through so much...she looks around eyes quickly looking for something...anything.  

The sonic speed has left her.  Too drained was the copy of the powers gained from the blue hedgehog.  However, spotting Riku, her eyes flashed.  Not knowing that...well that might be a huge mistake.  Desperate for a way out...which is often how she gets into these messes.

There is a strange shattering of glass, before the magical girl vanishes from under the flames.  Appearing with a warping of green energy ten safely away, though her arms and hands are burned severely.  They already start to heal thanks to the power of her soul.  

However, behind her stands...well, something that /should not be/.  It looks like several layers of gems overtaking the body of a very thin and sickly young girl with long arms.  The arms ending in the faces of many many animals.  

In those faces are those that might be familiar, Haguro, Lilly, and Haseo. The face of a hedgehog is there, but indistinct, before fading entirely.  The face of the creature is that of a mask, with one side crying, and the other side in ecstatic joy.  The mask, however, is jade.  

She dashes again, vanishing as the girl and... other strange girl strikes at the monster, aiming to go for the legs and attempting to stay out of its sight by just trying to be anywhere it's not looking.

Of course, with it finally going down, she can breathe.  Hissing at her hands burning as the thing behind her just disappears.  Others start going forward, and she catches up, the skin taking it's sweet time to restore itself.  

This leads to stained glass, just...covered with weird marks.  She can't figure out if they were real letters or just random scratches.  "Uhh...this has got to be random right?"
Reiji Arisu The battle with the strange black ooze and its myriad allies is an enlightening one, if nothing else. Not just about the capabilities of his fellows in this expedition (the rainbow-punching hermit is of particular note- that sort of thing doesn't just happen without some fairly impressive training), but also about the capabilities of and the danger posed by even the sleeping remains of one of the slain behemoths. If that 'purity' was allowed to spread, allowed to overtake that creature in its entirety, would they have witnessed the greater beast's proxy rebirth? Would they have been able to defeat it, then?

Fortunately, nobody needs to know the answer to that question. Not yet, anyway. The creature is slain, and Reiji is glad for it. He sighs, returning his swords to their sheaths.

He casts a worried look toward the two ship-spirits. Far too often has he witnessed what happens when they fall. Reiji gives the pair leave to retreat for now, possibly saving one's life-- and assuredly saving himself from giving their commanding officer long and painful explanation as to why he allowed her ships to sink in such an awful place.

"Reiji Arisu," he says, eventually, to Mikoto... Even as she forms what Reiji can only assume to be a manifestation of her corrupted self. Familiarity with Homura through his long association with Psyber has left Reiji well aware of what a Witch looks like, and this /definitely/ feels Witchy to him. "I think I've heard your name before. You're that one magical girlfriend of Rean's, right? Good to finally put a face to the name. Let's keep moving, we can talk on the way."

On the way to... to what, exactly?

Apparently, to the Westminster Cathedral.

And what appear to be swarms of horrible mosteethcrows.

Reiji defends himself as best he can with his flaming blade, warding the things away with plumes of incendiary energy. "I'm afraid I'm not particularly well read on my R'lyehan," he says of the script crawling across the bar and cathedral and everything /else./ "But it's our destination, one way or another. Stick close together; isolation here is a good way to get yourself killed."

And with that, Reiji forges ahead into the bar, hoping to find a way into the slumped-over, obsidian-windowed cathedral.

Hopefully he's not going in alone...!
Lilian Rook     The lettering, if it can be called that, looks like someone drew some sort of cursive runes, then stretched them extremely vertically, until they look mostly like nearly bar code-esque sequences of curling lines and dots. Sascha settles down to start deciphering them, bringing out most of the last of her kit, already looking exhausted. Touching the writing doesn't do anything. It feels slightly rough and textured to the touch, like painted on sharkskin. The holy symbol doesn't burst into flames or anything, but Staren can feel it quivering faintly on the end of its chain, moreso when he approaches the door.

    The window shatters easily under Riku's blow, scattering glass all over the interior floor. Even with the red-tinged light from outdoors flooding in directly though, it doesn't reveal much beyond the first few feet of polished marble balcony ahead of him. He tosses in a flare, the cherry red blaze of which visibly bounces off the floor, spins from the edge, clatters far to the floor below, spins into the center of the room, then puffs out instantaneously.

    Nova can sense *something* inside, but the shape and size of it is so fuzzy that all she can narrow its location down to is 'the building'. It at least doesn't hit her as horrifically alien. More half-asleep. It could be a ghost for all she knows.

    Filing in through the pub doors, sweeping lights around the corners, casting crazy shadows on the walls from upturned stools, the troopers declare a series of clears, and form up by the back room entrance to allow the Elites through, one of them rifle butting the doorknob and locking bolt out of the frame. A cramped, dust-caked space filled with silver taps, glass bottles, and oak barrels allows you to squeeze through to the portion of wall crushed by the Gothic rubble, and further work your way through the wreck into the door out of the back of the building, and up to the church gates.

    The second the last ground Elite is through the back, the heavy iron alley door slams shut behind, locking itself with a loud and jarring clack that has never ever been followed by anything good. Sweeping lights over your surroundings reveals that you're neither at the Cathedral gates, nor in the back alley between the two, but in a small, square, barren room, with a worn concrete floor, and walls peeling with yellowing paint. The queer writing is stenciled up and down those walls from corner to corner here, sprayed on in rusty dark red, and regularly spaced to create the optical illusion that it's slowly moving. The air is cold and stale, and smells of sterile dust. Another iron door sits in the opposite wall, and nothing but a single wooden chair sits in the middle, surrounded by dark stains that were probably blood.

    An intercom crackles on in the corner, revealing a tinny 1970s PA system set high in the wall, its edges covered in rust and a thin layer of grime. Random static sputters from the old speaker, echoing intensely in the enclosed, mostly concrete space. After a few seconds, an adrogynous, inscrutably 'young adult-ish' voice crackles through it, sleepily chanting in singsong tones.

    "One one one, all undone, coming of the midnight sun."

    There's a brief pause, the click of the intercom, and then the voice comes back, louder and more awake. It might be a trick of the eye, but the walls seem closer than before.

    "Two two two, me and you, who is it that I'm talking to?"

    The intercom clicks again, silence follows once more, and then the voice returns again, this time taking on a rough and callous tone.

    "Three three three, you're nobody, go dangle from the hanging tree."

    It's definitely not your imagination. The distance from the inexplicable chair to the edges of the room has shrunk dramatically. The door has gotten further away. The writing is *definitely* moving.
Staren     Staren jumps, startled by the sudden door shutting, then sighs as he realizes he's entered a Boss Room and looks around for the boss.

    Instead, he's greeted by a creepy voice on an old intercom. And it sentences them to death. Great.

    The room is... shrinking? But the door is getting further away. Urgh.

    Staren tests the walls with a couple of robot-strength punches, but that probably doesn't do much. He looks to Reiji and the Immunes, "Make it visible so we can hurt it!"

    If there are no better ideas, he'll walk around the room with Morg's symbol in one hand and a beam saber in the other, seeing if he can use the reaction to play hot-and-cold and locate whatever it is. He'll try magic sensors, too -- both probably not good for precise entity-locating but possibly better than nothing.
Sumiko Mikoto laughs when Reiji mentions Rean.  "Sooooomething like that.  Nice to meet you."

The creepy sing-song...and the walls seemingly changing shape.  She starts backing up...but well, there isn't a whole lot of room.  There wasn't anything to hit.  Shiiiit...

Ok Mikoto, calm down.  Focus.  You're surrounded by walls...that are slowly closing in.  With a creepy voice sing songing to you...crap this is just like a witch's barrier.  Ok...that means...

Mikoto points her gun at anything that looks important and starts firing with the gun from Lily.  Starting with the alien ruins, and then various other important whatever things might remain.  Good plan, Mikoto, she thinks to herself.
Riku     Riku is not entirely sure what's going on, working on his gut instinct. What's happening here isn't going to be like what he's used to. This place is following its own rules and no one here knows all of them. But acting is better than not acting, and watching the flare vanish is an important clue. "Break the windows. Quick." Riku makes the call, explaining his logic. "It's feeding on the darkness. It's too strong right now." He quickly swings down along the wall of the Cathedral, swinging down and smashing window after window along one side of the building, trying to break open paths for light, however minimal in this horrid place, to begin streaming in and hopefully weaken the thing's grip. Once more of them are broken, he tries firing more flares inside, trying to disrupt the darkness inside the building.
Nova Terra     Nova concentrates... But whatever's in there, it's hard for her to get a strong fix on it. But at least it's not a horde of monstrous creatures. So that's some good news!

    As Riku suggests a means of dealing with, or at least revealing, the entity inside, Nova agrees that it's worth a try. It's not like she has any better ideas at this point. Nova pulls out a pulse grenade from the small wrist compartment on her suit. She attaches it to the window beside her, activating the timer before jumping off the side of the building.

    The pulse grenade explodes in a blast of energy as Nova hits the ground in a roll. She stands once more and turns to look at the result, before signaling the two Marauders.

    Understanding, the heavy power suited soldiers raise their arms. The large weapons mounted on the ends begin to fire their own grenades towards the catehdral's windows, attempting to blow them out one after the other.
Reiji Arisu Well. This is certainly a problem.

Not just the sing-songy voice that quickly begins to deteriorate into something that sounds a lot more like it's come out of a horror movie, but because Reiji can /feel/ space-time begin to flex and bend. The room shifts, changes, distends. Unholy script scrambles across the yellowing paint like a chaotic parade of spiders. The walls close in, threatening to crush them from all sides. Was the /entire bar/ simply another one of those mimic-monsters...!?

No time to think. No time to worry. Now is the time to act.

"You may have chosen your prey poorly today," the exorcist intones, one hand folding into an auspicious mudra. The other swings forward, scattering five elemental weapons from their recepticles. They hover, whirling around him in a protective ring. The arrays of the five elements are formed. Destructive and generative cycles both surge with power as a sacred geometry unfolds in azure light under Reiji's feet. "I stand at the fulcrum of all creation. Inverse Demon Gate, Open!" His words reverberate as the array beneath him pulses, his energies focusing on counteracting the distortions corrupting the very space around them, all the while releasing pulse after pulse of purifying force...!
Lilian Rook     Staren patrols around the inside of the room, and feels the stale and derelict concrete shifting all around him at a geometrically progressing rate. The writing seems to crawl along the walls at the edges of his vision, as if following him from behind. Stabbing and striking the walls accomplishes nothing. It punches and melts holes in bare, cheap basement material like he'd expect, but no matter how deep he carves into it, he just reaches more concrete.

    Mikoto's bullets have even less effect. Hitting the chair somehow only splinters off the varnish. There's a rope tied in a noose hanging overtop of it, looped around a pipe. It definitely wasn't there before. Hitting the PA only causes it to spark and crackle, and the voice behind it continues in increasingly aggravated tones. Its coarse singsong rises to yelling, making the speaker whine with the feedback of being vehemently shouted through.

    "Four four four, blood and gore, cry and scream you stupid whore!"

    There's no trace of magic anywhere in the room. No ghosts. No spirits. No spells. The writing has no arcane nor holy power. Morg's symbol doesn't so much as tingle. The sacred geometry Reiji deploys causes the closing of the walls to slow, visibly shuddering as if the peeling paint and industrial concrete were the sinews of straining muscles, but the purification of the area accomplishes nothing. Chu looks around the room corner to corner in a sort of frantic calm, his eyes flashing like a cat's in the dark. "It's not in here." he says to Staren. "I think we're already in *it*."

    "FIVE FIVE FIVE! FUCK YOU FIVE! ALL OF YOU EAT SHIT AND DIE!" The voice screams incoherently through the speaker now. The PA pops and whines with the volume of its furious diatribe.

    If there's nothing magical nor spiritual about it, it can only be another Antegent.

    Meanwhile, outside, Westminster Cathedral, having withstood the fall of London, is rapidly vandalized by an armed teen and a squad of surly marines, smashing in its sadly bleached windows and hurling volleys of grenades and flares through the gaping maws of broken glass. The light doesn't particularly help, nor does blowing up priceless historical architecture. What happens is that the ambient red haze that fills the city starts to seep in through the new gaps, sinking down to ground level and slowly filling the main hall from the ground up.

    The two of them start to be able to see into the church mostly by contrast. The place where the front gates are remains completely vacant; wherever the others went, they didn't ever end up reaching the Cathedral. The darkness does eventually begin to shrink towards the centre of the room. Past the now-shattered pews and scarred columns, they can see the outline of a pillar that certainly doesn't belong, jammed deep enough through the floor to anchor its steeply leaning angle. It's something like a gigantic, obsidian needle, with a faint, subsurface texture of tessellating pentagons --somehow. The exposed end, at second floor level, is splits into a helical bident and reconnects back into an arch, inside of which inexplicably hovers a glassy, dull red sphere, which warms and brightens as the haze filters in.
Sumiko Mikoto, now sweating a little and stopping with the gunfire breathes deeply.  Then, of course, someone says that they might already be /inside/ it.  Deep breath...deeeep breath, Mikoto, she thinks to herself.  Just...we can get out of this, they just need a plan.

Panic immediately wins out overthinking, because the only way she knows is to go forward.  Her hand starts to have strange data-bits around it, as she leaps into the ground and points the bracelet downwards.  

A ball of black data fires at the ground...well, specifically the Antegent that has them in its belly.  The data trying to literally flood the creature with as much bad information and horrible afflictions as it can, trying to try to cause it as many maladies as she can.  Of course, it would shoot energy back to Mikoto, which the 'bracelet' would eat.  

Assuming she doesn't explode, she might get some sort of HINT from the thing...or at the very least gave it the mother of stomach aches.
Staren     No magic, and Reiji's techniques aren't revealing anything. Hmm.

    Staren keeps breaking the wall with fist, feet, and the matter manipulator, first to make room and second to make the monster have to expend energy growing new wall. Hopefully it works that way...
Nova Terra     Nova doesn't particularly care about the cultural value of a building like this. Even if she knew what it was and that it had any cultural value at all. The mission comes first!

    While the plan doesn't proceed exactly as intended, it does at least help provide a little more visibility inside the cathedral. Nova signals her two Marauders to remain outside while she proceeds to jump up to one of the broken windows, then jumps down into the large open interior.

    Rifle in hand, Nova begins to slowly approach the center of the darkness. She scans turns her head, watching for any hostile creatures as her visor tries to adjust for the dim atmosphere.

    Finally Nova comes to a stop as the form of alien pillar sharpens. And within it, something shiney. Nova hmms, saying to Riku, "I'm guessing this is what we're here for?" It certainly seems important and potentially dangerous.

    Nova also has a suspicion that this is the source of the mind she felt. Perhaps contained within it, "I think there might be something inside it." It could be a prison. Or a seed. Wanting, or perhaps needing, to confirm her suspicion and learn more, Nova says, "I'll see if I can pick up anything from it." She slowly reaches her hand towards the glassy sphere. The closer she is to it, the more she can focus her psychic power in an attempt to try and pull some useful information out of it. Assuming there actually is something in there.
Reiji Arisu Reiji is not sure what the blazes Mikoto is doing but he's PRETTY SURE it's not a good idea. Well, no. He's pretty sure it's going to do /something/ and it might just save all of their asses, but he's not sure it's going to end well for /Mikoto./

But sometimes, difficult problems (such as being inside some kind of strange, hostile genius locus) require solutions that may involve eating an energy field larger than your own head.

At the moment, Reiji can only wait and hope that Mikoto knows what she's doing. However...!

"I'll buy you as much time as you need," Reiji mutters as he strains, shifting his focus entirely to arresting the crushing walls. "The script," he says then, "If it's not the building, the most anomalous thing in this place are the words written all over. Staren, deface those letters as best you can. I'll do my part too."

And so he does... By straining his magic, endeavoring to expand that field of sacred geometry until it begins crawling across the walls, too.
Riku     Okay, so Riku was off base. But it did get them some important information. Once he can 'see' inside, Riku frowns. "The hell is that?" He asks aloud, and moves to another window to get a different view of the alien thing anchored into the floor. While Nova works to analyze the thing psychically, Riku notes that the thing has a sphere hanging inside it. "Well, there's only one way to find out..." He stretches forth his hand, and his shadow flows forward, stretching into the room. It streaks out, lashing forward and crawling up the surface of the bident. Provided nothing prevents it from doing so, that shadow wraps around the sphere...

    And then Riku tries to yank it right out of the thing.