Scene #6844: London Exclusion Zone

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	The request for any kind of intelligence does at least reach the outside world. Or, at least, it reaches one person there, as prepared for this eventuality as anyone can really be. Sascha, the extremely pale and thin Immune outside, responds. "It's a variant Glossolalia out here. Cipher-type. Nasty. I'm not far yet. All I've got so far is 'Count to Ten; Never Seen Again'. Any hints?" Chu responds from inside, "Not subtle, but no time. We're already at-" "SIX SIX SIX, SIX SIX SIX SIX SIX SIX SIX FUCKING DIE SIX, I KNOW THERE'S SIX OF YOU" "-that." There's no way anyone on Earth should sound that calm, but somehow he manages it. Since nobody else has tried, and this isn't his forte, he makes for the other end of the room, to the opposite iron door. He tries the handle, and of course it's locked. He tries striking it, and the peeling concrete cracks and flakes for feet around it, the metal denting inward. A flurry of following strikes explodes with incandescent energy, focusing it into the door as dozens of contact lances, gradually crumpling it like the world's sturdiest soda can. Thick orange liquid oozes out of the widening cracks, splashing on the floor, and creating a fuming cloud of vapourized concrete. Staren's punching and stabbing and shooting is precisely as useless on the walls as it was the last zillion times he tried. As far as he excavates, he just finds more and more concrete. By the time he could theoretically start to carve out a space big enough to shelter in, the interior starts to sweat that orange substance through the concrete pores, creating a lining of horrific acid. The unknown language writhing all over the walls, which themselves are closing in to a dangerous extent, physically wrestles with the sacred geometry Reiji spreads, the glyphs consuming each other like neighbouring colonies of night coral. It's not going to be enough. Mikoto then does possibly the most perfectly custom tailored 'terrible idea' that exists in this situation. Dumping horrendous quantities of parasitic garbage data into the seething graffiti causes the whole 'room' to contort and spasm around them, its dimensions shuddering, the single chair in the middle of the floor rattling around the rusty stain beneath it. In a single, dizzying, inexplicable second, she gains precise and perfect knowledge of the location and condition of every single door in the entirety of the city, and then a moment later, the whole group is promptly --quite literally-- vomited out from the far door, giving out under Chu's beating as the barren, hostile, vandalized concrete room ostensibly sickens and pukes them up. It sends the previously trapped Elites tumbling through the gates of the Cathedral, spilling out onto the flagstones covered in a thin layer of reddish, rust brown slime. It's just in time for them to encounter Riku and Nova interacting with the huge, helical alien needle jammed into the ground.
Reiji Arisu	It's not enough. Reiji really didn't figure it would be enough. Not without spending some serious time and energy trying to overwrite whatever strange language-based /thing/ has taken up residence in what used to be a paradoxically positioned pub. Honestly, that should have been the first indicator that something was up. Who puts a pub next to a church!? (The Brits. Probably also the Irish and the Germans.) Reiji strains and focuses, desperately trying to push the creeping scrawl /back/ when suddenly Mikoto does A Thing and... Well, what ensues hurts Reiji's eyes too much to stare, so he doesn't actually see what happens next. All he knows is that the next thing he remembers, he's hurtling through the cathedral gates, right on time for... For that... Needle...? Reiji squints and squints /hard./ Is this where the leylines have been leading? Is that thing absorbing all of London's otherwise abundant magical energy? Or is this strange find just... incidental to it all? They'll soon find out, he figures. "Everyone alright?" Reiji asks, dusting himself off. "Shimizu, what the hell did you /do/ in there?"
Haguro	There's a lot that could go wrong coming into a mission zone relatively blind. The last few times Haguro's done that, she bit off a lot more than she could chew. But this time... This time, she's got a good feeling about things. She still doesn't know much of/anything about what's going on with this whole situation in the church, but hearing that there's a call for some kind of assistance (even if it's technically for intel) is enough to get the Cruiser on the scene. And then she gets to see them puked out of the cathedral. Blinking slowly from below her cap as her gut-tail mimics that staring, Haguro raises a hand slowly in an awkward salute to greet the Elites that aren't messing with the weird needle. "Hello. Um. Is anyone injured? What happened in there?" There is no way to make this less awkward. Instead, the black-and-white shipgirl just moves over that-a-way to join Riku and Nova, assisting the former by gripping the other side of the needle to add MORE FORCE to the yankening. Her gut-tail even reaches down to clamp onto another unclaimed part for that bit of jaw-yanking strength.
Sumiko	The desperate action twists the room, blinking as the room twists and contorts. It looks like how it's making her feel right now, fearful and more than a little sick. The magical girl struggles to keep her footing, using the jade sword to brace herself as the world seems to rush around them. Everything is spinning, and then... Mikoto hits the ground, skidding face-first across it and covered in goo. Slowly, she tries to get up to her hands and knees at first, trying to make the spinning stop. Of course, there is the fact that NEW KNOWLEDGE is then just jammed into her think pan, which doesn't make the situation any better. Finally, she gets to her feet, stumbling to a wall and holding her head for a moment... And then just starts puking in the corner for like a whole minute straight. She might need a minute.
Reiji Arisu	Mikoto is vomiting profusely in a corner. Given the situation, she might in fact be vomiting rainbows of otherworldly colors. Reiji frowns, giving Haguro a look and a shrug. "She looks like she could use someone to hold her hair back, at least," he says, thumbing back over toward Mikoto. "How are you doing, Haguro? It's been a long time."
Lilian Rook	There's no way around the sheer presence that a piece of so thoroughly alien and so incongruously huge in its surroundings. The needle is even bigger than it had looked from the shattered windows of Westminster Cathedral, somehow, as the darkness draws back at the front of the red haze seeping in from outside. Looking up, you can see a portion of the vaulted ceilings where the thing had seemingly crashed through from above, and caved in a portion of the spires on top of the hole. Looking down, the damage to the floor is so severe and so focused that at least half its length must be buried in the catacombs below. Even then, the exposed portion would take several flights of stairs to get up, and that's still with its 45° tilt. The surface is hard and mirror smooth, with the impossibility of perfectly tessellating regular pentagons etched somewhere beneath it on some kind of black metal. The air is heavy and still around it, as if there were a background thrum of anti-noise around it, destructively canceling out what one would expect to hear. The great big sphere, the colour of nearly dead embers, levitating within the split helix at the top, is anchored in space to an obscene extent. There isn't so much a feeling of resistance holding it there, as it feels as if it were somehow physically part of the structure itself; it's an inextricable piece of the whole twisting monument. It's also the only focal point on which Nova can feel anything. The presence about it is extremely dim, requiring an uncomfortably close approach. At first, it does indeed feel like something is inside of it, trapped or asleep, or perhaps sealed. The more she focuses though, the more it seems like what she feels is through it, as if she were looking through an open window from point A to point B, instead of a perfect sphere with nothing inside of it. The off-colour of it flickers faintly within, like sparks of lightning deep in cinder-coloured clouds, or as if she'd breathed on hot coals. More accurately perhaps, as if Riku had, as the patches of light pop and ripple more brightly the harder he uses his Eidolon. The gates are, in short order, blown off their venerable hinges by the small demolitions dispatch outside, causing the huge slabs of ancient wood to topple inwards and crack in half on the mount of scattered rubble. GDF soldiers fan out into the room, shining tactical lights into the corners, sweeping the pews, and climbing up to the balcony levels. The specialists show up last, scanning the area with their threat radars, and then spreading out to take a million pictures and readings of the huge object from all angles. The specialist captain with the red helmet taps his GPS and confirms the correct coordinates. A radio transmission later, and the pair of 10 meter tall, armoured, stompy exosuits muscle their way in through the doorway as well, scraping bricks off the frame and pulverizing the debris underneath their feet. They'll probably be necessary to drag the thing back out to the transports.
Nova Terra	Nova opens her eyes, lowering her hand as she gets everything that it seems she can at this point. There's definitely something in there. It's probably dangerous, like everything else here. But it looks like the GDF are planning to take this thing with them, if the large mechs are any indication. Nova decides she might as well give them a hand. The Ghost turns around, taking several steps away from the needle so that's she clear, before turning back. Raising her hand once more, she grips the large needle with her mind and starts trying to pull it out. Given its size, it's unlikely she could do it on her own. But with help, it might be possible. It depends on how stubbornly the thing is embedded.
Riku	Riku tries something fancy and it doesn't really work out. He's working with something he doesn't understand, and it shows. Also, he's strong, but he's not THAT strong. The thing seems to be far more connected than it looks to the giant... thing. No matter how much he struggles with it, it doesn't do anything useful. Still, the others are free. Riku doesn't know how, but he'll take it. He drops to a knee, sighing as his shadow returns to him, and takes a moment to rest. This gives him the opportunity to look over everyone else as they enter. The exosuits are a thing. He looks down, blinking at them for a moment, and he rolls his shoulder, shrugging to himself. He hops down and steps up, moving forward to try to coordinate with them and lend his strength where needed to help get the thing out. He's no Hulk, but he'll do what he can. If nothing else, he can keep an eye out to make sure they don't get ambushed.
Big Boss	Assisting another task force, a transport helicopter flies towards the Chapel. It's distinguished by the music it's playing, a bellowing anthem that likely belongs to a military or mercenary force. As the helicopter approaches, comms are triggered. <"This is Pequod. Reinforcements coming in. Silent Jackal and Blast Condor are en-route."> Painted in urban camo, the helicopter's blades whirr as a sliding door clunks open, revealing two soldiers. One has a rocket launcher on his shoulder, hefting it up - he's wearing a full balaclava and a suit of heavy body armor. The other has a half face mask, covering his mouth and nose, and is armed with a suppressed assault rifle and a bag. A ladder drops. The half-masked soldier moves to slide to the ground as close as he can reach without being directly in range of the alien object. Once they've dropped, the man with the half-face mask approaches, speaking over comms. <"This is Silent Jackal. We have a helicopter to assist with the extraction. We'll begin removing the needle."> The helicopter releases a hook, the helicopter trying to find a point of the needle it can attach it to, with the aid of the man in the balaclava, Blast Condor.
Haguro	When it becomes obvious that just yanking the thing out isn't going to work, Haguro shifts gears to to check on the puking Mikoto and the frowning Reiji! Mostly Mikoto, since she seems to need her hair held back more than Reiji does at the moment. "I'm doing alright, Reiji. A-and yourself?" She still sounds like herself, at least, even if she's turned that stark Abyssal white once more and has an extra bitey tail on her gut that wasn't there the last time they had met. Looking back up at the damage to the ceiling more closely, Haguro squints a bit even as she gives Mikoto a few more gentle pats on the back. She's trying to figure out the best way to even attempt to get up that thing, but it all looks off. With nowhere else to go, though, Haguro stands back up, adjusts her cap, then aims a wrist turret at it. <<"I'm going to check if anything else is up there. Be careful, Mister Jackal.">> A knife attached to a chain launches out of her turret, aiming to stab right into that giant needle object. Whether it goes in or not, Haguro's going to start climbing to see just how far this thing goes and what's on top of it. If there's any suspicious buttons or levers to hit, even better.
Sumiko	Mikoto spends time recovering from the spinning room of reality and also horrible monster time. With some effort, she pulls herself fully to her feet and more stable, wiping her mouth clean. She's still covered in that red stuff...but well, she can get a shower later on. It wasn't like this place is very clean in the first place, and Mikoto is no stranger to dirty missions. "I'm alright...just dizzy," She says, with a groan, "I uh...know a lot about doors for some reason...as for what I did..." another groan, but they're getting better, "A trick I picked up," She says, wryly. "What's going on? Did we find something..?" She blinks at Haguro, "Wait...do I know you?"
Reiji Arisu	There is, unfortunately, little than Reiji can do to help lift something that huge out of a place like this. It isn't like he can leverage ridiculous superhuman strength or anything that could compare to the brute, mechanical might of the local power-lifters. So instead he hangs back and keeps his head a-swivel for anything his unique suite of senses might pick up in the area. Also, he talks, because there are people to talk to. "I'm surviving," Reiji shrugs in reply, though he does regard her weird belly-tail with a mild stare. "It's good to hear that you're doing well. I'm relieved that we really didn't have anything much to worry about with regards to your Abyssal state." It was, after all, a bit of a conversational flashpoint with the Admiral for a while there. "Doors...?" he asks, canting his head Mikoto-ward with an expression that is as amused as it is confused. "Well, whatever you did, I'm glad you did it. I don't think my magic alone could have gotten us out of there." He gestures at the needle that's still drinking in the ambient red mist, "We found... whatever this thing is. It seems to be the source of the disturbance that we were asked to retrieve, but I'll be damned if I could tell you what it /is./ Looks almost like some kind of... spore? I don't really know." This place is weird, even for him.
Lilian Rook	There's absolutely no chance of Haguro's knife grapnel finding purchase in the alien object's surface; it's far too hard for the blade to even make a scratch. Given the way it splits apart into that helical bident at the end with the floating sphere, she can easily just loop the cable over that, and climb all the way to the tip, where she finds the structure terminates right past the smouldering orb, at roughly the third floor of the Cathedral. The collapsed spire above looks like it hit the roof at great velocity, only not leveling the entire Cathedral due to its extremely slim profile, focusing all its force into puncturing the ground instead. It's strangely very hot near the orb portion. That chunk of roof is also the easiest spot to clear by far. With some demo work by the GDF, and/or quite probably Blast Condor, the pile of rubble that was once one of the feature spires of Westminster just gushes into the Cathedral floor, collapsing a balcony beneath it and opening up a gaping skylight. The Outer Heaven helicopter, and the extraction helicopter tailing the GDF, are able to get their hooks around each half of the bident. In combination with Nova lifting from below with her telekinesis, Riku flexing his Eidolon, and the quasi-mecha coming in to contribute military-grade actuators to the effort, the giant needle --more like a miniature tower than anything else-- finally shifts out of the ground, scraping loudly on the old stones as it slowly tilts upright and is threaded out of the extraction hole. It's extremely heavy, but relative to its size, it's surprisingly light, as if it were solid glass or something, instead of a more likely expected heavy metal. Where the point of the spire is extricated from the ground, exposing several basements, and the sewer below that, one additional room under a good twenty meters of further earth is revealed, where the dessicated corpse of something very large, semi-humanoid, and probably quite old, lies with a gigantic hole through its chest, lying in the middle of the smudged remains of an extensive, wall to wall summoning circle inked many years ago. A sacrifice? A beacon? Something hit with a nuclear option? Who knows. What's more important is that once the needle clears the building, a good forty meters in length overall, the orb at its zenith builds to a steady, fiery glow, the cloudy substance within it lethargically accelerating into concentric rings, not unlike the layers of ascending cloud formations permanently fixed overhead. The psychic connection Nova feels is briefly amplified a thousandfold, exposing her to the feeling of a massive, teeming, thrashing crowd somewhere just beyond a thin wall inscrutably in her vicinity, and then the air snaps in half several times, disgorging localized fireballs that disperse into scattered EM radiation and more of that red haze. The little explosions dump out something else. Creatures the size of prehistoric wolves, a score in total, dumped unceremoniously to earth from random points in the cathedral. Palindromic bodies, clad in iridescent black carapace, with strange, multi-jointed reverse legs in quadrupedal stance, covered in bioluminescent patterns that pulse and flouresce in time with their weird, guttural clicking and electric-sounding gurgling and howling. They pick themselves up as if disoriented, wobbling upright with that eerie, Boston Dynamics Big Dog-esque gyro-stability, and shaking themselves from to back (or back to front?) like dogs, despite balancing on their 'knuckles', with massive serrated blades folded back into the inside of their legs.
Riku	Progress is slow, but that's to be expected. And just think, the task force still has to /get out/ with this damn thing. At least they have a helicopter. Riku works to help move things along as best he can, but it is absolutely a team effort as they work to get things hooked in and the massive object moved. He doesn't have time to look down at the horrible thing down in the hole that the thing created, as occupied as it is. This is because the needle's orb begins spitting out fire and dog. "It's not supposed to be doing that, I assume." Riku comments, Soul Eater immediately snapping out. He wastes exactly zero time, having expected an ambush, and he moves to try to cut down as much of it as he can, slashing in towards the nearest target and attempting to decapitate one side, and then the other. He'll speed about the room as much as he can, leaping from place to place, trying to cut down as many as he can before they can get oriented and start trying to kill people. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE, TAKE THEM DOWN!" He calls to the others.
Reiji Arisu	Well. That certainly is not a thing that is at all normal. Again, though, nothing about this place is 'normal.' Red clouds begin to form. The needle disgorges strange, too-jagged mechanical /things/ that vaguely resemble a robot Reiji is not entirely unfamiliar with. They strike him as very clearly designed for combat by some kind of intelligent creator-- someone who could make several dozen of them, all while adhering to a single standardized template. But they're not what draw his immediate interest. Reiji breaks into a run at blindingly fast speeds, racing toward the hole that the pillar left in the ground and the strange humanoid shape lying sessile in the chamber below. He cleaves through or parries around whatever might get in his way, but the machine-dogs aren't his primary objective. A question burns in his mind: Why didn't the needle react until /after/ they pulled it from its hole? Could the giant and the magical array around it have been used to... seal it, or something like that? That's what Reiji is going to try to find out.
Big Boss	Blast Condor is pretty good with a rocket launcher, hence the callsign. He blows open the rubble to allow the helicopters to help latch onto the bident, sticking to the helicopter and pulling back inside, watching with a mix of fascination, awe, and revulsion. The giant body underneath is... Well, let's just say it's new to Outer Heaven, that's for sure. As the explosions ripple out, the helicopter is careful to avoid, but Silent Jackal is forced to roll back, taking his assault rifle and pointing it at the giant wolves. Holy shit. He snaps a quick picture with his iDroid to transmit it, and then levels the assault rifle off, firing at them, moving to keep distance and aiming for headshots on any that start charging him. He'll call down Blast Condor for supporting fire if they overwhelm him. <"This is not how I expected my first 'versal sortie to go.">
Nova Terra	Nova grabs her head at the sudden rise in psychic presence. She focuses on the orb above them, just in time to see the air distort and fireballs starting to rain down. The first one that explodes nearby throws off Nova's concentration and she loses her grip on the needle. Hopefully the helicopters can handle it. The Ghost does indeed not just stand there, instead she runs, heading for a better position as the doggos begin to spawn in. She jumps, planting her foot on the back of one as a boost as she leaps back up towards one of the raised balconies along the sides. Much better. Now raised above the action, Nova takes her canister rifle from her back and starts firing at the monster dogs. As she sends her large rounds blasting towards the creatures, she calls into her radio, "Hey! Get in here!" One of the cathedral walls suddenly bursts apart as the two heavy power armoured soldiers Nova had left outside come smashing in. The Marauder Commandos quickly get to work, raising their large grenade launcher arms and firing them into the increasing number of creatures.
Haguro	The higher Haguro goes, the more she relies on the radio! It's more polite than just yelling down from where she's climbing. <<"Right. I'm still doing what I think is right. And if anyone thinks it's wrong, then they can fight me if they believe it's wrong.">> She replies to Reiji very matter-of-fact'ly, lacking some of her usual uncertainty. She has to be confident, if she's going to be climbing up this thing without falling and braining herself on the cathedral floor. It takes some doing and creative use of the knife-grapnel to get all the way up there, but Haguro eventually makes her way to the orb! She even starts trying to climb it for a few moments before shimmying back down to just below the orb. <<"It's hot up here. Around the round part.">> She announces to her allies below while tightening her hold on the needle as she feels it moving finally. She stays right where she is to keep inspecting the needle and the orb in particular, reaching into her belly-tail's mouth to pull out a slightly damp camera. Said camera gets melted by the rising temperatures and fireballs coming out of the orb. Haguro yelps as she tosses aside that mass of melted plastic, slipping down that needle to avoid some of those fireballs whizzing past her head and singing her merely by vicinity. Her eyes flash red for a moment as one of those fireballs strikes her back, and her turrets jerk upwards. She considers just shooting the orb, but when her companions express displeasure at that, she opts for something less self-destructive. Haguro flings herself off the needle and dives down at one of those wolf-like creatures. She's aiming to land right on top of it, but she won't try shooting or wrestling it down yet. Instead, she's going to swing her belly-tail around to 'stare' right at its face.
Sumiko	Mikoto is a bit surprised to see the form that Haguro is taking. With an awkward compliment, and Mikoto trying to come to terms with what happened to a someone friendly to her, the next part is surprising. That being a bunch of dog abominations are dropped on them. They're disoriented...which means... Mikoto does a bit of putting two and two together. She has an idea but warded off against it. However, curiosity and the headstrong opinion that she is right got the better of her caution. Her hand once more produces the bracelet. Pointing it towards the needle this time, she attempts to fire a bit of that disorienting junk data into it and attempt to drawback information back from it. At the very little it might...slooooow it down? Maybe not drop creatures on them until they can find a solution that wasn't just essentially duct tape.
Lilian Rook	Decapitating or headshotting the creatures starting to stalk about the room is easier said than done. Partly for their bodies mostly being a sort of fused, silky smooth carapace of extremely hard material, but mostly because it's not clear where their head really is. Weird glowing rows of optical organs mostly blend in with the bioluminescent dots which seem to be mostly for communication, and then stabbing a keyblade or planting bullets into those doesn't seem to hit any kind of brain behind them. They aren't robots though, that's for sure. Nova can sense a sort of semi-intelligence coming from them. Between the initial ambush from the Terrans ploughing down the wall and throwing grenades and canister shots into the initial mess, and the Open Fire! order from the GDF, a number of the critters (Undobhar, apparently) are blown up by concentrated fire right at the start. Blast Condor's rockets take two of the legs out from under one and Silent Jackal repeatedly shoots the life out of it as it drags itself bleeding towards him. Thirty odd shots crater the exposed flank of another close to Nova, until its shell breaks and its weird, membranous insides, without clear organs, splat streaks of blue out behind it. Riku carves long, arcing gashes into the pair closest to him, hacking through their exteriors in a few slashes and then severing wound cords within. The infantry falls back in line at the door, and the effect of thirty odd men putting bursts of assault rifle fire, backed by a dozen snipers and grenadiers, can't be too overstated, as well as the tremendous whine and deafening tearing-paper sound of the giant exosuits firing miniguns. The initial wave is halved before they can leap up and band together, jumping the entire distance from floor to balcony, or else running straight up pillars and walls to converge into packs, spreading out like wolves on a chase. They pounce on, seemingly, the most mystically potent of the people in the room first, prioritizing Riku and Mikoto, with four of them following Reiji down the hole (dropping the whole distance effortlessly), followed by Nova, then the OH guys at a distant last. 'Prioritize' means spitting streaking volleys of glowing organic 'flechettes', stabbing neat rows across the area and each blossoming into little disintegrative blasts. It also means barreling into people at tremendous speed and snap-unfolding their too-many leg joints into huge, serrated, arcing blades like mantis shrimp. The helicopters are making away with the artifact itself without much trouble, now that it's been excavated, and as it gains altitude, the rings of light inside it start to lose cohesion and dull again --until Mikoto blasts it with Data Drain. Instead of scrambling it, the orb portion renews its fiery glow for another twenty seconds, causing the air to explode with a fresh wave of monsters, doubling the original number, and now turning the Cathedral interior into a chaotic three dimensional melee, black alien predators leaping this way and that, dropping from the rafters and bounding from the walls with blades outstretched, spraying volleys of living darts. Reiji, in the moments he has before his entourage slams into the dust behind him, clicking, growling, pulsing lights and vibrating weird extrusions, ascertains the humanoid figure is wrongly proportioned, at least forty feet tall, many decades old, and was probably summoned, rather than sealed, by the circle, before being impaled by the fallen needle, like some sort of extremely elaborate and expensive arcane airstrike beacon. Haguro is, bizarrely enough, not overtly menaced right away. The creature she stares down seems to barely register her presence, stepping back and forth to try and look around and past her, then kick her down and sprint over her into the battle.
Big Boss	The wolves are much tougher than Silent Jackal expected, so instead of taking down a pack, he has to cooperate with Blast Condor to blow through one of them. "And here I thought it'd be like hunting..." The American responds, as he then notices, quickly, that he's not being prioritized. Normally he'd have /absolutely/ no idea why, but with the talk about magic, it seems to be because they're entirely mundane, maybe, based on how the 'magic users' are getting the most pressure. Blast Condor moves to reload, trying to blast out the legs of the other one targeting Silent Jackal, who moves to execute it with another clip of fire. Instead of continuing to fight wolves, however, as he dodges the blades with a slide while the fletchettes impact his body armor painfully, but they don't pierce his skin completely. He's not getting killed on his first Multiversal mission, after all. Instead of fighting wolves head-on, Silent Jackal moves to start climbing onto rubble, looking for a high ground himself, and then grabs a grenade. Knowing that they aren't prioritizing him, he lobs it into the biggest pack he can see, calling out. <"Grenade incoming!"> Hopefully, he can at least cripple some of them with the frag grenade angled at exactly the right area.
Haguro	What a curious reaction. Haguro takes advantage of that initial non-reaction to just get a good look at the creature, taking note of the lack of head and their surface being so smooth. Even her armor isn't that smooth! Alas, the creature doesn't seem to make any noises in return, so Haguro doesn't have a lot to work with until it punts her off and dives into the fray. Silent Jackal Says, "They seem to be prioritizing the magic guys. I'm barely getting touched." Watching the creatures certainly seems to confirm this theory. With little magical ability of her own to assist in figuring out the stuff going on with the orb itself, Haguro instead turns her focus towards assisting Silent Jackal and Blast Condor. When the latter calls out his grenade, the shigirl bolts after those furthest away from the blast zone, trying to hoist and hurl them in single smooth twirling motions to maximize throwing speed and minimize general contact. "Creatures incoming!"
Sumiko	Mikoto gets the data back...and then see's the thing's glow get stronger again. There is a deep and very complex line of thought that goes through Mikoto's head, around the very nature of these creatures and their affiliation with magic...and it comes down to a single, very focused phrase. "Oh fuck," Mikoto says, betraying her mood and realizing she just accidentally fed it. But at least they knew what NOT to do. The realization burning in her...no wait, that wasn't just a realization. It was also a piece of her body being DISINTERGRAITED. Staggering from the blow and being sent flying, she dug her sword into the ground to try and hold herself upright. Ow. She stands up, once more as more monsters hit the ground, and she swings in a wide arch, the first one aiming to try and block projectiles, and a second swing aiming to try and cleave the wolf-creature as hard as she can through the center of mass. "Ok, anyone with magic, DON'T USE IT in here. Don't touch the big monster, and we should be good. NOBODY AT ALL with magic should touch or use their magic. Again. Saying this because when you do I can shout 'WHAT DID I JUST SAY' really loud. Like that. Oh kami, my side.."
Nova Terra	Nova appears to be mostly avoiding drawing the attention of the monsters. That's handy. It allows her to continue sniping them from her raised position on the balcony. At least until they start to overrun it. Nova ejects her magazine, reaching back to pull another out. But just as she's about to slide it into her rifle, one of the Undobhar charges and smashes into her. Nova grunts, impacted both by the creature and the railing she was just tackled into. It breaks under the force and Nova goes falling down to the ground floor once more. Hitting the ground, Nova is pinned under the monstrous doggo as it unfolds its blades and begins trying to stab her. She uses her arms and telkinesis to guard against them as much as she can, taking a few cuts in the process. Finally she frusted, her eyes glowing blue as she unleashes a blast of psionic energy all around her. Probably catching more than just the monster pinning her with that destructive power. Freed from her uncomfortable position, Nova climbs to her feet just as her two Marauders move in to cover her on either side. As they help to fend off the creatures, Nova glances around, then up. Seeing the helicopters managing to fly off with the needle, the apparent source of the summons, Nova calls out, "We just need to hold out until they get that thing out of here!" Nova successfully reloads her canister rifle once more, returning to putting large holes in the creatures once more. Meanwhile her Marauders resort to stepping on or punching those that get too close in order to crush them with the power of their heavy armour. Even as the spitting blasts begin to eat away at said armour.
Reiji Arisu	Well. From everything that they were told about this operation, the appearance of the strange staticky point on the GPS was a more recent addition to the landscape. But everything that Reiji is seeing-- the arcane scrawl, the dessicated colossus with the hole punched through its middle, the fact that it looks like it's been here for several /decades/-- all of it suggests that its position is either a coincidence... Or it was used to set in motion the arrival of that needle /years/ in advance. The possibility doesn't sit well with him. Who would plan for something like that to happen? The needle looked like it dropped out of the sky, so where did it come from? Space? On top of everything else, is this world being invaded by aliens now, too? Fortunately, he has no time to dwell on the possibilities. The soft rattling of spindly, razor-sharp legs upon stone and wood are all that he needs to realize that he suddenly has company. Two weapons emerge from his personal arsenal, even as that disintegrating shrapnel sizzles away patches of his body armor in flashes of energy and dissipating ozone. He ducks and slides under a dozen more shots, sweeping forward with his azure blade. Its tip cleaves along the ground, causing great spikes of frost to surge up underneath the swarming hounds. He whispers a curse when one of them lunges, cutting a bleeding gash across his shoulders. But his plan is set. The rapid accumulation of rime has surrounded him in a veritable field of ice. Bullets erupt from the barrel of his handcannon, fired fast and loose at any target he can find, and some that don't even seem to be there at all. Those bullets, apparent misses, slam into the ice around him. Spikes of too-solid frost lance up at the beasts from odd angles wherever the bullets land, the elemental metal bolstering the water and causing the ice to grow out of control. His weapons are sheathed, replaced this time with a red blade and shotgun. Though ideally, his first assault will have been sufficient...! The ice is serving a dual-purpose, after all. He needs to make sure the arcane workings down here are as pristine as he can possibly keep them.
Riku	This wasn't entirely bad, Riku reflects silently as they mobilize and manage to halve the number of enemies before things even really begin. That's good. However, then there's the problem of the additional wave of dogs. "DIDN'T SHE JUST SAY TO NOT USE MAGIC ON THE THING?" He yells as suddenly things get a lot more dicey. The unearthly creatures REALLY want to murder him, which is a problem when he has to be conservative. Riku is effectively wearing his magical power on his sleeve. Literally. That's how he operates. But there are differences of magnitude, which is something he is forced to appreciate when the flechettes and scything blades come. He's fast, but he's not THAT fast. Several of the flechettes begin to open up gashes across his battle suit, the Heartbrand having to resort to stopping and trying to parry some of the rushing blade strikes as he is harried from all directions... But the call about a grenade goes out, and Riku nods, leaping directly upwards as the munition hits around him and detonates. Riku grips onto one of the walls and rebounds off, getting back to using his agility to his advantage even as he continues to experience the death of a thousand cuts.
Lilian Rook	Once the breakdown on target prioritization comes in, the GDF advances further into the ground they're gaining, kicking aside pews and stepping over bloodied Antegent corpses, emboldened by the fact they're effectively at the absolute bottom of the list alongside the PMC, and using the opportunity to open up with close range automatic fire and shotgun blasts that are more like huge walls of shot than tight bursts. The orders come down through each squad to swap to explosive ammo as they go, to suppress the area as hard as possible while the choppers get to a safe height. One of the exosuits smashes down a load-bearing column, collapsing rubble on a trio of wounded monsters, jamming its cannon into the pile and executing the mess with a pair of muffled thumps. A specialist beyond a fallen pillar tunes a laser designator on the space below the hole Haguro created in the ceiling, and a hail of 30mm shells sprays through it at an angle, mulching a wide swathe of the historical building's floors. Blast Condor and Silent Jackal benefit from the same decreased aggro, crippling and executing the enemies they can flank. Sascha completes an extremely rapid-fire summoning from outside, sending in a flock of smoggy grey familiars that immediately draw attention, allowing the pair to sneak attack another couple of Undobhar from behind. They don't pay Haguro any mind until she picks up and throws a couple, at which point it's too late to do anything about her, being blown up and all. Mysterious. She can't be the least mystical person in the room. She's a spirit. The flare of psychic power throws Nova's engagement off of her, but the raised spines on the backs of several around her vibrate and glow, immediately turning their attention towards her. They renew their rush on her, splitting between the first and second floors to maximize how many blades they can be stabbing into her at once, slashing and scrabbling over the marauders protecting her, only attempting to skewer the pilots and sever their hydraulics once they've been actively wrestled with. The martial artist Immune borderline flash steps in there to help, turning one into a horizontal blue spray by hitting it with a two-fisted thrust from the chest, opening space for her to gun the rest off her men. The remaining bulk are focused on Riku and Reiji. Riku stays mobile and commits to evasive action, forcing them to form up and chase him down, circling around and above and trying to flank and cut him off. That in of itself opens them up to attacks from their unprotected arcs, and Riku finds the monsters jumping down in front of him, suddenly appearing where he turns, or pouncing on top of him, swatted out of his way by rockets and autocannons, until he has only to slash up the last couple. Reiji, stuck in the deep, deep catacombs, inexplicably existing beneath even the catacombs, catches his pack in an AoE attack with no room for them to be anywhere else, neatly skewering some and crushing others up against the walls. He is subject to a last minute hail mary volley of easily a hundred of those pulsating, glowing flechettes, scattering all across the ice, becoming a thwacking carpet of baleful lights, and blowing up all around him like a miniature carpet bombing with only his ice to protect him, but repeated frozen spears eventually stab and crush them enough to finally finish them off. The whole place is filled with dust, gunsmoke, blood mist, rubble, low burning fires, dispersing magic particles, and spent brass, but once it falls quiet, you can hear the last few seconds of rotor blades fading off into the distance, indicating a successful extraction. Wearily, the lead unit commander radios in an objective retrieval, calling in the adjacent task forces to form up, resupply, and head back out the way they came before it's crawling with hostiles again.