Scene #7009: The Riveting Spike

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	Deep at the bottom of the steep hole in the earth, at the very base of the antlion's den, the light starts to improve as the sun finally reaches its apex far above, hovering directly over the multi-mile silver scar on the face of the Earth, the glistening, slightly wet, reflective metal channeling its rays kilometers downward, and illuminating the gathering, the giant corpse of their last fight, and the ominous spire pierced deep into the hard bedrock, leaning out at its slight angle. The unidentified black metal doesn't grow brighter in the slightest, absorbing the light almost completely, though the red gem suspended within its twisted spearpoint glimmers faintly, still churning with cloudy, crimson substance within. Predictably, it starts to get pretty hot. Though it still isn't spring, the metallic substance extruded all the way down catches and funnels the heat of the sun's rays, making winter clothes uncomfortably sweaty, and prompting rounds of bottled water. It's been a couple of hours, providing time to recuperate and rearm. Deveaux has spent the last little while assembling a transceiver device at the bottom of the shaft, relying on technology over magic this time to conserve energy. The beacon, crackling quietly from the background interference of the mysterious power that fills this place, the precise coordinates are put through Lilian's radio for reinforcements or exfiltration, has already contacted the most forward airbase, and a squad of stealth craft is on its way with topped up tanks and hopefully enough transport equipment to haul this thing away, provided anyone can get it out of the ground. It's deep. Really deep. Even before analyzing it fully, it's obvious that it's crashed really far into the rock, otherwise the angle of its thirty meter exposed portion would have caused the heavy object to topple over already. The terrain hasn't changed in the least after the Antegent's death, apparently a permanent blemish on the laws of the world, fully physically incarnated rather than ready to collapse or disappear, which, at this point, is more a good thing than bad. Another mercy is that the corpse hasn't started to smell in the least, despite the heat and its sheer bloody bulk. It seems likely that it won't decompose at all. There's still about an hour to figure out how to haul the thing away. Any effort to cut through it and take away only the top part has met with failure; even Deveaux's holy sword has barely chipped it.
Ishirou	After repairs and a little bit of rest, I4 replaces the blindfold over his eyes, containing his exterior visor. A small black box with tiny arms follows behind him, as he presses his hand against the large object. He moves around, slowly trying to get a measure for it, as well as using the POD's scanning equipment to see if it could map out how far deep it goes so they could properly calculate mass. "POD, options," I4 says to the POD, who beeps and goes through a small list, -Excavation, high yield firepower, specialized flight equipment.- It says and causes I4 to shake his head. "The firepower only changes the problem, not solves the issue. Excavation is likely too dangerous here. The equipment may not be able to handle the mass." "POD, fetch me a group of rocks varying in mass, and a sample of the liquid that came out of the monster's sacs. The ones responsible for its gravity manipulation," I4 was running out of personal ideas, so he needs to collect as much data as he can, and try and apply every solution he can. Oddly, he avoids idle chit-chat, complaining, or anything else.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur is here! He has locked onto the BEACON. "YOOOOOOOOOOO!" He calls out, as a Gate opens. Others who choose to respond to the beacon, of course, are invited to join with him. Easier that way! "WHAT UP, PRINCESS?" Not you, Strawberry. "You hit that BEACON without going on the ANTI-SHITHEAD FREQUENCIES, so you got me for BACKUP. Fuck's up here? All the shit UP TOP is WACK AS HELL." He regards the horrible corpse, and sticks out his tongue. "BLEH." Then he regards what it's wrapped around. "THE FUCK IS THIS THING?" Arthur asks, emphasizing the whole-ass sentence this time. "This one'a your WEIRD MYSTERY CONSPIRATOR TECHNOLOGIES? Why are you a FUCKTILLION FEET UNDERGROUND?" He crosses his arms. He seems to be primarily antagonizing Lilian specifically to get a briefing from her about what he should do next, now that it seems he's missed the fight. "You need a LIFT? I can just REVERSE GRAVITY, but I ain't seein' much HANDHOLDS up there for makin' that EASIER."
Alexis	Once she's tended to her pokemon and reballed him to rest up Alexis wanders back to the rest of the group and joins them in staring up at the towering spire. Nibbles thoughtfully on her lower lip for a bit. Then looks down at the ground, giving the soiled surface a stomp with the heel of her hiking boots. "Well, it's like I said earlier. I brought pokemon to dig. But I think we gotta figure out how we're gonna get it outta this crater before we worry about prying it loose." Cue Arthur's bombastic arrival. Huh, that could be convenient. She raises a hand to wave briefly to him. "I'd be careful with your magic, dude. Gravity is already wonky shit around here." Less so with the behemoth eel dead, but that's not reassuring it's going to stay that way, with the way this entire world is on the FUBAR side.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry's wand has long since gone cold and dead, locking into an emergency SCRAM- as she explained earlier, the only thing capable of cooling the reactor is the reactor, so there's no hope of merely pausing its countdown. Without that, she's more or less just a well-dressed twentysomething with a gun. Even so, she's leaned against one of the cavern walls, tapping on her smartphone. Anyone looking over her shoulder might spot archived Wikipedia pages about nuclear ramjet technology. Fortunately, she seems more or less unharmed by the whole ordeal, save for a nasty bruise on the right side of her abdomen- her Shimmer Aura almost, but not entirely, diffused the impact of a mini-worm slamming into her. When Arthur arrives, she gives him a refreshed grin and does her best to reciprocate the handshake once more- she does significantly better this time, almost keeping pace through the whole thing! "Hey! Great to have you again, Arthur. That's what we're trying to figure out- how to get that thing out of here so we can, you know, puzzle over it." She holds up her wand, the reactor blackened and dull, devoid of its usual metal-tasting tingle. "I ran this thing dry pretty quick after the fight, though. Not gonna be much help."
Touta Konoe	Just like he said he would, the young man arrives into the depths of this silver-scarred land thank to Arty, saving him a lot of trouble in comparison to what the rest of the group had to do. "Thanks again Arty. I honestly- Maaaan, this hole stinks! Uggh!" The one thing disadvantage of taking a portal rather than the long way into this monster abyss is you don't acclimate over time to the heat or the smell. It hits Touta all at once and makes him shake vehemently for a moment. The spikey-black haired youth comes along with the reinforcements, his attire rather inappropriate for what would have been such frigid weather but within the depths of this chasm seems to work out rather well with how the these metals catch all the heat. In fact despite the poor quality of air he seemed pretty energetic upon seeing so many familiar faces. "Hey Lilian, seems like I made it after all. Though..." Looking around at the silver chasm and hearing what Alexis says to Arthur about the gravity in this place, Touta does something he usually doesn't do...He seems a bit more...Reserved? His black taichi gets tucked into his armpit with no sheathe to holster it in, his hands tuck into his pockets even though it's so hot down in this place, and also...He seems a little conscious of his surroundings all of a sudden.
Gawain	Despite being a magical ghost, Gawain still feels heat. His armor is making him basically melt, so he desummons it, and strips his winter clothes down to a white undershirt. He's wiping sweat off of himself with his jacket and a cloth, as he nods to Arthur. If Arthur approaches, Gawain attempts to give him a coolkid handshake he's heard about. He's not great at it. "Hm. Strawberry Princess suggested using the silver stuff to send it into the air, right? What if we did that, and have Arthur use his gravity to control descent? Perhaps I could ride it, and help Arthur with that." This is a stupid plan. But it's sunny! It'll be fine!
Korra	An hour had passed by, as Korra made herself comfortable at the bottom of the antlion pit. First, she had sat with her hands against the ground, 'reaching' spiritually out into the surrounding earth. By the half-hour mark she had retreated to the shade of Deveaux's transmission array, hiding in the shade of the dish. "Like a big mirror just reflecting down. How was it so dark, before? The arrow-behemoth?" She asks the french operative, having little luck connecting with the elements, such as they were. The SPACE PORTAL, around the hour mark, gets her attention though. "Woah! You're..." Korra looks Arthur up and down slowly, before nodding. "Going to be really hot here, with that whole scarf-hood. We're here searching for some sort of... special... energy thing?" The Avatar thumbs at the bloody 'core' of the giant monster that they had felled and left to 'rot'. "And it's not that. Did I ask that? Are we looking for the giant bloody sphere?"
Arthur Lowell	"Fuck, really?" Arthur squints at Alexis, scratching his head. "Well shit, gonna get BETTER SOLUTIONS or something on the GRAVITY BIZ." He lends an ear to Strawberry Princess, listening to the nature of the business. "Getting this huge-ass bastard OUT OF THE HOLE? Shit... Well, I don't wanna be runnin' REPEATS of the SYLPH OF SPACE, might fuckin' DIE if I try to TELEPORT THE WHOLE THING OUT." He regards her reactor situation though. "That NUCLEAR? Shit, girl. Well, I'm technically a NUCLEAR REACTOR." He says, jabbing a thumb against his chest. "I can't, like, REFUEL your shit, but gimmie some'a that SKIN and I can RUN SOME MAGIC THROUGH YA." To demonstrate, he greets Strawberry Princess with his usual impossible array of daps, pounds, bumps, fives, grips, grabs, joint-locks, finger-wiggles, and other assorted suchlike coolkid handshake maneuvers. Except this time he's charged his body with high magical output in potential energy forms that are just actively begging for utilization. Any time Strawberry Princess has physical contact with Arthur, she should be able to access that vast reserve.
Lilian Rook	Running scans through the earth, I4 ascertains that the Antegent's influence hasn't extended into the ground around the massive, alien needle, but the full length of it must be roughly 300 meters. It isn't an especially hyperdense material --it is in fact relatively lightweight-- but its sheer size ensure that it's still well over a thousand tons, and wedged tightly. The rock around it has apparently been superheated and partially fused, consistent with the ground zero of a small, high speed meteor impact. The rock is just normal rock, but they'd have to go very deep. Past the needle tip, there appears to be a hollow cave structure, albeit not deep enough to hold the entire thing; most likely it just barely breached the ceiling. Lilian has to sigh and get up when Arthur comes in yelling and teleporting as usual, coolkid style. His voice echoes off the walls, despite being at least a hundred meters apart. "Dead Antegent, obviously." she says, kicking the corpse. "Level Demon, probably tier Crimson. No doubt an Architect type responsible for this place. It's taken care of, but fighting Architects on their home turf is always awful." She squints for a moment in half-confusion, before saying "Oh. 'Up top'. That's just the result of a lot of other Architects and Dominions introducing their own private ecosystems or reality enforcements over fifteen years. Don't pay it any attention. Broadly, it isn't any particular Antegent's lair." She walks up to the massive pylon, rapping her knuckles on the metallic substance. It looks like it has some sort of translucent coating, and just beneath the surface, dull conduits etch a pattern of tessellating pentagons. This, of course, isn't a thing, but the brain agrees with the eyes, even if logic objects. "It's not ours. That's absolutely certain. A smaller one of these was discovered by accident in the London Exclusion Zone. At the time, people figured it was some weird sort of Antegent, but that's clearly not the case anymore." "Last time, this thing absorbed the use of mystical energies in its area, and somehow used it to spawn or disgorge smaller Antegent; Undobhar, in that case. A pack of them. They've been studying it since it was recovered, but it's above my grade to hear any results from it." She looks up, at the miles of floating silver detritus. "I'd be carefuly about reversing gravity. Underneath this thing, it appears to be normal, but past that, you're entering the bottom of a deep, high pressure pool with a floatation device on. We got down here with those platforms, like a raft. I'd rather not have this thing accelerated out of here like a railgun and fired off into infrastructure somewhere else, or worse, the ocean." Meandering back to Strawberry Princess, she says "The next set of craft are carrying a small amount of nuclear material, so if you really need to, you can resupply from those. Not terribly helpful right now, admittedly." Deveaux just nods to Korra while going through his equipment and fiddling with the transmitter. "It will probably cool down when the sun goes past. It's a very deep and narrow opening. That creature wedged itself in tight and blocked the light, yes. As far as we know, it may have been intentionally absorbing it. Gradually recovering its energy, perhaps?"
Ishirou	I4 looks over the data, considering each point carefully. It's lower in mass for its size, seemingly made out of a super light material, but it's a huge object. He uploads the data to his allies that can receive it, opting not to go over the data verbally. The slightly detached observation causing him to b-no he's definitely being broody. He decides to walk over and obtain the sample from the dead monster, aiming to get a small amount. He starts testing it on rocks of similar mass, aiming to see how much or little he needs to actually make rocks float if they'll float at all. When Strawberry calls for people to pull back, he does so. Returning to his tests to try and try and calculate how much of the liquid he'd need. More information from Lilian causes him to think, energy applied to the creature can produce more monsters. He could scan the gem to see if he could get more information, but that might cause energy transfer. I4 isn't sure about that and returns to his experiment. The heat of the midday sun seems to not overly bother him.
Alexis	Alexis nods, taking a few steps back when suggested, and... hmmm. She flicks a pokeball into her hand, and releases the tall yellow form of her Ampharos. "Give us a Light Screen, just in case." A bobbing nod with his long neck, and then he clenches his fin-like arms in concentration. Both the orb on his forehead and the end of his long tail start to glow as he generates an energy field, giving people something to stand behind for an extra measure of safety while Strawberry tries whatever she is going to try. They don't know what this fucked up world is going to do in reaction to things, so it's just an extra bit of precaution.
Strawberry Princess	As Strawberry's hand touches Arthur's throughout the handshake, glittering wings flicker behind her intermittently like a lightbulb in a brownout. She tilts her head backwards in a way that suggests bugged eyes and raised brows. "Oh, damn," she mutters quietly. "That's- that'll be real helpful, Arthur. I'm gonna ask for your help with a thing." She interlaces her fingers with his, ensuring a steady flow, and holds her wand out in her other hand, pointing it directly at the black pylon. Its lights and controls blink to life, stuttering and guttering from her hand out to the tip. Slowly, the horrible device awakens. The reactor whirrs to life, burning phantom fuel and shedding an unearthly glow as its control rods grind and raise out of their wells like a blossoming flower. Its red timer-screen flickers to life, displaying an ominous code: 88:88 A glow appears in the crystal at its tip, dim at first, but exponentially intensifying as Strawberry flips switches and adapts to the foreign energy. A column of blue-glowing ionized air, like a tingling Vegas skylight, shines out to paint the side of the pylon just above where it's buried in the ground. "Everyone, out of the way! Firing on high! Three..." The light from the charging crystal is unbearably bright. It hurts to look at, but you can't look away from it- it shines through closed eyelids, paints every corner of the room to erase every shadow. "Two..." Tingling and metal-tasting and tinnitus-squealing fills the tortured air. Skin glows hot, like getting a sunburn all in half a second. A deep, unpleasant pricking. "O-" There is a noise like thunder that's felt more than heard, a reverberating wall of air that hits like a tidal wave. The pink-white beam fires. It is concentrated, only three feet across, but it slams into the pylon with an unearthly destructive force. If the pylon is less than indestructible, it ought to ash a perfect hole straight through with a little sweep, chopping down the top fragment and boring hundreds of feet into the solid rock beyond. If it does prove wholly invincible, the absorbed energy should shatter and melt the rock the pylon's embedded in anyway, freeing it up to be extracted. Strawberry's hand squeezes Arthur's as she opens her eyes, coughing in the scattering gray dust. Her wand's display screen is cracked, its control rods scrammed again. "Did we...?" But she can barely hear herself speak.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur gestures vaguely at Gawain. "If you're sure we can RUN IT UPWARDS, man, I can do some STEERING, but this MF got DAT MASS for real, dawg." He also listens to Korra's input. He stops, thinks, and then snaps his fingers. NOW he is wearing something a little more akin to a desert wanderer's robes, though it keeps the long, long hood. Should be good for high temperature variance! He decides to approach the pylon after Lilian describes things. "Well, shit, homie." Arthur says. "Can't study it at the bottom of a pit like this, right? Any way you can use the PLATFORMS for GOING UP? Otherwise your options for getting BIG-ASS EVIL NEEDLE out of your CRUST is, like, SILVER STUFF, GRAVITY, or GATES. And who even knows if GATES would KILL me." He shakes his head. For now? He's just gonna lend some support to Strawberry Princess. She needs a reactor, and Arthur is a reactor! He knuckles down and locks fingers with her, specifically in that exact way that definitely isn't h*ndholding. And he does his best to give her all the power she needs. She needs a lot, and he gives a lot. His free hand is clenched into a white-knuckled fist, his eyes flash bright white, and his body roils with mysterious stellar fusion energies as the part of Arthur Lowell that can be an actual, factual sun starts pumping huge volumes of raw power directly into Strawberry Princess as a substitute for her own nuclear energies. He even gives a rising yell, much like her reactor might scream.
Touta Konoe	Touta scratches the back of his head for a moment looking sorta out of place as he ends up going behind the light-screen with Alexis. "Man, kinda wish I came earlier now. Feels like I'm not gonna be much help with getting this thing out of here..." Honestly, for an Elite he wasn't feeling very Elite at the moment. If anything the way he kept pocketing his hands like he was trying to hide something probably didn't help either but it's not his fault! Though with that said he probably should ask if there's anything she'd recommend him not touching...If just to be safe. Or at least he was going to until he feels the impact of Strawberry releasing her crazy magical blast from out of nowhere. He's not even the target of the thing and he can feel the pressure of it still pressing against his chest through the light-screen. By the time it finishes and the dust settles there's only one thing Touta has to say... "Uhm...Who's the new girl?"
Korra	Going from nodding appreciatively at Arthur's choice in clothing (and snickering about 'dat mass', which she took entirely in a different way than potentially intended - or exactly as intended, DEPENDING ON INTENTION - to ducking and covering is quite the new experience for Korra, but she leaps to it with alacrity. Ducking beind Deveaux, she stamps her foot to send a few blocks of earth up around his array before stamping twice more and crouching into a little cocoon of rock. It keeps the energetic particle event that Strawberry Princess lets rip only teeth-itchingly expressive. Punching her way out once the thunder dies down, Korra gasps for air and starts coughing again. "Gheez! That was..." Touta interjects. Korra finishes her thought after her coughing fit ends. "... actually awesome! Where was that against the fish that shot other, smaller fish?" "Oh, sorry." She waves at Touta. "I'm Korra."
Lilian Rook	Taking the iridescent oily sheen off the silver is a bit unpleasant to the touch. It stings in an acidic way that isn't really acid, feeling like having rubbed one's fingers raw on something rough and immersed them in salt water. Rubbing it on rocks doesn't so much make them float, as it makes them repulse everything around them. Given that they're of lesser mass than the ground and walls, this leaves them hovering at a low point of buoyancy. The ones with greater surface area have a greater effect; the cubic increase in mass is negligible, since the planet isn't going to move around them, and it doesn't seem to care about weight --as a function of mass and gravity-- anyways. "Strawberry Princess." Lilian replies to Touta, with exactly the sort of lightness of describing a children's cartoon character. "She's a magical girl." There's a pause, before her tone becomes heavy with implication, faster than the wind changing. "A real one." Deveaux brings up his Latin-scrawled shield of amber light again when Strawberry Princess fires, protecting himself from the searing light and violent blast wave. Lilian is just out of there, and slowly drifts back down like an autumn leaf when the aftermath is cleared. The smoke is intense, and finally actually tastes bitterly of tarnished silver and burnt lamp oil. It gradually clears to reveal . . . That pylon is made of some disgustingly hard stuff, but not quite 'point blank focused nuclear black' tough. The damage Strawberry Princess has done is far from neat; it's not even close to a perfectly circular ashen hole bored through, but it's gone through end to end alright, looking more like an armour-piercing gunshot hole through a plexiglass window. The exterior has fractured from the sheer force and heat, where it hasn't been burnt through, with glowing, red hot cracks spreading from both the entry and exit point until they touch each other around the side. The interior appears to be far less durable and far more complex. Surprisingly, it isn't one solid piece of material, but something sophisticated enough to be called a machine, or looking at it closely, perhaps some sort of complex plant? Layers of thin, translucent material in many stacked columns have holes scorched through them to varying degrees, with double helical conduits broken through in the middle, smouldering orange. Internal etching, like a circuit board with no hard angles, flashes with little rivulets of light, going bottom to top. Anemone-like fronds tangle together --or perhaps more like coral-- further away from the blast zone. It all interlocks and connects like some sort of pump or turbine. The black armour is ridiculously hard, and six inches thick, but the rest isn't. Compromised as it is, some additional blunt force could easily break the remaining material and snap it off its bottom nine-tenths like a dry twig. The rock around it has melted and peeled away, causing the whole thing to begin sliding further down, lubricated by smoking lava, into the cavern below. The splash of water can be heard, and the whole thing draws a long, molten gash through the cave ceiling, simply by leaning sideways on the superheated rock, opening up a dark hole.
Lilian Rook	Punching through the middle, rather than the gem, is probably ideal for keeping it intact. Since it's mostly nuclear energy, there hasn't been much of a reaction. Yet, still, trace amounts of esoteric energy, released by going through the wand, rise from the surrounding area, and are drawn inexorably into the huge, glassy red orb teetering at the top, gradually sucked in as thin vapour trails of sparkling rainbow. The churning red clouds --or is it liquid?-- inside darken, and spark with tracer-like flickers of bright scarlet. Space around it bends and ripples, like little disturbances caused by water striders, not quite breaking the surface tension of a pond. Pinpoints of light. Energetic embers of mystery energy that shine through and then fizzle out. It's trying to absorb enough energy to summon --no, transport something, but its conduits are extremely badly damaged.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry stares at the hole for a moment, breathing heavily as if the attack had taken physical effort. She drops the wand from her blackened glove, sending it to clatter and sizzle on the floor- one of the control rods actually melts and falls off like an overcooked marshmallow. She's squeezing Arthur's hand almost a little too tight. Then she lets go of him, straightens herself out, and clears her throat in the settling dust. "Oh, man. Thank you, Arthur. That was... I haven't gotten to do that in a long time. Cathartic, I guess." Then, to Touta and Korra: "I'm Strawberry Princess," she says cheerfully, removing some fancy earplugs. They're probably the only reason she isn't occupationally deaf by now. "Pleased to meet you. I'm sorry I couldn't line up something like that, you know, during the fight. I didn't have... a clear shot. It's not the kind of thing you want to miss."
Gawain	As Strawberry Princess fires a nuclear laser beam at the spire, Gawain steps back, watching. He seems very impressed, as he nods, and looks up. "Very good, Strawberry Princess!" And then he sees the orb is doing something. He can't damage it - that might do worse - so he tries to follow the motes with his eyes, figure out where whatever it's transporting is going to end up... And try and throw himself that way so that he can intercept it first, hopefully still in the motes of sunlight. He'll tank, as he alerts the others to the presence of the orb so those with disabling abilities can try and stop it.
Touta Konoe	The blast subsides and with it there's quite a few people who Touta gets the pleasure to meet all at once. The first being that of Korra who mistakes his question towards her. Not that he's going to tell her that he didn't mean her. If anything as Lilian makes her statements to Lilian, Touta decides to give his intro as well. "Name's Touta! Nice meeting ya both. Also looks like you both were really packing, huh? I saw all those crazy rock moving stuff you were doing on the side too Korra! You a magical girl too or something?" Meeting new people is always a pleasure for this kid...Yes. He's a kid, in fact he honestly looks like he might be in the range of a fourteen-year old at the oldest, and a twelve-year old at the earliest. In fact...Why is a kid this age even here, with a weapon none the less? Well, maybe both of them are somewhat accustomed to kids doing dangerous things already. Though it appears all sorts of questions will have to be held for later as Gawain makes note of the transporting situation. "Ah! Gawain, I got your back!!!" The young man shouts as he follows Gawain, leaving the protection of the light-screen to act as a secondary-tank, following Gawain's path to be ready to halt whatever this thing's trying to do.
Alexis	Alexis lets out a whistle after the display. "That's a hell of a shot. Looks like you weakened the structure at least." The noise and what not doesn't seem to have bothered her much, probably due to all the big noisy monster types she hangs out with normally. She gets ready to get out some bulky brawn to help finish the job, but stops as people point out the gem at the top is doing something. Drawing in energy? "Shit." Switching gears in an instant she instead recalls her Ampharos. If that thing can start sucking up energy having a walking electrical generator on the field is probably not a good thing. After that she takes a couple of steps back and looks up again, hand lingering near her belt so she can pull a pokeball as soon as she needs to. But maybe it'll stop now that the Magical Girl isn't shooting magic....
Ishirou	The scanner gets enough data on the strange liquid. He'll try and get a sample for later, and see if it could be replicated. This stuff could come in handy for other purposes. Oddly, this strange interaction immediately seems to improve the mood of I4. He learned something new, and despite what he was feeling that caused him to turtle up, he can't overcome his natural tendency for information collection. I4 is nearly knocked off his feet by the directed energy of REAL MAGICAL GIRL, as opposed to SUPER MAGICAL GIRL. Right now it means that he tastes copper for a brief moment, before standing up and looking at the work done. There is a whistle before he notices the thing deciding to do...something? A brief conversation, and a sharing of insight. I4 squints at the thing for a moment. "I would avoid magical fields, directed energy, or anything of the like. Anti-magic would be a good idea," maybe, Lilian's input into this, as well as Strawberry's insights were causing his brain to try and figure this out. He raises a hand and attempts to remote hack the machinery inside the damaged structure, or the orb if necessary. Maybe he can pull information out of it...or maybe even gain control over it? It's worth a shot, and won't at all turn badly.
Korra	"Sounds cool. So are you... from the Strawberry kingdom?" Korra asks, having barely registered what's going wrong before the moment is over. "Do strawberries in your world shoot green thunder? That's pretty cool. People from mine mostly shoot blue thunder if they know how. Kind of a hard trick, actually. I'm still working on it." Touta brings up an interesting topic, as Korra finishes punching her way out of her own rock shield and hopping up to sit crosslegged on it as I4 scans the pulsing sphere of doom. "I'm a... fffake magical girl. I don't do magic. I bend. The four elements - air, water, fire, earth. Make sense?" Strawberry pipes up with a request. 'Can someone hit it?' Popping back up, Korra smiles and nods. "Sure, one fake magical hit, coming right up." Hopping from foot to foot on the broken dome of her shield, Korra takes a stance, crouches, and leaps powerfully into the air, spinning and delivering a flying kick to the pulsing ORB. "Worst happens, it pops while we're way down here, right?!"
Strawberry Princess	"Oh, I'm sorry! There's not- there isn't a 'Strawberry Kingdom'," Strawberry says, holding her hands up apologetically. The palm of her costume's glove is burned away entirely on her left hand, showing reddened skin in the early stages of blistering. "I'm- I was from England. It's just... a title. For a group. You know- Strawberry Princess, Blueberry Princess..." She trails off. When Korra does the flying kick, she almost applauds, but then thinks better of it.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur gives Strawberry a quick fistbump. "No prob, dawg. You want MORE GOOD MAGIC, you HIT ME UP." He breathes heavily as if the attack had taken physical effort. Because it did, for him! He then focuses on what's going on. He can recognize it, the deep and intense danger that can be found in using magic around this thing. What is it? Why is it drawing on this energy? He immediately identifies and locks onto the space bends and ripples, and starts running his own analysis on them. It may not be the powerful analysis of a Seer, but Gates are his specialty, the transportation of things. He moves forward. He can afford to fly up there to where the top chunk's orb has settled, but that's because he's a dreamself, and thus flight isn't magic. He places a palm on the orb. He needs to find out all the information he can about what it's doing, but the biggest priority is making sure it won't summon another monster -- or if it does, at the very least making sure that the group gets the initiative bonus against it. The next thing, though, is figuring out just what the hell kind of transit system this is. Is it natural? Multiversal? Encoded into this reality? /Artificial/, somehow?
Lilian Rook	Strawberry Princess asks Lilian a very pertinent question as to the fact she'd said earlier that the Antegent don't use technology --that they're frequently unique but perfectly 'natural' beings. She's probably frowning under the 'breather'. "Yeah that's . . . correct." she says. "I'm wondering the same thing you are, I think. The Antegent that designed this space obviously didn't create it. It's so absurdly hard and heatproof, and it's buried so far into the ground. It's like it was shot into the earth; and it has all these complex internals. Plus, it interacts with magic --our magic." Deveaux seems less inclined to speculate on it. When Korra leaps and delivers her spin kick, he's on the other side, attaching a spread of golden mana cables to it, and yanking with enough strength that his boots sink into the solid stone floor. The thing finally snaps around the middle. Membranes and helixes bend and tear, briefly spurting fluid that is unnervingly red. It topples over with a might crash, exposing the narrower shaft down. The pylon doesn't appear to be capable of drawing the energy out of people (or pokemon); that's good, because otherwise everyone would be in big trouble. It's rapidly beginning to dim and calm down again as it burns through the energy it'd absorbed. The spatial sense of it that Arthur gets is that several breach points are all trying and failing in the area around them. It definitely feels like spatial manipulation and not some kind of summoning magic, pressing against and attempting to pierce the local skein of reality. It's definitely nothing he recognizes though; none of its internal processes make much sense to him, save that the orb doesn't really have a center, but rather a 'bottom', like a spherical hole. I4 fires his hacking shot into it. He is immediately blasted by literal terabytes of repeating glyphs and symbols unlike any he's seen before. They have an order and pattern that means they aren't random, but hit him in incredibly high volume, rapidly filling his data banks. They don't really strike him as encrypted; they're more like language than code. Between suppression attempts, the last of the spike's energy is all burned up with one one, singular, successful transportation, where the air is pierced and widened into a glowing sphere, filled with esoteric radiation, like a white hole, except angry violet-red. What crashes into Gawain and Touta is . . . Another specimen of the thing they'd just killed. Unmistakably, though it isn't nearly as large. The corpse collapsed in the bottom of the shaft is at least a kilometer long, whereas the dark, serpentine, silvered and bioluminescent thing that surges out, wiggling and thrashing like a sea snake forcing itself into a narrow coral passage, is perhaps only a hundred meters long, and thick around as an elephant. It's still a lot of force to collide with them, before the breach collapses and releases a burst of intense heat behind it. More importantly, there is one, huge, glaring detail: the Antegent is already wounded. Not by a botched summoning either; there are huge, smoking holes in its flank, punched all the way through, bleeding profusely and filled with glinting fragments of some glowing red substance. Half of its head has been carved through with a massive, clean cutting wound, still blistering white hot. It crashes to ground, bellowing in higher pitched tones, audible to the ear, and begins attacking them in a desperate frenzy.
Ishirou	The data surges over the line, as I4 tries to control the flow of information. At first, it might be confused as junk data, but as the patterns find themselves in the symbols, it starts to make sense. This is a language, and data is here but not in a medium he immediately understands. He breaks off his connection when the warning of another summoned monster is reported. Shaking his head and trying to press his fingers to his temples to overcome that link. The cobwebs are shaken out, as he motions towards the POD. "POD aim directly at the bladders on the sides let's prevent him from getting any advantage of height." The box unfolds, revealing a solid barrel, before a very directed blast of energy aims for the side of the creature, aiming for the same place he did on the last one, and attempting to damage those gravity pockets.
Gawain	Gawain nods as Korra attacks the orb, as requested, and the monster comes crashing down into the knight and Touta. Another one of the giant eel-things, but /far/ smaller. Gawain doesn't resummon his armor due to the heat - the sunlight protects him, so he's in his white undershirt. Summoning Galatine to hand, Gawain dashes with superhuman speed, staying within light where possible, and leaps upwards. He soars, briefly, into the air, the super jump carrying him, and sets Galatine ablaze with a flick of a wrist. He moves to try and slam it into the Antegent's weakened head. He doesn't expect it to kill it, not yet, but since it's already damaged...it should be a much shorter fight.
Alexis	Damn, it's a smaller version of the thing they just killed. "Arceus dammit, if that's a younger one, how long was that other one sitting here that it got so fucking huge?!" Even as she's cussing Alexis grabs a pokeball, going right for the figurative big guns this time. "Gonna just cut this sucker down quickly this time. Take the field, Machete!" The pokemon of choice this time appears to be some kind of green velociraptor like reptile. That like the more modern image of raptors has plumage too, just instead of feathers is long leafy fronds jutting off his forearms, and off his tail making it look almost like a horizontal conical tree. "Sssceptile." The hissing growl comes as he doesn't bother questioning what's going on and readies himself for a fight. "Right then." Alexis smirks a little. "Like they said, disable the floaty organ sac-things. Seed Bomb!" Powerful legs leap the lizard into motion and the command, catapulting him into the air. He reachs back to pulls several of the bulbous yellow pods off his back, and flings them at the side of the gravity eel opposite where POD is shooting at. Much like the attack name suggests the pods explode on impact, like some kind of botanical warfare grenades, aimed to blow out more of those gravity bladders!
Touta Konoe	"Not a lick!" That's the response Korra gets when she uses 'bending elements'. Though that would be expected from a guy who's never seen bending but plenty of magic. So at this point though things progress to where everyone's trying to make a point to make sure that whatever this orb is doing it doesn't allow for it's intended transportation goal to be accomplished. Unsure of how to help in the moment he follows Gawain in the heat of the moment only remember...'Oh right I make magical things blow-up when I touch them unintentionally.' Immediately realizing this he calls to the others on the channel to KEEP HIM AWAY FROM THIS THING. Meanwhile, Touta's decided he just needs to keep his distance from this thing no matter what. He keeps his blade up pre-emptively using it as a make-shift stick to keep himself distanced from whatever might be getting 'transported', really doubting anything is going to happen but he wants to avoid the situation where he accidently explodes a thing that everyone's been trying so hard to capture. Plus in a chasm like this he can't imagine an explosion would do anyone any good. Though when he sees that what this thing has summoned is a smaller antegent that starts coming down at him and Gawain, he feels pretty confident in actually stopping this one. It was much smaller and already damaged, compared to the one the group must have taken care of if he couldn't deal with this little thing he shouldn't have even been here! Touta finally preps his sword with a smirk as he hears I4's warning. "Thanks for the heads up! Sides it is!" As the two buffer it's attack with much ease, Gawain using his sunlight endurance, and Touta uses his strength to hold it off while healing most of the damage it may impose on him. Though once Gawain jumps into the air, Touta follows suit as he goes to the side of the antegent. He knows how sturdy the original one was so he makes it a point to not just slash into the beast, but really make sure he's hitting it with enough force to dig into it's body. "500,000 FOLD!!!" With those words Touta would do some gravity manipulation of his own to maggnify the weight of his blade. At the moment it probably weighed about...Half the original antegent, so as he went to swing his blade into the side of this 'baby' one he fully expected to hopefully pierce through it's body and into these bladders I4 was mentioning.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry's immediately moving, grabbing her cooled-down wand scaling up the dead worm's coils through frenetic rock-climbing-like acrobatics until she's at Arthur's altitude. "Lowell! Steady for me!" With a deep breath and a running start, she takes a flying leap off of the coils to reach him in midair- her fingertips graze his hand, and her wings flare to life, catching her before she can plummet to the ground. Holding onto Arthur's shoulder for dear life with one hand, she flicks a switch on her wand with another, powering its cracked screen to life. The damaged reactor sputters and grinds, but wakes up just enough for another shot- this one a needle-thin rapier of a beam, piercing into the hole in the creature's head and being jittered back and forth inside where its skull must be. Maximum biological damage, minimum magic expenditure.
Arthur Lowell	Gawain and Touta are taking the brunt of the punishment. Arthur's relieved about that, because even just the emergent thrashing is enough to knock him about a bit. He struggles hard to steady, and offers a shoulder to Strawberry. "YOU TAKE THIS AND YOU /SKULLFUCK/ THAT SON OF A BITCH!!" He screams, blasting a tremendous gush of stellar fire directly through Strawberry Princess, enough that hopefully her rapier-strike blast will be running at tip-top intensity. And since his broom is loaded with magazines, he can dedicate almost all of his power to fueling Strawberry Princess while he swings the broom around, and opens fire with rapid shots parallel with hers. The heavy bolts scream and leave trails of plasma from the speed at which they're fired and the internal propulsion systems that accelerate them. He goes for headshots at the carved-out slice much the same as some of the others here, trying to rip through its structure in tandem. And also preserve its flank, where there's evidence of a substance they can analyze later. "TURN AROUND, YOU REPTLE FUCK! THIS IS HUMAN COUNTRY!" He screams as he blasts volleys wildly out of his broom-rifle.
Korra	When things get better, and not worse, after Korra gives the orb a spin kick the Avatar is elated. Bouncing up on her fluffy boots and pumping her fists once, she whoops. "Yeah! How's THAT for fake magic?!" She calls, grandstanding a bit before realizing that-- --She's in a deep pit and the only people around are world heroes. Korra smirks as she coughs into her fist. "I mean... Yeah, great, good teamwork. We stoppd the sphere. Good plan." Things get interesting when the portal drops something else. The whole time Korra is captivated by it. "Spirits, that's red. What do you think is past it?" Reaching out with her senses - even dulled with inexperience - she tries to cast her awareness through the portal -- but it closes too quickly, disgorging the nascent boss all thrashed up. The rest go for the slithering creature! Korra moves to the sphere, hesitatingly. "This caused it, right? Is this their Spirit World? Is it..." The pinpoint explosion beam of Strawberry, powered by Arthur Lowell's NAUGHTY NONO WORDS, gives her reassurance. "Yeah, they're good. Now, where did that 'gate' go..." Closing her eyes, Korra places both hands on the orb and casts herself 'in' to the energetic flow.
Lilian Rook	The badly damaged, immature Antegent, is no match for the group's combined assault, especially with the biological data of the larger specimen. It's armour is thinner, there's less flesh to pierce to hit its organs, its vital force is lower, and it's already lost most of its blood. It fires multiple of those piercing !magic rays wildly around the area, slicing back and forth, scoring the rocks and cutting through debris, four of them waving around completely unaimed, and random fragments of silver shrapnel whiz around the pit, but it's very clearly fighting on adrenale; the pure survival instinct of a cornered animal. The POD fire and seed bombs stitch horrible wounds across both of its flanks, causing it to spiral out of the air almost crash into the ground immediately. Pieces of its metallic fins are hacked off, along with its head tendrils, by sweeping arcs of Galatine, and whatever the name of the searingly bright sword that Deveaux uses is, giving off its glaring corona. Touta's 'side stick' hits it dead on, sending it flying sideways into the wall, cracking through the silver, and cratering the rock behind it, painting the walls and floor in dark blood in the blink of an eye, like a ruptured paintball. Arthur's stellar bolts pound it over and over, throwing up vapourized smoke and fire, keeping it pinned and unable to escape. Strawberry Princess surgically thrashes her focuses beam through its insides, and shortly enough, it goes completely still, then slowly peels away from the wall, and collapses on the ground with a slightly sickening, limp crunch. I4 alerts Lilian to his data discovery, but she only points to him immediately and barks "Save and back them up immediately, then disconnect your drive. It wouldn't be close to the first time that kind of thing drove someone insane, or planted mental commands. Even if you're mechanical, if it's a Cipher or Dominion of the right class, you could still be in danger." Given that I4's digital/magical brains don't feel scrambled yet though, the threat, if there is one, seems to have been suppressed. Finally though, she approaches the corpse, rolling it over to inspect the damage from when it'd arrived. "These wounds though . . . Antegent don't ever attack each other. Not any more than incidental collateral damage from a larger one, at least, but these ones are targeted. Deliberate. It looks like it just barely escaped. Why would any Antegent hunt a smaller one? They're 'complete' beings; they don't rely on anything else to exist. They don't even compete for territory --not really." The object they have to remove is now more like a hundred tons than over a thousand; it's still a lot, but it's imminently far more manageable; there are people who could physically carry that out if someone else grabbed the other end. It's also stopped 'bleeding' like a severed limb, which is mildly comforting. "We have the transports inbound in twenty. Let's get this thing up and out of here." says Lilian, checking her holographic screen, wirelessly connected to the transceiver beacon.
Lilian Rook	Then Korra goes and puts her hands on it. She barely has to focus at all. The instant she taps into her spiritual projection, it's like her awareness is ripped from her body, pulled into a deep, roiling, crimson spiral, dragged inexorably into the black abyss at its heart. Though the sheer gravity might make one fear being crushed, or pulled apart into infinitely thin nothingness, shredded by the tides of the singularity, instead, partially inside of it, she has a brief moment of lucidity --in the sense of a lucid dream. The disorientation of a personal sense of gravity that doesn't quite work, shifting around to be 'downwards' from wherever she looks, like a trick room. Massive formations of solid, ultraviolet blackness covered in growth in infrared white. Nearly invisible, translucent shapes that swim and swirl and glide through the air. Stark shadows from the massive, overbearing, scarlet light somewhere above, yet surrounded by a halo of landmass; a stellar body at the center of everything, surrounded by silent, violet stormclouds. Her voice doesn't work, lost as if in a vacuum. Even her spirit body doesn't quite move right, like it has no mass, but only velocity. She has the sense of being watched --not secretly, or furtively. Someone looking at her. For the barest of moments, she feels herself cast under the shadow of something ambulatory, 'bigger' than she is, in the disorienting way she can sense relative size at all, standing at a slight incline on the tilted 'landmass'. Something ivory white, glowing red in the ambient light. Something with eyes, though she never sees them. No, there's more than one. Soundlessly, she hears them 'speaking'. A sharp sound. Mechanical, or like cracking bone. A high pitched whine. A flash of light. Blinding, agonizing heat, like a red hot sword had rammed through her guts and blown up into hundreds of spinning fragments inside of her. She's slammed right back into her body, and physically hurled away from the orb. Her hands are burnt and blistered, though she is otherwise unharmed. She couldn't hear it before, but now she'd be certain she can hear a sort of low, song-like humming coming from the thing.
Ishirou	I4 nods to Lilian at her command, "Activating info hazard countermeasures." Not that I4 is SPECIFICALLY immune to these things, but there are protocols for handling spells that operate through the written language. Methods of getting around these are known and built into the scanner's systems, in just such an event. I4 is about to get on with his business until Korra does an impulsive thing! On the one hand, he...should stop her, on the other the fact that there is so much to learn here and that he isn't sure what this would do overrides his better nature. Essentially, he becomes a tourist with a camera, as he keeps a scan on her, trying to understand what is going on and collect those readings for later. Once she's done with her journey, and of course, back with injuries his sense of not being an asshole returns, and moves to try and help. "You ok? We probably should get you a first aid kit," he says, looking around for one. Of course, he's not a particularly good doctor, and so he'll step aside for anyone else with proper training. Before they leave, I4 tries to collect a few more samples. Liquid from the pylon, any bits of shrapnel from it being blasted apart, and another good sample from the floaty bois.
Alexis	"Good job Machete." Alexis gives the reptile a pat on the head, right behind the crest-like wegdes. "Keep an eye out just in case anything else happe--" Cue Korra trying to do some fancy spiritual trickery and getting flung across the crater. That looked like it... Well, just another reason she only uses Psychics for their power output and not that other mumbo jumbo that's dangerous to poke around in. "Someone might want to check on her." That's out of her field of knowhow. Anyways. "Okay, anything -else-. There shouldn't be any more of those things, but the way the day has been going..." With a shake of her head Alexis grabs two other pokeballs. One releases her Aggron, having reverted back to his normal form when he was recalled before. He's not completely healed but after resting up he's at least got his strength back. The other releases her Flygon, the dragon with insectoid wings and eye-lenses. "Okay you two, this is the part we actually came along with so its time to get to work." She points at the portion of the spire where Strawberry nuclear lasers the thing and the exterior was cracked up. "Grindcore, help with prying that the rest of the way loose." The metal saurian nods, and as he trundles up to the spire to do so Alexis climbs onto Flygon's backside. "We're going to help with the lifting and guiding it out of here, Mirage." Wings start to glimmer a bit from refracting light as they buzz into motion, rising dragon-fly and trainer off the ground and up along the length of the spire.
Touta Konoe	It seems like for the most part the group ends up doing some overkill on this Antegent. Enough to not only slam it to one of the walls but then continue a relentless onslaught on the thing that keeps it pinned without any hope of escape. He's not sure how the fight with this original antegent had went but for this one it would go down much easier for sure. As the fighting stops though and the new smell of blood fills the already putrid air, Touta covers his nose for a moment as he tries to speak up, "Well, guess I ended up getting to help out after all." Though as the fighting stops it seems Lilian starts giving the rundown on the oddity of this Antegent and it's circumstances. He wants to ask questions, but inorder to ask a question...You usually need to know what the Hell you're asking about. So he saves these questions for...Another time. In the moment he watches Korra do...'Bending' maybe? He's not sure. Though Alexis says to check on her so he will...Which turns out to be a great call when she gets launched like a sack of potatoes away from the orbs. While he's got no idea what caused it, he's fast enough with his Shundo to catch this newbie before she slams into some oily, slick, sliver dirt or whatever was in this chasm still. Can't do anything about those burnt hands though. Still..."Hey, Korra? Korra, you alright? Uhm...What the hell just happened?!"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur drifts back down to the ground, panting with some exertion, and sets Strawberry Princess back nearabouts where she was before. "Well that worked. Good shootin', Strawbs." He says, looking prideful about the corpse of the monster. "So, we gotta get... the mini-corpse for that autopsy, and the big-ass space-chunk. He strides over to the corpse first. "You studied how they behave on the whole wide Earth, Princess?" He asks her. "Maybe this is just how it is in fuckin'... Antarctica or whatever. I gotta take a look at that space shit to figure out where this is linked up to." He walks over and tries to rip a chunk of the red fragmentary substance out of the body, a fist-sized chunk if he can find one, and CAPTCHALOGUE it in his SYLLADEX for later use in PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY. There is no clear explanation for what any of that means. Then it's time to hoist and lift this son of a bitch. "Alright, while we were fighting, I figured out the /actual/ solution." He slams his broom into the ground. "Why /reverse/ gravity? We can just put it sideways! And then /walk/ out of the hole while we carry this shit." He's going to wait for folks to ready up or to shout objections, but unless there's obstacles, that's what he's gonna do right away now! Just a quick crank of the broom to make it happen.
Gawain	As the monster goes down, in its final thrashing, Gawain is damaged, sent flying backwards, and hits the wall. He's /fine/, relatively, but he's gonna be feeling that and bruised. He slowly rises up, returns to the group, and moves over to the now much smaller pillar. As Alexis and her Pokemon move to start lifting it out... Gawain moves to grab it from the ground end, using his sunlight-boosted strength to just rip it out of the ground, once he finds a grip. He'll need help to carry the /entire thing/, but he can assist, certainly. If they're walking out, it should be fine. If they're going /up/...well, that might be awkward.
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry lets go of Arthur, letting her wings fade as they carry her down ten or twenty feet. She falls another bit onto the sphere, slides down that elegantly, then rolls forward in the air to elegantly diffuse her momentum on landing. The last flickers of her Shimmer Aura further dampen her fall, flaring in bright opaque pink around her legs as she bends her knees. "Thanks again for the boost, Arthur!" Even with the smaller worm dead, she noticeably keeps her distance and doesn't take her eyes off of it- probably seen too many people die to a monster's death throes in her career. Even so, she sprints over to Korra when the bender is thrown back from the orb, jockeying with Touta to make sure she's okay. "Oh, shit- you alright? Didn't hit your head or anything?" Once she's ascertained that Korra's still alive, she finds a place to safely lodge herself for the gravity-sidewaysening. "Secure! Hit it."
Korra	Korra's trip is... Trip-py to put it simply. It's a deeply strange spiritual experience, and one she doesn't feel very powerful during. Her trips to the spirit world had always been surreal but serene, the scale much more akin to the 'human' world. This was far more vast in scope and simultaneously alien and small. She only retains bits and pieces of it, smashed in the spiritual core so hard she meteor smashed all the way back into her body. Blasted back, Korra tumbles back through the air but, as she connects with the ground her hands shift down to brace - her connection ablated as the rock parts like a sled cutting through fresh snow around her neck and shoulders. Her eyes don't shoot open, instead fluttering asynchronously and with her eyes bloodshot. "Unghhh... Well that was rude. Ach-ch-chhhhh..." She complains as the nerves on her hands finally report in as the synaptic logjam in her head begins to clear. "Y-yeah, I'm okay. Burned my hands, have a headache." She does not report the humming. "Buncha thunderspeaking jerks."
Lilian Rook	"N-no." Lilian replies to Arthur, still a little put off by Korra's interaction with the orb, though seemingly glad nothing came through. The other blonde knight comes over to look at the body as well, and says "More than half of known Antegent are unique. One-off entities. The opportunities to study them are often very limited windows before having to intercept one, or occasionally after death, when minimum firepower is used. The body of common knowledge supports this, though. Antegent never compete with each other. They never consume from the environment. Evolved beings that subsist entirely on their closest thing to magic. They have no need to compete or kill one another, logically." Arthur rips a little fragment of white-scarlet something out of the body. It slides out easily, sizzling where flesh boils and vapourizes. He can tell right away that it has zero mass. Literally none. It's like a piece of glass, though an extemely regular, elongated diamond, thinner at the edges than he can really see. It's also still extremely hot, burning his fingertips right away. It disappears into his sylladex under the name ¬§¿ Splinter. For medical supplies, there are only the bare basics, though Deveaux shares the rest of a tiny little spray vial of something that foams on Korra's hands, then condenses into a sort of thin layer of warm, breathable gel, before anyone goes throwing on bandages. From there, he joins the rest of the squad in hoisting the hundred ton monolith flowerhead, and gives a thumbs up when Arthur goes to tilt gravity. It works. Perfectly fine, actually. The hole is now basically just a corridor a few kilometers long now, with steps that grow increasingly steep yet again, for completely opposite reasons. The floatation effect of the crater is, finally, handy; it prevents the horrendous nonsense that is carrying a piano backwards down a flight of stairs. The smaller corpse weighs less, and can be safely dragged. When Touta comments on the lack of smell, Lilian says "How many bacteria do you think are adapted to decompose these? Seriously." The trip, blessedly, remains uneventful, until they emerge into the sunlight, and the gushing whine of vertical takeoff engines lowering to embarkment height, lowering ramps for troopers to climb out and begin fastening tow cables to the artifact.
Alexis	The turning of everything on it's side for lack of better words is a bit disorienting. But they'll make use of it. It mainly means Grindcore can actually help carry the thing instead of just lifting, and once it's apparent they're going to just hike out Machete bounds up to help as well. While instead of doing much of the carrying Alexis and her Flygon are now on top, and just lifting up to help keep the length of the thing balanced as everyone is moving it along. It's still a trek and a lot of work, but it's less strain than having to fly the thing out as they were originally going to. Good thing Art popped up when he did.
Strawberry Princess	After adjusting to the shifted gravity, Strawberry walks alongside her friends towards the exit, making cheerful decompressing banter all the while and fussing just a little bit over their remaining injuries. Her wand is slung over her back; her blistering left hand is bandaged up nice and proper. There's just one little subtlety in the way she carries herself- She always walks a few paces behind Korra, her right hand swinging less than it ought to with each step, never more than a few inches from her holster. They did mention 'infohazards', and Korra just projected her soul into an alien space. So... just in case.