Scene #7922: The Pandora Gate

Owner	Pose
Evehime Gevurah	Ma'adim Vallis is another one of Mars' massive canyons. Far wider and less oppressively tall and dark than the Valles Marinaris from which this whole problem had arisen, it bears similar dimensions to the Earth's Grand Canyon, albeit far longer. Sculpted by a primordial river flowing into the gigantic Gusev Crater it its northern point, in the uncountable years before it all froze, it should be little surprise that this is another point at which Mars' half-finished terraforming gathers together, nominally breathable air sinking into the lowlands and liquid water trickling sluggishly down myriad intertwining multi-kilometer wide channels. It is also where the Pandora Gate is. As far as anyone has explained it thusfar, the Gate is an artifact that was simply discovered on Mars, by the 'native' Barsoomian people, and then seized by the solar system's premiere governing body, the Planetary Consortium. There are numerous theories as to its origin, including the remains of an alien situation, but the going theory Is that it, and like gates found in other remote corners of the solar system, are unfathomably advanced technology created by the sentient machines that once nearly exterminated humanity here, and then suddenly disappeared. The gates would explain where they went, after all, known to open to far flung, strange and sometimes seemingly semi-random and hostile locales far from any Warpgate. Managed by a private company called Pathfinder, that polices the gate, vets all explorers and expeditions, and analyzes what comes back, skimming a 'reasonable' fee for the privilege, it's a well-known fact that the gate is rather unpopular with everyone else, its existence and potential danger barely tolerated by the Planetary Consortium's general populace on Mars, and its decidedly less-than-just hostile takeover resented by the scattered and nomadic Barsoomian people. To cap it off, it is also where Evehime --the revealed mastermind of the previous wholesale theft of a Martial 'backup bank', storing ten thousand human souls-- has already promised to attack next. Given that the mission to bring those displaced people home under a nuclear doom clock imposed by the Consortium had ended in abject failure (mostly because several people wanted it to), it was a given that an assault on the Mars Gate, once the Gevurah deemed her provisional 'people' theoretically ready, would commence in the future. It was less a given that this would be barely a month's time. The Pathfinder company has an entire brigade of six thousand private military employees stationed all around the entrance to the Gusev Crater, hard fortifications built on top of the myriad islands of weed-choked red rock above the gigantic lake's water level, numerous missile silos and automatic emplacements lining the canyon valley feeding into it, and priority uplinks to the geosynchronous military imaging satellite dedicated exclusively to watching the mysterious gate buried deep in the crater's high and rocky off-center peak, ensconced under layers of sleek domes, silvery hab trails, and stark plastic concrete encircling walls. A robust network of overlapping sensors totally blankets the area for a hundred kilometers around, a permanent observatory watching the skies for arrival from space, and powerful broadcasting and jamming equipment to conduct military grade hacking and electronic warfare in the case of something coming from outside the gate rather than from the other side.
Evehime Gevurah	None of it particularly helps when the enemy goes full analogue. It's meteorological-event early warning systems that cook off first, causing a huge bustle of commotion around the sprawling corporate base, already put on fully armed high alert. Predictive AI models a crash site from an absurdly sharp and shallow angle, right past the mouth of the canyon, whilst experts quintuple check the data in equal parts accelerated mental time and utter disbelief. Techs both scramble to check the systems and bring all of the stationary defenses manually online to at least eyeball the impending disaster for shooting. High ranking staff sound the alert for non-essential company staff to evacuate the premises, which they do in great numbers, fleeing to parked VTOLs and watercraft by the hundreds. Private soldiers leap to their battle stations, waiting to hear the command come down. None of it is fast enough to do more than shoot off a single initial volley of ostensibly ineffective semi-guided missiles before what was going to happen, happens. A chunk of stone easily large enough to be mistaken for a colossal asteroid streaks over the horizon and explodes into the head of the river, damming up the water and sinking halfway into the lake-- but it is unmistakably rust red martian rock, torn from the windswept cliffs, not collected from space dust. On top of it, a singular, giant dome of interlocking triangular gunmetal panels, anchored deep into the crashed terrain. Behind it, a circular wake of dissipating fire and rust-smoke. After it, the teeth-rattling catchup boom of supersonic flight, and the gradual descent of airborne water and dirt falling back to earth in the low Martian gravity. From it, no sign of meaningful electronic activity or wireless communication; barely even a heat blotch, certainly not enough to track with ultra long distance sensors. Out from inside, the distant shapes of a hundred, five hundred, thousand, two thousand human beings streaming out from it, somehow preserved from the impact. There's just one transmission, from a simple portable radio that'd be picked up by the main transmission dishes in the Pathfinder corp complex. 'Admit weakness and surrender now, or be tested by rite of sword for whom this site should rightfully belong to.' It's enough for highly paid private military executives to feign internal debate over while immediately calling for Multiversal intervention; this problem came from the Multiverse, it can go back there.
Sleek Shimmer	The message is heard by many. A call from the Planetary Consortium for help. Sleek Shimmer's understanding of things is improving though. The moment Mars is mentioned, she knows exactly who they're wanting help from. Try and stop Evehime, Who Outshines the Sun? Not likely to happen even on her best days. Certainly impossible in her current weakened state. Her inner sea is still cracked and many meridians still torn. It puts a limit on how much of her strength she can exert. But still the fox is of a mind to come. Come and watch the deeds of the true experts and perhaps learn something from it. Sleek Shimmer emerges from the warp gate in her fox form, seeing no reason at the moment to waste her strength maintaining a fleeting human likeness. She bolts across the Martian plains. Any Consortium personnel who question her intentions are met with a vague response of 'To see if there is anything I can do' when she already knows there probably isn't much of anything she can do to stop Evehime's conquest. The wounded vixen shall thus climb atop the highest possible vantage point she can perch atop of and seat herself quietly.
Lory Thumper	The whole thing sounds fishy to the bunny cop Lory Thumper, who answers the call and quickly reads up on things on her way here. Her rabbit ears perk at the message and hmms softly while considering the implications. "So...are these people supposed to be who originally owned this thing? Are they just proxies?" she muses aloud as she watches the humans charging toward them. She checks her weapons, makes sure her armor is in place, and puts on her police helmet. "Of course, the mere fact that they are Evehime's minions probably makes those questions moot. They'll probably just destroy and kill based on some belief that war is the only way." she adds to no one in particular. Once the missiles have been fired and the attackers have started closing in Lory starts prepares her disc grenades of various types. She doesn't want to get into close combat until she has to given the number of attackers. Usually she would hold back and try her best to stay non-lethal, but an army of Evehime followers...well, she's seen what Evehime can do. Still, they are people so she has to at least try to resolve this peacefully. She deploys one of her drones and sends it out, relaying her voice to the incoming horde. "Please stand down! We can arrange for negotiations if you feel you have been wronged by the Consortium! If you continue with this attack we will have no choice but to use force, possibly lethal!" Once the message is relayed the bunny waits for a few moments. She has to give them a chance to respond, but she raises her paws with a disc grenade tucked between each set of fingers, ready to lob actual shrapnel grenades. And tries to just push it from her mind that this sort of thing really isn't what she intended to be doing when she joined the Paladins.
Ishirou	Ishirou knew this call was going to come. There wasn't much he could do to prepare for it. He let others know that it'd come, but nobody could stay on standby forever. Or maybe others felt uncaring towards this fucked up world and the government in place. It wasn't for the status quo that Ishirou cared about, but the people were caught in the middle. Both sides used their people, both sides had little value for the individual. One just came from somewhere else, and some people liked how she talked. Also, certain words stuck in his head more than they should have. 'You'll never change reality because you are afraid of it.' Even as he worked on the AVCS, he'd zone out thinking about what she was getting at. /Was/ he afraid? Was there something else she was hinting at? Did INDUS scar him more than he realized and only now he could really see it? Once that call came out, though, he summoned the AVCS over and activated the flight unit modules. Soon enough, he was flying through Mars' sky and coming towards the landed hunk of mars and starting his own scans of the people coming out. Trying to gauge their threat level, as well as get any other information about what they might be packing. 'Was it fear that caused him to operate this way', a thought lingering in the back of his head.
Hiromi	Having not been here, before, it should be no surprise that Hiromi still isn't here. It may not be 'representing the Archwolf,' but there is one present who could, under some circumstances, fulfill that role. She's a wolf-eared shrine maiden, standing with a teenaged girl's stature, her strength hidden beneath loose cloth. Her strung bow doesn't look much more imposing, but her bronze gauntlets are harder to avoid noticing. She was here, before, and though she'd been conflicted over the results, standing with the PMC defending the gate isn't really hard for her to justify. "I'd had no chance to test your strength, before. You'd seen mine, but seeing isn't as good as feeling, is it? I'd hope to say my eyes are good, but I know that, too. If I can't reach a decision just by thinking about it..." Her fists clench, her stance drops, and her gauntlets extend up to her elbows with a deep, echoing sound, "...I'll know better by feeling you. I am Hisako, miko to the Archwolf! I'll take your rite. I may be only a little sister, but -- as one disciple to another, please grant me this honor." If you truly lack for nothing, if what I think is important wasn't needed for you to defeat me, then that will be a lesson, too. I'll think about the meaning after I see and hear. She stands squarely in the obvious path forward.
Staren	The Planetary Consortium wants help? Honestly, from what Staren's heard on the radio, Evehime -- or is it "The Gevurah"? Has... a better idea than what was going on here. Certainly, everyone would agree that exploitative hypercorps shouldn't have exclusive access to something like the Pandora gates. But... Does Staren really have to be someone who just folds in the presense of someone like Evehime? When Persephone was around, the aura kept Staren from ruminating on that, but... Hnnh. Staren drives through the warpgate in a security walker, a metal-plated bipedal machine with a carlike cab and little arms with mounted machineguns on them. (Also lacking the power signature that should be present for such a vehicle...) She's wearing what looks like her usual, although scans show her to be in the same sleeve she's used in some ops last year around Lilian and the other day neer Pharsei, what would be locally classified as a 'pod' not that it shows on the outside. Her hair is in a poor woman's braid using a bunch of ties, and she's also wearing a rebreather, because Martian atmosphere. And marching through the gate after her come dozens of humanoid constructs -- Most wouldn't be out of place here as some kind of security bot, looking like cheap riot police but with presumably lethal rounds in their guns. A couple of them are piloting more security walkers, and there are a few magical constructs as well -- ten-foot tall stone giants with cannonballs, metal statue-men and quadrupeds sporting missile racks. Staren and her construct army form up with Lory and Ishirou. She takes a deep breath from her rebreather, and then announces: "To be clear: I like you more than those guys." She jerks a thumb at the distant PC troops. "But, your people and your cause need to be tested, right? It wouldn't do for you to win unopposed... So..." She takes another breath, then shouts, "Show me your strength!" There. The excuse has been said. It would be more convincing if she weren't almost tremoring... but... she needs the practice. Or if she ever has to go up against Evehime for real, she'll just fold like wet tissue paper. As opposed to... maybe she can shoot for dry, regular paper? Corrugated cardboard? One step at a time...
Hibiki Tachibana	That certainly is Evehime Gevurah's 'people' assaulting a very mysterious and abjectly dangerous gate to all sorts of godsforsaken places and planets, and about to chew through an entire defensive complex to lay claim to it. One does not necessarily have to have been present on Mars during the events with the Firewall team to know how this can, yeah, be a very bad thing. You really just need to get a widescale SOS and a very brief rundown on what's going on, and the most minor bit of previous experience with said Gevurah, but still one that sticks pretty deep. A battle witnessed from afar, the expression of unadulterated might, the very way she carries herself and commands a presence even over distant radio and the feeling in her chest... Not nearly as much an experience as plenty others. But more than enough that by the time she's arriving on scene, she's stark serious and wearing more than a grimace for several reasons, not the least of which being the whiplash from her newly-stabilized life to this. But no one can say Hibiki Tachibana doesn't go out of her way to to lend aid where it's needed, and it's sure as hell needed this time, however Pathfinder does business be damned. There's something nagging at her mind, just a bit. And she's not sure if it comes from normal pre-fight anxiety that comes with having to fight people, or... Either way, on a rocky outcropping halfway down one of the cliff faces of Ma'adim Vallis, a single girl in armor watches from overhead as a whole fighting force arranges themselves out of the fallen stone they've exited. There's a frown beneath her scarf, followed by a rise of her eyebrows at a certain miko's declaration before she settles back into a more neutral expression - before stepping off to drop down the rest of the way, coming down on a knee before rising back up with fists clenched. "...Alright then. I guess this'll be as much for me as it is for them. I already figure none of you guys will back down, so let's see if I can't shake off this feeling the only way I know how...!"
Evehime Gevurah	Ishirou flying overhead has some perplexing information to sort, and some 'oh, that makes sense' information to go with it. He'd remember the number of people engaged in that Valhalla-esque feast, fight, die, and get back up again training back at the nameless colony to be roughly two thousand, but the number of people on that colossal rock numbers at least half again that many. Two thirds of them are an assortment of Big Boys and Lady Larges wearing brand new armour that he is only able to analyze as being made of the same stuff that Evehime had lugged a building full of back from the TITAN exclusion zone; probably some kind of exotic metamaterial that companies don't fuck with, processed by inspired hands into some kind of semi-powered platemail, as well as a profusion of hand to hand combat weapons and muscle-powered projectiles. The remaining third is a motley collection of lanky red-skinned humans and cheap-looking retro cyborgs, armed with their own ragtag arsenal of advanced ballistic rifles and martian camo cloaks, between whom he can detect network traffic. There is no propulsion device to the building-supporting asteroid. As far as he could tell, a million tons of rock had been launched here, from the ground, manually, as an absurdly low-tech, and thus rather undetectable, delivery system, intended to crumble in the lake to absorb landing impact, with a simple bunker built into it. The enemy is currently outnumbered by Pathfinder's heavily armed and far more advanced forces three to one, to say nothing of their fortifications, silos, turrets, armoured vehicles, small airfield, and clambering four-legged tanks. This seems to be a known fact, because when the incoming mob is challenged, they are already, without any sort of transmission direction, assembling themselves into broadly spaced units of a hundred armoured troops with dual attaches of twenty five locals each. There's barely a pause before the response comes back, and Pathfinder command flashes the green engage light because of it. 'Then let your deaths be instantaneous, while we bear the progress of infinitude. We are immortal. Your men are but slaves.' The number of enemies is essentially far to large to contextualize in terms of location and position; when they begin rapidly dispersing into a crescent around the rim of the crater, seizing the nearby Martian spires as footholds, they already amount to 'a geographic formation'; there is nowhere to be that is still in the combat theatre from which one cannot be conceivably be promptly attacked. The mysterious enemy locals melt almost immediately into the environment, whether the dust or the water, and broadly begin bombarding all tech-based fighters with the opening salvo in fierce electronic warfare, and the rest with hails of invisible sniper shot. The men and women not so much as given hand grenades are somehow far faster; fast enough to start seizing ground before another wave of missiles can be launched at them. Most of them string bows or hurl lances of exotic TITAN nanomaterials on the move, propelled with the kind of force that'd make the finest local cyborg envious, tripled in range under Mars' gravity, and, obnoxiously, an ostensible hard counter to the automatic defense systems designed for shooting down incoming munitions. Little glaring lights wink on from the slopes and islands all around, but anti-ballistic lasers don't really do much more than heat up giant physical projectiles, aimed not at fortifications, but on immediately killing all of the closest targets available and working out from there.
Ishirou	Ishirou stayed on the wing while he tried to size up the attackers, and while initially he was confused about the numbers, things quickly fell into place. Physically propelled lances are thrown, and the flight unit quickly banks to one side and boosts out of the way, because of Ishirou's quick scans and analysis of the battlefield. He quickly sends information back to people, first to the elites on the field. For those with electronic HUD setups, it's an easy download. For those without it, it's more of a magical screen that only they could see. This includes the corporate forces, as Ishirou immediately attempts to make a handshake protocol with their forces in order to better direct them. "You can't fight these things with your tools at hand. I'll supplement and support your equipment the best that I can, but right your numbers advantage won't be an advantage if you continue to rely on your tools." Rather or not they listen, he DOES however make more intense scans, attempting to better calculate their tactics and exact strength a bit more defined. Of course, he's alerted to electronic warfare and that changes what he was going to do slightly. He makes an electronic pulse with his initial scans, attempting to counter the electronic warfare with his own electronic attacks. To the warriors he speaks, "So you instead submit yourself to another type of slavery. Did you not what to see your friends and family again? What is the point of attacking them like this?!"
Sleek Shimmer	The battle begins! Once some of the defense towers have been blown up, Shimmer relocates over to them for a better vantage point, though keeps her body profile low. She observes the battle using her Qi senses just as much as her normal senses. "They've done very well. Very fast! The prowess of years, in just a few months? Scary. Scarier than my own technique... but, how far can they go...?"
Staren	~~Meanwhile~~ Minutes Ago: A pretty young man(?) with short lavender hair, dressed in a pale short-sleeve tunic with a pointless cleavage window over loosefitting shirt and pants steps out of decontamination at the Gate (Pandora, not Warp) facility, and is immediately deluged by red lights and warnings as alarms start going off. "Hell's going on?" An augmented-reality projection only he can see, an anime chibi woman in a red dress, is frantically manipulating screens around her -- not a representation of actual activity so much as a sort of gesture to communicate what she's doing. <The gate is under attack! Priority comm from Firewall...> A little window opens in the man's vision, a... cyberpunk catgirl with fuchsia hair and a sleeveless green trenchcoat on the other end of the comms. <Fucking FINALLY! I know if you didn't stay airgapped there'd be risk of an infection getting through, but right now...> She shakes her head. <Just get to the VTOL pad. We need to be ready to go!> The man runs through the halls, not even bothering to pretend that this body needs to breathe. <Don't suppose there's been any progress in recovering 'the asset?'> The catgirl scoffs and rolls her eyes at the way he says that. <I wish that were our biggest problem right now... We're just lucky he DIDN'T turn out to be one of the people kidnapped by... Ugh, I'll bring you up to speed.> Now: Lavender-hair runs out onto the VTOL pad, where a single carrier has yet to take off. A nervous passenger with a rebreather is arguing with the pilot, a nondescript red-skinned person in a jumpsuit and helmet with an eye-concealing visor. "Why haven't we taken off yet?!" The passenger's frantic tone is contrasted by the pilot's calm, emotionless one. "I said. Some kind of mechanical problem. Just be glad another passenger was a mechanic." The passenger looks out the window to where the fuchsia-haired catgirl (also wearing a rebreather) is arms deep in VTOL guts and anxiously glancing between her work and the distant confrontation, growls in annoyance, and returns to his seat. Short purplish hair and long purplish hair glance briefly at eachother as the former steps into the VTOL, then turns around to look at the distant confrontation. <This is insane.> <The whole Evehime Gevurah thing, or staying and watching it?> <Both? But the second one is the regular kind of insane, like Gatecrashing and all the shit Firewall sends us on. This...> <I guess we'd better get used to it, if we're planning to ask Multiversals for help...> Short-lavender-hair nods, pulling high-tech binoculars from his pack to watch the battle. <The moment it's not safe...> <...We tell them it's 'fixed' and get out of here, yeah. Well. We're long past safe, but when it reaches imminent death... Assuming it hasn't already. Wouldn't be the first time.> <For either of us...>
Staren	Electronic warfare?! Shit, Staren really wasn't expecting that. WHY wasn't she expecting that?! <J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Oh shit, they're messing with my bots! Ishirou, we may not agree, but the chances of the outcome you want only go down if they get hacked and turned on us!" <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou ignoring Sleek, "Roger, trying to find countermeasures." The whole plan to use robots falls apart if Ishirou or someone doesn't do something about that. Some of the robots themselves fall apart, especially when freaking spears of alien metamaterial pierce through their vital components. The spears thrown at the walkers, on the other hand, lodge deep in them and... don't seem to do anything? Cheating magic is at work there, clearly. (Those thrown at the pilots, including Staren, glance off forcefields, although they don't look like they can take many hits like that. While Ishirou works on restoring the constructs' ability to properly coordinate, Staren abandons her walker to fly just over her army's heads. "You and you! Protect the other constructs!" Hacking can't mess with her ability to give golems voice commands! Two 10-foot stone giants charge Evehime's troops that are approaching Staren, waving their kanobo and... maybe buying Staren's army a couple of seconds? Yeesh. She lands by one of the quadrupedal golems carrying missile racks, connecting a cable between her neck and a port on the launcher to fire manually, dozens of mini-missiles arcing through the sky to rain down on Evehime's army with futuristic high-explosive blasts! Too late, Staren wonders if missiles will even have a chance to get through whatever countermeasures this enemy has... Did she bring a fist to a gunfight? At least while busy she's solving THAT problem, she's not being terrified by Evehime!
Hiromi	Hisako has made herself a prime target. That's very much by intent. It is, as well, obvious that it was by intent, though any attempt to puzzle out the yomi layers would be fruitless. Her ears flick, there's a rustling sound, and then she brings her arms up in time for sniper fire to hit -- harmlessly. It doesn't even drive her back, and the shining, bronze-like material is spotless. Unbreakable. Lances fare little better. With more mass to deal with, she ducks beneath, weaves, and is showered by dirt thrown up by explosive near-misses. A glancing blow only draws an inaudible grunt. However, the mass of combat is a problem she's unused to, and overwhelming her is entirely possible. The smart thing to do would be to draw back. Her foot strikes the ground first, followed by her fist, cracking, blasting, cratering it all around her, a forceful entrenching tool she can use repeatedly. Her self-healing ability isn't something she can rely on as well as some others, though she's certain to push that to its limits, if given half a chance. She can't command the earth to simply give way for her, either. Hollowing out her own defensible position is the best she can do to not simply give ground. She had selected this spot for a reason, being one so easily reached by all the many defensive positions of the surrounding forces, by the same token of being the obvious, swift path forward. She expected they'd be brave enough to take it. Her bow was already strung, and it's from inside the dust cloud her terrain-deformation has raised that she fires a series of arrows, each with a piece of paper tied around the shaft like a message being delivered. They're talismans, and the only message is boom, but that's not wholly wrong, given that. The bow is already put away by the time her first opponents have time to reach her, to get in past the cover she's made (and that slows the ballistic arcs of her own fire not at all). She's expecting it, at least, with her stance prepared, fist drawn back.
Lory Thumper	Lory looks around at the forces gathering on their side, then out toward the incoming enemies again. Just in time for her ears to spring up as all those arrows and spears and things start flying toward them. Displaying her bunny agility she starts leaping, rolling, somersaulting, and cartwheeling her way to cover while at the same time closing in on the incoming horde. "I'll try to slow them down at least!" she calls out to the others before throwing out a half dozen of her disc grenades, followed by another set. And another. The bunny never wanted to be in a fight like this one, but she was prepared all the same. Her supply of grenades seems to be endless, and the explosions of hindering foam, flashbang, and shrapnel seek to injure and incapacitate as many as possible so that those with actual destructive strength can do their thing. While she is doing all of this, Lory keeps her ears open for sounds of sniper shots or enemies shifting while trying to stay cloaked. The robot army and the troopers can probably handle the bigger enemies, but if they don't root out the snipers it could all be for nothing.
Hibiki Tachibana	'It's good to see you again, Ms. Tachibana.' Hisako's direct address gets Hibiki to look the miko's way after her own declaration to do battle, and her expression - half-covered by scarf as it might be - noticeably eases up. "...Same here. I wasn't expecting to run into...well, anyone from Hiromi's pack here, but I'm glad." She is, actually. Not just for being someone she knows she can rely on when things swiftly begin to hit the fan - but because it reminds her that she's definitely overdue for another meeting with the Archwolf. With everything that's happened... But that can wait for a time when they're not here - when lightning fast shots and thrown weapons fill the air, the masses of warriors mobilizing with some outright scary efficiency. Despite her brief moment of shifting focus, she's tensed and ready; one gauntlet, then the other shifts in the path of incoming attacks, and her body is already moving by the time the next shoot through the space she was just occupying. Lances are batted aside, or caught and used to swing their owners around to clear the immediate area. Open-palm strikes beat back at those who get too close, though she's not holding back on her strength with them - with power like that, already tearing into the local defenses, she already knew what the outcome of even thinking about doing so would be. And with just how many of them there are, like a human flood making perfect use of the environment-- Mid-duck out of the way of another incoming strike, her rise is accompanied by a leg swinging itself up to near-vertical, before her weight is put into a singular heel slam straight down into the dirt. Rather than entrenching herself as Hisako had done, it creates only a momentary shower of martian dust before it all blows straight upwards in a rising, expanding shockwave of force attempting to do the same to every single fighter near her. The first one who finds themselves caught up in mid-air is going to be subject to a whirling kick to make them a human projectile sent right back towards the firing line, if it can even be called that with this many actors in play. "That's what I'd expect...!"
Evehime Gevurah	It turns out the locals, going by Ishirou's nosing into their network protocols, must be those aforementioned 'Barsoomians'. Though they have no reason to have any special loyalty to Evehime, if they've even met her in-person, this would present the perfect opportunity for the more brave and radical amongst them to gather for a reverse Blaire Mountain moment. Few of them appear to be essentially skilled at what they're doing, and thus Ishirou's quick cyber-maneuvers are easily able to shut out scores of attempts to immediately disable Pathfinder radar and communications equipment, but even punching up five hundred to one, the sheer density of distributed signals, even just in the form of low level attacks, makes it impossible for him to get them all. Once they figure it out, he is immediately the target of old-fashioned, but perfectly functional, heat seeking missiles launched from crevices in the red rocks; javelin-style launchers could probably be made on a cracked 3d printer here, and only a couple need to hit. Staren's machine is equally recipient to a staggered missile massacre of cheap but numerous armour-piercing warheads as long as she remains in the air. Staren showers missiles into the swiftly oncoming formation. It's easier said than done to precisely hit human-sized targets from the air when they're each moving at a good seventy kph. The moment they'd come down from the rock formation, they'd each split up into widely dispersed, yet somehow very tightly synchronized, formations, that just makes it near impossible to hit more than two people at once with a single missile. Ishirou's early scans confirm this is an intentional tactical decision, using the sheer space available in the crater lake to render bombardment ineffective in the same way skirmishing highlanders of old would charge in scattered formations to avoid being murdered under volley fire. The same thing befalls Lory's disc grenades and Hisako's arrows. Shrapnel from the former seems almost wholly ineffective against the culturally ambiguous armour of dull grey-green and black metal most of them are wearing, and the latter strangely seem to be immediately 'sensed' in flight. Hibiki successfully launches a number of them into the air --even despite their weight, Mars' gravity favours her-- but she immediately finds that it's deeply non-trivial work to put one of them on the ground for more than a few seconds. It's as if someone replaced all the cannon fodder enemies in a musou game with half-health minibosses. Not only does the combined fire of the Elites barely slow the first wave, toppling double digit warriors, the way they move, flowing over the terrain with lightning quickness, leaping huge rocks and deep water, swerving around incoming missiles and grenades while shooting archaic weapons on the move; it's extremely concerning that these random nobodies have suddenly obtained abilities on par with the top of the line military morphs of this world. Of course, the Elites are being backed with 3:1 numbers of professional military. Their efforts to disrupt the assault wave, even for a bit, buy the PMC precious time to do everything they can. VTOLs scramble from launch pads, the first few riddled with six foot long solid metal arrows and crashing, mere ablative armour for the others, but they do begin to establish a meagre aerial presence, strafing heavy cannons and firing lines of missiles over the advancing ranks.
Evehime Gevurah	The commandos and specialists on the Pathfinder side who have been covered by Ishirou's e-war suite begin scoping out the tricky Barsoomians blending into the landscape, snipe back with much more powerful rail weapons, and calling in surgical missile strikes. Manned turrets hose the front ranks with thousands of armour-piercing rounds per second. The tanks hunker down and throw down immense blasts of boiling plasma fire, detonating martian rock into iron fulgurite spray. And thousands of troops spread in a wide net around the central gate complex are opening fire as the enemy enters their range. Every second Hibiki and Hisako buy with even small battlefield obstacles, every disruption caused by Staren's and Lory's explosives, is a dozen less arrows and spears killing a dozen less soldiers, and that means a few hundred more shots down range. The gap in armouring is immediately apparent, as hails of fire simply crash right off the leading ranks, now starting to form up and put out heavy tower shields made of slabs of starship hull-stuff, protecting the ranks behind them from the front and above. But the gap in volume of firepower is equally vast, and still counts for something; every charging warrior is forced to cross the open at some point, and shot from the air, the installations they pass, and the soldiers ahead. Slow --painfully slow-- but steady casualties begin mounting. The problem is that even those incredibly old-fashioned weapons are flinging projectiles hundreds of meters that easily pierce through concrete walls and body armour, only needing one direct hit to send a soldier to their last backup, and they're being placed with considerable skill. The small holdouts of soldiers dotting the numerous guard towers, turret pickets, and bunkers, are swarmed immediately, and completely butchered in hand to hand combat. The crews controlling heavy weapons are now being aggressively targeted by Barsoomian marksmen, and one of the sensor dishes suddenly explodes, apparently subject to a sabotage team. The Elites are soon in the same situation. Unless they want to run all the way to the central complex under immense amounts of projectile fire and showing their back to snipers, they're swiftly surrounded by ranks of numerous, tall and heavily built people in identical exotic armour; utter nobodies a month ago, now impossibly menacing even with only glassy black swords and axes. They prefer to encircle Elites in particular, cutting off escape routes and closing in from all sides, attacking two or three at a time from multiple flanks with drilled precision timing. They're all outrageously strong, which is itself a danger trying to block their heavy and incredibly sharp weapons under one third gravity, and think nothing of simply hacking into someone's neck from the side while they're busy dodging and parrying the other two; cooperation is the primary advantage of a soldier, after all. Only the high-end genetically and cybernetically enhanced 'fury' troopers amongst Pathfinder can hold out for long up close, and they're quickly being stranded and overwhelmed while the bulk of the charge continues for the gate.
Evehime Gevurah	As for Ishirou's tactical scans, he can only assume all of this has been incredibly carefully rehearsed; there appears to be no real chain of command and no officers giving orders amongst the warriors (the Barsoomians are using their closed network to support as best as they can in the moment). That combat training he'd seen in the Valles Marineris wasn't just incidental mock fighting; it was drilling for this specific assault. Of course, all fear and hesitation has thoroughly disappeared from the attackers, which is more than can be said for the defenders, whose panicked requests for reinforcements and artillery strikes, half of which aren't coming, start to fill the airwaves. Their priority is simply to dedicate enough force 'to be sure' to destroy each obstacle in the way, while simultaneously covering for the main advance, knowing that going slowly is just letting their enemy ramp up. The grasp of modern tactics in particular is something verging on intentional ignorance --there's been zero attempt to integrate and make use of the advantageous technologies of this world-- but raw fundamentals, perfect morale, and a solid mix of conceptually tried and true approaches are proving extremely dangerous. The strategy appears to have been chosen for being hard for a beginner soldier to fuck up, while inflicting maximum early casualties and panic on the defenders and negating a lot of their advantages. If they're able to pour into the gate complex, everyone there is as good as dead. It's also pretty obvious they didn't come up with this themselves. It could only be the Gevurah's prescience. He can add 'strategic acumen' to her list, next to 'taking convenient alliances where offered' with the Barsoomians being allowed to tag along and immediately strangle whatever Pathfinder tries to disrupt them. The response he gets 'verbally' is more of a mystery. Again, it's a single tightband from somewhere close, though god knows who sent it. 'Humanity was born with heroes to inspire them and wise ones to guide them. The leash and the whip were invented later, to starve and sicken us after we had already conquered both. We will see them again when this planet is ours. When it is the new home of Humanity, and not the cradle of the machine that owns us.'
Sleek Shimmer	The growing amount of death in the area starts to tickle Shimmer's senses in an uncomfortable way. Were she in human form her expression may turn a bit nauseated. Impressive as it is, this isn't her typical sort of battle. Hundreds, thousands of warriors all over the place dying in batches here, batches there? The longer it goes on, the less enthused about it she's feeling. Her ears start flattening a bit. And yet... "If someone strong like Evehime came to rescue me and all the shifters back then... would we be fighting battles for them like this...?" She freed herself... she never had to consider a debt to any rescuer... "What will they do with gate, once captured...?"
Ishirou	Once more, Ishirou's analysis of their fighting style allows him to predict their attacks on him. More than that, staying on the wing keeps him above the melee machines, and his speed and maneuverability allow him to keep one step ahead of thrown attacks and sniper shots. He's already calculating what to do next, especially now that he has a better idea of what is going on. He sends data out again, detailing how he sees the battlefield going, and making predictions. The first thing he knows needs to happen is the network they DO have going needs to stop. It won't kill the assault but it COULD disrupt things long enough for the forces here and elites to regroup and push back. He tracks down any of the native Martians he can, and fires a hacking attack at them. He attempts to biohack them, before taking control for just a moment. Attempting to get the Martial to give him access to their closed network before he releases a viral cocktail across it to try and interfere with and disrupt the network. With that, however, he dives over the center of the group of Evehime's army and drops a barrage of magical blasts into the center. These attacks aim to try and create sticky traps across the backline, aiming to slow them down so that the front part of the army could overextend, and allow regrouping to happen should the front run out of steam without the second force behind them. The tightband is responded to, "I am not saying the way of life you had before was good, or that you were not being exploited. However, looking to the past means you can never look forward. It's easy to look to the past, to think when things were better. To hear the stories of those heroes. It is much harder to fix the system in the present or to make the road to the future better. Or do you think a future coated in the blood of your fellow man is the better one?"
Lory Thumper	Lory Thumper may be agile and pretty fast, but she's not superhuman. It takes a bit of work, but with group tactics she is eventually surrounded. Facing down a trio of these overpowered brutes she clenches her small fists and takes up a stationary stance. Her ears twitch and she glances over her shoulders at her various attackers. She waits for one of them to charge, then as the follow up attack comes in from one of her flankers she leaps and twists, grabbing the weapons and changing the momentum just enough to (hopefully) cause them to hit each other. Then, she leaps off the head of one and as she backflips through the air she pulls her dual accelerator pistols and fires at the third as they try to cut off her escape. Near-lightspeed projectiles lance out, though against these opponents she really doesn't expect them to do much. Her ears splay back, and she mutters to herself, "...can't even bring down her followers..." with a bit of despair in her tone. Since the PMCs seem to have the sniper situation moderately handled, Lory...decides to stay on the field. The longer she can distract even a few of these warriors, the better off the soldiers inside the base will be. And she did tell Evehime she is a defender and not a warrior. Ironically the fox's question earlier may be appropriate. Perhaps this is all Lory can do. Slow them down. But, if that's all she can do, then she's going to give it her all!
Staren	<Holy shit.> The feed from the 'binoculars' is of course shared between the team of agents. <Think your fancy 'Steel 2.0' would stand up to that?> <Maybe one-on-one, if I were a military AGI and not an infosec researcher who gets sent on far too many missions where guns and armor are standard gear. How d'you like your chances, hacker boy?> <Please. I'm in a fucking exalt. Even if it's modded to the nines, it's still an exalt.> <Man.> <What?> <I sound like some rich inner system snob. I didn't mean it that way, I'm just glad to have flesh at all.> <It's an interesting experience, for sure. When we're finally done tying up loose ends, I think I'll sleeve a biomorph back on Luna. No, better: Reccomend me a good Scum barge.> The catgirl rolls her eyes, but she's smiling. <Tourists.>
Staren	Ishirou is shouting about how the Barsoomians are enslaved. But just what do people want in life? Words come to Staren's mind: -- "I just want to be useful again...." The sentiment is expressed by a hulking combat cyborg, taking a rest in some idyllic pastoral field somewhere in the multiverse. Staren paces back and forth. "Ah, the want to be useful. I wanted to be useful too. The Union never had much use for me besides as another pilot to throw at the bad guys, though. Although, some of them are starting to remember I have other talents, finally." A new voice on the radio, bright and feminine: "Does anyone need me for anything? I want to be useful..." Union Elites, Staren included, welcoming a new young girl to their number. A bright voice full of hope speaks up: "I just want to make all of you proud. I want to be useful." It is one of the darkest days of Staren's life. The Union has fucked up the peaceful and perfectly moral Confederate operation Staren tried to help with, and a bunch of moronic civilians have charged to their doom. The voice of someone she was trying to help comes over the radio: "I'm not really big on the whole 'hurting people' thing. I still want to be useful, though..." -- She's heard it countless times. And here these people are... forging their own destiny with their own two hands; guided by Evehime Gevurah but all contributing. They may not be building the kind of future Ishirou or Staren would work towards, but... aren't they happy and fulfilled? Heck: They ARE building a future, THEIR future, one they can believe in. Can Staren or Ishirou say the same? It's a lot to think about while FRANTICALLY DODGING MISSILES, being buffeted about the air by near-misses of THANKFULLY shaped charges, her coat and hair scorched as she finally lands back in the relative safety of a walker's cab. Freed to coordinate, the dwindling construct forces change tactics, even as they find themselves at the center of a concerning number of Barsoomians AND a concerning number of fallen robots. Staren and the other two walkers sweep their heavy machineguns over the enemy troops for covering fire, while the remaining couple dozen-and-change robopolice concentrate fire on one target at a time, massed, steady, precision-aimed automatic fire of smart material bullets that harden to pierce armor and soften in flesh. The missile carriers just launch everything they've got left now -- if the Gevurah's forces spread out, that's STILL some taken down, for sure, and every little bit helps -- and then charge the front lines to be cannon fodder and take hits with their heavy, solid metal bodies. "What are you trying to build?" Staren's voice asks from her army's speakers, part conversationally curious, part awed at the display of coordination and skill, and a little bit instinctively afraid for her life even if she knows she can peace out at any time, including posthumously. "This future... what are you, to the Gevurah? What will you be? My acquaintance here says you are slaves, and he and I don't understand things 'spoken with your fists.' Can you tell us in your own words, before you squash us flat, what you're doing all this for?"
Hiromi	Hisako's operating under no expectations of any sort of 'normal human' endurance. The first to approach her is counter-charged, her body launching the moment before it would be natural to begin a strike at her, given that 'superhuman' strength her larger opponents are showing, aimed both to give her greater weight in her strike and to throw off her opponent's timing. The blow itself is the kind of thing to crumple armor in the modern, vehicular sense, and aimed just slightly upward, easily done with her height, to make it harder to brace against. Then she's leaping back, and still, quickly surrounded -- but when it comes to a pack circling prey, harrying it from every direction, she's more than a little familiar. She still hasn't reached the point of needing to retreat. She blocks a strike from in front. Her ears flick. Her foot is already raised together with that first block, and comes down before the strike from behind can reach her. The ground breaks all over again with a deafening thunderclap. Trained senses can find their footing again, if it were only chasms opening beneath one's feet, but the shockwave is right on the surface, launching her surroundings up and away. Hisako's used to the Mars gravity, by now. She can launch herself fast enough not to far overshoot the growing walls of her position, but only take her opponent in midair at that top speed, passing by them with one arm outstretched. It's not a direct impact, but one that turns that speed into a counter-orbiting spin, her hand on some giant man's metamaterial-armored shin. "I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough to hold back." Crunch. The spin turns into a powered toss as she retakes a three-point landing on one wall, then leaps again, this time striking the ground just before her next opponent, then somersaulting through the dust cloud to grab their neck with her thighs -- she'd always wanted to do it with just the blades of her feet, like her big sisters could, but the timing was too delicate to be reliable -- swings her arms back with a twist, and slams the unnamed giant woman into the ground at neck-breaking angles. Again and again, they can launch from the sides, or try to surround her. Again and again, her gauntlets refuse to break. Fluttering red and white cloth hide a well-trained body. Her ears flick to the sides, and she hears the breath from ten meters behind. Her feet break the soil, her fists break armor and a pinch of fingers break bones. They can try and try, but here and now, for this moment, nothing works. It's not just her defensive power, but her speed, her senses, and her knowledge of this level of tactical combat. Still, they'll catch her, eventually. Her endurance is great, but not unlimited. "Hah... after only a month, too. If I couldn't do this much as your senior by a few years... oh, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm very sorry about that. Please, show me how strong you are."
Hibiki Tachibana	These guys--are too hard to put down. Way too hard. It doesn't take long at all to learn that disabling them to the point where they won't be able to fight anymore is going to be nearly impossible without more effort than she can reasonably expend having to also account for so many enemies. It's the most she can really do at the moment to stem the tide and create a break in the assault. She's not ignorant of the fact they /are/ making a difference. Just not enough of one by her standards. And she's not in much of a position to change that right away, with these towering and armored warriors selecting their targets. Surrounded. Attacking in multiples. She ducks one, only to have to cut an attack halfway to spin on her heel and take a heavy blade to her Symphogear's gauntlet. There's a gash in her side she barely avoids letting become something much worse while she's still reeling. Again. She uses Mars' gravity to her advantage the next time she guards a blow, body rattling but feet leaving the earth and sending her flying backwards - where a surge of her armor's thrusters puts her in a flip up and out of the formation's boundaries and puts them all in front of her. "Ngh...! I can't protect anyone if I can hardly protect myself...!" Death is mounting up on both sides. She /has/ to do something. All of these guys--the raw and pure way they fight. The simple and effective tactics, not only inhumanly coordinated but inhumanly mighty, all of them. Is /this/ what even Evehime Gevurah's inducted warriors can do? If she can't even get over this much-- A foot touches the ground, only to be used as leverage to stop and skip forward again with a second accompanying booster-burst. The internal piston of her gauntlet slides back at the same time she prepares a punch--and she returns the favor to one of the imposing fighters by slamming into him fist-first at full speed with an air-quaking impact, regardless of the strength of the armor trying to hold her back. And keep on going, using his frame like something between a battering ram and a shield as she keeps on going - through sniper fire, through the ranks of more tight-knit groups of combatants, to cut a path through the battlefield. "I won't--!" She trails off in favor of a stream, shooting for a good hundred meters of distance before the piston blasts back into place, and a body-wracking burst of force not only clears the immediate area and cuts her own momentum, but propels the warrior right off and into more of his kin at blinding fast speeds.
Staren	A beat passes after that playful back-and-forth. <...We should probably go.> <Oh shit. Yeah, it's not looking good for the PC troops.> <Unlikely we'll see much more of their capabilities before the fight's over.> <...And they have a chance to get suspicious of us. Yeah, it'd be nice to escape an encounter with an existential threat WITH my stack intact this time.> The catgirl pulls her arms out of the VTOL's mechanical innards, various spindly, silvery tools retracting like a liquid into silvery bands on her wrists, and she slaps the maintenance panel closed with a sense of finality and stands up, giving the pilot a thumbs-up and a smile, shouting "Try it now!" The engines come on. Her fellow agent helps her into the VTOL and they close the door behind them, taking seats as it takes off into the air and flies off after the others, responding to any radio traffic in a manner consistant with evacuating visitors delayed by mechanical trouble.
Evehime Gevurah	Ishirou tracking the Barsoomian hunters from the air is tough, but tapping into the telemetry from Pathfinder that still works allows him to locate one group of rust-coloured pixels moving against all the other rust-coloured pixels, and get shot at a few times before managing a successful override. Two are organic, two are stuck with android bodies, even. The network protocol is not exactly robust from the inside, and forces a huge portion of the still-fighting marksmen and saboteurs to cut off their cloud comms and go over to old-fashioned hand radios like the rustic old-timey pioneer types they are. It's a meaningful strategic swing, inching the balance over a little further towards a neutral that might be recoverable. His reward is that the other Barsoomians have clearly figured out who's doing it, and simply told (with words) their warrior host, who are now focusing on both mecha with focused volleys of giant hyper-dense arrow-lances; the classical definition of 'volley', throwing up a coordinated wall that simply doesn't leave space to miss. Magical barrages, sprays of missiles, dropped bombs and grenades, and even sweep fire, are a form of just allowing it to sweep back by degrees. It's like this entire battalion was trained and equipped presumptive of 'cheap' and convenient means of killing a lot of people being functionally irrelevant to them. It's where Elites continue to brawl on the ground, as the little pockets of special ops forces and elite fighters dwindle and vanish around them, that the enemy starts to congregate. Each passing second where a Multiversal can cheat death and hit back is another gram on the volatile and sensitive scale of this battle, and another set of eyes on them. 'Not being crushed already' is like an open challenge, attracting more and more attackers, now adding ranged attacks into the mass, shooting through the little gaps in their comrades' movements. More sophisticated tag-team start to come into play, involving simultaneous strikes, cooperative feints and grapples, and even sacrificial maneuvers. Again, it's rehearsed and drilled; one of many tactics that were simply instilled into every fighter and left to their discretion with a rock solid flowchart, rather than rely on officers and chains of communication. Something that could easily be done by a well-trained fighter with the implicit cooperation of any given one or two trusted comrades. They've finally been made to use their contingencies for genuinely tough foes, correctly judging by growing rings of bodies. More than that, the greater the performance, the more of them it attracts; one can practically feel their heat rating rapidly increasing over time. It bogs the enemy down more, but becomes commensurately more dangerous to keep going. Yet, that might be more important than ever, as the somewhat ragged and thin leading edge of the charge reaches the outermost gates of the main complex, already effortlessly breaking into the gatehouse control center to start opening the way for the greater tide behind them.
Evehime Gevurah	"I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough to hold back." 'Neither is the man-eating machine that consumes our world. Our culture. Our species. It knows it is not stronger than us, and so it claws for every desperate means it can. Why be used by it? Why make yourself the fangs and claws of a gestalt monster so vile? Haven't you pledged those to someone else?' "It is much harder to fix the system in the present or to make the road to the future better. Or do you think a future coated in the blood of your fellow man is the better one?" 'Looking to the past is what enslaved us before. The thought that things were always like this. That it was normal. Inevitable, even. We thought humans were meant to live in such a pathetic, subservient way, because Earth was the same. Looking to the present is what makes it so clear that it needn't ever be that way. The future is finally ours.' 'There is no more need to fix that way of life than there is to fix a disease; you're meant to cure it, reject it, purge it from your body. Don't be weighed down by the chains of the past. Don't be enslaved to the world you knew. Don't be beguiled by the false legitimacy of chains, economic, social, political. Someone who seeks to attach the chain to your neck is an enemy and their work is violence. It is always right to spill blood in self-defense.' "What are you trying to build? This future... what are you, to the Gevurah? What will you be? Can you tell us in your own words, before you squash us flat, what you're doing all this for?" 'We are building Ares. The red star our ancestors saw in the sky and gave it a name and humanity. Not Mars. Not the rocky planet, mere minerals to exploit, fuel to burn, ice to melt, empty space to own and sell. Not long ago, we dreamed of making a home here. A living, breathing world. Something new. Somewhere that wasn't just Earth yet again. And Earth destroyed itself, and moved all of its evil here. The dream of our new home is dying; drunk dry by the thirsts of the old world.' 'We are only the first. Those who realized the truth of Her words, and felt them resonate deep in the core of the truths we already felt our entire lives. Earth is dead. We abjure its ghost. We banish its evil. We will give this world life, a name, humanity. What all humankind yearns for is a home, not another office, another tomb. We will not allow our world to be treated as an object, and ourselves mere replaceable parts in its grand violation as a commodity. We will have that home, we will fill it with beauty and culture, we will labour only for each other, and we will finally enjoy the fruits of what all of our 'advancement' always promised us, even though our labours never delivered anything unto anyone save the greatest of parasites.' 'It isn't too late to choose to be right. Show Her your sincerity.'
Evehime Gevurah	The mystery messages, strangely all-hearing, finally terminate. Two seconds after the phantom comm link shuts, the chaotic bedlam of the battlefield is drowned out by a sound that could easily be mistaken for a bombing, given the way that hardened bunker dome that carried three thousand people here suddenly implodes, shearing and shattering apart from the center down, the island beneath it cracking in half. The supersonic roar that follows it is louder than when it was the giant stone flying through the atmosphere; sharper and louder for the vastly smaller object, having painted a visible vapour trail over the horizon. A deathly near-silence falls over the crater. At first, it is pure tension; the instruments hadn't detected this one at all, and somehow its arrival seems as if it can only make things worse. Then it is the bated breath of so many combatants waiting anxiously for their enemy to so much as twitch towards them, trapped in a chain of uneasy ceasefire. Then it is confusion, and awe, and fear, when every armoured warrior on the field drops to one knee nearly simultaneously, turning to face the crumbling island, sinking under the lake, en masse, like an object of prayer. A palpable stormfront --pressure and static and the tingling potential of violence harboured in every molecule of air that could spark become lightning-- invisibly expands behind the dust cloud, silencing the guns. The crunch of iron steps can be heard with perfect clarity from a mile away. To say nothing of that voice. "Six minutes. Six minutes behind. This cult's funeral pye should be visible on the horizon by now. Have I not taught you enough of rightful ruin? Do you not yet understand that there is something much older than glass and steel and screen-lights, and its name is fire?" For a few moments, it feels like all of the difference between Mars' gravity and Earth's comes back all at once, subtly squeezing the air out of lungs. It takes Evehime no time at all to reach the top of a rock formation, look down, and see straight away. "You again? So you've chosen to throw away the clemency that the Hesed bought for you. As I thought. Base animals, unworthy of her. Once is mere ignorance; twice is Intent. Why do you interrupt my disciples' training? Why do you choose to venerate Hell yet again? Can you even explain it? Do you even know why you can't help but worship your own strings? Are you even aware of them? Do you simply crave death? Or are you simply exactly as soulless as I feared you were."
Staren	"I see now. It was foolish of me to come here and test you with tools like your opressors'." Staren's voice comes over speakers as the fighters close in. A metal construct is batted aside by a bloodied soldier, buying just enough time for concentrated fire to bring them down before the adjacent one smashes more robosoldiers. "But you know... listening to your dream, I really don't have it in me to fight you properly, with my all. I don't want you to lose... But hopefully making you fight a little harder, a little longer, will make the victory all the sweeter?" The ultimatum is presented. Staren opens her mouth to say something about how she's going to work for a better future in another, but not conflicting, way, and how she has already promised to work for the Concord and besides that... Okay, there is probably SOME way to phrase her relationship with 'Hesed' that doesn't make her sound like Persephone's pet, but she goesn't get time to think of it because Evehime Gevurah.
Hiromi	'Why be used by it? Why make yourself the fangs and claws of a gestalt monster so vile? Haven't you pledged those to someone else?' "Ah, no, I'm sorry. You've misunderstood." Hisako's voice edges from 'humble' to 'neutral,' whether from the subject, or the mood that cannot help but affect her mid-battle. She's far from immune to the rush. Much the opposite, it's something she leans into, taking it as natural, almost necessary. "You promised death. You began a war. Arguing that someone shouldn't fight, at this point, don't you feel ashamed? That's a weak distraction. You can only prove yourself right by your own strength, now. That's the path you've chosen. Don't complain that someone helped your enemy." Talking this much doesn't take away any breath from her own fighting. It doesn't disrupt her natural, deceptive rhythm, even when she's suddenly cut off, and has to begin after another exchange of blows. "If you wanted to beat me without fighting, you should have tried talking, first. If you're really immortal, you'll remember that, won't you? This is your Rite of Strength."
Lory Thumper	The warriors she was trying to distract...suddenly have the biggest distraction of all apparently. Lory turns to face Evehime and tightens her grip on her guns. "So, I guess I was doing better than I thought if you're angry enough to come out here yourself. Must be quite an insult, your new followers unable to level this place in a timely manner." She raises her guns toward Evehime. "You already know my reason for standing in your way. I told you I'd find some way to stop you someday. And while I can't say I've found it yet, that doesn't mean I will just give up. I'll stand in your way as many times as it takes."
Ishirou	"The future isn't yours, the future you want is /hers/. Don't you see that you haven't freed yourselves, you're being used by her. She does not /see/ you as a person but as a piece of property. Worse, you've been messed with in such a way that you can't even see it! It's no better than the system you were a part of, except that you can't see the chains, because she doesn't let you." "Right, no need to fix something. Easier to burn it all down, right? That's what you're doing. You're forgetting or have never known what life was before this. Disease that kills millions of people, death being final, and I could keep going on. This world is not perfect, but it just means that people need to do more and become more involved...not burn it down or become enslaved to it," Ishirou says exhaustedly. "I will never trade my freedom for any chains," he says to the ultimatum given by the voice. "And I am sorry you can't see what it is you're doing." Then the explosion that follows, interrupts the conversation. Despite what happened, he knows immediately who has come. He doesn't need scanning equipment or special senses. He thought she might stay out of it, that they had a chance to turn this tide. Apparently, he was wrong, and that she was here now this might be a lost cause. Ishirou shakes in his suit, trying to steady his breath again. Even as he hears Staren losing her nerve, he steadies himself. The flight unit shifts, as it flips upwards and turns into humanoid flight mode. He hovers, as various attachments come out. More weapons connect, and the POD changes up programs. "I told you then this wasn't over. Because you can't listen doesn't mean it didn't happen. These people will be broken free of your control...and I won't stop!" He says, shouting. "You call us animals, but all you can do is throw strength. You say you're what humanity /could/ be? If that's true then I'd choose to be anything but that." Ishirou was /intensely/ afraid now because there was no victory here he could see. But...he couldn't stop, not when she saw others like slaves. Not when he saw Indus in her actions, benefiting only herself, and setting a system up with herself in the center.
Hibiki Tachibana	Coming to a stop, only to do so deep amid the chaos, Hibiki takes a deep breath inward and resolves herself to get back to the brawl. No matter her usual proclivities, this isn't the kind of battle where an understanding can be achieved through words. If there's one to be attained, it's one that will only be found through fist clashing on fist or in the aftermath of all this fighting. Or maybe that's just where she's mentally put herself, with plenty of communication - albeit far from friendly - already happening. But this never was entirely about her normal brand of conflict resolution. It's not even really personal. After all, she's only had the one, fleeting encounter with Evehime Gevurah before. It's... ...a bit like she's using the opportunity to try to figure something out. Or learn something. Maybe test herself against the ones testing themselves. There was already something on my her mind when she showed up. Seeing Hisako only locked it in place. But when the air quakes and the entirety of the battlefield goes still, she goes still with it. She turns towards the source so slowly you'd swear she wasn't trying to disturb it, her eyes wide. That's it--that's that overwhelming presence bearing down again. The one responsible for this. That's... "Eve...hime...she's..." Her hand is trembling--but she soon locks it back into a fist.