2019-01-12: Leftovers

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  • Log: Leftovers
  • Cast: Leftover Metal Beasts, Ines Colina, Talise Gianfair, Ree, Ida Everstead-Rey, Zed, Layna Manydays
  • Where: Photosphere - Domicile Level
  • Date: 12/01/2019 (IC Date December 1st)
  • Summary: In the depths of a crumbling Photosphere, a group try to clear a path to an exit for those who can no longer fight. In so doing, they are attacked by misshapen Metal Beasts that try to bar their way. But what is the truth behind these leftovers? CW: Body Horror


<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

 
DECEMBER 1st - 500 POST-COLLAPSE
 
AFTER 'WORLD EATER' AND 'PAIN OF LOSS'
 
ROUGHLY ABOUT THE SAME TIME AS 'THE POWERS THAT BE'
 
     Mother has fallen. Riesenlied has been rescued.
     These are messages that are hard to convey between the Drifter strike teams, because there's still a lot of hostile Photosphere denizens that stand between them. (This is also because the Photosphere is presently shaking and shuddering like it's the end of the world, in which both the past and present tenses apply.)
     Much more clear to communicate: it's time to escape the alien structure, somehow, in some way. How is not exactly clear, but wherever any of them currently stand is, in itself, not the way to go.
     A number of them cross paths back through a new path opened through the help of something deep in the bowels of the Photosphere exploding in a terrible fireball. Molten metal forms an alternate form of lighting in which to guide one's way, as crucial power reserves have been expended or destroyed. Something else deep down this path of alternate form of lighting teases the eyes and the senses, possibly as a hope.
     A sector in which there is still power. A back-up generator, then, as if this part of the Photosphere were deemed so critical as to require such measures in case of something like exactly what's going on. Ambient light, warmer yellows compared to the blue-green that seems to be the dominant coloration elsewhere, casts clarity upon hallways and chambers that are marked in laser-stenciled Hyadean script. A picture of Hyadean function over form, structure over expression...
     ...were it not for smears of red and silver. Did another team already pass through here? None of you came through the Photosphere this way.
     From the recesses, guttural wails and choking growls fill the halls, and soon they emerge. Misshapen, asymmetrical, creatures unlike any of the other Metal Beasts that the Photosphere brought to bear against Filgaia, who all start coming the way of those who dare intrude upon this secluded sector.
     As far as Mother's defenses go, they sure seem like they're just the leftovers. You've all come this far for Filgaia's sake - and beyond. Another violent rocking of the Photosphere reminds the gathered that there's no room to doubt or dwadle.
     They can't stop you.
     They won't stop you.
     They do not apper aware of this, as a number of them begin to move towards the collected with all the anticipation of a circling predator, though some break ranks and move forth immediately with purpose and determination, if not so much agility, to reach out towards you.
     None will strike before you are ready to do so.

<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    The fight to actually breach the Photosphere had taken it's toll on Ines, let alone even getting in. For her troubles, she was busy fending off some of the other creatures and combatants in the Photosphere, while others took the fight to Mother. So mostly, she's been trying to make sure that the escape routes don't get closed off during the combat. Now that these avenues are required, it's time to see how well they did. The Photosphere starting to collapse around them doesn't help matters.

    Ines puts herself fairly forward in the pack, operating under the perhaps flawed assumption that those who were involved in the bigger fights are probably a lot worse for wear than those who weren't. If there's more fighting to happen, then at least she'll hopefully bear the brunt of it. Not a great plan, but it's the one she's got at the moment. There's a lot of ducking and avoiding- or knocking out of the air- of debris going on, as the rush to not get trapped takes priority.

    And so, when they come across the scene, Ines is probably one of the first to notice. That's a lot of blood, and a fair mix. "Did someone else get hit here?" She asks aloud, looking around. It's then that the prescence of the Metal Beasts is made clear. "...Well, at least we have our answer."

    The large beastwoman decides to charge in, and not let the Metal Beasts hit first. With an arm outstretched, she goes to clothesline one of the monsters, bringing her not inconsiderable strength to bear. "We just need to get through them, we're running against time here!" She shouts, possibly unnecessarily. "If they don't look like they'll be able to chase us, leave 'em!"

GS: Ines Colina has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Hills Hoist!
GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ines Colina's Hills Hoist for 85 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

When last we left Talise, she'd helped a large number of Tainted escape the Gutter. Then she was almost KILLED BY GARBLE SPIDER and fought a squirrel robot man who liked history a whole lot. She has not yet teamed up with said squirrel man to confront the Four Horsemen and Larry.

She did what she could to help Tethelle, but ultimately never got within visual range of Mother. And now everything's falling down around her - including a literal fragment of the ceiling, which bounces off her shoulder armour and evokes a curse from her: "Althena's codpiece! We're gonna be buried in here if we don't haul tail...."

Pressing onward, the swordswoman whips around a corner, checking around for allies -- "Damn it, did I lose Sephilia," she chides herself, clenching her hand around her sword. Raising her voice, she tries to call over the noise: "Sephilia! Lanval! You out there?"

Nothing yet. Nothing but the glow of molten metal. Frowning, Talise moves along, the lighting giving way to the more stark yellows of the emergency lighting - and what that light illuminates. Red and silver blood splattered about. "Lanval doesn't usually gut people," she murmurs. "Or leave molten metal. Or, uh, bleed."

Before she can realize that Sephilia bleeds, Metal Beasts begin to make their presence known. Talise grunts and whirls her sword into a ready position, dropping into the standard Thousand Stormless Tides attack stance. The point of her blade weaves as she advances forward. Before she can attack, though, someone else goes barreling past. Ines, she remember, before grunting. "Yeah, looks like it," she says.

"Let's hit 'em back," she says before she attempts to meet one of the grabbier Metal Beasts by shoulder-checking it firmly to stagger it, then following the heavy body-on-body impact by trying to chop its head off.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Infinitely Rippling Waters!
GS: Talise Gianfair has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Talise Gianfair's Infinitely Rippling Waters for 146 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ree has posed.

Ree treads carefully through the huge alien spaceship. It's unnerving -- the sounds, the air, the vibe, are not quite right. She sticks close to her companions, some of which she recognizes from past missions.

Then comes the growling, but it seems...distorted, somehow.

Then she sees them. A cadre of Metal Beasts, but deformed, twisted, unnatural -- if such a word could be used to describe creatures that weren't natural to begin with. They'll show no mercy to humans and their ilk. Ree takes aim with her pistols at one, a wolf-like specimen who appears to be half-melted. It probably wanted to be put down...

She doesn't have the size or strength of the two Beastwomen currently barrelling their way through their enemies--or trying to. She's going to have to count on her guns.

GS: Ree has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Vicious Gut Shot!
GS: Ree has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ree has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Ree's Vicious Gut Shot for 119 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    The Photosphere is coming apart.

    Ida takes each hallway at a run, adrenaline washing through her system with each twist and shudder of the alien station's superstructure. Mother wounded her, badly, but it's difficult to tell just how badly, now--she's tied a length of cloth from Festina Lente about her in a sort of makeshift cloak, and it's splattered with both silver and crimson. Beneath that is a suit of lightweight body armor, the kind issued to new Hyadean soldiers, battered and burned from the fury Mother unleashed.

    Will there be new Hyadean soldiers after this? It's an open question.

    "Search the walls for script," Ida says, a moment before spotting some of that script herself, and stopping in her tracks. She braces her gauntleted right hand against the wall, and steadies herself.

    "It--wasn't me," Ida says, to Ines. She turns to the Beastwoman, and then glances down at the blood, worry and confusion in her eyes. Then, the Beasts appear, and the shooting starts.

    Ida's heart leaps into her throat. Devil's Due, consequently, all but leaps into her hand. Ida fires off a quick snap-shot at one of the Beasts in the lead, even as something in the back of her mind starts to agitate, worried.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Snap Shot!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Snap Shot for 65 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.

There is nothing but chaos left in the wake of the Mother's death. Chaos, and perhaps more than a little bit of hope. Hope that now, finally, things can maybe begin to change. Zed cuts a swath out from the depths of the Gutter, Doom Bringer flashing bright as it cleaves through a tangled jungle of power conduits. "This way," he calls to the people following him-- a few drifters, certainly, but... there are a lot of Hyadeans there, too, tainted and otherwise, all in various states of injury and disrepair. Today has been an event for everyone involved here, their leader unexempted.

But...

Now, what these people need is someone who can push past that pain, grit his teeth and cut a way forward.

But Zed has another purpose in mind. An ulterior motive for all this.

He needs to get out.

He has to. He needs to find Siegfried. Wherever the Azure Knight has gone to, it has to be outside. He'll open a way out for these people, then rush to join his commander in battle. There's time for that, right? There has to be.

There has to be.

"Come on. Not far now! I see lights ahead! Must be one of the emergency sectors! We can get to escape pods there--" Zed freezes. Red and quicksilver fluids are smeared across the walls. And then... things emerge, grotesquely contorted monsters of... What the hell are they?

"What--" Zed breathes, briefly taken aback as he sees other drifters charge into battle. "Wait. What is this!? These are... Metal Beasts? Did Mother release them from gestation early...?"

Zed... Readies his sword and stands between them and his crowd of civilians.

For once, he... doesn't rush in. He stands at the ready, whirling like a steel dervish to deflect and dissaude any who might come too close to his band of refugees...!

GS: Zed has attacked Zed with What!?!
GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Zed has completed his action.
GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Zed's What!? for 0 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The last anyone saw Layna, she had been running off to investigate some commotion. It was, in the words of her Quartermaster, a pretty reckless and stupid action, considering that the Photosphere was in the process of collapsing.

But before she can do that, there's something else to look into. She hears familiar voices nearby and veers in that direction. She's on a floor above, but in its current state the Photosphere is pretty full of holes. Layna looks down, a frown crossing her face.

Smears of red and silver...that wasn't good. And what's worse, those misshapen Beasts...they don't map up with any of the ones she and her crew have encountered so far.

Well...they look like they could use a hand. Or maybe, a foot?

"Incoming!" Layna shouts out. She leaps down, using her momentum to land a flying kick on one of the beasts and jump back toward the escaping Drifters.

"These don't look like any I've seen before...on your guard, aye?" Layna says, then looks back toward Zed. He seems...uncharacteristically shaken.

That's not a good sign.

GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Dynamic Entry!
GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has adjusted their boss level for 6 opponents!
<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

    Ines leads the charge. With her considerable strength, she's already done wonders in helping secure routes prior. She just might help lead everyone to something resembling safety, or at least to somewhere resembling anything other than here. She stretches out an arm and clotheslines a massive one with... tank treads? There is a distinct jigling noise as she strikes them. Studs of metal are sewn into blue fabric around its neck with a broken bell attached. Why would a Metal Beast need a bell attached, let alone this one?
     Talise charges in and beheads a larger one with three arms, sending them toppling backwards into a lifeless heap. A bloodied garment - a scarf of some kind? - falls off of them, already deeply stained with blood. That must have been a Drifter they caught earlier.
     Ree keeps shooting. It's not the first things she's shot, they won't be the last. The half-melted wolf-like specimen recoils and raises a disintegrating paw as she fires further into it.
     Ida's words have a worrying component to them: this wasn't her. She carries the blood of two people within her now, but she did not shed any of her two colors of blood in these halls. Someone did. No, it looks like multiple someones did, both Filgaian and Hyadean, but there is no obvious clues. No human bodies lying about, no fallen Hyadean soldiers. Just these leftover Metal Beasts, one of whom flops over lifeless as Ida shoots. Their death rattle is a prolonged scream.
     Layna leaps into action, striking a foot against a lumbering hulk who seems to have five legs but no arms, and thick steel cable tendrils. They are thrust into the nearby wall - to one of the more complex steel arrays with all the weird tabs and shapes in rows that depress and then rise back up when one stops pressing them - and one of the empty glass domes that seem to contain only darkness flares to life with a hissing electrical sound.
 
     Kkkh... kkkh... kkkh... Static. It coalesces into an unfamiliar face. A Hyadean, but not one familiar to any of them. Updating status report on... kkh... kkh... kkh... More static. Results on present samples are wildly divergent... kkh... kkkh.... kkh...
 
     Zed is much less enthusiastic about battle than usual. This is already a worrying thing unto itself, as he makes an observation that only he might be able to make - these are Metal Beasts of some kind, sure, but they are not like those that are fielded. Many of them seem... incomplete? So deformed, as to be flawed. Anatomically infeasible, for being beasts of war. Most of time, by Zed's reckoning, anything 'born' so flawed would be immediately culled and their materials fed through the recycler as to produce a much more ideal specimen.
     The late Alhazred, disintegrated by the Ley Dragon Riesenlied, did order all of them released. Maybe whoever was on hand simply released them in their present state of development, regardless of whether or not they were ready for the field.
     They make an adequate show of force, by standards of being flawed designs. Many of them bear down with their weight, as if aware of their own mass as an advantage. Sharp protrusions among limbs they do have, irregularly placed as they might be, reach out to grab onto any one of them. They shout. They scream. They swarm, as they bear down upon the lot of them.
     Most of them don't seem to have very sharp teeth. Those that do have them coming out at awkward, bizarre angles that don't seem useful for biting, but they sure seem to try.

GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Layna Manydays's Dynamic Entry for 81 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Metal Claw!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ree with Metal Fang!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Talise Gianfair with Metal Claw!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Layna Manydays with Metal Fang!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ines Colina with Metal Claw!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Zed with Metal Fang!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has completed its action.
GS: Talise Gianfair takes a solid hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Metal Claw for 139 hit points!
GS: Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Metal Fang for 83 hit points!
GS: Zed takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Metal Fang for 80 hit points!
GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Metal Claw for 92 hit points!
GS: Ree has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Ree completely evades Metal Fang from Leftover Metal Beasts!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Metal Claw for 69 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

Someone else springs into action. Talise widens her eyes. "Zed?!" she shouts over the noise of battle. "What are--"

Only then does it occur to Talise that these Metal Beasts aren't just injured. There's something wrong with them.

The sight of the scarf only worries here a little more. The swordswoman pivots to face the next Metal Beast --

The dome on the wall springs to life and distracts her. Talise takes a step back and blinks as the static tries to resolve into a face and a voice.

But distraction's never a good idea, and one of the Metal Beasts manages to sweep in and scream at her while slashing a bloody claw at her. With a spark of surprise, Talise swings to try and shoulder most of the impact, but the claw hits her just right and rips through a seam in her armour to cut into skin beneath it. Growling as pain shoots through her and blood leaks down across her side, she brings her left arm up.

She's holding her shotgun. Unceremoniously, she attempts to jam the barrel of it into the Metal Beast's body and open fire at point-blank range.

Even doing it leaves her feeling a little sick. "Something's not right here," she admits before backing off and emptying the rest of her clip, pumping out a spray of buckshot intended more to keep the Metal Beasts at bay than to do any serious damage.

Talise pauses with one shell left to make an observation: "They barely even look like Metal Beasts. Was someone doing something to them? Some kind of bizarre science experiment?" She squeezes the last shot off.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Spray and Don't Die!
GS: Talise Gianfair has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Talise Gianfair's Spray and Don't Die for 70 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ree has posed.

Ree skids out of the way as a Metal Beast tries to bite her. It snaps its jaws shut -- HARD! -- on emptiness, breaking off a few teeth in the process. "After me, are you?" she smirks, shooting it right in the face. Truth be told, this place is starting to get to even her. If they don't get out of here soon they're going to wind up like whoever left all the bloodstains on the floors and walls. She doesn't want to think about how those got there -- or what could be awaiting all of them ahead.

GS: Ree has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 2 on Gatling!
GS: Ree has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Hired Gun!
GS: Ree has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ree's Hired Gun for 83 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    The jingling sound as she makes contact is... unsettling, to say the least. Fabric round it's neck as she pushes it away. "...Is that a collar?" She doesn't have the same experiences with Metal Beasts others do, she's only encountered them a few times prior to this. But that stands out as strange even to her. Zed, however, has a reaction that makes things clear. These are not normal.

    She doesn't have time to probe further before one of the sickly metal beasts tries to drive a claw into her. She manages to get her arms up in time, but the beast draws blood and Ines is pushed back with a grunt. "Things are gonna get a bit shakier!"

    With that warning, Ines drives her fist into the ground, and her tattoos glow. The next thing is the ground starts shaking more recklessly as Ines causes a small- well, earthquake isn't the right word given they're in a metal spaceship, but that is sort of the effect. At the same time, shards of rock are generated by the spell to further disrupt the metal beasts footing, and hopefully clear some of them out.

    The console coming to life starts to explain, and Ines shakes her head. "Samples?" She grimaces, pulling back a bit. Nothing about this makes sense at all. "You said these aren't normal," She directs to Zed, looking the only nearby Hyadean for answers. "Then what the hell are they?!"

GS: A targeted player wasn't found. [#-1]
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Tectonic Breaker!
GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Tectonic Breaker for 219 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna observes the beasts before them. She's paying a little more attention now that it's become clear they're somewhat...unusual. Just what were these Beasts...? And what were those 'samples' that voice spoke about?

Having been aggressed, the Beasts react in kind. They're not particularly skilled, but their sheer mass and strength make them dangerous. Layna ducks underneath one as it snaps for one of her arms with its bizarre teeth, managing to just barely miss.

"Good question, lass. No idea." Layna replies to Talise and Ines both. She backs up, deciding it might be safer to attack from a distance. She recites an incantation, sending blades of wind sweeping toward the accumulated Beasts.

"An experiment?" Layna asks, looking toward Talise. "Or maybe a sick joke - just look at the poor bastards. What kinda use would they have for these?"

GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Cutlass Gale!
GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Cutlass Gale for 134 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.

It's obvious then. These really aren't normal. Zed darts under a set of reaping claws and swings his blade up to parry a second. A third penetrates his guard just barely, opening what is not the first wound he's suffered today-- and it certainly will not be the last. "I don't know what they are!" Zed answers, shoving the swarming beasts away with a sudden whirl of his deadly blade. "Samples? If these are Alhazred's, then they could be anything! Normally we recycle things this... wrong. I don't know if they're just malformed or if they're one of his pet experiments! But..."

What could they have been, then? Some kind of new type of Metal Beast? They don't seem to be... successful experiments, whatever they are...!

"Damnit, I don't like this. Alhazred, what were you doing?" This-- this is what science becomes. This is what it's like when you have infinite resources, no oversight and even fewer morals. Zed roars, his blade suddenly blazing with a terrible un-light. He sweeps it out in a wide, forward arc, the halo of disquieting energy radiating into the swarm of malformed monsters, blasting them all with raw misfortune and condensed curse-stuff. "The way they move. The way they scream... These creatures, how much pain are they suffering!?"

GS: Zed has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling!
GS: Zed has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Sealed Blade - Demon Breaker!
GS: Zed has completed his action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Zed's Sealed Blade - Demon Breaker for 143 hit points!
GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Leftover Metal Beasts!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Zed is on edge. This doesn't happen often. This alone would be enough to shake Ida even further--but the sound of that death-scream is like a razor drawn across her raw nerves. Her whole body tenses, and a surge of adrenaline flows through her veins. Silvery arteries stick out against her neck, pulsing with every beat of her bifurcate heart. The moment's distraction leaves her open. One of the Beasts surges at her, its deformed claws slashing at her right side like razors. Ida's reflexes take over where her conscious awarness fails; she twists away, thrusting her armored right forearm into the path of those claws.

    The blades cleave through with a horrible, grinding screech. Rivulets of crimson and quicksilver drip down her flesh. Her face twists in pain.

    "Alhazred's," Ida grates out, turning to Zed. She thrusts out her left hand in an open palm-strike, trying to drive the offending Beast back while she recovers. "Are you certain?"

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Open Palm!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Open Palm for 130 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

    Talise brings her shotgun to bear in the environment that a shotgun is meant to excel in, as she finds herself at the disadvantage. To her absolute horror, this seems to be able to withstand a point blank shotgun blast. Flesh disintegrates around steel chitin, and from the maw of the screaming beast, she is sprayed in greenish spittle, caustic and terrible. What she observes... that looks like it shouldn't hurt, but the way the maw shudders, the way more seems to leak around its face despite withstanding even that... it's in pain. Her further spraying ensures the spittle's the worst of her immediate problems.
     Ree coyly smiles, but the creature she smiles at... isn't. It opens its maw several times over, and there's a series of complex calls and cries she's never heard a Metal Beast make. If it's trying to communicate, there's no response from the others unless it's just 'keep trying to eat them,' which it could well be. She shoots that one in the face, and it starts making screeching gurgling noises as its jaw unhinges, grabbing about its throat like it's... choking? No, it turns out, a sharpened bone spike flies out to try and spear into her as it flails an arm.
     Layna has to ask the obvious - an experiment, or a sick joke - as she casts a wind spell that roars over the battlefield.
 
     Khhh.... The static isn't helping matters. Presumably whoever is speaking would agree. It's not clear if they are speaking in the present, or is a saved piece of the (recent?) past. Means of infiltration... khhh... khh... If only it wouldn't speak in fragments! Demon Seed has shown promise for this purpose... khh... khhh... The voice breaks apart again into illegible static.
 
     Layna won't have much time to dwell upon it, because one of the beasts aggressing upon her recoils in such a way that a human arm... a human arm?! Yes, a human arm that appears to be sticking out between two sets of teeth without spilling an ounce of blood from it - maybe it's an arm from a deceased Drifter that has been eaten, though its fingers seem locked in an intricate arrangement, as though it were still trying to reach out from beyond the grave.
     Ida thrusts her left hand out in a palm towards a Metal Beast that, by her fighting instinct and knowledge of typical Metal Beast breeds on the field, should be 'soft' but not this soft. Her palm draws in deeper than expected, a squelchy crunch followed by incredible discomfort - like it were trying to suck her arm in, to clench around it with both crushing and serrated teeth. When she draws her hand out, whether fast enough to avoid the worst of it or with a struggle, she will find it coated in crimson and silver. Hers...?
     Zed has no idea what these are, and he can speak from the heart to that point. If anyone knows what these are, and why they are, they must be complicit in something abominable - even to make life specifically for the purpose of creating suffering, this seems too far. Zed takes matters into his own blade, bringing forth doom in the form of energy waves filled with an abstract of cursed misfortune that doesn't seem to cut through them so much as trip them over like their shoelaces were tied together to much the same effect, tumbling one over forwards as such that when they brace a limb (so misshapen and strange it may well just be called a pseudopod in the hard lump of living stuff that this is), multiple points go 'pop' at once, like cannons, a... sort of coppery ooze leaving the openings created as Zed is showered in a mortar of explosive bone fragment. The misfortune cuts both ways.
     Ines demands more answers. Something deep within her will want more than that, as she strikes the very ground with a fury and force that feels as though the entire Photosphere would shake under it. A flight of fancy, for its present condition and situation. Many of them tumble, and she can spy more strange objects. A fancy brass cufflink in the shape of a horse, a little blue ball made of some strange material she's sure she might have seen before--
     Suddenly, an enormous Metal Beast, standing on its hind legs before any lighting that could better define its features, bears down upon Ines, pressing limbs on and around them as another gurgling can be heard. The weight is crushing, even for her very might. There's a sense of something... desperate, about it, but finer features escape her sight.

GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Talise Gianfair with Acidic Spittle!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ree with Hybrid Offensive!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Layna Manydays with Scraps of Humanity!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has spent 1 Combo on Poison, including 0 on Gatling!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Red and Silver!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Zed with Proof of Concept!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ines Colina with Growing Desperation!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes 13 damage from Toxin!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has completed its action.
GS: Talise Gianfair guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Acidic Spittle for 39 hit points!
GS: Shieldbreak and Toxin! Statuses applied to Talise Gianfair!
GS: Layna Manydays has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has lost 1 Combo!
DC: MISS! Layna Manydays completely evades Scraps of Humanity from Leftover Metal Beasts!
GS: Ines Colina guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Growing Desperation for 115 hit points!
GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Leftover Metal Beasts!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Red and Silver for 80 hit points!
GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Ida Everstead-Rey!
GS: Ree guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Hybrid Offensive for 99 hit points!
GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Proof of Concept for 181 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

"Ugh!" Talise grits her teeth and throws her arm up to try and shield her face from the horrific acid spew the twisted beast vomits at her in what she can tell straight up is a scream of pain. Her face goes pale as she pulls back, clenching her jaw as the acid begins to seep into her armour. It burns. Her muscles clinch and tense as the acid gnaws at things she'd rather not have gnawed at.

Zed makes something clear: Alhazred. Talise clicks her teeth together. A Quarter Knight she never fought, but one of the most dire - the one who did to Riesenlied what horrors she's suffered through today. "So one of his little experiments...."

The static in the background makes things infinitely worse. "What's a Demon Seed," she asks rhetorically as she shoulders her shotgun and draws her sword - only to widen her eyes at the sight of Layna's enemy suddenly sprouting a human arm from its mouth.

Colour drains visibly from Talise's normally tanned face. "What--"

If they are Metal Beasts, they're the strangest ones Talise has ever seen. Metal Beasts aren't supposed to shoot explosive bone fragments. Metal Beasts aren't supposed to scream in what sounds for all the world like despair. Metal Beasts aren't supposed to have human arms. Metal Beasts aren't--

"What was Alhazred doing," Talise says, the seeds of a horrifying idea beginning to take root. She doesn't press the battle just yet. She's too busy thinking. Dropping back, she takes a brief swig of a potion in the hopes of at least taking the edge off the acid.

It doesn't help the burns. She's not that lucky.

GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Talise Gianfair with Defiant Spirit!
GS: Talise Gianfair takes 11 damage from Toxin!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
GS: Talise Gianfair gains Restore, shortening negative statuses by 3 turns each!
GS: Mighty! Statuses applied to Talise Gianfair!
GS: Talise Gianfair heals Talise Gianfair! She gains 0 temporary hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Ree has posed.

The Metal Beast's surprise bone spike jabs right into Ree's right thigh, doubling her over, cursing. She has just enough presence of mind (and willpower) to counterattack after pulling the spike free, firing at the Beast with both pistols. Her blood flows freely, staining her pants leg, and Ree realizes she may have to dig out one of the precious Heal Berries in her pack...which leads to even more cursing. Onlookers may never have heard such inventive use of invectives before...

She is too distracted fighting to pay much attention to the videoscreen and its static, but she can't help wondering what these particular Beasts are doing here, and why they're so *different* from their companions.

GS: Ree has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Mad Dog Rondo!
GS: Ree has completed her action.
Leftover Metal Beasts (Monster) pages Ida Everstead-Rey and Ines Colina: if I suddenly disconnect, this next round's
intended to be the final attack round where the recording makes it clear(er) as to what the hell's going on
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

"...Demon Seed? What the hell is that?" Layna asks, looking around for the source of that voice. "Come on, stop being so-"

Before she can finish her sentence, one of the beasts is upon her. One with two sets of teeth...with a human arm sticking out of them. Her eyes open wide and she goes silent for a brief moment as it lunges. And then, she's gone - leaping over it and on top of it before reaching down, grabbing the top of it and attempting to force its jaws open with all her might to free that limb.

It is a very rare situation when she hopes that something is just a severed limb, and she needs to know whether that is just the case here.

The alternative would be too horrifying and grotesque to contemplate.

GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Swab the Decks!
GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ree's Mad Dog Rondo for 75 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts critically Guards a hit from Layna Manydays's Swab the Decks for 32 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Layna Manydays has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    The items tug at Ines' memory. There is a familiarity to some of them, but she can't place where. And she doesn't have the liberty of time to probe her memory further. The large creature bears down on Ines, and she tries to bring her arms back up to block, just in time. Still, the overwhelming mass of the metal beast drives her down. Her knees buckle, and it takes huge amounts of strength to even remain standing. With effort, she manages to push back enough to get out from under the massive beast, and get some small breathing room. She starts to duck back, seeing as getting in close with this giant creature may well be a recipe for her own demise.

    "The one with the gold mask?" Ines asks, trying to clarify. She fought him all of once, and mostly he was able to shrug her off all too easily. Why someone would create creatures in nothing but pain, malformed and horrifying, is beyond her. But the sight of a human arm bursting from a mouth silences any further questions. Shock tinges her face, but she has to keep focus on her own opponent. She starts to move, trying to turn the giant Metal Beast away from catching anyone else in it's strikes. "How could anyone with a soul do something like this?" Given Alhazred, it's highly possible he doesn't have one.

    As she keeps her distance, Ines' summons up a gust of wind at her feet, and swings out with a rough kick at the giant. While not close enough to connect, it sends the wind flying at the monsters. It should get it's attention, and maybe cut it up a bit.

    Still, something is eating at her. There's not just something wrong with these. There's something, just on the edge of memory. The realisation is almost there, but not quite.

GS: Ines Colina has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Scything Wind Kick!
GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Flesh goes squelch. It feels more like hitting a ball of rubbery dough than Metal Beast flesh--rubbery dough filled with knives, that starts trying to suck her in. Ida's eyes widen to the size of saucers.

    'infiltration'

    A surge of desperate strength rushes through Ida's body. She pulls her left arm free, blood trailing from a hundred tiny punctures in her flesh. Crimson and quicksilver. Not all of it is hers.

    'Demon Seed has shown promise'

    Another Beast rushes Layna, and Ida sees it out of the corner of her eye. "Layna!" she cries. A human arm protrudes from between the thing's teeth. Ida's stomach lurches, and she clamps her teeth shut, as if trying to keep her last meal from making a break for it. She stumbles back, puts her back to a shuddering, groaning bulkhead. She breathes, feels the flow of chi as it moves to bolster her flagging body, "Their scientist," Ida chokes out, when she feels well enough to speak. It's less than ten seconds. It feels like an eternity, to her. "We should--"

    'How could anyone with a soul do something like this?'

    Ida has no answer. She swallows, hard, remembering the Badlands, the Wels, the stories her mother told her. She can't even say 'put them out of their misery'. Speaking it aloud feels disrespectful.

    The deck jumps beneath Ida's feet. She braces, rights herself, and steps forwards, breathing as evenly as she can. She draws back her gauntleted right fist, chi boiling around it--a brilliant gold-white corona surrounding red-gold flame. She takes a step, lets loose with an ear-piercing battlecry, and drives her fist at the nearest Metal Beast.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Steel-Breaking Fist!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes 10 damage from Toxin!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.

    It is the curse of Zedderdom. Misfortune breeds misfortune, after all. The strange Metal Beast pops like an overly ripe corpse bursting on its own gaseous buildup. Zed yells as he's suddenly blasted in a shower of bone fragments. Quicksilver blood leaks from a dozen fresh wounds as the Hyadean throws himself in front of the band of escaping refugees, taking the blast in their stead. "What... 'Demon Seed?' 'Means of infiltration?' Alhazred, what were you..."

Where... Where would they need to infiltrate?

What kind of place...

A human arm erupts from one of the beast's maws. Zed's eyes widen suddenly, his face goes pale. "Alhazred... No. You wouldn't be so twisted, would you...? That's not what these are! They can't be!"

"Hhhhhh--" The Hyadean snarls, his voice burning with the sort of rage that few have ever seen him roused to. He draws his blade back, dropping into a low, stable stance. A wreath of demonic energy swirls around him like a halo of frosty light around the sun. "He said he was letting the experiments loose. These... There's only one place I can think of... That we'd need to infiltrate with monsters like these!"

"'Demon Seed...' The name is descriptive enough, isn't it!?" Zed moves--

In a flash of violence, he charges into the swarming, suffering monsters. His sword swings in rapid strikes faster than the eye can properly follow. He seems to be aiming for arteries and veins, watching for the color that spills forth as if to try prove his suspicions wrong. And yet-- it's undeniable, isn't it? "'How?' It's easy! Alhazred didn't think of humans as people! Just as tools! Everything's easy when you just don't care!"

GS: Zed has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Saint Arts - Winter's Howl!
GS: Zed has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Zed has completed his action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts critically Guards a hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Steel-Breaking Fist for 34 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has lost 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts critically Guards a hit from Zed's Saint Arts - Winter's Howl for 28 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Zed has lost 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ines Colina's Scything Wind Kick for 76 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

    Talise helps frame the question at its most pure. Anything scientific upon the Photosphere has Alhazred's fingerprint. Nothing ever escaped his notice, in life. His curiosity had proven insatiable in the many years of his foul existence. As Talise takes her breath in which to quaff a healing potion in which to counteract anything nasty getting in deep enough to enter her circulatory system, she has herself a front row seat to her acid-spitting opponent starting to shudder as wounds knit themselves... incorrectly, like something inside were trying to take root.
     Ree keeps firing into them, with all conviction and will available to her to fight through the pain. Her pistols might not inherently pack the firepower to truly put them down, but she might have seen how one of them just outright withstood a shotgun blast at close range. Maybe all she can do is keep firing, keep firing, to put them down like rabid animals.
     Layna tugs at the arm to find her answers where the person speaking from the glass seems unresponsive or uncaring for calls of clarity. She may find one of her hands around the outstretched hand, as though she were to try and meet that hand like it were someone thrown overboard that needs to be taken out from the water. First, she finds that the 'teeth' around the arm don't bend, they don't give. The entire biomass moves with it. It's kind of like she were trying to tug out a shoulder. She might come shy of dislocating that, but first (well, actually), second... a feeling of that hand weakly trying to grasp hers.
     Ida leaps forward with a fist full of chi. She has no problems bowling something over, though the flesh and the surrounding architecture has so little give that pain will resound through her striking arm as she nonetheless forces them low, her target oriented as such that they're on their back, their face looking up. They only have one eye, the rest of their face hidden underneath... things. An eye that seems to water. An eye that seems to have a hazel coloration. An eye that looks... ... ...
     Zed, noted for his propensity for lack of forethought, current thought, or even afterthought, seems to be able to piece it together, but the truth is instead interpreted through fury and indignation as he bears down upon them. To his chagrin, he will find the ability to discover veins and arteries seems to spite his impeccable swordsmanship. The biomass is just too wrong to conform, that it comes down to luck. Luck that he doesn't have... but the rest will. No, it's not luck, it is in itself its own misfortune as colors spray out the back... crimson and silver, for the rest to see.
     Ines hurls a burst of air through her legs that is potent enough that it goes past the giant and scatters a number of them back, though the giant seems to withstand the pressure... as though maybe there were something about it that could blunt its force. Some X factor, that can't be defined, other than the aforementioned thought of the lack of a soul. As the wind blows one such beast into a wall, the lighting violently shifts. What was once not visible, starts to shine details for Ines' sight.

<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

     Khh... khh... The static clears, proportionally speaking. For its purposes, a success. Variable results between subjects raises new concerns... patterns do not appear correlated specifically to observed physical traits.
 
     As the light shines down upon the giant, Ines will see it more clearly - patterns of a sort running up one arm, visible through the gristle. They resemble Symbology, with strips of green cloth caked in blood. To look up further the torso... no, it looks more like... two torsos, welded together. There are brown-hued fibers - hair? - about the length of the other. Rusted, bloodied tools seem to both be adorned about, and embedded within, their form, as the entire body continues to press down upon Ines' form. Masses that might be heads tilt downward towards her, as massive limbs reach higher towards her face - as though to press upon her sight. Though the body has no shortage of dangerous surfaces, none are employed beyond the pressing of their weight.
 
     Khh... The static clears up towards legibility. Present theories suggest geographic origin is thus of no consequence... khhhh... khhh....
 
     As, one by one, a horrible truth dawns, they might search for something, anything, to recognize one by. To grasp at straws in finding some sort of trait, some sort of feature, to be able to refer to if this is to be spoken with others. To put names to... no. As the Metal Beasts bear down upon them in whatever guides them now - a hunger, a desperation, a fear, a fury, or if there is even anything of that sort - there is something they must all accept.
     When they are put down, there will be nothing left to bury.
     If it requires a lack of a soul to even entertain the idea of bringing creatures like this into the world, what qualifications must one possess - which ones DID Alhazred possess - to act upon the idea of bringing creatures like this into the world, from that specific origin?
 
     Khh... khh... the subjects from St. Centour... khhh... khhh... khhhh... It dissolves into static again, but there is nothing more useful to be heard.
     No, if anything, too much useful has been obtained.

GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has spent 5 Combo on Gatling, including 4 on Gatling!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Talise Gianfair with Nothing Left to Bury!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ree with Nothing Left to Bury!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Layna Manydays with Nothing Left to Bury!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ida Everstead-Rey with Nothing Left to Bury!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Zed with Nothing Left to Bury!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has spent 5 Combo on Gatling, including 4 on Gatling!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has attacked Ines Colina with Legacy of a Mad Poet!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Talise Gianfair guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Nothing Left to Bury for 125 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has completed its action.
GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Nothing Left to Bury for 200 hit points!
GS: Layna Manydays takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Nothing Left to Bury for 102 hit points!
GS: Layna Manydays enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Zed has attacked Zed with What!?!
GS: Zed has completed his action.
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes a glancing hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Nothing Left to Bury for 104 hit points!
GS: Zed takes a solid hit from Zed's What!? for 0 hit points!
GS: Ree takes a solid hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Nothing Left to Bury for 210 hit points!
GS: Ines Colina critically Guards a hit from Leftover Metal Beasts's Legacy of a Mad Poet for 42 hit points!
GS: Ines Colina enters CONDITION GREEN!!
GS: Ines Colina has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has lost 1 Combo!
<Pose Tracker> Ree has posed.

Ree discovers with growing horror what these metal monstrosities are, what they have to be. It's enough to give even the jaded Geohound pause. There seems to be no way to restore them to their former forms, so maybe the best thing do would be to stop their suffering.

She draws on her magic now, determined to hit as many as she can at once. She can't shake the feeling that if she'd just been at the wrong place, wrong time, she might be transformed, misshapen, and on the receiving end of a coup de grace. It's a no-win situation, and if there's one thing she hates, it's one of those. Cold surges, quickly followed by ice and snow. Hypothermia would be a gentle end, wouldn't it?

GS: Ree has activated a Force Action!
GS: Ree has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Blizzard!
GS: Ree has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Ree has completed her action.
GS: CRITICAL! Leftover Metal Beasts guards a hit from Ree's Blizzard for 147 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

The arm reaches, grasping for hers. It gives her pause. It was still moving. No...it was impossible to deny now. What this was, where it came from... If that wasn't enough, that voice lays it all out.

Layna closes her hand around the one outstretched to her, gripping it tightly for a brief moment. Ida begins to say something. She doesn't have to finish it for Layna to know what she was about to say.

"...I don't know who you are, but...I'm so sorry. This is the only mercy I can offer. This'll be over soon." She says, her tone subdued far more than normal. She exhales, reciting an incantation under her breath.

The wind begins to howl as it builds up around her, emitting almost a mournful cry as it whistles through the many holes in the Photosphere. A green aura begins to grow, and then she disappears from view.

A flurry of blows is unleashed within a span of only a few seconds, rapid and countless in number, aimed to end this as quickly and painlessly as possible.

And then, without the unnecessary dramatics she's prone to, she reappears, completely quiet.

GS: Layna Manydays has spent 2 Combo on Gatling, including 1 on Gatling!
GS: Layna Manydays has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Dead Men Tell No Tales!
GS: Layna Manydays has gained 2 Combo!
GS: Layna Manydays has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Layna Manydays's Dead Men Tell No Tales for 221 hit points!
<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

It's exactly what they are. Talise swallows a lump in her throat as she realizes that Zed is getting the exact same idea she is. Her face is pale, but the shock in her eyes is rapidly giving way to a mix of outrage and sorrow. "They were people," she whispers through her teeth. "If that's what Alhazred did to them, then--"

Befoe her, the creature begins to try and knit itself together. Or perhaps some abomination within it begins to try and restore it, irrespective of its wishes. It's sickening to watch. It's even more sickening to watch Layna wrestle with that arm.

To listen to the static.

    'the subjects from St. Centour'

Talise clenches her fists. Her eyes snap towards Ines. Lower lip dropping a little, she wrestles with a sudden surge of words she wants to say as she realizes what must be going through the huge Beastwoman's head. The horrible realization of just whom Alhazred did this to.

"There--," she starts to say. There must be some way. But the way escapes her. It'll escape all of them. How do you even start when a human has been warped and twisted into something like this? Is there anything left to bring back but a screaming soul? Is even that left? Can there be any hope of returning from becoming this much of an abomination of flesh and science?

What has to be done is clear. Talise...

...doesn't move. She looks down at Rastaban in her hands. The sword is the only tool she has for this. A tool that exists to take away life.

She grits her teeth and tries, but her feet are frozen to the spot. Moving forward feels like a sin. The mere thought of it makes her soul scream. These were people. Are people. Are someone's sister and parents. And she's expected to do this, to people who are probably the mother and father and sister and friends of the very person fighting with them.

To put them out of their misery. To concede the truth: There's no hope for them. That she can't save them. Just like she couldn't save Rosaline and Ida from becoming Hellions. Just like she couldn't save her parents from disappearing. Just like--

Talise looks down at the sword in her hands again. The light glints in the inscription on its surface - writing she can't understand. Capturing the ambient lighting just right, the reflection along the contours of Rastaban appears green. Perhaps greener than it could by simply catching the light around the corridor.

    Lady Chloe.... Dragonmaster Alex.... ... ... Green Knight Fredo... what would you do...?

She's not expecting an answer. The heroes of her past are just that: Stories. And yet, there's a voice in her mind that's clearer than in life. She can see a face more skeletal than anything else - she has to imagine features over the bones. Imagine what she imagines the words of the Green Knight would be. Or is it an imagining?

    To be a hero is to understand what you can and cannot do.
    In our hearts, we seek the perfect outcome. The happy ending.
    But a hero cannot always be a savior.
    She does what she can, when she can, even if she feels helpless.
    No more, no less.
    If the best outcome cannot be, she seeks one that can be.
    And she understands the courage of accepting a hard truth.

"I understand," Talise grates through her teeth, speaking quietly but aloud to the phantom of the lesson the companion of the First Dragonmaster taught her. The flicker of green along the blade of her sword brightens a little.

It dances in the tears that stand at the corners of her eyes as she takes a step forward. Drawing herself up, Talise raises Rastaban high, gripping it in her right hand and holding it above her head.

Ida's seen this once before - but Layna hasn't. It's something Talise shouldn't be capable of doing. A surge of green light crackles up Rastaban's blade. The light sings, arcing like green lightning. It pulses like a heartbeat as it grows and swirls around the ancient blade.

"I'm sorry," Talise says with grim conviction as the green light dances in the tears that begin to mark a path down her cheeks. "Please be at peace."

Without so much as another word, Talise brings Rastaban down. She swings in a broad arc that sends the light roaring off of the blade. It erupts into a rolling wave, expanding and broadening, before swelling into a shape like a massive green dragon's head that broadens about as wide as it can get.

The blast blooms forward to try and consume as many of the twisted villagers as she can - to try and burn them away and end their misery.

    This is all we can do for them, Talise reminds herself through the horror, her face stony with resolve behind the tears. To end their torture. Althena... or whichever god rules over this place... please, have mercy on them.

GS: Talise Gianfair has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling!
GS: Talise Gianfair has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Dragon Courage!
GS: Talise Gianfair has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Talise Gianfair's Dragon Courage for 210 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.

St. Centour.

There it is.

There's the truth.

"How--" The rage is palpable. It's something material, something tangible. The horde of metal beasts swarm over him, ripping and clawing in a desperate struggle to express or reclaim something. Are they angry? Are they crying for help? For salvation? There's none. There will be none. "How... Could you..."

Zed's hand trembles. His blade clatters against its sheath. "This... THIS is what happened to them? You... WE ARE WARRIORS, ALHAZRED!" Zed cries into the grotesque tide. "Where!? Where is the honor here!? These were just people living their lives, and you turn them into monsters! This... Everything that was wrong with what we were, THIS IS IT! THIS IS WHY!"

There's no defense here.

There's too much rage. Too much fury.

Did Siegfried know about this?

If he did, why didn't he put a stop to it? Was he so consumed with hatred? Was it the terrible sense of despair that fell upon him with the Mother's revelations? Or his allowance of this in this some small part of what broke him? Zed thinks too many thoughts. Too many. He has to silence them.

He has to... silence these.

To put them out of their misery.

But more than that--

Those people watching. Those Metal Demons turning their eyes away in fear or disgust, or who do not even seem to care, except for the fact that these creatures are obstacles between them and safety. They need to know. They need to understand. "Don't look away," Zed whispers as a claw digs into his shoulder. "Don't. This... This is what we are capable of. 'Humans are monsters?' No, we're capable of being monsters too. We're no better. This is proof! That one of those we called 'greatest' could cause so much suffering! Could spit in the face of everything that we are!"

"As a warrior of Hyades--" Zed snarls, his hand painfully tight around the hilt of his sword. "I'm sorry. So sorry. We were supposed to make war. But this... This...!"

A blaze of power and righteous indignation blasts the swarm back a half step. "This atrocity-- we should never have allowed it! We can never, ever repeat it! All I can bring you now is peace, by my blade!" Zed...

Swings exactly once.

With all his rage. With all his sorrow. It's a blow not unlike Talise's own, but where hers unfurls into the jaws of a mighty dragon, Zed's...

Simply rolls forward like an arc of destruction that freezes at the heart of the monstrous swarm...

Before blooming into a vast dome of light. Before rupturing into a devastating explosion of power.

Zed looks on as the horde is consumed, and the brilliance of his final blow dissolves into a blizzard of cherry blossom-like motes of light.

...As if he were giving them a funeral in light.

GS: Zed has spent 3 Combo on Gatling, including 2 on Gatling!
GS: Zed has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Split Ladle Sakura Supernova!
GS: Zed has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Zed has completed his action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Zed's Split Ladle Sakura Supernova for 226 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Ida's punch knocks her foe to the ground. Something in the mass catches her eye--

    A human eye looks out at her, misting over. It looks so out of place that Ida can't help but fixate on it, and for a few, terrible moments, the eye is her entire world. Her throat constricts. "No," she says. "I--" She can't say anything else. She wants to scream, to vomit, to tell herself that this is not happening, but it is, and there's nothing she can do. There's nothing she can do.

    The voice in the background continues to speak.

    'St. Centour'

    Ida's mind flashes back to an empty town, to a shattered statue. She remembers the smear of silver blood, and the young woman who talked of monsters. An all-too-familiar numbness sinks in. To say that Ida was already emotionally raw is a gross understatement. Mother's voice echoes in her ears as she remembers the glint of a golden mask. Her hands tremble, clench into fists.

    The experiments do not relent. Claws dig into Ida's right forearm, tearing rents in the armor. Crimson and quicksilver pour from her as she tears the arm away. A second experiment reaches for her with some sort of spined pseudopod, its touch raking her side.

    "Ines," Ida chokes out. "I--" Ida's right hand starts to shake, violently. Ripples spread across its surface like waves across a body of water--the metal gauntlet pulls outwards, fingers lengthening, twisting, growing into razor-like blades. She lashes out with that hand, violently shoving that second experiment before it can do worse to her. She tenses up, reaches behind her to her holster with that mutated limb. She feels flesh flowing back into a more humanoid configuration, feels fingers close around the handgrip of Devil's Due. Ida frees the ARM, takes aim with it.

    'As a warrior of Hyades, I'm sorry.'

    Tears fill Ida's eyes. "Clear out!" she cries, and her voice hitches, almost breaks. Her jaw tightens. The tendons in her neck stick out with exertion. Ida pulls the trigger, and the Dragonbreath Filament in the weapon all but roars to life of its own volition. Dragonfire tears out into the corridor, raking across the gathered experiments, white-hot and searing. Ida holds down the trigger, but it does not matter--the weapon is her, and she is the weapon, and she wants nothing more than to make the suffering stop.

GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has spent 3 Combo on Poison and Gatling, including 1 on Gatling!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Dragon's Breath!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has gained 1 Combo!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey takes 12 damage from Toxin!
GS: Ida Everstead-Rey has completed her action.
<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    'Alhazred didn't think of humans as people!'

    As Ida and Zed put together what Ines hadn't- or perhaps didn't want to- the words hit home and hit hard. The memories come together. Memories from nearly two decades ago. She hadn't been home once in that time. But some of those items, she remembered. She remembered pendants that hung around the necks of people who hurled abuse at her. She remembered cufflinks people wore as they threw rocks at her. The items of clothing of those who just stood by indifferent or supportive of this cruelty.

    'These... There's only one place I can think of... That we'd need to infiltrate with monsters like these!'

    Ines' eyes widen, and she stumbles back. The hardened geohound's body is shaking, even if it's hard to see in the shuddering Photosphere. A lot of them were cruel, callous. Ines had little good to say about the people of her home town. But...

    "No..."

    But even the people of Saint Centour didn't deserve this. No one deserved this.

    "No no no no no..." Ines looks upon the creature as light shines down on it. Symbological tattoos, near identical to some of the ones on Ines' skin. Old tools that she remembered handling as soon as she was old enough to help in the forge. Tattered remnants of a green dress, the skirts of which she hid behind when she was so, so young. Tears build in her eyes as realisation comes over her.

    "Ma... Pa..."

    The horrible creature that was once her parents descends on Ines, crashing against her with all it's might. The geohound seems stunned- unable, or perhaps unwilling to defend herself against the attack. As the creature descends upon her, the beastwoman seemingly disappears under the creatures mass. She can't be seen after the impact.

    Then the Metal Beast starts to rise off the ground. It's not by much, but it's enough to see a figure underneath. Her skin hardened to stone, using the symbological tattoos her mother gave, Ines stands, slowly. Her hands and forearms look as though they are made of steel. It takes a few moments, but she manages to get herself free from the creature. She stumbles back. Tears run down her face as she looks up at the monster. Even as she does, her tattoos glow. The knuckles on the right hand start to increase in size, magical metal building on them and forming a massive spike. Something to strike through the form of the monster.

    "I'm so sorry..." The words a choked out, like it's hard to speak. It seems to take everything she has. It doesn't matter what became of them, how little is left of them. She finally knows what happened, and it's almost too much to bear. "I'm sorry I ran. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

    Ines draws back her right hand, breathing heavily, as tears stream freely down her face. "I'm sorry that in the end, the only thing I can do is..." She stops. She can't even say it. But still, she finally braces herself, looking straight at what is left of her parents. "Whatever comes after, I hope it's kind to you and Lara." The words feel dragged from her throat.

    And then, with a shout, she drives her spike into the metal beast, hoping that is enough to end it.

GS: Ines Colina has activated a Force Action!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Full Clip!
GS: Ines Colina has activated a Force Action!
GS: You have activated the Force Action Lock On!
GS: Ines Colina has spent 4 Combo on Gatling, including 3 on Gatling!
GS: Ines Colina has attacked Leftover Metal Beasts with Hullbreaker Knuckle!
GS: Ines Colina has completed her action.
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Ida Everstead-Rey's Dragon's Breath for 199 hit points!
GS: Toxin! Statuses applied to Leftover Metal Beasts!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts takes a solid hit from Ines Colina's Hullbreaker Knuckle for 202 hit points!
GS: Leftover Metal Beasts has Fallen! It is no longer able to fight!
<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

    There is only one thing any of them can do, and each one contributes one thing within this one greater thing they can do.
     Ree attempts to freeze them all, to hold them in place - to maybe stop or halt not only their movement, but whatever foul science keeps grafting new anatomical alterations.
     Layna, devil-may-care pirate adventurer, once more finds herself facing down one of the uglier facets of journeys that rarely make it to song, but never leaves the consciousness of those who witness such. As the wind whips around her, it will have to speak for her, for she knows there are no words that can be said to bring solace to these people. There is only one mercy she can offer, dispensed across multiple blows among the gathered that suffer.
     Talise fights within herself to grasp at what it is she can do with Rastaban in her hands that might give them back their lives, their happiness, their everything. Deep within her, she reaches for a hard-won truth she had struggled to obtain. Just as she grasped at circumstances that many would declare in history as a catalyst for it, it is here - truly, here - that she takes a hold of the true meaning of Courage, as she brings this given form down upon the suffering.
     Zed, too, struggles with the revelations of just what values his own kind could both be bound by... and what could happen when they choose to eschew it, or to perhaps come to grips that maybe the values he held dear were more imagined than intristic. He finds an uncomfortable likeness among those he may call friends now, from a whole - that anyone is capable of being a monster worthy of being cut down... and that sometimes those who aren't worthy of being cut down, must, as a blossom of light comes down upon the misfortunate from another with misfortune.
     Ida, finding herself an occupant of two separate worlds who may have aspired to a whole prior, finds that she too now grips with both sides of the tragedy. That she is a human who has been irrevocably changed by a Hyadean origin, that she is a Hyadean who holds honor as a warrior. Both parts of herself put resolve into one outlet, Devil's Due, and drenches those transformed beyond recognition in Dragonfire.
 
     Kkkh.... kkkh... The collected destruction washes over the static-spewing glass... plate-dome thing, and it fades to an endless black under a shower of sparks and melting slag. The static is at end.

<Pose Tracker> Leftover Metal Beasts has posed.

    Ines faces down the amalgamation of two people as well as anyone in her situation can. That the two of them would have somehow fused into one organism, one can only fathom the scenarios in which such could come to be - that the two were perhaps able to embrace one another as fear and worse overtook them, that they were given both the mercy and the sheer curelty to get to be together.
     The worst of it comes as Ines speaks those words, she can feel it through what isn't being brought down upon her as they're lifted up. So much on the giant horror has enough protruding from them that if htey flex themselves a given way, they could impale Ines all the way through. If there is a separate malevolent intelligence in play within, it seems a struggle to stop it from having its way. The body shudders, but nothing dangerous comes down upon (nor through) Ines. Somehow, a set of... eyes?... track between daughter and parents.
     She is aware of how little there is left of them.
     She will be made aware of how much there actually is - enough to be conscious of their daughter, what she has become. Strong enough to lift them, strong enough to confront her feelings and fears - in another way, strong enough to do what Ione Paua, the Saint Guardian, could not.
     Ines drives that spike through the beast. There is no telling if that would actually kill, as the entire husk shudders underneath, as though... maybe, it wants to try to make sure that this is, as it falls to the ground in a growing pool of crimson and silver. The single most intact (set of) corpse(s), where the rest have been rendered unto dust. It does not move. It makes no cruel ploys to lull one into a sense of false security, as its warmth leaves it and it goes as still as the death it needs to achieve in order to find peace.
     ...
     Even with Filgaia being blessed with a chance at life after Mother's fall - a boon hard-won by all gathered here - it would seem that not all the news that will come of this venture into the bowels of the Photosphere will be worthy of celebration.
     Ines, herself, now having been equipped with answers that have long since eluded her, will find herself charged thus with an even greater responsibility.
     As one of the exceedingly few known survivors of St. Centour, even twenty years removed, even having left as an object of scorn for a nature she could never have helped, she will be carrying the torch for all of them as the one who carries what of it is left into Filgaia's future from December 1st in the year 500 Post-Collapse.
     She holds the even greater responsibility to see herself - and as many as she can - to safety, and that is a trial unto itself yet as the Photosphere rumbles heavily from weapons fire striking it. The chamber collapses anew, the ceiling collapsing into a convenient set of makeshift stairs... that leads even further to, in the distance, daylight.
     A way out?
     Or an invitation to bear witness to another great tragedy in the making?
     They cannot afford to be among the leftovers now.

<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    The magic dissipates from Ines hands, as she stands, unmoving once the attack drives through. Her skin turns from stone back to her normal grey skintone. She stands there as The battle is over. An exit is made. That was what she was trying to do here. She's met her goal, right?

    As the last of the metal beasts lie dead, she finally falls to her knees. She's exhausted, mentally and physically. The fight took it's toll. She knows she has to run if she wants to survive. She knows now is not the time. There'll be time to mourn later, she knows all these things.

    But all Ines can do at this exact moment is kneel, and weep.

<Pose Tracker> Ree has posed.

Ree drapes a consoling arm across Ines' shoulders (it's a good thing Ines is kneeling) but does not speak. There are no words for a situation like this. Anything she could say -- they're in a better place, they're not suffering any more -- would seem trite. She gives her fellow Geohound several moments. "Come on," she then murmurs, urging Ines to rise, "we need to get out of here." Best to do it before something happened to the makeshift stairs. "We're nearly there."

<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.

    Dragonfire tends not to leave much behind. In this case, that might be for the best.

    The flame fades and dies, but Devil's Due still glows, cherry-red, from residual heat. Ida takes the gun from her right hand with her left, holding it gingerly. Her whole body trembles. Her right arm is still a twisted amalgam of two kinds of flesh. Her breath catches and hitches in her throat as she steps forwards. "I--Ines," she says. The floor shudders. She looks down at the big Beastwoman, overcome with emotion, and wonders if she could even help her out of here.

    She tries anyway.

    "Take my arm," Ida says. Bladed fingers clench into a fist as she kneels beside Ines. "Please."

<Pose Tracker> Talise Gianfair has posed.

One of them is her parents. Talise's heart feels like it's going to break in two.

It doesn't. Tears stand in Talise's eyes, but her resolve doesn't break. If Ines has the courage to give her mom and dad this small mercy....

When it's all over, Talise lowers her sword slowly. Her body is slow to release its tension. The last wave of attacks had hurt her - she'd taken a few solid hits, so caught up in emotion that she was barely even aware of the fact that she was defending herself - the ache she feels is entirely unrelated to any kind of physical injury.

Wordlessly, she makes her way over to Ines. The huge woman crumples and weeps. Who wouldn't?

The floor shudders beneath them. Talise swallows the lump in her throat, then reaches down to rest a hand on Ines's shoulder, squeezing once.

"Ines," is all she says, quietly. The emotion in her voice is heavy and hard to sort out.

<Pose Tracker> Layna Manydays has posed.

Layna sees Talise draw upon that technique, the power gifted to her by Green Knight Fredo. At some point Layna will give this some thought, but for now, she focuses on the grim task ahead of them.

One by one the tortured experiments fall, given the only mercy they can offer. And then, there's silence.

Layna stands there for a moment, quiet. The wind slowly dies down. She removes her hat for a brief moment - a small sign of respect for the departed.

Layna looks back, her eyes finding Ines. What can she possibly say here? Layna doesn't think there's any words.

"...Knowing my crew, they're probably not too far from here. If any of you need a hand getting out, they might be able to help." Layna says, then turns.

"Ines..." She says, looking back. "...Make it out of here alive."

And then, without any further word, she begins to walk away. There was one last thing she needed to do here.

<Pose Tracker> Zed has posed.

It's done.

But at what cost?

Zed stares wordlessly as the most terrible of truths is revealed. That... That someone else had to lose their mother today.

After everything... everything that had happened, there had to be another loss. The world wasn't finished taking its toll yet.

And Zed... Is just so tired.

...

. . . . . .

"Ida," Zed says, quietly. "...I need you to guide these people back out to safety, I... Shouldn't be here." Not after what his people did to St. Centour. What could he do to pay back that debt...? "...I have someone... I need to go find. I'm sorry, miss. This... For everything. But you... need to live. There are other survivors, and you all need each other so much."

With that, Zed... staggers into a nearby hallway, and slaps his palm against the locking mechanism behind him.

<Pose Tracker> Ines Colina has posed.

    It takes a few moments for Ines to even respond to the people around her. She's still visibly shaking. She barely even registers it. Ree's efforts to get her to rise, Talise calling her name, Layna telling her to survive. Ultimately it's two things that get her attention: first, Zed's apology and talk of survivors. And then Ida's polite request.

    She stares at the arm Ida offers her. It's clearly of Hyadean make. And at the moment, some part of Ines could turn all her anger and grief upon anything the Metal Demons had created. But...

    'I just ask that... you withhold judgment, in the event it comes up.'

    With a weak nod, Ines takes the metal hand that is offered, and slowly stands up. She can't really speak at the moment, but she can follow. She has to make it out of here to count as a survivor. And that much, she can manage.