Final -V- IC

The entity appeared distracted by something behind; the glowing eye of infinity upon the horizon drew its attention as if commanding it. An unseen force pressed upon the entity like a sort of pressure. The Final Five could only imagine it as if in their minds eye, physically invisible in that otherworldly realm. Though it fought back against that invisible something, the entity kept up its assault, enveloping the platform in walls of approaching flame escaped only by darting into the air for nearby surfaces.

While the rest had fled for the images of respite in their world, Tian-Gui had opted to utilize the strenuously-retained psychic energy within his armor. The spear rocketed forth on the wings of near-light speed. Still, the otherworldly entity was no less aware of his retaliation. With a flick of its head and a reality-shattering screech, the entity teleported itself away and to an unseen location. The very speed and force with which it disappeared warped reality where it stood and broke the veils further, revealing more of the shuttle.

Missing its target, Tian-Gui's spear flew into the horizon before erupting in a flash of light that nearly blinded the hero. Lest he be enveloped in the oncoming apocalyptic shockwave, Tian-Gui followed suit and returned to the shuttle.

Though they had entered through a fragment of light, the Final Five found themselves spontaneously returned to their seats, still buckled in, as if waking from a dream. Not a hint of the portal, entity, or hellscape were to be seen. The familiar feeling of motion returned to them as they remained situated for a few more moments. Then, the motion stopped. A green light turned on nearby the exit, and the female voice spoke up again.

You have arrived at: Mars Styx Accelerator landing sight. Please enjoy your stay. Please note that quadrants five through sixteen have been closed for indefinite maintenance.

The door opened with a hiss, and the Final Five felt suddenly light on their feet; Martian gravity was lesser, by about two-thirds. The room outside was not unlike that of the accelerator launching station, though seemed far more high-tech, clearly designed by a more modern architect rather than an industrial planner. For the time being, they received no messages from Earth.
 
What…what just happened?

The giant Michelin Man that was Tian-Gui blinked his eyes, fragments of a dream still clinging onto him. It felt like he should have known something, that a truly monumental task had been placed before him, but…there was nothing. Only the adrenaline that pounded through his veins told him that something had happened, and only the incredible sensation of 'distance' reminded him that he saw something both incredible and indecipherable.

The stopping of their vehicle, however, brought Tian-Gui's eyes back to focus. Clumsily unbuckling his seatbelt, the rotund titan shed his spacesuit shell and stood in glorious gold once more. So they were finally there, at the Mars Styx Accelerator, ready to be launched back down onto earth. Bouncing with each step, he marvelled at how light he felt in his armor, before realizing that such a feeling was bad. It would invite weakness, after all, and he couldn't go take it easy yet.

He took in a deep breath, the throbbing pain of his body returning as adrenaline faded.

"Alright, how do we do this from here? You know, Iphie?"
 
Jin-Sun opened his eyes to see the world as it should be: free of various supernatural bullshit. Now all that was left was an enormous space armada and a titanic mecha costing more than a small country's GDP.

The cyborg unbuckled his seat belt, joining the rest of the Final Five. The lesser gravity of Mars was disorienting at first, but he adjusted rather quickly, the enhanced cyberware in his brain compensating for the change in gravity and helping his senses acclimate to the change. Jin-Sun blinked. He hadn't even realized his cyberware could even do that. The Thremonts were thinking ahead, then. Probably wanting to use him aboard their fleet.

He shook his head and focused back on the present, bringing an arm up and tapping it to address Tian-Gui's question.

"John loaded up map data onto me before we left." A holographic display emerged from his outstretched gauntlet, displaying the full layout of the station.
 
"I'm getting really tired of that thing," Runa muttered as she returned to reality. "If that's what passes for attempting to communicate..." They'd never get anything but fights out of it. The whole popping up at random and dragging everyone into some sort of nightmare hell dimension wasn't exactly fun, either. "Bet we'll meet it again on the return trip."

She unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up. The sensation of lightness caused her to bounce up and down a few times, giggling at how easy it was. "If the low gravity's a problem, I could always try and get us a local increase, I guess." She pretty clearly didn't think it was much of a problem. Nor did the thought that the facility might be compromised and the air outdoors wasn't breathable.

After the inevitable "cooooool" at Jin-Sun's holographic system, she got a little more serious. "Ok, so where we heading in that mess? And how'd they even build this? There some sort of attempt at a colony they didn't mention in school, or something?"
 
The unnaturally serene nature of the soft-spoken announcement threw Iphie for a loop as she blinked into proper reality again. Accompanied by the hiss of a hydraulic door, the purple-haired licked the inside of her mouth as she finally processed the ordeal that she and the four other members of the Final Five just experienced. Almost absentmindedly, she undid the buckle of her seatbelt as she glanced between the other equally bewildered members of her team.

Continuing to blink at Tian-Gui as they took their first steps in Mars gravity, she shook her head. "Sorry. I'm going to need a few moments here still, I think." Lightly tapping her feet, she seemed to take a moment to get her bearings before she took into action again. "Right. We're looking for the vehicle that takes us back to earth." She nodded at Jin-Sun, "Let's hope that the station is still intact enough that your map data is still relevant."

Still testing her balance while holding one of the worn seats, Iphigenia finally propelled herself forward and out of the door, taking advantage of the lowered Mars gravity.
"To follow up on that… I'd keep these suits on, even if they're troublesome. Who knows the state of the facility."
 
It took Kyouko a few moments to process what just happened. Back into the safety of their seatbelts; the announcement made clear that everybody, including Tian, arrived safely. Still, with the sudden danger gone, Kyouko had yet again doubts.

Sure, Tian became her sort-of Idol, but at the same time, he always took the spotlight - as a hero was supposed to. Regardless if he was only concerned for their safety or not, it brought the brunette into a weird pinch. Rather than running, she should have stood with him and fought. Rather than running, she should have faced the danger and grow. After all, who knew how much stronger her power was right now?

Shaking her head, Kyouko put that dark thoughts once again back into her mind. Next time, she simply had to be heroic - she was done with running away. Undoing her seatbelt and getting used to the gravity, she soon stepped out.
"Spaaaaace exploration! I wonder if we can take any high-tech shenanigans with us!" The girl said as the grouped started exploring, keeping her eyes open for any and all that wasn't nailed down and open for taking. While some parts of the station were still intact, others were not, but Kyouko had no problem using her Neuanfang to set the states of closed doors to open and similar. Yes, here, her power was still considerably stronger. There was clearly some sort of anomaly still going on.[/hr]
 
Jin-Sun's hologram projected an extensive matrix of the facility; too large for any one of them to fully parse. Fortunately, the map flashed a series of lights at the group, indicating with flying blue text where John knew they needed to go.

Quadrant 3. Accelerator loading bay.

The blue title blinked over a section of the map that glowed yellow, as opposed to the light blue matrix of the rest of the map. A dotted line coursed through from their current position to the indicated spot as it zoomed in further, minimizing the amount of pure architectural information they had to sift through. The directions had indicated, then, that they needed to head left in the hallway just outside the landing bay. An application of Nuenfang from Kyouko and a jolt of electricity from Iphie, and the console holding the door closed opened up for them after an error message threatened to leave them stuck inside for an eternity. The hallway spread along at least a mile in length, each end obscured by various steel boxes, outcroppings, and items left about the place.

A shutter system closed off the other side of the lengthwise wall, obscuring the Martian lands outside, leaving them with only the facility lights to illuminate the way. Surprisingly well-kept for its extended period of abandonment, the various facility-connected electronics such as consoles, doors, phones, and the like seemed inoperable. The window shutter buttons would not respond to touch, and the consoles would offer only an error message;

Error 25899-EJ - Deadline time for user input past due. Please contact the system administrator for reset and access.

Meaningless to those without the aptitude for computers, and a reminder of the emptiness of the facility for those who could understand.

The group continued on at the left, Kyouko picking up various nameless items that likely would have served a plumber better than it served her, though she did find an occasional paper-thin tablet that had run out of battery. Eventually they came to a large bulkhead door, accompanied by a console with a different error message.

Warning: Entryway in total lockdown mode. Dangerous environment ahead. Please use Quadrant 5 to reach the loading bay.

With a little magic from two certain girls, the door was, like the one before it, opened without an issue. Whatever 'dangerous environment' had been blocked off on the other side had clearly disappeared, leaving behind a trashed and battle-scarred ghost of its former self.

And at the center of the room was a mechanical figure on its knees, head bowed and inactive.

A familiar face to three of the Final Five.

The missing robot, Gigakill.
 
Quadrant 3. Accelerator Loading Bay.

So that was their objective, huh? It didn't look to be too far off, but on the other hand, Tian-Gui had no idea what the scale was on this holographic map of Jin-Sun's. Turning to Runa as the eldritch gravity-manipulator suggested using her powers to give them all more normalized gravity, he shook his head. "No need for that, Runa," he replied, "We'll probably need every smidgen of power we have in the upcoming battle…if we don't waste it on that interdimensional esper thing."

His neck made a disconcerting crack during that shake, but Tian-Gui ignored the pain that followed. This was nothing, really. Nothing to be concerned about until the mission was over with.

The group trudged on, passing through more doors with a combination of Kyouko and Iphie's powers. Though Tian-Gui wouldn't have minded just punching through those metal doors, it was a good chance for Kyouko to do something useful, after all. All things considered, she hadn't had many chances to do much of anything, and for that energetic go-getter, he could totally believe that she'd be getting antsy in such circumstances.

But Kyouko, outside of her power, was more or less normal. Though she may be scouted out as a member of the Final Five, Tian-Gui still wanted her to go through some easier missions. Everything thus far was way out of her league. He closed his eyes, recalling her first fight where she was promptly KO'd by the restrained Abyssal.

Yeah, that can't happen again.

Lost in his thoughts, Tian-Gui wasn't prepared at all when the second door opened, revealing a very familiar face.

Gigakill.

His master.

The individual that allowed him to join the Final Five as an apprentice.

The hero that nurtured his own powers and aspirations.

His pain was forgotten, as Tian-Gui took a step forward, his mask obstructing the joy in his expression.

And then, he faltered.

He couldn't sense it at all. The presence of that heroic individual, the steelhearted hero who carried the entire city of Shanhu on his shoulders. No, what stood before him, chasis barely scratched, was an inert machine, holding none of the magical power that gave it sentience, gave it passion. What was he doing here? Were the original Final Five scattered then? What happened to Citadel? Majorana? Black Star?

Lotte?

Dangerous Environment Ahead.

The last great feat of the Final Five was driving back the Abyssals that rampaged through the city of Shanhu. Something must have happened then, something that would bring the city's most stalwart symbol of justice into Mars. This needed further investigation. They needed to figure out a way to resuscitate Gigakill. Get answers. Have him back on the team.

But…Tian-Gui grit his teeth, remembering the massive mecha that even now roamed the skies.

Gigakill would not have wanted them to stop, not when evil was hatching their masterplan.

"…we move on. An extraction team can be sent to recover him later. Let's get going."

Who knew his steps could be so heavy when gravity was reduced?
 
"Man, what the hell happened to this place," Runa asked as they walked through the empty halls of the facility. It seemed to be in good enough condition, but it was still so...deserted. Why would people go through the effort of building such a thing, only to abandon it. Something seemed off, even if there were no clear signs of a struggle. "Seriously, why build it and then just...leave?"

Kyouko and Iphie clearing the way meant she had little to do but look around and try to spot anything out of the ordinary or particularly interesting. She didn't sweep up everything not nailed down the way Kyouko did, but some sort of nice souvenir from Mars would be nice.

She was not expecting something like Gigakill, when it came to any detritus lying around in a room on the martial station. Tian's reaction said enough, but she still followed close behind him to check for herself, even going so far as to reach out and knock on the steel colossus' armored frame. "Huh...Nobody home?"

She had to ask the others. "So, did anyone say anything about going to Mars? Because, I really don't know what could get someone to accidentally end up somewhere like here." Even if they were, for all intents and purposes, dead. Not the sort of souvenir she had expected, and one far too big to take with her. "I guess we can' take him with us," she sighed.
 
Iphigenia gave a skeptical glance at Kyouko as she looked about. Of particular note, the facility was surprisingly well kept for something apparently unmaintained for the past several years. "I wouldn't do that," she advised, as she glanced at Kyouko. "Any of the stuff you can pick up here are old for today's standards, and picking up rubbish will just weigh us down." Also she wanted to drive further sales for her companies

Dismissing Kyouko, the purple-haired girl followed directly behind Jin-Sun, who was in the position as their guide with his holographic map. The sole obstruction on their way to the Accelerator loading bay quickly fell to their powers combined. Despite her warning, she herself was drawn to the mysterious aspect of the old consoles, but everything she encountered in the facility seemed to be inoperable and nothing seemed important enough for her to waste everybody's time and her energy manipulating or powering some of the dormant electronics up. It seemed clear to her, however, that the permission settings for the various computers had long since expired.

"It happens," commented Iphie to Runa as they moved along. "There's a massive particle accelerator complex in Texas in the same state."

They soon came to another large bulkhead door, although the readout from this one was noticeably more ominous, giving them all a moment's hesitation. Iphie entertained the thought of directly interfacing with the console to get relevant information and unlock the door, but decided against it, enlisting Kyouko's aid to get it open as before. It simply was too risky to use her deeper powers on an unknown and damaged system like the ones here.

Iphie braced herself for the 'dangerous environment ahead,' but even she did not expect the scene on the other side of the door. A large, battle scarred robot in the very center of the room. While she approached cautiously, the reaction of Tian-Gui told her everything that she needed to know; who the robot was, and the probable state of him now. Even so, the purple-haired girl was not deterred, taking the time to walk around the inert figure several times before stopping directly in front of him.

She crossed her arms. "Tian, not so fast. If he's here, and like this, we must know what happened to him before we press on if we want to be prepared." Inspecting him more closely, she looked for his data and power interfaces. Hovering a single hand above them, she transferred some of her electrical energy into his body, enough to power his systems for a short period of time.

To her mild surprise, his systems booted up despite the apparent damage. But even so, he remained in his inactive position despite the sounds of power and lights on his chassis. Had Iphie been more reckless, she would have interfaced directly with the lost robot, but being characteristically cautious, she instead produced her phone, rapidly tapping away at it to enable several settings. While it lacked the relevant interface to directly communicate with the robot, Iphie herself easily acted as the go-between, downloading all the data and telemetry of Gigakill to her device.

As she finished doing so, she waved Jin-Sun over. "You've got the correct equipment too, right? Can you do the same? I'm looking at the data here and off the bat, I can tell most of his memory is corrupted. Let's cross-reference it."

Having given her suggestion, she rapidly began to sort through the information. After a few minutes, she stopped. "It looks like he was tapped into the admin permissions here. We might be able to make use of that—Oh? What's this?" A promising string of video files, but mostly corrupted on her end. "Jin-Sun, what do you have? Throw it up on the hologram."

She gave the robot another walk-around. "To be honest… I'm morbidly curious if Kyouko can't do anything about him. Do you think you could?" She bit her lip. "It's risky. We don't know what happened to him or his last state when he was still conscious. But seeing all of these files, I'm hesitant to say even the best of engineers back home could pull off putting him together again."
 
Was this...? Kyouko couldn't believe what she was seeing. Was this really? Tian's behaviour only confirmed it... but how? And why? Despite the sparkle in her eyes about being able to meet the Legendary Gigakill the brunette kept rather reserved - confused, to be more precise. Taking careful stops closer to the disabled robot, it was ultimately Iphie that gave her a push forward.

"To be honest… I'm morbidly curious if Kyouko can't do anything about him. Do you think you could?"

'Reviving' the dead... yeah, something Kyouko had wondered about multiple times already. That way, she could see Miku again - not to mention make a lot of other people happy. But with that thought came always this innate fear... something about it being 'wrong'... a fear that if she would try, and succeed in whatever form and fashion, something horrible would happen. But... then again, he was a robot, kinda sentient, but a robot nonetheless, no? He wasn't like Miku. No. He was, ultimately, a machine, an object like the can she had practiced on earlier. Not to mention, her powers were enhanced here too.

If she ever wanted to dare a first step, then why not right here and now? Would she ever get a better situation? Having thought a minute or two in complete silence again to find resolve for this action, too, Kyouko nodded. "I... can try."

With those words the brunette stepped closer, placing her hand on the lifeless, cold, chassis of Gigakill. If nobody would stop her, she would begin. "Neuanfang!" ... She really had to practice using this without 'calling' the name.
 
Jin-Sun knew this robot. Gigakill. One of the original members of the Final Five. He'd never quite gotten the impression that Gigakill had liked him, considering his association with Citadel, but it still wasn't right to see such a proud hero simply...decommissioned like this. What the hell had happened to him?

As Iphie began tapping in to Gigakill's systems, Jin-Sun nodded at her as she called him over to help her with the task.

"My frame's not exactly designed to interface with other systems, but I'll do what I can." He muttered as he laid a palm on Gigakill's interface. For the next few minutes, Jin-Sun linked up with Gigakill, trying to extract any kind of memory file he could. Unfortunately, most of them ended up like the ones Iphie had pulled out.

"Same on this end. All the memory files I can pull are corrupted. This is the only video file I can even load." He extended his gauntlet and played said video file on hologram for the rest of the group. The video played as a long streak of corrupted static with a single, blurred frame of a large black, obscured object taking up most of the screen. "Nothing else. If anything, I'd agree with giving Kyouko a shot at it. God knows we can't do anything for him like this."
 
Like the revered symbol of a long-gone battle, Gigakill sat in the center as the Final Five surveyed both him and the scene. Towering over Kyouko as she approached, the dead artificial intelligence appeared as if it would miraculously open up and allow Kyouko in as a pilot. In the last few moments Iphigenia and Jin-Sun had to gloss over the files, little else came up; more of the same meaningless corruption and system access.

Kyouko placed a hand upon the robot, and with strengthened resolve, channeled her unique power upon the object's being. At first, it seemed as if something was holding her back, like the energy within her arms had suddenly become 'plugged up'. She strained for a moment, as time-manipulating arcane energies began to creep upon the vaguely dusty purple surface of Gigakill's arm. Dust vanished and minute scratch marks began to fade, and still her power seemed 'stunted' at the time, despite her earlier feelings of empowerment.

Iphigenia continued scanning over the files in that last moment when something caught her eye. The photo that Jin-Sun had brought to view featured something peculiar... Something vaguely familiar... A tinge of red in the black streak. But, before she could yell for Kyouko to stop the process, it all rushed forward in an instant.

Whatever had stalled Kyouko's powers suddenly let loose, and she felt a surge of energy pass through her arm the likes of which she'd never felt, perhaps besides the day she was imprisoned in that tank. A visible arcane streak materialized in the air around her arm and shimmered down it to hr fingertips. The skin upon her arm glowed and began to crack, threatening to explode in a shower of singed flesh.

Neuenfang instantly restored Gigakill to his former state, but it did not stop there; the energy crashed through the robot into the ground like lightning channeling through earth, spreading out to the corners of the room as a flash of greens and blacks blinded the Final Five. Parts of Gigakill sparked and sputtered as his eyes flashed on and off.

The room in its entirety was suddenly restored to a time when Gigakill was untouched... and with it, so were the former occupants. Where once they found themselves surrounded by scorch marks, ashes, and obliterated objects, the room was pristine, organized...

And suddenly filled with Abyssals.


Diminutive in stature compared to the armored Abyssal they had fought outside the burger joint, the Abyssals in the room were no taller than Kyouko herself, spread out on four limbs and bearing the same lifeless red eye on their headless bodies. Six in all. Gigakill remained inert, systems clearly attempting to regain composure after the blast of energy Kyouko had implanted within him. The Abyssals were immediately poised for attack, and before the group even had a chance to utter the first syllable of any word in their dictionary, they pounced.
 
As Iphie and Jin-Sun mulled over the data they could recover from Gigakill's inert form, Runa idled around, impatient to keep moving. There might be a key to what happened at the facility buried somewhere in that data, but waiting while everyone else did things was so boring.

Then Kyouko stepped up to make good on a suggestion. This was worth watching, and her expression quickly turned to shock as nothing happening went to Kyouko practically blowing her arm off. "Kyouko, are you all right," Runa managed to shout before the dazzling lightshow began, leaving her momentarily stunned along with the others.

Runa recovered quickly, blinking the last of the dazzle away with little difficulty, even if she didn't expect that sort of rapid flash, and she can only adjust so quickly when she didn't know what was coming. Their presumed weakest member was usually nothing so flashy, nor did she affect nearly so much at once. And the room, well, it was certainly different, most notably by the addition of multiple new forms. They were smaller, but definitely Abyssals, and the damn things didn't waste any time wondering what was going on before they attacked.

"Kyouko, what the hell did you do!?" It was an appropriate reaction. Runa didn't waste any time with a counter of her own, shredding her protection against the vacuum of space to transform one hand into some sort of bladed weapon and striking out at the nearest Abyssal as she tried to sidestep its attack. She felt no resistance as her attack passed into the Abyssal, only enough pain to make her scream and quickly recoil even further. "FUCK, how do you fight these things," Runa asked as she shook what was left of her injured hand. Anything that touched the damn monster had simply disappeared as surely as if it had been cut off.

She jumped into the air, lifting herself off the ground with her familiar gravity tricks, to better get out of reach as she tried to figure out if she even wanted to try fighting that sort of monster in melee. "Looks like I'll need to get more creative..."
 
Iphie's own opinions on how they should proceed definitely made some sense, but on the other hand, it simply seemed unnecessary. They didn't have time for this. Though it didn't seem like the Thremont's mecha was doing anything supremely dangerous at the moment, such as vaporizing countries, at the same time, the golden titan couldn't help but feel a sense of urgency. Should they really be doing this? Wouldn't it be better to just blast away any obstacles that stood in their way?

Underneath his mask, he bit his lower lip, drawing some blood.

Iphie couldn't extract anything useful, but it looked like Gigakill's robotic form was still semi-function. Jin-Sun's attempts to link up were similarly futile, retrieving what were merely corrupted memory files. Strange, though, considering how undamaged the giant robot appeared. Hacking, perhaps? No, there may be other reasons for that. Standing on guard and watching, Tian-Gui simply allowed them to continue on with their own investigations.

But then Kyouko stood up, utilizing her strange power on the robotic form of Gigakill.

And, before Tian-Gui could react, the entire environment changed, as if they were all suddenly thrust into the past. A past that featured six Abyssals, unrestrained by whatever scientific anchor that sealed the power of the first. Before he could shout out a warning to Runa, the eldritch schoolgirl already lost a weaponized arm to their peculiar powers.

"Flamestone GEYSER!"

Slamming a golden fist into the ground as his armor expanded to tear off the astro-suit, Tian-Gui's eyes flared up with borrowed arcane energy. Golden crystalline streaks spread out, before six pillars rushed up, thrusting into the Abyssals barely in time to obstruct their sudden attack.

"Everyone, Abyssals absorb matter! Magic and Auronum only!"

His geyser only served to blow the monsters back, and already, white-hot flames were surrounding the armored warrior, as he prepared to strike them with incandescent fury.

"Kyouko, stay near me," he said, his white mane billowing in the heated air, "One hit from these things will kill you."

No, considering the enemy's unique power, only Tian-Gui could survive a full-on hit from these monsters.
 
"Oh what the fuck?!" Jin-Sun cried out in surprise as Abyssals popped up out of nowhere to surround the group. He narrowly rolled out of the way of one Abyssal's pounce, hurriedly reaching for his sword only for Tian-Gui to momentarily push the entire lot back with his magic.

With time to recover, Jin-Sun pulled himself back up and leveled his sword in front of him. The high-vibration blade was crafted from Auronum, so it would be able to deal damage to the Abyssals and parry their blows, but the rest of him wouldn't fare quite as well. He'd have to limit himself to the sword only and avoid any unarmed or Wire Spear strikes.

Jin-Sun chanced a glance back at Gigakill, hoping he'd be active thanks to Kyouko's Neuanfang. No luck. Probably rebooting, then. Wouldn't reactivate in time to be of any help unless the fight dragged on. They'd have to finish this quickly before an Abyssal made it past himself, Tian-Gui, or Iphie. The cyborg ninja darted forward, unleashing a flurry of slashes at one Abyssal.
 
The distinctive still amongst the corrupted data files caught Iphigenia's eyes. Looking vaguely familiar, she couldn't put a thumb on it until she finally caught a streak of red amongst another frame of the recovered files. The purple-haired girl immediately jerked backwards in realization, immediately glancing at Kyouko before moving towards her.

"Stop the experiment! Kyouko!"

But it was already too late as she saw Gigakill revert back to his former, pristine state… along with the rest of the environment around them and its previous inhabitants. Iphie reacted immediately upon seeing the six Abyssal monstrosities. Drawing away from the flashing, unstable robot, she leaped back to the relative safety of her fellow team members, already taking up a defensive posture. "I said to fix him up, not the whole bloody facility!" She complained towards the blond-haired girl as she pointed an index finger upwards, small sparks flying from its tip as she prepared a counterattack.

Waving her arm towards the surrounded beasts, she brought down a crack of lightning in the middle of the enemy group, taking advantage of their relatively bunched up position. Watching sparks fly, she concluded her brief attack with a whisk of her arm. With another movement, she manipulated the remnant energy towards Tian-Gui's pillars, wrapping the high-powered energy around it to create an even more compelling barrier to block in the otherworldly monsters.
 
Stop.
Stop!
Stop!

And suddenly, with a flash of light. Everything stopped. An intense feeling. An intense pain. The brunette was about to fall back but caught herself to just stumble a few steps backwards. The girl wanted to let out a cry of pain; but inside this bright whiteness the sound of her voice simply seemed to reach no one.

Slowly, or suddenly, the light started to fade. Yet, the pain was still here. When Kyouko was finally able to see again everything was the same, but different. Assaulted from what were clearly a bunch of Abyssals, Kyouko saw herself being obliterated. No. She thought. It couldn't just end like this. Using her guts and will to ignore the pain the brunette did the best she could and guarded herself - just to be saved by Tian's Pillars.

"Kyouko, stay near me,"

He commanded. The weakest member of the Final Five was supposed to stand idle by yet again? No. She refused. With the Abyssal having lost their advantage of a surprise gang bang, Kyouko wouldn't just let the others do all the work. What happened to the energetic girl just a few weeks, or has it been months, ago? No fear. Always forward. Always going ham. That was the girl she wanted to be. The hero she wanted to be. For Miku. For herself. Giving even less shits about her burning right hand, Kyouko charged towards one of the Abyssal. "EAT SHIT!" She roared as she used the very same burning hand to punch the thing.
 
As pillars rose from the concrete floor, the numerous Abyssals already rising trajectory had them suddenly pinned against the ceiling. Their blacks forms glowed white as the pillars impacted them, bracing them against the two pins. A burst of energy shattered each of the pillars into a crumbling mess and bending the ceiling outwards in the process. Stone shards rained down around the Final Five as the crawling Abyssals fell back to floor-level. Without a pause, they charged at each of them like beasts. They were silent, though the intense glowing of their red eyes seemed to scream at them.

One was already accosted by Kyouko as she took charge, meeting her fist head on as if unafraid of being stricken. Instead of absorbing her hand entirely, however, her cracked fist slammed right into the eye of her target, sending it careening to the back of the room. Another leaped at her exposed side, capitalizing on her extended stance.

Another skittered up onto a wall before charging for Runa with a leap, claws extended to tear into her flesh. The remaining three each took the other heroes for themselves. Iphie, Jin-Sun, and Tian-Gui were assailed by their own personal pet Abyssal, charged at in a selfless, mindless way. For the time being, their only directive seemed to be to physically attack the Final Five using their unhinged portal-like bodies to simply graze the enemy, shearing their forms away like a hot knife across butter.

Gigakill remained inert, though the energy had ceased to flit around his chassis, and his eyes remained bright. At the very least, he was making progress towards coming alive... One could hope.
 
"Tch."

Underneath his mask, Tian-Gui frowned as the Abyssals shattered his Flamestone pillar with a burst of energy, Iphie's electricity not even reaching them before the golden material cracked and crumbled. As they fell once more, gravity temporarily making them vulnerable during free fall, the flames that he collected swirled like a maelstrom, centering within his palm. He'll destroy them all in a singular flamestrike.

Before he did, however, he sensed movement behind him. Gigakill was active? No, Kyouko!

The fiery high school girl leapt out in front of him, running past falling debris as she delivered a mighty blow, sending an Abyssal flying into the opposing wall. It was a moment of victory and redemption for her, perhaps. But that wasn't what he saw. What he saw was…

In another fate, Kyouko's entire body was devoured by the hungering void, only her power-cracked arm remaining, the energy within dissipating.
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…an ambush.

His own 'personal' Abyssal slammed by his side, the Flamestone cracking underneath the force. Magical or not, the beings they faced were still apex predators that almost brought Shanhu to its knees, and the blow was felt within his heavy armor. But it was a momentary distraction only. The flames within him were rerouted from fists to his back, funnels opening up.

The Abyssal charged at him once more, red eye holding a silent scream, but this time, Tian-Gui roared back.

"MOVE BITCH! GET OUT THE WAY!!!"

Scarlet flames burst out like phoenix wings, driving him straight into the abyssal. It suddenly turned white, and he could feel that repulsive force continually slam into him, but Tian-Gui didn't care. The Flamestone Wings pushed past the repulsive power and launched the two straight into the second Abyssal, rebounding it away from Kyouko like two yoga balls bouncing into each other. Another something broke within Tian-Gui's body, but he shook it off, tossing the spider bastard off his hands and far away.

There was now a cluster of three Abyssals in a pile, and, cracks still present in his armor, Tian-Gui took in a deep breath.

"Kyouko," he said, an undertone of pain present even though he tried to suppress it, "We can't watch out for each other if one of us goes off alone. Stay near me."

She had an ego, didn't she?

"I need someone to watch my back as well."
 
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