Whether falling from holes clawed out of the silver skyscrapers bordering the streets or dropping from the black roots hanging between those skyscrapers above the streets, Pawns roar as they join the masses rampaging down the roads, sprinting towards an intersection. Also reaching that intersection is the silver bus which is the target for that horde, garnering enough aggression that demons leap to try clinging to the bus. As the bus makes a hard right turn on the intersection, those beasts eager to grab the vehicle are caught in a swarm of pink electricity emitting from the arms of Kokei who stands on the flat roof at the top. She clenches her hands, overcharging the swarm which flashes bright, shocking those monsters enough that after she relinquishes the swarm, they drop dead for the bus to drive over them.
She moves quickly to stand near the right corner, charging her arms with coils of lightning before discharging them in separate swarms towards both faces protruding from that corner, handling the wider intersection area vigilantly. While she defeats the monsters trying to jump the bus head on, many other monsters chase the bus from behind, as that frontal blockade forces the pod to drive at a slower speed that chasers can catch up to. Those monsters try leaping onto the top of the bus to defeat the defenders, but the second one shoots them with a radiating yellow bolt which causes those beasts to explode into chunks of guts held together by a slime that the other monsters accidentally throw themselves into, catching them like a net. Holding that smoking gun, Ekitai raises his gun to the sky and swipes up the interface screen beneath the hammer before firing a single red shot that's distinctly more volatile as not only is the bolt brighter but it shakes in the air. The bolt doesn't directly strike the closest monster dropping from the roots, but the one it does strike triggers a great scarlet explosion that not only disintegrates that monster but all others within a wide radius, reaching the closest monster and effectively clearing the air.
Acting quickly, Ekitai flicks his wrist and pops his gun's cylinder open, swiftly tossing aside a couple empty flasks and replacing them with full containers from inside his brown coat which flaps in the breeze. He manages to refill both slots in just a couple seconds, flicking the gun again to collapse the cylinder whilst swiping down on his interface screen before he then promptly fires a blue bolt at a monster leaping towards the roof, seeming to penetrate the monster's chest though in actuality that monster's chest stretches backwards with such speed that it penetrates the chest of those behind it, claiming several beasts in that one strike.
On the other side of the bus, Kokei spreads her fingers and aims her arms ahead before discharging a wide electric field across the entire width of the road ahead of her, casting a wide net that catches many beasts which she's able to then neutralize with a latent shock. She shakes her arms to brush off any build up of fatigue, understanding that she couldn't relax now. But as she rolls her shoulders which again spark to channel energy around her arms, Kokei's eyes sharpen as she peers further down the road curiously, though that curiosity grows quickly to concern.
What her gaze has set upon is past several blocks ahead, where she finds that the intersections along the path are becoming suddenly flooded by significantly denser mobs. As they converge into those intersections and continue up the street towards the bus, the horde's size grows by over double what she has been pushing herself to ward off, as she could hardly even gauge space between those monsters, for they all amalgamate into a thick black wave rushing up the road.
Her face tensing from that dreadful development, Kokei desperately calls: "Eki, any chance you can come up here?"
On the back of the bus, Ekitai glances back after hearing the request, and he sharpens his yellow glare while returning to face the horde chasing after him.
After a couple right swipes with his thumb, Ekitai aims his gun down at the road just behind the bus, swipes up with his thumb, and rapidly fires multiple dark blue bolts radiating bright as he pans the gun across the street. Every single bolt that strikes the ground erupts a geyser of blue slime that sticks to the road and the monsters too close to the shots, marooning them in place. While more demons begin to pile over the suspended mob, they only climb over to fall on more slime as a whole trail is swiftly placed on a chunk of the road behind the bus. That trail extends until no more shots are fired out of the gun despite rapid trigger pulls, prompting Ekitai to turn around and jog up the bus platform.
Approaching Kokei at the front of the bus, Ekitai raises an eyebrow and questions with intrigue, "What's up, I'm pretty sure that won't hold them for lo-...oh…," as dread immediately swaps out that curiosity upon catching that exact sight. Moreover, in those few seconds it has taken for him to respond, that thickened flood has proved itself not to be a minor chunk but rather an unending stream from the far end of the street, for there is no back line that can be registered despite the elevation they stand at.
Hesitantly clicking his tongue in unease to that alarming approach, Ekitai huffs before admitting: "I mean maybe we can hold them off together but someone needs to guard the back. Jesus how many- do I even have enough for that?"
Kokei winces beside him upon that unconfident response, and she sighs before resorting to her desperate thoughts, "Link Bellators, we're about to be overrun, are you almost done guys?"
Elsewhere in the infected city, hovering in the air over an intersection, Dana thrusts her open hands forward with a sharp glare as all ten of her diamond fingers rapidly extend forth, each of them thickening to the size of her arm yet moving even faster to penetrate the Pawns leaping at her as well as those on the ground, chasing the group of civilians hiding by a burning military pod. That mob, having dwindled as there are more collapsed corpses of them as opposed to active runners, roar as some of them attempt to dodge the incoming tendrils, flinging themselves to the side and climbing up to their feet as explosive booms shake the sky above them.
Those explosions disperse a frosty luminescence over the vaporized remains of the roots formerly hanging over the intersection, now crumbling into dust, and diving from that dust is Meditat whose thumbs and middle fingers burn blue as he snaps them, and every snap discharges a fire that manifests into crystal darts that precisely strike the foreheads of the monsters in front of him. He lands on one of the diamond tendrils which he runs down before boosting off –propelled by a blue burst– to another and then another, racing down the tentacles as they grow while snapping darts into demons, eliminating those who evaded Dana's attack. He catches up with the tentacles due to the speed of his quick boosts, reaching the last Pawn which he leaps at, raising both arms in the air and manifesting a crystal-headed mace which he swings with a full body spin, the propulsive energy creating a wheel of light that caves the demon's head in, leaving the body to drop on the road. Landing by that body, Meditat stands upright, holding the mace with his left hand as it erases while his right hand faces back towards the crowd of survivors behind him, and he lifts his head to find Dana descending, all ten of her fingers recoiling back. They both exchange glances, prompting Meditat to fire a flame from each of his five fingers to manifest armed drones as Dana jerks her left hand, detaching her five fingers which transform into full specters that each grow a tentacle.
While Dana steadily drops, Meditat drops his arm and assures the survivors huddled by the destroyed pod, "You're safe to continue evacuating, they'll protect you." He lifts his left hand which fires a wire high towards a distant tower, and just as he turns to face Dana, he lets himself get pulled into the air. Dana spins to face the survivors before flashing a delicate smile, and prompting launching herself after her friend, leaving the survivors to survey the battleground in silent astonishment. They then turn to the specters who begin marching down the street in the other direction, leading those survivors who start to follow, initially apprehensive though as more join they find themselves more confident in their escape, reinforced with the drones.
After reeling close enough to the anchoring tower in a pendulum swing, Meditat jerks his arm back and lets go, throwing himself in the air before projecting two wires from his hips just as Dana catches up to his side, her arms and legs together in a tight formation. At their speeds, their hair is brushed back enough to keep their faces clear, enough for their expressions to noticeably shift to concern upon hearing Kokei's voice in their head in distress: "Link Bellators, we're about to be overrun, are you almost done guys?"
Meditat and Dana immediately face each other with that same anxious look as Meditat is first to hesitantly answer, "Link Bellators…we're approaching the list's end…we should be done in a matter of minutes, perhaps three-."
"Link Bellators, we have like maybe a minute, please come," Kokei hastily interrupts, and before either Meditat or Dana could respond, Ekitai's voice joins in, "Link Bellators, yeah it's bad, our ark's not cut out for this."
Meditat winces in turmoil, unable to give an immediate answer as there was no telling if the other patches of survivors could hold out long enough for them to make such a detour. Dana notices that turbulence as they both hear Kokei offer, "Link Bellators, maybe if I uh lift the bus a bit we'll get through-."
"Link Bellators, don't do that, it's too risky," Meditat immediately cuts in, though he's unable to follow up with his own counter strategy, gritting his teeth as he scowls to himself for this horribly timed freeze.
Dana's eyes sharpen upon arriving at a determination, and she lifts her head before lifting her entire body to rocket up, accelerating hastily as she decides, "Link Bellators, I'm coming, Medit can handle the rest."
Meditat's eyes widen in shock, lifting his head to watch Dana approach the tops of the skyscrapers around them, and as he urges, "Link Bellators, wait Dana-," she boosts so intensely that she erupts a sonic boom that shakes the skies.
As that golden ray begins to dissipate, the head far from his sight, he hears her voice assure confidently, "Link Bellators, you'll be fine, you've handled worse on your own."
Still staring at that fading ray, Meditat frowns with a more somber anxiety before he sheepishly offers, "Link Bellators, I could join, maybe you'll need me-."
"Link Bellators, they need you Medit," Dana shuts down promptly before more gently soothing, "We're here to fight with you, remember. We'll be fine."
Meditat grimaces in a burdensome discomfort, his teeth gritting and his cheeks clenched, his starry eyes staring sharply into the void as he's struck by an instinctual disturbance. He breathes through clenched teeth, but ultimately calms himself with a weighty sigh. He nods before wishing, "Link Bellators, I'll reinforce you once I'm done, stay safe."
His grimace shifts to convert his fear to a furious determination, his star refining to a glare, and he throws his arms forward to project wires from his hands just as he detaches the cables from his hips to replace with another pair.
From the last intersection past, the silver double decker bus's pursuers are accompanied with more black beasts rushing in from the intersecting street. They aren't the smoothest companions though as the two mobs collide, causing monsters to shove each other like two trains crashing, dropping many beasts to the ground as they roar at one another.
While that initial collision does slow down the chase, the monsters are durable enough to rise from the ground just a second after collapsing to it, resuming the pursuit steadily as more Pawns push off each other to gain speed. All of this is watched at a glance from Ekitai, who stands at the front end of the train beside Kokei who's focus remains ahead.
Kokei's focus is on the greater problem of the approaching flood far greater than that of the pursuers, their distance closing even faster as the bus moves towards them, marching towards a horrible fate but unable to stop as it'd allow the pursuers to catch up quicker. Kokei's whole body begins sparking as she clenches her teeth, raising both of her arms towards the flood, understanding well how difficult it'd be to contain them but finding herself with no other option.
Ekitai winces too and raises his gun forward to assist her, watching the flood now just a little over a block away, reaching the next intersection now.
He grits his teeth and turns his gun back towards the other end of the bus where the pursuers begin to accelerate, finding them to be a closer target, and one they couldn't necessarily ignore either. Ekitai clicks his tongue and pivots his whole body backwards to focus on the pursuing horde at least at the moment to ward them off, swiping down his screen and firing several purple bolts off the corners so as to not strike the bus itself.
Only a few of those purple bolts strike monsters directly, but it's no matter as they all erupt into fields of spikes that penetrate any monsters near impact, leaving behind obstacles for the other monsters to need to mantle around which slows their movement. More bolts are fired ahead to prematurely set up additional obstructions, all a means to buy time.
Understanding that against a seemingly infinite mob, no amount of traps would permanently repel the beasts, Ekitai's sharp yellow eyes contemplate the next layer. His meditation is interrupted with a tap to the shoulder, prompting him to face Kokei who points at the flood now reaching the very block their bus drives down, the distance closing fast.
Made aware of the imminent crush, Ekitai huffs and faces back one more time, time converging every beat of his heart. He swipes his screen a couple times and primes another shot, the coils around his barrel flaring hot, the smoke of the previous shots still rising out of the aperture.
He takes aim at the approaching mob, but just before he fires his first shots, he hears booms emitting not from ahead or behind, but muffled from the side: the intersecting street. Some monsters still stuck in the intersection even turn down the street towards the sound, but they can't react before being struck by the many diamond darts fired out in two arrays shot out from the sides of the golden cyborg's torso as she reaches the intersection to make a sharp turn, soaring above the cyan blaze left below her carpet bombing.
Those bombings conclude as Dana approaches the bus, leaving only a small group of monsters currently navigating the spike field, their movements slow to make easy targets for her to aim her transforming hands, each resembling the thrusters of a rocket which then beam down a concentrated cyan laser, to raze through the field and all the Pawns stuck within it.
After having cleared the field, she reverts her hands but her entire body begins to morph, her golden diamond shell liquifying before helixes emerge from all over her body, extending her figure in a manner that enlarges her overall shape while altering it slightly to one more akin to a brute. The skeletal extensions that wrap around her arms to widen them while also extending to elongate them thicken as more helixes fill the holes, similar to the creation of her specters but on herself, growing her body several feet taller.
The helixes at the ends of her arms refine their shape into a palm with extruded sharp fingers before solidifying into diamond clawed hands the size of her head. Her shoulders broaden significantly, and so a golden collar is created around her neck to create a distinct division between her human proportions, almost creating the resemblance that she's encased herself within a large suit of armor despite it all being her own body. Her amber hair, remained untouched, continues to wave against the wind as the golden rings within her green irises flare as she races past the bus, over Ekitai and Kokei who raise their heads in awe.
Upon passing the bus, she swings herself into an upright orientation before diving straight down as each of her arms transform into her diamond conal cannons now significantly larger, her shoulders extrude to equip themselves with gridded missile cannons, and four tentacles with the thickness of her former form's arms protrude from her back each with barrels as heads.
Landing on the ground with enough force to shatter the metal road, dropping her into her own crater, Dana marches forward slightly faster than the bus itself, quick to exit the crater as she raises her arms forward which guides the four tentacles, all aiming at the incoming flood who she now stands above, not much shorter than the bus itself. Without another moment to waste, she opens fire, releasing energy bolts through her conal guns and tentacles while firing darts from her shoulder cannons.
At a small plaza in front of another office building which is curved to face the left, a train sits curled up to match a similar angle to the office's curve. Racing into the plaza from the road is a crowd of civilians, sprinting for the open doors of the train guarded by two black military pods whose side doors are open to reveal the squads of armed soldiers. They watch as the civilians reach the plaza, but they also notice that further down the road approaches another crowd, this one of ferocious Pawns, roaring and growling with anticipation, their clawed hands waving back and forth.
Horrified by the sight of the approaching mob, the soldiers raise their arms to guide their guns, and they open fire with cyan barrages, their faces clearly nervous when facing down on a mass of such alien hostiles.
Pawns at the front of the line are struck first by the barrage which perfectly hits on target, ridding their black bodies with cyan-rimmed holes before they collapse, leaving the mob behind them to receive the continuation of the barrage. The gunfire does successfully exterminate the individual monsters, but with their inhuman speeds and great numbers, they nonetheless move as a collective horde closer to the plaza with every passing second. As bodies hit the floor, they're immediately trampled over by those behind them without care, reaching several feet ahead before the cyan volley eventually stops their advancement, leaving them to fall forward for the next to take their place.
Despite being equipped well for an engagement, the sheer volume of monsters within a confined space, accounting for nearby civilians which requires leashed strength, all results in a struggle to properly hold back the mob which is now not even ten feet from the civilian furthest in the crowd's back, that being an older man who's the last to enter the plaza. The soldiers notice the closing distance, shifting aim but needing to fire weaker bolts, left in an impossible juggle, trying best to buy enough time as the crowd floods into the train.
Able to witness the other civilians reaching safety within the interior of the train, the old man, seeming to be in his seventies or so, tries to push himself as fast as his body will allow him. He forces his gaze forward, away from the mob drawing ever closer to him, ignoring even the Pawn at the front line who leaps into a pounce, its clawed hands extended forward and its head unhinged open to reveal its wide mouth gaping, its teeth radiating.
From their gaping mouth strangely emerges a crystallic spearhead, or rather four heads as the tip collapses into quarters which anchor to the back of the mouth to then yank the body backwards, straight towards the physical wire being reeled in from a gun-shaped device being yanked in the left gloved hand of Meditat floating high in the air, whose black hair waves like his cape as his right hand ignites in an azure flame that constructs a crystal dagger he uses to slash the nape of that beast. Tossing aside both the dagger and hookshot launcher, Meditat equips both hands with double bladed swords connected by a hilt with a disk seeming to function as a guard. The disk has another purpose as they both spin, spinning the blades attached to it like a fan.
With both fan blades, Meditat fires two cables from his hips down to the front of the horde and applies a boost to swiftly dive to the ground, the impact itself staggering the closest monsters. Those monsters don't have the recovery time before the fan blades raze them, the blades practically disintegrating their body as Medita moves in a precise dance, using quick cable zips to carry himself around the mob as his blades annihilate anything within proximity to him. Paired with rapid boosts, Meditat's body is nearly impossible to register whole, instead appearing in flashes along a trail of blue residual energy, his path paving over the Pawns until clearing the monsters that had entered the plaza.
Coming to a stop, Meditat turns towards the Pawns just now reaching the plaza, and he erases both fan blades as their spinning comes to a halt. He closes both hands as they are engulfed in flames which protrude to six crystal knives, three on each hand, each sandwiched by fingers. He then throws those hands forward, throwing the blades into the beasts, aimed for the head. Before they hit their targets, the blades explode with a forward force, scattering fragments like pellets of a shotgun, defeating not only the primary target but those around them. After throwing both sets, his hands close and reconstruct another pair of sets which he throws, and he does the same one more time, each throw casting six blades into the heads of the horde, further pushing back the line.
After the third cast, Meditat pauses to discern that the remaining monsters are further back, nearly far enough for the evacuation to conclude safely. He glances back at the civilians to watch them race into the train, and then turns his gaze back to the Pawns who aren't slowing down, on the road but close to the plaza. Regardless of if there may be a safe distance, caution is exercised as Meditat extends his left hand to construct a silver compound bow, and his right hand grips the string as it blows a flame that creates three arrows while he pulls it back. Upon release of the string, Meditat fires all three arrows forth whose crystal heads simultaneously flare up continuously until they make physical contact in which they release that energy in explosions, all three of them covering the entire back line of monsters, incinerating them in a great frosty blaze.
Meditat's right hand drops to his side as the bow erases in an open flame, and he turns his head to find the elderly man reaching the train. He raises his head to the soldiers in the pods hovering over, one of whom raises his hand with a thumbs up. Although he was successful at protecting the evacuees, his tense expression shows greater concern as if the speed of the clearing was too slow, silently beating himself up over any inefficiencies. Not only were there other groups needing help, but every moment spent is another without his team, having no idea of their situation.
Meditat huffs to subside those worries and turns back, facing the street where he can still see more Pawns charging towards the plaza, though now at a safer distance. It's enough that the soldiers open fire again, now capable of managing this mob especially with civilians safely distant from their target. Cyan hail buries the monsters in front of Meditat, signifying that Meditat's done all he's needed here, and so without wasting time he raises his hand, fires a wire, and reels himself off the ground and back to the air. As the train doors materialize to enclose the evacuation vehicle, Meditat quickly rises among the skyscrapers, swinging through the city to the next location.
Marching forward, Dana leads the bus in her fortified form, a humanoid tank firing more than double her standard output, burning through the front of the flood. It's enough in fact to at least halt the advancement of the flood, holding back the monsters from making any ground despite the utter scale. They don't even manage to crawl a single foot past their fallen horde, freezing their motion towards the bus effectively.
That said, the distance from the horde continues to close due to the fact that the bus itself needs to drive forward, and so while the flood has halted, the danger still progresses. While Dana's firepower is just enough to freeze the mob, it's not enough to drive them back, no matter how hard she pushes herself as she clenches her teeth, her bangs waving back as if she's standing against a blizzard. Every step she takes, she moves closer to the line, and yet she can't stop simply as the bus wouldn't.
That's when, from behind her, Ekitai raises his gun, scrolls up his screen, and rapidly presses the trigger to fire a volley of orange bolts, and upon impact they explode such a way that from their explosions emerge a singularity that begins drawing in nearby monsters which there's plenty of, ripping their bodies like spaghetti as they're fed in. The singularities grow as they're fed more, though they do have a limit before they cease entirely with an explosion, with each singularity managing to clear a patch of monsters. With enough rapid firing, many of these patches are cleared, leaving holes in the horde.
Moments later, the distance between the bus and front lines reduces to just enough for Kokei to finally release her swarms of pink lightning, one from each hand, reaching the front line before spreading like a wildfire. The electric fields grow swiftly, and once they begin slowing down, Kokei comprehends that her effective limit is being reached and so she closes her hands, discharging a bright shock from her body, through the swarm, and into the field which electrocutes the monsters, dropping them in droves.
After releasing the shock, Kokei opens her hands as the electric arcs dissipate into sparks. She takes a moment to breathe before her body starts sparking once again, crowding to her arms to begin building up the next swarms. Next to her, Ekitai swipes on his screen and cocks back the hammer before pulling the trigger again, firing yellow bolts. A few seconds of charge, and Kokei directs the next pair of swarms forward from her arms.
Dana's barrages paired with Ekitai's solutions and Kokei's lightning begins to finally push the flood's line back, as while the bus continues advancing forward, the distance to the flood remains constant. It's a steady effort to hold back a mob that still seems endless, but they are truly being repelled back now, giving the bus the space it needs to continue its advance towards safety. While more monsters flood into the intersections including one approaching closely, their collective density is balanced out by the rate of repulsion the warriors press back with.
From the surface of the black roots whether at its top, the side, or the very bottom, pairs of demonic hands emerge connected to arms that bend to pull the rest of the bodies out, the heads being the first to rise. Their mouths open to shriek as they pull the rest of their shoulders and torsos out until managing their legs, which is when they can throw themselves off the roots, dropping down countless stories in the sky as many of those roots are held up between skyscrapers like bridges from where the demons drop to the ground far below. They pool along the street where they get up to their feet and charge towards a train that's parked in the center of an intersection a block ahead, which many groups of civilians from all four sides run into. Guarding the train from above are two military pods hovering right above each other, each facing down a different street to form a cross, allowing the soldiers inside to fire down all four directions from the intersection to ward off all four mobs trying to converge on the train.
While their tactic is sound, for they are indeed covering every angle, the density of each horde is overwhelming for half of each squad, and so while they do fire continuously they struggle to hold back any of the fronts, resulting in the mobs crawling closer to the intersection.
No matter how quickly they eliminate individual monsters, the limitless horde presses to close in on the intersection at a rate faster than the evacuation could feasibly conclude. There's no signs of a slowdown either as more Pawns emerge from the roots, though one of those rising beasts is caught by a blue wire, and just as it turns its head towards the other end of the wire, that end catches up and slashes its neck clean with the use of a crystallic dagger that exudes a frosty glimmer.
That glimmer becomes an azure blaze as the whole blade deforms into smoke, freeing Meditat's hand which continues to burn as he extends it up before releasing it in a concentrated stream as he moves his arm in a loop, projecting a huge ring in the air above the intersection, just about as wide as it. All along the ring –which is solid on the upper half but venting with grates on the bottom– are many extruded constructs, and upon materialization, they're revealed to be silver cannons all of which are already aiming down at the streets. Upon finalization, all cannons fire rapid barrages of frosty ammunition, levitating in place on the halo among the clouds, forming blockades of pure firepower on all four converging streets. The blockades can't capture all Pawns however as some are too close to civilians to safely bombard, which is when from those grates on the bottom of the ring fire countless hooks on physical wire. Passing Meditat in a race for the ground among the slower snowfall, they're revealed to not simply be guided by the initial propulsion, but the crystal hooks are attached to a silver base that has its own independent propulsion mostly used for guiding turns, honing specifically for the many monsters among the crowd of civilians.
All in the matter of a couple seconds, crystal hooks plunge into the heads of all monsters past the blockade, and all at once those hooks are reeled back up, carrying the beasts into the air. Dragged by gradually brightening hooks, they're raised above the pods, all the way up to where Meditat lingers in the air which is where all those hooks detonate, blowing the heads of all the monsters caught by the ring, forming a second ring of frosty fire around Meditat well before he'd touch the ground.
He aims both hands towards the physical wires those hooks were attached to, and projects his own translucent cables. He curls his arms before slingshotting himself off down the left street, releasing those cables from the physical wires which burn into an open flame along with the ring, as in that time the bombardments have managed to clear a decent depth of the streets, all just as the final civilians enter the train before the doors materialize shut. As the black bodies drop from the sky, the train rises off the ground, guided by the two pods, taken safely away from the approaching hordes pushed further back, though they don't rise straight for the sky but rather move along the road in the direction of the infested zone's edge.
In the far distance towards that edge, a couple trains can be seen rising into the atmosphere, far from the infested zone, seeming to have first made sure to drive far from the colossal tree before ascending into the open sky. They do seem to succeed, safely rising into the clouds without a shot aimed at them.
From inside the bus, all the survivors can peer forth through the window screen to find the black tsunami charging for them from down the road, or rather the streams converging as the bus reaches the next intersection. Yet between the survivors and that tsunami marches the golden cyborg clad in diamond, firing endless waves of cyan energy bolts and diamond rockets at the beasts ahead. Not only that, but from the roof above the survivors rain countless colorful radiating bolts that target the right side of the intersection, their impacts leaving rows of purple spikes, great red explosions, eruptions of green lava that melt anything near, or they turn the very monsters into obstructions whether it is exploding them into sticky goop or electrocuting them with a yellow electricity that spreads to neighboring demons, chaining farther out. Other swarms of electricity rain from the roof down to the left side of the intersection, pink storms that spread over huge portions of the road, freezing all the monsters caught by the field before those storms flare bright, leading to the monsters simultaneously dropping to the ground in a sweeping execution.
Past the protective metal hull of the bus, the three warriors allow themselves out in the dangerous storm, entering another apex as the snow continues to press down on them as they press forwards. Pushing through a single lane is one ordeal, but powering through an intersection involves the challenge of handling multiple angles, especially given that they're currently being targeted by the vast majority of all Pawns in the infested zone. As though an entire city of people have all chosen to chase down one group, they all swarm in from every angle, and to cover each angle the three Bellators couldn't fight with anything other than their maximum output, though they manage well as the pauses between Kokei's swarm summons has shortened while managing to not only maintain the spread of her fields but even increase it to capture larger groups. Dana's large, clawed diamond feet walk over the black corpses now littering the street, their bodies like snow as each step crushes through the surface. It doesn't slow her down significantly though, letting her remain a consistent distance ahead of the bus which she confirms with the turn of her head, able to see over the large collar around her neck.
She turns back ahead with clenched teeth to continue the march as her armored chest extrudes a thruster, and that thruster flares before releasing a concentrated cyan beam that incinerates any monster in front of her, for the beam cleaves through them swiftly. Able to focus exclusively ahead as her teammates control the other fronts, Dana hones the firepower of an army straight before her eyes, clearing a path through the intersection.
Reaching the end of the intersection, Kokei releases a conjoined swarm from both hands clasped together, and by spreading her arms she spreads the field to capture the entire breadth of the street, freezing every remaining monster in her direction. At the same time, Ekitai swipes his gun's screen, cocks back the hammer, and rapidly fires red bolts that explode on impact, covering the entire street until no monsters can be seen, which is when Kokei supercharges her swarm to drop all the bodies on her front. With that, the bus passes the crossing, allowing Kokei and Ekitai to focus forward once more, though the horde's intensity has noticeably felt reduced as with every intersection they pass, the fewer points there are for hordes to amass together, resulting in thinner crowds the further they move.
That said, a reduction to the tsunami's density doesn't discount the fact it still is a tsunami, as in the time they pushed through the intersection they did lose some distance between the bus and horde despite Dana's additional firepower. With heavier breaths, it's clear she's been exerting herself a great deal too, choosing to close the laser thruster on her chest to reserve that energy as she can now rely on her allies who are quick to guide the next pair of swarms into the street onward, accompanied by a rain of dark red bolts which cause struck monsters to explode with bright red debris that explode upon landing on others. While Dana's retracted one weapon, she maintains her others, not having even paused any of her other barrages, not having slowed down her march as she still leads the bus down the street. Again the flood begins to get pushed back, the line stretching back to a safer distance, a task becoming easier in time together.
Alone however, high in the skylines of the silver city in white is Meditat, his black cape waving in the wind as he pulls himself from block to block by wires attached to towers. His cape is nearly consumed in the residual trail of his propulsion, boosting constantly to amp his speed as fast as he safely could in a dense environment, needing to still account for zipping between the black roots that pollute the sky. From those roots rise Pawns who throw themselves off immediately to join the effort in flooding the city, which Meditat's azure eyes glance down to though they raise back up given his current objective requiring focus elsewhere. Detaching from his current wires, he boosts himself straight for a tangle of roots, extending his hands forth to fire another pair of cables to pull himself straight towards as he flips his body into a horizontal dive position to cleanly slip between the cluster of roots, his body nearly being grazed by a few Pawns climbing out, unable to swipe fast enough. They only perhaps became aware of his presence after he's passed the cluster, reorienting himself upright and firing another cable at the tower's corner to make a sharp left turn, swinging himself around to find a small corner plaza at the next intersection, and at that plaza resides another train protected by two military pods.
Once more a group of civilians can be seen crowded by the train, being pursued by hordes of mobs charging at them, though at least they're funneled into fewer angles due to the corner wall composed of two skyscrapers behind the train. The train however is surrounded from above by a cluster of roots from which monsters continuously emerge from, allowing them to drop straight onto the plaza's edge, walling it off from a group of civilians on the other side of the intersection desperately trying to find a path though to no avail regardless of how hastily the squads try to clear the mob, for they just continue to return.
His sights set for those roots, Meditat dashes with a combination of heavy boosts and fast cable zips, all as his entire body ignites into a great flame that not only encases him but expands into a far larger figure though one that maintains the resemblance of a humanoid. That figure grows to the size of about eight stories tall before materializing with the familiar artificial white skin armored by frosty crystal plates building around the body, shaped intricately to be placed such that they don't significantly hinder movement as the plates themselves are inflexible, creating patterns of smaller plates over the abdomen and larger plates over the breasts and thighs. While the armor is built protectively to encase, those plates are oddly covered in sharp jags and edges, almost resembling thorns. Larger spikes are featured on pauldrons sporting three, perhaps breakable against a stronger opponent though unconcerning here. Such spikes are featured on the boots and gauntlets too, plated protectively just the same as the torso, though the toes and fingers have been sharpened with the shins and forearms sporting harsh edges. A spiked crown builds atop the head, and beneath it awakens the two parallelogram eyes, the same as the pencil emblem over the center of the chest between the breast plates.
The construction takes just about a second, finalized perfectly for the titan to begin moving, first reaching both hands out to grab onto some of the roots hanging over the plaza, ripping them apart just before its feet land past, leaving a crater on impact that nearly shakes the block. The titan spins around and dashes back for the plaza, reaching again for the remainder of the roots, grabbing them in place and crushing them, focused promptly on destroying the source. Pawns that manage to crawl out of the roots fast enough pounce onto the titan, though some of them are immediately penetrated by the thorns covering the plating. Those that crawl over the pierced bodies struggle to penetrate the plates themselves, unable to reach the white skin underneath. Like hyperactive ants, they crawl over the body to find any weak point, covering the titan that focuses on ripping apart the remainder of the roots despite its frosty exterior being covered in black as Pawns sacrifice themselves just to move around the body, impaling themselves just for others to crawl over them.
Ultimately the roots are completely torn apart, absolutely destroying the immediate source. In that time though, enough Pawns crowd the titan that even without penetrating its hide, it's unable to see clearly, causing it to stumble from side to side. Its struggling movement does crush the monsters still on the road, and it limits its steps to delicately keep a safe distance from the civilians waiting at the intersection though many of them also try to keep a safe distance from the behemoth. They watch in awe as the titan drops a knee at the intersection, swarmed in black, seemingly overwhelmed as it grabs the road with one hand to steady itself. Yet between the black bodies hoarding the colossus gleams a frosty light, enough to supercharge the crystal plating to an explosive extent, enough to entirely annihilate the hive.
Free from the swarm, the titan remains frozen for a few moments, leaving the civilians and soldiers on both sides stunned. They all watch as the chest of the titan ignites in a blue fire, and falling from that fire is Meditat who spins around mid-fall, aiming both hands to fire cables onto the titan's left shoulder spikes, using them to launch himself back up just as those spikes are engulfed in the spreading flame that consumes the whole titan, leaving it to disperse entirely. The road now clear, the civilians trapped on the other side of the intersection immediately begin running for the plaza where the train stands, and the soldiers return to firing at the other monsters approaching from the roads, present though nowhere as obstructive. Among the civilians making their dash for safety is a man in a gray business suit, his body being pushed along by the crowd, though his attention lies elsewhere as he just raises his astonished starry crimson gaze to the man soaring to the skies. He frowns with a sense of guilt, his eyebrows sharpening in contemplation, the current carrying him towards evacuation yet something within himself resists escape.
Diving towards the sky, Meditat boosts himself with a continuous rocketing force as he raises his hands for quick cable zips, yanking one arm after the other as he assesses, "Orial, that was the last one, correct?"
Orial's voice speaks straight to the man's head to conquer the thunderous winds resisting his inhuman speeds, "Yes sir, that appears to be the final other evacuation zone in need, all others that have yet to deploy are currently on track for a smooth escape. I will notify you if that changes."
After climbing up the skyscrapers he's passing with those repeating zips, Meditat eventually surpasses the peak of the towers around him, sending him flying high into open air. His cape dances in the snowy winds as his boosting continues to drive him up, enough to obtain a decent overwatch of the city's infected zone, his focus first setting to the colossal black tree hanging over many blocks to his left. While the entire area of the city in sight is covered in those dark roots, either sprouted from the ground or hanging between buildings, there's a notably dense clump of them around the base of the tree, nearly conquering those blocks in wholly black. That dense region has well past the area that the shopping mall once stood on, about double the original radius than when last inspected.
Analyzing the region with keen eyes, Meditat observes drearily: "It's already larger than the culled original hot spot, we need to end this soon."
Peering between his waving hair, he turns his head to the right and winces uneasily before commanding, "I need their position, I've left them alone for so long."
"Done," Orial answers a second later, and immediately Meditat spins his body to the right, brings his legs up in a cannonball formation that rotates forward, and kicks off the air to launch himself with a boom of propulsive energy sending himself at a downward tilt. It takes not even a second for him to once more become surrounded by the silver towers, which he quickly uses to his advantage as cables project off his hips to pull himself forward, aiding his hands which do the same to maximize speed. His eyes sharpen, his irises flaring, his heart racing as he does as fast as he can. His movements aren't as graceful as his usual swings but rather frantically efficient, keeping by the tops of the skyscrapers where he's able to use them with wires but minimize their physical obstructions. A few of the towers have thinner peaks which make it easy for him to glide straight by a block's center, attaching a wire to the middle, whereas other towers' tops cover a greater surface, warranting slight upwards boosts to let him fling himself over the roof before dipping back down after it passes. He moves in a direction diagonal to the city's grid, meaning he doesn't move directly along any roads, instead intersecting with city blocks inconsistently: either moves directly through a block or threads between two, in which case he can rapidly zip using hip wires, each cable fire occurring at the speeds of a machine gun one after another. It's an inconvenient path compared to simply moving along the roads, but rather than prioritizing least resistance, speed is all that matters, for his expression tells of heightened anxiety.
Boosting over another road before his hips fire another pair of cables to weave him between towers, Meditat's open hands ignite in preparation like guns primed, and right after passing those towers he pivots down to the right to face the street where his eyes immediately set to the silver bus, contrasting the black roads, and at the head of the bus are pink sparks, colorful dots, and cyan fireworks all directed forth at the horde that run directly below him. Finding the bus head on, he gazes at the golden tank leading the survivors, pushing the mob back a distance of about fifteen feet from the bus consistently.
After the brief gaze, Meditat flips his head to follow the bus's direction, finding that just a couple blocks away stands the familiar plaza identifiable by the ring of spherical bleachers all surrounding the central memorial that the five golden statues stand atop. Also by the plaza's center is a curled train guarded by two military pods, currently firing down at other streets from where other crowds of civilians enter from, racing for the train. The intersection right before the plaza seems to be the end of the flood too, as the monsters converging split off either towards the bus or for the plaza: a visible end.
Turning back to face the bus, the anxiety on Meditat's face washes away, and in its place –oddly enough given the apocalyptic situation– is a boastful smile. He shakes his head as he spreads both arms out before releasing flames from his hands into wide blazes reaching to the road's width while he mutters, "I got it too easy having them."
Those flames separate into countless crystal-tipped darts, an enormous array at his side, and their heads rotate to follow Meditat's hands as he brings them together, clasping them with his pointer and middle finger aiming straight.
"I'm glad I still have heroes," he declares before jerking his wrists up in a motion like firing a fake gun, triggering all of the darts to propel themselves down towards the flood standing in the bus's path, leaving behind countless trails of blue light rays, and among those rays is a thicker comet he makes of himself.
The heads of those rays flare a frosty blue before erupting right above the street, blasting patches of Pawns between the final intersection and the horde's head. The ray that drops closest to the bus is the thickest, though it doesn't strike the ground but rather freeze a few feet above, revealing Meditat who faces his team, his cape waving as his pauldrons glisten from the blue light flashed from the explosions behind him.
Marching right towards those frosty explosions, Dana doesn't slow down though she does raise her head in relief, as does Kokei in astonishment and Ekitai in excitement.
Meditat's eyes set onto Kokei before ordering, "Come with me, we'll thin the intersection, they'll handle remainders." Two cablers then fire from his hips each to opposite towers at the edges of the road, crossing over each other such that they immediately untangle which spins Meditat to face the horde before pulling him towards them, though rather than engaging with them directly he instead zips above them.
Standing on the bus, Kokei glances at Ekitai who meets her gaze, and the two nod to each other as Kokei's body surrounds itself with an electric aura. She then leaps off the bus, propelling herself with sparks to fly after Meditat, also following above the horde, leaving them to be dealt with by Dana and Ekitai who resume firing, managing to hold off the flood given the gradual reductions. As they handle that, Kokei pursues Meditat to the final intersection before the plaza, watching him spin to the right before projecting another two wires from his hips to suspend himself in place to then raise his blazing hands.
Understanding the plan, upon reaching the intersection Kokei spins to the left, holding herself steady in the air before charging her arms with a surge of lightning that she then directs into a single swarm straight for the center of the left street, all as behind her Meditat unleashes his flames which manifest into a pair of hovering turrets at his side that then fire rapid barrages of crystal ammunition. Meanwhile, Kokei's released swarms spread out to nearly cover the width of the road, suspending the monsters caught by the field before they're electrocuted by the followup overcharge. Due to the field not covering the entire road from building to building, several monsters manage to slip through the stream, reaching the intersection and joining with the few monsters that got past Meditat's turrets. The combination however is significantly lighter than the mob just moments ago, and so while that mob charges down the street to pursue the bus, they're far more easily swept away by the barrages of colorful bolts and cyan darts deployed by Ekitai and Dana.
In fact, as the bus passes through another intersection, the two of them are able to handle the additional two fronts as the main one ahead doesn't require their full attention, letting Ekitai swap to firing down the left street and Dana reserving her right arm and four tentacles to the right street. They keep a healthy distance from those converging hordes, all while having the time to pick off the few monsters ahead that survived the cullings of the final intersection.
Suspended in the air by his cables, Meditat throws his arm forward to direct a missile deeper down the road, which releases a cluster of smaller crystal pellets that explode all over the mob, leaving what's left between the struck patches to be cleared by the turrets at his side. He then turns his head to the bus, finding it being safely led to the end of the intersection, reaching the other side where Dana and Ekitai can once again focus just on the road ahead: the final block, for it's the very next intersection that is currently being culled.
One more block to move, Meditat returns his focus to the street, first aiming his hands at the turrets at his side to resupply them with another belt of ammunition before they run out, before then aiming at the road itself to fire the next flame to build his next weapon construct.
Her back to his, Kokei supercharges another horde, dropping their corpses to the ground. An idea flashes in her head, and before the Pawns can retake the ground she just cleared, she charges and guides another swarm into the pile of corpses she's accumulated of the monsters, forming a field around the bodies. She then raises both arms, raising the field which raises the bodies to form a dense wall. Knowing it wouldn't exert as much energy as a supercharge, she extends the field to the edges of the road, able to stretch the wall to fully blockade the horde who first bash into the wall mindlessly. After throwing themselves aimlessly into the barrier, some begin trying to claw through the bodies themselves, tearing them apart to create openings, only for them to accidentally reach their hands into the electric field, thus suspending themselves. She keeps her arms raised to maintain the barrier, her pink hair blowing back, her bright eyes trained on holding off the flow.
Reaching the middle of the block, the bus drives forward at its constant speed, carrying Ekitai on the roof who swipes the screen while pulling the trigger, changing which solution he shoots, from turning clumps of monsters into stone statues that fall forward and crumble to exploding monsters into thin strands of spaghetti that form a pile; moments later they're marched over by Dana's armored feet as her barrages persist without rest from all eight cannons, firing cyan light bolts out of countless ports through the conal guns and ejecting darts as quickly as they can be formed from her cells. It's perhaps overkill, for the two find that there's far less of a mob for them to blow away, half in fact of what they were dealing with seconds ago.
Gritting her teeth, Kokei approaches her limit on holding onto this one field, especially with how many monsters continue to claw at it, trapping themselves, giving her more entities to freeze. She pulls both arms back, and takes a deep breath before throwing her arms forward, projecting the field forward, which in turn throws the wall which folds like a cloth onto the horde. For a moment, the horde becomes trapped by the cloth, even once she relinquishes the field, no longer stringing the monsters together. Temporarily the monsters remain stuck together, tangled in a demonic mass hastily trying to separate, providing Kokei a moment to rest with heavy breaths.
Her head turns in that breath to glance at Meditat across from her, who in that moment cups his hands together and fires an azure fiery ray to the ground, reaching slightly ahead of the front lines beneath the hovering turrets, and upon impact the flame spreads over the street. The initial flame is singular and broad, but it quickly divides into many individual pockets that materialize into small silver disks with a frosty crystal ring embedded between the silver plates. Pawns who manage to slip through the array of turrets step on these disks, and those crystal rings flare bright before the entire disks explode like mines, a field constructed to prevent breaches.
Acknowledging the focus of her teammates on their own ends, and the trust bestowed onto her to cover hers, Kokei's eyes sharpen and she takes one last breath before facing the cluster of monsters now starting to slip through the net, detangling themselves. With haste, Kokei aims her charging arms at the lump and releases another two streams which swiftly expand a field over the entire mass, freezing those squeezing between the horde only for them to be lit up by the supercharge, shrieking their last cries as the whole mass is eliminated at once.
Despite the general volume of Pawns, that one strike has released a significantly louder cry from the sheer mass of monsters struck, drawing Meditat's curiosity as he turns around to face Kokei who, as if sensing an air of judgement, turns to meet his gaze. Kokei forces an awkward smile, embarrassed by the grating shriek. In actuality though, Meditat flashes back a genuine, grateful smile for the successful defense, which instinctively warps Kokei's own smile to reflect that same sincerity. In the heat of the horde, he then returns his focus on his side of the intersection as Kokei focuses on hers, and they both continue to fire down on the two converging mobs to make it down to the final stretch as the bus enters that very intersection. Ekitai assists Kokei on her side, filling the street with singularities and purple spikes as Dana joins Meditat's, joining Meditat's physical frosty blue ammunition with her light-based cyan bolts.
Both pairs manage to utilize their combined strength to not only ward their hordes off but drive them down by an entire block by the time the bus reaches the end of the intersection. By this point, Meditat can now detach his cables while erasing his turrets, and he fires a cable from his hand to the corner of a building to swing around towards the plaza. Kokei spins around and follows after him, leading Dana and the bus to the end of the road.
Ultimately reaching the Space Square, Meditat sets his eyes on the train currently being guarded by the two military pods, both of which hold soldiers firing down on hordes trying to flood the square, though they're holding their own decently as they cover all four sides. Approaching towards the pods, Meditat dives down and throws his arms forward to release a fanning flame past the train, painting an arc that walls the vehicle from the rest of the plaza. That wall grows about fifteen feet tall, the top of which isn't perfectly smooth but rather has protruding merlons. The wall materializes as frosty crystal, and behind those merlons grow more constructs, turrets in an array made of silver. The barrels of those turrets light up to deliver barrages of flaring bullets that reinforce the squad's firepower from the ground while simultaneously providing a final wall of defense, allowing Meditat to spin around and set his eyes on the bus now entering the plaza, led by Dana marching below Kokei.
At last, the bus safely reaches the train, reaching within twenty five feet before finally coming to a stop, leaving space for the last of the other civilians trying to board. Kokei descends to the ground gently, watching Dana's body begin to melt, shedding her armor as entire shoulder plates slip off to the ground before dissolving, reducing her stature. The armaments melt as well into the same diamond and golden sludge that dissolves on the ground, the collar around her neck dripping down her arms exposed to their traditional cybernetic form. Fully emerging from her heavy armor, Dana strolls towards Kokei as her head now better fits her body, her form still larger than the natural human's but reacquiring agility of generally humanoid proportions.
Upon stopping, the bus gently depresses to just barely linger above the street, and that's when the door dematerializes. It takes only a couple seconds before civilians begin flooding out of the door, racing for the train though some of them glance around the square in utter astonishment, clearly bewildered to have survived and reach safety. They run past Kokei and Dana, the latter of whom turns to face the bus and raises her head before extending her hand towards the roof. Her arm extends as a tentacle to reach Ekitai, wrapping around him and carrying him back down to the road at her side all as the final civilians other than those transported on the bus enter the train.
While Dana focuses on lifting Ekitai from the bus, Kokei watches until a civilian stops in front of her and thanks earnestly, "Thank you so much for saving us!"
Kokei naturally faces the person, finding them to be a woman in her young adult years, her eyes watery in overwhelming joy. Her initial expression is of bewilderment, unsure of how to respond to such applause, throwing her arms up and disregarding, "Oh of course, just trying to help."
As Meditat bolts down to the road, landing beside Kokei, the woman grabs Kokei's hands and cups them in her own, slightly tugging Kokei to her complete shock, her attention absorbed by the woman who again thanks, "Thanks, Bellator!"
Before Kokei could react, the woman lets go of her hands and darts off to join the rest of the survivors entering the train, aware of the ongoing battle. Kokei's left speechless with wide eyes as Dana gently places Ekitai on the ground. Standing at her side, Meditat smiles gently towards Kokei, and without words, places his hand on her shoulder. He then faces the bus, watching the final survivors exit, the older man who had identified him along with his son. Meditat lifts his hand and waves as the father passes him, and the entire bus bursts into an azure flame, losing its shape and dispersing into a haze that fades, erasing the vehicle that had completed its journey.
All four of the Bellators then turn towards the train, watching the father enter as the final civilian needing to evacuate. Meditat pivots to better watch as the train's door frames excrete clouds that harden into solid doors, enclosing the vehicle, and moments later it begins to lift as a hum grows from within. Side by side, the four heroes watch the train's head rise to the sky, uncoiling its body to follow the two squad pods that also begin ascending, keeping a distance from the long vehicle while maintaining the same formation until the very back of the train lifts in the air. As the entire train drives upwards like a dragon, the two squad pods smoothly rotate to guide its path, one to the left and another to the right of the train it leads in a path to the sky but rather towards the end of the infested zone, choosing to still maintain a safely low altitude until far enough from the tree.
The three pods drive towards the other end of Space Square, off towards freedom where the silver towers have yet to be covered in black roots, their hums victorious as the final train to be departing the battlefield, the evacuation nearly complete.
It's at that moment that a black streak cuts through the sky and through the right squad pod, immediately resulting in a fiery orange explosion that the Bellators jump back in shock towards before turning around, Meditat first to lock his horrified gaze.
Facing towards the unholy tree that stands over the city, the Bellators stare in horror as a projectile path has been outlined by the line of holes through dozens of skyscrapers between the plaza and the tree. It was a purposeful shot, one that bewilders Dana who asks, "Why now??" Meditat however comes to a horrible realization, prompting him to turn back to the train before launching himself off the ground in its direction, leading the three other Bellators to face him.
Darting to the back of the train, Meditat spins around –his back projecting a cable to attach onto the train– and throws his arms to breathe a massive flame that spreads out as a great wall wide enough to cover the back of the vehicle and remaining military pod, materializing into frosty crystal. Without any levitation technology, the solid wall would naturally drop, but it hardly manages to before shattering upon impact of another black streak aimed straight for the center of the train, managing to absorb the shot.
Immediately, Meditat projects another flame of the same size, constructing another wall but this time with a silver frame to provide it passive levitation to remain in place, though again it wouldn't have dropped significantly before it gets shot by another streak which shatters the wall as if it's a glass window.
Meditat constructs another wall which shatters a second later, and then another, protecting the train against an aggressive bombardment that blasts additional holes through the skyscrapers in the way, for not every shot is fired from the same branch.
Inside the remaining squad pod, the soldiers on the right watch the burning wreckage of their fellow squad's pod drop to the plaza floor in horror, but their attention is pulled towards the cabin upon hearing the announcement from the driver: "COMMAND'S TELLING US TO SHARP ROCKET OUT OF HERE, WE'RE BANKING UPWARDS FOR AN IMMEDIATE EVACUATION! CLOSING DOORS!"
The soldiers on the right and left step back closer to the center to keep their bodies from peeking outside, some of them clutching their rifles with their free hand, incredibly fearful of the escalating situation. Their view of the city is soon obstructed as clouds enclose the pod, closing off both wide doors hard, and moments later the pod sharply begins rising, swiftly taking a perfectly upwards climb which the train soon begins following.
That climb emits a raised hum from the back of the train which alerts Meditat, prompting him to hastily glance back while constructing another wall. His eyes widen in dread upon recognizing the shift in direction, and he instinctively raises his right hand higher up to fire another flame, constructing a second wall higher up before the first one is shattered by a shot, only a second before the second is struck down.
There is validity to the plan to make this immediate evacuation as the focused targeting has thrown the original plans off, and now there's no knowing if the bombardment would stop simply if the train drives far enough. Perhaps for the squad pod alone this isn't a necessarily problematic strategy, for they aren't much longer than they are wide and thus don't expose themselves much greater as a target, however the same can definitely not be said for the train.
Behind Meditat, as the train follows the pod into the sky, more and more train cars are lifted, chained vertically in such a manner that it becomes perhaps the largest possible target. So as Meditat boosts upwards, detaching the cable to follow with the change of direction, the next wall he constructs is far larger than the previous, necessitating greater coverage as in the very next second a black streak strikes the top of the wall towards the squad pod just before another streak strikes the bottom by the train. In the time of that exchange, the train has moved higher, and thus more of its cars have entered the vertical climb, forcing Meditat to output an even larger wall next, this one significantly longer than wide, and just after construction it absorbs a triple burst of streaks aiming at different points of the train, shattering on impact.
On the ground, the three Bellators watch in horror as their leader desperately attempts to protect the evacuation from the volley, though Dana's attention is lowered upon noticing the flooding of Pawns into the plaza due to the absence of the squad's firepower. With no other people left in the area, the flood has nobody to target but them, and so they do, prompting her to grab both Ekitai and Kokei before launching into the air. The grab momentarily breaks both of their attention, noticing the horde as well, leading Ekitai to aim his gun at them as the three rise above the defensive wall, about twenty feet in the air. Kokei's charging arms aim at the horde too, watching the monsters begin to pile up in an effort to form a mountain tall enough to reach them.
Dana's attention however isn't on those monsters but rather the trains being bombarded, protected only by Meditat. She winces worried, tuning out Ekitai's gunshots as he fires acidic green bolts to melt the top of the mountain while Kokei guides electric swarms to shove Pawns off, dropping the piles.
Between them, Dana just stares dreadfully, her amber bangs waving in the wind, her bright green eyes kept wide against it. There's a wavering uncertainty, for she has witnessed the potency of the black streaks, and at the same time she could be far underestimating its strength, for it's simply an alien power beyond herself. It was great luck that Meditat was already equipped with a tool to counteract the streaks, one that he's harnessed over years, and one of arguably alien origin itself as his powers were of supernaturality too. On the other hand, as Dana glances down at her diamond-plated hands, she admits to herself that this new cell variant is one she has only very recently acquired with very little practice time. She's aware that the material is better resilient against Pawns, functioning as decent armor for their claws, but against the bombardment she has no idea if they'd be at all effective. That power was not simply alien, but demonic to the greatest degree, a power that's hard to confidently rival. He was beyond human, in fact sometimes she felt he was beyond Exhuman, beyond superhuman. She may have melded herself with immaculate engineering, but she was still human, and so were the limitations of her devices.
She knows all this.
She also knows her friend needs help.
"Kokei, keep hold of Ekitai and stay a safe distance. I'll be back," Dana commands gently, pulling the attention of both Kokei and Ekitai, both of their expressions befuddled. Without being able to wait another moment, Dana then relinquishes her grip on both of them before thrusting herself up into the sky, leaving Kokei to instinctively charge her whole body to carry herself freely, pink electricity snapping off her legs. She grabs Ekitai's wrist with one hand, able to support his weight using her lightning, and after the two glance at one another, she begins drifting off to the side to avoid the pile of Pawns amassing beneath them as Ekitai resumes firing at them from above.
High in the air, the backmost train car is lifted into the vertical climb, fully straightening the train upright. Hovering behind the central car, Meditat rises steadily to match its velocity –attached to the train by a cable from his back– as he keeps both hands extended forth, though his left hand is raised up and his right hand is lowered down. Both hands release another flame, spreading to form a wall more efficiently, creating two walls that join in the middle, as now this wall is taller than the length of the train to also account for the leading pod. This colossal wall materializes out of frosty crystal with a silver frame that raises the wall to match the train, lasting smoothly for just a second before several black streaks strike it all along the surface, shattering it at different points until fully breaking.
Meditat grits his teeth as his flaming hands prepare the next wall, but that's when he hears a rocket roar below him, prompting a brief glance to find Dana rising up to the train, slowing down to settle around two thirds along the vehicle before extending her arms forward as they extend as diamond tentacles whose flat head expands out to form a huge shield, one that's accompanied by several more shields as tentacles emerging from her back shoot off above and below to grow slightly smaller guards. The central shield is then struck by a black streak aimed straight at Dana, causing the shield to shatter instantly.
However, the shield miraculously absorbs the streak's impact, leaving Dana untouched as only the ends of her tentacles have been decimated. She severs those ends before letting them regenerate enough to then reconstruct the shield, raising her head towards Meditat with an assuring smile.
Meditat, facing back down at her with initial terror at that first shot, can't help but match that smile with confidence, relieved as those diamond shields cover half of the train. He faces forward and ascends slightly faster, raising his right hand straight forward before releasing his next flames to construct the next wall, this one building faster than before given the reduction of necessary surface area. Materializing out of frosty crystal with the silver frame, the wall takes another three shots back to back, once again shattering, forcing him to have to reconstruct it. There is however a newfound ease, only needing to deal with half of the area, a task that feels lighter than even when he was covering less of that.
All moving at the exact same speed, the squad pod leads the train in a straight climb as Meditat and Dana ascend upright, both now equi-distant from the train's center as Meditat has raised himself higher, reattached by a cable. The bottom half of the train is protected by several overlapping huge shields made of a diamond-like material, and the top half is protected by a tall frosty crystal wall levitating by a frame.
Both of these barriers shatter easily against the bombardment of black streaks that raze through silver towers in its way, riddling holes through skyscrapers as if bullet holes through a wall, each streak aimed for the train or squad pod and each breaking through a shield or portion of the wall. The barriers however are rebuilt as fast as they're shot down, as Meditat's hands are constantly firing puffs of flames like rapid breaths and Dana's constantly generating her shields to be in a continuous state of repair. They climb together, the bottom of the crystal wall's frame overlapping with the top of the highest diamond shield, absorbing every single shot despite the streaks firing at the rate of a machine gun, yet with the strength of a cannon.
It doesn't take long until the leading squad pod climbs above the peaks of the silver skyscrapers surrounding the Space Square plaza, and soon behind it follows the train. No longer behind any towers, there's now a fully open space between the train and the black tree lingering over the city. As Meditat reaches past the tower's tops, he too catches a glimpse of that tree, one larger than the native structures, one that doesn't reside amongst nature but aims to dominate it, an invasive monster.
That glimpse has to be covered yet again by another crystal wall that protects the squad pod and top half of the train, but when it's destroyed again, Meditat gets another glimpse before replacing the wall. A wall is constructed, it's destroyed in a fraction of a second, and another wall is constructed a fraction of a second after that, leaving just slivers of glimpses at that tree. In fact, the speed of the streaks feels to be growing quicker now, as though the lack of obstruction between the tree and train has allowed it to unleash its bombardment with greater freedom, greater oppression.
Rising above the top of the tower next, Dana's shields keep shattering before being repaired, then shattering again. She raises her head with worry upon noticing the heightened rate, once again pressuring Meditat, and she then focuses ahead as she prepares for that same pressure herself. As expected, it's only moments upon exposing herself above the city's pillars that she's met with a faster barrage of streaks, forcing her to not only repair her shields quicker but supply herself with several more, growing more tentacles from her back as others branch off of pre-existing tentacles, forming more shields some of which are smaller. The size of the individual shields aren't the focus however, but rather the layers she can endure, needing to stack shields in order to regenerate them fast enough as a single layer is no longer viable.
The front shields are shattered first along with a few deeper in, and those front ones regenerate first while the layers behind repair, covering for each other and maintaining a certain amount of layers between Dana and the open air.
Above her, Meditat cannot so easily layer his walls as he's already being pushed to his mental speed limits of construction, unable to grow additional walls or thicken it any more without risking the train taking a hit. While he's able to construct faster than Dana, he can't enjoy the same multitasking capabilities Dana has, as she's not consciously repairing her shields in the same way that a human doesn't need to concentrate to clot a wound. Her body simply follows the instructions of rebuilding the shields constantly, whereas Meditat has to consciously build every single wall. Even though he has learned to consolidate his thoughts –especially the crystals which come naturally to himself more than anything else–, a single thought has to be registered for every construction at the very least. So he can't afford to move his head, dart his eyes, relax his arms, or even think about any of these luxuries, for he has to be absolutely concentrated.
Meditat cannot even let himself acknowledge the progress of the climb, for he's ascended high enough that he's now reaching the base of the snowing clouds, passing far above the black tree, though it remains present in his periphery. The city's skyscrapers appear short from this height, like they could be any height. From this altitude, those silver towers blend in with the whitened roads, the entire city appears like one vast white plain, a snowy field where the towers are the grass. The view of the city is beautiful from this height, the curved horizon visible from the far ends, all of it white, and yet this view cannot be enjoyed, for within that white field is a black flower, and from that flower spread a dark mass. That flower continues its onslaught of streaks, shattering those frosty walls as well as the diamond shields below.
Those shields continue to replace each other, all of them grown from tentacles either from Dana's arms or back. She briefly glances down to gauge the distance from the ground, shocked by just how high they've reached, for she too has lost track of the duration of this stand. She raises her head to glance at Meditat, noticing that the clouds are not far above them as he's nearing the fluffy film, and a relieved smile comes to her upon that realization. She again faces forward, continuing to hold her half, brightly anticipating the end of this evacuation as they near safety. That said, even though her mind has the freedom to wander unlike Meditat, her body toils itself far more given that her shielding is a physical effort exerting her cell regrowth. While those cells are artificial, robotic in nature, they are intimately connected to the rest of her body to an indistinguishable extent where they feel just the same, and so the physical pain scorches her to not only endure the constant blasts but rebuild her shields to anticipate the next.
Yet the anticipation towards approaching success, while mental, serves to dampen or at least partially absolve that physical strain, for she can't help but hold a smile through the agony, the golden rings in her green irises glistening wide as her bangs flow along the roaring winds.
Above her, Meditat clenches his teeth while rapidly replacing his crystal walls, his face not nearly as tense as earlier as he's tapped into a rhythm that's allowed him to more naturally handle the barrage, optimizing his construction to minimize the mental strain. Feeling a heightened coldness on his head, he's able to even afford a brief upward glance to notice that the thick clouds sit right above him, dense enough that he's hardly able to examine any layers other than the bottommost, dense enough to hide any object that'd enter. After setting his gaze back at the bombardment, he manages to exclaim: "Dana…stop where you are…they can take it..from here!"
Suspending her smooth ascension, Dana maintains a steady hover while holding off the bombardments with her regenerating shields, nodding her head and shouting back: "Got it," verbally affirmed that they're at the end. She remains in place, though the train behind her continues to rise, now moving at a discernible pace relative to herself, its hum mighty to affirm its own presence as untouched thanks to their defense. Her support doesn't wane even in these final moments, holding up every shield held by every tentacle, covering the bottom half of the cars as they pass her up.
As those cars exit the protection of her shields, they immediately rise behind the frosty walls to continue upwards behind Meditat, whose hands continue rapidly spitting fire to replace the walls as they're shattered beyond reliability, as each wall manages to absorb a few strikes before too much of its area has been shattered.
The head of the train behind him drifts into the white cloud ceiling, vanishing entirely, and following are the rest of the cars steadily escaping from sight. Like a dense smoke screen, the clouds function to cloak the train, and notably none of the black streaks fire into the clouds themselves, seeming to confirm that the sky's fog may be successfully impairing the devil's tree's sight. Even then, Meditat's forehead scrunches and his eyes sharpen in reluctance, realizing that such assumptions can't be made lightly after recently witnessing a change in behavior, for this bombardment shouldn't have begun at all according to its former actions. A misinterpretation of the enemy's limitations could very easily and very quickly result in the casualties of all the civilians they had painstakingly escorted along with many others, and so in the final moments of the evacuation mission, there was no place for half measures.
If anything, with this fight for attrition reaching its conclusion, now Meditat could afford an expensive action to ensure the safety of the evacuees. And so after constructing one more wall while the tailmost train car passes him, Meditat charges his hands –which he brings together– with notably greater flames, flames that dance wildly like his hairs, a ball in his palm growing as his fingers articulate to flex as he pulls both arms back.
Just as that wall in front of him absorbs its third shot, shattering it beyond usability, Meditat thrusts his arms forth with clawed hands that propel the charged blazes forth further out than his former walls, almost forty feet forth until it expands, which it does at a sharper tilt normal to its direction of the tree. Upon growth, not only does the blaze stretch far wider than his former walls to the width of a city block, but its height transcends far past the former constructs, nearly that of a tower itself, vanishing into the clouds, effectively forming a barrier not only between the tree and the train's current position, but future positions in anticipation. Upon materialization, the wall does indeed feature a silver frame holding the construct in the air, but within that frame is a silver grid of smaller frames that divide the wall into smaller sections, each of which encases a crystal barrier, thereby ensuring structural stability in the overall wall even if portions are destroyed. The wall covers so much area that it'd undoubtedly cover the train, in fact it provides generous room to protect the train even if it turns, ultimately supplying surplus shielding far beyond necessary, all for maximum assurance for the evacuation's success.
It'd undoubtedly protect the train until it could reach safety, as by the time the entire wall could be destroyed, the train will be far from its sights.
However, there'd still be someone left behind the wall, someone who had just expended additional energy to construct that wall, and would thus struggle to rebuild another so suddenly.
Dana's eyes widen in dread upon this realization, and without a second thought, she launches herself into the air as all the tentacles protruding from her back simply snap off as do her arm extensions, instantly freeing her from the mass of shields she had built, allowing her to rocket in the air as the stubs in her arms regenerate proper hands.
Just after the great sky wall's construction, streaks of the black void begin bombarding the many panes, driving up the wall, each streak shattering parts of different panes but the remainder stay hovering.
Meditat glances up with desperate eyes, dreading the sound of an explosion or screams, yet he hears none, leaving him with a gentle smile at the confirmation of the evacuation's success.
His attention is brought back straight ahead however upon hearing the sound of shattering right in front of him, and the sight he returns to is that of the panes directly ahead of him utterly shattered into countless shards, blown chaotically into the high winds, and through those shards he can catch a glimpse of the black tree staring at him from below, its presence so great despite the height he hovers far above. Instinctively, Meditat raises his hand forward to construct another wall, but his hands don't ignite instantly, which he immediately recognizes with a dreadful horror. Wide eyed, he only realizes now his failure to regard his own safety, for the scale of his previous creation has stuttered his construction speeds slightly for just a brief moment, but any measurable delay is a fatal one.
Standing midair in front of the shattering frosty crystals, the man just stares straight at the tree, his body still except for his waving hair and cape, surrendered to what he's believed to be an absolute outcome. Yet from below him rockets a golden comet, one that collides straight into him, and from its head extends a golden hand that grabs his own extended hand before throwing it downwards, flipping the man into a fall. The comet's head reveals itself as the golden cyborg, her body almost fully metallic except for her neck and head which remain human, though the complexion of her skin is similar to the gold of her armor. The gradient extends even to her amber hair which waves wildly, majestically above her gentle green eyes. Those eyes, augmented with golden rings, stare straight into the man's eyes, flaring with blue stars, which widen just slightly more. His hand remains extended towards hers, though now he's below her, as if reaching out to her like an angelic being, and her hand extends towards him like a response.
Behind their bodies, blue and gold, behind the wall of crystallic shards reflecting their emissions of the same colors, within the white snowy sky flashes black dots: tips.
His mind is too taxed to conjure a construct, but the man's body already begins producing tears below the azure eyes, his mouth gaping open yet his thoughts are scattered such that no words would be able to exit even from his mind alone. He just stares, not in dread or horror, but anguish preemptive.
Tears don't grow under his friend's gentle green eyes though, but the golden lenses within them thin out and disperse, erasing the only nonhuman remnants of her face, allowing her to gaze down at her friend with her natural eyes alone, and for him to gaze up at her as she is alone. Her mouth is open too, but not aghast, instead with a delicate, beautiful smile. In this brief moment, words don't have the time to reach her mouth, but she doesn't need it to speak, for she instead relays her final message through the most intimate connection that being the mind itself:
"I'm coming back for you."
In the very instant after the transmission to him and him alone, the sky behind her blackens fully, consuming not only the shards, but her.
As from the man's perspective, his dear friend who had embarked on this journey on her own volition against all concerns, not to stop him from completing his impossible goal but assist him in achieving it, vanishes absolutely in a single black streak, for not one glint of gold is left after the streak's dispersion.
Yet he has fallen just enough to evade the shot, the tops of his fingers being annihilated but his body safe as once again, she had saved him.