EMBRACED [Event]

All that Carl could currently tell was that he had had success of a sort. Coupled with a strange energy beam from out of nowhere, Bardtholomew had stopped one girl from being attacked. Except she then snapped her own neck. And then got up and started moving again, but not in the same manner as the infected. For a brief moment, Carl wondered if he was experiencing how others felt when he just picked himself up off the ground after sustaining a fatal injury. An enemy who had no reason to fear death could potentially be a problem, since she certainly wasn't a Bulwark. He quickly turned his mind away from the subject, though, and focused on his present company and the infected.

"A parachute would've made for a slower descent," he said to the man. "Our only chance to save anyone was to get to them before it was too late, but it seems that people think I've already missed that window of opportunity. Still, like the one guy just said. It's worth a shot, if only to learn how to better handle similar situations in the future. As for my plan, I've never had the opportunity to face against a dragon that used the innocent as bullet shields. My best guess is that, if we handle the infected by either disposing of them or otherwise making them unable to be used as pawns, the dragon will be forced to make its presence known to us."

Just then, a hat, being carried along by the wind, came fluttering down from the sky. Carl caught it midair and, recognizing it as the Plague Doctor's, placed it on his head over his hood. He could return it later, when they next meet, but until then suddenly he had a stylish new hat.

"Anyway, Bardtholomew," Carl said absentmindedly, "do the same as before. At least the immobile ones can't do much without orders."


Interference (Obfuscation) against Immobile Thralls

Pride had heard some sort of attempt at an recommendation or order from a nearby portal in the air but he couldn't give it even enough attention to be annoyed at as he was currently thrown to the ground. He was great but he couldn't help the small flakes of doubt in his mind as he felt an armored claw slash his chest, not cutting but for sure fracturing or breaking a rib or two. He could di- his almost modest and depressing thoughts were quickly interrupted by a loud yell, insult, and...reassurance? He sat up from his spot on the floor and saw her, shining as brightly as a star with flames fiercer than the sun...Of course stupid stupid, how could he even believe for one second that these insects could cause him pain, let alone injure him. With a chuckle, he didn't even notice the broken rib shift and repair itself as he refused to acknowledge the enemies being able to overwhelm HIM. Patting his shirt clean of spores and dust, he allowed her a confident smile.

"Like I would ever dream of disappointing my lo-flame...I'm better than perfect after all."

After the reassurance, and not a near obvious confession, he felt fury similiar to hers flow through his own veins. They were attempting to attack the both of them, and had already caused her worry...THEY WOULD FACE FATES WORSE THAN DEATH ITSELF!!!

"I SHALL SHOW YOU THE FURY OF ROYALTY!!!"

Power built up in Pride's legs before he took off with another loud boom, completely bypassing the armored ones with his speed and instead going for the gaunt ones on the buildings, like a thing such as height or gravity could stop his power. With a second burst of force flowing into his legs, he began scaling the building's glass side as if it were horizontal instead of vertical and threw an uppercut into the first thrall he saw, before using it's flung body as a spring board to launch into the other one. Everything was meaningless to the sin at that moment except for his fury and Wrath.

Action: Maneuever Speed against Gaunt Thralls

Though she was able to stop the bloated thralls from releasing more of those spores into the air, they all still managed to let out a huge cloud of spore into the air. It doesn’t seem like those bloated things aren’t effective by her attempt of suffocation. As the matter of fact, they don’t show any sign that they’re breathing at all. As the spores reached the rooftop, Poppet could see an erupt of aurora up in the sky, probably from the current Pandaemonium leader, Aurora.

“I-I hope she’s alright,” she said to herself; she doesn’t know what those spores will do to a super, but she can make a guess what they’re suppose to do from how these unpowered people turned into the thralls.

“I’m sure she’s fine; she can turn thing into particle anyway.” Jessica told her, “right now we need to worry about ourselves.”

Poppet turned and see more of those bloated thralls emerged out among the crowd, and they all seems to be in the process of letting out more of those spores.

“W-We better contain them quickly.”

Poppet then rapidly moved her hands in a weaving pattern in order to create more and more of those webs around the street. The webs soon started to stack up, layer after layer, in order to conceal them into a huge cocoon. Each strings weave on top of each other, making an air-tight webbing that would be enough to filter out the spore from the air coming out of those bloated thing.

Action: Maneuver (Field) against Bloated Thralls

As calculated, HaLOS managed to reduce more of those climber thralls on the building walls with its rapid strike. It is unfortunate some of them managed to let out their spitting attack against some of the supers down below. The dragon truly is quite an intelligent creature if it were able to command these thralls, utilizing each of their specific ability, to gain a better advantage at the combat.

However, that doesn’t mean it’ll be gaining any advantage over HaLOS. Even if it might have face some lost during its activation time, HaLOS always learned, adapted and upgrade to become better. After all, it was able to map out what these climber thralls’ attack pattern in order to deal with them, so that mean their attack are quite predictable. Of course since it hasn’t seen the dragon showing itself just yet, HaLOS need to prepare in case a sudden ambush might happen like before.

For now, since its previous plan work so well before, there’s no point of switching its strategy until something unexpected happen. Once again, HaLOS scanned the area in order to locate all those climbers on the building in order to once again map out the pattern to attack them. This time, however, HaLOS make sure its rocket booster is cranked up all the way that would allow it to fly at Mach 5. Perhaps with a faster movement speed, it can maneuver around the climbers and strike them before they jumped away to dodge its sword strike.

Action: Maneuver (Speed) against Gaunt Thralls

Was it weird that someone appearing out of nowhere beside him no longer registered as the slightest bit strange? Geata’s suddenly obtained sword (very suddenly - Blue Jay had seen the guy yesterday still as unarmed as ever), and the thought that he might be starting a trend was far more startling. At least this was a safeguard, should his name fall back into obscurity with this recent faction change, that it probably wouldn’t default back to ‘that guy with the sword’, since there was now more than one fellows with bladed weapons running about and slaying dragons.

Under other circumstances, Blue Jay would’ve been included to turn down Geata’s challenge, or humor it only as far as was convenient while he kept up the search for the dragon. But then he brought up Gilgamesh.

Blue Jay’s face flattened. One dead already, and Aurora, one of the strongest supers in the city, was yelling over the portalcoms. Attacking the half-formed thralls still felt… wrong. With the others that’d been twisted into inhuman creatures, at least, it was easy to ignore that they once were and might still be human. He didn’t know how long he could afford to play nice while the dragon hid wherever the hell it’d bunkered down - but he did know who would win this bet.

In response to Geata’s portals, Blue Jay offhandedly flicked his sword. A wave of force blasted out, catching any thrall down its long path as it shot down the street and ripped into the large building at the far end.

“Six.” The challenge was on.

Blue Jay teleported up and onto the rooftop perpendicular to his last attack, landing directly before one of the thin thralls. A part of speed from the displacement shifted into his arms, allowing for several strikes to the creature’s limbs in a matter of a second before he was off again, in search of his next target and point.

Action: Maneuver(Speed) against the Gaunt Thralls

The detonation of the tanker thrall signaled the first turning point of the battle. In that moment, the dragon's heavy hitters were gone. And as the ground shook and the smoke of the explosion filled the air, the supers who had found the holes in the dragon's tactics led the charge.

The gaunt thralls were forced to leave their sniping positions on the sides of the skyscrapers as the more mobile supers sped up to meet them. At first, the gaunt thralls tried to make an orderly retreat, looking to find a secondary spot where they could mount a proper defense. But as Blue Jay, HaLOS, Lobisomem, Pride, and Zenith smashed through thrall after thrall, the remainder could only scatter in an all-out retreat. Down below, Limen and Geata picked several more out of the air while Gluttony managed to spot and crush a few that tried to escape at street level.

And with the gaunt thralls cleared away, the other supers were free to focus their attention entirely on the enemies before them. The incomplete thralls' minds still battled with the dragon's influence, and that made them easy for the likes of Anonymous, Hooded Siren, Nemesis, Phenomenon, and Solomon to influence. With Dullahan, Lust, Rainfall, Seraphim, Toko, and Tricky putting pressure on them, they collapsed easily enough, often trampling each other or falling off buildings before they could even be directly attacked.

This left the bloated thralls completely exposed. Balance, Envy, Plague Doctor, Wrath, and The Good Shepherd's team soon joined Big Martin on the attack, hitting the spore-spewers with wide-ranging attack power. And although the bloated thralls tried to spread out and scatter in order to escape, Arcanum and Sanduleak were able to slow down the stragglers and stop their counterattacks from forming an effective distraction. The bloated thralls were wiped out to the last, and Unhallow's power quickly dissolved the spores that were left behind.

However, as Azoth attempted to join in on the rout, the strength suddenly left her limbs. Her thoughts became hazy, her speech became difficult. The mental image of the spores' chemical structure (carbon- and nitrogen-based like the last dragon, but this time arranged into long chains that should only have been possible for hydrocarbons) became indistinct and uncertain. The feeling only got worse over time.

The supers had underestimated the dragon's power. Its fundamental nature was that of spreading influence. Spores which settled into matter, living or otherwise, would turn that matter into a suitable structure for spreading more spores. But the dragon's power wasn't limited to matter - it could spread through data as well. If formulas representing the dragon's structure were written on paper, the dragon's power would cause the ink to spread across the page and eventually to whatever surface it was sitting on.

Copied into a brain, the formulas would have the same effect. By absorbing the spores' information into her brain, Azoth might as well have injected the dragon's cells directly into her neural tissue.

Fortunately, the tide of the battle had already turned. The armored thralls had lost all their support, forcing them to fall back inside the buildings in small units of three and four. With Bloodbath and Carl hindering and dismantling the walls of immobile thralls, the other supers were able to move freely and finish off all the enemies that remained in the open. Giza's roots combined with Fleet's wind attacks and Ophiuchus's snakes' venom wiped out the isolated thralls, while Aurora's power revealed more that had been hiding underground and Hivemind's bugs made sure they couldn't get away again. The minor injuries sustained in the process were trivial for Sin Eater to deal with.

The battlefield was quiet for a few moments. But as the last few thralls trapped out in the open were struck down, the dragon made its next move. A rumbling began to sound throughout the city.

Mutating and controlling living creatures had never been the dragon's primary ability. The thralls weren't worth much to it, and so it had spent them in a sacrificial gambit to reveal what its foes were capable of. And while the dragon might have preferred for them to have lasted a bit longer, their purpose had still been completed. It was time for the battle to begin in earnest.

Those at street level might not see it at first, but those above were able to discern the source of the rumbling immediately. Narrow spikes, each ten or more feet long, were erupting from the ground in a dense spiral pattern, spreading outward from a central point. They emerged with incredible force, impaling any thralls lying on the ground and threatening to do the same to any supers who didn't head immediately for the rooftops.

The spikes continued erupting until all of downtown's street level was a thorny deathtrap. The tips were razor-sharp and cut through flesh and stone with equal ease. But with all the unpowered, unthralled civilians having left the battlefield by this point, the area returned to deathly silence. The dragon was waiting for the supers' next move.