Starring:
Rinako, Ruri, Kara, Nai, Shemri
Date: February 5, 2011
Summary:
Another tidal wave has rocked Mother Island and brought with it the largest seaborne aberrations yet!
"Paradise Lost, Part V: Extermination"
Destroyed Village, Mother Island, Land of the Sea
"Never again, Imouto-chan. I promise." Rinako allows a grateful, if small, smile to slip through her guard as she places a hand on her sibling's shoulder. The rest of the crowd merely seems to stare frozen at the other young woman, deathly silence hanging bleakly in the air in the aftermath of the Sunagakure kunoichi's rousing speech.
Silence…
Silence…
"AYE! If ye think it'll stop these damned storms and monsters from eatin' these folk, ye'll have all the help this ol' carcass can give ya!" From out of a nearby doorway the grizzled old doctor steps forward, folding his arms over his burly chest as he withers the crowd with a disparaging glare. "Aye, I'll fight fer ya families, even ye won't."
Slowly, a few of the men begin to let go of their women or children and stand up, looking unsure towards each other. A few more stand up, and then most of the rest. Soon almost every able-bodied man, teenager, and even women are on their feet, looking steely-eyed and ready to face down the skull-faced visage of Death himself. "Just tell us what you need us to do!"
"I'm not sure it can think itself into new mouths. At least, I hope not. We should be prepared for anything, but if it's here, living in this reality, it has to at least exist according to a specific set of rules, right? It can't just be invincible! Right?" Rinako looks towards their insectoid companion for reassurance.
But the beetle only lifts two of its legs, the bug equivalent of a shrug. "I can not say other than that if it lives, it can die. The only one of us who knows anything of this beast is my father. He will not be able to come here until the storms abate. Let us hope it is soon." He turns slightly to encompass Nai in his gaze. "We thank you for your brave assistance. Many of us may not make it, but those that do will carry our memories forever!"
"Okay, drama queen," Rinako interrupts, walking over to lay a hand on the beetle's head and leaning heavily upon it to force his head down. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We still need to figure out-"
"Hey… HEY! You hear that?" A man dares approach one of the windows. "Is the rain letting up?"
Indeed that seemed to be the case. The wind has almost ceased its furious howling, muting itself to a dull whisper outside, though still strong enough to cause one to squint one's eyes. The rain still fell, but no longer in horizontal slats which stung on contact. A glance outside would reveal that the devastation was large, but that the storm had abated… for now. An eerie silence seems to follow, before a few half-hearted cheers begin to break out, people beginning to regain their feet and a few of them tentatively heading towards the door.
And then the water comes.
It smashes through parts of the roof in a torrential flood, pouring through the windows as if the entire building had been mysteriously submerged. A section of the wall gives way down the hall, breaking stone and wood followed by screams as several people are slammed by the sudden influx of seawater. Children are swept from their feet, parents grabbing towards them as the water invades, and then recedes towards the door, sucking those too weak or injured to fight against the current outside in a torrentially strong undertow. Rinako keeps her feet by virtue of clinging her chakra to the bottom of her feet and the floor, one strong arm reaching out to grip Ruri, another grabbing for a section of wall for added support. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?"
No sooner does this cry ring out from the elder Rurohashi sibling than the corner of the building collapses, screams sounding as rubble falls on a few people, some injured. The waters are rapidly receding, but judging from the scaly-skinned, overly-large tail that withdraws from the collapsed portion of the building, it had brought some things with it that it had neglected to take away. Sounds come from outside, horrified screams, and then the feral roaring of something very large, the thrashing of huge bodies.
Ruri hangs onto Rinako's arm as she is grabbed, also sticking to the floor, though only with one foot. She was caught off-guard, believe it or not. She didn't expect a tidal wave this far away from the beach! When the water finishes washing over her, she just coughs a bit and wipes her hair out of her eyes. Searching around for whomever may be left, Ruri decides from the thrashing tail and such that the first order of business is… Helping the survivors.
"Rinako, do what you can against those creatures! Kara, help her! Shemri, Nai, we're going to look for anyone who was washed away and get them to safety! If we see any other people in trouble, we help them however necessary! MOVE!" she then tries to slip-slide her way out of the partially-destroyed building and starts searching for anyone who needs help. She's still tired, but the adrenaline rush is making her forget about it for now. She IS a bit surprised at how weak her muscles feel though.
Oh crunchberries. And /just/ when Shiikaa was starting to feel dry again! ^>.<^; Shemri reaches out in all directions with arms and sashes, grabbing onto anything she can. One hand is lucky enough to grip a sturdy timber in the wall; the other limbs chance to grab, or be grabbed by, villagers being swept away in the backwash. x.x Shemri grunts painfully (not that it's heard amidst the water), but clings determinedly until the enormous tug on her body recedes. Amazing how much pain you can force on your own fingers. Hearing Ruri's orders, Shemri extracts herself from the frightened villagers — cold, but there are probably others who need help more now — and moves outside. "Hoi! Everyone head for high ground!" Moving against the flow, Shemri searches for those not lucky enough to still be on their feet.
Kara is washed away somewhat, but once the wave dies down, she comes clambering right back, hoping that everyone is still alive and well. When she finds everyone more or less in the same place, she breathes out a sigh of relief. "Okay, Ruri-chan! Let's go! I don't know how mobile those things are on land, but they can apparently do plenty of damage!" She moves to follow Rinako as she gets out her water-logged scrolls and releases her three Puppets from storage within those scrolls. She can't hold back against terrors like this! Not with so many lives on the line!
Nai's response to a tidal wave? He turns his body — or at least his outer flesh — into stone. He also hunkers down and grabs hold of anything he can, relying on density and the Earth Chakra Nature to defeat the powerful wave of water. When all has more or less settled, Nai stands up and reverts his body to flesh gradually… He can not be certain another wave is not on the way.
Orders are given out, and Nai wastes no time in responding or hesitating. Not everyone is as durable as he is, and the vast majority need to breathe. Breathing in the water is hard. The recordskeeper goes dashing out into the devastated village and starts looking for anyone in trouble. He hopes no one is bleeding. He prays to whatever gods or demons may be listening that no one is bleeding.
There are plenty of ways to get out of the building, as almost every window has been shattered. Plus, as the only doctor's office in town, it was not exactly designed for defense, so there are several entries. To top it all off, several new holes are now in the structure, most of which can also be used to egress. But going outside might do little to alleviate the concerns of those who are rushing to the defense of others.
The storm has not let up, the islands are now merely in the eye of it. Dark clouds still swirl overhead, though are lesser in the epicenter of the typhoon, a relative circle of calm several miles wide while outside of it the seas rage with deadly, unstoppable force, proving that no matter how destructive one could get, the power of nature would always stand colossaly supreme. But more immediate than the weather are the creatures. Several more of the ones that had been met by the shinobi team out on the water have arrived, elongated crocodilian monsters, some up to thirty feet long. They thrash this way and that, snapping and devouring anything living, and a few things that are not, that come near their jaws. There seem to be four, maybe five, of them strewn throughout the town, though an exact number is hard to come by in the confusion and the chaos.
Those who can struggle to their feet and do their best to help their loved ones out, trying to avoid the monsters and their many-snapping teeth. While they use their fins to flounder about, they aren't legs, and thus those who aren't injured are able to outrun them. Many of them take Shemri's advice and begin running, herding their children to the relative safety of the mountain path, away from the ocean that has turned against them. A few brave others take up harpoons and begin hurling them at the creatures, seeking to gain their attention long enough for others to get away. It works, in that the beasts are distracted long enough to eat them rather than their friends and loved ones.
Fortunately for Nai, the rain and tidal waters wash away most traces of blood from the injured before it has a chance to so much as stain, though he may have other way so sensing the life fluids of others. Injured are in no short supply, people hurt by the waves, the sudden influx of creatures, and the destruction they are causing to the few still-standing structures in the village. Whether they are intelligent or not, they have identified the intact buildings as sources of food.
Lightning cracks through the sky, followed by the sonic boom of thunder, outlining a vast form in the murkiness, a long, slender neck rising above the village. Like Scylla upon its rock, a massive head snaps down and scoops up the village's doctor, who had just finished heaving a harpoon into one of the crocodilian monster's eye, leaving behind only an arm and one of his legs as it reverses direction and hoists the rest of him into the sky. The beast is different from the others, thick of body, with a swan-like neck tipped in a head almost as big as a house and filled with teeth the size of a child. It lets out a shrieking roar as it finishes off its first snack, its beady eyes searching around for more, using its flippers to maneuver its ungainly body around for another morsel.
Rurohashi Rinako and her beetle companion make it outside in time to see the monstrosity towering nearly seven stories over everything else near it, leering down at them hungrily. They skid to a stop, the human gulping audibly before setting her jaw determinedly. Her hands begin to form a seal over her stomach even as she calls out.
"Kara! I think I'm gonna need your help with this one! Kokono, see what you can do about the others!"
The seal is complete, resulting in an explosion of chakra from the jinchuuriki. Her skin turns a camoflaging shade of blue in this rainswept environment, her eyes bright yellow, vertical reptilian slits. Water kicks up from the sidewalk, forced away from her, as is most of the rain, a semi-opaque haze of darkening chakra forming around her, two tails sprouting from her rear to end in wicked spikes.
Ruri gets to see the monsters first-hand… Again. They're just as ugly as before, though they seem slightly less threatening this time around. Until they start EATING PEOPLE. "*Bleep*ing *bleep*," Ruri curses as she dashes towards the nearest monster-thing that looks like it's going to eat someone. She backs up those hurling harpoons by touching a couple Flesh Scroll tattoos. A brick wall falls in the path of one questing maw, seperating it from its intended prey — at least for a few seconds. The wall, as sturdy as it is, may be destroyed relatively quickly if Ruri doesn't act fast.
So she leaps up onto the wall and releases the second tattoo she activated, flinging a black 'whip' of liquid — ink, maybe? If it strikes, it may well seal the creature's mouth shut temporarily by turning into a Seal upon contact with its 'flesh' (it's kind of made of Chakra/dreams) and then turn into a 'spike' on one end that attempts to drive itself into the ground firmly. That won't last forever, but it may buy enough time for a few more lives to be saved.
"RUN!" she yells back to anyone who is still standing around and gawking. Then she clears the area as best she can, hopefully leaving the creature to flop around and die on land with nothing to kill. Next fishosaurus she encounters is going to get a less pleasant treatment than she gave the last. Assuming she even gets out of range before the last one squishes her.
So much for all that scheming about fighting on land or at sea and putting lots of heavy stuff into scrolls. x.x The enemy got here a lot quicker than hoped, and now it's all they can do to minimize casualties, it seems like.
Shemri grabs a child spluttering and flailing in the foam and leaps away with him just in time to prevent one of the monsters from snacking down. "Go! Get to the forest!" Shoving the kid in the direction of relative safety, Shemri turns and spots another hapless victim nearby with a gator-whatever advancing on her. Time for Shemri to put her recent practice to practical use. >/ Shemri's sash-tails, until now folded into the belt part to form doubled-over loops, slide loose and extend into two tails, each three meters in length. Shemri tosses a pair of kunai straight up into the air, and the sashes grab them and whip downward in a tremendous arc, aimed at the ravenous creature's skull. "You shall not find me such a harmless foe here!" >O
While Rinako gathers her Chakra and mixes it with that of the Three-Tails, Kara is laying down some suppressive fire via Pharaoh and Sekhmet. Sekhmet launches flaming arrows from an arm-mounted launcher, primarily as a distraction, while Pharaoh launches a canister in an arc, high into the air… It looks like whatever attack that was missed completely! But then it cracks open, dispensing liquid nitrogen and >acid<, resulting in freezing shards of corrosive substances that rain down on the rear-half of the mighty monster. Not only do they cut but they also melt away what they touch! Fun!
Anubis stands ready for the first opportunity to attack. As soon as the dinosaur opens its mouth wide, he has a couple poisoned sickles with the beasty's name on them ready for its throat!
Nai can smell the blood, even when it has been washed away from most people. Water does not make injuries magically go away either. He pulls down the cloth over the lower-half of his face so he can track the scent back to the wounded more easily. He rescues as many as he can, telling them to head for higher ground, and pointing them in the direction of the mountains. He tries to ignore any protests or sounds of horror at the withered flesh, the lipless mouth, the receded and blackened gums, and the jagged teeth more befitting a predator than a human. His appearance is not his primary concern. But damn it all if he does not wish to just grab one of these people and EAT. The healthy ones — the ones who are not injured — are the easiest to ignore this urge with. But as he encounters people bleeding, people hurting, people crying out, it triggers too many memories… Too many horrible memories… Of dining on delicious human flesh! He has to eat! He HAS to! A mother and child have wooden beams lying across them nearby. The child is alive… The woman appears to be dead from the blood streaming down her head and face. Nai helps the child out.
'What about momma!?' the child asks frantically. 'You have to help momma!' Nai answers in his raspy voice, "I am going to help her too. Get somewhere safe while I pull her free!" The child hesitates and then obeys, looking back more than once. Only when the child is out of line-of-sight does Nai bend down and grab the woman's arm. When he starts to tear it out of the socket, he realizes the woman is still alive from her cries of pain. He keeps pulling anyway, as though in a trance. He pulls and stares at the woman as connective tissue strains, tears, and seperates. Her screams make him ill, but he still hungers. He wants to stop, but his body moves of its own accord. He cannot help it.
He wishes he could cry. It would make it easier somehow when he lifts the wooden beam one-handed and then drops it hard on the woman's skull to silence her. Then, while everyone around is running for their lives or fighting for the lives of others… He eats.
The brick wall prevents an overly-zealous teenager who imagined herself to be a mighty warrior from being made into a snack. The beast's jaws strike the wall, and then rear back slightly, as if it intended to take a chunk right out of it! The spike introduced through its mouth manages to shut it rather effectively, pinning the creature's mouth to the ground. The thrashing of its body only increases, its tail, body and fins flipping about, near to crushing a few people before they follow the younger Rurohashi twin's advice and run up the forest trail towards the mountain. But there are a few more where that creature comes from, and yet another comes squirming around the corner like a giant, hungry, angry worm, its beady eyes set on the flesh scroll user as it begins wiggling its way towards her, chomping its teeth as if to give her a preview of what it had planned for her!
Shemri's double-kunai drop manages to stick a pair of the throwing knives into the top of one of the creature's head. It begins shaking it's skull violently, as if attempting to dislodge the sudden headache that had been injected into its life so suddenly. It swings its head from side to side, crashing through a nearby wall, apparently having trouble seeing for the moment. Whatever Shemri had done had obviously taken away at least one of its sense by virtue of his brain being partially penetrated by foreign objects.
The corrosive shards of ice that rain down onto the backside of the large pleiseosaur-like monster, managing to penetrate parts of armor-like hide by virtue of melting through. Judging from the shuddering mass of its body, as if trying to shake off a horde of angry flies, the attack is painful, and yet there is a lot of creature to try and hurt! The head on the end of that seven-story neck begins to swivel around, looking for the source of its current misery.
Luckily for Nai's sanity, if not his secret, there is too much confusion, too much chaos, visibility is low. His crime goes unnoticed, the sin unpunished, at least by the villagers, most of whom are desperately running for their lives. Precious few remain in the village proper, and of those that do, none of them have the capability to flee on their own.
Rinako is still gathering chakra when the monster's eyes find both her and Kara and her puppets. Like lightning, its jaws snap down, the serpentine neck shooting forward, mouth full of teeth wide open. Time seems to slow down as the wide-open jaws that look big enough to swallow a small house come darting down. Poisonous sickles flow into its mouth, yet do not have the stopping power to halt that much mass. An explosion of chakra is followed by the very real explosion of heated water engulfing the entire section of the village the kunoichi are in, a geyser of water defying gravity, tearing up buildings and rubble alike in the menacing ball's explosion. The great head of the beast rears back out of the steaming cloud of vapor and water, streams of vapor trailing here and there, roaring out its misery in a volume thunder itself would be envious of as poison and pain work through its scalded mouth and throat.
The section of the village that had been there, several square blocks, no longer exists, having been replaced by a rapidly-filling crater of quickly-cooling water. The neck snaps left, and then swings low to the right, attempting to use its scaly hide and bulky neck to crush its tormenters. Kara may get herself out of the way, provided she wasn't caught up in Rinako's own impromptu close-range attack, but the jinchuuriki is swatted aside like a tiny fly, sent hurling and careening through the air, bypassing several streets, slamming through a wall, then another, and finally crashing into another, to the sound of crushing stone and mortar, vanishing the brunette underneath a small pile of rubble.
Ruri confronts the next creature cautiously. It wriggles towards her on its flippers, and it would almost be comical if it wasn't so deadly. She wants to just avoid the damn thing, but it is a threat as long as it remains active. So she launches a 5-ton marble cornerstone from an ancient temple right at its stupid crocogator face from one of her tattoos. Then she follows this up with the spire-needle from a minaret aimed at about mid-body. If the cornerstone with a very interesting history and great archaeological significance does not impress the hell out of the creature's FACE, then maybe a giant needle will impress itself upon the creature's GUTS. Suck on THAT, ugly.
Shemri twists the kunai about a little before yanking them from the monster's head. Well, looks like that one's at least partially incapacitated, so better focus on those that are still fully functioning flesh flayers. If they're /really/ lucky, maybe these things eat their wounded and some of them will be distracted for a bit finishing off their lobotomized comrade. :P
Looking around, Shemri judges that most of those who are able to flee are already doing so, which means the best way to protect them is to slow down or if possible STOP their pursuers. "Hoi, Shiikaa! Get those ones over there!" Shiikaa, who has resigned himself to the fact that being wet is unavoidable at the moment, is all too happy to inflict some pain on the causes of his misery. ^>.<^ A sudden rush of wind comes down on a small group of the predatory lizards, aiming to pin them in place for the cutting scythes which follow.
The Menacing Ball was not really accounted for in Kara's battleplan. Thankfully, however, she has learned to react fast to threats. A Barrier Technique is activated via Pharaoh that protects her and her Puppets from Rinako's blast… Barely. She had originally intended to protect Rinako from the incoming creature as well, but there was no time once the scalding water erupted everywhere. Even with the protection of Pharaoh's scroll-based defense, Kara and crew are knocked backwards a dozen feet, digging in their sandals and other foot garments (if any) as the kinetic force passes through the barrier to a degree.
"Nnnggh!" Kara grunts. No time to survey the substantial environmental damage. Rinako has just been smashed aside like a toy! Kara manipulates the Chakra Strings on her fingertips with deft motions, and Anubis goes running after Rinako, hoping to send out some highly durable bandages to try to snare the Jinchuuriki and keep her from getting hurt any further. Sekhmet tilts her head forward once the barrier is down. A slot pops open in the back of her neck, and a spear shoots up out of where her spine would be if she were a human being. Seizing the spear, the lioness-headed Puppet lunges into melee range and tries to stab the huge monster.
It may seem ludicrous that a tiny spear like that could do anything. It's like a toothpick against a battleship. But this is no ordinary spear… It's coated with a toxin that will not only do physical damage but also inspire >terror< in its victim. Neurological poisons are great! …Against humans anyway. Will it do anything at all against this behemoth!?
The cornerstone manages to lodge itself in the monster's wide-open jaws, causing it a bit of confusion. At first, the sea-creature simply tries to constrict it's jaws and crush whatever it was that was stopping up it's mouth, only to find out it was some sort of hard, strange, resistant material, much like what it was squirming on top of. The spire makes itself known much more readily known, penetrating the thick hide of the beast and pinning it effectively to the ground, thrashing both its head and tail. But unable to free itself, and unable to bite anything, it is only a matter of time before it leaks enough glowy-substances to melt itself into oblivion.
Pinning the primitive reptiles in place isn't a problem for Shiikaa, as their fins did not make for very good legs to begin with. The real danger came in their thrashing from side to side, as they could only move at about the pace of a brisk human walk while on land. The slicing wind which comes next manages to open long, bleeding gashes across the backs and one side of two of the beasts. Though they did not seem to be predisposed towards attacking each other, one of the mosasaur-like amphibians turns and snaps its jaws into the other, thinking it was its comrade who had assaulted it. The pair begin a relatively titanic struggle which will leave only one alive, and wounded at that.
The tiny pinprick of a spear goes pretty much unnoticed by the enormous creature given its other injuries, until the poison begins to work its way into its system. The burning pain of the introduced poison causes the beast to rear its head back and roar once more in agony. Unfortunately, the neuro-poison, other than hurting the monster, has the opposite effect on a creature that is already angry and wounded than it would on a human! The monster goes into a thrashing frenzy, tossing aside buildings with every sweep of its body.
The small hairs on the back of the necks of almost every mammalian creature still left in the town would begin to stand up as an immense static charge begins to build. When the creature opens its mouth in the Sekhmet puppet's general direction, the stream of electric charge that issues forth travels with the speed of lightning, burning a clear line through any solid matter it touches by virtue of vaporization, the electric excitement creating intense heat in its cone of destruction, electrifying the water even around that radius for a few feet with deadly currents before dissipating.
The Anubis puppet would find the elder Rurohashi twin slowly digging her way out of the rubble, pushing aside pieces of wall the size of a boulder to begin crawling out, blood dripping down across her brow and cheek from somewhere within her hairline. Not even the Three-Tails chakra shield had protected her fully from the direct blow of a creature so large, and she seemed to be favoring one arm.
The lesser creatures by now have mostly been taken care of, and those who haven't are either injured or otherwise stalled. Everyone capable of moving under their own power has fled the village, leaving only a handful of straggling and trapped survivors, some calling for help beneath a pile of rubble and wooden beams in a section of the collapsed hospital.
Ruri moves away from the wounded creature and starts looking for more survivors or anyone who is trapped. The calls for help from the hospital send her back to her starting position, and she produces several pry-bars and similar from her tattoos, and starts using them to the best of her average-level strength's abilities. She could toss all of this crap aside easily if she used the Tomogan. But she is still not quite recovered from her exertions and she doesn't need that thing sucking up what little Chakra she has available.
She thinks it's just her exhausted mind at first when her hair starts to prickle and stand up. But it eventually becomes clear there is some large static build up in the area. She looks around for a moment trying to find it, but in the end she has to focus on her task at hand. The survivors come first.
Fact A: Shemri is the least powerful member of the team offensively, especially against large, monstrous entities.
Fact B: Being a mother, Shemri likely has the most protective instinct of anybody on the team. At least, of the general sort which leads one to aid strangers (especially children) in need.
Fact C: Fighting the sea monsters appears to no longer be the most effective immediate means of saving lives.
A + B + C -> Shemri's gonna go join Ruri and rescue some more peoples nao kthanx. Bounding back over to the collapsed hospital, she examines the jumble of debris briefly in an attempt to determine which parts can most likely be removed without making the mess fall together further. Well, looks like Ruri's handling the fine work, so Shemri decides she should go for the heavy lifting! Her sashes pull back inward and form the double loops again, giving Shemri four extra limbs to work with. She seizes a beam several times her size with her arms and the chakra-sticky sashes, gives a grunt of effort, and tosses the wooden obstruction aside. Yay triple lifting power! :D Just hope it doesn't tire her out too quickly. c.c
While Shemri is working on digging villagers out, Shiikaa keeps blasting away at the remaining sea monsters. Take this! And that! Your mother was a guppy and your father smelt of seaweed polyps! ^>.<^ Haha, all this excitement is almost making him feel warm again—wait, that's not just excitement, is it? ^c.c^ YOWP, BIG LIGHTNING BREWING! Shiikaa leaps away from the biggest monster's line of sight on a gust of wind. Shiikaa may not be the target, but he can tell there's going to be plenty of collateral damage from that thing!
The electric energy gathers, and Kara gets an impending sense of doom. The Killing Intent radiating from the huge dinosaurbearmanfish makes the Puppeteer break out in a cold sweat. She feels paralyzed. Her Chakra continues to flow regardless, and Anubis starts helping Rinako out of her situation, slicing heavy objects apart, whipping beams out of the way with bandages, and so forth. Sekhmet tries to use her phenomenal speed to get out of the way — actually, no. She's trying to draw the creature's fire >away< from Kara! Pharaoh remains right where he is and does nothing. Why? Because Kara's mind is as paralyzed as her body. She feels fear, gasps for breath, and can't manipulate her Puppets. So why are two of her Puppets moving around!? Are they moving… On their >own<!?
Then the point becomes moot, because a massive blast of lightning erupts from the monster's mouth and strikes Sekhmet directly, turning the already-hot water into steam, and obliterating chunks of stone, and turning timbers to ashes, and basically whatever is in the area where the attack strikes is just completely FUBAR.
When the blinding light and deafening noise of the air being split by lightning both fade, Sekhmet is still standing. However, she is charred and immobile. Whatever motivates that Puppet seems to be out of commission. Kara finally snaps out of her paralysis when she feels a mental shock strike her. She feels like a part of her body just got cut off. "Wh… Sekhmet…!" She trembles as she fights free of the frozen state inspired by the murderous feelings of the ancient dream-beast. Anubis keeps on working independently of Kara's control. She has only Pharaoh now. Pharaoh bursts into action, drawing in a massive amount of Chakra and focusing it into a single point inside of his mouth.
"Pharaoh-kun… We're not going to let this stupid monster get away with destroying our friend…! >Pharaoh-24:<" Then Kara raises her hands as though she were a maestro preparing to conduct some kind of epic classical music piece being played by an orchestra. Only in this case she is preparing to conduct what may well be a death blow. "PULSE CANNON!" she yells.
A single poisoned senbon is fired from Pharaoh's mouth with so much force behind it that it breaks the sound barrier with a loud *CRACK* that is heard a full two seconds >after< it may have punched clear through its target and left a mix of toxins and molten metal in its wake.
Nai comes back to himself. He lost control. He lost his sense of self. The recordskeeper looks at his hands, claws on his fingertips that have torn through his bandages. The bandages and claws are both soaked in blood. Some of the blood is bright red, most is much darker red — nearly black. He stares at his hands for several seconds as though seeing them for the first time. He turns them over, holds them up to the dim light, and observes how the talons glisten.
Feeling a sudden disturbance in the area, the cannibal raises his head and looks over his shoulder. He rises to his feet as electrical build-up alerts him to something big coming. Wiping his sharpened teeth with the back of one hand, he realizes this is pointless. Everything is covered in blood. There's no way to conceal this. No way at all. He has no spare bandages. Looking at what's left of the mother he said he would rescue, Nai realizes that aside from blood… There's nothing left. He ate all of her — even her bones. He feels numb, and mentally paralysed. He feels as though he just woke up from a deep sleep, and yet… His thoughts are clear. His analysese of his situation and his actions are perfectly logical. Then the remorse hits him. The guilt and the crippling sorrow for giving in once again to his hunger… For being weak. This washes over him and he wraps his arms around himself and just turns away from the blood-stained timbers. It will be washed away by the waters to come. He's sure of that. But how much water would it take to wash away the sins from his soul?
…Does he even HAVE a soul anymore?
Sousa assured him that he did, based on a conversation with Death itself. But what condition his soul is in is another matter entirely. He thinks Death might not want him anymore if he ever does die for good.
"Enough," Nai says in the rich baritone of his true self, rather than the quiet archivist he pretends to be. Then he shakes his head and takes some of the bandages that have not been stained, from around his ribs, and replaces the bloody ones around his mouth with the clean ones. He'll say the bloody hand wraps were from trying to save someone who was mortally wounded.
He goes running back towards the site of the fighting just as the blinding lightning flash goes off. Even with bandages and goggles, he feels his withered flesh tingle as it is exposed to intense light. Smoke rises from his body. But he keeps on running. He'll worry about what happened here later. Right now there are lives to save.
The survivors are slowly pryed out of the rubble, first one, who then assists Ruri and Shemri in trying to free the others. As each is let free, they in turn help the kunoichi pair to free the others, except for one woman who grabs her injured newborn and heads immediately for the mountains after offering profuse thanks. It isn't too long, with the largest monster kept busy and Shiikaa running interference on the smaller ones, before the dozen or so survivors are more or less limping towards the mountains, two dead left behind: an old man and the doctor's assistant crushed in the falling rubble.
Rinako is extricated from the pile of rubble she had been slammed into and locates the enormous, reeling monster that is towering over what is left of the fishing village. It doesn't take much to be able to see the beast, even in the dead of night through the dark rain, despite its darkly-colored scaley armor. The jinchuuriki breaks out into a limping jog in the direction of the fishy monster without so much as a word of thanks to the puppet. Well, it wasn't alive or had emotions anyway! And she was on a mission, gathering chakra in massive amounts as she turns down the streets, backtracking to her original position near one of the two large newly-formed craters.
Kara's poisoned senbon rips through the underside of the creature's jaw, piercing through it's mouth and into it's skull cavity. It ricochets off of the inside track of the skull after piercing through gray matter with its toxic touch, and then bounces around with force, tearing up more of the beast's central nervous cluster and spreading the poison further like a primitive shotgun blast. The creature panics, its body seizing up, and static begins to build in the atmosphere once more, the beginnings of light gathering around its huge, gaping, toothy maw. Its going to discharge another as it dies!
The edges of the creature glow green, and begin to slough off, and the discharge dies before it ever begins, the electricity dissipating into the air before it is formed into another lethal discharge. The beast begins to topple, its body near to crushing the few remaining semi-standing structures left, only to finally turn into that familiar liquid green goo, splashing wetly across half of the town, before evaporating into nothing rather rapidly. No sooner does the sea monster vanish than another creature appear in its place!
"Hmmmmm, it seems I am too late to be of assistance!" Kokuoukabutomushi, just as big as the abomination was, but without the incredibly long neck, slams into the ground just where the enormous, lightning-spitting pleisiosaur had been, the bulk of the enormous rhinocerous beetle turning this way and that slightly as if to view the distressing destruction, his ninth son riding upon his body, near the head of his father. Boss Beetle doesn't even have to yell to be heard over the sounds of the storm. "Where are the survivors?"
The elder of the Rurohashi siblings, however, does have to yell for her voice to be heard, exhaustion creeping in as her excess chakra sloughs away, her skin and eyes returning to their normal hue, her tails and the chakra haze vanishing from around her. "The mountain!" She points, and then cups her hands around her mouth. "The other islands?"
"It was bad, little Rinako, but we saved many."
Finishing up with getting people out from under the rubble, thanks to the help of Shemri, Ruri wipes the sweat from her forehead and breathes heavily. She couldn't stop to look and see what caused that huge flash before, but now she can. She turns to find the source, only to see the monster preparing to launch a second one! "Dammit!" she lets out and starts trying to rush over to keep the creature's mouth shut, hoping maybe it will just choke on its own attack or blow its own face off or something.
She never gets close enough to try, because the monster explodes itself. She fails to see Rinako approaching due to her sister being in her blind spot. When the giant beetle appears, Ruri tenses and then realizes this is not some new beast. It's Boss Beetle! She calls over her shoulder to Shemri, "Hey, come on! Help has arrived!" Then she rushes forward to see if Kara is okay, since she's in plain view—"HOLY !" Ruri sees Rinako finally, and changes direction to head for her sister. She looks injured. She would be easy to take out right now. The beetle would pose a problem though, so she'll hold off and wait for a more opportune time.
The disturbing thing about this is that those thoughts about 'taking out' Rinako flow right alongside Ruri's concerns about her sister, and she doesn't even realize she thought them. Like they're 'normal'. She comes up to Rinako and starts inspecting her like a concerned sister, rather than someone who wants to take over her body and absorb her power. She inspects Rinako's arm and head, lifting hair out of the way and trying to find the source of the bleeding, checking for broken bones, and so forth. "You better not have done anything stupid, Nee-chan!" she scolds, only to go right back to worried. "Do you think your arm is broken? Is anything else injured? Does it hurt when you laugh?"
Shemri's sort of running on automatic now. There's just too much going on to be concerned with everything, so her mind is shutting out pretty much everything besides the task at hand: evacuating the villagers. Move the rubble. Check for survivors. Pull them out, no matter how much it hurts, and set them running. Repeat. It takes her a couple moments to realize when there aren't any places left big enough for humans to be trapped inside them. Then comes something new — a flood of green yucky stuff! Shemri's brain kicks back into combat mode a second after her body, which leaps onto some nearby rubble. What is that stuff, acid? :o Did it come from the big — say, where is that thing, anyway? And why is the green stuff evaporating so fast? The gears in Shemri's head shift once again to 'observe and assess'. "…What has happened? Did we win?" c.c
Shiikaa makes his way over to rejoin his mistress. He licks his fur irritably. Yes, we won. My tenketsu hurt. Can we go home now? >P
Kara breathes hard and fast, trying to recover from the adrenaline rush and everything. She searches for more targets, and finds none. Anubis runs up and Kara blinks for a moment in confusion. Then she just nods to herself and runs over to Sekhmet to see if that Puppet is salvageable at all.
Nai arrives back with the others, and looks around cautiously. The large beetle has arrived. The monsters are gone or on their ways to being such. All the survivors who could make it are up in the mountains, and hopefully above water level.
"I did what I could," Nai rasps out in his usual voice. "One was eaten by a monster… Snatched from my grip… A mother with a child. I saved the child, but…" He looks down. "…There is more work to do here. We cannot give up yet. The death here is nothing compared to what we will face if the source of the manifestations is not dealt with. What would you have us do, Kokuoukabutomushi-sama?"
"I didn't!" Rinako protests as her sibling accuses her as if she had just tried to pull off a monumentally suicidal stunt. She makes a face and tries to move her head away from the poking ministrations of her younger twin, but is ultimately forced to endure as the light rain falls around them. There is a deep gash along the side of her temple, just above her hairline, likely something her bijuu will fix once its strength has recovered. Her arm near where the shoulder meets the neck is turning a sickly shade of purple-black, and she grimaces whenever it's touched. "Nngh, hairline fractures at most. Don't worry about it, Imouto, we have bigger concerns."
"No, little Maneshi, we have merely survived. I suspect the real attack will come with the sun." The enormous beetle's hearing appeared to be exceptional, to hear the questions of the human above the blowing wind and falling rain. The great insect's gaze turns towards the newly-arrived records keeper. "We will move into the mountain caves for shelter. We will plan, and we will wait. There is nothing more that can be done this night. My children shall gather for the final confrontation, but I believe our hopes will lie with all of you. I have a plan, yes. …You may not like it."
Rinako, meanwhile, with her good arm on her sibling's back, turns with the large beetle and his much smaller, but still large, son and begins the trek up the mountain, in the same direction as the survivors have fled. As the group seeks shelter and a place to hear the plan of the Boss Beetle, more of his 'children' arrive, flying in low over the water, of all shapes and sizes, from no bigger than the palm of a human, to almost two-thirds the size of Kokuoukabutomushi himself. Whatever they had planned, it was going to be a large operation.
