Satori's thoughts inadvertently drifted to an image of that tengu journalist, who, in all honesty, she would have preferred to forget, at the mention of a newspaper. The relation she drew was a mostly irrelevant one, but it didn't help that she was an accomplice to those two who broke into her mansion in the first place.

"...A newspaper should be fine, I'd think..." she stated, nodding her head before hearing the little girl's suggestion of killing someone to take it. That was... That was a bit too extreme, wasn't it? In what world did getting a newspaper necessitate killing someone?

"I also cannot approve of that course of action. No action is worth taking a life like swatting an insect."

As the group continued discussing a course of action, though, a tall man walked by the group, holding a cellphone to his ear with his shoulder as he walked over to a nearby bench, newspaper in hand.

"Yes. Okay. No, I don't know where he's gone. Chain's lost his trail, too?"
The conversation he was having, it seemed, wasn't exactly one he was pleased to be a part of.

Like my immature heart the hostile sentiments that I vent

Shirabe slowed to a stop as the truck pulled up. The arrival seemed to draw some of the creatures away from them, but at the same time it was going to put whoever was in the truck in danger.

Like my immature heart the hostile sentiments that I vent

She shot forward again, this time launching a large number of sawblades at the horde as she skated forward.

“Newspaper, newspaper… Eh?” Shotaro’s sharp focus was snapped the moment he heard the cloaked kid suggest murder to them. Philip’s attention just as worriedly honed in on the girl, leading him to wonder what in the world could have led her to that conclusion. ”Wh- Murder?! Hey, hey, hey now, girl!” Shotaro reprimanded “Jack” as he kneeled down to her level. “Do you hear what you’re saying? I’m with everyone else, it’s definitely not alright to just go and kill an innocent person. No matter what.”

Just as Shotaro was about to cut in to a longer, more winded speech about the value of life and all, Philip nudged him and pointed towards the tall man on the phone. ”Shotaro, morals later. Look there.”

”Hah?” He looked up at Philip with a confused look on his face, only to be met with Philip pointing at the man again. “…Ah! Right! Talk later,” he rose up to his feet and adjusted his tie, ”Newspaper now.” He marched on over to the tall man and put on the most professional face he had, appearing stern and serious. ”Pardon me,” he asked, ”Mind if I take a look at that paper there?” It was… probably really rude to interrupt his phone call like this, but his manners were a lot easier to throw away than his morals.

Back with Philip, he just gathered his thoughts on his scene. ”That man is carrying a cell phone, yet he brought a newspaper with him,” he thought out loud, ”Either he’s one of the rare Americans not carrying a smart phone these days, or we’re very early into the 21st century.” Philip wasn’t sure if his deduction was really correct, but at a first look around the area he didn’t see anything that could particularly give it away. He took another look around anyway for any year establishing landmarks, filing “Jack’s” strange train of thought away to think about later.

"Fufufu~ What a lovely song~"

Goldibanne giggled, twirling elegantly towards the strange, fleshy pink creatures as she did. Whips of gold followed, flowing from her hands as she approached, grinning all the while. The cute girl with the saws was weaving such a beautiful melody of gore and destruction, it almost made the doll's heart flutter... If she'd had a heart. Her creator had not replicated internal organs with such detail. The massive knight had so valiantly charged in to clear an easy avenue of attack, as well! Such bravery!

Unfortunately, his bid to draw attention had not drawn all of the creatures. One skinless abomination threw itself at her, claws flashing towards her as snarled. Of course, such a clumsy attack would not strike a doll of the caliber of Goldibanne. She delicately danced out of the way, and the gold in her right hand retracted briefly so she could grasp the creature by its neck. Showing strength previously undemonstrated, she took the creature and stopped it dead, clutching it by the neck. It thrashed and growled, and she grinned.

"Ah, such a revolting beast~" she said, with a giggle, "Goldibanne's going to have to have a shower when I'm done~"

She squeezed, and a spike of liquid gold shot through its neck. The creature didn't seem to stop thrashing, until she pulled the sizziling whip clear through its skull, spinning elegantly and bending backwards to slice the lashing tongue of another of the beasts cleanly off.

"Jack" could do little more than tilt her head in confusion, as the others... Well, they didn't exactly have a warm reception to her suggestion. It had seemed like the quickest, simplest way to obtain a newspaper, but they'd all immediately shot her down. The man with the nice hat (Shotaro, she had gathered) was especially opposed to it, and as he kneeled down to look her in the eye all she could do was stare back silently until the other man (Philip, apparently) redirected his attentions elsewhere.

"We... Don't understand..." she mumbled, watching Shotaro's less violent attempts to procure the newspaper. She didn't understand these people at all...

The guy turned girl grimaced for a moment, her now much keener senses seeing all that was happening from her crouched perch. The rather cute gargoyle mimicker heard all she needed to hear when the order was given to block the group from stopping the brawl, something that all but screamed suspicious. Also the way Relius acted. Jumping high in a vertical arc, the magical girl silently summoned her flaming longsword at the apex of her jump before descending with assistance from her jet vents. Shooting down at a breakneck (to regular human) pace, Tailred lifted her fiery blade up above her head to aim a greatly empowered cleave at the blob of shadows in a crescent arc, her young face set with determination.

Saber couldn't help but wonder. What, exactly, had made the little girl immediately come to such a conclusion? It was hardly something she would expect from a child... Well, most who had such an appearance, at least. The world was not without exceptions... and yet this still struck her as strange. The little girl seemed shy and childish, and yet she made such a remark... What, exactly, was occurring here? She found herself wary. And yet... even if the girl had suggested such strange things, no matter what, Saber would not cease her intention of protecting her. She was still a child, no matter what. To leave her unprotected would be wrong.

Noting that Shotaro and Philip had spotted a man with a paper, she approached them as well. She also realized she had yet to introduce herself, but... that could wait.

She held out one armored hand.

"It would be most helpful if you would allow us to see your paper."

The man sighed as his call seemed to end and brought the phone off his shoulder, slipping it back into his pocket after a quick glance at the "Call Ended" written on the screen. Though he wasn't visibly irate with anything, it did seem as if he was troubled by whatever that call was about. Sighing, he went back to checking out the news...

Only to be interrupted by a Japanese man and... What seemed to be a blonde woman wearing a suit of armor. Wasn't that a bit... Archaic? As far as he knew, there weren't any events that would invite such an appearance, but he could've easily been wrong about that.

Their requests for his newspaper boggled him, but he had already read through most of the major stories by now and was only checking out the editorials, so it wasn't of much consequence to him. With a shrug, he handed the paper over to the Japanese man and attempting to size him up, glancing between him and the rest of the group he seemed to be with.

"You know, even in a place like this, it's kind of strange for someone to ask a stranger for a newspaper. Tourists? Here for an event?" he asked, mostly out of curiosity.

Satori, on the other hand, had been a bit more curious about the stability of the child's mind, and opted to see if she could try and figure out what was wrong with her, and so decided to see if she couldn't pry into the mind that laid therein. With a deep breath, she calmed herself and attempted to try and focus on the girl, looking down and staring into her eyes.
Biggest mistake she'd ever made in her life.
The immediate backlash from what she had just heard inside the girl's head was obvious; Satori immediately cut off any attempted contact and caught her balance as she nearly collapsed on the ground. The drops of sweat forming on her forehead said enough to the youkai, who decided to take a few steps and sit on the rim of the fountain. Her head now in her hands, Satori took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself.

"That... What...? What kind of...?"



"...Whoa."

Those were the only words the driver could make out as he pulled the car to a halt to watch these people(?) go to town on the horde that had been chasing them across the city just moments ago. The pile of bodies in front of them seemed to have all been infected, but clearing them out without any guns...

"Who... What are they?"

The Caucasian man seemed to follow in the driver's sentiments, nodding as he grabbed the assault rifle that had been at his feet moments ago to man the mounted weapon instead.

"Well, regardless of who they are, they've saved our asses here. Feels really surreal, like something out of a comic book, but I'm not gonna count my blessings. Maybe we can get them to help," he stated, taking his weapon and filling one of the monsters full of lead as it leaped towards him. "But first... Clearing the rest of this place out. Seems they've taken out most of the lickers, but there are still a few stragglers. Safety first, talk later."

Most of the enemies were defeated, making it a simple matter of clearing out the others before making progress on their mission here (such as finding out what the problem even was). Simple for them, at least; the world's normal inhabitants apparently relied ineffectively on advanced technology to combat the threat.

One of the beasts' tongues wrapped around Artorias' shield, finding that budging the defence from his grasp was nigh impossible and setting itself up to have massive jaws clamp down, ripping the offending muscle off as Sif joined the knight on this side of the vehicle. The mutilated monster found its skull crushed by the weight of the shield it had so briefly tried to steal. Yet more found that the knight's reach was deceptively long, a sharp thrust turning into another broad arc clearing the space to Artorias' left--with the right covered by the wolf.

With the majority of the enemies now (hopefully) disposed of and Sif and the two girls to mop anything left, the huge man walked back to the two completely, and unfortunately, normal humans to try and work out what was wrong with this world. The apparent overabundance of walking corpses? It was all they had to go off.

"Doth thou know from where these abominations stem?" he asked, adopting the same mentality as with the Abyss: go to the heart of the problem and excise it from there.

"Now, I'm not too fond of the idea of smackin' humans, but then again..."

Kinji raised his guitar, holding it like a rifle and pulling the trigger. He fired off a few shots at the puppeteer before trying to close the distance.

"Puppets never did sit right with me."

Relius turned and glared at the boy attempting to grab him, pulling Ignis back out from wherever she disappeared to in order to block the attempt. The grip of the puppet is in heavy contrast to its otherwise-delicate appearance, managing to put up decent resistance before slipping back into nonexistence. In regards to the "musician," however, Relius wasn't so lucky. Though the fist that emerged from under his mantle had managed to block a few of the man's shots, two had made it through to hit his torso. The recoil caused him to fly back a moment, but he immediately jumped to his feet before glancing at Arakune's situation.

It wasn't very good, needless to say; the mass of seithr had failed to capture either of the two girls, who had changed into what seemed to be...

"...Murakumo units? I thought they were all accounted for...
Interesting! I've have to examine this later!"

A grim smile flashed upon his face before turning to the two fighting him at that moment.

"Well, now I guess I have more of a reason to deal with you. You're in the way."

With that, Relius jumped forward and waved his right arm, causing his puppet to appear behind the man clad in gold, attempting to skewer him with her arms seemingly changed into drills.

Meanwhile, Arakune had shrunk away back inside the ground after failing to capture either or the two girls and taking a heavy hit from the one with the freakishly-long twintails, opting to move a good distance away before beginning to spew insects.

Hordes and hordes of insects, some of which didn't even seem like actual insects, began to flow out of the thing's mass, covering the ground and sky with hundreds and thousands of bugs. The blob itself had blended into the mass, growing closer to the girls as it readied more insects... And a few strikes of its own.

The emergence of a third magical girl driving away the... blob whilst Hibiki transformed came as a relief to Miku, given that her own close-quarters abilities were essentially non-existent and Hibiki, without a transformation, definitely didn't measure up to the commander's abilities in martial arts. Being defended by a man who appeared to have turned into someone smaller than Shirabe was... strange but it was definitely better than her room-mate getting hit by the bug-summoner before she could fight back properly.

Without a strong attack available to do huge damage to the insects, Miku resorted to firing lasers into the mass and hoping for some sort of impact. If her normal lasers worked, then she'd release the other mirrors to increase the barrage. In a target-rich scenario like this, there wasn't much to lose with such poor accuracy provided that the attacks could do something. Otherwise, she'd be back to relying on Hibiki... though Miku was worried that her punches wouldn't necessarily be more effective against an insect cloud. Chris or Tsubasa would have a much better time for certain.

With her focus on Arakune's growing cloud of insect-y doom, she didn't exactly have much attention to spare for Relius.

As Hibiki began to move, she began to sing. Sure, the insects had numbers, and they seemed like they might be hard to hit, and yet...! The shockwave of a hard enough blow could also deal damage!

"The determination to break through a single point in my right hand, is in this song of mine"

Her fist slammed down, the impact tearing one insect part and sending other tumbling through the air, off-course in their flight. The insects on the ground faced the girl's armored foot slamming down, hard, crushing the creatures under her foot and causing the concrete beneath to fracture. The blobby thing had retreated into the swarm of insects, and so they had to clear them out as fast as they could! Batting another one of the bugs that had flown towards her with her fist, its body splitting in half as she did, Hibiki glanced back at her roommate. Good, she was firing lasers right into the swarm!

Swiftly, the girl's focus returned to the bugs as she shifted her feet, swinging one fist forward and watching as one insect ruptured backwards and others went tumbling through the air from the force of her blow. There was a lot of them... but she could do this! She knew she could!

"Before asking [How? Why?], I bear this courage-"

She slammed her foot down again, scattering insects backwards and crushing several.

"-In my fist without hesitation!"

High above the skyline of the city, a shiny silver person can be seen flying quickly across the sky at incredible speed. She would never had guessed that she'd be at first leading a squad of veteran fighters against their monstrous opponent, would somehow have her get teleported in another dimension, let alone with the mission that was presented to her. She didn't even begin to guess what an 'Akashic Record' or an 'Astral Plane' were, but regardless, if this was for the sake of her world, she might as well do it. Hence, she was teleported in a random world, much like Earth's, but in a very post-apocalyptic world. Hoping that she can find some allies, she flies off to the nearest city in search of life.

As Kiryu flies by the ruined skyscrapers, she pans the burning and decrepit ground below for any sign of movement, with so far being very minor. She was able to encounter some strange mutants here and there, but ignored their presence as she flies on. It would take her several long minutes, but eventually she sees some people down below, in what she believes to be allies from the meeting. She slowly descends towards the ground, her boosters already alerting her presence towards the people below. She eventually reaches the ground, where she lands with a soft clunk as she looks around her location, checking to see if any hostiles are nearby. She then faces towards the four allies, eying all four of them as well.

"Greetings." she introduces herself, "I take you are all allies of Administrator Lydia, correct?"

"..."

"......"

"...........!!!"

Tailred's eyes went vacant for a moment even as her small frame shook, actually shrinking back from the swarm of insects for a moment due to a fear of the buggers going after her long pair of twintails. Nightmarish imagery of the things attacking her hair all but burned itself in her mind and the girl's fear promptly turned into burning anger. Taking in a deep breath to steady her nerves, the magical girl's aura grew increasingly more volatile and dense, the temperature near her spiking up to furnace levels even as she raised her blade once more. "ORRRRAAHHHHHHH!" It was a voice filled with determination.... to protect twintails! Blazing sword arcs flashed this way and that as she wildly attempted to exterminate the horde of creepy crawlies, every swing bringing with it a super-heated updraft and sparks in its wake.

-------------------------

-------------------------

Relius proved to be too quick for Alex to get his hands onto, the blonde man backing away just in time and letting the virus grasp air. Alex's ally had managed to get a hit or two on Relius though. The Blacklight virus took a glance at his ally while Relius was still saying something Alex did not really understand. His ally looks like he was a golden Power Ranger holding a guitar. Alex had to process for a second that he was fighting alongside a Power Ranger before returning his attention to Relius Clover and his hidden machine woman.

"Well, now I guess I have more of a reason to deal with you. You're in the way."

With that, Relius jumped forward and waved his right arm, causing his puppet to appear behind the Power Ranger, attempting to skewer him with her arms seemingly changed into drills.

"Look out!" Alex would try to tackle the Power Ranger person out of the way and, likely, take the machine woman's attack. With a drill embedded on his stomach area, Alex only showed a face of being slightly hurt and decided to retaliate by trying to punch the machine doll with natural, inhuman strength,

.........
@clanjos

The comment about her song caught Shirabe's attention. And then she noticed something about the person it came from. The way they moved... the way they looked... it could only mean one thing.

"Autoscorer..." She muttered under her breath, shifting herself into a ready stance again. It didn't make any sense though; the Autoscorers had all been destroyed, including one of them at least in part in the teeth of her saws, and it wasn't likely that any more were going to be made any time soon. And yet, as far as she could tell, there was another one right in front of her.

But it also didn't seem to be mocking her like the others had. Something was definitely off here.

... Was that man... That very enormous man, with the very enormous wolf, was talking in such an archaic fashion that it was almost hilarious. In fact, it would be hilarious if not for the rather more serious situation they were in. But Goldibanne found it amusing regardless, even as she pulled a golden whip through the bisected body of another of the creatures and retracted it into her hand. Most of them were quite, quite dead by now, and yet more had been put down by gunfire from one of the two men who had shown up. And yet... oh dear, the cute girl with the lovely singing voice and the buzzsaws was looking at her so seriously.

At the moment, the doll was balanced on one leg, bent backwards with the other in the air, her hands out to both sides.

"Ah, that cute face looks so serious~" she commented, with a giggle, before slowly returning herself to a standing position with a few clicking sounds from her internal structure as she did. "Is something the matter? Fufufu~ Goldibanne doesn't want to go upsetting someone with such a lovely singing voice~"

... Unless it would be entertaining, but the girl didn't need to know that.

”Thanks. Shotaro took the newspaper and gave the front page a glance over, looking for any sort of alarming headlines that might clue them in. And then the guy spoke up again, commenting on their obviously out of place looks. ”Huh? Oh- Uh- Right we’re… we’re tourists!” Shotaro nodded affirmatively and gave Saber a quick look to make sure she’d roll with. Lying about their situation was a lot easier, and more believable, than explaining their unbelievable predicament. ”Me and my friends we’re- we’re here for some cosplay show.”

He looked back down to scan the paper and continued, ”Most of our stuff got jacked when we got here though, including our money and phones. We got a guy waiting at the police station to file a report, but we still gotta scrape together some cash for a ride back.” There. That sounded believable, right?

Back with “Jack,” Philip looked down at the girl with a quirked eyebrow. ”What is there not to understand?” he asked her, ”Killing’s just wrong. Especially over something as trivial as a newspaper. He tapped his chin in thought, thinking up another question in case the idea of it still didn’t get through to her. “Do you have anyone important to you? Like your parents or any friends?”

The death of the last few lickers caused both Chris and the driver to let out a deep sigh and relax, letting the brief moment of peace take them over. The stress of the incident had certainly taken its toll; upon closer inspection, one could see that the men had bags under their eyes and were covered in wounds and scrapes, having likely accumulated over the course of their trip here.

"Damn. What a miracle. Who would've thought that we'd get saved by... Uh... Hobbit characters? Man, I don't read this kinda stuff; buy it for my son all the time, but never actually looked at it," the driver said, slouching in his seat as Chris turned to face the armored man who was addressing him, albeit in a rather... Archaic manner.

"Er... Ah... Yeah. Guess you really are new here, huh?" he asked rhetorically, scratching the back of his head before turning around to dig into the duffel bag placed next to his weapon.

"Bioterrorists have been running amok ever since they managed to get a hold of the G- Wait. I guess... You wouldn't really know about that either. I'm not really good at explaining this stuff, to be honest; my sister could probably do it a bit better than I can, and if not her, then one of the higher ups. You mind coming with us back to base so we can debrief you there instead?"

With that statement, Chris pulled out a small earpiece and, after putting it on and pressing the button, began talking into it.

"Alpha-1. We've made it out of the city, and we've encountered some survivors. Heading back to rendezvous at base. Over."

With that, Chris placed the earpiece back into his bag and turned to Artorias again.

"Though... Really can't thank you enough for saving us back there. I'm usually not one to trust strangers, but with the place in as much of a hellhole as it is right now, I'm glad to see any bit of help we can get. Name's Chris. Chris Redfield. My driver here is Aaron Michaels."

After his decidedly-awkward introduction, Chris turned to look at the others who had helped the knight out in helping them out, eyeing them curiously as Aaron sat up in his seat and prepared to drive the jeep on ahead.

"So, uh... You and your friends wanna go sit inside or something? Though I'm not sure if you and your wolf buddy over there would fit..."