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[IamanElfCollaborator]

Discard the Luin by letting go of it and letting it smash into Weeknd Alter and self-destruct itself, while Minato drops down and attempts to get out of its range, using the Aegis to shield himself from any last-ditch attacks. Also burn that 1.

[Empiricist]

Spoiler: Rolls (click to show/hide)

Faith: 3
Minato: 2
Noriko: 4
Shef: 6
Yoake: 3
Yuki: 6, Hyper[5]

Weeknd Alter: 6, Hyper[5], Resolve
SMII-SPECIAL F: 6, Resolve
SMII-SPECIAL G: 5, Resolve
SMII-SPECIAL H: 6, Resolve

[Now Playing:

Panther

]

Yoake heads on over to the others, not much the Storm Minds cane when do about it now that they're scattered and harassed by Noriko's fire support. It doesn't get much better for them when Yuki teleports right behind G and brings her chainsaw right down on its neck. The armor takes the edge off the impact, but it's not enough, the sheer force splits the plate, not deep enough to cause much beyond a cut, but the impact leaves its internals haemorrhaging and its form slamming into the ground. If it were a person, it'd have been paralyzed. It ain't though, so it just ends up face down in the dirt, wounded.

So Minato discards Luin, the spear using what little energy remains on one final launch at its target, Shef and Satoshi join in, RAM and revolver raised, fingers right on the trigger, a final twenty-one bullet salute to send the broken construct on its way.

Just one problem, the Weeknd ain't done just yet.

[Now Playing:

Nothing

]

With a horrific screech the parts around it, the arms, the torso, the cannons and circles, they all shift and slam in place. In the time it took the bullets to reach, they were no longer hitting a soon-to-be corpse, oh no, they were racing headlong into an inferno, a great crucifix of energy rising upwards, splitting the bloodstained skies and cracking the ruined earth.

The shockwave hits you like a semi. The skies clearing in its wake, earth seemingly blasted away beneath your very feet, blasted by the radiant cross until only the clouds of heaven remain.

Clear blue skies, billowing white canopy at your feet you stand amidst the heavens themselves staring down your foe.

[Now Playing:

Sword of Doom

]

Specifically, their fist. An enormous fist of charred bone with liquid fire for flesh, adorned with gauntlets of gold and bearing down at you with roughly the same size and speed as a semi-truck fired out of a cannon. Maybe not you specifically, unless your name happens to be Faith, but really considering its downward angle and the force behind it, just being near it is not gonna be good for your health.

Okay, let's take a step back shall we? Talk about just what the hell you're even fighting?

Right now speeding right down to you is an enormous figure, something like a man, something like a machine, but greater than both and far more monstrous. It's somewhere between a giant and a suit of armor, its torso only half-covered by flesh, its lower body and left arm little more than charred scaffolding. Your target is in there somewhere, a maimed construct piloting another maimed construct, kinda like a more murderous turducken, one that, judging by the spinning ritual circle pylons on its body and the floating cannons behind it heating up, is going to disengage real quick after the punch to give y'all a nice painful shelling.

Spoiler: Worldlines (click to show/hide)

Faith
Status: Fine, superior shielding, HEAVENLY AEGIS, catching her breath
World Line: 1 6 5 5 4 1 1 1 1 1
Alterations: 1+
Resolve: 2

Minato
Status: Quite hurt, Aegis (cracked), 2 stockpiled units, Guidance of the Moon
World Line: 2 2 2 3 2 4 3 6 2 6
Alterations: 1+
Resolve: 0

Noriko
Status: Fine
World Line: 6 6 3 3 2 2 5 6 6 4
Alterations: 5
Resolve: 0

Shef
Status: Somewhat hurt, slight shielding
World Line: 4 5 4 4 6 1 2 1 4 6
Alterations: 4+
Resolve: 0

Yoake
Status: Fine, slight shielding, Rackupressure
World Line: 3 6 3 3 4 2 3 1 5 1
Alterations: 5
Resolve: 0

Yuki
Status: Fine, some shielding
World Line: 6 2 2 5 5 2 5 4 2 3
Alterations: 4
Resolve: 1

Karen
Status: Fine, probably wishing her powers scaled off of anger rather than arrogance, uniform is in tatters

Satoshi
Status: Fine, decent shielding, HEAVENLY AEGIS

Weeknd Alter
Status: Disarmed, missing an arm, both legs, and basically his entire lower body. Bleeding from fucking everywhere. Lungs have collapsed. Cardiac arrest. Somewhere inside a giant robot. The giant robot has a skeletal frame and is missing the flesh from its left arm and lower body.

SMII-SPECIAL F
Status: Frontal armor has cracked, Power Supply Estimated at 20%, tether disconnected, no longer present

SMII-SPECIAL G
Status: Armor at the back of the neck has been split, internal fracturing at the back of the neck, Power Supply Estimated at 20%, tether disconnected, no longer present

SMII-SPECIAL H
Status: Fine, Power Supply Estimated at 20%, tether disconnected, no longer present

Spoiler: Allies (click to show/hide)

Karen
A precision unit, able to rapidly strike foes at all typical ranges with her magatama jewel whip. Her sheer ego distorts reality, protecting her from harm proportional to her own arrogance.

Satoshi
A highly technical close quarters specialist armed with rod of force that can alter its own dimensions and well-versed in multiple martial arts. She has immense amounts of willpower.

Spoiler: Notes (click to show/hide)

Well since Phase 1 is done, I might as well explain what the hell just happened.

Basically, Weeknd Alter's first form is supposed to stall until it can get all four components of its mech summoned up (via Hyper[5]), with each component increasing its capabilities but being able to be destroyed. With the idea being that the party would have to fight it to try and kill or weaken it before it could get to Phase 2 after fighting through most of the train.

Needless to say, this didn't exactly go according to plan. For starters, the party kinda split themselves across the train, with Noriko cheesing the turrets to death at the back, Yoake and Shef rushing to the locomotive, and Minato getting bogged down in the middle. Meaning, when it did come out, there party wasn't as well-grouped as expected. Enemy counts, were roughly the same, since while you guys did aggro way more at once than I thought you would Noriko cheesed the fuck out of the turrets.

That, made fighting it kinda hard seeing as, as you've probably noticed, the boss has I-frames. Strider was partially correct in guessing that they were not triggered by its Hypers, though his "every other attack" theory wasn't correct. Basically it has I-frames on fully committal attacks (those lunging strikes), start up for its dodges (hence why Faith's beam hurt it during the latter half of its dodge but not the front half), and whenever one of its summoned pieces got destroyed.

It kinda ended up highlighting the risks of betting too much against foes with unknown abilities. Since Shef's Enforcer and Minato's four-copy launch ended up getting nulled by I-frames.

What happened last turn was that well, remember how I said there was a way that Yuki could end the battle real quickly? Well, as implied by the panties using Keijo techniques and the Storm Minds preferring to zone the melee units whenever possible, these newer constructs are loaded with combat data from the previous units, and Weeknd Alter is no exception. Thing is, Yuki has never her teleport against any of these constructs. She didn't have it in Chapter 0 and Chapter 1, and when she got it in Chapter 2 she was fighting a group of Mononoke that aren't affiliated with the targets of this mission. Meaning, as her attack this turn showed, these things have no idea she could do it, letting her Hail Mary them at very the least the first target she used it on.

Last turn, with the way things were going, it made a bet of sorts. It, was one last piece from moving into Phase 2. Which while not exactly that overwhelming an advantage sure beat the situation it was in. So rather than having a component broken and using the I-frames to escape, it burned a point of Resolve to phase out its components, eating the hit. Its bet was that it could survive, however barely, without sacrificing a component. If it called it right, it could move onto Phase 2, if it called it wrong, it died right then and there.

Yuki's actions caused it to take massive damage, but well, it was still alive, however barely. It could, to an extent, try and avoid Faith's beam. At least enough to buy the time it needed. A teleport it didn't know its foe even had? That would've taken its head right then and there. No giant robot, no Phase 2.

Oh and yeah, sheer bad luck kinda cheated Minato out of a Resolve point here. Medusa is safe to look at indirectly, and unfortunately for him, mechs tend to view the world indirectly through cameras rather than large open windows, hence why the Weeknd isn't getting petrified right now (last turn it would've fully petrified if he had managed to get into range, like not even like how Jason was kinda stunned, no, motherfucker would've been a rock in under a second). The Luin discard, didn't help but, to be honest it wasn't the best weapon for this situation anyways. Using it against powerful foes requires heavy stockpile usage. Something like Kusanagi with its wind control, would've let him get the Storm Minds out of his way (albeit without killing them, their armor is very good against direct wind attacks) and have extended his effective melee range make it easier to cut down Weeknd Alter.

Oh and kudos to Murdoc for suggesting this theme for Phase 2.

And hey Powder, enemies are finally targeting Faith. You happy now?

[Strider03]

"This is getting a bit tiresome."
Shef uses Portal Shield 6 to redirect the shells back at it if it survives long enough to shell.

[4] 5 4 4 6 1 2 1 4 [6]

[Powder Miner]

Well, the sudden transformation of the... thing into a horrible conflagration, cored with ivory and gold, a marred monstrosity that was now speeding at Faith in the hopes of reducing her into a red paste, was rather unwelcome to its target. And in this case, "unwelcome" means that Faith started screaming, aimed upwards at the thing coming down at her, and once it had got close enough that the part of her brain that was still operating rationally wasn't concerned that it would maybe still phase through the attack (figuring it had to unphase to actually hit her), Faith proceeded to fire another Lucky Sunbeam directly at the thing. She was still screaming as she did it though.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
Once the Giant Weeknd Alter Robot either is hit and damaged with another attack or gets a split second away from landing its attack on Faith, she nails it with another Lucky Sunbeam. Alteration to 6, of course.
World Line: 1 6 5 5 4 1 1 1 1 1

[Chevaleresse]

A transformation into a giant mech traveling at alarming speed. Problematic, but not honestly that strange at this point. They really were pulling out all the stops on this one; made sense, Heaven's Draft seemed to be pretty valuable. Unfortunately for the ones behind it, that value was the exact reason that they were here, stopping it from being used.

On a more practical note, this was something she could handle. A large, heavy object, traveling at high speed? If only the party had a kind of weapon that was almost purpose-built for dealing with such a thing. . .

Vasavi Shakti and plant both spears in the mech's path, preferably angled to try and impale through its neck and chest. If it dodges, focus on dodging myself. Also burn a 2.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Alter to 6, Dai-Henshin and explode the stockpile to tackle Faith out of the way of the giant fist while propelling both Faith and Minato out of the way. Keep the Aegis pointed at the mech just in case Weeknd Alter catches a glimpse of it.
[2 2 2 3 2 4 3 [6] 2 [6]]

[spümpkin]

Yoake groans. Seriously?

She hardens a nipple and attempts to slash at the Weeknd, potentially opening a hole for another attack.

[Alteration used, 4 instead of 3]
[Burnt 1]
[3 6 3 3 (4) 2 3 1 5 1]

[Twinwolf]

Yuki blinked as the mech appeared. Well then. That was a thing. She decided to help out the others rather than try charging it with a chainsaw right off the bat, because that'd probably not be fun.

Heal everyone normally, as well as using the 4-heal on Minato.

[Empiricist]

Spoiler: Rolls (click to show/hide)

Faith: 6, Hyper[R]
Minato: 6, Hyper[6]
Noriko: 6, Hyper[3]
Shef: 4, Hyper[6]
Yoake: 4
Yuki: 6, Hyper[4]

Weeknd Alter: 4

[Now Playing:

Sword of Doom

]

Noriko sets up her spears, Yoake lunges forwards, Minato dives, Faith aims, and everyone else just kinda just stands there like lemons. Yoake's the first one to attack, leading onto one of Noriko's expanding spears and them onto the giant's arm, spinning up its arm leaving in her wake a trail of wounds that bleed with gouts of flame. Kicking off, she watches as twin spears slam into the giant's chest, followed by an enormous beam of light. It's, not a clean hit.

The giant twists its body, shifting its weight to approach side-on, its trajectory now a high-speed arc. The spears rake across its chest, the beam burns across it, but only for a moment. It's hurt. Chest loosing its coherence, flesh returning to flame. It holds, for now.

Its attack continues.

Its fist crashes down, an enormous shockwave blooming outwards, and then it vanishes, its entire body disintegrating into brilliant motes of light. Weapons-turned-wings exploding, Minato managed to tackle Faith out of the way, riding the shockwave into a chaotic tumble. Satoshi does something similar, grabbing Karen and launching into the air, her weapon expanding into a pillar of force. Yoake? Yoake wasn't even in the blast radius by this point. Noriko meanwhile couldn't escape in time but she had made progress on getting away from the epicenter, and with a little bit of wind magic she twists the blast and rides the shockwave. Shef and Yuki aren't so fortunate. The wall of superheated air slams into both of them, hurling them up into the air right in time for the follow up barrage.

Few shells come.

No, this battle was already lost. The construct, it couldn't win. Not with the damage it had sustained. At best, it could stall, teleport backwards, bombard from afar. How much time could it buy? Seconds? Minutes? A pittance. No, it would not do that. If it could not win, then that is fine, it was expendable, its powersource too was expendable, its enemies were not. Somewhere within its body, something tips over the threshold, something shifts, changes.

It has eight targets. Seven of them identified.

The portal mage was too skilled. Ranged attacks were ineffective. Up close, his durability would ensure he outlived the construct.
The keijo specialist was too fast. Its missiles would be effective, but they required too much time.
The medic was too durable. A sustained assault would be required, one that would ensure its own destruction long before her own.
The explosives specialist was too durable. A sustained assault would be required, one that would ensure its own destruction long before his own.
The courier was too fast. She could move in quick bursts, sustained fire in conjunction with missiles could work, but it required too much time.
The spear wielder too agile. She was not fast enough to avoid highly explosive attacks, but its shells and fists lacked airburst functionality. Furthermore, its gaydar could not lock onto her properly, rendering missiles ineffective.
The artillery mage was a viable target. She was fast, but she was also tumbling, unable to dodge. The explosives specialist was near her, but his shields would be unable to block a full barrage.

So here's what happens. Your target, Weeknd Alter reappears in a pillar of light, its wing-like cannon array already folded into position. The barrage is heavy and wild, the giant teleporting over and over all across the place, bombarding you from multiple directions, and soon enough  it becomes apparent that for most of you, that shelling is just a formality, suppressive fire. No real bite behind the bark.

Shef, you open up your portal behind you even land, sending the shells right back towards their source, though you aren't having much luck hitting them - they're teleporting too chaotically.

Noriko, Yoake, you two just dodge.

Yuki, yeah, you get hit, but considering that you're constantly regenerating and shielding, it's not going to delay you for too long. Satoshi's roughly in the same boat, basically batting Karen away with her weapon before striking the incoming rounds, managing to deflect a few before getting blasted and showered with shrapnel.

Minato, Faith, yeah, you too drew the short straw here. That tackle saved you from the shockwave, but it makes your motion predictable and the need to break out of it before you can dodge, that costs seconds, precious seconds you simply don't have. The full force of the barrage rains down right upon you. Shellfire and shrapnel crash down all around you. Minato, you do manage to throw yourself on Faith. Good job, one date in and you're already on top of her, a shame your protection broke already. But hey, you can take way more of beating than her, that being said, that doesn't exactly spare her from the damage either. A heavily armored man being jackhammered against you, that isn't exactly therapeutic.

The motes of light shift, becoming more missiles, and considering how much the Weeknd teleported, yeah, that's a lot of missiles, all raining downwards, mostly at Yoake and to a lesser extent, Satoshi. The adversary itself however remains focused on trying to murder Faith's puss harder than Minato, just y'know, it's also gonna try and murder the rest of her body and blast her to pieces. It's just continuing to teleport around and shell them. Its entire body is beginning to burn, beginning to glow, glow to bright it's becoming almost painful to look at.

Spoiler: Worldlines (click to show/hide)

Faith
Status: Critical, out of breath, disoriented, prone, pinned beneath Minato
World Line: 1 5 5 4 1 1 1 1 1 3
Alterations: 0
Resolve: 1

Minato
Status: Very hurt, 1 stockpiled unit, Guidance of the Moon
World Line: 2 2 2 3 2 4 3 2 6 5
Alterations: 0
Resolve: 0

Noriko
Status: Fairly hurt
World Line: 6 3 2 2 5 6 6 4 6 4
Alterations: 5
Resolve: 0

Shef
Status: Hurt
World Line: 5 4 4 6 1 2 1 4 4 4
Alterations: 5+
Resolve: 0

Yoake
Status: Fine, some shielding, Rackupressure
World Line: 3 6 3 3 2 3 5 1 6 1
Alterations: 5
Resolve: 0

Yuki
Status: Hurt, slight shielding
World Line: 2 2 5 5 2 5 2 3 4 3
Alterations: 4+
Resolve: 1

Karen
Status: Hurt, probably wishing her powers scaled off of anger rather than arrogance, uniform is in tatters, tumbling through the air

Satoshi
Status: Fairly hurt

Weeknd Alter
Status: Disarmed, missing an arm, both legs, and basically his entire lower body. Bleeding from fucking everywhere. Lungs have collapsed. Cardiac arrest. Somewhere inside a giant robot. The giant robot has a skeletal frame and is missing the flesh from its left arm and lower body. Its right arm has wounds spiralling up its entire length, what remains of its chest has lost coherence and will likely be unable to stop another attack.

Spoiler: Allies (click to show/hide)

Karen
A precision unit, able to rapidly strike foes at all typical ranges with her magatama jewel whip. Her sheer ego distorts reality, protecting her from harm proportional to her own arrogance.

Satoshi
A highly technical close quarters specialist armed with rod of force that can alter its own dimensions and well-versed in multiple martial arts. She has immense amounts of willpower.

Spoiler: Notes (click to show/hide)

Aight, aight, look, things, didn't go quite as planned, but seeing how now that a single hit to the core is all that is needed to finish it off and the party has its fair share of improved accuracy attacks, I'd say you guys have it in the bag.

Yeah those 6s really screwed Faith and Minato. Would've screwed Noriko by making it hard for her to dodge, but well, high agility and the shells lacked airburst.

Noriko's burn didn't go through because you can only burn results if you aren't using a hyper and Noriko just did.

[spümpkin]

Seriously? Why was this guy even trying anymore? Just making things unnecessarily long.

"Shef! Portal, now!"

Yoake crouches, and performs a jumping somersault, planning to come out of the portal and slam into the Weeknd's chest with her butt.

[Alteration used, 5 instead of 3]
[Burnt 1]
[3 6 3 3 2 3 (5) 1 6 1]

[Strider03]

"No! Got a better option, hold on a sec." Shef brandished his pistol quickly, taking no time for aiming. The portals would do that for him. There was the concussive blast as the round burst forth from the barrel, winging its way through discontinuous sections of space, until it came to the weeknd. Preferably wait till a split second after it teleported, then attempt to penetrate and detonate. The twinges of pain in Shef's skull grew significantly as he did this.

Tracer [R] on the Weeknd, using generous Faith resolve. If the thing still looks up after that, give Yoake a nonhyper portal to play with to get in close to the thing.
[5] 4 4 6 1 2 1 4 4 4

[Twinwolf]

Alter to last 5, Cast a HEALING FIELD on everyone to make them recover, along with a normal heal, and then try to dodge incoming attacks.

[Powder Miner]

The whole fiasco with the clothing earlier had been embarrassing, a faint part of Faith's mind pointed out, but it was preferable to what was going on right now. Because what was going on right now was what was almost entirely keeping her from rational thought: she was dizzy, she couldn't breathe, she was squished under someone who was presently very heavy, what with his armor, and blasts of heat and pulses of force that crushed Minato into her were slamming into her again and again and again and again and it hurt. Plus, pinned, immobilized, exhausted, and disoriented, Faith couldn't do anything about it except for try and fail to curl into a ball... and, of course, scream.

Do, uh... nothing. Give a Resolve to Shef, though. Burn a 1.
World Line: 1 5 5 4 1 1 1 1 1 3

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko briefly considered trying to rescue Faith and Minato from. . . whatever it was they were doing, it looked kind of untoward through all of the fucking explosions but that was probably just a consequence of Minato's questionable defensive tactics and Faith's apparent inability to maintain focus. She supposed it was hard to fault Faith for her utter lack of defensive ability - or, she would have, if she'd had time to consciously process the thought - but it would be nice if she could do something other than shoot lasers and hope someone caught the (in this case, literal) flak for her.

She decided that the best way to get those two out of harm's way was to simply eliminate the source of the harm. The thing was basically dead, all she needed to do was cut out it's heart. . .

God fucking damn it.

She summoned up her power over wind once more, planting her spears to either side of her once she reached a position where she believed the thing wasn't going to immediately appear atop her and squash her into the dirt. The air around her compressed into blades into what the construct might have recognized as an attack normally meant to take on groups, slashing at them and sending them reeling. But these blades of air, they were headed straight for its core, seeking it out and trying to blow the damned thing up, Noriko relying on experience she really, honestly wished she did not have to guide her strike.

Vayvayastra, using the next six in my line (as in, not the one that would normally be used for this turn.)

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Summon Rho Aias and cover as much of Faith's body as possible with Minato's own body and his shield while staying off of her.