[center][img]http://i.imgur.com/6zc773j.jpg[/img][/center] [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/3R5vYYi.png?2[/img][/center] [hr][center][color=silver]𝕊𝕖𝕡𝕥. 𝟛, 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟘 / / ℂ𝕣𝕚𝕞𝕖𝕟 ℂ𝕦𝕝𝕡𝕒𝕖 𝟙 / / ℕ𝕠𝕣𝕥𝕙𝕖𝕣𝕟 𝕆𝕦𝕥𝕤𝕜𝕚𝕣𝕥𝕤 / / 𝟚𝟙𝟛𝟙[/color][/center][hr] [center][h1][color=pink]☐[/color][/h1][/center] [quote][i][color=f7976a]"No one asked you to be a hero, you fuck,"[/color] Decker complained quietly, red and blue needles threaded with black and white thread, respectively, hovering in the air behind him as three blue needles stitched white threads across Shane's lacerations. The wounds healed immediately on the last stitch and the used threads shimmered out of existence, leaving the corresponding needles empty. Decker discarded the empty needles with a wave of his hand before mentally pulling on a few others. He was sitting on a borrowed stool beside the hospital bed, glaring daggers--or needles, in this case--at their team leader. Ethan, on another bed, groaned loudly in an attempt to rush the healer. Decker flipped him the middle finger before turning back to Shane, waiting on the response. [color=f7976a]"If I waited until people asked me to help them, I think it'd be too late,"[/color] Shane flexed the previously damaged arm as he spoke, testing for any injuries Decker might have missed. [color=f7976a]"...Could've just let 'em die. And saved me the trouble,"[/color] Decker glanced at the bloodied hole in Shane's shirt. The stomach wound had been the first thing stitched up and the ruined dress shirt was now the only evidence that one of the civilians had shanked the subnatural who had saved their ungrateful lives. [color=f7976a]"If I had let them die, you'd have stitched my ass to the floor and used me as a footstool."[/color] [color=f7976a]"Ye. But it still would have saved me the trouble."[/color] The last cut on Shane's scalp healed without a trace of damage just in time for the healer to reapply mild cranial trauma with a slap upside the head. Decker's remaining needles angrily spun to face Ethan once their perpetual grouch of a medic had violently emphasized his point.[/i][/quote] The giant fan blades in the air sharpened into blades as the last of the mist cleared. Shane sucked in a breath at what he finally saw in full. Fights between mages and monsters were always messy, especially where powers collided, but this battlefield was one hell of a soup sandwich. No organization, no tactics, no fucking clue. And the Director, without missing a beat, had doubled up on the pressure by turning this into a combat assessment, too. Always make or break with her, but this was bordering on extreme. He knew the current testing methods had been under fire for years due to the unreliability of the results, but sending fresh faces against monsters--even if they were supposed to have just been category ones--was just...cruel. Not surprising, given the alarming depletion in combat-ready mages over the last year, but still cruel. He supposed it was a terrible twist of fate that had collected an entire batch of new students stable enough for Rosa to suggest sending out and strong enough that the Director believed they had a reasonable chance of success. The cherry on top of the universe's terrible comedy routine was the sudden attack, though Shane had a feeling the Director would find one way or another to turn even this disaster of a battlefield to her advantage in the long run. It was simply how the woman operated. Selfishly. Efficiently. And with a sense of purpose that no one but Rosa and Fredric had figured out. Shane noted Brent's target suggestion and Sophia's question, but with the mist now cleared and showing no signs of returning, rescuing his teammates was too tempting for two reasons: they were his teammates and Ethan had his gear. So he took the bait. He waved the two off with a hand and an apologetic [color=f7976a]"Sorry, guys, change of plans now that I've seen this mess,"[/color] before turning back to the group by the golem. Teammates first while he had a chance, then back to hunting for the caster. If the glowing green circles in the air prior to their arrival was any indication, the caster needed some time, which meant Shane would at least get some warning if he couldn't pull this off in a timely manner. He could practically hear Decker's bitching in his ears as the large cradle near Myla and Ethan broke apart, the readily positioned strips of crystal reforming into vague climbing harnesses that picked up everyone near the golem by the armpits and torso, catching in mid-air the partially shifted girl whose red talons had left a clean, shallow gash on the golem's chest. The construct reacted immediately when the harness began lifting the nearby targets backwards and upwards. Its body broke apart again, turning back into that deadly whirlwind of black, spiked rocks as the monster attempted to murder the students before Shane could lift them out of its range. But he had been expecting some kind of attack. It would have been too easy if the thing had just stood by to let him rescue people. The whirlwind picked up the nearby earth, which seemed to melt before morphing into that same black rock the creature was made from, proving one of Myla's guesses correct. A converter, and earth was its material of choice. So then he'd test her other guess. The white, visible core in the center of the maelstrom vibrated faster as it built up more material, the whirlwind rushing towards the students even as the crystal harnesses dragged them away and upwards as quickly as Shane could manage in his current state. One of the larger rocks whipped towards Myla just as Shane struck it down with a crystal spear. The collision slammed it into the earth instead, where the golem's core dragged it slowly back towards the main body, the rock's movement hindered by the embedded crystal still under Shane's control. 30 of the readied javelins shot towards the core, deflecting sharply off a barrier around the white sphere and slamming into the inside wall of whirling rocks, where the force of Shane's will over his shards battled against that of the creature's control of its body. With every impact on the barrier, large portions of the construct's tornado fell away, the glossy, black rock turning back into regular dirt. 30 times was enough for the initially tractor-sized swirl of rocks to nearly dissipate. While the golem's core vibrated and recovered from the attacks, Shane whisked the seven people up towards his large sphere in the air, where he slid them through a newly formed aperture in the sphere's roof and deposited them gently on the floor of the floating orb before refocusing on the rest of the battlefield. Detailed maneuvers and multitasks like what he had just pulled were still too slow for his tastes. In the month since he had returned from [i]that[/i] mission, he hadn't been allowed to spar or practice. And it was showing. Before the new arrivals could say anything, he snapped his fingers once at Ethan. [color=f7976a]"Strip. Gear."[/color] The words were clipped and the tone cold. Ethan fell to floor in a rough, seated posture, legs splayed out in front of him and arms braced against the smooth crystal while he leaned backwards, tilting his head up to blink through another surge of dizziness. On another day, he would have been irritated that Shane prioritized the armaments over his health, but today was not that day. When the nauseating feeling passed, he obliged, sliding his hands over the barely visible seams in the chestband and armbands. They opened without a sound and fell to the crystalline floor in a heap like heavy fabric. There was no response as Ethan slid the armaments towards Shane, nor was there any appreciative acknowledgement from the recipient. Myla's lips thinned in disapproval, but she left the two alone, checking instead on Genevieve and Eric. Shane slid the devices over his forearms first, snapping them shut and watching as the bands molded to fit him like a second skin. Last was the wide band that wrapped around the upper torso like a tube top--something Decker had laughed derisively at when the Director had first presented the gear to the person she deemed USARILN East's strongest Arbiter. The material looked like quicksilver, but felt like silk. A trick for the senses. While the set could be used by anybody, the intended user had been Shane, and the amplification had been customized for his power. After he had grimaced and hissed his way through wrapping the chestband around his injured torso, he took a moment to wait through the fresh pains he had awoken from moving the muscles on his upper body. His injury was still sensitive. Still healing. Still not okay with movement, especially after he had taken advantage of a fresh painkiller dose to recklessly beeline for the Director's office. Now that the medication was slowly wearing off, that particular decision was really coming back to bite him in the ass. One thing after another, really. But with the gear on, everything that would otherwise be magically straining him felt lighter and easier. Clean-cut. Polished. Precision control and generation on the fly was as natural as breathing now and the fog that tugged on the back of his consciousness faded away. The light blue hexagons shimmering across the crystals under Shane's control almost tripled in density, pluming in billows from Shane's body and his crystals like soft-hued, geometric conflagrations. [quote][i][color=f7976a]"Raise the roof, you shitter,"[/color] Decker had joked with a mixture of awe and amusement the first time the team had seen the gear in action. Shane had stepped towards the helicopter's open door, the wind screaming against the metal frame. His parachute was on the floor of the cabin, under Decker's feet as a makeshift ottoman. Thirteen others sat in the large cabin, awaiting their first-hand glimpse at Hephaestus-customized gear in use with a combination of trepidation and anticipation. He and Decker had both grinned like madmen. [color=f7976a]"Sure. Just watch me."[/color] [/i][/quote] The entire field exploded with crystals. They rapidly unfurled from the points of creation like glass flowers violently blossoming to life. Some were close to the ground while others floated in the air, but they all covered space in smooth, bladed fragments that spiraled away from the center, filling up the available volume rapidly as they merged on contact with other masses of crystal. Where they touched students and guards--dead or alive--the material swept against them, pushing and wrapping around them, then ballooning into large spheres that shot upwards towards Shane. The spheres encapsulated the students in groups if they were close together and individually if they were further apart. Grant was picked up from the trench while Zoe was pulled out from beneath the spaghetti monster, leaving a trail of rotting flesh as her power scraped against it. Allison was picked up with the porcelain shard embedded in her body, the sphere breaking off the wedge as it sealed up. The sphere around Christmas closed on the wires still attached to the dismembered doll arm, severing them. A shapeshifted dragon in a much larger sphere floated up last as Shane checked his phone again, confirming the dragon was a friendly. That neither Commander Kardos nor the Director protested the sudden end to the combat assessment indicated the woman wasn't at all surprised by the turn of events. She had likely seen it coming. [color=f7976a][i]Did you know?[/i][/color] he thought the question without following through, knowing the Director would never answer what he really wanted to ask. He glanced towards Brent and Sophia, the two of them sent out by the Director herself. Why? To test him? To test [i]them[/i]? She could have sent him out alone with the same effect. The two students she had selected were practically liabilities with their respective injuries and lack of combat experience to make up for that. Pretty useless, right? Right? [color=f7976a][i]Wrong.[/i][/color] He'd have been lying if he claimed that their presence hadn't at least reassured him on the way there. People to brief. A pseudo team to plan an attack with. Fresh faces clear of the grief, resentment, and tension that permeated what remained of his original team. The hinges that had been falling apart for the last year. Had the strain of it all showed that much on him? Had the Director really considered that he would find a grave for himself here? Or was he just overthinking things again? In the clarity of control he had from the armament's effects, Shane heard that raucous voice again. [quote][i][color=f7976a]"What the hell! You need a call-out for that! That's lit as fuck! Call it, like, the Dome of Diamond Death or something!"[/color][/i][/quote] On the floor, the crystals had now formed one solid mass that spanned the entire battlefield, with more still bursting into existence. The creatures below were completely encased in the material, pierced through where they had tried to run--some still alive, but unmoving. The golem's core had managed to reform the majority of its body, but it had lost the lower half to the crystal mausoleum rising in a solid dome that was slowly filling itself in. The golem swung at the floating orb, the range of its control extended the arm through that same segmentation again. Shane speared it through with the remaining 44 spears in the air, coupling the projectiles with five swipes from the five literal fan blades still hovering above the dome. As the spears and blades made contact with the rest of the material, they melded into the dome as well, shattering the golem's upper body almost completely before enveloping it. The golem core's barrier remained, but even as the white sphere rumbled and vibrated, the rest of its pieces could barely damage the entombing material. What cracks did appear were small and quickly repaired. It was, in essence, the extreme version of isolating a converter from whatever material it was keen on converting. That this creature could break apart and manipulate every section of its body meant its movements needed to be restricted. The casing handled all of that. The eye scorpion, trapped, but still able to cast, spun red circles in the crystal, detonating the glitter bombs again. To little effect. What room it gained for small bouts of movement was quickly lost as the material filled in again. It repeated this process several times, but failed to make any significant progress through the crystal mass. Meanwhile the spaghetti monsters and meatballs lost room with every wiggle of a noodle tentacle, losing ground to the encroaching crystal as Shane topped off the tomb with a smooth finish. The dome was complete--a perfect, 400-meter-diameter semicircle that had, by design, barely missed the trucks on the periphery of the battlefield. [quote][i][color=f7976a]"NO WAY! You just iron maidened the shit out that thing! That's so overkill...and completely you."[/color][/i][/quote] The solid mass of crystal imploded in a rush of spikes, collapsing inward in successive layers and reducing everything inside to a mess of white blood, marinara, porcelain fragments, and fleshy bits that were once terrifying nightmares given life. What remained of the golem's body suspended in the crystal was pulverized and the core body only held on a fraction longer before the barrier around the white sphere thrummed one last time with energy and caved in on itself, the sphere winking out of existence as the crystal mass compressed in pointed ends and jagged tips straight through it. The particles of the golem's body turned back to dirt once the core vanished. Brent had mentioned potential underground enemies and Shane hadn't forgotten how difficult a burrower fight could be. As the dome fell inward, it dug and drilled deep into the ground below, leaving a jagged crater about a hundred meter deep at the lowest point. Shane held on to the compressed crystal mass a bit longer before dissipating it. From above, the battlefield was remarkably silent now, empty save for the fresh crater in the ground speckled with supernatural viscera; the new hole wasn't far from the comparatively small pit blasted into existence by Ethan's earlier attack. In stark contrast to the violence not a minute earlier, the floating spheres gently lowered themselves back to the ground, depositing their occupants in one scattered group near the trucks before breaking apart and vanishing in a blue spray of variously sized hexagons folding haphazardly into and out of themselves. Shane's group, including his more recent pick-ups, landed several meters away, their bubble lowering itself into nonexistence as carefully as possible, leaving them on dirt and grass with barely any bump in transition. When Shane didn't actually turn off his ability, however, Myla's eyes narrowed. She watched the stream of power rising from his body, saw the way he clutched at his torso as spots of blood seeped through the gauze, noted how he had remained seated the entire time, cross-legged and deathly quiet. [color=f7976a]"You overexerted,"[/color] she said simply, knowing as well as Shane did that once the bolstering effect of the armament was shut off, the backlash of exhaustion and agony would crash down like an ocean above him. If he wasn't in peak condition going into that, he would die. Hell, going into that in perfect health still posed a risk of death. [color=f7976a]"Healers,"[/color] he slid his phone towards her, the word a whisper. She saw the markers, flipped through the notes on powers, and found the two healers in the group. A healer who regenerated by feeding blood and one who transferred injuries to herself. Myla disregarded the girl who transferred injuries. The one Shane sported beneath the bandages was not something the girl could take safely, especially if it had reopened. So it was the other healer. She headed towards the batch of students that had Christmas Halvost's marker in it, surprised to find a bleeding, unconscious boy at the location indicated, a filmy veil of shimmering mist still glowing around his torso. A persistent effect, the notes had pointed out. Myla knew the rule about not moving the injured unless absolutely necessary, but if there was an injury transfer mage nearby, then it didn't matter so long as the wounds weren't life-threatening. She dragged the blonde boy by the shoulders unceremoniously to Shane, nearly retching as another round of queasiness slipped into her stomach and down to her shaking legs. Still, she managed to get Christmas to Shane. Rosa's forwarded notes had mentioned the boy could heal poison. Time to confirm. With the barest trace of hesitation, Myla dug a hand into the largest of the gashes on his thighs, shouting in pain as her hand came into contact with the magical wires left behind by the doll. They cut on contact, apparently. Annoying. Shane had looked up at the shout, a thick mass of crystal already sprouting in the air near him. [color=f7976a]"Leftovers,"[/color] she explained, ignoring the cut on her fingers as she licked the blood on her hand. [color=f7976a]"Wires in the wounds."[/color] The same veil of magic wrapped around her as well and the fresh injuries on her fingers slowly faded. Her nausea, too, was slightly alleviated. Not showing on her face how disgusted she was at this particular method of healing, she cleaned off her hand like a cat, noting the increase in healing speed. Meanwhile, Shane had slightly loosened the tourniquet and picked out the wires with hooks and tweezers of crystal, pressing a small crystalline cup against the largest gash for a shot glass of blood. His mouth twitched downward in disgust, but he threw the drink down, trying to taste it as little as possible. And then he went for round two. Three. Four. The white, glittering veil around his torso and shoulders was almost opaque now from how heavily he had layered the healing effect. Christmas looked pale, as was expected from the method through which his power worked, but the compounded effect was noticeably faster, which meant it'd be far more efficient to have one person constantly healing at high speed through injuries than 16 others healing slowly off safe amounts of blood drain. Within a minute, speaking was no longer brutally painful, and Shane could already feel the worst of the wound healing. He glanced at Ethan, who had remained seated, leaning back on straightened arms. [color=f7976a]"Tell them to heal up. Get the injury transfer girl--Lilianna something. Prolonged effect, so have her take all the injuries and drink his blood. Minimizes the amount he'd need to lose."[/color] Ethan looked back at him, face unreadable. [color=f7976a]"You can't do it yourself?"[/color] [color=f7976a]"Aren't you field commander in my absence? Do your job. Correctly, this time."[/color] Swallowing down another bout of potential vomiting, Ethan barked out the order loudly enough that the other groups could hear it. [color=f7976a]"Lilianna! Front and center! You're taking all the other injuries and healing through them with this guy's blood!"[/color] his voice lost momentum near the end as he held back a spell of disorientation and fatigue rolled into one. Myla took the time to send a request for transportation through Shane's phone, reporting in the finished mission in the process. Formal paperwork would come later. When she finished, the cuffs on everyone's ankles beeped, including the one nestled deep within the dragon's back, left leg. An automated voice announced, [color=f7976a]"Combat assessment concluded. Mission status: complete. From current location, return expected within 2 hours."[/color] The surviving four guards stepped away from the group warily, reminded after the cuff's announcement that for all the amazing feats displayed, the students were still 'attending' USARILN East and needed to be treated like the monsters they were. Shane's obliteration of the enemies had only solidified for them exactly [i]why[/i] the kids needed to be kept under lock and key, not that any of them needed reminders of the terrors plaguing the world at large. The nausea hit one of the guards again, and this time he vomited onto the ground, unable to catch himself in time. [center][img]http://i.imgur.com/3R5vYYi.png?2[/img][/center] [hr] [hider=OOC Interaction Tags/Notes:] [@Snagglepuss89][@GreenGoat][@Piercing Light][@VampireOracle][@ERode][@Kyrisse][@Diggerton][@Deathmyster][@dragonmancer][@RedDusk][@Baklava][@Chasers115][@Lasrever][@PapiTan][@Riffus Maximus][@Holy Grail][@VarionusNW][@Zombehs][@canaryrose][@banjoanjo] [u]Summary:[/u] 1. Battlefield exploded in crystal. Shane picked everyone up in multiple crystal spheres. Those of you near each other were put into the same sphere and moved about 300m up. Those standing apart got swept into individual spheres. Dragon!Chris got his own sphere a few seconds after everyone else. 2. Dome. Inward spikes. Collapse on everything. Annihilation. You guys get a bird's eye view. 3. Shane lowers everyone to the ground in a large group--along with the dead bodies. Spheres slowly dissipate from the 'floor' first for gentle landing. 4. Myla drags Christmas to Shane. Healing happens. Ethan calls for Lilianna to pull all the injuries and just heal herself off the prolonged, regenerative effect from Christmas's blood. 5. Feel free to crawl into one of the trucks and decompress. Or break down and cry. Whatever works. 6. Also feel free to interact. 7. Battle is now over. Quickened timer is on for this last round to end the event. 8. Week-long timer will be back starting next update. Same policy applies. All posts come in = we move on early. 9. No update for Gregory this round. 10. Next update will move everyone back to the school. The update after that will involve a brief time-skip. Details to come. [/hider]