Concrete bursts, cracking and shattering as the ground tears itself asunder at Selma’s command. The fissure cuts a jagged line along the rain-soaked street, the earth below letting out a groan of effort as the green-haired giant’s magic pulses through it. A vicious line that ends underneath the vulnerable foot of one of the hulking machines that Chie’s called to the hunt, the explosion of rock, mud, and asphalt throwing it off balance.

Off balance and right into the spear formed to meet it. In the wake of the attack, it rests impaled against the nearest building, the spike of earth entombed partway inside of the drone’s center mass. Heavy legs twitch and buckle, but they seem to be dying throes rather than anything that might be cause for alarm. 

The remaining two drones make themselves less easy targets. The fall of one alerts the other, and then move with surprising agility toward the source of their fellows demise. Heavy legs flex in long strides, the machines propelling themselves over debris and toward the advancing Magi. 

There’s a shrill hiss from the first as it lets loose the opening volley, four distinct trails of smoke exploding from one of the rectangular shaped pods attached to its central body. From each contrail leads a bone-white missile, a painted cylinder bearing a magic-charged payload to be delivered in full to one Selma Rosemarie.

The second machine, perhaps surprisingly, doesn’t double-down on the threat to the green giant. Instead it chooses to focus on the other sources of magic that burn in the rainy nighty. Staccato machine-gun fire rips through the darkness, tiny flashes illuminating the ruined street. The rubble that Chie’s sequestered herself behind pops and cracks as bullets perforate her shelter and puffs of dust begin to rise from the detritus. The machine lopes closer still as it fires, threatening to soon overtake her.