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Justine continued flying above Bolorton, firing beams of crimson at the few Spades who yet lingered, as well as incoming troops on the ground, and incurred a wound on her shoulder. Alex continued fighting successfully, managing to avoid serious injury through Reinforcement magic and aggressive use of his tails to counter the incoming fire. As part of repelling the latest wave of Wonderland troops, he also managed to fell several monsters that had accompanied the assault; different from the Wendigos, these were ogre-like, with hunched over bodies; they carried bags full of the same sort of helmets that the troopers themselves wore. What the intended use for them was, Alex couldn’t tell, though he had a feeling it wasn’t anything beneficial to the villagers. He was doing well, though at 45% mana reserves he knew he was merely buying time before a big enough wave would force him to stage a retreat.

[color=fff200]”You bastards! Take this! And this!"[/color]
Lily continued providing support to Alex, he could tell that she would grow more and more reckless and ferocious as the fight went on; she would spend less time in cover, and more time aggressively bombarding the Wonderland invaders with lightning arrows. It would reach a point where she would seemingly let herself get hit just so she could continue firing, letting Alex’ barriers absorb the damage when she had the opportunity to relocate to safety. Alex would realize these were signs of her encroaching Monstrous Metamorphosis.

Past the sunflowers, Alex could see tanks, having managed to drive through under the cover of smoke, accompanied by soldiers escorting them. The tanks fired from the main cannons, and their shells brought down one of the sunflowers as it approached the northern buildings. However, one of the tanks was soon destroyed by a barrage of iridescent weaponry, the smoke obscuring the direction.. Gaia and Angel of Hope, however, saw the source from their high vantage point; a group of monstrous Mahou with advanced technology had joined the defense against Wonderland. The ground units nearby, of course, were surprised by their sudden appearance, and were only now staging a counterattack, managing to take down one of the new arrivals through combined firepower of enchanted bullets and cannon shells. The other two tanks rolled past the fallen sunflower, and were taking aim at the defensive line Alex had set up.
Annabelle continued to support the sunflowers with her magic, but with so many enemies getting near she grit her teeth and retreated back towards the square, setting up smaller sunflowers in the streets to draw enemy fire.
“Gaia! Iron Mouse! We need to fall back!”

The news of reinforcements for the defenders didn’t escape the Queen’s notice, as she heard Heart commanders relay through her comms. “New enemy sighted! They possess weapons we have never seen before!” It was in that moment of distraction that the Engine took her chance, and taken Dormouse hostage. The Queen squinted, her sword held close as she gauged her opponent’s intentions. Dormouse could barely scream as she was choked, tears in her eyes as she shook in pure dread.
However, the Queen seemingly spared no sympathy for her own minister, her face like stone as the Engine made a warning whine. “Coward,” she coldly stated, and gripped her sword tighter.
“Very well then, kill her. The moment you do, I will make you regret ever crossing blades against me.”
As she said that, her sword began to glow; she was charging up magical power.

[hr]
Mariette successfully escaped from Wonderland with an Overcity Shift followed by a portal back to safety, and delivered Jelena to Ronja. The spider girl then immediately began emergency Reinforcement spells on her heroic companion, stabilizing her in the process and saving her from death. However, as her condition was, she would spend a long time recovering.

[hr]
At the shelter, Oliver was the first one to respond to the growing confusion and chaos among the civilians, and had full-plated phantoms assigned to watch the door, deterring the more meek villagers. However, some of them villagers, especially the burly farmers, were so enraptured by terror that they were not deterred by the slow-moving and detached guards, and managed to shoulder-tackle en masse through the door, scattering one phantom’s armor like pottery.
As Oliver helped reassemble the spirit’s possessed pieces, he felt his mana reserves to have dropped to around 85%: still very much in fighting condition.

Ronin and Miko managed to catch the few who had run out before they got too far with the use of regular barriers and disc-launched ones, tripping one of the farmers; he then proceeded to cover his head with his arms and cry like a little girl. Fortunately, before the situation escalated further, Magical Dream Princess provided a soothing spell of slumber; like the three fairies in Sleeping Beauty, rainbow-colored dust sprinkled over the villagers as they descended on bubble cushions, their eyelids shut and hearts calmed with sweet dreams.

[hr]
Hyun Long was visibly appalled at the sight of Bolorton, her fiery fists tightly clenched. “Acknowledged,” she immediately replied to Alicia’s command, and kept her eyes peeled as Aurelio drove towards the shelter. She blinked in surprise at the sight of Suwako, surprised that Alicia had recognized her. Then, once Alicia revealed the truth, she gasped. “The audacity! But why would they do that?” As Aurelio chimed in with his own suggestion, Serenity had taken the initiative to report on the strange sighting. Violette sounded confused. “Suwako? She used to be a member of Penrose branch, but…” Serenity could hear typing sounds. “She had been relocated elsewhere. She hasn’t operated in the Penrose area for a long time. We will be conducting an investigation on our end. Paladin Seraph, if you can, assign someone to follow after the imposter from a safe distance and find out their identity and what their objective is if possible, but focus primarily on evacuating the civilians. Over and out.”

When Violette’s call ended, the car stopped before the shelter, and Aurelio’s clones began building the teleporter outside the shelter; compared to the heavy-duty-model back at headquarters, this one was smaller, mainly consisting of a central round pad wide enough for a single person to stand on, a magical power generator, interface unit with an LCD screen and keyboard controls, a couple of suspended rings and staked struts to hold the construction in place. While not designed for durability, it was split into easily recognizable parts, and thus was easy to build. Hyun Long, took up defensive positions nearby to make sure the building process wouldn’t be interrupted.

[hr]
On her way back to Bolorton, Kiyome had fortunately only met a couple of Wonderland troopers, one of them seemingly wounded by a stray bullet and another who slowly crawled their way through the grass; both of them were quickly disposed of by her summons. She had successfully managed to use her minions to capture two of the crystal-augmented assault rifles as well as a crystal sniper rifle from a fallen Spade.

After a detour over from the east side of town, avoiding most of the assaulting force gathered at the north side, she reached the town square where Eliana was providing supportive barriers around the civilians, making sure the encroaching fire from the nearby buildings wouldn’t harm them. Once Kiyome arrived, she sent the minions to cover the flanking sides of town to slow down the enemy forces.

[hr]
Al chuckled at Chloe’s counter-reference, and pointed the cigar away, letting the cigar ash drop away from them with a couple of taps of his forefinger. “Rebel Without a Cause, eh…That was a good movie. Shame about the race accident.” He listened as Chloe explained what she had in mind, and when she finished, Al dropped his burnt cigar, and lightly stomped on it.
“You know, I’m not supposed to talk personal with the agents. Keep it strictly business, as you know. But I’m starting to get tired of this. Back in the good old days, I had multiple areas to look after, a lot of business dealings and whatnot. I even earned as bit of vacation. But then Veronica had to go and screw it all up. Ever since she left, the wise guys upstairs decided to tighten up on us brokers.” He lifted his hat a bit, and Chloe saw a glimpse of a black tattoo on his forehead. “Chained us like dogs, they did, and the organization was forever changed for the worse; without the freedom we once had, our operations got downsized, as did our recruitment. But I got it the worst, since I had history with her. Was sent on a wild goose chase that led to nothing. Suppose that’s when they realized their motto wasn’t holding up as well as they hoped. Soon, we were a joke for how we handled Penrose.”
He tipped his hat down took out a new cigar; this one was special, if the gold wrapping was anything to go by.

“I don’t know if it was spite from the fiasco, or all the crazy magic they saw happening here, but they figured this would be a gold mine, that if I just pushed the competition out, they’d get rich and we’d get back to the good times. Well, too bad the mine’s also holding pockets of volatile gas, and they forgot to bring the canary.”

He lit the cigar, and blew out a smoke ring up to the sky. “I tried to make it work. Hell, even got a foothold on one of the major businesses. But I see the bubble, and the Great Depression that’s beyond it. I can send a hundred agents to stab at the problem, it’s not getting solved. This Big Apple’s rotten to the core.” He paused to take another smoke. “You’ve seen it, right?” He gestured to around Chloe. “Some Horror getting summoned every Tuesday, monsters throwing earthquakes like they’re downing drinks at a speakeasy, not to mention the latest Lewis Carrol carousel. Penrose is cursed, and I don’t mean the fun kind. I would like to kick someone to the office here and then kick back myself.” He coughed.
“But going all in with you? I see your bluff.” He blew smoke right in her face. “You got moxy, kid, but that's not enough to cut it as broker. All I see is a dame who ran off and then tries to talk big. You gotta prove you got what it takes; experience, ambition, the will to get your hands dirty. Show you got a full house, and no bats in the attic” he said as he pointed at the side of his head. “Maybe then I’ll reconsider.”