[center][h3]Abandoned Subway - Gunkin Junction[/h3]
Raz’s [@Truthhurts22], Sakura’s [@Zoey Boey], Peach, Luka, Dexio, Sina[/center]

Together Luka Platoon charged forth to assist their fellow Scarlet Guardians in battle. As the team spread out on their way in, Sina helped pave the way with ice shots from her arm cannon, aiming not for the monstrous Gunkin Fisher’s shaggy fur or masked head but the red-tinted tank of simmering, sludgy oil on its back. Some of her shots went wide or hit one of its spines instead, but the sudden cold she introduced both siphoned off heat and weakened the glass as her shots piled up.

Peach slowed down once she reached a comfortable mid-range, far enough to react in time to the Other’s vicious strikes and dangerous oil sprays, but not so far that her Scatterboom lost its bite. Mr. Grimm’s revolver made an appearance as well, and the princess put it to use hammering the Gunkin Fisher’s hairy hide while her shotgun cooled down.

Naturally, Dexio rushed past both ladies to take the Other head-on. With an armored defender on hand to take the Fisher’s attention, Arashi could abandon the hit-and-run role of evasion tank and focus on the ‘hit’ part. While Dexio amped up his Seismokinesis to keep the ground constantly shifting beneath the Other’s feet, forcing it to fight to keep its footing almost as much as him, Arashi sped around as a glowing pink blur. Peach could barely even see her chainsaw as it cut streaks through the air; only by the gashes that ripped open in the monster’s torso could she be sure that Arashi passed by.

Arashi needed breaks, however, between usages of Hypervelocity, and that’s where Luka came in. He repositioned constantly with his Teleportation to avoid the Gunkin Fisher’s business end and escape its focus in order to bring his hammer down on its exposed flanks. With an enemy of this size, the savvy and mobile fighter enjoyed plenty of openings. More than anything else, Luka focused the raw power of his weighty weapon on the Other’s metal forelimbs. By denting the bars that constituted them again and again, he could gradually warp its arms to cripple both its offense and mobility.

Most of Luka Platoon naturally assumed that the wounded member of Seto Platoon would be fine under his role model’s protection, but like a true hero Sakura wasn’t going to take any chances. Her sudden appearance and the bespectacled boy’s side took him by surprise, though indignation came quickly and naturally to him, as if it were a default state. “The hell are you-!?” he griped as she took hold of him, pulling him away from the fight. “I can still-!” His protests came to a sudden halt as the sensation of restoration suffused him. Mistaking Sakura’s Tag Out for conventional healing, he seized his batons, ready for another round. “Don’t expect me to thank you.”

“Shiden, wait! Just listen to her, will you?” his commanding officer told him. Seto looked back over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed.

Shiden bristled. He couldn’t back down, not when he had something to prove. “Captain, this is nothing. I'm not just gonna watch from the sidelines!”

“I know.” Seto fixed his protégé with an intense look. “But I need you to work smarter, not harder. Take a few moments, reorient yourself, and come at the Other from a fresh perspective. That’ll impress me a lot more than blindly rushing forward.”

A comment like that from anyone else would’ve stoked Shiden’s fury, but he couldn’t bring himself to contradict the man he idolized. “...Right,” he finally agreed. “Don’t count me out, though. I’ll be back before you know it.” Without looking at Sakura, he backed off, maneuvering around the battle in a wide berth as he formulated a winning strategy. His next move would need to make up for this lost time, or he knew his battle rank would leave him bitterly unsatisfied.

Meanwhile, Sakura joined the fray with gusto, landing a strong kick before getting beneath the Gunkin Fisher to sear its belly with fireballs. The opening she made gave Sam a chance to send her spiders forth and jump in the Other to keep it occupied, while Akira laid into it with his mind-bending illusions to debilitate it with different status effects. Still, this monstrosity was nothing if not tenacious. It wasn’t going to just stand there with someone directly beneath it and take its lumps. The Gunkin Fisher jumped straight up and came down in a room-shaking body splash, then seized its head-hoses with its center hands and took aim at all the Scarlet Guardians in its proximity to bathe them -and the whole area- with steaming-hot oil. Dexio got coated, Akira took cover, Sam lost some spiders, and Arashi -moving too fast for her own good- slipped on the oil and went into a headlong tumble. She came to a stop in a pile of rubble, her expression more annoyed than hurt. “Ugh, this is too much work…”

At that point, however, both team leads stormed the scene. Seto, no longer burdened by Shiden, went on the offensive with Lucian’s Atmokinesis brewing up a storm around him. Lightning-quick, the Septentrion’s twin swords slashed, sliced, and stabbed in a deadly flurry, and Luka -borrowing Sina’s Cryokinesis- joined him in an all-out Teleportation flurry. Luka and Seto matched one another blow for blow in a spectacular thundersnowstorm. Their bombastic assault gave the other team members the time they needed to recover, and by the time the Gunking Fisher blew through the cloud cover to push the two back, all ten Scarlet Guardians stood ready to mete out some serious justice.

Seto clanged his blades together in a shower of sparks. “All troops…!” 

“...Take it out!” Luka cried, hurling his hammer to begin the final act.

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIOUIWb-Wlw&ab_channel=Qylex[/youtube][/center]