[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/h5xf31C.png[/img][/center][hr][i][b]//Night 0 | Location:[/b] Nameless Forest - Clearing[/i]

[sub][@OwO][@AThousandCurses][/sub]
It was not form that determined effect, but effect that guided form. Inventions did not come from matter, but from idea. A desire. And if that was the case, then how necessary was a defined form? Given the proper [i]tool[/i], what need was there for a reasonable cause to generate an effect?

Her fingertips burned, glowing with the light of her core once more. She could feel the energy building, peeling out from her fingernails, as her mind formed the trajectory. With a swing of her hand, Rin drew a line in the night air, one and a half meters in length. An arc, in truth. A crescent, like a moon.

The release was near-instant, a flash of light slicing through the air!

But what was novel for Rin was common for the monsters. The Long-Tailed intercepted, its blade clashing against that energy construct before it exploded, impotent! A failed attack? Nay. She could see it. Her blade had been shattered, but [i]its[/i] blade had been chipped, repelled back by the self-same explosion!

And whereas Rin became formless, Shun became Formula One.

She had always been energy personified. Her parents had joked about her heart being an engine before she ever got her moped. Always forward, never back. So long as [i]she[/i] wasn’t the one who would get in trouble, there was no reason to stop. Her body burned, from the pain and from the heat, blood steaming out from her multitude of injuries. She had been faster than she ever was, once. And now? She was faster still, to the point that her mind couldn’t even keep up with her actions.

Shun’s head slammed into her adversary in one step, and in the next step, the two reached the depths of the treeline, both of them smashing through the terrain before the sheer force of the consecutive impacts wrenched the two of them apart. It had been so much faster than the excitable girl had thought. So much more [i]forceful[/i]! Her legs felt numb, forced beyond even superhuman limits to achieve the effect of a truck slamming into a teenager.

But it had been enough.

The blood that coated her face was not hers, and the beast before her was still stunned, its lower jaw hanging on one hinge. A familiar choice presented itself once more.

Rin was out there. Alone now.

Would Shun finish off this crippled monster, or return to assist her classmate?

[sub][@baraquiel][@Yankee][@Vertigo][@Cu Chulainn][@Nakushita][/sub]

This was his weight to bear. The iron hot and burning, but controlled still with a purpose. Masato could not surrender it after all, the responsibility of being the Student Council President, of being a leader, of being a shepherd. Of being someone who had to be [i]better[/i].

Hana lead the way, her pen-sized flashlight carving a swathe through the darkness. Daisuke brought up the rear, filled with an energy that was at once determined and nervous. Masato stayed in the center, the one most capable of responding to any other threads. And though he had tried to take on Yukiko’s burden as well, she ignored him.

No, ignore perhaps may have been too harsh a term here. She looked like she had something to say, but in the end, didn’t say it. A stupid question, perhaps.

Together, the band slipped off sideways, leaving the chaos of battle behind for a trek into the unknown. Seeking safety, in a world that could not guarantee even a sliver of it.

For Ayana, that meant a slow death. Her body was firmer than the ground so she wasn’t crushed by the earth, but that was all. She was suffocating. Her thoughts growing hazy, her struggle depriving her body of more oxygen. Her limbs were numb, blood vessels constricted by the impossible weight. All she could do was hope for the best, but what was there to hope for? She couldn’t even see where her classmates had gone. If they had fought, there were still two hulkphants that were still lumbering about. If they had ran, that meant she was now alone.

She wasn’t the brightest. Wasn’t the strongest either. Back in elementary school, she’d be called a clumsy idiot by other kids, while her teacher made her out to be a troublemaker and her father thought of her as a little disaster. Banned from the kitchen after too many incidents with knives. Sitting out from home economics classes after too many incidents with needles. Banned, for fear that there was something that would happen to her that she couldn’t recover from.

Was this it? Did anyone even [i]know[/i] she was here?

Kogen did.

He climbed quickly, hands finding easier purchase around the thick fur of his mount. His legs were too short to wrap around anything, but he could squeeze his thighs together at least, pincer it between the fat around the spine. And with a yank of the [i]reins[/i], the image was complete! The One-Eyed Devil, mounting a mountain of a beast, commanding it to charge at its prone brethren!

That delusion lasted half a second, before the monster stood up on its hindlegs. Turned around.

Fell on its back, straight upon the charred remains of the bus.

He had seen it once with Masato, smashed into the ground by superior strength and mass. He had seen it again with Ayana, flattened into the earth by superior strength and mass. Now? Kogen too experienced it, the weight of an entire body dropping his whole body through charred steel and melted rubber, finishing with an impact that flattened him whole. His hands came away with but loose fur as the monster rose, the force that he took still jarring his brain, and before the Devil could rise once more, the hulkphant’s jaws opened.

Teeth. So much teeth. A tunnel of teeth, each rotating like a nightmare of a cement mixer. Wholly unrecognizable from the mouth of a dog, the mouth of a wolf.

And snapped shut.

The only thing that prevented Kogen from becoming K ogen were two things: his arms, pressed against the upper jaw to prevent it from closing fully. But that too, was a slow death. How long until his arms lost their strength? How long, until he ran out of blood?
How long, until his mind gave in and accepted a death that could at least be quick?

How long, until Asahi couldn’t dodge anymore?

His mind could keep up, but his body couldn’t, and the situation he thrust himself in demanded both. Beneath the hulkphants, he spun and slashed, a pink-colored gale. At times, the fang-dagger tore out tufts of fur and skin. At times, the fang-dagger ripped into fat, leaving raw gashes. At times, the fang-dagger drew blood, scattering like petals.

But they were shallow wounds, compared to the threat of each concussive stomp that Asahi had to dodge. He felt the secondary impact even as he avoided the strike itself, the air rippling against his skin and clothes, the upturned soil scattering into his hair. He couldn’t make space like this, couldn’t get [i]out[/i] from beneath the beast. It simply followed him, simply redoubled its efforts to crush him in a single blow, like how one would pursue a rat or a mosquito.

And he was running out of air.

Through his narrowing vision, he could see Kunio pick up Sasuke, carry the unmoving boy away. A spot of relief, perhaps. Could see the rest of the fighting that still had to be done. Kogen’s legs, dangling out from a hulk-phant’s mouth, as that delusional idiot struggled to accomplish something. Ayana’s form, completely gone from beneath a hulk-phant’s body, flattened and suffocating.

And Asahi himself. Each step sending another twinge of pain up his  calves. Each swing reminding him how inadequate a dagger was when his foe was so titanic.

A risk needed to be taken.

The forge needed to be fed.