[center][h3]Quarantine Valley - Redshift Cascade[/h3]
Level 6 Goldlewis (81/60) Level 4 Sandalphon (46/40)
Karin’s [@Zoey Boey], Blazermate, Roland, and Susie’s [@Archmage MC], Geralt and Zenkichi’s [@Multi_Media_Man]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2669[/center]

[i]Leave no man behind.[/i] That was a mission statement that had shaped the whole military career of Goldlewis Dickinson, from gung-ho cadet full of youthful vigor to grizzled battlefield captain, holding fast in the face of devastating loss. Did that principle apply here? Maybe not. These Hermits were never ‘his’ men, as their masked leader just made abundantly clear. Now, they weren’t even men anymore. Just crystalized husks, animated and compelled to slaughter by some otherworldly malice. Yet his body had moved as if of his own accord, compelled by a force even stronger: the will of preservation. And so Goldlewis flung himself away from his allies into the newly-birthed throng of murderous aberrations, using a stunt that was hard enough to pull off let alone make count, to save a stranger who moments ago would’ve been his enemy. Almost without thinking, he sacrificed a small part of himself to form the friend heart needed to free Mudrock in her final moments as herself. And against all odds, it worked.

Of course, that was just the beginning. Mudrock might be saved from aberration, but the rest of her crew hadn’t been so lucky, and the monsters were more than willing to make sure no living thing walked away from this rooftop alive. It was up to the Seekers to make sure that didn’t happen, and they hardly needed Sandalphon’s call to action in order to grasp the situation’s urgency. Heeding the veteran’s call, Geralt booked it in the direction Iron went, and despite the dangerous close quarters that lay ahead of them Hal sent his drone in after him. These aberrations were a clear and present danger, but detaining Iron -the only link the Seekers had right now to Reunion- was still the mission objective, after all. Everyone else could handle the monsters.

Everyone got to work, Roland attacking first. Still emotionally charged from the skirmish in the Astral Realm, he could start dealing damage right out of the gate, and his assault kept the enemies at bay while Blazermate and Susie scrambled to respond. Feeling resentful over the betrayal maybe, Zenkichi allowed the axe-bladed aberration to whale on the despondent Hermit leader while he lectured Kyle about shortcuts. He wasn’t heartless, though, and after a moment his Persona rained down Almighty devastation across the rooftop, throwing the gang of aberrations into chaos before jumping into the fray alongside Roland. On the far side of the mob, Goldlewis got just the moment he needed to extend a hand to Mudrock and lift her up to her feet. “No time to explain,” the veteran told her. “We gotta fight for our lives!” He could not see the grim expression on the woman’s face beneath her helmet, but she seemed to understand the life-or-death situation, and was willing to do whatever it took to survive.

With that settled, Goldlewis led by example. The aberrations on his side of the mob had regrouped, and now half a dozen charged him at once, the air filled with their grotesque screams. The veteran roared back, his coffin seized and upheld like a massive shield that he drove forward to scatter the mutants like bowling pins in an unstoppable [url=https://i.imgur.com/kEEVJfI.png]Wild Assault[/url].

[center][hider=For Goldlewis]New Power:
[b][url=https://i.imgur.com/kEEVJfI.png]Wild Assault[/url][/b]
An advancing, hard-hitting special move that uses up half of Goldlewis’ Burst. Strike and projectile invincible on startup. Can be canceled into but cannot itself be canceled. Causes guard crush on hit and drains the opponent’s burst, especially if charged. [/hider][/center]

His attackers hit the ground en masse, dazed and left floundering by the weighty impact. A few more turned at the commotion, a filthwing archer among them taking aim, only for the lid of the coffin to fly off and smack the filthwing out of the air. From the cosmic void within the coffin burst a handful of arms that seized most of the downed aberrations. Then, with help from Goldlewis, the UMA bodily flung them over the edge of the rooftop to plummet down to the streets of Quarantine Valley far below. Whether they lived or died, they weren’t his problem any longer. The other aberrations surged forward as the UMA’s arms receded into the coffin, but Mudrock charged in to meet them. Using Crag Splitter, she brought her hammer down hard enough to fracture both the aberrations and the ground beneath them, stunning one or two in the process. 

“Duck!” Goldlewis barked. When she did, his Behemoth Typhoon whirled over her head. Its crushing weight smashed two of the monsters’ upper bodies apart like ceramic, while knocking the other two down. “Crumble!” The veteran went to finish them off, while a larger aberration with an axeblade came at Mudrock from the side. It swung at her with timber-felling force, but the juggernaut stood fast and intercepted it with her hammer. After blocking the strike, she forced her attacker off-balance, then took out its knee with a horizontal swing and an unsettling [i]crunch[/i]. An upward swing to its head launched it off its feet, and when Mudrock followed up with an overhead slam, the aberration was destroyed. Meanwhile, Goldlewis had run into a new problem: the aberration that had been Kabal, still possessed of the masked man’s superspeed. It raced around him, keeping him under pressure with quick attacks from every angle, until a brief pause telegraphed its next rush a little too much. “Hold your…” When the monster burst toward him, he stepped forward and delivered a massive cowboy punch that clotheslined the aberration, knocking it head over heels as it flew off the edge behind him.

By then, the two sides had just about pincered all the aberrations between them. Supported by Susie’s missiles and Blazermate’s healing, the others had also made quick work of the aberrations. Karin had dispatched the most dangerous one personally, the aberration that had been Bernavas. Though wounded thanks to his former friends, Kyle was still alive, albeit slumped down on his knees. “It’s all over…” he muttered. “We’re through…”

Brows furrowed, Goldlewis looked around. The aberrations might be gone, but the team’s troubles were far from over. He hadn’t noticed it while fighting, but the Hermits’ aberration had thrown something out of whack. All across the rooftop, patches of the ground were in flux, shifting unnaturally or bleeding crimson energy from glitchy wounds. The air itself seemed to crackle in places, and as Goldlewis watched, small outcrops of red geometric crystal began pushing through into this plane of existence. His eyes went wide, and bared his teeth in a frightened grimace. “Aw, hell!” His gaze landed on Mudrock, and he pointed at Kyle. “Can you get him back to Sector V?” She nodded, and as she jogged over to him, the gate that everyone fled from the Astral Plane through suddenly tore open once more. Everyone beheld a vision of [url=https://i.imgur.com/ER2Ewbo.png]Tartarus[/url] with terrifying clarity, followed shortly by its massive coal-black arm reaching through the Gate to claw at the ordinary world. As if in response the crystal growths began to accelerate, and the Gate itself to widen.

“It’s a Redshift Cascade!” he roared, memories of the catastrophe in the Sector 07 highways flooding back to him. “We gotta haul ass outta here! Move, move, move!”

By that time, Geralt and Hal had made it through the gauntlet left for them by Iron. Though waylaid and obstructed, they were still in hot pursuit, but as Geralt burst from the apartment complex to catch up to Hal’s drone they both got a good look at the disaster unfolding down where the chase began. The latent data corruption in this part of Quarantine Valley had been kickstarted by the massive red matter spike introduced by the Hermits’ aberration, and to disastrous effect. For a few moments, the backdrop itself changed like a TV channel. Suddenly it wasn’t city buildings in the distance, but an off-white haze surrounding the formations of the Astral Plane, complete with red matter cubes afloat in the sky. They could see large spikes of red matter crystals cropping up all over the place, in some cases blocking off or breaking up bridges, though floating platforms started to appear as well. More Gates ripped open, disgorging Aellos and other chimeras.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/A3akFFm.png[/img][/center]

“Oh man…” Hal piped up weakly. “Don’t tell me Blue Evolve caused all this…?”

Sandalphon’s voice cut through the haze. “I see you,” she said. “Everyone, use this shot to follow them.” From her distant vantage point, the archangel fired near Geralt and Hal’s position, showing everyone else where they needed to go. “There’s nothing we can do about this cascade. Hurry, before you succumb to redshift, and Iron gets away.” 

As bad a taste as it left in the heroes’ mouths, she was right. Geralt and Hal resumed the chase, charging through the condemned upper floor of a building where a couple panicked squatters were trying to gather their belongings to flee. “Oh, good, there’re still survivors,” Hal breathed, not realizing that by the time Goldlewis and the others made it up here, there would be new aberrations waiting for them instead. After exiting back out onto another [url=https://i.imgur.com/ZcHsV8L.png]highrise rooftop[/url], a loud reverberation swept over Quarantine Valley, originating from a spot at the edge where it met Detroit. There, the two could see an explosion of pink energy like lightning, which continued to swirl around some sort of mass wedged between the perimeter buildings. “What the hell is that!?” Hal wondered, close to panicking. “None of this makes sense! But I’d bet my life it has something to do with Iron. “We’ve gotta find her!”

In between them and that point of interest lay the only place Iron could have gone: the building on the other side of this rooftop. Before Geralt and Hal could get there, however, a Gate burst open above the empty helipad, and a humanoid chimera with curved horns, red armor, and a huge flaming poleaxe dropped through. [url=https://i.imgur.com/TSVMZpw.png]Diomedes[/url] spotted Geralt and leaped down to challenge him with an angry roar.

As it approached, however, there came a shimmer of divine light, and Sandalphon warped in to stand alongside the Witcher. “I lost sight of you when you went inside,” she mentioned matter-of-factly, crouching down with the barrel of her gunstaff trained on the chimera. “It seems I was right to come in person.” She fired, her shot shaving off one of Diomedes’ horns and cutting a furrow through one side of the chimera’s helmet. With a slight sigh she stood, then jumped backward, taking up a support position with her weapon held like a staff. “Please continue.”

That encounter delayed Geralt, though if the other Seekers caught up fast enough, they could help. Still, the team hadn’t lost the trail while the scent of Iron’s sweat -not to mention her fear- hung in the air. At the head of the pack, Geralt led the way into and through the next building. While rushing through the dingy, trash-littered halls they ran into civilians bolting the other way, who stumbled and in some cases collided with the Seekers as they fled. Sandalphon, who already had to stoop to fit in these corridors, wasn’t strong enough to shoulder past the runners and got tripped up several times. The scent trail led to a stairwell, which had a surprise aberration in it that jumped out when the door opened, and climbing those stairs led to a dark, quiet hall on the building’s top floor. “End of the line…” Hal muttered. After another moment, though, he suddenly raised his voice. “Look! Someone’s there!” he called out, forgetting that the others didn’t have his drone’s sensors. “Trying to ID ‘em…I think it’s Iron. Go, go, hurry!”

When Geralt reached the room he indicated, however, he found a sorrowful sight. Iron was dead, her body gradually dissolving into ashes atop a stained mattress on the floor. Beside her lay a sleek black [url=https://i.imgur.com/5Kz6lr6.png]pistol[/url]. “We’re too late,” Hal observed, his tone morose. “I guess that’d be her gun, then. I don’t see any signs of a struggle. Check her pockets, would you?” Within them Geralt found a strange keycard that Hal seemed to recognize. “That’s a passkey for the Zone 09 gate. Wait…Iron worked for the ARI?” When he got a blank stare, the technician explained. “The Aegis Research Institute. Supplier for Neuron. Take a look around the room, there may be something else we should see.”

Geralt quickly found the other clue: an open case surrounded by discarded vials. “Looks like all these vials are empty. That means someone must’ve…” Hal turned his drone to look back out at the hallway. “There was a security camera in this hall, right? Maybe it can answer a few questions for us.” When he hacked in, he quickly set up a 3D holographic reconstruction of its data. It showed Iron running into the hallway and slowing to a stop as [url=https://i.imgur.com/0Ajr5cA.jpg]another woman[/url] stepped out of the room she died in, holding a case. With a start, Hal realized who it was. “That’s Jena!” he exclaimed, referring to the woman on the wanted poster he’d shown everyone earlier. “Ugh, the audio is really rough. Must be all the corruption.” The two women seemed to talk briefly, until Iron sagged down like a puppet with its strings cut, and as Jena turned to leave, Iron lurched into the room. 

By this time, everyone had caught up, so everyone knew just who had been on the scene until mere moments ago. As they gathered, the sound of gunfire echoed through the building. “Could that be her?” Hal asked. “Let’s check it out!”

Everyone hurried through the building, exiting into what looked like an alley. “We’re still technically in Zone 09,” Hal told everyone. “Must’ve hit the outer wall by now though. We’re below Detroit.” After several back-and-forth turns, the alley finally [url=https://i.imgur.com/FY4IRG6.png]opened up[/url] into a large square courtyard, surrounded on all sides by buildings that lit the area with the glow of huge neon signs. Through a rift between two buildings on the left side, the Seekers could look out across Quarantine Valley, but the scene right in front of them demanded their attention. People were already fighting here, and not anyone the Seekers expected to see. The [url=https://i.imgur.com/e429h1k.jpg]enemies[/url], nine strong, resembled chimeras, but sleeker and more artificial in appearance, with silvery exoskeletons and purple energy instead of red. Fighting them were just two humans, both Lupo judging by their wolf ears and tails. [url=https://i.imgur.com/wwYNTCZ.png]One[/url] wore a dark blue pinstripe suit that matched his hair, his purple overcoat fluttering as he discharged his twin revolvers. By now, just about everyone should recognize the stoic, almost drab attire and pale golden thorns of the [url=https://i.imgur.com/OzBWCTo.png]other[/url] as she fought with a hammer-headed flail.

“The Judge,” Sandalphon observed, pausing at the entryway to the hidden underground plaza. “I do not know the other. Judging by his attire, a potential scion of an undercity crime family.”

As luck would have it, a bone-shattering slam to the jaw of a clawed Protolegion as she took it to the ground turned Penance the newcomers’ way, allowing her to spot them. “Oh, there you are,” she said wearily, wrenching her weapon free of the monster’s head with a [i]schlorp[/i]. “And at the worst possible time.”

“Or maybe the best possible time,” Vigil joked offhandedly. “The first dozen of these things were fun enough to toss around, but this bit is starting to wear thin.”

Penance dodged away from the lance of another Protolegion, wincing as she put too much weight on her wounded left leg. “I suppose it can’t be helped,” she muttered before raising her voice. “Would your cohort consider a truce?”

Bringing her gunstaff down, Sandalphon’s Angelic Praise sent out a divine ripple of healing light for the sake of all allies present, both old and new. “I would consent,” she suggested to the others. “Whatever’s going on is bigger than petty politics.”

“It’s us against the chimeras,” Goldlewis agreed, glowering at the enemies of mankind. Anderson had to be close. He readied his coffin. “Team, let’s help ‘em out.”

After kicking away her attacker, Penance gave a stiff nod of thanks, her health and her morale restored. She and Vigil made a break for the Seekers, joining their ranks to turn on the Protolegion threat together.