[img]https://i.imgur.com/mJqWtBQ.png[/img][hr]

Hizuki might've liked to respond to Rei's compliment, but the light girl was a bit preoccupied with not dying at the moment. Neither did she have time to consider why the miseria might be ignoring the dark girl entirely. Rei was a mystery that bore further investigation, for sure, but that investigation could wait until Hizuki was reasonably certain she and Hibusa were going to get out of this situation relatively unscathed. The burning sensation in her armor wasn't exactly a good omen for that outcome, and it made it harder to focus through the pain. [color=yellow][i]These things are [b]gross.[/b][/i][/color] She'd been trying not to consider that, either, given how the mangled flesh and foul odors made her want to hurl already. 

She yelped in pain when she was slammed off her imprisoned foe. SHOCK WAVE caught most of the damage, but the armor didn't exactly make it painless to get kicked around. Shrapnel flew off from the impact point as it disintegrated rather than pass the injury onto the Daybreak herself, something she was grateful for as another tengu began beating through it with its fleshy hammers. Hizuki hissed alongside her burning flesh when yet another disgusting lump of bile splattered against her exposed shoulder. Try as she might, she just wasn't able to overpower all three of these opponents at once without them letting her, and flashing warnings inside her helmet let her know that it wouldn't be long until she couldn't try. Time for more desperate measures. 

[color=yellow]"Tank Purge!"[/color] Her armor burst outwards in an explosion of light and flying metal, scattering debris around the area and flinging Hizuki skyward. Detonating an armor this early in the fight was bad, but she'd been left with little choice. SKY FIRE was still recharging, and would suffer for the lost airborne agility besides. SOLAR PRIESTESS wouldn't help against such melee-heavy fighters, and LUNAR DRAGON was for clearing chaff, which these weren't. That left one option, as she wasn't confident she could end the fight now, and wasn't about to run away. [color=yellow]"Mode: ARISE HEART, engage!"[/color]

She flew feet-first through another gate, switching around her armor once again. Her wings were replaced with a series of swordlike vanes, her armor covered most of her body (though with far from the bulk of SHOCK WAVE,) and her polearm, appearing only briefly, transformed once more into a hand-and-a-half sword. Curving beams of light lanced out from her new "wings," aiming to slice through the already-injured tengu as Hizuki prepared for the inevitable assault. [color=yellow]"Alright, then, come and get me!"[/color] Taking up a fighting stance, she readied herself to intercept a foe trying to catch her with another tongue, or remove the offending limb before one of them could kick her again with a superheated slash. Occupied as she was, the Daybreak was in no position to even notice other dark girls coming into view of her once more, including one she hadn't been introduced to yet. . .