The effect of Nina's ice beam was straightforward and immediately useful, much to her own relief. For all she knew, the slime could have been adapted to remain liquid even in the vacuum of space. With her mana just over half burnt and her mission just under half accomplished by her own estimate, another wasted opportunity might have made this one a bit tough.

"Is maybe more effective than I intended," she remarked, adjusting her goggles to Witchsight to see if, alongside Ashley, she could learn anything from observing their captive comrades. She paid particular attention to Luna. Though she'd only met her a handful of times, she was the one person for which Nina might have a solid enough baseline to compare to and find out what the slime and its containing machinery might have done to her, and what it was doing to her now.

"Aren't you the dickhead that tried to roofie and then kidnap me or something?" Rika's expression was incredulous in response to the purple alien's demands. "Here's some diplomacy for you." She pointed at a section of ship nearby, which began to groan. "Stop flying away or I'll keep blowing up your stupid ship!" To emphasize her point, she released the spell, causing another hole to violently rip itself in the hull (hopefully, anyway.) "Seriously, aren't aliens supposed to study Earth culture or something? If you want someone to come home with you, you don't just grab them. What the hell?" She didn't really believe that Tim was going to somehow be swayed by some teenager berating him, but she also wasn't really thinking about anything but how confused and frustrated she was at the moment.

If she had known that such an offhand remark would get Dan to kick things into another gear she would have said something sooner. No sooner had her claim about Marrie dating a Dolphin man that was cooler than a Shark man left her lips Dan had gone into action. What she wasn’t quite happy about was the fact that he decided to use her head as a springboard to propel himself upwards and towards the ceiling. It hadn’t been easy to steady herself with the much larger man shark using her head to get the leverage he needed for his jump. If it hadn’t been for her physiology having some qualities of a Jellyfish she likely would have been put right into the floor. Right as his fishy feet left her squishy dome two frilly jellyfish like tendrils emerged from her back and wrapped around Dan’s ankle like a tether as she let his momentum and force drag her along with him for the ride.

She wasn’t about to let him off the hook that easily, plus wherever he was trying to go would likely be quite important. “You are lucky that I’m not your ordinary esper or you might have caved my head in with those filthy fin’s…so where exactly are you off to in such a hurry…worried that your crush might be kissing a bottlenose?” She questioned him with slight bemusement. She knew he couldn’t keep quiet about Marrie, but his reaction to her remark only further instilled the belief that the shark had some sort of crush on the freelancer. One that at first had been a hindrance, but now that it had gotten him moving at a much higher pace it had become an advantage. One that she would have to keep in mind for the future if she ever needed more effort or energy from the strange orange alien Carcharodon carcharias.

Nukkelina’s expression persisted in lack of said expression, even when Jack berated her for leaving the job of defeating the slime queen only partially finished. The Puppetress rolled her eyes: it seemed that belligerent oafs existed among all kinds of Espers and not just her organization. Regardless, she was not offended by the starry-eyed shark, and refocused her effort on the slime queen as it stretched and launched a cube at the Esper. Nukkelina sprang into action, her strings tightening as Ser Pekka Puupää Esquire was directed to climb up the tilting floor, hunched down and crawling on all fours with bent limbs and high vigor, like a giant insect in the guise of a man.

Right after the cube was tossed, Pekka jumped, a claw raised with the intent of severing the arm with a savage slash, followed up with more slashes at any other slimy appendages. To ensure the slime wouldn’t immediately regenerate, Nukkelina imbued the brutish doll’s attacks with damage and flotation power, ensuring the slime scattered into tiny levitating globules, unable to reconverge.

Well, that worked out well, then. It seemed that Ice espers had a lot of utility as a rule, rather than just Maiden.

But while Orion and Nina focused, rightfully, on the captive espers, Marrie's paranoia chose to strike. She'd keep her eye on the 'defeated' half of the slime. After all, in her experience and with her luck, the thing would probably thaw and have doubled the number of obstacles to freeing the others.

Not to mention the possibility of other captives that may be in the next room.

Rika did not understand the layout of the ship, but even a broken clock was right twice a day. The seemingly ordinary chunk of wall broke and fell away, revealing the alien in question. Tim was seated in front of controls with the same inorganic design as the inside of the ship. His head moved, slowly, to look at the destructive little esper.

"I have studied your culture." He said with all the calm of a disappointed father trying to suppress his rage. "Do you know what I discovered?" He rose to his feet. "That your kind would rather lie than tell the truth, that you are happiest when you have more than you deserve, and more than everyone can share equally." He brandished his spear. "For centuries your kind have preyed upon each other, enslaved one another, either through contract, law, or subjugation through violence. Even with the mercy I’ve shown you thus far, violence is your answer to this dilemma." He chuckled darkly, even as the ship continued to turn sideways. "Fine by me!"

The wall of slime pushed out of the holes, sprawling a network of tentacles that stitched themselves together like a net. It began to get dark around Rika as the sunlight was filtering through thicker and thicker layers of slime, and Tim lunged out of his newly created opening and soared towards his opponent.



So it was a waiting game.

The ground was only becoming more slanted, to the point where Mika had to dig her claws into the floor to prevent herself from sliding. Her eyes shifted to Marrie, who was trying to break up the cooled slime chunks into even smaller slime chunks. She raised an eyebrow, but would never really fault anyone for being cautious. Though given the look on her face, this was more something done out of frantic desperation than a cool head.

Nina’s goggles verified what she already knew. The ship glowed with arcane energy, and she needed to squint just to make looking into her goggles bearable. Her current setting couldn’t tell her if Luna was real or not, but she was giving off an arcane signature like she’d expect of an esper. It was hard to tell if the slime had an arcane signature or not with the ship glowing like the sun, but it was mild enough that Luna’s magic was able to register. She couldn’t see much more through her goggles.

Ashley’s vision was also flooded, but it was all information on her tactical goggles. Much of the information she already knew. It was a monster, it was weak to arcane damage sources, its soft body gave it a resistance to crushing-like attacks, it used tentacles to defend itself, but then the interesting bits came in. This creature was more than just lab equipment, it behaved as the ship’s central nervous system. While it was used to analyze and study subjects, damaging it too much would adversely affect the ship. Otherwise, it seemed like it had the ability to sap the mana out of whatever it touched, and was able to subdue targets by keeping them in a coma so long as it was allowed to enter their lungs, at which point it took over breathing for them. Care would need to be taken if it was killed outright, as its victims would risk suffocation if they weren’t extracted fast enough.

The creature spasmed, and began to grow. Or rather, draw itself in from other corners of the ship. Its color changed, the chamber trembled, and the tendrils in the hallway darted in behind the espers.



Dan ignored the jellywoman’s words, or at least he didn’t appear to react to them. As the incline of the ship got worse, he less ran and more slid towards his destination. Where that would be would soon reveal itself. After sliding a certain distance, he swung into a side chute that was just a bit narrower than the duct they had been in previously. It was very dark in here, but there was enough light to see the encroaching slimes. Though Dan wasn’t too worried about them.

Until he got to a particularly big mass. He stopped running and picked up the jelly woman and pointed her at the cyan growth that was growing out of control. "Hit it with your most powerful spell." He commanded her.

Meanwhile, the other two espers were left to contend with the slime queen. Jack wasn’t fairing well against the increasing incline, and the block attack nearly crushed her. However, Pekka was in a better position to attack. While the slime monster was only distracted for a moment, it was enough for the doll to land a blow on the slime queen’s other arm, and the added magical energy was enough to sever it. However, it wasn’t enough to kill it outright.

There was a lot less floating inside the slime queen now. She didn’t even really look like Penny anymore. Her arms were missing, and her head had elongated into an appendage to hold the massive cube. But now it was in close proximity to its attacker.

The slime monster opened up like a clam and swallowed Pekka. A green cylinder of slime now surrounded the doll. It’s body thickened, making controlling Pekka more difficult, but worse, its body twisted into itself. The strings that bound Nukkelina to Pekka were drawing her in, all while the slime monster prepared for a mighty blow. The massive cube was wrenched out from the hallway, and was being swung like a flail on top of the girl’s head.

This was bad. Not only would harming the slime further also further harm the ship (perhaps even to the extent of complete structural failure), it had also gotten inside the captives’ lungs. Trying to extricate the captives with care seemed the best course of action, yet, it would also take time, and that was a resource in exceedingly short supply. Even now, Ashley could feel the ship shudder as attacks were made against its outer hull, while closer at hand, the slime tendrils had redoubled their efforts to attack the high-tech heroine and her allies. And, of course, the floor also continued to tilt at an ever more extreme angle…

I have to try and vaporize the slime in their lungs myself, the Knight of Tomorrow resolved. It’s risky, and I don’t know if I can hit everyone with one shot, but it’s the only chance we have!

“I think I can free the captives without harming them,” Ashley told the other espers as she aimed her techno-wand at the greatest cluster of captives, its tip glowing with ever-increasing power. “But I need you to hold those slime tendrils back for a little longer!”

Oh, good. He was spewing some philosophical bullshit about the evils of mankind to justify his actions generally falling under the category of "total thundercunt." Was she fighting an alien in a ship rising above Pax Septimus, or arguing with someone on social media? "Fuck you, kidnapping people is a dick move!" came Rika's eloquent reply, as wires quickly wound themselves about her again. The alien had, conveniently, vacated the pilot's seat, and while she was fairly certain this thing required at least a CDL to drive legally, she suspected nobody was going to pull her over in the weird-ass cube spaceship she was probably about to crash.

The wires wrapping around Rika also began to sprout from the walls of the now-exposed cockpit. Of course, she didn't strictly have a backup plan if this was too slow. . . but maybe if she just let this dickhead skewer her in that case, she'd pop away like she did before. Yeah, yeah that was probably a good plan. Probably. Attempt to pilot something not even designed for human hands, that she's never seen before now, while relying on arcane abilities she doesn't understand to survive being impaled by an angry termite man with a vendetta against humanity, or worse, being subject to whatever the fuck weird experiments he wanted to do to her.

"Tch!"

Nukkelina scoffed as Pekka was enveloped by the gluttonous queen of slime, a rare show of emotion for the doll–like Esper. She tightened her grip on the strings, now holding them in her wrists like a pair of reins as she first attempted resisting the pull of the queen. However, she immediately realized she would not win a tug-of-war against such an enormous monster. With a flourish, she opened her hands, and spun with her arms spread to her sides, letting the threads trail in a wave-like pattern, her eyes closed.

"Hmph...Even like this, you are a fool, Asimov..." Nukkelina spoke as the monster queen's arm raised, ready to strike.

"...For you have already fallen into my trap."

With a twirl, she opened her eyes, and the threads shone with red light.

At that moment, the slime queen's central body bulged at a diagonal angle, and then began bending, twisting and churning in a spiral pattern, before the entire body burst in a great explosion of slime.



Pekka launched itself up: it's arms were up with the palms together, wrapped in spiraling threads across it's entire body, having turned itself into a drill, or more accurately, like a blender. It had spun around, letting it's bulk drive the surrounding shaprened wires into the slime body, carving it up like a worm through delicious pudding.

Nina quickly came to the conclusion that any further information she might glean by continuing to blind herself was not worth the effort, but she remembered to switch back to Illusion Begone rather than shutting the goggles off. Her flight note began to waver, setting her sliding down the still-tilting floor toward the slime's main body. Now she would have to brace for impact in more ways than one. "Time for Hail Mary, as they say." With a grunt, she turned her downward slide into a diagonal wall run down the upturned floor toward Ashley. Tendrils pursued her from the hall—so much for keeping an escape route open. Positioning herself between Ashley and the tendrils, she cast an AoE Shield note to cover herself, Ashley, and as many of their allies as she could encompass within her 10-foot radius, then she turned to face her pursuers.

Kneading her hands like she was forming a snowball, she grinned. "After this mission, you will say, Nina is the bomb! Wahaha~!" In her palm was a chunk of ice formed to resemble a small naval mine, and with a short wind-up, she pitched her cryogenic explosive up into the mass of tendrils. This, she hoped, would have something closer to the intended range of effect, and their allies would not perish with organs full of ice.

It wasn’t ideal having to travel behind the behemoth of a man shark through the duct, and eventually the even more narrow side chute. At the end of the day it was still better than trying to fight or trudge their way through the many slimes or potential traps. So she couldn’t complain about that too much as she felt like they were finally making real progress for once. Keeping pace with him as he led the way, unaware of where he was headed exactly, but it beat standing around while he searched his feelings.

Coming to an abrupt stop when she noticed Dan doing so when the giant mass of slime was blocking their way ahead. She had very little time to make a remark, or even come up with a thought before the muscular shark swept her up off of her feet and picked her up like some kind of weapon as he pointed her at the cyan mass that was rapidly expanding. Slowly turning her head and her reddish eyes towards him as stared directly at him wordlessly for a moment. Not quite sure how to react to being picked up in such a manner as her unamused expression stayed upon her face. After a moment passed she finally broke her silence “Unfortunately I do not have any powerful destructive spell’s, my entire repertoire revolves around wearing down my opponent over time, not any single big blow” giving him a very honest assessment of her own abilities, all while not addressing the current predicament she was in.

Turning her gaze away towards the cyan growth she let out a small sigh. “With that said, I suppose I can try one thing…” her tendrils emerging from her back as she fanned them out to reveal all six of her jellyfish like appendages. Once she had them fanned out she shot them forward to jab the tips of them into the cyan growth to inject her poisonous venom into them. She wasn’t sure how slime would react to poison, as she had never tried to use her abilities on anything like it before now. It wasn’t like she had much of a choice, or another option to go with as she didn’t pack any explosive or powerful attacks in her arsenal. She found the slow, grinding, wearing down approach to be far more worthwhile and consistent. Rather than risk it all on a few powerful attacks that would leave one vulnerable if they didn’t defeat the opponent.

Jack's reaction to seeing the huge, dense cube being flung straight at her was, just as anyone's would be, to get out of the way. She probably should have expected that the slime would just let go of its weapon and find a new one, but since she didn't all she could do at the surprise attack was to dive to one side. Now inside the room again instead of in its threshold, the ship's listing flattened Jack against the wall while the cube tore through the hall. The sound of wrenching metal -or whatever it was actually made of- was very unpleasant, especially so close by.

She made to push herself up, but found that the combination of gravity and poor surface for footholds was impeding her. "Tch, come on," she said to herself, glaring at the slime queen and Nukkelina who were more or less unaffected. Stupid physics defying monsters and monster-adjacents! Not to mention Dan and his squishy groupie had evacuated at some point, through some hole in the wall only the alien shark new about. They were probably headed deeper into the ship, so Jack's attempt to stall them had failed.

Jack didn't like failing. She had ideals to live up to.

So first order of business was to stop letting herself be subject to the space ship's movement. She got her feet under her and stood, sheer willpower keeping her upright until she braced herself in the seam between the floor and the wall. At that time Nukkelina's puppet had been swallowed up and the jello monster was angling to flatten the puppeteer herself. Though Jack felt no need to save the other esper, she didn't want to let Nukkelina take all the credit for defeating the slime... so if Jack's own attack happened to help Nukkelina avoid being pancaked while she spun to urge her puppet to attack, then lucky her.

When Jack's spell ran once again to her heels she kicked off of her place against the side of the room, hurtling towards the slime queen with her instrument primed like a lance. She aimed to tear through the slime queen's head, lengthened as it was to hold its makeshift weapon. She doubted there was any kind of brain in that head, but at the very least she could slice through the slime itself and cut off the new appendage.

As Jack sailed through, eventually landing on the other side, she heard Nukkelina shout out something she couldn't understand but could definitely infer was like the name of a finishing move.

"W-what the hell?" she sputtered. Was she overwhelmed by the cringe? No, wait... Jack pointed a finger at Nukkelina, her cheeks slightly pink and her golden eyes a little more sparkly. "Hey! You can't just shout cool move names like you're some anime hero! Not fair!"

Damn it! I should start doing that again too!