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 sharpened 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!

Rika and Tim could exchange words for as long as they wanted. What really mattered was their actions.

As the sunlight dimmed around Rika, she prepared to cast a melody. It wasn’t something Tim was giving her much time to do, but the draconic esper was proving to be far speedier than her scaled body might suggest. It was clear that the alien was expecting a frontal assault, and had his weird mancatcher brandished and pointed at his target. Though Rika was not interested in a frontal assault, she wanted to get behind him.

Teleportation spells are powerful. Not just for moving to places that one could never reach normally, but also to evade attacks. However, they were also slow, and unbeknownst to Rika, required additional time to activate. Her melody had manifested. Magical metal bent behind Tim’s back, but they wouldn’t receive Rika before Tim’s attack.

Or at least he would have, if she didn’t miraculously teleport out of danger again, just like she had last time. Though Rika could feel that whatever had saved her before had been spent, and it would not save her a third time. This was unfortunate, as Tim had little difficulty catching himself. He grabbed a hold of a slimy tendril and sprung back towards Rika’s position. But this time, her melody was ready and she was saved just in the nick of time.

But Rika did not have time to count her lucky stars or pray to whatever god was looking over her. Instead, she attempted to commandeer the ship. Something that immediately caused Tim great concern.

"Get away from there!"

The ship was very responsive, as in everything Rika did caused the ship to behave erratically. It went from fighting Book Kidd’s hands to crushing them under its hull in a single breath. Then the thing did a 360 spin, which cast Tim into the membrane. He continued to bounce around as Rika accidentally did a barrel roll, fought to try to land the thing, but ended up putting it into the ocean.

The slime net burst open and sea water rushed in. Tim was swearing in his strange language, but all Rika understood was that he was pissed. He attempted to activate that weird musk again, but the water he had been soaked with was trapping the particles. Though his body began to change shape, as his limbs became tendrils and what once could have been a man looked like an octopus. Giant eyes colored like the lens of Tim’s helmet looked back at Rika and, without a word, pushed off into the water. Then Tim sunk below the depths and vanished into a purple haze.

The ship in front of Rika started to fall apart. All the perfect cubes began to drift apart in the water and sunk into the depths. Hopefully they weren’t too far out to sea…



"Like we’d do anything else?" Mika groaned to Ashley. Less because of her orders and more because of the situation, but it did feel like something Mika would have done as a new esper.

As perilous as the situation was, Nina still had the spirit to joke around. Her erratic scrambling had gotten the attention of many pursuers, and she was able to slow them up with a well timed arctic bomb, and also create shields of snow for her allies. One of the frigid tendrils managed to poke at Nina’s back, only to catch nothing but snowflakes. Mika swiped her claws at the encroaching tentacles as they came.

Finally the time came. The neon energy at the end of Ashley’s wand was almost ready to fire. She squinted her eyes as the glowing energy hurt to look at, even through her tinted visor. As she fired, the world shifted.

Everyone was thrown everywhere.

Nina had little difficulty with it. A normal human, or even an esper, would have been concussed many times over. But her padded outfit and bare noggin was no worse for wear. Later Mika would comment that it was probably because there was nothing in her head to begin with, but that came later. Mika herself was not able to get away unscathed, or rather, her magic had to kick in to save her from a nasty landing. The girl briefly turned into a spirit to soar through a wall, only to return and land in physical form. Marrie was totally unaffected, as the girl was half ghost and anything under her feet was of no concern to her. Ashley’s suit had some new features, and a hardlight construct protected her head from smashing into a wall. While she was ultimately uninjured by the ship’s sudden, erratic movements, her shot was thrown off course. Fortunately, the blast was big enough that it at least hit her target.

While the shot did not hit where most of the espers were located, it did manage to hit the creature’s center of mass. The explosion was only half as wide as the slime was, but it sent green slivers of technolight deep inside the slimy mass. The slime was turning black, rotting and vaporizing out and away from where the shot had initially hit. Any sound the blast might have made was muted out by the entire ship groaning. It sounded like grinding metal, or the wail of a dying creature. The tentacles went limp, if they hadn’t dropped to the floor already. The creature had been eradicated.

Of the dozen espers trapped in the slime, Brittany was the first to stand up. The scantily clad witch was probably the most ready for the beach vacation without Dan’s enchantment, since the only thing anyone ever saw her wear was the bikini and witch hat that she donned in her shop. There was still some slime stuck to her, but she was able to stand up.

"Ugh!" She didn’t even need to cough to clear her airways. "What even happened here!?"

Though the explanation would have to wait. While Brittany and a few espers no one was familiar with were starting to wake up, the others were not. Though out of those that remained, Stacy was probably in the least amount of danger. Being an immortal zombie would do that for you.

But when it rained in Pax, it poured, and that might have been why water was starting to leak into the ship. The perfectly positioned blocks were starting to slide and drift apart, likely a combination of the the ship’s central system being destroyed and whatever caused it to flop all over the place.

Now they had to devise a plan. The ship seemed to be sinking, and they were left with ten or so delirious victims, some not even conscious. That was all without addressing what was behind the final door, which may not even open now that the slime was dead. The espers would need to act fast.



Poison was a slow killer, but not when it was this potent.

The jellyfish woman known only by her alias had made short work of the slime barrier. It bubbled and burst in a matter of seconds. The duo were coated in decaying slime, which Dan didn’t bother to wipe off. Now wasn’t the time to be concerned with such things. Instead he dove forward, and fell through the ceiling between the espers that had just vanquished the giant slime cylinder in the laboratory. He was even more coated in gunk now.

"Get them out of that gunk now!" Dan reached inside the remains of the decaying slime and pulled out Stacy, who started to blink herself awake.

---

While Jack’s first attempt to rely on reflexes to dodge giant cubes hadn’t worked, the friction against the ship had slowed this one down enough that it was possible to evade. It was close though, with the former ceiling debris landing just a few feet in front of her shoes. It was dragged back for its next attack, allowing Jack to prepare for hers as well.

It was not looking good for Nukkelina and her puppet. With the the slime ratcheting in the puppet girl, it was only a matter of time before she was under a rather heavy object. But she had one last trick up her sleeve, and a chuuni monologue to go with it. It would cause some to cringe and others to envy, but the girl without a heart would feel none of that emotion.

Pekka spun as fast as he could, and surged with magical power. What was left of the slime queen was not so easily eviscerated. It stuck to the puppet and spun as it did, continuing to pull Nukkelina in closer. But the arcane barbs it waived through the slime did plenty of damage to its form. Chunks of green and yellow material were thrown in all directions. But as the slime was hollowed out, the massive cube it held over head would tumble soon.

And that would happen very soon, as Jack had kicked off the wall and aimed to peirce what remained with their instrument. But their aim was thrown off. Not because anything happened to them, but the ship itself began to move erratically. She slammed into Pekka, which was likely preferable to running Nukkelina through. The indestructible doll cared little for what might try to pierce it. Fortunate too that it instantly stopped spinning as it was thrown off balance and carried free from the slime’s remains. Nukkelina tumbled after them, given that the strings had been wrapped so tightly.

After being stabbed and sliced with all manner of weapons, what remained of the slime queen had no recourse but to allow the cube to fall on top of itself. With a metallic thump, the massive cube fell, and what remained of the slime queen was scattered to the corners of the room. Between Nukkelina’s floaty grace and Jack being airborn, they managed to avoid any serious injury.

Though it was clear that the ship was breaking down. Something had happened. The floor was separating and it was starting to take water. The way ahead had been cleared, if they cared to risk it.

While the allies in the chamber with Ashley succeeded in keeping the slime tendrils away from her, this assistance was more than counteracted by the actions of an ostensible ally outside the ship causing her overcharged shot to miss its intended target. Damn it! The Knight of Tomorrow swore as she was flung across the chamber just as she was about to fire. Although the attack did succeed in vaporizing even more of the slime, perhaps even fatally wounding the creature, hardly any of the captives had been freed. The vast majority were still within the remains of the decaying slime, very possibly beginning to suffocate, now that the creature seemed to be dead. As soon as Ashley was able to reorient herself, she prepared to make a second attempt at freeing them, when Dan dropped down from the ceiling and instructed the gathered espers to do just that.

“You heard him!” Ashley told the others, even as she began dragging one of the captives out of the slime. “And put them all close together!” she added as her techno-wand began charging up once more. “I need to purge the slime from their lungs!”

At least one of the former captives had woken up and begun asking questions, but the Knight of Tomorrow knew that any Q&A sessions would have to wait. Not only was the ship still tilting and shuddering violently, it was starting to come apart at the seams, with seawater beginning to rush in. If they didn’t wrap things up soon, then they were all very likely going to drown.

Once all the unconscious captives had been placed in close proximity, Ashley would tap the center point of the group with the glowing tip of her instrument, sending forth a burst of neon green energy that would, hopefully, annihilate the last remnants of slime still inside their bodies.

Nukkelina did not show it in her expression, but her more relaxed stance was a sign of relief: after the Slime Queen’s eviscerated mass began to collapse on itself, Jack sprung, about to deliver the coup de grace, delivering the horizontal stroke after Pekka’s vertical one, their two slashes a cross into the canvas called a monster. However, instead of a cross, the letter that was made was a terrible T, as Jack had struck Pekka instead, sending the two of them away…And her.

“Ah!”
Like a ragdoll, Nukkelina was whisked away, her strings pulled alongside Pekka’s, and she crashed right into Jack. However, unlike the time at the beach, Nukkelina now had Pekka catch the two of them, serving as a somewhat hard cushion. Yet, the flexibility in his hold provided some alleviation of kinetic energy.

The Puppetress floated back up and dusted herself off as Jack, after her stunt, accused her of the use of theatrics, seemingly jealous, though Nukkelina failed to understand why. The doll girl could only tilt her head as a string drew the Minion once caught in the net back to her, holding it in her arms like a pet.

"...Anime?”

However, there was no time to further question the envious Esper, as the ship began showing further signs of catastrophe, the floor breaking away into the sea.

"It is a curtain call. Exit stage right,” she advised Jack, and pulled Pekka back to stand, letting it pick her up. Now riding on the palm of his hand, Nukkelina attempted to flee the alien vessel by the way they had arrived.

The chaos Nina had been anticipating arrived right on schedule, and thanks to her quick thinking with the shield (so she had convinced herself), everyone had made it out okay, if not more than a little bit dizzy. She had been expecting the side of the ship being held down to suddenly right itself, but everything that happened afterward was a curveball. At least the new crisis of the ship taking on water was informative of what was likely happening outside.

They didn't have the time to dig out every esper by hand. Even Nina, with her indomitable optimism, knew this to be true, and so she decided to do something about the mass of slime still trapping their allies. Preparing a melody, she touched the mass, then began to back away, pulling the mass of slime along with her like a long rope of taffy. If it worked as intended, their allies would be left behind in a pile while the slime continued to slough away. "Somebody need to make portal ready fast!" she warned.

By the time Nina mentioned a portal, Marrie was already mid-cast. A portal opened under all of the slime-covered espers and their rescuers. Fortunately, she'd planned ahead earlier when she made her initial portals. Unfortunately, the second portal she made was on the ground, meaning her functioning allies would have to get the captives through it due to gravity.

"Hey, once everyone's safe, stay on the beach, okay? Except Dan. If you get the chance, I could use your help finding anyone else."

She trusted them to do that, to keep the slime-ridden survivors safe. She knew Orion and Cerberus could manage, and she didn't doubt the others could too. So she made sure to also give herself flight so she could continue through the ship. She still had to find if there were more prisoners, and somehow get the purple alien to come to the negotiation table and see reason. She imaged that Dan would be helpful with that, but it seemed like he was needed for the rescue right now.

So, first she'd check behind the door, she decided, flying over to find what was behind it.