The impact and subsequent skull-rattling roar caused Ivor to freeze and blanch visibly. He sat stock-still for the duration of the tremor, as if any movement might throw him off into a gaping chasm. Afterward, however, he saw fit to reply to Sangue, “Yes, I’d say it is. I think it’s time we get going. Something that big might tear through the ceiling and land on our heads any moment. I can carry this guy.” To conform the statement, he gingerly embraced the man on the floor before hoisting him up over his shoulders, fireman-style. This put a great and obvious exertion on Ivor, whose face immediately betrayed the burden upon him. Of course, he knew full well that a sufferer of hypothermia should be moved as little as possible, but between worsened condition and death by giant monster, the choice seemed clear.
At the same time, the battle began in earnest on the roof. The instincts of a hunter, even one in his first year of formal training, were impressive indeed, but among predators the killer instincts of the Manticore are seldom matched. Its every sense focused on the diminutive creatures before it, permitted by age and experience to regard even small and weak things as threats thanks to steel, strategy, and souls. A cluster of bullets moved quicker than the monstrous eye could see, chipping away at its great bony mask, but the Grimm never diverted its attention away from the source, which it now saw moving toward its unprotected underbelly. At the same time, a second pipsqueak appeared to offer a glancing blow to a leg, scraping across the hide, and a shrill squawk. Did this sparrow imagine itself the predator? The moment Benjamin was beneath, the Manticore unleashed not a roar but a snarl, nasty and intense, like the cry of some behemoth engine. It sprang backward, agile if not quite as fast as a feral cat, and with some twisting of its body span around. The huge tail swept horizontally across the roof, crumpling and sending away antennae, AC units, and the body of the deceased woman. The beast landed on the ground, its head just high enough to crest the building’s edge. Pushing off its front legs, it reared up and put its front paws on the distillery, shaking the whole thing again. Its red eyes shone with a lust for bloodshed, but it would be content to wait for the little ones to open themselves up by attacking it instead.
-meanwhile-
The rapid degeneration of the current situation did not go unfelt by the group of survivors, now counting eight after the rescue of the panda girl. Knowing exactly where their best chances of survival lay, the civilians almost collectively panicked when Lucas seemed distracted and overwhelmed, Cian swore and searched wildly for a solution, and Jack did nothing. The newly-freed faunus did, however, pipe up in the ensuing silence. “’Scuse me? We can help carry the hurt girl if…if you need help?” She gestured to Priscilla, and some of the other survivors nodded eagerly, hoping that the resolution of that problem might bright the hunters-in-training clarity of mind enough to begin the dangerous journey out.
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