EVENTS:


Sword and shield move in unison, stepping into a practised battle stance as if they were a single entity. Rosa's smaller half draws its pistols while the kaiju's shoulder cannons spring to life, and together they unleash a veritable torrent of gunfire, each bullet precisely aimed so as to avoid Eigla's movements as the shieldmaiden leaps to the frontline. Eigla's vines burrow deep into the rocky earth, steadying her body as it transforms into a shield of flesh and bone, distorted arms wrapping around the meatblob's canines to keep its jaws from closing.

Both Dolls are thrown back by the sheer momentum of the humungous cranium, Eigla continously using her legs to push Rosa away from danger. Despite the hundreds of bullet holes now pockmarking its face, the monster continues moving forwards, howling in blind fury, its chin being sanded down to white bone as it scrapes against the terrain. It is all that Rosa can do to keep her aim true as her back slams against boulders and rubble.

Uncoiling her entrails into a makeshift arm, Eigla draws Rosa II from its holster, focusing on keeping the blade steady as the world tumbles. With a single, furious thrust, she sinks the sword into the roof of the meatblob's mouth, extending her tentacle to drive it as deep as possible, past muscle and bone and finally grey matter. She feels the jaws loosen for a moment, and the force crushing down on her arms suddenly lets go.


She has just enough time to look back at Rosa and smile, before noticing the serrated, muscular tongue wrapping around her waist. With a sound like a great tree's trunk splintering, Eigla's spine is bent backwards, and her limbs lose their strength. Man-sized teeth bear down upon her, crushing her skull with a single bite, before cracked lips hide her mangled corpse from sight.


Rosa's clips run dry, but she doesn't find the presence of mind to reload them, fingers futilely pressing dead triggers as her eyes unfocus. Her gaze meets the meatblob's, and she slowly realizes they're both crying.


Meatblob: "Why? Why this, again? It was supposed to be you!"


_____________________________________
COMBAT:





With a commanding bellow from Malia, Klimt and the pirates charge forwards, intent on retaking the plains from the heathen mud scourge. As to the threadgirl herself, she uses some of her stored Flesh to re-knit her body, preparing to enter the fray. Taking advantage of the others' distraction, she quickly crams the half-dead Doll down her throat, replenishing the consumed mass.


Klimt leaps across the battlefield, deftly dodging the hordes of Mudmen and sliding along the muck, intent on getting past the no man's land. The vile form of the Mud Lobber beckons in the distance, almost taunting him with its bulk as it continues its thunderous barrage.

The surviving sailors put up a respectable fight, carving their way across the crowd to reach the Stiltwalker, but the mud is inexorable. Half a dozen Dolls are dismembered or dragged below the surface, their lungs flooding with quicksand as they are buried once again. Malia takes the opportunity to propel herself into the fray, razor-sharp threads slicing several enemies in half as she attacks them from behind.


Battle map:

[MudLobber] - Tartarus
[Klimt] - Hades
[MudmenX18,MudmenX22,Stiltwalker] - Limbo
[MudmenX13,DollsX14,Malia] - Elysium
[] - Eden

Use Coffin to defend if an enhancement part would be damaged.

EVENTS:

After delivering her line, Rosa uses her kaiju hands to try and prise open the meatblob's maw, trying her best to go after Eigla, but the monster keeps them firmly shut. It takes a moment both of them to simultaneously realise the absurdity of the situation. Their eyes meet once again, and they let out a rather simultaneous "Hmmm". Seems like they might have found some sort of common ground?


Then the blob opens its mouth and eats her, because no way in hell it's gonna waste a chance like that.



________________________________________


Eigla feels as if she's floating. Or maybe, falling? It's hard to say, without any frame of reference. She tries to extend her flesh to look for handholds, but it's as if it's... Not there?

Before, even in her memories, or when she lost her head, she'd retained some sense of corporeality, but that seems to be completely lacking now. Like an out-of-body experience, except she's quite sure she's lucid and conscious. It's just... There's, nothing, out there. Not even darkness. It's as if she's in an abyss, beyond the event horizon, completely void of sensorial experience.

It's quite unsettling. She worries about Rosa, fighting out there. Without her.


Some amount of time passes. It's hard to say how much - counting the seconds in her head seemed to make time go slower, so she'd stopped. But, something had changed, in the gravity around her. A vague pull, a slowly increasing tug towards a particular direction. She looks towards it with her nonexistent eyes.



A reddish orange sky, stretching for unending miles. Far below, a strangely still sea. Droplets of water float next to her, springing from her mossy arms as they begin to dry out in the wind. The small watery spheres seem to be... Accelerating, but sideways?

Floating her eyes to the opposite side of her head, she scans the horizon, finding other things suspended in space just like herself. Debris, water and blood, bodies. Strangely enough, nothing seems to be falling towards the ground, but instead moving inexorably towards some point in the distance.

And then, she sees it. A sphere, large enough to boggle the mind and bend light itself, floating inexplicably in the air, drawing everything towards itself. Like a star-sized hole in the sky, tinging the universe with its dull red glow.

Something else catches her attention. Amid the great clumps of floating rubble, she sees some sort of indistinct organic mass. And - it might have been a trick of the light, but she's quite sure it had a head of brilliant white hair.



___________________________________________________________________________

BATTLE!





Meanwhile, back at the mud flats, the vicious melee rages on. Malia riccochets across the area like a murderous pinball, alternatingly slashing through mudmen with monofilament, tearing them in half with muscular thread bundles, or simply crushing them with her body. The rush of battle finally gets to her, and she finds herself smiling ear to ear as she punctuates each kill with a spin and flourish, even as her body begins to tear and leak from the strain.

With a final, tentacle-propelled impulse from his legs, Klimt launches himself at the Mud Lobber, wrapping the creature down with his barbed tendrils. Razor-sharp bony protrusions slice through the creature's skin as its arms are pulled off, but its rigid carapace keeps it alive for a few more precious seconds. Despite Klimt's attempts at restraining it, the tail-like appendage on the monster's back springs forward, catapulting one last huge glob of congealed mud through the air, before its torso finally is torn in half.


This final attack, it seems, was the last straw. With a resounding thud, the projectile slams against the Stiltwalker's main deck, throwing the vehicle off-balance. Broken metal plating cascades from the superstructure as the walker stumbles then falls onto two of its robotic knees, its back-mounted mortar irreparably crushed from the impact. The mudmen are quick to take advantage of the situation, clambering through broken gun ports to invade the cockpit. Screams can be heard as the crew inside tries to fight back, and the situation looks quite dire unless the remaining enemies can be taken out quickly.



Battle map:

[Klimt] - Tartarus
[] - Hades
[MudmenX18,MudmenX14,Stiltwalker] - Limbo
[MudmenX1,DollsX14,Malia] - Elysium
[] - Eden

EVENTS:


Rosa feels the wind rushing through her hair. Strange, considering she was just eaten. She opens her eyes, but they feel loose in their orbits, and she can't make sense of her surroundings. She feels... Vulnerable, somehow, as if layers of armor and humanity had just been stripped from her body. Her many legs flop around like wet noodles, trailing her amorphous body like a comet's tail.

She chooses to focus her thoughts inwards, towards the voices she'd grown so used to. Are they still there? The question is launched towards the void, a message in a bottle of thoughts.


"YES WE'RE STILL HERE"
"AAAAAA WAKE UP WAKE UP YOU IDIOT"
"I AM SLAPPING HER BUT SHE'S NOT ANSWERING"
"AAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAaaAAAAAAaAAAAAAA"
"BRACE FOR IMPA-"

Something slams against the side of her body, sending it into an uncontrolled tumble. Through the pain of cracked ribs, a familiar mossy scent reaches her nostrils, and she feels tentacles and entrails wrapping themselves against her torso, doing their best to resist the centrifugal force that threatens to pull them away.

"ARE WE OKAY?"
"OH ♥♥♥♥ IT'S EIGLA"
"HI EIGLA. YOU UH, COME HERE OFTEN?"


_______________________________________


There is no doubt in Eigla's mind. Every part, every cell of her body unites itself in purpose, as she feverishly plans a path among the floating rubble. Wrapping a tendril around a nearby mass of bodies, she pulls herself forwards, swinging across the sky like an acrobat. Her feet touch the side of a collapsed building, and she sprints sideways along it, leaping from boulder to boulder as if her body was weightless. Her legs extend to find footing, and her skin works as a sail to propel her along the slipstream.

Finally, Rosa is in sight. The overgrown mass of coral and mollusks floats in the distance, the Sword's delicate body almost entirely enveloped in its pulsing bulk. Her head hangs limply to a side, eyes dull and unfocused.

With a final leap, Eigla slingshots her body forwards in a ballistic arc. The target is too far away to reach with a calculated move, so she has to take a risk. Disengaging her joints, she folds over her vines as an impromptu airbag, and prepares for the inevitable impact.

THUD

The world spins as Eigla's body slams against Rosa's, shredding the shieldmaiden's face and torso against the razor sharp calcium skeleton. She holds on desperately, ignoring the caustic oozes that pour forth from every polyp as she clambers closer and closer to the semi-conscious girl.

Suddenly, a gaggle of tiny voices echoes out from within the mass, almost drowned out by the hurricane-like weather.

"Are we okay?"
"Oh ♥♥♥♥ it's Eigla!"
"Hi Eigla. You uh, come here often?"



_________________________________________

BATTLE!





Klimt rushes back to defend the stiltwalker, while the pirate Dolls interpose themselves between the mudmen and it. A shieldwall is formed, and cutlasses meet teeth in a feverish, pitched battle, while the surviving crewmen bring damaged machineguns to bear upon the pelagic scourge.

Suddenly, just as the mudmen are about to once again crawl into the damaged vehicle, a large shape leaps from amid the mists, sliding through the sand as she impales half a dozen creatures with her drill. The diamond-tipped tool comes alive, spinning the skewered enemies until the sheer centrifugal forces quarters their bodies, to the cheer of the beleaguered crew.

Sally: "Sorry fer bein' late, thought ye all had it covered! Come on ye scallywags, mop this poop deck already!"

The eyeless doll looks a bit worse for wear, her lumbering, ironclad form covered in gashes and dents, but she smiles ear to ear as Klimt moves closer, disemboweling scores of mudmen in his path.

Sally: "Tha's the spirit, boyo."



Malia, meanwhile, focuses on bringing her body back into fighting shape - the muck around her feet sizzles as she dramatically speeds her metabolism, converting carbohydrates into energy at speeds previously unknown to science. New threads burst from her joints and orifices, displacing the frayed edges of her form as her body contracts to almost normal size. A lone surviving mudman rushes her, attempting to take her by surprise, but she merely smiles at its frustration and confusion when the entrails it gnaws off immediately grow back, again and again, tinging the mud a vivid red with her rich, pungent blood.

She could get used to this!



Battle map:

[] - Tartarus
[] - Hades
[MudmenX6, Stiltwalker, DollsX14, Sally, Klimt ] - Limbo
[MudmenX1,Malia] - Elysium
[] - Eden