2023-02-04: ePILOguE in ( Progress... disPERSal )
- Log: ePILOguE in ( Progress... disPERSal )
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Alma Stirner, Elisa Kafim
- Where: Thoothukudi, India
- Date: 2023-02-04 (OOC date: 2023-02-07)
- Summary: Dr. Devi recalls Yuliana to her new laboratory, in order to mature her Orchid Cells... a process which will destroy Yuliana's brain. Her body is horrifically altered in the process. Alma helplessly attends her -- but when Elisa appears, the former surviving members of the Institute are no longer the biggest monsters in the room. Elisa extracts her vengeance, and brings Alma and Yuliana to safety... just before Ivnerre destroys the Experimental Design Clinic entirely. (Content warning: medical torture, body horror, suicide, murder, gore, mind control.)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana curls around the MP Nu Gundam's pilot seat, shaved head laid in Alma's lap. She sobs, body wracked with her sin. "I let him die," she mumbles, disconsolate. "I didn't listen..."
The Major began a request, to her. A demand. He wasn't able to finish his sentence or his life, and the scars are written on her flesh, now. (They're in those surgical scars, along her bare, shaved skull. Fighting this hard, so soon after brain surgery... well, it's not the only type she's had.)
"Thank you," is another thing she mutter-murmurs, eyelids fluttering, half awake. "I had to go... the orders changed..." She breathes out coordinates, just the same. The place they're going.
The Experimental Design Clinic.
"Looks like we only caught one," the skeleton crew receiving them comments, as they bring the Nu into the hangar. "1A-B's unit... shit, it better be in there."
"What about the other one?" A second voice asks.
"What about it?" The first replies, as he moves to the cockpit on their gangway. "We have plenty more from its batch; we'll just requisition another."
"Is Bailuo even going to acknowledge us, after this...? You heard what happened at the old site..."
"They should consider themselves lucky we work with an insignificant lab like theirs!"
"I'd rather be insignificant than in the news," the second technician quips, as she swings a walkway over to the Nu. "Visual confirmation," she affirms, as her gaze falls over Alma and Yuliana. "You. Get up. Dr. Devi will see you, now." And it's clear which of them she's talking at, gaze fixed on Yuliana's prone form.
With a shuddering breath, Yuliana pushes herself up from Alma -- but something about the contact (she remembers) prompts her to grasp Alma's hand tightly, by the time she's standing.
It's difficult enough for her to move that Alma should have plenty of time to unstrap herself, at least.
"Follow me," the technician says, as she leads Yuliana -- and the woman she's latched onto -- into the facility. It is sparkling new and sterile white; no one has screamed here, yet. There are no subjects, here, aside from them, though a few members of the Institute's staff transferred over before the Hyperion made it quite impossible.
All eyes on them.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Most of Alma's focus is on piloting -- the Mass Production Nu Gundam is barely holding together, and she needs to keep it together at least as long as she's got Yuliana with her. "You did your best," she says, softly. "Don't worry, Yulie -- I'll get you where you need to be."
By the time it pulls into the Experimental Design Clinic, the Mass Production Nu Gundam is on its last legs; it takes a last-second adjustment from Alma to keep it from collapsing into the hangar, cockpit still open. As the technician brings a walkway over, Alma begins unstrapping herself. The way Yuliana's being talked at makes her anxious -- she's been in this kind of environment too. This sort of talk from the technicians usually presages something horrible.
But Yuliana has asked her to take her there, so Alma serves as Yuliana's crutch rather than even thinking of removing her from the situation.
"Understood," she tells the technician, as she looks at the pristine facility, heading deeper in.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I tried," Yuliana says, neighbour to whimpering. "I really tried... it's just... it hurts..." And not just the brutal beating she received from the Narrative Gundam and the Qubeley, either.
Now she isn't so hungry, she can feel that pain.
"Thank you," she mumbles, again.
... she's thanking her for bringing her out here to a forgettable slice of India, though everyone fought so hard to save them.
She can't feel Alma's anxiety, but she can feel the warmth through her palm, as she walks with her through the hall. (Why does she notice that?) It's not a large facility, all told. If she had the mind to think of it, she would reflect that it seems a little rushed.
She doesn't.
The room they're led to is unfriendly, in a word. Intensive care is rarely warm or welcoming. The ventilation machine to one side of the bed is complex; there are others, as well, with a dozen tubes and wires.
Dr. Devi, that severe older Tamil woman, stands in the middle of the room. She looks up from a computer on a wheeled stand, to glance, sidelong, to Yuliana. "Good," she affirms. "You survived. Tell me, what of the others?"
"That damn Cascade betrayed us," Yuliana hisses, with venom. "She's not coming. And the Major..." The flinch which runs through Yuliana's body can be felt, transferred to Alma's palm. "I wasn't able to distract them. He's dead, doctor."
Devi's green eyes narrow, as if her very blood runs cold. (Perhaps it really does, by now.) "Vinh was like a brother to me," she says, tone cooling just the same. "Did you not think I would include him in those I wished to escape? This was to be his redemption! You've ruined everything, you stupid girl!"
"I'm sorry," Yuliana cringes, fingers flinching tightly in her grip. She looks away. She lowers herself. Perhaps it's a familiar exchange. "I tried. Just like you sai--"
"Useless," Dr. Devi condemns her, sharply, and does not suffer her to defend herself. The hitch of breath, in Yuliana's throat, is audible; even stripped of empathic ability, there's no way to mistake her terror, hearing a judgement like that.
"But... perhaps I'm being too hard on you," she allows, with a magnanimous glance to Alma. "Since you can best serve another purpose. Come," she instructs her, gesturing to the hospital bed. "Lie down. She can stay, I suppose," she allows, with another glance Alma's way, "so long as she doesn't interfere."
"Behave yourself," Yuliana warns Alma, sharply, as she releases her hand. Just as those scientists said, she lies down on that coffin of a bed willingly, and does not protest as her skin is pierced and so many things inserted.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saMcWuA84Ww Lemon Jelly - Experiment Number 6
The other scientists read off confirmations, read off values. She feels medication flood her veins. It does nothing to dim her awareness of the intrusion into herself, though her limbs, certainly, feel leaden.
"Vinh himself requested you be conscious, for this," Dr. Devi remarks, unsympathetic, as those so-called professionals force the tubing down her throat. "Given your failure, I'm not like to disagree. Roll it over," she switches to speaking to her fellows, and doesn't bother minding her language, any more. The scientists dutifully roll Yuliana onto her side, careful of all her connections. Devi looks to Alma, as an afterthought, as she prepares a wicked syringe -- far too thick and long to find a vein. "Hold its hand, if you like," she gives her something to do.
The needle slips into Yuliana's spine, and injects.
Cypripedioidea weeps.
The nervous system operates through the spinal column. So many of those spidering connections lead back, lead up, call and response. Respond, and cry out. Yuliana tries to scream around the ventilator. Her eyes widen to bulging; her hands jerk, even as scientists pin her arms to the bed and strap her wrists and ankles down. She seizes against them. Sweat pours from her, all a sudden, clammy and hot. Fever-hot, in her palms, flush across her dark skin. Her nostrils flare. What drips from them is both damp and bloody, as with the excuse for tears from her eyes, the red collecting at her ears. They didn't bother to remove her golden earrings, nor her wedding bands. They did remove her bomb collar. It lies off to one side, unclasped.
Visually -- haptically -- audibly, it is agony. This much can be felt without feeling.
And oh, the feeling.
If Yuliana could speak, would she scream, would she plead? Please, she'd said, the first time. I'm burning up! She cannot say anything, now. Her lungs have been slaved to supports.
Because she is dying.
She knows she is dying. She feels it, apart from herself, as the black abyss crumbles in front of her sightless stare. She is dying -- it is right -- is it right? -- it is Devi's right, how she's purposed her. Oh, but it hurts. But it hurts! All her thoughts to the agony, the use it serves, until they too fall to the abyss.
The abyss has always loved her. In oblivion she is caught by a dozen spider's webs called fingers, split at twenty and twenty-two points. Prone and defenceless, they embrace her.
And they tear through.
This much can be felt without feeling: the air s pl i n t e r s .
And that horrible feeling around Yuliana
ESCALATES,
with a wet, tearing sound in the fabric of reality and human flesh.
A nurse turns, alarmed, from his instruments. "Doctor, we're showing a sharp increase in psychic lacunae! At this rate --"
"Keep going!" Dr. Devi snaps, over those images of Yuliana's agony. "The strength of the past cannot HIDE from me!" And her keen edge, too, is its own kind of bloodlust.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
"I'm happy to be here for you," Alma answers Yuliana, as she's again thanked. "I'll always take you where you want to go."
She grips Yuliana's hand tightly until they reach the intensive care unit. Alma's seen these before, too -- though only once, in this context. (Flanagan was, for the most part, careful with its subjects. Individual researchers may not have been, granted, but the Principality may well have operated the gentlest of the Newtype labs.)
Alma sees Dr. Devi, and stands at attention while she and Yuliana talk. The hand not holding Yuliana's clenches tight as Devi lectures Yuliana -- though she doesn't raise her voice yet. She's not the one being addressed.
(Even if Flanagan was gentler, it was still a Newtype lab. Alma knows how these things go. She's not the primary subject; her opinion is not desired unless asked for.)
Told to behave herself, Alma agrees, "Yes, ma'am!" with a nod, as Yuliana climbs into the bed. Watching the needles enter her is a little overwhelming, though. Alma's always been a soft touch, and she flinches.
Hold 'its' hand. Alma, for a split second, wants to lash out -- but she's been told to behave, so she keeps her expression carefully neutral. "Yes, ma'am," she says, with a bit less enthusiasm than she'd had for Yuliana's order, as she reaches out and takes that hand.
Yuliana has chosen to be here, to experience this -- there's no reason for Alma to stop it. She's been asked to behave, too... she remains still until the air begins to tear itself apart --
"y-yulie," Alma stammers, anxiety overtaking her. She remains very quiet, regardless -- even as Devi starts to shout to keep going, amid Yuliana's agony. "I'm here for you. I'm here." She dares not do anything else but repeat that, even as her pulse skyrockets.
She's very well-behaved.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
BGM INTERRUPT: Witch Image - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZDYlOdq6z0
The world lurches for a long moment; those with Awakened senses feel something like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. Then, a hole in the world opens, and Elisa Kafim appears within it in a flash of green light, filling the empty space and doing away with the light all at once.
Elisa wears a long, black dress, a cloak with a hood, but who else could she be? Who else has such power as this?
"It is you, Divya Devi, who cannot escape."
"Protect Yuliana from them. All other orders are secondary." Elisa instructs Alma, looking to her only briefly such that her eyes gleam green in that moment. Then she turns away from Dr. Devi, and pulls a syringe from her sleeve. It is a huge, huge syringe, much like the one Dr. Devi used, and within it gleams something green and shining.
Elisa does not bother to look at anyone but Yuliana as she begins to inject the antibodies into Yuliana's spine. The needle does not break. Elisa's hand does not so much as shake.
Her utter intention is on this one action. She is trusting Alma, now, to give her the time to do so.
Much like she is trusting the syringe to deliver the necessary payload.
"Another few moments..." Her eyes gleam, still, intent upon Yuliana now.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana cannot offer Alma a response. Barely can she hear her, feel her, fingers twitching and jerking. It is not easy to hold her hand. Not now, either.
Not as the wings erupt from behind her ears, black tentacles joined by emerald webbing, fanning up and flapping bonelessly. That horrible feeling escalates.
Perhaps Alma will feel -- for one mad, maddened moment -- a desperate grasp of Yuliana's fingers. Perhaps it even feels intentional. Some vain, dying gasp to be understood, as she is ripped apart.
But it's easy to let her hand go, and necessary, as Elisa Kafim rips into the world. The light gutters to nothing, and the scientists scream in alarm. "It's her!" "The witch!" "She's back?!" "Shit!"
They grasp their sidearms, they advance -- but they're Naturals, by and large, untempered by those same soldier-creating programs they run. They're not prepared for Alma.
Magic slices through the bindings at Yuliana's wrists, so that Elisa can, with greatest care, roll her to her side to press that needle into her spine. She can see, there -- the way two more tentacles rip from the back of her gown, claws with two thumbs which grasp together like deathly jaws, all lined with draconic frills. As those frills flare up, they look almost like...
... orchids.
Yuliana's body jerks and seizes, around her dozen, dozen medical devices; her hand, flailing, catches some tubing and rips it away. Blood splatters. She is still trying to scream, though it is so difficult to do, with that tubing down her throat to her lungs.
Finally, a few moments -- though surely they feel like long, long minutes -- and Yuliana's seizing stops, and with it, the feeling that reality is tearing apart. Her flesh is sundered no more, though those sightless snakes from her back arch in mirror to it, staring at Elisa.
Her stiffness sags to collapse, and her eyes focus again.
She's alive...?
"Away from me, girl!" Dr. Devi snarls, lashing out at Alma with something other than a gun -- a crackling shot of blackness not unlike electricity. She whirls on Elisa, then, grasping her hand to a fist. "What have you done?!" She demands, of her, now. "Just a minute more, and I'd have everything!" A minute more, and Yuliana would be well and truly gone. Devi's dark hand spreads, as she gestures, to Elisa. "Away from her, witch!"
And so she draws on that dark green Power to envelop Elisa in crackling, painful energy, that thing which is not lightning to anything but a brain which can comprehend no other explanation.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The gentleness -- and, honestly, the primary concern for Yuliana -- drops out of Alma's expression the instant Elisa instructs her otherwise. She is the tool prepared for Yuliana, and right now, the name of that tool is 'weapon.'
"Yes," she says. One might expect her to finally indulge that fear, that anger -- to begin crying out.
But other orders are secondary, not cleared.
Alma is very well-behaved as she reaches down to retrieve her sidearm from her hip. (Why would they take it from her? As long as Yuliana is in hand, Alma is, isn't she?)
Once she sees other sidearms out, she very neatly takes aim and fires; even if she is bereft of so much of her capacity here next to Yuliana, she is still a trained soldier thrice-over among scientists. She does make the effort to aim for arms and legs where she can; Alma has never been a killer by preference, and it seems Yuliana and Elisa haven't yet trained that reflex out of her.
"Please stop resisting," she says, after the first three takedowns; there's a blip of something in her rear arc before all descends into Yuliana's aura --
and the blip is all she needs, as Alma steps back, seizes that scientist by the arm, then takes them into a hostage's grip.
Devi lashes out at her in the same moment she does so -- which means that shot of eerie darkness finds another target before it finds Alma. (She's still grazed, as it 'deflects' from head to cheek. But she is merely grazed, and the scientist she'd grabbed is not so lucky.)
She lets go of her (injured? deceased?) hostage just as easily as she'd taken them.
"Please stop resisting," she says again, this time more pointedly to Devi.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa holds Yuliana through her jerking and seizing. That tubing--it is secondary. But it is still a problem. And eventually, those 'snakes' from her back arch, and Elisa smiles grimly. "You are almost safe," she says. "Almost..."
She listens, vaguely, to the sound of Alma destroying unimportant lives behind her. But one of it matters. Not until Devi finally moves into action. What has she done?
"What have I done?" Elisa inquires. The lightning has struck her, certainly. It courses through her body, crackling all around her. But it does not so much as slow her. Instead, she turns, and her eyes gleam viridian. There is no fear in her eyes.
There is nothing in her eyes.
"You have nothing." She pauses, and turns to a surviving nurse. "Attend to Yuliana. Release her from these machines, gently."
Then to Alma, "Ensure that he is not interrupted. I will handle this one."
Elisa begins to step forward.
"We had a deal, Divya. You were chosen. I instructed you that you would see the void to come, and that it would embrace you..."
"But the widow, too, is a lover."
"'A little more time', you had requested. And I gave it to you. And then... you betrayed me, Divya. You betrayed me, thinking in your hubris that you could overcome she who will open the gate."
"But unlike you, I will keep my word. You shall have your respite. Death shall not claim you."
Step. Step.
"But I shall, my pretty fool. I shall."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
The scientists are -- well, they're scientists. Nurses and doctors and technicians, whose primary weapons are medical, not military. Their aims just aren't good enough, especially in an environment like this.
Alma's aim, on the other hand, is beyond reproach. "Fuck!" One of those doctors yelps, as he crumples down, grasping at his shattered kneecap. Another just screams, as the gun scatters across the floor when her dominant arm is shot through. "Aaarrghhh-- I'm ordering you to stand down!" The third manages to piece together enough thought to say, clutching his foot. (Alma knows better than to target the thigh, surely, with its rich blood supply.)
Dr. Ajit Patel finds himself grasped as a hostage, held in front of Alma, as if he could protect her from the abyss. "Release me!" He snarls, twisting haplessly in her grip. "Release--"
Blanch horror crosses his face as the lightning comes towards him, and he has no time to speak before it wracks his body. He jerks, against Alma, and then... he stops moving.
Not so lucky, no.
One of the survivors stares at Elisa, in horror -- and then in nothing at all, as the light dies from his eyes. "At once," he agrees, and he stops resisting, as he moves to disconnect Yuliana from the machines they'd just forced onto her. Machines to keep her heart beating, keep her lungs breathing, to keep her fed and watered. Machines which rest on a mattress with characteristic raised texturing, to keep someone healthy when they cannot move.
They're very complicated things. He cannot complain about the work.
"What are you doing?!" Dr. Devi demands, of that nurse. "Stop him!" This, she barks to another technician -- who looks awfully hesitant about it. Alma won't have any trouble dispatching this one nonlethally; she doesn't even bring a gun to the argument.
Devi can't exactly criticise her for her mettle faltering.
Not with Elisa stepping forward.
"B--betrayed you?" She demands, and despite herself, she takes a step back. "You gutted my team! You ensorcelled us! You tricked me! It wasn't until Vinh broke free of you that he told me -- that I realised the truth! But you made one vital mistake, witch!"
Dr. Devi tries to launch more lightning at her, though it does so little. It's a gesture of desperation. "You gave me power! And now -- now I will--!!"
She takes another step back. Her heel hits the gun that scientist dropped, when Alma disabled her. At once Divya crouches to grasp it, and fires -- four shots, straight through the forehead, or as close as she can muster with her shaking hands.
"Now... now I will... oh, God," she breathes, in dawning horror.
"... it's not working..."
Her hands only tremble further, as she comes to that realisation, backing up to hit the stark white wall. Her green eyes drop, to her gun. One bullet left.
A sob chokes itself through her throat.
The gun shakes, through the hand holding it, as she lifts it to her own weathered temple. Her eyes screw shut, and the thought she carries through herself is: I want to die.
Bang.
Another corpse falls to the ground, shot through the skull.
But Elisa is no liar.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma rubs at her face, singed as it is, as if it -- now that the situation is defused -- is the second most important thing in the world. It's such a small injury, and yet, there's nothing else for her to latch onto.
"Understood," Alma says, glancing to the other nurse; she strides over without hesitation and delivers a swift, immediate takedown. The most important thing, after all, is Yuliana's safety (as lensed through Elisa's orders).
Dr. Devi moves against Elisa; Alma doesn't concern herself with that so directly. Her task is to keep the situation safe for Yuliana and the nurse removing her from the machines. All else is secondary.
She doesn't so much as look up at the repeated reports of the pistol. After all --
She must see to Yuliana.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa does not acknowledge the survivors any further than is necessary. She is focused entirely on Divya Devi, now, on the scientist who has broken their pact.
"I gave you exactly what I said I would give you," Elisa asserts over these baseless accusations of trickery. "I gave you Power. I gave you respite from death. You did not care overmuch for your team when I came offering, as I recall. No, you eagerly accepted my deal. What was it you said...?"
"'You are an arrogant woman. But you're right. I accept.' We 'shook' on it."
Elisa begins to smile. The lightning does not so much as faze her. But the gunfire. Ah, yes. That is more troublesome.
Elisa falls, blood splattering all over Yuliana, Alma, and the wall behind as those shots explode through her skull. With a thud, the woman in black hits the floor.
She is whole in the next moment, and rising without muscle, rising up into the air to her feet once again by sheer malice.
"Hahahaha..."
It's not working, Divya says, and Elisa approaches.
"Did I not tell you?" Elisa says. "I gave you respite from death. Your life belongs to me now. And as you have broken the terms of our agreement..."
Elisa crooks her finger, and Divya rises to her feet, unable to resist her commands. Her own skull is whole; there is blood on her, of course. Gunpowder residue. But no wound.
"...You were chosen, Divya Devi."
"But I am she who chose you."
Elisa extends her hand, and in it is a green crystal. She wills it, and Divya begins to wither. Feet-first, she begins to turn to dust, blackened particles seething towards the crystal, slowly at first and then more quickly. She never has the chance to fall. The effect travels up her body, up to where she has time to scream at her fate before it is finished.
The crystal is black, held in Elisa's palm, when it is finished. It gleams with green.
"And now you are mine."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana's eyes flutter, as the tubing is removed from her throat. Her moans of pain are a backbeat to this horror, lungs freed to herself again.
The lightning... he died. They're dying. People are dying... is she dying?
No -- no, she's alive.
Yuliana groans, and reaches out a hand, trembling and shining with sweat. It takes so much effort to even try; there's cement, in her limbs, from the paralytic agent they gave her. The nurse doesn't even notice. He's busy strapping some medical tape to one of those puncture sites, so she doesn't bleed. He's almost done.
"Uhhh--hhhhhuuuu," she whimpers, as blood splatters over her face, and she doesn't understand why she's so, SO upset. Throat raw and aching, all she can muster is wordless complaint, as her wife's blood drips down her cheeks. No -- no, surely that's why she's upset. Because, that's -- "Nnnnhhh...!"
The tears in her eyes now, at least, are clear of blood.
Elisa rises, and Divya falls. But her skull restores itself, her brain; there is blissful nothing for a moment, and then Elisa's words, cutting through it all. Respite from death...
"No," Dr. Devi gasps, as she cannot help but rise. Blood streaks down her own eyes, but they are healthy enough to focus, wide and frightened, on the younger woman before her. "No, don't... just let me die..!"
New horror dawns on Divya Devi's face, as she begins to crumble, just as she made them crumble. (No -- no, surely this is worse.) "No," she still has the volume to cry out, panic choking her voice, "no, please! Don't do this! Just kill me, witch! DON'--"
The 't' is silent, because quickly, quickly, that rot reaches her voicebox, and the rest of her horror is carried in her eyes as she's carried to that gleaming crystal.
She has time to scream.
She's screaming, all the time.
Trapped within that crystal, though, there's no noise to bother Elisa any further, though those pained sounds from Yuliana haven't ceased.
"Oh, God," one of those disabled technicians whimpers, helpless witness to the tragedy, as she cradles her bleeding arm. "God help us..."
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The situation is well in hand; Yuliana is safe, or at least, seems safe. (... Safe enough.)
Alma returns to behaving herself. She stands pleasantly between the nurse working on Yuliana's injection sites and the one she'd taken down a moment ago. She looks at the whimpering technician, and...
... moves to her, instead. Yuliana is seen to, at this point -- and Alma is still, ultimately, Alma Stirner. "Let me bandage that," she says, gentle now in a way she wasn't before. "I don't want you to get hurt any worse, okay?"
... having now gotten a little mental space, she is starting to get uneasy about the situation again, even if she is terribly well-behaved. Her gaze sweeps over the room, and she asks Elisa, "... We should take them with us, right? It seems like Yulie's going to need a lot of monitoring, and I'm no good at this kinda stuff..."
She wishes she were -- it'd make her so much more certain Yuliana would need her, too.
(She still hasn't spared a second thought for Divya.)
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa does not pay heed to Divya's screams. She keeps that same smile on her face throughout the 'effect'. Only once Divya is gone within the crystal does Elisa say anything at all again, and to that, she looks down at the crystal, eyes full of purest malice.
"You belong to me, now. And you will see all your works turn to dust as you have."
"Then, perhaps, I may allow you to die."
The nurse finishes his work. Elisa turns towards him, for a moment, and then towards Alma. She is gentle; she is bandaging. She is useful.
She extends her hand; the light goes out of the nurse's eyes as soon as her black lightning touches him. He turns to dust. She turns to the others; they have time to scream before her power touches them, too.
"Your God is not here," Elisa tells the last, as she approaches her. She reaches out--and snaps her neck.
Then, she turns to Yuliana, and smiles.
She steps forward. "We have people for that. I have brought more trusted medical help to where I shall take her. Where we shall go."
"My Yuliana," she says then, softly. "I shall care for you. It is finished, now. Your tormentors are destroyed. Come..."
"Carry her," Elisa instructs, and picks up the corpse of the only remaining body in the room; she presses her fingers into the ribcage, until it shatters under her touch. She grips the heart.
With it, she begins to trace a runic circle.
"I will see that this place is no more."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
If a crystal can feel anything, surely it is horrified; but Divya Devi has no blood to run cold, any longer. She is as dust, trapped forever, doomed to an eternity of torment.
(Yuliana's hand grasps nothing, and it falls, fingers curling in on themselves. An epic in a sentence.)
"T-thanks," the technician whimpers, as she holds out her arm for Alma. In this raw moment, all she can do is trust the people destroying them. "I... I'll do what you want... I don't want to die..!" Alma, at least, seems a kind soul, and the technician has enough medical knowledge to know what happens if a wound isn't staunched.
She can believe, for a moment, that she might be okay -- if this weapon is willing to vouch for them. They were just doing their jobs, weren't they? They're not as bad as the doctors in charge, are they...?
But the nurse has finished his work.
His usefulness is at an end, too.
The light dies and so does he, crumpling as the lightning touches him, crumbling before he hits the ground. "AAAAaahhhh--!" The scientists scream, as lightning seems out from Elisa's merciless hand to find all who live.
All but one, who sobs, as Elisa approaches her. She tries to shrink behind Alma, as if she could protect her. "No, please --"
Elisa is horrifically strong; it is effortless, snapping the technician's neck like a twig. Perhaps it is merciful, compared to the fate of her fellows, dust marring the perfect sterile floor. The remains of human beings mix with the blood splattered there.
Yuliana watches, and horror wars with horror, all lodged in her throat. Her heart shatters, as Elisa steps forward, and addresses her so familiarly. "El...Elyh--hhhnnnn..." She tries, tries so hard to choke out her name, before she flinches to groaning again. She is helpless. She is alive.
The technician's body bends so easily, under Elisa's grasp.
The runes mix with that scattered corpse-dust, too.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma flinches as Elisa begins her... cleanup... of the clinic. Even after months with Yuliana -- seeing how she operates, seeing the REA's unique approach to cleaning up its internal problems -- this isn't her temperament in the least.
... She doesn't move to protect the woman at all, though. Elisa controls the situation; it's her duty to remain out of the way.
She does as instructed, to the extent she needs to, of course. In this she is Elisa's instrument as much as Yuliana's. But there's an unhappiness to it all, as she waits for Elisa to finish the circle -- to take them from here.
... it doesn't even make her smile to hear Yuliana speak, at this point. It's not that she's unhappy Yuliana's survived in the least, but... it's hard to be happy at all, here.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa regards Alma thoughtfully, for a moment. That flinch was notable. Will she require correction? ...No, she does not get in the way. Not at this moment. Perhaps later.
She does not look upon the remnants with mercy or with malice. They have chosen their paths, to Elisa.
Blood drips from the heart as Elisa finishes her circle; the body bleeds, where the heart was removed. Yuliana cannot call out, at the moment. But she will live. That is what matters.
"Y kh'oll: wph'ou jow, Ivnerre. Y kh'oll: jow y-th'ou piy-k. Th'oth u'ykh ysh ou-th, piakh'ou-ni:a thou nilj u-yll:."
"Plj th'ia pllou:t ou-fh th'ia gh'oyzaw th'oth llyfiash... Piakh'ou-ni:a."
The circle gleams green.
"Destroy this place," she instructs the creature that is forming already outside. "Then, return whence you came."
She places her hand on Alma, her other hand on Yuliana, and they all disappear.
Then too will this place.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana sinks, against Alma, when she picks her up. She will live; nevertheless, right now, she's dead weight.
The only part of her with the capacity to hold on are those strange, horrible tendrils from her back; those things like snakes wrap about Alma, and grasp tightly to her. It's a horrible feeling. They are cold.
"Hhhh," she breathes, ragged and torn, as her cheek buries against Alma. "Hhheh... hhellll... hhhelpp..." But they are caring for her; she is cared for, and what her deranged mind cries out for cannot be voiced.
She has not the sense to compare it to her unwilling comrade's plea, just hours ago.
The chill of Elisa's palm is so familiar.
Soon she will lose consciousness again, and not for days will she wake.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Those snake-like... appendages? Entities? Alma still isn't sure -- wrap around Alma, and she all but buries herself in Yuliana, hoping that somehow embracing the feeling more fully makes it less horrible.
It doesn't. But she doesn't have the words to put it together, as Elisa places a hand on her --
-- and they all disappear into so much nothing.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Later, on the news...
Some sort of dragon appeared today, on the outskirts of Thoothukudi, India. Witnesses claim that 'great cloud' appeared over the city block, and from it emerged this creature. Some fifty feet tall according to reports, the 'dragon' was possessed of multiple jaws filled with sharp teeth; six-limbed, it also had two wings, and a long tail, with horns all down its back. It shrieked in a deep terrible voice, and breathed on the warehouse.
Witnesses claim that the warehouse simply dissolved, all the way down to its foundations. There is simply a hole there where nothing is left. Strangely, that's all the kaiju destroyed. The rest of the town was left completely untouched, except for the fumes from the acidic breath that caused many near the scene to report symptoms of illness. They are currently quarantined, but doctors say that they expect them to be released soon. It is currently unknown how many people perished in the blast.
A chilling report. And now, back to our ongoing coverage...