Shopping Spree - [Ysionris]

For a moment, Jennifer Frost lay still and unmoving. She wasn't sure what had just happened, so she took a moment to organize her thoughts and sort things out. When she had fired the laserbeam at the schoolgirl instead of doing what it usually did (burning a hole through anything in front of it) it began to spin around Silly in a ring, completely suspended in midair. As Knight told her seconds before the event, there was apparently something in the air. Something that was dangerous when inhaled, sharp enough to scratch metal, and reflective enough to refract lasers.

Before anyone had time to figure out what was going on, however, there was a sudden shock and everything went dark. When Frost came to and her mind refocused, she didn't know where she was anymore; she must have been knocked unconscious for at least a minute there. She couldn't see anything at all because something was blocking her vision. She realized that she couldn't move either, so she figured that she must have been buried under something rather heavy. "Ugh..." she groaned, trying to ignore her pulsing headache. "Jesus, what the f*ck just happened...?" she mumbled to herself, unable to take a deep enough breath to say much else. No reply over the radio meant that Knight was probably incapacitated at the time being as well, or something was wrong with one or both of their radios.

Jennifer ached and hurt all over. The explosion had thrown her off the second story balcony, right through the glass barrier, across the room and onto the marble tiled floor of the ground level. Then, presumably, the floor of the balcony on the other side of the room, the one she hadn't been standing on, collapsed and landed on top of her. Suffice it to say, she didn't feel like moving or doing anything active at the moment. Unfortunately, it was quite important that she get out from under the heavy debris as it was crushing her and making it very difficult to breathe.

After some difficult pushing and shoving, Jennifer was able to clear away some of the rubble holding her down. She soon found out that she couldn't even feel her left arm at all, so she had to rely on just her right arm and her legs to get herself free. Finally, after moving aside a large sheet of broken gypsum board, Jennifer was able to see; despite a long fracture running all the way across her visor. If she didn't still need the helmet for its gas filtering capabilities, she might consider removing it. The fracture appeared to be only on the surface, however, so the helmet was still airtight as ever—but it would be significantly easier to break all the way through now if she suffered from any more brutal physical contact.

Lying with her back on the ground she could see up to the ceiling above her, which no longer had any glass in its many skylights. Turning her head to her left, she could see a relatively large piece of concrete pinning her arm to the marble floor. It had probably been part of a support for holding up the second story floor, but now it was just a crumbled heavy boulder with bent and broken rods of steel rebar sticking out of it. A crushing weight holding her down and preventing her from moving; one way or another, it had to go.

Frost reached out with her free right arm, grabbed one of the reinforcing bars for leverage, and began to lift and push the boulder off of her other arm. After a minute of heavy lifting, she was finally able to get the chunk of concrete to roll over away from her, releasing her left arm. She was just lucky that piece of debris hadn't landed any further to the right, on her head or chest—almost certainly that would have killed her, or at least prevented her from being able to get out from under it without help.

With the pressure removed from her left arm, she was suddenly able to feel it again—and it hurt like hell. "Sh*t," she hissed through clenched teeth, as the pain flooded her mind. The arm must have been shattered and broken in several places, crushed like it had been. Overcoming the throbbing pain, Jennifer forced herself onto her feet, letting her arm hang down by her side, limp and useless. The left sleeve of her armorsuit had been torn away from the elbow down, exposing her bare arm and hand, which were covered in wet crimson blood, freely flowing and dripping down to the floor.

Various other parts of her armor had been damaged and torn as well. The legs were practically torn to shreds by flying pieces of metal and glass during the explosion; Jennifer bent down to remove a few large pieces of that debris which were still stuck in her bloody legs, wincing in pain under the faceless and emotionless guise of her helmet as she did. Some of the shiny black metal plates that were sewn into the armor on her torso had torn partially free from their stitching, now hanging loosely and ineffectively.

Urgently, Eidolon began to search for her weapons. One of her plasma weapons was hanging lopsidedly off of her right thigh, with one of the straps snapped off. A blinking red warning light indicated a fracture in one or both of the internal plasma cells, rendering the weapon both unusable and unsafe. Fortunately the plasma chamber had not been breached as well, meaning everything was still under pressure and there was no risk of it suddenly vaporizing everything nearby. She tossed the useless weapon aside and looked for her other ones.

It didn't take long for her to locate the other plasma weapon, sitting in a pile of broken tiles and shattered glass. The laser carbine could wait—after what had happened when she fired it last, she wasn't planning on doing it again any time soon. The plasma gun, apart from some serious cosmetic damage, was otherwise completely operational. Equipping it on her still functional arm, Jennifer walked out into the middle of the room to find the target, trying to stand as straightly as she could on her injured legs.

Dust was still thickly hanging in the air, and no doubt would for hours, but as it began to settle things became visible in the gray cloudy haze. Walking towards Jennifer was the interdimensional schoolgirl, Silly, looking just about as damaged as Jennifer herself was. She was even bleeding, believe it or not. Whatever had caused this unexpected explosion, it had apparently not been an intentional attack by the extradimensional being. It seemed to do almost as much damage to Silly as to everything else.

"God damn, I guess you're still alive then," Jennifer said, breathing heavily and trying to hide her pain. "But seriously, what the hell did you do to the mall?"

Silly was not in a particularly pleasant mood, nor did she feel very silly at the moment. Well, in a sense, she probably felt it silly - if not outright stupid - of herself to have been put into this position. What was supposed to have been a significantly advantageous counterattack had turned the entire surroundings into...well, there was the notion that whoever was supposed to keep this entire event covered up was going to do overtime tonight. Little jokes like these kept her dangerous mood at a relatively reasonable level. It was, unfortunately, a tenuous hold at best; the pain of her mortal body was eating away at her patience, and she wasn't pleased with how much her barely-visible wounds stung.

The dust was the least of Silly's worries; utilizing Diamond Dust meant she was immune from airborne contaminant attacks. Still, there were other problems, mostly the pain, and that fact that her sixteen-year-old body was beginning to reach the limits of its endurance. Already, she was breathing heavily, bleeding, and very much inclined to discontinue combat...if she was even capable of it at this point. Her legs were trembling, not with fear, but with exhaustion at keeping her body upright at this point; the urge to drop down to her knees or even take a nap was overwhelming. Her face was tightened into a tight scowl of child-like annoyance, fatigue, and frustration, of a young teenager not being able to get something she wanted. There was the urge to pretty much punish this Eidolon for having started this fight in the first place. Maybe after Silly managed to defeat and restrain Jennifer, she's give the CORE operative a divine spanking. That, Silly was sure, would certainly help her moods.

At least, until Eidolon finally appeared as the dust finally slowly died down. Although Silly was sure that she had suffered just as much as Jennifer when it came to physical pain, the mortal's wounds were that much more apparent, having no metaphysical protection. While Silly's damage was largely internal, focused onto her shell, the CORE operative seemed to have sustained very serious external wounds. One of her arms hung limp, looking like it had been struck by some rather seriously damaging falling debris at some point. There was also much more blood involved, much more than what Silly was losing. And parts of the armor were ripped apart, exposing bare skin and open wounds. It would've been so easily to damage that raw flesh, but...there were other considerations.

The Aternians were effective as close to deities to any world as any single race came. The decision was made so long ago that they would be benevolent, well-meaning deities that loved the mortals they had to care for. Indeed, there would be need to correct the path mortals walked down history, saving them from self-destruction or proliferation, but the Aternians were otherwise aversive to actual killing or exploiting, a misuse of their powers. This was, in fact, hardcoded into the personalities of each and every Aternian - Silly was not sure by whom, although she suspected the Aternians did that to themselves. With Jennifer in such a state, alarm bells were already going off in Silly's subconsciousness as the ethics portion of her mind began to wail in protest at the damage and the hurt that was going on here, effectively screaming, "Aren't you above this picking-on-others routine?"

Silly wasn't sure she liked it, but she recognized the need to stop the carnage and wrap things up. She wasn't sure she'd be able to continue this battle in good conscience.

Ignoring Jennifer's question about what the Aternian did to the mall - that was Jennifer's fault, dammit - Silly daintily made her way towards the woman at a relatively slow speed; she walked instead of running or gliding or moving far too fast for the eyes to keep track, and, at the moment, she didn't seem too hostile at all. At least, she didn't seem to have any of those mirror shards in her hands, she wasn't moving too fast, and the Diamond Dust around her - which Jennifer couldn't really see - hovered mostly around her rather than at decent attack range. Calm after the storm. Or calm before the storm.

"Say," Silly struggled to keep the pain out of her voice even as she tried to sound almost whimsical and musing on her approach, "I've never asked, but...what happens to you if you fail to kill me?"

((OOC: Sorry about horrendously horrible post; muse running a bit low lately. x_x ))

"Heh, kill you?" Jennifer remarked, as Silly slowly approached. Although Silly did not appear to be nearing with hostility in mind, Jennifer kept her weapon aimed and ready. Never let the enemy get too close, always expect an attack. "I don't want to kill you. Or maybe I do, but I'm not supposed to kill you. That was never the plan." She tried to keep a calm and level voice as she spoke, but even with all her extensive training there was always a hint of pain that just couldn't be held back to those who knew to listen for it.

"You thought I was going to kill you? I told you from the beginning I had no intentions of killing you. We just need to take you in, ask you a few questions, that sort of thing. Interdimensional travel is serious business, you know. This whole mess could have been avoided if you had just listened when I told you to come along with us." As Silly continued her slow and dainty approach towards Jennifer, the CORE operative began to slowly and cautiously back away; a calculated retreat to keep a safe distance from the extradimensional and to remain at optimum range for her own weapon.

"No, if we had wanted you dead, well, that would have been much easier. Could have brought in the big guns, get everything over with in a matter of moments. You know, I think they even have one that could instantly vaporize an average sized adult from over ten yards away." Jennifer pointed her weapon somewhere past Silly and vaporized a small area of the floor around ten yards away. "Luckily for you, the corporation I work for is run by intellectuals and scientists who couldn't stand to let the possibility of new discoveries and knowledge be taken from them so swiftly," she said with an exasperated tone of voice.

"But of course, in a not-at-all-unexpected turn of events, the extradimensional thing I was ordered to detain turned out to be a crazy violent b*tch who didn't want to go down easily," Jennifer said, gesturing angrily around the devastated room with her right arm. "This incident, among many others, only goes to continue supporting the arguments of those higher-ups and executives who would rather us deal with creatures like you, Lord knows what you really are, the easy way. Just get rid of them all," she hissed, anger tainting her voice.

Walking over various amounts of rubble and debris as she backed away step by step, Jennifer soon backed into a particularly large slab of concrete and had to stop moving. "So, here I am again, cleaning up a mess I didn't make," she continued her rant, looking around the room and trying to ignore her excessive loss of blood. "Either I drag your body out of this building, breathing or not, or they come in with the big guns and mop up anything I missed, without discrimination or concern for life. However it goes down, this story only has four possible endings; you're dead and I throw your corpse to the biologists, I'm dead and you get the hell out of here, we're both dead and Knight has to clean up, or we're both alive and you're in chains."

With that, she climbed up on top of the chunk of concrete and aimed her weapon at Silly. "What's it going to be, darling?"

~ & ~

"Knight! You okay in there? What the hell just happened?"

Groaning, Knight answered the voice on the radio. "Yeah, yeah, I'm all right." Damn, I'm surprised none of these f*cking grenades went off, he thought to himself, noticing that all the explosives hanging from his belt were completely in tact, although a few had fallen off.

"What happened in there? Looks like some kind of explosion!"

"Yeah, something like that I guess. Man, I don't even know, it's this extradimensional. Crazy sh*t, I swear. It looks like some kind of schoolgirl or something you'd see in some nonsense anime. Didn't know they had Japan in this other dimension, but then I guess you never know."

"Is Eidolon all right? We can't reach her radio, must be out. What about the target?"

"God, I don't know. Gotta figure out where everyone is. Where I am." Standing up, Knight took a look around the mall. Jesus, it's like a nuke went off or something. You know something's wrong when the creature you're fighting can explode stuff with their mind, or whatever crap is floating around in the air.

"Yeah, I can see them both. Still alive, apparently. Damn, looks like Eidolon's losing a lot of blood though. Messed up her arm, but the goddamn ex-dim seems fine as ever. Must be near invincible, that thing. I say we bring in a tank or two. Or hell, even better, call in an airstrike, teach her what a real explosion looks like."

"Knight, we can't do any more damage to the mall than we already have. This alone is going to cost a fortune to repair. If you can't get the target out of there alive, just call in the clean-up squad and finish this up. Gotta get out of there soon, we can't hold the media back much longer."

"Yeah, yeah. If Eidolon can't get the target to comply in the next few minutes, I'll get the squad to roll out. This thing is dangerous, man, should have just done this to begin with. Why even give these things a chance if they always end up causing so much destruction?"

ooc: your post isn't as horrible as you say it is.