Powder Miner

Satomi jumped a little when the first goat made its loud noise, but then tried to play it off as though nothing had happened. Then she put a finger in her orange hair and twirled it when Jun asked the new arrival her question, waiting for Jun to conclude and then asking her own. "...Onyx Rivers of Mourning, that's your name, yes? If we're going to be asking questions, I suppose... where is it that you hail from?"

Seeing Rivers and Jun depart towards the bathing area, something clicked in Satomi's mind. Oh, kami, she was still filthy, and a little tired besides. Getting herself bathed would be an absolutely heavenly experience, and it would be unfortunate if she were to miss out. So she jogged out to follow the two of them. "I hope you don't mind, but I want to follow along! I need to get myself bathed, it has been days and I've been through a lot of fighting and exploring. Eyeugh."

Satomi popped her knuckles by flattening her hands out, arms outstretched and fingers interlaced, and then she considered all the speaking coming from the others. ”I will see how many mountings I can add without compromising the battlements too much, but it should not be a large issue — I should be able to add multiple. I am still only planning to build four myself, though, both due to time and other tasks I could be worrying about. As for the walls over the river... well... Leo, the walls I am building do go over the river, I’m just not one hundred percent sure the grate would hold. Goblins and ogres don’t tend to be the most amphibious, though, at least where I come from, so I trust Toshiro...” His name was Rokugani and so was his gear, but he was some other race, so Satomi wasn’t sure if she should use an honorific, ”Toshiro’s ability to take care of any enemies that do make their way into the river. Oh, and if you’re gathering slime, I would appreciate some of it for my weaponry.”

Satomi nodded once upon hearing the Dryad’s explanation of the taint here (it sounded like maho was involved — it made sense, that was the kind of foulness Satomi expected undead to spring from. At least it sounded like the Taint had been mostly handled.), and then she nodded twice upon hearing the Dryad’s description of the enemy forces. The samurai-ko then cleared her throat and faced the group as a whole, pulling her notebook and the pen she’d pilfered from Earth Bet from out of areas of her obi sash that didn’t already have things hanging off of them. She flipped open the notebook to a sketch that she had been making earlier that day as she measured the lengths of the village’s “walls”. Said sketch was a map of the village two planned walls with little sections of their structures quickly drawn near them, as well as two circles on each wall. The canyon pass was denoted as well, with the word “traps” written on it. ”Okay, so my first priority... the walls that the village has right now are... um... not... they aren’t going to work, and I’ll leave it at that. So I’m going to be rebuilding them both. Instead of these purely wooden, strapped-log walls, each of the walls I’m going to make will be buttressed stone brick walls, which would be sturdy enough to stand up and stay up on their own, but to ensure their stability under force, I am also going to make wooden frames behind them, which will also serve as a scaffolding to allow us to get up to our side of the walls. These walls will also feature battlements for snipers to take cover behind, because those magicians will need targeting more precise than siege weaponry but their presence also means that arrow slits would be less effective. These walls will also each have two siege weapon mountings. After I’m finished with the walls, which will be built tomorrow (and I’m going to need additional manpower from the villagers and Leo’s golems) these will be my next priority. One mounting on each wall will have heavy weaponry meant for usage on these ogres — one will be a large siege crossbow for which I will make slime gel-cored bolts which will light when lodged inside the ogres, and for the other I was thinking perhaps an axe-trebuchet with an optional spring-load to give one strike extra oomph, though that would be primarily for destroying an ogre upon it getting close. The other mounting on each wall will be for mass weaponry, for dealing with infantry and if they clump up or join the infantry, the mages. One of these will be a kind of combination ballista firing multiple bolts, and the other will be, if I can get one of you to create me some jars or pots of area-of-effect magic, something to fire those. I also have the portable ballista I created today, which can be brought to any spot if it needs additional firepower. There is also the canyon pass to contend with to a lesser degree, but a wall there would be misplaced because of the incline, so instead it should be heavily trapped. I may help if I have time, but I believe this is some of your specialties. There are also other things I may do if I have time, but I believe what I have listed to be the necessary components of our defense. I will note that I cannot block off the rivers, so the militia will need to be wary about intruders coming from there and the canyons, but the weapon operators, the snipers, and anyone who wants to go out in front of the wall should be seeing the brunt of the combat. This is also going to be a lot of work, so I would appreciate it greatly if you could give me more time to work on the weaponry when I am working on it, Kusuke-san. Manpower or golem-power can be used in the wall building, but the work on the siege weaponry will be precise and complex enough that I will have to do it personally.”

Satomi still had her things on her at the meetings, which meant that various mechanical locks, crossbows, and her portable ballista bundle were all hanging off of various spots of her armor and her sash. She’d been curiously staring at the Dryad’s “arrival”, and then for a brief while at the new arrival, but Alyssa’s sudden tirade caught the samurai off guard, breaking her from her observation. ”Um... that doesn’t seem quite necessary,” Satomi notes softly, ”you don’t know what her world is like, nor what she has gone through to get here.” Satomi could empathize with getting berated like that, it was a common pastime of the Crane prissies at times to insult the perceived brutishness of the Crab. Then Satomi turned towards the Dryad, and curled her finger in her hair. ”I suppose I have two. First of all, how much is the Taint spread throughout this land, to create the zombies? It seems to me like a fair source of concern, and perhaps something to help defend the town from, other than of course the siege. And speaking of... I don’t suppose your prophesizimg has told you about the approaching enemy force?”

Navin nodded, closed his eyes, and then nodded again. Still, he didn't immediately speak, for a long while just staying there silently with his eyes closed, because relating this from the start would be painful, though perhaps the awareness would do him some good. He didn't know. Nonetheless: "Hff... Well, to go from the very beginning, I was twelve years old when I gained my powers." This part of his history was itself not painful, so he continued on smoothly, though increasingly reverently. "I had been out in a field one day near my home village, Mhasas and a brilliant, flashing light came smoothly down from the sky. I caught it, and then I knew at once that it was destiny, and the work of God in some way." Navin chuckled, a little lost in his reverie. "Of course, I learned later that this was the result of an American superhero with the ability to grant powers having a fight in space and missing with his power. But I believe the astronomical chances of a projectile from space just landing my way proves the work of the gods itself. ...no offense meant, of course." Navin let out a long breath - this was going to be the hard part. "It was around one year later that the Kemenel alien race invaded Earth... pretty much the entire planet, en masse. For the first two years of the war, I was just in Mhasas, and they hadn't really made it into my region of India much, so aside from an occasional fight against an alien scout, I did not really understand what the war really was. But..." Another breath. "When I was fifteen, a call went out around India. The Kemenel were massing to take Mumbai and get a foothold in my state, and since the military was busy in Delhi, they needed a coalition of powered individuals to do so. I wanted to help save my country, so I went. And..." Navin's vision unfocused somewhat. "...it was... they had devices that made people... liquefy. On... more than once, at first, because I was young, and unprepared, there were heroes that took blasts and died for me." He let that stand for a moment. "And, of course, there was the fighting and the destruction itself. I had not been ready for that. I had not been at all... But I told myself that if my destiny had led up to this it had to be my duty. It was my duty. It was my duty. It was my duty." The repetitions of that line came softly, Navin fully in the throes of memory as he remembered that hellish day. "And so I could make myself fight. And I did. Well, even. And I did so for battle, after battle, for two years..." Navin shook his head hard to clear the memories. "I... I do not like killing, not just because of ahimsa, but because when I do it I remember the way I made myself do it back then... and then I remember back then. But... I... I threw myself into it here. I told myself that it was a war here, and I had to think and act the way I did in that war because of it, and I even reminded myself of the memory to fight against that mist..." He closed his eyes again and leaned back against wall even more, putting his hands to his face. "I... it all just... it all just came back to overwhelm me all of a sudden, as I stood there covered in ichor with the area around me being torn up. It was just... I was back there again, instead of here. And it... is just... too much. It is too much, all of a sudden."

Nader didn't need telling twice -- though he couldn't feel the pain of having been hit with a penetrating shot by the alien vehicle (the result of Rachel getting him right between the shoulderplates with a syringe? He'd twitched in her direction at the time, but he'd also had a tank to shoot), he could feel that there was blood running down his stomach, and the amount that he could feel was... not promising. Nader didn't know that he could take another shot, and frankly he didn't particularly want to find out. It was time to back off. Nader immediately began to haul ass as quickly as he could towards cover, whirling to have his back to the cover as he dropped down behind it -- he wanted to drop down flush to the wall at first, and his guns wouldn't let him fit. Only then did he begin to turn around, though not yet peeking over the edge -- he didn't want whatever was getting prepared to take his head off. What he did do, though, was stick his PAW over the cover and wildly spray the entire damned magazine out in the vague direction of the Sectopod in the hopes of suppressing it. Nader goes for cover, and then uses the PAW’s stun on the Sectopod! Active Cooldowns: M3 Sorraia (1 Turn) Personal Assault Weapon (3 Turns)

Seeing that only his Horsekiller had had any appreciable effect on the armored thing, Nader swore up another loud blue streak, and then forced himself back to his feet, going from on his rear to on one knee with a surge of motion, and then returning to a standing position with another. On his feet, then, Nader chose to repeat the only thing that had seemed to work for him: hitting the tank with a really goddamn big bullet. "Fuckin' space alien tank, fuck you, you aren't shit compared to Forenian engineering!" Nader was distinctly aware that this bit of vitriol was completely untrue, but nonetheless it was helping him stay in the mood for violence, and he promptly appeased that mood by straightening his left arm again, swinging it towards the Sectopod, and then pulling at the handle that fired the Horsekiller, the .60 caliber rifle reporting with another one of its distinctive BOOMs. Nader fires his Horsekiller at the Sectopod again, for 6d6+3+DEX (3)+STR (6) damage, with a 10% chance to miss! Active Cooldowns: M3 Sorraia (2 turns)

"It's..." After that one, hesitant word, Navin trailed off into silence, and he took a few moments to formulate what precisely he was trying to put together into a sentence. "I..." Still unsatisfied, he frowned, visibly tried to think it through for another couple of seconds, then sighed and slid down the wall into a sitting position. "I suppose I ought to explain a piece of background first. I... do not take taking a life lightly. I don't mean to say that the others do: It's a piece of the superhero community and also of my religion that one ought to avoid killing whenever it is possible... but it is not always possible. Sometimes, when people with mighty powers or inventions are using them to be as deadly as they can, you have to kill them." Navin took a deep breath here, to steady himself. "...and sometimes there are wars." The weight on that phrase was emphasized by the brief silence that followed it. "I... I need to place myself into a certain mindset to make myself do these sorts of things, to kill. It... it is hard to explain this precisely." Navin fidgeted and wrung his hands as he tried to come up with a way to follow up on that. "It... I have this war mindset, is what I might call it. When I go into it... augh. I... I have said before that I am not very good at communicating these things and..." Navin choked up here, as he had to work to fight off the memories buried deep inside the very thing he was trying to speak about. "This... this is all very deeply rooted in something that is very painful to explain, and I would have to take up your time to do so. It... I know I did the equivalent for you, but... well, unless you are sure you want to hear my burdens, considering the ones you already have, then I might have to leave it at that."

Satomi nodded and put a hand to her chin, fascinated. It looked like these pieces of metal were situated to make use of the minute shrinking and expanding that came with the temperature. Then, when they were triggered, the lock would split into thirds. It didn't take a Kaiu Engineer to reason out that the lock had to be activated either by making it hotter or by making it colder, but she couldn't figure out what in the world that middle piece was, and it was driving her nuts. So she promptly pulled the lock out of the door and showed it to Kusuke. "Kusuke-san, I took a look at the lock, and I mostly figured it out. I think we just need to change the temperature near that other lock and it will split into three -- see the way those metals are composed? It works with their expansion or contraction, I'm sure of it. I can't figure out what this middle component is," and here Satomi pointed to the coil wrapped around a rod, "but I am fairly certain I know how this works overall. Therefore..." Satomi walked up to the sturdier door and made an attempt to test her hypothesis, by taking one of her flaming arrows and lighting it, holding the flame near the lock on it and then exploring the area beyond if she managed to successfully unlock it.

Navin started when Mitsurugi entered the room, twitching from his position leaning on the wall, his eyes jerking open as he spotted Mitsurugi and brought his hands down from his face to attempt a somewhat more neutral position. ”Erm... no, you can stay, if you want to. It... doesn’t bother me, I suppose, considering our previous conversation.” Navin had, it seemed, nothing more he was able to summon the words to say for a while after that, and several seconds passed in silence that was at least clearly awkward on his part, until eventually the man looked down and sighed softly. With that gentle introduction, Navin spoke, but only spoke a single, simple, sorrowful sentence: ”I... am not a very smart man, Miss Saigai.”

Much like more than one person other had done, immediately after he had arrived back at the castle from the fight that he had been in, Navin had made his way to the Barracks in search of a quiet place. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, too -- Mitsurugi had found a quiet place for them to talk before this last round of fighting, and now he could make some use of that serenity himself. So, from the very moment he opened the door to enter the Barracks, Navin beelined down to that room deep in the barracks, and then once he had made it, he closed the door behind him carefully, with a quiet clack. After that, Navin closed his eyes, sighed, and leaned against the wall of the room. Every now and then, Navin was forced to stop himself and wonder, really wonder about what he was doing. The aftermath of the previous battle had been one of those times: the mindset that he had been placing himself into finally just came to be too much, too much all at once, and he'd just... been overwhelmed. What was he doing to himself? What was he always doing to himself every time he allowed himself to become like this, whenever he got involved in something he could classify as a war and turned himself back into more of a death machine than a superhero? Why did he never learn his lesson? God, he was an idiot. Navin continued to lean against the wall, and slid his hands up to his head as he closed his eyes, fingers on his eyes and thumbs hooked around his chin as he covered his face and contemplated just how stupid he was.

Nader saw that his instincts were even more right than he had feared, as the source of the sound of metal on metal turned out not to be a space alien of a similar kind to those they had fought so far, but instead revealed itself to be a giant walking tank thing! Nader's reaction, accordingly, was far more of a natural one than Aquila's. "OHHHHH FUCK!" The words echoed off of the walls of the hangar, and were promptly punctuated by the detonations of smokeless powder, conveying his state perhaps better than even the panicked edge of his shout could, even if they likely set the others' ears ringing a bit. And it was detonations, plural: Nader's immediate choice of action had been to, almost without thinking, rip the Mark 3 Osprey and the Personal Assault Weapon from his back, jam their butts against indentations near the armpits of his armor, and to yank down the triggers with terrified, reflexive strength. The sharp crack of the Osprey and the rapid, high-pitched patter of the Personal Assault Weapon rang out through the hangar, as his smaller weapons were sent firing at the Sectopod, but it was not long before they were followed up: Nader desperately twisted his wrists to get his thumbs on the handles of the firing mechanisms on his armor, and with a yank, his right arm was sent shaking as the thirty-round thundering of the M3 Sorraia filled the hangar... and then the godlike BOOM of the Horsekiller 1935R, which not only sent a .60 cal bullet whipping at the tank, but also provided the final piece of momentum that sent Nader falling onto his ass with a clatter. Nader uses Barrage, his once per world Trump, firing ALL of his guns at the Sectopod! This means he does: 6d6+3+DEX (3)+STR (6) damage from his Horsekiller, with a 10% chance to miss! 2d6+DEX (3)+STR (6) damage from the M3 Sorraia, 3 times! 4d6+DEX (3) damage from the Mk. 3 Osprey, and if the Sectopod wants to dodge the Osprey it must perform a DEX check vs the damage rolled! 2d4+DEX (3) damage (lol) from the Personal Assault Weapon! Active Cooldowns: M3 Sorraia (3 turns)

Satomi stepped into the house with Kusuke, a frown once again curling the sides of her lips as she observed the various signs of the great disrepair. Gigantic rotting holes in the wood... eugh. The condition of this building was a shame, to be true. So, partially in order to distract herself from the manifest squalor of the cabin, she answered Kusuke’s questions. ”Yes. I believe that when I explained the purpose of the Crab Clan families earlier, I explained that the Kaiu family are the ones responsible for the maintenance of the Kaiu Wall. Both the construction of the siege weaponry atop and under the Wall and repair and reconstruction of pieces of the Wall are within the Kaiu family mandate, and indeed the Kaiu are the best in all Rokugan at both of these areas of engineering.” When the two of them came upon the door with the intricate lock, it was only natural that Satomi’s attention was immediately piqued — she adored everything of an intricate mechanical variety, after all, and with her training and intellect she usually found herself able to figure them out, especially with her natural talent for keeping track of how multiple things work at once and in relation to each other. The lock, then, was a fascinating chance for a puzzle to her, and Satomi immediately zeroed in on it, precisely taking the door off the hinges and laying it onto the ground, then continuing to speak to Kusuke as she closely examined the lock, examining the individual pieces and occasionally prodding at it. ”You see, most samurai find such tasks as construction and siegecraft as demeaningly menial, and not refined enough for a samurai, so while you may sometimes have a skilled architect outside of the Kaiu, you will not find a proper school devoted to it elsewhere. Since we Kaiu both have a very important duty with engineering, and since we are not too prissy to do any actual work because we are Crab, we’ve collected many techniques around it, and the Kaiu are trained in both construction and siegework, as we are the only ones among the samurai who truly specialize in either craft. We do also get training in tactics and in smithing, for that matter, but those are more common in the Emerald Empire.”

As Aquila begins to pick up his weapons, Nader shifts his position to look towards the other end of the gigantic room, where the lack of illumination caused the area to be obscured with enough darkness to be impossible to see. But that didn't stop Nader from, after a couple of moments, suddenly extending an arm to warn Aquila to stop moving. He heard something, and if he got a little bit of quiet, he could make it out... yes. There. That was the definite sound of metal scraping against metal. Stupid bastard thought it was being stealthy, didn't it? Nader unlimbered his jury-rigged assault rifle from his back; it was a gun, so it certainly wasn't quiet, but the small caliber meant that the PAW probably wouldn't deafen everyone in a chamber this size. Nader spoke in a low, intense voice. "I hear something. Be ready for a fight, at least one of the aliens is over there, I can hear the damn thing scraping around over there." Still aiming for the darkened section of the room, Nader slowly backed towards the wall and hunted for a lightswitch similar to the one Frigus had used in the other room, pressing it if he found it; he could hear the scraping sounds going on still, and getting closer, but they hadn't picked up speed so Nader didn't know if it had caught on that he knew yet. He wasn't sure he liked his chances, but if he had any chance of surprising this thing by flipping the lights on on it, then it was an opportunity too invaluable to lose.

Satomi peered through the crack, shaking her head when Kusuke asked her his question. "No, this is more than fine. I'd not like to act as if I have a deficiency of Courage." Satomi put her bow back across her back, and as she squeezed through the crack she held her hands near her katana's sheath in case anything popped out, at which point she intended to execute an iaijutsu strike -- it did not pay in the tunnels under the Kaiu Wall to be unprepared for battle, and Satomi carried her habits from home with her here as well. When she actually passed the crack and noticed the condition of the building, her lips immediately curled into a disgusted sneer. Rotten wood, a hole in the floor, moss-covered stone, and though Satomi really couldn't see the structure in much more detail than that, given her great familiarity with buildings, she didn't particularly have to. "I recognize that this place is a ruin, but..." Her tone of voice was one of moderate revulsion. "This offends my pride as a builder just to see, I'm afraid. A place that truly hasn't stood the tests of time."

Satomi wheeled her arms outwards for a moment to keep her balance as she reoriented herself -- she'd had Kusuke's power applied to her multiple times by now, but that really wasn't going to save her from the brief dizziness of being wildly teleported over the pool. "Whoa..." she muttered, before she managed to straighten herself out, letting out a little exhale when she did. Then she looked around the cavern, squinting as she did, until she spotted the little slime still trying to get them. "Oh... heh, it looks like I missed one." Satomi pulled the bow off of her back, and with a little self-satisfied smile she loosed an arrow directly at it. Then she turned back to Kusuke. "Well, alright! I suppose I don't see much else to go to besides that crack, but I must admit it does make me a bit nervous to think about just heading in there -- it seems to me we would be vulnerable in there... though we also could teleport back if we needed to, hmm?"

Isobel leant over the plushie, an eyebrow raised and a slight frown at the corners of her lips. "How... strange. I'd say kind of cute, but under the circumstances, what with her having just tried to murder us all a few seconds ago... it's a little harder, heh." She put her gloved hands together, wringing them as her expression slowly shifted to one of thought, the botanist woman losing herself to pondering for a few moments. Then, the AI on her hip suddenly began to laugh, emitting that laughing for a good few seconds, even. "Oh... oh wow. I'll say, up until now I had thought I had honestly seen it all. Destructive blasts, skeletons (that was a unique incident), suspicious corporations, I've seen all that, but, you know what? This is new. This is completely new. Incredible. Ahaha... you sure have found a way to surprise me, Dackly. But I think we can make use of this, to maybe capture and interrogate Lancer here for the identity of the remaining Servant? House Shienar secrets? Yesss, I think this could be useful if we found a way to communicate." Then Isobel put out the results of her own thinking, even if she did get uncomfortable making the suggestion to the whole team. "Or... hummm... I remember Assassin being possessed by some sort of magic, and I also remember that Edmond mentioned something similar with Berserker... and then I also remember something about divine magic being able to break the possession... um, yeah, so I was thinking... maybe... we could find a way to save Lancer, here? Um, if we can find a way to apply that divine magic when Lancer can't hurt us, you know... maybe we could de-possess her?"

The punch the Muton dealt Nader may have rocked him backwards a step, a loud metallic BONGGG ringing out as his head was pushed backwards, but aside from a likely moderate bruise, Nader wasn't that injured (curve of the helmet doing its work), and he was most certainly not out of the fight. Yelling angrily, Nader took a step forwards and swung his Horsekiller arm again, aimed at a hammer blow. If the Muton somehow survives Aquila and Frigus, Nader will use yet another Heavy Metal Blow on it for 1d20+Strength (6) damage.

Navin had just finished a surprisingly violent usage of his power (apparently, with something as badly wounded as this monster was, even his energy in its ebb was more than enough to slay it) when the battle quite suddenly changed, a literal storm of death and destruction arcing from the skies to plow furrows in the ground and rather cataclysmically remove the life (and unlife) of whatever of these beings remained near the castle from existence. It wasn't the display of power that unsettled Navin, because to be frank, he had seen it more than once before. His homeworld was one where men and women soared the skies and lived in the eye of the public simply because their own personal power was enough to singlehandedly put a stop to supernatural threats, or cause them. Heroes and villains and those in between, a small, small portion of the population... but in a world with seven billion people, that was a lot of people. And of that mass of people defined by their might and skill, another small portion wielded power that was truly terrifying if they let it loose, such as Tamil Nadu's Disciple of Shiva, persons who could shatter a town if they truly wanted to. Though Navin wasn't among that number, he was prominent enough that he had fought with (or, in team-ups, against) those who were, and though the power that had just been unleashed was thus still exceptional to Navin, it was not foreign. It wasn't the manic laughter or the general megalomaniacal exultation that unsettled him, either. In his decade-long career as a superhero, Navin had come across quite a few supervillains, from mad scientists to wizards to simple superpowered menaces, and he'd seen so many evil laughs or speeches or taunts that they didn't have an effect on him anymore, except as a potential source of a little underspoken banter... though he was far from in a state for that now. What unsettled Navin was that the situation, taken together, took him from this strange world of historical figures and noble houses, and back to a very bad time. Blasts in the sky and his peripheral vision, ruin and fatality, with his own arms even covered in ichor and blood... he'd been in that position before, long ago. Mumbai, Aurangabad, the Second Battle of Chennai... he'd stood among giants before, pressing past the destruction that carved up the earth and shattered the buildings, that liquefied men with terrible bubbly screams, and he had most certainly killed, back then with blasts that made meaty, jagged indentations into the Kemenel aliens, or reduced organs to so much green mist and coated him with it, leaving him covered in blood both alien and human, justifying it over and over with the knowledge that it was war, and that it was his fate and duty to help protect the world from its occupation and conquest. Navin stood with his eyes closed for several moments, remembering rather than perceiving, until his consciousness returned to him and he slid a hand (not covered with ichor simply because it had already been blasted away) to his temples, over his eyes as he dragged himself out of the state he'd been in. And, what had just happened aside, Navin supposed that it was his own fault that he had ended up like this. He'd declared his current situation a war, and he had been killing men and monsters left and right with that justification, willfully putting himself back into one of the worst positions of his life and taking it upon himself to kill, and he had even forced himself into a flashback of the battle of Mumbai in that first battle just to pull himself out of that blasted pink mist. The ridiculousness of it all was now coming back to strike him. "Gods," Navin mumbled to himself as he finally pulled his hand away from his face, his voice shaky, "what am I doing to myself...?"

Satomi remained quiet as Kusuke spoke to Arminius, but to be frank her expression was hardly a pleasant one either -- she perhaps put an effort into concealing her disdain for the saboteur man, but it had failed enough for it to be pretty clear she wasn't too happy to see him either. He was a sneak, after all, and smugly proud of his own cowardice at times in a way that was infuriating and a lack of Courage AND Duty. He reminded her of the Scorpion and Crane clans in different measures, to be frank, and that was not a positive comparison to draw. Satomi nodded at Kusuke, when he asked his question, tying the string of the disassembled ballista around the pieces to keep them in a tight bundle which she then tied to her back. After making sure her various other things were secure (and frowning to herself, she'd need a better system than the one she had soon), she nodded again. "Alright, that sounds like a plan to me. If worst comes to worst, I am sure that I can come up with a solution, but I will trust that you know what you're doing here! You've been very helpful so far, after all, both in healing and with my siege weapon, so you've earned some trust in your abilities, I say."

Nader charged forwards and swept his left arm violently to the right once more, the tip of his Horsekiller moving to help finish off the two Mutons Frigus was going after. Nader uses Heavy Metal Blow, dealing 1d20+Str (6) damage to the Gravity'd Mutons!

Satomi had shared her plan with Kusuke, and she had received his assent. The Kaiu Engineer had been quite glad to hear that -- she hadn't worked on a siege weapon in far, far too long. It wasn't fitting for someone quite literally raised to work on these things, Satomi had been getting rusty, and to be frank she was itching for a chance to show off her skills in a way that didn't involve her screwing up with half-thought-up plans and nailing everyone with metal shards. So she headed back out of the mine to the village, grabbed the materials she needed (not that many, she wasn't making anything very large) and got to work. The first thing Satomi did was to write in her notebook to get the proper calculations done and to have her plan written out beforehand. Some craftsmen worked on the fly, but when you worked with the scale and intricacy that a siege engineer did, that was hardly a well-advised option. She wanted this to be a portable modular device (and one she'd keep for herself) because she wanted to take it in and out of the mine, and into other worlds, for that matter... a ballista was simple enough. It'd obviously need to be disassemble-able, to make it reasonably portable, and so she would divide it into three pieces: the stand, which would actually be the most complex piece as it would be constructed of wooden rods with rotating joints that would be able to be folded flat and unfolded. Then, the body of the ballista would be another piece, and the largest. Then the rope assemblage would be next, and the ropes could either be tied onto the body to actually use it, or tied around everything to keep it secure. The three pieces would assemble by sliding notches together in certain ways, a material-free but secure solution. With the ballista planned out, Satomi then recruited Kusuke's aid to make it happen, and with his help Satomi got the entire contraption completed within a mere couple of hours, working on a separate piece each time Kusuke sent her back. Carving wood with her wakizashi, wrapping rope, placing in metal pieces, Satomi worked diligently, and everything went rather smoothly! By the time she finished, Satomi found that everything had gone essentially just as planned. She'd created a portable siege weapon, once much lighter than "real" siege weapons but still around thirty pounds... but that weight (and the time needed to set up) would still provide her with unparalleled portability. Then, she had to create its ammo, but this was a simple process, simply taking eight balls of stone and strategically striking them to web them with cracks but not to break them. This structural weakening (she confirmed with a bit of math) would cause pieces of stone to fly everywhere when they impacted from the ballista, and that would be quite useful for dealing with that mob of slimes. Having thanked Kusuke profusely for his assistance, Satomi immediately scurried off to the cave and began to set up the ballista without any further words -- Kusuke would be able to see that she was pretty much manically happy with getting to set this thing up (she was a great fan of technology and siege weapon, after all, and naturally getting to test out her own complex craftsmanship put a glint in her eye), and soon enough she was grinning to herself as she was shooting pieces of stone at the mob of slimes, the obstacle that had blocked Kusuke's path earlier dissolving before the slicing pieces of shrapnel that shredded slime and slaughtered the little gooey monsters. After only a few minutes, they lay dead in a washing-away pile of goo, and Satomi pumped her fist, disassembling her ballista. When she finished, she turned to Kusuke with her grin still on her face and a singsong tone of satisfaction in her voice: she had done her job well, and her ballista worked beautifully well. "Well, that went well if I do say so myself~ It is very, very nice to finally get a chance to make and use a weapon like this with my own hands, now that I'm not scurrying around on Earth Bet or those other places we went. Thank you for your assistance in that matter, Kusuke-san." She stretched and put her disassembled ballista on her back. "Right... now we just have to make our way down? Do you have any tricks to make this easier, Kusuke-san?"

Oh no, Perlita had once again fallen headfirst down the well that was her seemingly boundless teenage awkwardness. She put a hand on her head. "Wait, but why would you need us to save a spot if you're walking on, uh, I mean, I'm confused too--" Perlita dropped her hand and sighed... this really wasn't the time or place for this sort of thing, and she didn't have the energy with the mood she was in. "...sorry, uh, I thought you wanted us to save you a seat because you weren't going to be getting right on. But... whatever, you know?" Perlita settled on shrugging, and then extended a slender hand to wave Gabriel on in as she finished entering the bus and picked out a seat for herself.

Perlita had felt an initial rush of elation when the end of the battle came and no one was seriously hurt -- not only did she feel some pride that she'd done her job properly, but she was also just happy that everyone got out okay in and of itself. Of course, events transpired rather quickly to crush that good mood in its infancy. First of all, Snow spit on the corpse of their enemy, which just drew an uneasy stare from Perlita -- the village had been burned down and all, but she didn't know that she approved of that. And of course, THAT reminded her that they were standing in the charred wreck of a village around several dead people, some of which had probably been horrifically transformed... and, well, that took a visible toll on her mood too. THEN Soryn and a skeleton lady started arguing, and Perlita had to resist sinking her face into her hands. They were about to slice each other up! Was this really what it was like here...? Perlita didn't know what to think of some of her slightly less recent teammates, but at least they hadn't gone at it like this... this certainly wasn't the happiest way to get introduced to this new team. Actually... she missed the old team, too. Malachi and Diane and the bunch. And speaking of her friends... as Perlita approached the bus, she saw Gabriel doing so too... and asking a spot be saved? Climbing into the bus, she turned to him. "Er... Gabriel? Save you a spot? What are you doing?"