Powder Miner

Nader was a little surprised himself when his armored fist crashed into the blade-bear-beast-thing's face with enough visage-crushing force to force it to rear up off of Leo, and even more surprised when it stumbled around as if it were concussed. Well, he hadn't expected to do that much damage, but Newton's First Law was something beautiful, alright. However, he really didn't have time to revel, because after staggering around a bit, the monstrosity was looking to charge again, and Nader didn't want to have to handle either being hit by it or having to avoid shooting someone else under it. So he brought his left arm in front of him, turned it towards the creature, straightened it until the rail clicked, and then pulled on the bar on the bottom of his armor's forearm. BOOM! Nader fires his Horsekiller at the Drop Bear, using his No Silencers Here perk to taunt it!

Satomi nodded silently (but still with that tight grimace) as Kusuke offered to rewind her back into time. Once he did, of course, the relief was incredible. Not only did the magical pain in her very soul disappear, but the wounds from the acid ceased to be, the blood that had been running down her kimono disappearing, as well as the damage to her kimono and of course the painful wound itself. Immediately, Satomi stood up much straighter and took a deep breath, eyes closed. Then she looked at Kusuke and gave him a small bow of gratitude. "Thank you, Kusuke-san." Then she dithered a bit on what to do with the shield she had looted, before ultimately choosing to simply sling it under her arm for now. It was hardly as if she had to carry it long, after all, and she did have the necessary muscle for that.

Satomi was clearly not in a very good position -- her and Mirri were the most clearly wounded at its conclusion, but the fact that her armor was not concealing made the extent of her injuries far more clear. Firstly, blood was dripping down her front, as well as some of other unidentifiable fluid, seeping from under the shoulder and chest plates on her right side, the aftermath of the acid attack she'd taken near the start of the battle. Secondly, the bizarre attack that had hit her the second time had her in inexplicable pain and weakness throughout her body, visible only in the hunch in her posture and the squint of her eyes. Although she was grimacing, she made no attempt to slow down or to complain about her injuries: it was unbecoming of a samurai, she was far from the only one wounded, and there were new things to pay attention to anyway. Satomi's first moments after the battle were spent looting; she gathered gravestone pieces, she scraped some scales off of the wyvern and then left them for the others to pick up, and then she went up to one of the dead Slaughtaurs and reluctantly went for its shield. If this were not a horrible monster, the act would be shameful -- but considering that it was some oni, looting it was simply a matter of pragmatism, and not particularly a stain on her honor, even if she did still feel a little awkward.

Having left the Barracks, both Navin and Isobel made their way over to the courtyard. Isobel Low and LOTUS Isobel made her way over to the area of the courtyard where the squad leaders appeared to be standing and talking, with her hands in the pockets of her green-and-blue jumpsuit. She didn't much like leaving Sachi alone to just deal with what was eating her, but to be frank Isobel knew she didn't have much of a choice -- it might be unfortunate, but they did kind of have to do something here, and even though Isobel that the role she played in it was just a peripheral one at best, she was playing a role, so she couldn't dawdle. She made her way up to the talking squad leaders. "Um... hello. LOTUS?" As LOTUS got handed off to Isobel, and as she hooked him onto her apron pocket again, he replied. "Thank you, Isobel. Well, alright, I think that we're done discussing team composition now, I'm going to announce it to the others." LOTUS increased his volume, and addressed the crowd of people in the courtyard. "Alright, it's the same deal as last time. For those of you new here, that means that I'm going to announce who is on which squad, which one of us is leading each squad, and where each squad is going, having discussed it with the other squad leaders. The Lancer squad will take on the Servant Lancer, who is some female version of King Arthur, with a lance that seems to be able to charge up to deal devastating blows. The team is slightly arranged around dealing with this, but I'm avoiding overspecializing this time. Lancer squad is led by me, with Isobel carrying me as is usual, and the members are... Dackly and Gozer, Samantha, Bridgett, Friedhold, Morgan, Ritsu, Hikari, and Katsuo. The Saber squad will take on the Servant Saber, who is some bizarre atheist edgy version of Jeanne D'Arc, who likes fire and dragons, and the composition was made with that in mind. Edmond will lead this one, and its members will be, uh, Spicy HG, Mitsurugi, Snow, Perlita, Atton, Magnum, Gabriel, Soryn, and Magna. The Siegebreaker squad will be battling the enemies outside of this fort to ensure that they can't reinforce our enemies. Overall this is a largely balanced team, with some slight preference for area-of-effect. Lexiel is leading it, and its members are Liliya, Jade, Venus, Laver, Solomon, Halley, Sachi, and Hiroki. The Castle Defense squad will be defending our castle. It's largely just a balanced team. It is led by Ghost, and its members will be Aurora, Walmond and Lambda, Rampart, (sigh) Empi, Victoria, Mira, Kino and Enma, and Navin. If the members of these teams aren't in the courtyard, please head to the other areas of this fort and retrieve them. Get into fighting shape and assemble in your squads, we're heading out soon."

Satomi had kept her Perfection Crossbow out, jerking it towards the dragon-like beast once it appeared, but she ended up holding off once she saw the absolute storm of death that her teammates were bringing down upon it. Alright, that was fine -- perhaps her contribution could be used elsewhere. Instead, she saw the gaki-like creatures rising from the gravestones, which clearly had some sort of maho (did one use maho for ghosts?) that was allowing them to bring more monsters that her group would have to deal with. Since trying to shoot the "gaki"s themselves would have little effect, Satomi slung her crossbow back onto her back, drew her katana as she proceeded to run at the gravemarker, and then slammed the sword's hilt into the gravestone as hard as she could. Satomi smashes a Gravemarker!

A loud hiss escaped Satomi's lips as drops of acid slipped past where they'd hit her armor and sizzled past her kimono, painfully searing the flesh around her collarbone and on the side of her neck. It was, of course, agonizing, but other Crab samurai had dealt with worse than this before, so Satomi swallowed hard and stifled any louder noises. Besides, she was in a fight, and she couldn't afford to slow down. Unfortunately, her strike had confirmed that though she actually did seem to be stronger than several of her compatriots, a simple katana strike was not going to cut it during this fight, so to speak. She was a Kaiu, not a Hida, plus there was a reason that her Hida comrades tended to use tetsubos and not katanas, for situations like this. Still, she could contribute. Sheathing her katana reluctantly and pulling out her good crossbow, Satomi aimed in the direction of the arriving centaurs, but instead of aiming to plainly hit them, she was aiming for ways that she could make it difficult for them to block. Of course... given that they were actually kind of just blurs she could mentally extrapolate into enemies with shields and weapons, what with their distance and the condition of her eyes, she was just trying to harass a centaur, in the end, not actually having but maybe not needing real precision. Satomi uses Fend Off on a Slaughtaur! Loadout:

Wordlessly, just before her charge, Satomi hands the crossbow to Piglet, letting her take the Shitty-Looking Crossbow, unless this takes Satomi's action.

Satomi, much like she had during the situation with Lung, immediately took in the situation; she had been trained in tactics to some extent and had the intelligence to make use of it; it would be a very poor idea not to take stock of things and decide the best course of action. They faced three types of enemies: gigantic two-headed ogre-like beasts, serpent oni, and what looked more like gaki. Satomi didn't know that she could do much to monsters as solid looking as the two-headed ogres, and she wasn't sure she could even harm the gaki-like monsters, but perhaps it would bear testing to see what she could do against the serpents. Satomi didn't presently have much of an issue throwing herself into the attention of these monsters, either -- having tested her new armor, she knew that it was far tougher than it really had a right to be, and if she wasn't getting hit it would be someone else anyway. Satomi hardly intended to be keeping herself out of danger at others' expense, and though she didn't expect to be totally invulnerable, she figured that she had a better chance of dealing with being attacked than some of the others. So she slung her crossbow against her back, where it lightly knocked against her other, and put her hand on the hilt of her katana. Running towards one of the serpents with a shout, she proceeded to draw it and strike fluidly in one movement. The Rokugani art of iaijutsu, striking with the draw, an art used in dueling first and foremost, but not one useless for combat. It could be blindingly fast if practiced... and though she was no master, Satomi certainly had practiced in case the day came some Scorpion dog tried to send her the way of her mother. Satomi uses Iaijutsu Strike on one of the serpents! Loadout:

Satomi managed to finish loading her crossbow at that moment, and she picked it up off of the ground, aiming it in the direction of the approaching demons but waiting for the right time to strike, her elbow hovering near where her katana sat loose within its hilt. The man --Parias, his name was, evidently-- spoke, and Satomi nodded, both to herself and to everyone else. Right. Previous events may have tested her resolve, but not this. No, this, fighting horrible oni to save the world, that was what she was born to do, the Duty of her clan, and thusly her Duty itself more than anything else. This was so similar to that that despite the danger she felt that she was on familiar ground, for once. "I will aid you." It was a short, simple, affirmation, but Satomi didn't need to go on about this. It was the tenet of bushido, Sincerity -- for a samurai, saying ought to be doing. There was no need to add additional pledges, or to talk on and on -- there was a battle, and she would battle.

Satomi could tell that she didn't have any time to waste from the moment she entered this place (which still wasn't Jigoku, but perhaps was something very close -- she could only hope that the Taint wasn't one of those similarities); the current fighters couldn't pay attention to all of the incoming oni, and even with her poor eyesight Satomi herself noticed that several of the Oni were coming their way. So while the others were doing their things, Satomi immediately crouched down and began to place a bolt box into her better crossbow, going through the difficult process of pushing the reload lever with enough force while not damaging it, while she still could.

Not being in the bus at the time of the sword's impact, Satomi was lucky enough therefore not to get tossed around by it. But the sound did get her out of her working mood, causing her to pop up from the pile of wreckage she was at and slip on her newly improved armor. Good timing too, because it wasn't long after that that a portal suddenly popped into existence, emanating screams and a fairly charred and desperate man. Really, there wasn't any hesitation from Satomi. With her armor now on and her crossbows at her back, Satomi charged through the portal, drawing her katana as she did. She had no intention of just letting people get killed, as bizarre as the whole situation was. She was more dutiful than that. "Come on! We have to provide aid!" Satomi joins the hunt.

The vision brought a multitude of reactions from Satomi. First of all, of course, it brought some startlement... but compared to some of the other things she had been through, a vision was perhaps not the craziest thing that she could have encountered. Divination may have usually been the domain of the shugenja magic-users of her homeworld, but this wasn't her homeworld. The description of Arminius brought a slight scowl to Satomi's face; she knew that this PRT had some misconceptions about their group (PART was a bizarre cover up and she refused to think of it as the group name) and that she should not trust their statement without additional verification, but if they were correct in their assessment of Arminius, it was yet another horrible thing about him, even if she couldn't quite put her finger on the exacts of why it was awful. Some of the overly terrified descriptions of the others did draw a little bit of a giggle from Satomi; it was funny to watch them scramble around talking to someone like Lilly, but it did present a little bit of a problem in that they sold have to be careful not to panic these people much more, (especially because their paranoia did potentially have justification)... say by causing gigantic explosions (and when criminal usage of the bizarre metal pieces was mentioned, Satomi winced.) Even though their description of her was surprisingly accurate when considering Armsmaster's earlier insistence that she had some kind of power, the idea that they thought some man named Teacher had given her her skills stung a bit. She had learned through hard work and through the Kaiu sensei, not from some person from their Earth. The mentions of threats closing in on Brockton Bay drew another scowl from her, but a more determined one -- they would have to come back indeed, because their help would be invaluable in fighting these criminals off, Satomi was sure of that. Oh, even though APPARENTLY they were working with criminals already. Satomi would have to ask about that later. -- After the vision, Satomi exhaled and pulled our her notebook. She had a couple of questions she felt were worth asking, and she believed that that world deserves their attention later, but for the sake of her own improvement she had something to pay attention to now. She had taken in a lot during her time there, and now if she took the time to collate it and further get used to it, she would be increasing her own potential. Springs, these moving metal devices, some of the aspects of their architecture that weren't the kind of thing that required her to see materials or blueprints, such as some of the supports she'd seen at the apartments and Rig... Satomi spends 8 Merit, boosting her INT by 2 and her Gempukku passive by 4 levels! -- When she had finished with that, Satomi didn't just want to huddle inside the bus anymore. She wanted to do something, and now that she saw other people walking around outside of the bus, she knew that she could too. So she grabbed some of the time-altered metal (indirectly, using armor plates to hold them; she didn't want to get cut up), and took it outside the bus, then started to put in the grueling effort to try to cut it into a couple of pieces to see what would happen. When she started making significant damage on it, though, what she saw caused a silly grin to spring up on her face. Not only was the metal highly dense, but it seemed that each of the separate stages that it changed into held damage differently -- meaning that the metal had frankly impossible structural integrity overall, and that it was nearly invincible unless one spent a lot of time. This might not work the best for weaponry like she'd originally envisioned, but she could not have asked for a better material for armor. Rushing with excitement, then, Satomi grabbed more, small pieces of the shifting metal, and some of the regular metal, before shucking the armor plates on her chest and shoulders and getting to work. She took the plates of armor, put the time metal pieces onto them, and then placed the other metal plates onto them. Then, with a vaguely hammer shaped piece of wreckage from the boats that had been taken to the bus, she pounded against the edges of the metal again and again and again, forcing the two pieces of normal metal to kind of seal around the smaller piece of time metal in the center, a sufficient arrangement to hold the metal, especially when she tied them with rope also taken from boat pieces. And she did this for each and every single plate, resulting in a long and noisy process, the CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG of her work probably audible to most of the team. But when she was finished... she took a test plate she'd made without her actual samurai armor, she took her earlier, worse crossbow, and she put the crossbow right up against the test plate. From this range, Satomi knew that bows and crossbows could relatively easily pierce armor... but the crossbow bolt stuck in it, unable to pierce more than one state of the time metal and getting stuck in the others. "Yes! Oh, that's fantastic!" Strapping her armor plates together in the proper way, the diminutive samurai lifted her newly durable armor into the air, the silly grin back on her face. The fact that it made a light sound, a susurration from the slight grinding of the pieces that was fairly easily ignorable, made no difference to Satomi. This was incredible! It was fantastic! "Ohhhh," she practically squealed in excitement, "This is the best!" Satomi uses one piece of Timefucked Metal, and upgrades her Light Samurai Armor to the following: Time Sandwich Samurai Armor (Level 2): These plates of samurai armor have been modified, with usage of the metal resulting from the bay explosion making the armor extremely difficult to pierce without sustained effort -- damage only sticks on one of the phases of the timeshifting metal. Level 1: +3 RES when equipped. Level 2: +4 further RES when equipped.

Nader's train of thought and what he had been doing ground to a (not literally, yet) grinding halt when all of a sudden a gigantic, horrible razor-beast dropped behind the party out of nowhere in a gigantic cloud of dust, slamming onto Leo in the process. "WHAT IN THE NAME OF-- FUCK!" With that expletive hurled from his lips and through his mask, Nader twirled noisily and looked in the direction of the immense, awful blademonster. He raised his left arm, and then dropped it... dammit, he couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't end up going wild and putting Leo down one torso! Nader hated himself for thinking of this, but it was fairly clear that if he didn't want Leo turned into meat cubes, that he had to take a... bolder plan of action. And that is how Nader found himself clanking towards the colossal, terrible knifecreature, shouting as he ran up and then sent his machine-gun arm hurtling towards the monster's side, hoping that the momentum of his fist with his armor and his weapon would be enough to knock the thing off. Nader tries to knock the Drop Bear off of Leo with a Heavy Metal Punch! Loadout:

Satomi, by now having composed herself, pops up over the seat in front of her, and Lucille hears a sigh before suddenly her question is being answered by the short samurai, who is a few seats behind her. "...the explosion was entirely my fault. See, I had been trying to come up with a plan to disassemble the boats faster, but seeing as I was distracted... well, I was only really half-aware of what I was writing. And... heh... what I had made was guesswork from watching Kusuke do his practice with his new technique, but as it turns out I had more been thinking of... well, it seems I hadn't been thinking with safety in mind. So what happened was I ended up having him merge two boats together, which blew up half of the boats and wreckage, but also... violently blew up half of the boats and wreckage."

When everyone had been getting onto the bus, Satomi had had questions, questions including "where did these two other dragons come from, and why do all these minion creatures keep coming out of nowhere", but once the bus was warped to another world, those questions were driven out of her mind. See, the bus had ended up in a realm of shapeless darkness, and the realm Satomi knew that was said to be a shapeless realm of darkness and suffering... JIGOKU?! Satomi shot up into a standing position, then suddenly froze up with a squeak, her hands on the hilt of her sword as she looked around at the void outside the bus. It took until the others left the bus and then weren't horribly mutated or shredded by the environment outside that she began to calm down, though for the most part that just meant she slowly sat down, her small height allowing her to shrink down easily behind the seat and try not to let everyone see that she was kind of shaken up.

Navin Mhasalkar He raised an eyebrow at Empi. "The two of us have more pressing commitments to deal with here than going and planning outings, such as fighting the beings consuming the multiverse, and all. We are not exactly in a situation where I can go 'oh, I have Saturday off', even moreso than being a superhero tends to destroy that sort of thing back home. But, yes, I do think I succeeded in clearing things up between miss Saigai and I, miss Powderbelle." Isobel Low Isobel sighed, something of a regretful look on her face. "I'm not really involved in strategy, but I think that LOTUS is going to need me. I'm sorry about this -- perhaps we can talk later, though? At the very least, don't feel the need to apologize here, it isn't as if you've done anything wrong." Isobel extended her hand and grabbed onto Sachi's extended one. In her normal form, Sachi was hardly the heaviest girl, but nonetheless levering a girl as tall as she was did elicit a grunt from Isobel as she helped Sachi up.

Satomi lets out a vindictive little "Hmph," turns her back on Arminius, and gets back to looking over the bus.

Satomi's expression suddenly changes at Arminius' last sentence; she puffs herself up a little bit, which isn't terribly intimidating considering her tiny height, but then shoots a glare at Arminius which, even if it might not intimidate Arminius, is actually a surprisingly fierce look. "I'm not afraid of being recognized -- I am no Scorpion clan "samurai", and we ought not be relying on treachery and deceit to conduct our affairs. I know from experience that those groups which would speak of using deception and "underhanded approaches", and wear m--" Satomi suddenly cuts off what she was about to say there, cognizant of the fact that pretty much everyone in this world wears masks, "...that those who use underhanded approaches are just waiting with a dagger in their hands to plant into the backs of whoever is in their way, no matter what they are doing, so long as they can bring their plots to fruition. I don't have any respect for deceit, and we DEFINITELY should not be staying here for years just to be able to rely on it."

Satomi turns to look at Arminius and crosses her arms. "We are not staying here for years, that's so problematic a "choice" that I hardly even want to discuss it. And we can discuss what to do with bringing them things when we actually have things to bring them, because when we actually have what they want then we can get what we want better than if we try to negotiate when we do not actually have what they want yet."

Satomi, largely unmoved from her previous position except for circling the bus a couple of times, chimes in here, still examining the vehicle. "I am probably one of the samurai of Rokugan the least opposed to commerce, considering that my mother belonged to the Yasuki family which does it in service of the Crab, but I don't think that you're going about it the right way, Arminius. What you're springing for here is actually less important than the bus itself -- any profits gained on this world are going to be useless outside of it unless we make a habit of returning, and we have a lot more to gain just from visiting other worlds. Just from the couple of days I've been here I've gained quite a bit of knowledge and gear, and really the "bus" is the best way we have to make progress in general. I'm largely satisfied with the deal, especially because it's secure by its nature. If the bus didn't work, they wouldn't be able to take footage, and if any extra negotiations come up later then we have the ability to dictate their terms than and there anyway. I do agree that we should be able to say no on certain things being filmed, though."

Satomi frowned. "How much of our journeys are they going to be recording? All of it, all the time? To be honest... I do not exactly like bringing it up, but having some of the things that have happened so far be recorded would have been a very great source of shame, and I would I think like to avoid being hit with a massive burden of shame."

"Right... well, I guess I'm not going to be disassembling this any time soon, then. Still, it is most certainly intriguing just to get to look at it." As Uber began to describe what he wanted to get out of the deal, Satomi frowned -- these terms were rather unfamiliar to her, but considering the importance of what was going on she figured that she would want to know. "...do you mind defining for me what exactly you mean by footage? This must be backwards to you, but... well, I'm afraid that the term is beyond my time. I don't really intend to be doing the diplomacy here, I'm no Crane, but I suppose that it would be helpful for me to know -- and maybe for some of the others."

Nader looked out at the minefields... and the armored Forenian was thoroughly unimpressed. What kind of shoddy explosive worksmanship was this?! Nader wasn't even any kind of explosives specialist, but chances were that he could do a better job. Of course, what if that was what they wanted Nader to think? What if the man that had put down the mines had put down a second, better-hidden layer of mines that would take the legs off of anyone fooled by the first layer of obviously poor work? Nader certainly did not plan to take any chances, as he planned to keep his legs and for that matter to keep everyone else's on them. Besides, those mines were dangerous. He leveled his right arm in the direction of one of the minefields, and supported it with his left, careful not to end up pulling the pull-trigger installed to fire his machinegun until he actually wanted to fire it. He was taking a little bit of a gamble here -- shooting any given mine may detonate, may not detonate it, or may only detonate it if he hit it in the right place and ended up simulating the force of a step... but the fact that he was going to be putting out twenty-five or so bullets into this minefield significantly increased the chances of destroying the obvious mines and of finding and destroying any hidden ones, though the weapons engineer knew that he couldn't really be sure of success in that regard. Nader shoots both attacks of the M3 Sorraia at Minefield 3, potentially doing 2/3*(2d6+3+5) damage to it! Loadout:

Perhaps not showing the best of caution, albeit around people she doesn't know are villains, Satomi (still dizzy and sweaty and wet but more steady on her feet) immediately beelines for the bus. "Oh, another one of those vehicles I've seen about! I haven't had any chance to look at one of these up close, though this one is a lot bigger than the ones I've been seeing these last couple of days."

Satomi's commandeered rusted boat, piled positively high with all sorts of pieces from the boats that the medieval engineer had just mercilessly slaughtered with Kusuke's help, touched with the shore of the bay. Satomi herself was more than a little bit sweaty, her orange hair sticking to her head in damp strings, but she also had a silly grin on her face, standing high (or, given her dizziness, mostly high). She had a reason to be proud -- with the efficiency that getting sent back in time four times had given her, she had been able to disassemble the boats blocking the bay with frightening speed, and now the bay itself was a much better place for it. A fine exercise of her Duty, Satomi, thought, in a wider sense, and when Proditor came up to congratulate her, she bowed to him proudly. "I had help, of course, but thank you." Now, given that she had just put forth a frightful amount of effort despite not actually having that much stamina at all, and given that she had just been through the incredibly disorienting experience of being sent back through time four times in just a few minutes, and given that watching herself work was probably an even more disorienting experience for her than the other watchers, when she stepped off of the boat she very nearly pitched face-first into the sand and had to wheel her arms and stumble around a bit in order not to fall down, but that didn't stop her from being quite proud of herself.