Masks 2

“So, like do the plants have some sort of telepathy?” Hackerman whispered. “Pheromones? It is kind of weird every plant in this region is just reactive enough to help their minions.”

“Also why do these plants have lasers? Are they controlling antimissile platformers?”

Ezren's little jog slowed down for a second. Could whatever was getting rid of the missiles hit THEM? That sounded more concerning than whatever was in the grass. Unless there were also lasers about to come out of the grass, in which case maybe the sewers weren't such a bad idea. Once everyone else caught up a little he decided running was a little more appropriate. Definitely staying with the team for THEIR benefit, yeah.

"Hmm. Should we split off to see if we can counter that anti-missile tech? That security is still up but the security for that security may have gotten pretty lax." Orla asked as she kept up the constant jog/run, apparently totally unexerted despite being in proper serious armour.

"And I heard plants can sense their environment, moisture, heat, that kind of thing. That or the mutants are emitting something that makes the grass kick into overdrive rather than the grass setting up for the mutants."

Finn shakes her head at Orla's suggestion, keeping pace fairly easy at her ridiculous height. "Anti-missile systems are Omnicorp tech. They're stationed downtown, and once we're there we won't have any use for the missiles. Only way we can get 'em through is if someone can hack into the local Omnicorp HQ through one of the turrets, I'd figure."

"As for the plants, it could be a natural response, or it could be some fucked up magic. Frankly have no idea what the fuck we're dealin' with here, and I doubt we'll get much of a chance 'til we're finished." She reaches for her spear - gotta be prepared if a mutant comes charging outta nowhere.

Esen clears the grass immediately around herself with a swipe of her hookshots, and drops into a low ready stance.

"So long as we don't get stuck in a mob of mutants... I'll try and keep a small area clear, since I can cut things pretty damn fast."

She twirls her invisible appendages around, keeping them circling around herself.

"I can defend us, let's move as quickly as we can!"

Theraea positioned herself in the middle of the group, ready to cover the flanks with barriers as necessary to keep Bad Things away.

Esen began hacking through the grass with her hookshot, slicing the blades as quickly as they could grow back. This kept their path somewhat clear, at least.

"Not sure on the telepathy or pheremones, but they're working together somehow. Everything's been way too coordinated for the tree not to be some kind of intelligent," the Demon nodded to Hackerman. "If we get you to the turrets, do you think you could make them into your turrets? Could help."

Just then, the ground began to shake and crack, destabilizing their footing as dozens of enormous terrifying snakes began surging out of the grass around them. They substantially larger and more aggressive versions of the region's native rattlesnake, mutated with an extra large mouth and tougher scales! They were a couple hundred feet from the wall at this point. Just a little further!

Aww yeah -- snakes have an EASILY exploitable elemental weakness baked right in! Two of 'em, matter of fact! Sure, these ones are bigger and angrier, but Finn's ready for this!

She charges up her sword with some lightning and goes to town, pole-vaulting with her spear and going in for a plunging slash!

Candy sets her visor to lock onto all snakes and to give an accurate reading to track them. "Looks like we gotta start with the RATTLE dazzle am I right?" She quips as she throws some exploding shurikens at the snakes. "I can be a distraction for now, I'm pretty nimble. I'll be able to get up when you guys got the wall secure."

"Hey...hey Theraea. Can you pick up up and get me over to the missiles."

Ezren laughed, because he didn’t know we were getting extremely funny on the battlefield- which was quickly cut off with a noise of disgust. These dogs looked sick. Gross! He threw his handfuls of rocks into the air, quickly morphing to crystal shards that rained down on a pack. He intended to try and isolate one from the rest so he could grab it, and use it to continue beating up other snakes that got too close.

Ah, humans. Cracking jokes in the middle of mortal danger. It never really got old, that an entire species would be so absolutely flippant while one false move from the grave. That and the whole "powerwalking for hours as a hunting method" thing made humans endlessly fascinating.

No time to think on that, though! Theraea quickly grabbed Ken and began flying. "I'm, um, I'm going to take Hackerman to the turrets! Just... survive, please, everyone else? And I guess anyone who can can join us, if that doesn't split things up too much."

As she ascended, Theraea prepared to deflect any incoming attacks that would no doubt be in store. This place was just awful.

Orla was... understandably distressed at the giant snakes. Giant snakes. A lot of them. Gross, poor things but also, snakes were scary.

Still.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

Going from 0 to 80 she ran with a brief, fierce scream to shake any fears from herself. Theraea was flying with Ken so not much to do to help there, better help the ground forces for now whilst keeping an eye out in case bow needed to be drawn.

Esen switches from cutting grass to cutting snakes!

"If they're communicating with pheromones, is there any way to stop that? Spray some deodorant or something to confuse them?"

"Good idea!" the Demon agreed with Esen. "Don't think spraying a simple spray can will do it, but...Emily, can you modify some missiles to disperse something to that effect?"

"Sure can! It'll take a bit though. Hang in there and keep pressing for the city!" she replied with her typical pep.

Fortunately, the snakes already seemed to be acting somewhat stupid. Most of them kept trying to bite Lady Light or Orla, both of whom could easily tank their fangs or toxins. Folly, for her part, was walking unconcerned at the center of the group with a most fashionable walk.

Bloodsport kept on trucking with the bomb on his back, while Harpwyn blasted snakes into meat chunks with chromatic blasts from his harp. Lady Light hovered a few feet off the ground, flying around and destroying snakes with light blast and swordstrike. The resistance fighters, adopting a moving defensive formation, shot at the snakes to little effect. Their hides were mostly bulletproof.

They were not, however, magical spear proof. Or magical sword proof! Or even hookshot, explosive shuriken, or exploding shard proof! Orla charged into their midst stabbing and tearing with her spear and occasionally her sword, tearing the snakes apart. The bites that did manage to get around her armor did nothing, as her healing factor easily resisted the enhanced toxins. Finn, in a fury, slashed apart many of the snakes attacking Orla with powerful elemental sword strikes.

A cluster of snakes were annihilated by Ezren's exploding shards, with left a field of mangled snake corpses amidst a charred field. Candy blew snakes apart with blasts of her voice, and destroyed others with exploding shurikens. Finally, Esen did what she did best and sliced numerous snakes asunder with her ferocious hookshots.

The group reached the wall, where Bloodsport began setting up the explosive charge. Now in a more stationary position, the group was able to fend off the snakes with relative ease. Unfortunately, giant insects were now coming down from above, trying to harass them and get at Bloodsport!

Up above, Theraea carried Hackerman up towards the turrets. Gullgirl flew ahead of them, furiously bashing hordes of giant insects out of the sky with her flail swinging like a propeller. It wasn't long before they reached the top of one of the defense towers, where Hackerman was able to run up to one of the turrets. If he entered it, he'd be able to run through the internet back to the city's defense headquarters. There, he'd be able to take control of the entire city's automated defense systems. Most of them were probably offline by now, but he'd be able to do some serious damage with whatever was left.

Beginning to realise that, while it wasn't particularly pleasant, that she'd be fine from their bites snapping in and out of her, Orla swapped out the shield to her sword since Finn was keeping them from just swarming entirely over her anyway as well as the other explosions and ranged attacks. Focusing more on just taking the hits as an easy target and dealing out damage in return.

"Ew ew Eeeeeewwww, that's so gross." She yelled out now at the horrible giant insects. Like, this was better than fighting people but these snakes and bugs were just really unpleasant to be coming at her. "They're going to keep sending gross things at us. We should hurry before some specialised bugs or mutants come at us eventually in case this isn't just random violence."

Honestly, this was pretty exciting, a good day already. These people knew how to have a good time. Ezren decided to be helpful for his new besties! Instead of slowing down and turning to fight more snakes or whatever, Ezren raised a flaming fist and collided it with the wall as hard as he could. You know, so they could put the explosive in it or whatever.

It looked like Hackerman had the remainder of this situation taken care of! Theraea took the opportunity, already being up here, to do some scouting. She looked around for monsters and other threats lying in wait, either up here or on the far side of the wall. She'd get Gullgirl's help on that, too - needed to make sure the ground team wasn't surprised by something terrible once the wall was breached.

Hackerman slips into the network, or what remained of it!

Esen switches strategies, stabbing for the weak points of the insects' carapaces instead of slashing at the snakes. She keeps an eye out for anything coming at ground level, though!

Finn takes notice of Ezren's actions and grins wide! Gods above, the fella was mighty mysterious but he was useful. She could deal with a few enigmas for that.

"Brilliant! Okay, Orla, change of plans - play defense for Ezren! Keep him covered while he gives us some room to plant the charges, yeah? And you'd best tell me if you need to take a break, lass!"

She turns then to Candy. "If you can taunt 'em into gatherin', I think I can make 'em regret it!"

She charges her blade with ice, preparing to release it in a burst around the snakes. If she can cool the cold-blooded critters down sufficiently, they might start getting lethargic, and then it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel!

Orla's ears twitched at the yelled command, trained enough to not look over at Finn speaking mid-battle and taking the opportunity whilst battling to observe the battlefield for the demon, and then breaking from her position. Only attacking to clear a path, defend herself or take an opportunistic stab in passing as she rolled, jumped and in case just hard shouldered and tripped in an unarmed, martial move one of the mutated animals. Thankfully Amazonian training wasn't specialised to fighting only humanoid enemies.

"Understood Finn, you'll hear me if it's too much." As she stabbed a mutant and used her spear to pole vault over through the air and landing with a crunch and sword stab on another monster near Ezren, moving immediately to keep her back turned to Ezren and fighting off to clear space.

"Ill do my best! Good idea!" Cadence used a combination of sound manipulation and explosions to round up all the mutants together as best they could.

Orla, Candy, and Finn rushed to Ezren, guarding his back while he punched giant crazy holes through the base of the wall. Finn channeled ice magic through her sword, lowing the local temperature as she hacked and slashed through the snakes. At the same time, Candy sent out numerous sonic screams, disrupting the natural vibrations of their environment and disorienting their attackers. These combined tactics made it pretty easy for the three heroes to cleave through the attacking snakes.

The insects attacking from up above were thoroughly disrupted by Esen and Lady Light, who utilized a combination of slicing hookshots and light blasts to knock them out of the sky. Outside of being rained on by burning bug viscera, those on the ground were safe for now.

With this helpful cover, Ezren was able to charge his fists and punch a whole hell of a lot of giant holes into the base of the wall. This collection of holes was eventually united into one BIG hole, into which Bloodsport placed the prime explosive charge.

"EVERYBODY RUN FOR COVER!" Bloodsport yelled. "WE'RE SETTING THIS OFF."

***

Ken looked to the automated defense turret, closed his eyes, and immediately he was rushing through the horrors of endless cyberspace. Smashing and slashing his way past the city's cyber defenses, he soon found himself outside the defense mainframe. It was guarded by an enormous three-headed firebreathing dog.

"YOU WILL NOT PASS. THE CITY MUST REMAIN SAFE!" the demi-AI dog roared at him, preparing to bite with all three mouths.

***

Upon her perch, Theraea and Gullgirl looked down to see a giant porcupine creature lurking below. It was directly opposite where everybody was setting up the bomb, and seemed to be waiting for them to enter the city. Could be a problem.

***

The heroes all rushed away from the wall, hacking, slashing, shooting, and blasting to get away from the soon-to-explode wall. They all dived behind an old concrete foundation just as the plasma bomb went off, vaporizing large chunks of the lower wall. A few moments passed, and then the whole thing came crashing down, blanketing the area in dust and debris. The way forward was clear.

”YEAHHHHH GO TEAM!!!” Ezren shouted behind the concrete pile, absolutely giddy. He jumped up and kicked a rock in his exuberance, and started yanking people up so they could GO GO GO!! He learned his lesson last time. Everyone wants to hang while we do this, fine, fine, worth it. He picked up some of the smaller pieces of debris to shove in his pockets, and the MOMENT everyone was ready to charge, so was he.