World Tree MUSH

    A new vine to an unfamiliar world is opening today.

    It's probably not something that people in the World Tree are unaccustomed to, at this point. But perhaps the way one opens now is something less common.

    At this hour, where the sun is at it's highest peak in the sky, a wide highway leading towards a large city isn't quite busy enough to form pace-slowing columns of cars on the lanes, but well busy enough to showcase the density of the population in this area. Busy enough that cars seem to whiz past near constantly. And it's here where the first new vine between the World Tree and a freshly-blossoming world is opening.

    The instant the smallest hint of a tear large enough to permit something through opens, a bizarre, dark creature leaps down onto the highway. At first glance, one could mistake it for a large dog, or even a wolf, if it wasn't for one key difference; where it's head should be, is instead a mass of writhing, perpetually undulating tentacles. The details of the rest of it's body are difficult to make out, for some reason. THe space around it seems to darken, for some reason, as if though the light from the sun could not quite make it all the way to touching it completely, shrouding it in a shadow that simply should not be there.

    The instant it lands, a car collides head-on with it, knocking the creature over the car and into the air and sending the car itself careening out of control. But before either has come to a halt in the sudden, violent motion, more of the 'wolves' appear. Not just a few. Not even just 'tens'. Too many to be counted easily just by looking pour down from a freshly-formed Vine in the air like a tidal wave of darkness, quickly spreading across both sides of the highway with such numbers that traffic is forced to a halt, and any cars that happen to collide with the mass of tentacle-headed beasts are quickly overrun.

    And yet, more. And not just the 'wolves'. Among the numbers of the beasts are different shapes of creatures. Some two-legged, hulking figures like ogres, with heads lacking eyes in favor of making room for giant, gaping mouths with an insanity-inducing number of razor-sharp teeth. Some like giant crabs, with multiple spindly legs and giant spinchers. And yet, some seem to have no form at all -- simply amorphous masses of darkness of inconsistent shapes and sizes, constantly shifting in silhouette.

    With every single new monstrosity that flows onto the highway, less and less light seems to reach in. Not just in their immediate vicinity -- as the numbers grow, the area affected seems to grow, too, like the presence of the beasts alone seems to be sucking light away.

    That effect becomes all the more clear when the final creature makes it through the vine. The largest of them all. A truly gargantuan, serpent-like beast larger than even a while, with seemingly a hundred enormous eyes running along the length of it. As it winds along the highway, the presence of light is almost crushed away entirely. From afar, it might look like a giant dome of black had suddenly appeared on the highway. And right here? It is as if the sun had gone down prematurely. The bright light of noon had disappeared, and day had made way to night.

    === MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE ===

    "Every single one of the surviving ones went through it."

    A warrior is reporting to his superiors through a magically-powered communication link on a most curious of events on the battlefield. An unexpected retreat from an enemy known only to have fallen back even in the most unfavorable of circumstances. But even more curious was the method the enemy had now used to make that retreat. The warrior had closed off a portal the enemy had launched an offensive from in this skirmish, only for a new portal to have opened. A portal that the warrior's enemies had then gone through, instead of being used to bring in more of them. A portal that he could not close with his magic. Which, in turn meant, that the portal wasn't the make of his sworn enemy. The portal could then lead to anywhere else that wasn't the enemy's home -- potentially somewhere they could threaten someone else.

    The superiors of the warrior urge him to return to them while the situation is evaluated.

    "..."

    But this doesn't sit well with the warrior. There's no way to tell what is on the other side of the portal, yes, but...

    "Sorry."

    What could happen to whoever is on the other side concerns him more.

    "You'll just have to punish me later."

    And the warrior leaps into the portal.

    Sometimes you just can't catch a break.

    Hyouka has been out on adventuring business, dealing with a posted job off on a very warm desert world; it went off more or less without a hitch, and she was looking forward to a lazy ride back home. As it happens, she's dozing in a bus on a particular highway when things start to go very badly very quickly further up ahead. The bus is far enough back down the road that there's no crashes or even really sudden stops; the bus just smoothly slows down to pretty much a stop as traffic backs up.

    But it quickly becomes obvious something is wrong, and DARGN's voice wakes the cyborg. "Hyouka. Wake up. We have a situation of some sort." The faux elf jerks awake with a bleary-eyed blink, sits up, and takes a look around... at people starting to evacuate and run the other way, on foot. "...what in the world?" Smoothly, the woman shoulders her travel bag and steps down off the bus - and it's then that she sees the dome of darkness further down. "That, ah... that looks like a problem. DARGN?" Already she's breaking into a run, and as she does, DARGN smoothly replies, "Output raising to combat levels."

    As Hyouka comes up to the edge of the dome, she leaps with all her superhuman might - and comes down towards one of the monstrous shadow-ogres feet-first, yelling at the top of her lungs. "DRAGON KIIIIIIICK!"

    After a momentary pause, DARGN speaks up with a baffled, "Really, Hyouka?"

 
 Cyber Frost was no hero, yaddi yadda yadda, etcetera, yeah yeah, we've been here before! Frost wasn't the type to answer calls of distress because she was a bleeding heart that wanted to save civilians. 
 
 She was here to -kill monsters-. That's it. 
 
 "Finally! Some freaking action!" The cybernetic ninja muttered to herself as she soared across the skies into the highway being overrun by monsters, her boot turbines and jetpack taking her to the outskirts of the city where she could more properly think of her attack. Frost was a sadist, but she wasn't an idiot that plunged into Kombat with no strategy, she liked to soften up her targets before going in for the kill. 
 
 "Let's see what you got, beasties!" She hovered above ground and procured double shoulder cannons as she fired volley after volley of ice shurikens at the monsters, seeing how they reacted to projectile fire before engaging them in melee. 
 
 "Shoulder Cannons!!! Man.. I really need to come up with a better name for this attack..." 

    As it just so happens, Bell is...
    In the city nearby. What she's doing could be called as sinister as 'scoping the place out' for a potential attack, but at the same time...
    Sluuuuuuurp... Slllllllluuuuuuurrp!
    She's having a milkshake at a local malt shop, when everything chooses now to go to hell.
    Bell's sensors pick up the sensation of a new Vine opening up. She... Promptly ignores is, kicking her feet as she slurps her milkshake. But when she ignores it for too long...

    BEEP BEEP: Incoming call from: <3 <3 <3 Daddy <3 <3 <3

    Bell brings her fingers to her ear and answers.
    "Hm~? Yes, daddy?"
    ...
    "Oh. Yes but..."
    ...
    "But I was having a milkshake-"
    ...
    "Yes. Yes, I understand it's a new blossom. Mhm. ... Okay daddy. Alright. Love you too, bye~."

    In an instant the ice cream joint's windows blow out, glass flying everywhere as Bell zooms out the door fast enough to break the sound barrier.
    Soon enough a blur of white comes screamin down the highway, car windows exploding in the sonic boom that follows it.
    Right before Bell comes to a grinding halt, stopping herself on a dime.
    "... Why is it so dark?" She asks, surveying the chaos for a beat. Before her pupils come to life with a smokey red glow as she charges her eye lasers...
    And unleashes a cutting pair of red hot laser beams at a slew of the smaller tentacle-faced wolf blobs that dare to get too close to her.
    "... Bad dogs."

    The nicest thing to call the situation at the highway would be 'pandemonium'. Eldtrich monsters flow through the streets, screams of people fleeing on foot echo through the air along defiant honks of cars driven by people still hoping to make their way out through the now traffic-clogged roads-- not to mention the otherwordly snarls of some of the beasts that people are running away from.

    One of the two-legged beasts is promptly knocked across the air from a sudden and phenomenal DRAGON KICK(tm) courtesy of Hyouka, well hard enough that it's maddeningly-toothy head explodes from the impact. Unfortunately, the other beasts don't take any time to mourn their lost compatriatot. Instead, a pack of the tentacle-headed wolves come bounding and circling around her, while a a massive pincher from one of the more shape-lacking beings suddenly reaches in from amidst the crowd, intending to clamp down upon her.

    The icy shurikens from frost pierce through many of the dark shapes, in the meantime. They might not seem particularly affected by cold, but shurikens are shurikens-- and being launched at the kind of force that Cyber Frost's cybernetic body allows her to launch them with, they take good chunks away from various monsters, enough to at the very minimum hinder their movements if not outright cause them to fall apart afterwards. While she's still hovering in the air, though? A... constantly-shifting *blob* that has, apparently, grown wings at some point, suddenly swoops in, aiming to slam straight at her while she's still off the ground!

    Bell's super-sonic, window-shattering entry probably ends up wounding some civilians from shards of glass, too. Whoops. At least the laser beams seem to do a phenomenally good job of cutting down the 'wolves' that try to leap at her. But theres just more coming. More and more. Along with a few toothy, heavy ogres charging at her like some kind of frenzying gorillas.

    The gargantuan serpent coiled around the highway rears it's hundred-eyed head up, too, shrieking a high-pitched noise that, while not necessarily harmful, still seems to pierce and dig into the eardrums of anyone hearing it. It's long body shifting slowly onwards -- to the general direction of the city. And for that matter, the interfering... uh, heroes? ARe they all heroes? At least one of them is, right? Right?

    "Congratulations, Hyouka. You're a target now."

    DARGN is not shy about needling Hyouka. But for once, the cyborg was prepared! "That was sort-of the point. If they're all looking at me..." DARGN hmphs. "That's a bit more clever than usual for you." As Hyouka brings her arms up, she utters an irritated, "Oi."

    That's when her forearms start to split apart, plates sliding aside and folding back, while much larger components fan out and fold out and lock into place from the magical space within them. It's a rapid-fire snapclackCLANG that replaces her arms from the elbow down with a pair of massive, high-tech gauntlet fists; lines of gold light along each start to pulse and softly glow as earth-aspected mana flows in.

    When the pincher swings in to try and grasp her, Hyouka meets it with a fist nearly as broad as her own torso, unleashing a burst of earth mana right on the moment of contact. It lends not only a magical earth-aspect to the punch, but also force to the impact. "ORA!" The scream does briefly draw Hyouka's attention, though, a moment of distraction that will probably cost her.

 
 "YEAAAH!! DIE DIE DIE DIE!!" Cyber Frost cackled whilst she hovered in the air and rained frozen death on the shadowy monsters. It always helped having a variety of attacks, if she found that her opponents were immune to the cold, they were usually not immune to sharp objects being thrown at them at the speed of sound- and viceversa. 
 
 As much as Frost preferred the gory glory of melee Kombat, kills were kills, and she would eliminate as many of the monsters from a safe distance as she could, why risk herself after all? 
 
 That's when she sensed... a familiar presence. "What the hell?" The white blur, that petulant, girlish voice, those searing hot lasers.. 
 
 "HEY! Its that white haired girl!" Frost exclaimed as she saw Bell attacking the monsters. The cyborg had half her mind to attack the android when a flying monstrosity started careening towards her. "Crap!" Frost wouldn't usually be caught distracted, but the sight of Bell made her momentarily drop her guard and get slammed by the flying monstrosity. "Oof! Shit!" She flailed her arms around as the thing clotheslined her, and had she been human this would have hurt a lot more, but with her new cybernetic body there were a lot of attacks that Frost could simply just shrug off. This was one of them. 
 
 "Get off me, ya freaking shadow bastard!!" The ninja grasped at the shadow winged creature with one hand and PLUNGED a giant ice sword through where the creature's mouth would be, aiming to puncture it completely through its body so that the ice sword was sticking out of the other end of the creature. Even if the thing somehow resisted her, she was already pushing downwards to smash the monsters on the ground and do a double stop on its stomach to squash it flat for good measure. She could not afford to waste any time with these things, not with Bell around- she might end up having to attack her. What would this be for she and Bell? Round Three? 

    So it's pretty chaotic. People are running and screaming, there are monsters everywhere, and Bell?
    Bell is in her element.
    Taking a moment to stop and crack her knuckles, the Shadowpuff Girl's silver eyes sweep across the benighted highway as the ogre-like creatures with the toothy maws start to approach her.
    There's Hyouka... And there's Frost to boot.
    "Heeeeeeeeeeeeh...?" The girl's eyes narrow as she considers her options.
    "Heh...~"
    What makes matters wors is that worm thing. The scream does force her to cover her ears and flinch, but then she... She uh.
    She casually lifts the bus that Hyouka had been riding just moments ago.
    And she HURLS it with a small grunt. Right at the monster trying to clamp down on the dragon-cyborg.
    "Hey~. That big worm thing's headed for the city. Shouldn't you try and stop it?"
    Oh man that is a catty little grin on her face for a moment before her attention shifts.
    And she's scowling at Frost.
    What? Don't expect Bell to help you, Frost.

    A loud sound explodes from the impact of pincher and mana-infused giant robot fist. It's an electrifying clash that, for just a half a second, seems like a true, even clash of brute force!

    But after that half a second, the pincher *explodes* under the force of Hyouka's mana-infused punch. A force that continues to expand further past the limb the pincher is attached to, and all the way to the crab-like creature's main body. Guess Earth beats Dark, afterall? Nearly the instant Hyouka's gaze is drawn away and distracted, however, a large pack of the tentacle-wolves come bounding for her. Some circling around her before pouncing in, others going straight at her from the front. Pouncing and leaping from all sides, in seemingly ever-increasing numbers, with those disgustingly-undulating head-tentacles stretching out and reaching out, each creature seeming to aim to clamp onto a limb, before... well, whatever comes after is probably something no one wants to find out about.

    But then there's a bus out of *nowhere*.

    It lands straight into a good chunk of the pack, seeming to squish outright the ones unfortunate enough to be hit by it, and cause others to scatter away from their initial path of attack. Sure, there's still a *very* deadly intent of swarming her (and now probably Bell, too), but at least she hasn't been immediately dogpiled on.

    The flying 'blob' that clamped onto Frost was growing some kind of long appendages out of itself while it was still attached to the cyber-ninja, too. MOre tentacles? Ew. Before it can *do* anything with them, though, she's plunging that long frost-sword into it. There is an utterly inhuman, high-frequency screech that comes with the impalation, that seems to continue even after it has been slammed down onto the street. It continues even while Frost stomps upon it, the sound only seeming to treble a bit with each strike, before finally dying down with the complete disintegration of the creature itself.

    Speaking of the massive worm that Bell has so helpfully pointed out. IT continues it's advance, but... then suddenly, it stops. And slowly turns to point it's impossibly-many-eyed head back towards the way it came from. Towards the threshold of the Vine the horde had come through.

    Something else drops through from there now. A much more humanoid figure, at the very least, though the details might not be that easy to make out with all the darkness the monsters have brought with them. The figure, seemingly clad in some kind of hooded jacket, lands smoothly down onto one knee on the street, and--

    Immediately, a significant number of the dark monsters pounce towards the figure. Not just the tentacle-headed wolves, but all manner of shapes of them that just happen to be nearby. Enough of them pounce in that in an instant, where the figure stood is practically just a writhing, wriggling mountain of the amorphous beasts, probably pinning that figure down and... doing god-knows-what.

 
 "Shut! Up! SHUT THE HELL UP!!" *Stomp! Stomp Stomp!* Cyber Frost usually -LOVED- when her opponents screamed in agonizing pain, she adored basking in their suffering, but even she thought that this insufferable screeching from the beast was too much. She stomped on it. She stomped on it hard! Over and over and over until she made its head explode in the asphalt and it finally silence in death. 
 
 "Phew.. what a mess." She flicked her foot and gingerly walked away from the corpse of the creature, JUST in time to catch that death glare that Bell was giving her. 
 
 "Bite me, kid!" She flicked her hand under her chin at Bell in a rude gesture. For once, Frost fought hard against her instincts and didn't immediately charge Bell for a rematch. She had to be realistic about things and prioritize the civilians. 
 
 "You can help out or you can stand there and watch me kick ass! Yer call, twerp!" She snarled at Bell as she rushed now for that worm creature which appeared to be the main target currently. 
 
 "Yooo! Hyouka was it? Lemme give ya a hand!" The cyber ninja brought out an ice naginata to cleave at the wolf pack attacking the elven cyborg. Well, its just full on cybernetic city tonight wasn't it?

    The moment of distraction costs Hyouka, and a number of freakish eldritch wolves leap on her. Dressed in plainclothes as she is, the cyborg very much looks like a soft, squishy target, but whatever it is the wolves do when they latch on, they quickly find that she's a hardened target. Her skin is a masterwork of both mundane and magical technology, materials and enchantments woven to protect her against attacks both supernatural and mundane. Especially with all the mana produced by her power core running through it, it's tough. Not that there's no damage suffered; but she has ample time to swing one big fist upward, and then smash down, releasing a burst of elemental earth magic to blast away the ones that have already latched on.

    She's just about to swing for the next pack when a bus goes screaming by. And an ice naginata cleaves through more. The woman is left blinking in vague confusion for a second. "Ah, thank you...?" Wait, is that Bell? That's Bell. The look on Hyouka's face when she recognizes the angry little android is... conflicted, to say the least. "You- nnn." A glance between Bell, the huge serpent, then Bell, the huge serpent, Frost, the serpent, one last look at Bell...

    And then with a frustrated growl, the cyborg whirls around, picks up a car, and hurls it down the highway at the huge monster, before jumping up onto the cars and starting to run in towards it. She can't beat the crap out of it if she doesn't get closer, after all.

    Bell smiles sweetly. Almost serenely to Hyouka, while the woman has her hesitant moment. Before Bell makes a 'go, go' motion with her hands.
    And off Hyouka goes.
    "Eat me, you frigid, spike-headed, she-witch. Better not lose your cool, or I'll knock your head off again like last time." She sniffs irritably before she's pulled back into the moment.
    There are ogres coming at her.
    Darting into the air, she unleashes another baleful blazing pair of deadly heat rays from her eyes before something catches her attention.
    Something that comes out of the Vine.
    "Oh hello... And what are you?" She muses more to herself than anyone else before he's pounced by the masses.
    "Oops. Guess they're dead."

    The serpent's attention is taken away by the mountain of beasts piled on someone by, wouldn't you guess it, a car smacking against the side of it. The beast might be gargantuan, but with the force that the couple tons of steel slam against it, even it recoils slightly. And as a result, its hundred eyes all seem to turn to focus specifically on Hyouka. Another loud, otherwordly roar that would make Godzilla proud, and the serpent decides it's not going to simply wait for the cyber-elf to get close to it.

    Oh, no, it goes lunging *at* her. And as it does, a mouth the size of a house opens up four ways, exposing a veritable ocean of teeth from within.

    Bell's eye laser beams cut through most of the ogres, but one manages to leap in close enough, at least, to reach one enormous hand out to grab for the Shadowpuff Girl.

    As for the latecomer from the vine whom Bell already pronounced dead? As if on cue with her pronouncement, there's a flash of light.

    Suddenly, the highway is *much* brighter, with the spiraling pillar of flames that burst from within the pile of dark beasts-- outright incinerating most of them, and knocking the rest away into several different directions, their paths traced by the light of flames quickly burning through them.

    Another ball of flame bursts away from the explosive pillar before it dissipated -- zipping with superhuman speed between the abandoned and/or crashed cars, leaving a trail of fiery explosions whenever it collides with an eldtrich beast of darkness. And make no mistake, it seems to be purposefully going for them, too. As much of a blur of motion and flames it might be, there are still occasional pauses that come with the explosion. Of a (probably?) human figure striking with a lightning-fast, flaming fist into a monster... with the hooded jacket covering up his or her upper body currently caught in flames intense enough to nearly conceal their body entirely. Someone didn't invest in fire-proof clothing, apparently.

 
 "Oooh! You got a mouth on ya!" Cackled Cyber Frost as she noticed how Bell waited for Hyouka to get out of ear shot before she started very un-lady like insults at her. "Yer not fooling anyone, kid! I know yer a brat through and through! Now go do something useful before I spank yer sassy self again! HAH!" Yeah, yeah, Bell might have knocked Frost's head off the first time, but Frost got her back on Round Two and the cyborg was feeling very confident that she could take the android on a rematch if necessary. Something about antagonizing Bell also oddly excited Frost, as much as she hated the little android she was kind of the perfect enemy for her- inwardly Frost hoped she got the chance to fight her again. 
 
 First things first though, deal with these creeps. Frost swung her ice naginata in wild arcs to slice and dice at the shadow wolves, leaving Hyouka free to do her thing. Which was apparently chucking a freaking car at a giant shadow serpent thing. 
 
 "Hey! We're throwing things now? I can do that!" Not one to be left out, Frost ripped out a fire hydrant off the ground and flung it right into the center mass of the serpent suddenly aiming to eat the cyber-elf. That fire hydrant was flying at supersonic speed right for its target. 
 
 It was a good thing that Frost next to water at the time because she winced when suddenly FIRE everywhere, coming from some guy in a hood that was quickly burning away. Even though fire guy was punching at the shadow beasts, Frost was reeling away and shaking her head. "Who the hell is that? I hate him already." Fire bad as far as Frost was concerned. 

    Oh boy, it's looking at Hyouka now.

    "DARGN, it's looking at me." "Yes, Hyouka. That's kind of obvious."

    Still running and hopping across the sea of cars and wrecks, the cyborg evades any other monsters along the way, not slowing until the serpent begins moving towards her. While this is a good thing in that it's got its attention on her and not anyone else... well, that also leads to the problem of being attacked by a big shadowy eldritch kaiju.

    It's not quite 'panic', but Hyouka is definitely at a loss for what to do. Lacking anything better, she reaches over and grabs another car - and this one she aims to throw right down the monster's gaping maw. She's about to try and follow up, when she's distracted again. This time, by a sudden zipping blur of flaming explosions. "What th- DARGN, is that... is there a person in all that?" "It would appear that way, yes."

    As that gigantic hand snatches at her Bell tries to dart away-- only to get swept up in that vicious grasp.
    "Nngh." She spends a moment wriggling and squirming in that massive hand. Before she puts all of her strength into heaving-- And bodily lifts the monster into the air with her.
    "You're one to talk!" She snaps back at Frost amid wrangling the ogre. "You can't even fight me one on one, you've had help both times! Heh! Take me one on one and MAYBE I won't talk about you behind you back to daddy's monsters!"
    Now's not the time though, and even Bell knows that as she uh.
    Hurls the ogre at the big snake thing too. Right for its open maw before--
    Oh hey so he's not dead.
    The sudden fiery eruption makes even Bell flinch, squinting at the conflagration, trying to see just what- or who- is inside it.

    The kaiju-like, hundred-eyed and thousand-toothed serpent is at least momentarily brought to a pause between the car and ogre getting thrown violently into it's maw, and a fire hydrant getting launched into it like a missile. The hydrant even pierces some way into it! But...

    It clamps it's jaws down tightly into the car in it's maw, along with the ogre. Friendly fire doesn't seem to be too much of a concern for these things. THe mass of metal crushes terrifyingly easily against those teeth, and--

    The fireball speeding through the highway leaps up, arcing through the air like a meteor that slams right into the side of the serpent where the fire hydrant thrown by Frost had pierced through. A powerful explosion comes with the powerful impact there, and even in spite of it's intimidating size, the serpent jostles and is knocked to the side, screeching loudly as flames spread along it.

    The fireball responsible lands back down on top of the roof of a car near Hyouka at the end of the rebound. ANd now, having stopped, and with the jacket burning away to the point of disintegrating away from the actual person, the figure is actually discernible.

    It seems... mostly like a human man. A tall, topless human man with a thick mane of phenomenally red, shoulder-length hair. But there is something distinctly different from a 'normal' human.

    He has scales.

    He is not entirely covered in them, no -- there's a very distinctly human face of a young man and the front side of his torso is completely bared to show olive-toned skin, but there's a coating of dark-red scales that spatter portions of his chin and entirely coat his neck, shoulders, arms and back, Urban-colored camo-patterned pants were *somehow* not burnt away, but a complete lack of shoes makes way to show scale-covered, almost talon-like feet, too.

    And stood there, the man looks... with confusion, at Hyouka, first. Then Frost, and then finally Bell.

    "...Now what the hell are you?" Like he's one to talk?!

    His attention snaps away with another roaring shriek, though. The serpent rises up from besides the highway again -- still lit up in flames, and seeming to be slowly burning away. But not quite *dead* yet either.

    "...Figures," the scaley man grunts out with an irritated tsk, timed with a flick of a thick, scale-covered tai-- wait, he has a tail, too?! "The big ones never wanna go odwn quick."

    Hyouka is settling back into a defensive stance when both her own thrown car and a projectile ogre are crushed effortlessly. There's a little grimace. This isn't going to be-

    Oh. That fire-thingy just... slammed into a wound and exploded it. The faux elf blinks owlishly - and then does so again, when the explosion turns out to be a scale-covered man with a mane of hair straight out of an 80s metal band.

    And then he asks what the hell she is.

    Let's have a third blink of confusion, just for good measure.

    "I'm... human?" Hyouka says. "Hyouka, nobody is going to believe that just from looking at you," DARGN replies, her tone dry.

    But introductions will have to wait. The serpant isn't quite done. "Right, well. I guess I'm going to have to get in there after all." And then the cyborg bends down, and leaps. All the strength in her legs applied to one great big several-story jump, hurling her skyward in a high arc. As she goes, the lines on her right FISTEAU gauntlet start to glow brightly, more and more earth mana charging up, until the limb is more or less shining with magical energy. When the leap turns into a fall, she cocks her fist, descending down under gravity's pull straight at the serpent - and swinging her fist at the last second, discharging all of that earth mana in a colossal burst. "HAAAA!"

 
 Wow! Ok. That was just absolutely NOT COOL! "You little freaking--hnngg!! SNOT FACED BRAT!" Yeah, Cyber Frost was losing her cool and she -wanted- to say something else at Bell but caught herself before she made a total fool out of herself in front of everyone. Was Frost even paying attention to this fight? It felt like she was fighting Bell more than anybody here. 
 
 "You wanna go right now ya little punk kid! I'll throw down anytime! Watch me!!" She yelled over at Bell, even turning her back at the giant monster worm that was literally just shrugging off all their attacks. What was a giant eldritch Godzilla in the face of her EGO BEING BRUISED! Frost couldn't take it. She had to go and smack that sassy grin off Bell. Or she would anyway, except that this FIRE was really difficult to ignore. 
 
 "AAGH! Crap!" She reeled away from the man with red hair and scales, irritated at the high temperature more than anything. 
 
 "I'm a Ninja! What does it look like I am!? Now get away from me! I can't stand fire!" 
 
 The cyborg glared as the worm emerged a ways away, still on fire, but still wiggling despite everything. "Hrgg!! Whatever, let's kill this thing so I can put this insolent child in her place!" 
 
 Frost engaged her foot thrusters and followed along with Hyouka following her same trajectory. When the other cyber elf descended upon the worm, so did Cyber Frost, as she careened down onto the serpent creature with a devastating dive kick, aiming to hit right along where Hyouka was striking to maximize the impact of the two attacks. 
 
 "Foot dive!!!" 

    "Heeeeeeeeh... Did I strike a nerve?" Bell leers at Frost as the chilly ninja loses her cool. But then she clicks her tongue.
    "Not here. Not now." She says. "We'll have at it, but let's just deal with this first." She suggests while... Uh.
    That flaming man has no shirt.
    "I'm a Shadowpuff Girl?" She says, not quite sure what to make of the draconic man.
    "Who... And what are you?"
    But things need to get handled.
    Hyouka goes for the worm thing.
    Frost goes for the worm thing.
    Bell... Remains right where she is. A slow breath and she takes a fighting stance.
    "You know what, this is getting boring." She declares as she starts launching a volley of white-hot energy projectiles from the palms of her hands at the serpentine monster to slow it down.
    "Oh man did you really just name that attack 'foot dive'? How LAME."

    Hyouka declares herself to be human, and the scale-covered man just kind of... looks her up and down before asking bluntly, "Are you sure?"

    Frost's answer to his question just has him mouthing the word 'ninja' with visible confusion, like he's absolutely never heard it spoken before. It's what she says later that brings a much more pronounced reaction from him. "--So you can *what*?!"

    Bell did, of course, get a very confused look from him, too. But with the serpent deciding to defiantly struggle still even while engulfed in the magical flames, he doesn't get to question her on her answer much more than with that confused look. Or answer *her* question, for that matter.

    Energy projectiles pellet the serpent, thus, drawing more shrieks from the kaiju-- and keeping it certainly occupied and distracted if nothing else. The white-hot beams just seem to make the spread of the flames worse, at that.

    But the big hit comes from Frost and Hyouka leaping in a synchronized maneuver over the gargantuan, eldtrich being. The combined magic-powered punch and thruster-launched kick slam hard into the top of the burning serpent -- actually concaving it momentarily where it was struck, and sending it toppling back towards the ground.

    Where the draconic, red-haired man has apparently also managed to speed over to in the meantime.

    Magical fire gathers at the palm of one scaled hand -- intensifying steadily before similiarly-scaled fingers curl closed into a fiery fist, drawn far back--

    "RRRRRRAAAAAAAHHH!!!"

    --and launched up in a furious, fiery uppercut into the underside of the serpent as it comes down, with another powerful explosion of magical fire. The beast writhes helplessly in the air, nearly broken apart already in the point where it was hit by Frost, Hyouka and the dragon-man. Rapidly burning away, the flames work their way through it--

    Disintegrating it completely before it even reaches the ground. And with the disappearance of it, and the routing of the swarm earlier, the darkness fades away, too. Sunlight floods back to where the opressive darkness brought by the beasts reigned for a while.

    Faint embers float down along the air, thankfully fizzling away before they reach the ground and anything that could catch fire. The highway has returned to a calm-- save for the sound of sirens in the far off distance.

    The scaled man, meanwhile, holds two fingers to his ear. A glowing, magical rune formation appears there in between his fingers and his ear. "Reporting in. The abyssal group has been--" He stops himself short there, and frowns at what he hears. Which is... nothing. "...What... is this...?"

    His tail thumps with a distinctly annoyed note down against the ground, and his hand lowers down away from his ear, the sigil disappearing with it. He goes looking to Frost, Hyouka and Bell, then, frowning with visible confusion.

    "I am Idri," he offers, finally. "Can any of you tell me where the hell I am?"

    The satisfying impact of her fist, the discharge of earth mana, the sight and sound of Frost's kick slamming home at the same time, all of it puts a deep smile on Hyouka's face. She rebounds a little from the collision of fist and serpent, and then...

    ...loses her smile.

    She just realized she didn't plan this far ahead.

    A good few seconds later, the cyborg slams into the ground ass-first, hard enough to crater it just a little. "OOF!" There's a good several undignified seconds where she just kind of lies there.

    "Hm? Ah, you're... well, you're probably on another world from wherever you came from. If I had to guess, anyway. I don't even know off the top of my head what world this is, this was just a stop on my way home. We call this whole collection of universes the World Tree, though. I'm Hyouka, by the way. Hyouka Kiyama."

    All of this said while lying there in her little impact crater.

 
 "HRAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!" 
 
 Oh, Cyber Frost was angry. In fact, she was PISSED THE HELL OFF. But not at the serpent thing, oh no, and though she was certainly pumped by the triple threat attack from her, Hyouka and Idri, it really wasn't what was making her yell out that defiant kyah along with everyone else. She was feeling alright.. 
 
 But on the wholly wrong area. 
 
 "IT'S CALLED A REFERENCE!!" She yelled at Bell as she had the gall of daring to call her attack lame sounding. "But what would you know!? You probably weren't even alive when that game came out!!" What was Frost even talking about at this point? She was going absolutely ballistic, stomping on the ground hard even as the shadow serpent writhed and died in horrible flames and punctured holes behind her. It was like she was channeling all her anger directed at Bell and was just taking it out on the serpent instead. 
 
 "I hate you.. I FREAKING HATE YOU!!" She snarled at Bell, but as much as she hated to admit it, it was probably not a good idea to launch herself at the little android brat. She had spent a lot of her energy and fighting in front of some unknowns was just asking for trouble. 
 
 The cyborg ninja kept her eyes trained on Bell even as she was turning to face Idri. Unlike Hyouka she landed on her feet, but that's what happens when you have years of ninja training. 
 
 "Frost." She said by way of introduction and shrugged her shoulders at Idri's question of where he was. "What she said." She gestured at the cyber elf sitting on the ground. 

    And that's that. The worm is no more. Bell dusts her hands and sets them on her hips as everyone sort of regroups. Most likely around Hyouka's crater because it's convenient.
    Hyouka explains the basics of the Tree which is all well and good.
    "Don't get too comfy, Idri." Is all she says on the topic of the collection of worlds and universes all brought together, at first.
    "My daddy is going to destroy it all one day~."
    On that topic she doesn't elaborate further because Frost is yelling at her.
    "Huh? A reference? What exactly were you referencing with that? That's like me yelling "FACE PUNCH!" out loud while I cave your face in." Pause.
    "By the way, next time we meet, I'm caving your face in."
    What a terrible little girl.

    "......."

    Yeah. Idri's reaction to the explanation of a laid-down-in-crater Hyouka is one of just silent staring for several long seconds. Frost's tirade towards Bell most definitely doesn't help with his reaction either. Hell, there is a non-zero chance that he is considering all three of them to be utterly insane at this point.

    "I... truly understand absolutely nothing you just said," he declares with a shake of his head, as he just casually hops over to the crater created by Hyouka's landing, and extends a scaled hand down towards the cyber-elf in offer. "Are you hurt? I don't think I have ever seen someone land like that."

    Oh, but Bell just said something very strange, too. Idri narrows his green eyes at the girl with a mix of wariness and disbelief. While he is inclined to just shrug it off as something insane said by a small child, but... a much more dutiful part of him tells him to at least consider the potential of a threat. But either way, he ends up telling her, simply, "...I see."

 
 "I'll cave in YOUR FACE!" Cyber Frost was running out of insults by this point, though she had to admit that was never really her forte even if she was from the streets. She wasn't a hustler, she was a street fighter originally, and she responded to insults with violence. 
 
 And when she couldn't respond with violence she began faltering. She seemed resolved to -not- attack Bell tonight, so at this point she could do naught but mutter in annoyance and regard this Idri fellow warily. Mostly because she did not like the fact he commanded flames. 
 
 "She's evil as all hell, watch yerself around her." She whispered over to Idri despite everything, hoping to at least ruin Bell's day if she ever ran into Idri by herself or some such. 
 
 Still, with nothing else to kill, and not really being the type to hang out to see if everyone was ok, the cyborg ninja just began moving away. 
 
 "Man... I need a drink. Maybe some bubble tea.." This had been one weird fight for her. 

    Hurt? Hyouka considers that for a second, then shakes her head. "No, I'm fine. A little banged up, but that's easily fixed." She makes a breezy gesture with one massive gauntlet, but then moves to sit up; and as she does, her FISTEAU gauntlets begin disassembling themselves, in a reverse of the process that brought them forth. Within a second or two, the last segments are folding themselves back into her normal forearms, which lock seamlessly closed.

    The elven woman watches Bell go, a conflicted look on her face. Meanwhile, Idri is spoken to by another voice, issuing from somewhere in the vicinity of Hyouka's collarbone. "Idri, my name is DARGN. I don't know if you know what an AI is, but... think of me as a companion of Hyouka's." The faux elf glances downward briefly, but opts to let DARGN keep talking. "Whatever place you came from... you aren't there anymore. You walked through something like a tunnel or a tear, right? The place you've ended up is a completely different world. We call those paths 'vines'. Your world has been connected to many, many others. Some of them may have things which are only spoken of in fairy tales where you come from."

    It's Idri's turn to make with an owlish blink. Though this one is directed in the general direction of the verbally fighting Bell and Frost. This inevitably results in him asiding to Hyouka, "Your friends are very strange."

    Not that Hyouka isn't strange by his standards, clearly! His jaw actually drops when the gauntles disassemble themselves, and retract into the much, much smaller normal arms previously hidden within them. "Wh-- those weren't your arms?!" Wait, he thought they were?

    The second voice quickly catches him off-guard, too. He is quickly turning his head to the left and right, before his eyes finally lock in on... Hyouka's neck? Pinpointing the source of the voice just seems to make him even *more* confused. He probably has no idea what an AI is, judging from all that.

    "DARGN...?" he repeats after the AI, though. "You're... not making some kind of joke at my expense, are you?" His tail flicks subtly towards one side with that question.

    Slowly, a red-scaled hand rubs across his olive-toned face while he tries to process... basically everything. "I... do not feel like I understand, still. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't some elaborate joke either, but... I have never seen anything like you three, and... I suppose that would explain why I can't contact the Elders."

    It seems Hyouka has finally deigned to climb to her feet, and she brushes her backside off as best she can. "Oh, no joke. And they're not my friends, really." She jerks a perfectly normal thumb at Frost. "She's someone I've worked with once before, that's about it. The other girl..." There's a troubled frown. "...she's who we were fighting last time we worked together." She waves a hand, however, as if to brush that aside. "Anyway. Those creepy... shadow tentacle monster... things. Were those from your world?" DARGN chooses that moment to speak up again, adding, "Are you some sort of dragon-person? Those were some interesting powers you used back there."

    Another slow blink from Idri, with an entirely deadpan look. "Sounds... like a complicated relationship. My condolences." Well, Hyouka has gotten herself up on her feet easily enough, so Idri decides to step back away from the crater, now. At the faux-elf's question, he casts a look at the debris left behind by the monsters. "We call them Abyssals," he offers as way of explanation. "We... my world, I suppose, has been at war with them for two hundred years. Usually I can close the portals they use, but not... this one. I suppose it's because it's one of those... Vines, you called it? At the time I was thinking it was going to lead to somewhere else in my world instead of... er. Out of it?" The AI's question, on the other hand, suddenly makes the scaled man look... sheepish? He even scratches at the back of his head through his thick hair. "...Yeeeees? I suppose that's the... best way to explain it? I am a far descendant of a dragon, and I've fused with a dragon soul to make me... like this." He gestures vaguely at himself with that. Presumably that means he *didn't* have scales and a tail at some point.

    "Fused with a dragon soul, you say?" DARGN echoes. There's a hint of amusement in her tone. "Interesting." Hyouka sighs. "That would get your attention, wouldn't it?" She reaches up and taps her own chest. "My body is artificial. Entirely a machine, except for up here." She reaches up and taps her forehead. "And my power core generates magical energy the same way a dragon's heart does. DARGN herself is, er... think of her as an artificial mind, based on an actual dragon's mind. That's why she's laughing." She and Idri are hilariously similar, in that sense. "Anyway... Idri, was it? I need to figure out how I'm going to make it the rest of the way home. You should be able to get back to your world by going back through the vine, if it hasn't closed. They're usually stable for a while, but not always, and they can shift positions every now and then too."

    "Uuuuuuuhhhhhh."

    As if though Idri didn't have enough new things to have to process through. The pseudo-dragon's eyes flick over the cyber-elf, and his mouth opens and closes several times over. Trying to think of something, anything intelligent to say about *this* particular revelation. At least some kind of question to help him understand it all more properly.

    "--Wait, what?" The warning of Vines not always being stable and sometimes even changing position entirely catches him out of the stupor. He processes it for all of two seconds, before-- "Ah!!" His hands go slapping at the sides of his skull in a sudden fit of panic. "Shit, shit!! I gotta go then! The Elders are already going to kick my ass for going through that thing! They're gonna be even more mad if I end up caught here for a long time just because I didn't go back before that thing moved or something!" With a speedy motion and a wide sweep of his tail, he's turned down the way where he originally popped to the highway on. "Goodbye and thank you for your help, Hyouka Kiyama," he offers. "Maybe we will meet again!" And with that, he's practically *launched* off where he's stood, sprinting down the highway and finally making a superhuman leap to get himself back on the other side of the Vine. The leaping *might* not have been necessary, but he's clearly not been instructed in proper Vine-travelling etiquette or anything.