World Tree MUSH

    So here it comes. 


    By request, here's the final battle music!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nq-PalicR4
    Falling Down - III
    Remastered Tracks Rockman Zero Physis - 2005

    You stand in the middle of the central command node, surrounded by a tangle of preserved computers which may be your only hope of reprogramming the nanoprobes ravaging the world. Opposing you is a gigantic spined wurm made out of nanoprobes, debris, cables and junk. And spikes. Lots and lots of spikes.

    It's said all it wants to say and now just lets out a synthesized roar as it turns to attack you, the roar itself serving as a sonic shockwave that rattles the keyboards and shakes the foundations. 

    Choose to fight the monster or help Astra with the computers, if you wish.

    This is the final battle!

Astra's memories come back to her one by one as she further investigates the computers. Still she's clearly a bit uneasy about the worm and having trouble focusing on the task at hand. After all most of the rest the world was eaten by nanomachines, she's going to try and help Alty first though since she doesn't know how much time she has left before she's fully corrupted.

Emily Nyx staggers back from the sonic assault, falchion swords held in her upper hands, and a few minute silver scars form over her body and her midnight-blue business suit. She regards the monster for a moment, and then lets out a scream of exertion, and bits of silvery glitter raise from her body for a moment.

And then a staticky portal opens up, leading back to the entrance. "Anyone who wants to come, come in here! Anyone who wants to leave, leave!" She gasps. "B-but do it quick, all right?"

>> GAME >> Emily Nyx spends an Edge for: Portalling all the way through the boss-dungeon back to the entrance

    Nort could help with the computers, but with Alty there to help, he and Scar instead move over to Astra to form a defensive line, taking laser blasts at the worm to keep it from approaching too near. "If you need any help, let me know. It isn't my thing, but I know my way around a console." All this high technology is useful for once.

    For something aside from blasting.

    Scar takes position mostly, lining up his massive body between the worm and Astra, rumbling quietly. "Better work fast."

    No sooner the portal opens, someone rushes into the portal!, a powerful warrior appears, riding a ferocious beast!... wait, no, it's Luke perched atop a tiger that looks like it had a few too many fancy treats. At least the second part of that statement was true, as upon noticing the large, very impressive 'monster', Luke jumps down, and Dynamo lets out a defiant roar at the creature. Luke looks understandably surprised by the 'wurm', "This certainly does not look good." he says, stating the ovious, Dynamo taking point in front of his trainer to join Astra on teh defensive line, glaring at the spiky thing,

    That's not good. That's not good at all. The longer Alty remains in a nanite infested area like this, the faster her systems corrupt, but even worse there is that worm.

    WARNING! Viral infection detected. Current systems damage at 77.89% and climbing.
    WARNING!! Catastrophic degredation will occur when outbreak breaches AI core partition.
    WARNING!!! At current rate of infection, AI core breech will occur in an estimated 5:00.

    For Alty, this fight is on a timer as multiple hologram screens appear about her like nagging pop ups.
    "This is bad. This is really bad." She worries to herself as she perches on Astra's shoulder. "--Don't worry about me, right now, try and figure out how to stop the nanites bad program.
    Nort and Scar take to forming a defensive line, and the shinki peers over her shoulder. "... We've got this, don't worry. ... I hope."

    Vanileth can't help too much with computers, but he can try to keep the worm at bay! The winged man sputters, rushing... away from the others! His frustration at the 'final boss' not being a flying machine also makes him angry, but he has some awareness of the problems the others are facing! In this case, that means... enrage it away from Astra!

    "Over here you landbound lump!" Wind blades lash out, slicing at cables and anything exposed. He's much weaker than the others, this far from his home, but if he can give the heavy hitters an opening...

Time to face your fears, Astra. 

    "...I know you must be scared right now, but I have a feeling you can do this," says the mysterious suited man they met last time. "Can you trust your friends enough to turn your back on this monster and trust them to defeat it?"

    As if responding to his words, Nort and Scar take up a defensive position over Astra, starting to give some cover fire and words of assurance to prepare her for the task at hand. It's a small display of arms but it lets the wurm know that there's a threat there to deal with.

    Lotus has realised that there's less chance of dealing with this thing with bladed and blunt weapons and therefore goes for a chisel and a hammer to begin with when it comes to fighting it; the hammer's not so good on its own, though. Her teeth rattle at the sonic scream but she doesn't let it slow her down, Leeroying into the fray with the wurm and dodging between laserblasts in order to try prying some of its spines loose.

    Emily's portal does its work and allows Luke into the melee from his position on the Kaguyahime, but he just takes up a secondary position defending Astra along with Alty, who's suffering but clearly willing to do her part protecting her too.

    "We can take it down!" Lotus shouts over to Luke from her grapple position. "Haven't any of you seen a big worm before?"

    Vanileth decides to make a targetted attack, slashing at the cables which- upon their destruction- will be revealed to contain a sort of green venom. This disables any sort of slime-shooting attack temporarily until the wurm would be able to repair or redirect the poison flow.

    The disadvantage of seeing so many people gang up to protect Astra means it knows she's a valuable resource, and it devotes it attention first to lunging forward and making snapping bites at the defenders one after another. It moves back and forth one enemy after another, a predictable but dangerous pattern due to its sharp metal teeth.

Astra's going to have forgo Alty for now, and hope fixing the nanites repairs her as well. She's concerned about the others though but she's not really able to fight off the worm directly, she's going to have shut it down along with everything else. The question is how much damage would be undone by fixing the nanites? Would it be possible to fix everything that happened the past 10 years?

Emily quickly closes the portal. From somewhere inside her chest, her CPU core plays a faint recording of a glitching sound effect which sounds approximately like a sigh of relief. "Okay, whew, that's done," she says flatly, straightening up.

She smirks at the monster, encouraged by the results of Vanileth's attack, and rises straight up into the air. "Hey, big-and-ugly!" she calls out. "Catch!" She throws her swords forward, and in a swirl of silvery glitter, they transform into ... a copy of the spiked-ball type nanoprobe-monsters! Except that it then grows a set of buzzsaw-blades as it flies over to the worm, attempting to slice and dice through more of the cables!

... And maybe, if she's lucky, cut off its head. She doubts it'll be that easy, though. Or if that will actually work regardless; it'd probably be even less effective than cutting off her head.

     Luke knows it's either attack or defend Astra, but's a hard call on how to handle it, given the sharp ends, he considers keeping it at range for now. "Vanileth, Emily... watch out!" says the trainer, "Since it's a machine it's hard to guess what might work but... Dynamo, Hyper Beam!". 
    As soon as the big round tiger hears those words, it snarls and opens it's remarkably large maw wide, a bright yellow orb of energy forming in front of it, growing in size for a moment, before suddenly bursting as a broad yellow beam of energy aimed at the monster's head, maybe to break that sharp looking maw, or at least to stun it!.

>> GAME >> Luke Gray spends an Edge for: Hyper beam

>> SUMMARY[Luke Gray] >> Dynamo is shooting his lazor.

    "Yeeeee!"
    That terrified squeal is the sound of a shinki losing all her resolve in an instant. For all the bluster of a moment before, the truth is that Alty is a coward, pure and simple. And as soon as the worm starts snapping, she's off Astra's shoulder- latched on tight she's trying to climb right into Astra's jacket for protection.
    Sigh.

    "I am the consensus among the nanoprobes that what is happening is not the correct outcome of our programming," the voice on the screen tells Astra. "I cannot influence the majority to stop, though. You must force a decision through by fixing our corrupted programming."

    "...yes, that's right, the... something went wrong, didn't it?" asks the suited man. "We... but ... you were there, Astra..."

    "Gotta be a core inside this thing like the last one..." Lotus says out loud, although mostly to herself, bringing her hammer down again and again to try and take a chunk out of the wurm. She's immune to being bitten but any drastic shift in its coils could mean she gets sliced by the very spikes she's trying to pry out.

    Whack whack whack!

    Emily makes a buzzsaw attack with the nano entity replica, it can't cut the machine's head off so easily but it definitely can give it a significant wound. In fact it forces the machine to stop making bite attacks and stop for a second, trying to regenerate the cut on its neck.

    But it's not so easily stopped altogether- the thing's bristling tail, like a big nightmarish toilet brush, erupts out of the ground next and tries spinning and swinging around to knock people into the air or slash them with its bristles.

    Luke's Pokemon Dynamo makes a good case for the damage race as it fires a massive energy beam, and even a glancing shot against the wurm will burn a significant number of spines off it not to mention dig a deep trench in its armor. Looks like you'll have to rip your way through to the core and expose it, then destroy it to put this thing out.

    Sigh. Alty is panicking, which means Nort will have to take over. "Scar, hold it off." Nort shoulders his rifle, turning to the console and typing rapidly. He's going to try to help out, but under fire is hard, and he isn't a hacker in this unfamiliar system.

    Scar growls and flares the flame shield on, roaring with a POUNCE at the worm. Teeth sink into his side, the armored wolverine's fur and plating not strong enough to resist everything, but that just makes all the more vicious a fight. At last, the cyborg can cut loose!

>> GAME >> Nort and Scar spends an Edge for: Multi-Action: Attack and computer use.

Emily dodges to avoid Dynamo's Hyper Beam, and grins at Luke. "Sweet laser!" she calls out to him ... right before she hurriedly swerves to the side in order to avoid the monster's tail-attack!

She pauses slightly as Lotus speaks up. "Right!" she says, looking the worm up and down. "Yeah, wonderful, I think I can tell where it is! We need to get more of this guy out of the ground in order to get at it!"

She then proceeds to start firing golden bolts of light all along its side. As usual, she can only summon five bolts at a time.

    Well there's an idea of how to stop it. Vanileth sees his distraction didn't work as well as he'd like, but at least the poison is taken care of. A buffeting wind roars through the room, and instead of trying to hit the core himself, Vanileth pauses to consider... then sends those wind blade to try to 'slice off' armor plates, to make a route for another to pierce.

    "Over here, why do you want- oh never mind." Now that Scar is WRESTLING it, maybe it's a bad idea to try to distract the creature.

    There is a reason Hyper beam is not too used, despite the remarkably high power it has, and it is quite visible as Dynamo slumps when the energy beam fizzles, panting heavily, dazed momentarily as it needs to regain it's strength, but giving Emily a soft growl, "Needs a moment to recover from using it!" calls Luke. At least he is learnign more about the creature, maybe should have call his Bewear to help Scar on wrestling the thing.

Is Astra going to have to reprogram the entire system? As knowledgable as she is there might not be time to do so, she's going to have to try and manually force commands through. She does her best to try and protect Alty even though she's not really equipped from combat. "Am I to blame for all of this?" She can't help but to wnder as the man speaks up.

    Nort does his best to help Astra out. There is a lot of corrupted code here to figure out and they're mostly using an interface which communicates human programming into the otherwise alien code of the nanoprobes. Having a sentient voice to help only goes so far, but it seems as if Astra can interface with the alien code directly...

    "Yes, yes, it's coming back to me," the suited man says, rubbing his head. "I was a... scientist here, part of the research on the alien spaceship... and... Astra, you were there too..."

    Scar flames on and heads in to grapple the beastie too, which is just as well as Lotus' attempts to dodge the swinging tail mean she loses her grip and is flung off as well. Replacing her hammer with a drill she jumps forward again, doing her best to go with the flow and jink off any sinuous strikes with the spinning weapon, then dig in for another try! Unfortunately, her first pierce puts her dangerously close to where the green goo venom is being redirected!

    The nanoprobe wurm is rapidly regenerating its damaged armor. Emily's five golden energy balls strike places that have already been damaged by Nort and Luke, doing her best to slow down the rate of regeneration, but those cables are fixed back up by now.

    Scar pins it in place, giving Vanileth the edge it needs to start cutting plates off directly. Without matter in its body, it can't regenerate as fast. It can't make new armor plates out of nothing, after all.

    Now the cables are replaced the wurm can start spitting venom, and explosive balls of it come out of its mouth and 'pop' into small geysers of green poison. Someone might have to meatshield for Astra here to stop her from getting splashed. 

    Lotus does her best to ignore the goo. "Scar! Help me pull it out of its hole!"

Emily promptly nods at Luke's comment. "Not as sweet!" she says, regarding the damage Scar and Vanileth have been doing. "Nice work, you two, keep it up! -- shit!" When the monster starts spitting venom, she dives down to land behind Astra and transforms into a large metal barrier with her human face on the inside. She winces as the venom splashes against her, and the surface of the shield turns into a wall of silver as her nanomachines get damaged, but the shield holds for the moment.

Astra does her best to interfere with the alien code directly, "I was the only survivor on the ship though? So you stayed behind? Do you have any idea what made the ship crash?" She asks the man as she hears the acid splash behind her. Hopefully the barrier would hold long enough.

    Deep breaths. Deep breaths Alty.
    It takes the shinki a moment but she pokes her head out from Astra's jacket looking sheepish. She panicked. It happens. She does that. ... A lot. But now isn't the time for it.
    "S-sorry, sorry." She blurts and clambers back out so that Astra can focus.
    Setting herself down on the console in front of the screen, her eeys rove over data and files and code, quickly pointing out rogue elements and important looking code bits to Astra and Nort.

    Luke can see what they need is help tearing and prying the giant worm up, and he thinks he can find help for that!. He recalls Dynamo, who vanishes in a flash of red light, since trying to hit the thing with electricity now might be a bad idea, and calls a different pokemon!. This time, a... guess 'bear' might be the closest term, pink, black and white in color. It lets out a squeaky growl as it looks around, spots the Wurm, and lets out a growl. 
    Bewear, use Dragon Claw, help them open that thing and if you find a orb inside, take it. The tallish creature nods, and with surprising agility, it charges and jumps near mort, a set of blue, glowing claws emerge from the cute looking 'paws' of teh bear, and joins on the 'Let's break Spot open' party.

    Scar snarls, but is a little busy. Poison steam evaporates off his flame shield, and it probably can't be good for him to breathe that in. He's trying his best though, levering his bulk in a sudden HEAVE backward, letting the wurm dig into his flesh even if it hurts and blood splatters just so he can get a better grip. "RRRRRRRGH!" The wolverine's snarl gets louder, putting all his weight into it... and then adding his telekinetic arm as it manifests to grab from behind and help 'hike' the back up.

    Nort gives up, diving to the side and opening fire with his rifle. As the unknown man starts to remember who he is, Nort calls out, "Great, you can help Astra fix Alty!" He gestures. "Go! Spot! Fetch the data Alty needs! Fetch!"

    As the battle continues, Vanileth has to pause... which is a bad idea, since he ends up getting knocked over on his butt by one of the wurm's many attacks. Just an instant of carelessness! "AUGH!" His body is tougher than a mortal's but that obviously shook him up. Any more of this and he'll be dematerialized, and at his current energy levels it would be a while before he could reform.

    "I don't ... think this is your fault," the suited man says scratching his head. "...I think it was our fault."

    He listens with a little bit of chagrin to Nort, and does his best to shrug it off as he trundles over to a console and sees what he can do. Time to feed Astra more data. Alty joins in, too. Together they start to see the problem- corrupted code which has left the nanoprobes running the same, half-finished program for years with no programmed end point. It's like it's only doing half a job, then repeating from the start when it gets as far as it can go.

    Toxic bombs go everywhere and splash people with unpleasant industrial chemicals or refined animal venom or some other unslightly combination of recompiled nano-eaten stuff, as Lotus and Scar go for a power play. Lotus transforms her arms back to normal and grabs onto a relatively spine-free patch of monster, and Scar shrugs off some gas inhalation to help her start pulling the wurm out of the... wormhole? Well, no, just a regular hole. Picking something this large up and pulling it is no small task through, and it might yank its body back into the hole any moment now, but it's out now and needless to say it is ANGRY, its head hitting the floor before it thrashes and goes into a biting frenzy, snapping its metal teeth (are they getting longer?) at anything within range.

    Luke's Bewear starts to make an attack on the thrashing wurm. It doesn't quite know where to hit yet, and the fresh body is still undamaged and unexposed, but with a little work it might be able to pry through to what they need. "Emily, start coordinating!"

Emily grits her teeth. "Mmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrrubber baby buggy bumpers, that stings!" she snarls. She bursts out laughing at Nort's order, though. "Ow ..." She shakes her head. "... okay, I needed that laugh. Thanks, Nort!"

She pauses at Iron Lotus calling out. "Whaddaya mean coordinating," she says flatly, before changing back to her four-armed humanoid form and flying over, positioning herself between Vanileth and the monster. "Oh! Yep, I can ... kinda ... I'm 90% sure the core is right there!" She points at one spot with all four of her arms. Which then unfold like Swiss army knives ... in fact, the blades so revealed look a lot like the blades of a Swiss army knife, except sword-sized, and they start slashing and prying at the armor!

... And she hasn't been paying attention to Spot, so that's about when the timer runs out and his clothes transform back into nanomachines and go flying back to her.

"I see, do you know exactly what happened?" Astra notes that nanites aren't fully coded, could that be the source of the ship crash? But why would they launch the ship if that's the case and what did the Roshnatori have to do with all this. This was creating more questions than answers. She takes the data that she receives from Alty and Nort to try and repair the nanites.

    Scar makes an incoherent snarl because he's giving fur decorations to wurm teeth here! Also kind of pinned down. Good thing Nort is still free to... see where Emily is pointing. "Shoot the core, huh? All right." He makes a few twists and adjustments to his rifle and lifts it again...

    A low whine sounds out moments before he blasts! "Kid, that bear better be as strong as it looks!" If he can help crack the shell with Bewear and Emily, they can stop this, right?

    The Bewear is happy to accept indications on how to handle this!, this is a bit unusual for the bear, and it's not long before Lotus and Scar find the large pink bear moving closer, firmly grabbing onto the thick beast, the fluffy body seeming quite good at absorbing most attempts push, or even stab on it. "Bewear, swords dance!, then try to help Emily break away that armor!.". 
    The bear pauses for a moment, growling loudly as what look like blue swords form around it, circling around the pokemon for a moment, before they fade, replaced by a red aura bursting around it, engulfing it completely before it returns to attempt to tear the worm away, grabbing onto parts of the metal plate and trying to tear it appart.

    "Oh, I'm naked again," says 'Spot'. He's kind of into what he's doing so it doesn't bother him anywhere near as much as this probably should, and right now things are busy in his mind and involving Astra. But as he applies himself more and more to the work, looking at familiar code and interfaces, his memory starts to come back to him. It should work the same for Astra, too!

    "Baha. That's my name. Professor Baha..." he says. "I've never heard of the Roshtonari. They were never a part of the status quo originally. Maybe they just came here with their own agendas," he says. 

    They were a red herring all this time?!

    Emily begins to dig into the body of the wurm. Naturally it doesn't quite like that happening at all, so it begins to twist and turn and lash out at her with the spikes lining its sides, and anyone else who gets close is going to find itself likewise injured unless they happen to have the serious luck of being whacked with a place Lotus already pulled the spines out of. Otherwise you get slashed.

    Lotus doesn't contribute to the current objective- too many cooks, after all- and instead uses her drill and chisel to try and knock more spines out of the wurm's body to reduce its overall mass and options. Her clothes are getting cut up as she stays close to the wurm and it's starting to wear her down, so we'd better implement the plan soon...

"But why did they get involved with all this then...augh!" More of Astra's memories come back to her as she examines the code further. This was all a bit painful for her as she remember seeing bodies everywhere when she was just a child. She's still not quite fully sure how she survived, "Why was I the only one to live?" She can't help but to ask.

    Alty is doing the best she can to help out with the data on the console. Between her, Astra and... Spot, it shouldn't be hard to keep things up, but what about the others?
    That worm is being a huge pain.
    And then Emily raises the fact that it probably has a core- even estimating where it may be. Alty... Pauses.
    Glancing up from the screen, the shinki worries on her lower lip as she checks her countdown timer.
    It's not looking good. But her... Friends are giving everything their all.
    Friends, huh.
    "Can I leave this to you guys? I'm... Going to try and help the others." She mutters, reaching into her Slipway storage with several flashes of white light, to draw all four of her swords; a greatsword, two longswords, and a dagger, all of them in miniature as she pulls down her skull-faced visor with a sigh.
    She's so small. What can she do against something like that? Something that big?
    But it has to have a core somewhere.
    And that's why Alty takes a running leap off the keyboard and zips towards the worm. Anything she does would probably be little more than an insect bite; an annoyance. On the outside at least. But maybe from the inside...
    That might be why the littlest shinki with the heart of a valkyrie zips towards the worm, shooting herself right down its open maw and into its gullet.

>> SUMMARY[Alty] >> Into the breach.

Emily reacts, but not fast enough, and she gets a faceful of spikes, knocked backwards onto the floor! And she's covered in silver scars now -- a lot more than can readily be accounted for by the damage she's taken so far. Looks like she's not doing too hot!

But the purple glow in her eyes remains steady, and she pushes herself back up into a sitting position with one of the sword-blades. "Can't go to sleep yet," she mutters. "Got shit to do. D ... damn it, am I gonna have to ...?"

She looks around. "Hey," she calls out in an unsteady voice, "is it okay if I ... take off ... the last capacit ..." Her voice trails off. "Ugghhhh ..." She doesn't sound remotely enthusiastic about releasing the last capacitor seal for some reason.

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Ouchies.

    Nort is looking good! How has he avoided damage thus far? Well, part of it is because Scar is HOWLING in pain, and this is making Nort twitch. The two are very close in some way, everyone should know that, so this is not good for the armored man. "If you need to, then do it! I- Alty?!"

    He looks shocked at the cowardly little robot streaking through, arrowing toward the core, but... quick shots try to clear a path for her, and he gives Emily a meaningful glance. "Better question you two! Can you turn them OFF?!"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_R0tkARFtU
    Luna Ascension EX - Flashygoodness
    Rivals of Aether - 2017

    "No time to think about that right now! We're almost finished!" Baha urges Astra, sweat running down his brow. "Look! If we finish this now, we can bring back everyone, just like me! Just fix up the programming to give the consensus control over the rest of the collective and we can shut them down and do this!" he shouts. 

    "Astra, I remember now! You were a child and I blamed you for what happened when the nanomachines went out of control! It wasn't your fault!"

    Alty goes for the gusto and jumps directly into the snapping nanowurm's mouth. She'll have to dodge past jagged metal and blobs of nanoprobes that seek to assimilate her even faster than things are currently going as she dives all the way down a dark and dangerous tunnel.

    Emily is getting really knocked around, as is Lotus. Her drill seems to get longer and sharper in response to her senses getting thicker and duller, but she's still got some fight left in her. 

    "Sure, do it!" she shouts as she grabs onto the wurm's body, doing her best to swing back and forth and onto its back. Once she's there she takes off and begins running down the length of its body, back up to the head, where she jumps and her whirling drill stabs down into the creature's head, pinning its jaw shut!

    

Emily grumbles, and rises to her feet. "Dunno why I stick my neck out," she says. "... wait, of course I do. Okay. Ugh. Releasing final capacitor seal!"

She's surrounded by the pearlescent glow, which then shatters. Her trademark amused and faintly smug smile returns as she rises off the ground, all four arms raised. Her eyes glow brighter and brighter for a few seconds, before returning to their usual luminosity, and six red holographic angel-wings flicker into existence behind her back.

And then several dozen golden bolts of light appear over her head, and rain down on the monster, tearing in towards its core, all aimed with perfect precision so as to avoid her allies!

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> That's more than five bolts.

Astra does her best to focus on the task at hand hoping that Dr.Baha was right. She gives consenus control over the collective and hopes nothing goes horribly wrong in the process. It wouldn't undo 10 years of pain and suffering but maybe she could at least make things right again. "It's okay, I forgive you." After all it sounds like Dr.Baha couldn't remember what happened which was the same as her.

    Vanileth has crawled to his feet at last, only to find everyone in the midst of a pretty awful melee with the wurm, while the others are trying to figure out the whole situation. Seeing Alty blast her way through, and Emily pulling out her final trump card, that makes for an inspiring sight. One that reminds him of why mortals can be so interesting. It also means he needs to show him he can contribute.

    His rich voice fills the air. Not a shout, just a loud and clear /order/ that cuts through the chaos.

    "Shatter and fall, landbound worm."

    A disgust is present in the words, but they carry with them a thrum of power that induces quivering, powerful vibrations through the thrashing beast.

The pink bewear seems surprisingly in good shape, it certainly looks like it's getting worn out. The bear's tearing of the wurm's plates pauses when it spots Emily getting thrown off and jumping down to move and check on her, while Luke seems a bit unsure of what to do. "If you think you have to.". Of course, he realizes he has to do more more. "Bewear!, help Lotus keep that thing down!, use some of the metal around!. use Superpower!". 
     The bear nods, letting out a deeper growl as it reaches to grab some of the discarded plates and spines, it's fluffy form suddenly bulking up as the red aura seems to settle into a light blue outline, clumsily and quickly compressing the metal scraps into what looks like a very rough attempt into making a block/ball before it takes a note of Iron's action, jumps up, and slams the heavy, makeshift heavy object right on the thing's head with a loud crash of metal against metal. 
    It might look more impressive than it likely is.

    This was a bad idea-- no this is worse than a bad idea, this is the worst idea Alty has ever had.
    Blazing at top speed, the little shinki jinks through jagged spines, just barely missing gnashing teeth and flies her way right down the worm's throat.
    This is the absolute worst thing she could have done, and if she had a heart it would be pounding like a drum, but instead she'll settle for the rising gorge feeling of having one too many nitro jelly cans, that's beginning to climb in her throat. She doesn't even have a stomach and she's getting butterflies as she races down the dark channel on a path to only god knows where. ... Dark for a moment longer anyway.
    In the next instant there's light. So much golden light as Emily's rain of devastation homes in on the core and tells the shinki where she needs to go.
    Alty puts on speed, blazing at maximum output down the worm's body until she reaches that brightly lit node, all four of her blades are brought down, the mechanical extra pair of arms on her armor breaing down every ounce of strength she has as she slashes at the core and does not stop for the world.

    With everyone clashing, and the huge array of attacks, Scar decides to be somewhere else. With a snarl, he TEARS himself away, the bloodied and tumbling wolverine letting his teeth release the cable. He coughs as his leap slams him into the side of a console, then slumps there to let Nort take over.

    And take over Nort does. His rifle tossed aside with the magazine emptied, the armored man concentrates, holding out a hand. A sudden heat wells off from the hand, and then a tremendously bright beam of light blasts from the palm, searing into the creature where Scar used to be, avoiding Bewear. The beam of light is just the air ionizing from the massive gamma ray burst Nort is directing into the wurm.

First, Emily rattles the nanowurm with golden energy balls, slamming it in every concievable angle and bashing bits off left, right and center.

    Then, Vanileth gives out a Command of Power that starts those energy wounds quivering and shaking, causing cracks to spread out of them and through and through the monster, starting to break it apart.

    Next, Luke's Bewear slams the nanowurm directly on the head, causing a shockwave to ripple through it from top to bottom that starts cracking piece by niece off of it.

    Alty makes a massive run for the core as she goes through all of this chaos from the inside, diving down on the essential power core that every big nano entity needs to be built around to run itself, slashing through the core and then straight through a hole that's begun to open as the beastie cracks apart.

    And then Nort goes gamma and finishes it off once and for all, starting at the head and splitting the thing entirely in two now that it's got no power, well and truly blowing it to bits.

    And as that spectacular show of combination finishes the evil avatar of the nanoprobe collective off, Astra patches direct control into the nascent central consensus and finally, FINALLY stops the destruction once and for all. All over Van Pat, nanoprobes quiver and stop in their destructive path, ones flying over Bonne Bon freezing in their tracks and receding as the destructive impulse finally ends once and for all.

    "Finally," the alien avatar icon says to everyone present. "The destruction is over."

    "What do you wish for me to do now, recreator?"

Emily Nyx smiles at all the damage she and everyone else has done to the monster. "... Reapplying all capacitor seals," she says, and her voice sounds slightly breathless even though she doesn't need to breathe. The pearlescent, gold, and silver auras reconstruct themselves, and she lets the holograms fade.

Somewhat unsteadily, she floats down to Astra and Dr. Baha, looking between them and the screen, smiling at the two of them as she waits to hear their answer.

"Use the nanomachines to reconstruct everyone that you can remember in their original forms and remove the corruption from Alty." Astra's still not sure if that's fully possible. "Then use whatever is left over to reconstruct the buildings." She might be asking for too much but she didn't come all this way for nothing. "Thank you everyone, I couldn't do this without all of you! I'll do anything I can to make it up to you." Her attention turns towawrds the others make sure that everyone was okay.

    Alty is spit right out of the newly opened hole in the giant nanoworm. Just in the nick of time too as the others tear into it and finish the job permanently. Her landing is bad. She hits the ground at top speed and goes flying in a bounce, landing in a heap of black armor and parts with a squeal.
    But a beat later she picks hersel up, pulling her visor up and rubbing at her scarred eye as the avatar appears and declares an end to the chaos.
    "Did we... ... Did we do it?" She asks as another tiny holoscreen pops up.

    Diagnostic Report: Viral infection halted at 89.99%.

    Cue the heaviest sigh of relief.

"Ooh, so that's the plan, huh?" the consensus replies, smiling as she looks over what resources it has. Answer: a lot. "You want to rebuild the world and the people, right? They're going to need some natural resources back if you're creating a whole bunch of people... what the heck, I'll do that too!"

    Screens begin to appear in the middle of the air, displaying the outside world...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVcc16o0SaY
    MARIA - Daisuke Achiwa
    Atelier Ayesha the Alchemist of Dusk - 2012

    A huge whirlwind begins to gather outside the central command node as nanoprobes from all over Van Patissiere are drawn back in, as if some sort of massive being was taking a deep breath in.

    And then, beginning first from the node itself and then spreading outward, a huge world-healing wave begins to erupt outward! Wherever it goes, buildings, trees, plants, water and animals begin to reappear, recreated from the dust by the nanomachines.

    At the base of the node, slowly one after another people begin to reappear, confused and naked but otherwise completely okay as they are recreated from their absorbed brain patterns by the nanoprobes.

    Inside, Lotus watches, very impressed. "Well, how about that."

    Golden sparkles surround Alty as good nanomachines replace bad ones, undoing the corruption and assimilation of her body and restoring the damage they have done to her quickly and efficiently.

    "Recreator, it will take some time to restore every human. The process will be slow but it can be done," the consensus explains. "The world will be returned to normal."

    Somewhere, back at the Eschaton Machine, the Roshtonari's computers go crazy. The world won't be ending any time soon.

    "If only it were always so easy," Nort mutters. Scar grunts, still bleeding while Nort is looking over him, doing his vet thing to the large wolverine. "Will there be any side effects?"

    He looks up, notes that Emily is exhausted and Alty seems to be... not dying. That's good, he supposes. Without looking at her, he grunts to the tiny robot, "That was brave, Alty. Are you all right, Emily?"

    Might as well check on Luke too. "If your creatures need medical attention, I am trained."

Emily smiles and nods at the result on the monitors. "Great," she says softly, sinking to the ground. "Nice work." The silver scars are starting to spread.

She shrugs at Nort's question. "That acid-attack ... really did a number on me," she says, looking increasingly unsteady. "... I'm, I'm not just nanomachines ... there's enough magic inside me ... that it's 'me' ... that got damaged. ... Hurting me ... actually ... uh ... hurts me." She shakes her head. "A-anyway... be ... back ... in a ... bit."

And with that, she keels over, and in a swirl of silvery glitter, she transforms into a bulky orange metal box with padding and backpack straps on one side, and the text "EUDAEMON EMERGENCY SELF-REPAIR - ORANGE BOX" on the other.

    "I am never doing that or anything like it ever again." Is Alty's reply to Nort as she picks herself up and is promptly swarmed by nanoprobes again and... Is made all the better for it. "Are you all alright? I was worried that um..." She just trails off.
    This whole 'opening up to people' thing is not easy.
    Thankfully, Emily turning into a box might take some attention off of her.
    "... Can we go home now?"

    Luke smiles to Mort, "I appreciate it." and motioning the Bewear the get closer, it looks fairly battered, "I think Bewear is ok, but can't hurt to get a check up, while we maek our way home."

"I understand, in that case it might be best if I stay on Van Patissierie for now to make sure nothing else goes wrong." Astra wouldn't feel right leaving until everyone has returned. Her attention then towards Emily, "Are you okay?!" She's hoping that she didn't over do it. The box does say self-repair on it but she's not sure how long that'll take. It might be a good idea to move her somewhere else though so she tries to pick up the box if it's not too heavy.

The obsidian stone of the central command node shifts, and a long tunnel is created straight out of the core and to the outside world. You can see daylight streaming in from outside and a panorama of the world you've saved. The Kaguyahime is there too.

    "This place used to be the research facility for the nanoprobes, didn't it?" Baha asks.

    "Yes, and that is what it will be returned to," says the consensus. "This command node will be disassembled back into raw materials to fuel the reconstruction of the world. You are all free to go. The effort can be coordinated from anywhere. After this, the nanomachines will self-consume to restore more of the world and return to their original number that was originally present."

    Astra picks up the Emily box, and Lotus pats it on the ... top, she guesses. 

    Lotus smiles, and begins to walk towards the new exit.

    "Come on, guys," she says, with a grin. "It's a whole new world out there- let's go exploring!"

The box is, in fact, light enough to be carried! And worn as a backpack. There's no response to Astra's exclamation or Lotus's pat, but there is a faint thrum of electronics inside it. Looks like Emily's gonna miss out on the first bit of exploration, oh well.

Astra wears Emily's repair box as a backpack then. "Alright, let's go see what's been restored so far then!" She can't help but to be curious and besides the people who've returned might need some help! She eagerly rushes to the Kaguyahime wanting to see the rebuilt world. Still she wonders if her family will return since they were technically killed before the nanoswarm.