Infection - Violet Death

[Origin: SciLab]

A brilliant light beamed down into the cordoned-off network, quickly reforming itself into the form of a Navi. Aurora stepped out of the light, and immediately recoiled as she did so. Eternalis had apparently attempted to escape from the temporary prison that they had constructed. Around the rings of light that made up his cage, a few streaks of purple slime could clearly be seen sizzling by themselves, and a noxious-looking gas had started to cover the area from it. The perpetrator himself was running against his cage repeatedly, adding up to the various tendrils and innards that spilled out. An incomprehensible static-laden noise could be heard every time he did so, along with a faintly noxious stench. Aurora couldn't even exactly register the noise as coming from the former Navi, even as his newly-formed maw hung wide open. A vulgar-looking tongue whipped about from inside of it erratically.

Her current operator could barely bring himself to look at the spectacle, only opting to look sideways at his PET's screen. "Eternalis..."

"▂▂▃██▄▂▃▄▃▃▅▅███!!"

Even with just Eternalis' roars, Aurora could feel her knees buckle. She brought up the heads-up display, as she usually did when she served her duties as a Support Program. As expected, however, she couldn't get a good read on her opponent - not with all the glitches that were gluing up any cursory analysis. Her gaze was returned with five separate ones from the corrupted Navi as he repeatedly continued to bash against the rings. She directed her vision slightly downwards, and saw the emblem barely peeking out of the side of a few tendrils. The SP shook her head, and opened up the comms screen. Three people appeared on it, anxiously watching.

"Ready when you are," she said.

"I'm releasing the quarantine," she could hear Reverus say in the background.

The visual comms link was quickly severed with a crackle, replaced with a sound-only link. Aurora widened her stance, and finalized her checks. The circular prison in front of her slowly dissipated, and snapped out of commission. Eternalis' continuous assaults on his restraints suddenly met with thin air, and the corrupted Navi landed on the off-white Cyber-Panel flooring with a sickening splat. The pile of slime wasted no time in rising back up. Suddenly, his back erupted open, and a myriad of claws and spikes emerged from it, made out of a strange purple chitin. Towards the front, what used to be Eternalis' arms rapidly began to encase themselves in the same material, reminiscent of his old busters. Eternalis' new five-fold set of eyes then locked onto the only target that was given to him, and let out a savage cry.

"▂▄▅▅███████████▄▂▃▃▃▅▄▅███!!"

"Battle routine, set!"
"Execute!"

[Subplot Battle - Ready.]
[Aurora: 360 HP.]

Only vaguely humanoid and even less arguably sentient, the infected remnants of her navi were very much a revulsion-inducting sight for Aurora, and she could be forgiven her initial recoil from the horror of it. Even so, she steeled herself for the impending struggle and gave Reverus the go ahead, ready or not.

Freed of its containment, Eternalis... maybe it would be easier for everyone not to think of the monster before her as him though? Either way, the mostly purple abomination of slime and spikes was obviously readying itself for combat as it looked at the only other occupant in their suddenly all-too private net space. Each of the five eyes watched Aurora independently; there was no unification of the gazes and they each shifted and moved on their own. One darted about in a far more crazed, wild jitter, while another seemed to be staring back at her eyes only, with something approaching a frightfully cold awareness. The others roved, though whether they were tracing Aurora's form deliberately or by chance was probably up to her to decide for now.

A spreading mess of goo was radiating out from where the corruption had stumbled forward from its bonds, and amongst the claws, spikes, sharp edges and waving, grasping tendrils of plasmic slime, it was hard to tell exactly what she could expect to face. Whatever it was, though, it was coming now; the roar signalled a lurch and suddenly the defiled former navi was upon her, reaching and grasping. The stench of corruption was worse up close, but Aurora had precious little time to think about that now.

-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 720Hp [Normal][Right on top of Aurora and too close for comfort]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 360Hp [Normal]

-=Containing Terrain=-

All Normal: won't be listed in future unless something changes

-=Violet Death, Battle, Start!=-

The movement was too quick for Aurora to register, right after Eternalis' roar shook her legs. Suddenly, she found herself in unreasonably close distance with her foe. The multiple eyes squelched about mere inches from her face, and the torturous sounds of slime mashing against chitin only added to it. But this wasn't any enemy, this was her former partner. Though they never did have much in the way of understanding each other, they at least had their moments of camaraderie. In an instant, a wave of emotions washed over her.

Reluctance,
Revulsion,
Terror.

Involuntarily, Aurora froze in place, unable to act.

This was it; this was how she would be deleted.

"Aurora! Snap out of it!"

Out of the blue, the young Ezarith's voice snapped her out of the fugue, and she immediately propelled herself backwards with a kick off the ground. At the same time, an explosive heat started to accumulate from within her. Her body slightly lifted itself off the ground while the heat started to blur the air around her. Suddenly, a fiery portal opened up on the ground in front of her and the flaming EarthDragon reared its head. The dragon virus roared, and plunged towards Eternalis, melting the paneling around it due to the sheer heat emitted. Aurora's already-shaken expression contorted as she watched on, trying to recollect herself.

// Summary
[Au.1] Dodge
[Au.2] Chip: HeatDragon2, on ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis // Fire 150, Ground, Lava Terrain 25%, Acc C
// Turn Split (Remaining: 3/5)

Some might say the first moments of a combat are the most important. In these first moments, however, Aurora froze up. Precious seconds before she recovered saw the partially chitinous, mostly fluid arms reaching out to take holds of her, more tendrils erupting out of the two apendages all along their length to grab and curl about her shoulders and forearms, leaving purple slime everywhere they touched. This close, she could feel the presence of his body practically pushing against her as he tried to grab hold.

For a moment, the five-eyes remnants of the creature's face were right by hers, the crazed eye darting madly, the cold eye glaring back at hers. Then, its whole body convulsed again, smearing Aurora's front with more of the purple goo, before a gaping maw opened up below the eyes and a white mass of... something... erupted outward, aimed directly down at her chest and face. In that moment, Aurora managed to tear herself away from the abomination, pulling back and putting some distance between them and avoiding the mysterious discharge. Even as she broke free, though, the creature flailed after her, drawing a slash across her back with one whipping blade edge that stung as it scored down from shoulder to hip.

Despite this, aurora let loose and unleashed an attack of her own once she had gotten clear, sending the blazing heat dragon to scorch a trail of lava across the ground. It struck the corrupted navi solidly in the mid section, boring a gaping hole clear through the gelatinous body with a sizzle that only added to the lingering stench of corruption in the air, but while it made Eternalis reel back and let out a wet roar in response, he steadied quickly and came right on at her again without any further hesitation, uncaring of the burning terrain beneath it. The gaping wound she had caused was already closing up, as if nothing had happened.

The scoring cut that he had caused across Aurora's back was still stinging... or, not stinging, exactly... it felt like it was crawling... like something was coming out of the wound; a thousand tiny fingers or tendrils wriggling as they tried to emerge. Though she couldn't see it herself, no such effect was actually occurring to aurora; it just felt like it to all of her senses, and it was equal part terrifying, and nauseating.


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 710Hp [Lava][Violet Death Lvl 1]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 280Hp [Normal][Creeping Cuts]

-=Containing Terrain=-

75% Normal
25% Lava [Terrain directly between Aurora and ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis]

-=The Glitches=-

Violet Death: Will damage the host successively more each turn as it stacks up, and affects some abilities. As per plot details.

Creeping Cuts: Neutral Glitch. The victim will feel as though any injuries they take are crawling and seething, like there were something living crawling around on them, or coming out of them. This is purely sensory and has no actual adverse effects. Effects remain until cured, battle ends, or the victim is restored to full HP.

-=Turn 1: Aurora has 3 Actions Remaining, ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis has 4 Actions Remaining=-

"Urgh!" recoiled Aurora, as a sharpened slime edge scored against her back. Her attack had been successful; she watched Eternalis' purple body sink slightly into the lava created by the dragon virus chip. Tearing through Eternalis' midsection, it let out a savage roar as the chunks of slime flew about in all directions, now roasted with the dragon's power. Eternalis was bent back horribly like a melted piece of burnt plastic, knee-deep in lava. However, the slime abomination bent himself forwards again, a sickening squelch following his action as the damage dealt simply melted back into place.

"You alright, Aurora?" said Harke, concern in his voice.

"I'm... fine, but I'm really starting to question my decision making," replied Aurora. Harke sighed in relief, hunched over the PC console; his hands were shivering, though more from nervousness than the A/C. Looking down at the stats on the screen, the one attack alone had already badly damaged Aurora. Over on Eternalis' side, he saw what he had come to expect, but didn't want to acknowledge. "Seems like he's got his healing factor supercharged," Reverus said, watching from over his shoulder. The older of the two reached past his arm with a serious look on his face, typing up some further diagnostic commands. Meanwhile, Harke looked through his folder, and pulled out the LittleBoiler chip.

"Sorry, Aurora, but for now, let's just try to hang back and see what he does," said Harke, slotting in the chip. "Try to intercept anything with this."

"Roger," echoed Aurora, trying to hide a voice crack at the end of her quip. She felt the chip data fusing with her arm, and found the buster arm on her hand fitted with a single-fire short mortar barrel. Her feet lightened up as she ran about the area in a widening circular path around Eternalis, with her hand on her buster. The wound on her back really ought to have healed by now, but she was still feeling something stinging on it. Which was to be expected, what with the unstable bugged nature of her enemy. It would be more surprising if she didn't experience any side effects from the attack.

She brought up a finger to her temple, bringing up the familiar info screen. The heads up display popped up on her right in her peripheral vision, showing her structural integrity dropping by more than 20% from the single attack. She turned to focus on Eternalis again, and raised her buster to bear against Eternalis as she strafed about, trying to keep her distance against him. With any luck, she could anticipate an attack or a quick approach and fire the LittleBoiler at him. Then, seeing her chance, she fired it, letting loose a brown explosive shell. The LittleBoiler-infused shell would either intercept an attack and explode in Eternalis' range, or simply crash into him with its initial force. Either way, she wasn't really banking on her aim with how fast Eternalis moved, but she still got to her feet after the mortar buster disappeared from her arm.

Then, immediately after firing the explosive, Aurora suddenly halted and doubled over. Her body twisted about erratically, and her face turned white with an indescribable mix of fear and revulsion. Her hands motioned towards her back, as if she wanted to touch something on it, but they recoiled immediately. However, to any external observers, there appeared to be nothing at all happening on the "wound" that Eternalis had inflicted earlier. No damage was being done to her critical systems, as Harke saw.

"Aurora?! What's wrong?!" said Harke.

"There's--- There's something on my back! There's something crawling out of it! Get it out! Get it out get it out! GET IT OUT! SOMEONE GET IT OUT!" she shrieked. Inside her back, she could feel a foreign body wriggling through her spine, invading and crawling through her body. Her mind was completely at a wit's end as terror overtook her situation.

In the house, Reverus' typing grew more frantic, while more diagnostic windows appeared on the large screen. One of them was showing an unusual amount of activity, which the older Ezarith noticed immediately. "Aurora! Calm down, there's nothing there! Your systems are fine! It's just a foreign program writing to your sensory system!" he roared.

However... "Ahhhhhh! I don't care! I DON'T CARE! HELP ME! GET ME OUT, EZARITH! GET ME OUT!"

At that juncture, no amount of reason was about to help Aurora, as Reverus started to attempt to reverse the glitch on his end. Harke scrambled through his folder, and a small picture of a cube fell into his palm. He grasped it, very nearly snapping it in half, as he slotted it in. Aurora would then see a small cube appear above her, rotating in a rapid movement as it alternated between two colors. One of them would temporarily incapacitate Eternalis for them to resolve it, and the other would (hopefully) clear her sensory system of the glitch.

// Summary
[Au.3] Act: Strafe around in a circle // Dodge
[Au.4] Chip: LilBoiler1, towards ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis to block an attack // 1HP Light/Thrown Object (Aqua 100 + Absorbed Hit + Blast3 + Delay2 on Hit, Acc B), Thrown Acc E
[Au.5] Chip: DBLBEAM2 // Random (Null 10 + Stun-To-All-Enemy OR Status Cure-To-All-Ally), Acc S

Despite her initial heavy damage, and the relatively small effect that her own attacks seemed to be having on her opponent in turn, Aurora kept herself together as she backed off from the corrupted creature. It moved towards her still, slogging through the lave and reaching out with one arm. A mass of smaller tentacle appendages and bulky growths extended out with the arm, swiping and flailing towards her, but didn't manage to connect this time. The burning, melting hiss of his body in the lava was sending up a vapour cloud that stank like rot and corruption; it was acrid and putrid at the same time, and the slime bubbles and blacked before shifting and restoring itself seemingly without end, or notice from what remained of Eternalis himself. Still watching Aurora, the cold eye had moved from her face while the more languid ones traced her body or wandered about the room. The crazy eye jiggled and twitched, fixing her for a moment, then down to the lava, then away to the side seemingly at random.

It paused to lash out with a freshly formed blade, long and fluid and deadly sharp, but this time Aurora met it with a somewhat unorthodox counter, launching her boiler shell towards him at force. the blade struck the mortar as it came on, hammering it down to the ground in front of him, where it settled into the lava and began to screech and whistle madly. ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis flowed past it, and several tendril waving about from his lower section seemed to collect the object, trying to absorb and devour it as he did.

The corrupted navi seemed as unaware of this as most other things that weren't Aurora; the primed shell ended up lodged in the goo in his back somewhere, slowly getting gnawed away even as it whistled, but Eternalis himself lunged forward as she tried to back off. An appendage of some sort lashed around her shin and dragged backwards with enough force to pull her leg out from under her, and a moment later more latched onto her other ankle and further up her leg, drawing her back in close again. The smell of burning slime was almost overpowering as she was grappled to the edge of the lava. Eternalis was still knee deep in it, unheeding as he drew her close, and no amount of struggling or thrashing could seem to unhook all the slime monster's various holds at once. His body dripped and oozed, splashing more purple over her and Aurora would be able to feel it seeping into her undersuit as the vile fluids found the broad tear where his first strike had laid open the back of her outfit.

This close, the guttural growling and bubbling sounded much more like some kind of bestial breathing, panting even; if Aurora managed to roll over while she was grappled, and move her exposed back away from him, she'd see the main bulk of his body rocking and pulsing slightly, and the hardened parts on his arms shifted and moved to reveal a glowing opening. Despite the feeling of thousands of tiny tendrils writhing at the edges of her wounds, and the grapple hold that her former navi was vigorously pinning her with, Aurora managed to twist in such a way that the burst of corrupted data that emerged from the cannon slammed into the panels behind her and scattered away, though maybe the avoidance was more by luck than anything else.

Just by her eye, to one side, the helpful cube that might prove her salvation from the sensation of being infested appeared and began to spin. Whether she was able to pay attention or not, though, it stopped a few moments later and emitted a blinding bolt of light at her opponent. Held in his grapple, she'd feel the body go tense, then slack for a moment, though it didn't seem to have done anything else.

Then the boiler reached a peak of its instant whistling. Aurora would feel it, more than see it; a harsh thump of raw force as the boiling mortar inside Eternalis detonated with explosive force. there was no sound in her ears as the force-wave hit, and her back was slammed into the panels, but the brunt of the blast was taken by the purple creature above her. for the briefest moment, she might catch sight of Eternali's emblem, and a small amount of pure blue, sneaking to the surface right in front of her, just as the entire creature was blasted down against her, slime and chunks splattering everywhere. she was forced down by the goo, felt it everywhere, pressing and sliding over every part of her body and oozing into every gap and crevice in her undersuit as well, sliding against her skin, but it seemed as though Eternalis had taken the blow alone; her own status wasn't damaged by the time the sound caught up and her ears slowly stopped ringing.

She would have enough time to extract herself from the exploded mass of goo and chunks; the individual pieces holding onto her provided no resistance right at that moment, but it wouldn't last long. Already the corrupted navi was pulling himself back up, his form filling out and repairing itself. Someone with a more outside perspective might be heartened to see that there were, apparently, limits to his healing. He hadn't patched up all the way, and the remainder was healing in a bit more slowly for now. The real question was, was Aurora still up to keep fighting?


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 540Hp [Normal][Stun1!][Self-Slow1][Violet Death Lvl 2]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 280Hp [Normal][Creeping Cuts]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]

-=The Glitches=-

Violet Death: Will damage the host successively more each turn as it stacks up, and affects some abilities. As per plot details.

Creeping Cuts: Neutral Glitch. The victim will feel as though any injuries they take are crawling and seething, like there were something living crawling around on them, or coming out of them. This is purely sensory and has no actual adverse effects. Effects remain until cured, battle ends, or the victim is restored to full HP.

At the peak of her breakdown, as if the invasion of her wound didn't count for enough, Aurora felt herself being yanked off of her feet by her shin. Her body twisted as she fell down chest-first, her breath caught in her throat. All the while, the feeling of the tendrils inside her back ravaged her mental state.

As she felt herself being pulled in by slimy tendrils, another one wrapped around her other shin, the cold slime sending warning signals all up her thighs. This wasn't what she had expected; everything was moving too fast. The nauseating, burning stench, the surreal sights-- everything compounded in order to pull her further into mental pudding. This wasn't happening. All she was doing was sitting in her PET, and she had never volunteered to do this suicide mission in the first place.

Her hands scrambled to grab onto anything, but the white paneling of the ground didn't give her much to work with. Then, something-- something dripped into the snaking depths of her wound, through the tear of the bodysuit on her back. Something thick, and viscous, and moving. Without thinking, she turned around, perhaps unconsciously trying to prevent it from happening any further, and met the gaze of her assailant.

Towering over her prone body, the hulking violet-colored monstrosity opened its maw, releasing a deep gurgling cry directly at her. Her heart felt like it was clawing at her through her chest, as the pulsing slime-form revolved about a small opening, which gradually widened. No, her heart screamed, trying to reconcile her inner voice with her senses, that pounded into her mind, that this was absolutely real. Behind her visor, a stream of tears poured from her eyes as she shrieked, obscuring her view of a tiny light coming from the opening.

Even as terrified as she was, and with her mind as clouded as ever, Aurora's body managed to instinctively twist itself about, just as the corrupted stream of data shot out from the blackened gap. The heat from the glitched cannon crept through her back as the attack wound down. Then, without warning, Aurora's screaming was swiftly cut short, as a bright light blinded her eyes, and some piercingly loud sound played in the background.

Thump, was a good summary of what the force of the explosion felt on her body, even with Eternalis' Navi armor on her. Within the brief milliseconds of the explosion, time slowed down to a crawl. The force of the shockwave forcing her onto her back. The splatter of the disintegrated slime on her face, arms, legs, and body. The brief glimmer of blue light, shimmering through the endless sea of purple...

Why doesn't it hurt, she thought. Isn't this supposed to be where her limbs were supposed to be screaming in pain? Instead, contrary to her expectations, the hail of slime raining down on her from the explosion almost felt... warm. She looked up, and saw most of Eternalis' multiplied eyes blown away by the mortar, except for a single pair, barely open. One of the eyes twitched slightly as the explosion died down, but it was clear to Aurora. The eyes that were looking down at her held no more of the bestial hunger from earlier, but another expression entirely.

---

"That's it, I'm jacking her out," said Harke, standing up from his chair. It was bad enough that he had to watch, but the screams of terror-- he'd never heard anything like it before. Harke hadn't realized it, but he had built up a cold sweat, even as the cool morning air came in through a nearby window. However, as soon as his hand reached for the keyboard console, he felt another hand on top of it, stopping him from pulling the plug.

"Hold on," said Karen, as she grasped her younger brother's hand. "She's not gone yet."

"Karen, what-- are you doing, let me-- let me go," he said, tugging at his captive hand. He turned to look at his sister, and saw her eyes rapidly darting back and forth with a pensive expression, reading through the data displayed on the screen. She then turned towards the mass of chips that Harke had laid out on the desk, and picked out one, that showed a greenish robot, wielding two blades in front of it. Her deft fingers quickly slotted it into the PET plugged into the console, and a short click punctuated its transfer.

"Aurora, can you hear me? Are you all right?" she said over the link.

---

As her ears slowly ceased their ringing, Aurora heard the voice link at the back of her mind, almost painful in its clarity. Her battlechip queue had received some reinforcement, and it loaded automatically, in the form of a green DarkMech that materialized in front of her. It turned back towards her with its single eye, and emitted a single beep. Aurora shook her head, and scrambled back for a bit, as the DarkMech extracted its twin blades, and started hacking away at its targeted opponent.

"... No, I'm-- not all right. I'm fucking-- terrified right now," said Aurora, quickly getting back to her feet. Her legs were still shaking wildly, as well as her arms. Her voice was slightly cracked; she could feel something tugging at her throat. She could still feel the crawling inside of her back, trying as hard as it could to distract her.

But she had seen her partner's face within the murky purple depths. Somewhere in there, someone was waiting for her, just as terrified as she was. Waiting for her to save him. At least, that was what she told herself, repeatedly, as she drew a shaky breath, and tried to put all of her fear behind her. "So I'll need a bit more help on this."

The voice link was silent for a little bit, before Aurora heard the sound of a chair shift in the background, and the shaken voice of her operator sighing. "F-Fine..." said Harke, as he slotted in another battlechip.

A shimmering glow appeared on Aurora's arm, as she saw the wide fan of the WindRacket form on it, and she widened her stance. The DarkMech from earlier had vanished, and she was now once again face-to-face with her opponent. Her twitchy legs were readied themselves to move at a moment's notice, to counter any attack she would receive with a swipe of her racket. If it connected, it would put a bit more temporary distance between them, but she was also prepared to do that herself if it didn't land somehow.

// Summary
[Au.1] Chip: MachineSword1, on ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis // Null 60 x2 Hits, Wide, To-All-Stunned, Slashing, Acc B
[Au.2] Act: Get a bit of distance (Feint)
[Au.4] Act: Wait for attack and sidestep (Dodge)
[Au.3] Chip: WindRacket, on ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis // Null 100, Microburst, Wide Attack, Gust, Northwind, Acc A
[Au.5] Act: Sidestep attack (Dodge)

The moment of reprieve passed all too quickly, and as the monster in front of Auruora rebuilt itself, slime and goo bubbling as it filled in and swelled out, the sense of her partner reaching out, whether to protect or beseech, faded again. The softer, less monstrous pair of eyes slipped back, closing before a ripple of slime covered them over while the rest of its head reformed. The first eye to re-open was the hungry one; a cold, sentient and cruel eye that raked Aurora's form with intent. The crazy eye flickered open next, twitching and darting everyone, watching for further danger. One by on the other eyes came back as well, the lazy eye, drifting around the room in distracted unconcern for what was going on; the bestial eye, wild an animalistic in its focus on the SP-turned navi in front of it; the wrathful eye, burning with nothing short of total destruction in its gaze. Just as terrifying as anything else in this situation was the certainty that all as one, the creature wanted Aurora, was fixated upon her completely now, but there was no telling what its intentions truly were.

Whether it wanted her body for food, slaughter, or something else, Aurora had a moment more to get to her feet again while it was further harassed from its regeneration by the sudden intercession of the DarkMech. Even with the vicious machine-sword slicing into him again and again, though, the distraction couldn't hold the corrupted creature for long. Its regeneration was picking up speed again, and as the mech faded, Aurora would be able to see that it had almost completely regenerated anyway. The ragged maw in its face gaped open as it bellowed a wet, slimy sound of defiance at her, tongue rolling out and twining with a disturbingly prehensile freedom, before the creature lurched forward and flowed towards her in a flash, arms and tendrils reaching hungrily. Even as it came towards her, many of the distorted tentacles lashed out ahead, whipping at her while the main body of the beast approached. Aurora managed to duck and shuffle away from most of them; one thin tendril snaked about her wrist, leaving a thick, slimy goo, but she was able to pull away before it managed anything.

A moment later, the corrupted remnants of Eternalis were upon her more bodily, trying to pin her to the wall and grapple her body with its own primary limbs, snaking tendrils writhing to cling and grip as he did. Up close, its head was near hers for a moment, the cold, hungry eye glaring into hers while the over-long tongue curled out to drag across her exposed neck. It came with a low, gurgling sound of exhaling, which wafted the scent of decay over her. Shaken and unsteady as she was, though, Aurora still managed to slide away from this clumsy, if vigorous engagement, ducking clear of the strongest grabbing limbs and beating back with her racket quickly. The blow struck, and the slime monster was hurled back away from her, flying across the room to slam with a wet slap against the far wall, before slumping to the ground. It seemed to pause, crumpled in a heap, but this turned out to be a feint; after only an extra second, its head came up, and with it the launch of a thick bolt of dark, corrupted data aimed directly at Aurora. The combination of surprise, and her already unsteady condition meant that, try as she might to twist away from the sudden blast, it still singed across her front, searing through her suit and leaving the skin beneath feeling raw and scorched; it would be hard to fight down the urge to put a hand to the damaged area, where the front of her outfit had been given a new midriff-revealing front window from the base of her breastbone, down to the waist.

Worse, as much as the bolt scorched and stun, she could feel more corruption creeping into her system and sending things haywire. All over, even where she was hurt or scorched, her skin began to feel warm, almost tingling, like she needed to rub at it; it wasn't an itch, or a discomfort, per se, just an urge to rub softly, or to sooth it somehow, but it was everywhere, spreading in all directions over her skin from where the blast had connected. Alongside this, her sight began to waver; the walls and the floors of the chamber shifted and changed; the only constants in her field of sight were herself, and Eternalis; everything else was... strange. The walls and floor changed colour, flickered, disappeared, changed patterns, grew spines, became wavy, disappeared again, came back looking like sky, then grass, then blood, then slime... the shifting didn't stop and it was impossibly to tell anything about what kind of terrain she was standing on, or even if she was in the same space at all. A final side-effect manifested itself more subtly; it came as a sense of restored strength, amidst all the terror and pain. The writhing tendrils on her back faded from her awareness as this strength took root.

This left Aurora a little more stable, despite everything, as the one constant in her field of vision rushed towards her. There came the hiss of burning rot again; there was still lave on the field, even if she couldn't see it, and apparently the former navi had rushed across it on his way towards her again, completely uncaring for the burning that it caused. It reached her again far too quickly, this time managing to pin her against the wall at her back before she could escape. The main arms held painfully to her forearms while the many independent tendrils snaked and curled around her and several hard spikes began to pick and pull at the torn parts of her already damaged outfit. The creature's mouth had opened slowly again, tongue lashing, but it was impossibly to tell whether it was gearing up to bite at her neck, lick her, or something else entirely. In that moment the strength from moments ago seemed to leave Aurora again, flooding away just as swiftly as it had come.


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 675Hp [Normal][Pinning Aurora][Violet Death Lvl 3]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 200Hp [Normal][Pinned!][Creeping Cuts: (Cured!)][Borrowed Time (4 Turns)][Visual Dysphoria][Tactile Craving]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]

-=The Glitches=-

Violet Death: Will damage the host successively more each turn as it stacks up, and affects some abilities. As per plot details.

Creeping Cuts: Neutral Glitch. The victim will feel as though any injuries they take are crawling and seething, like there were something living crawling around on them, or coming out of them. This is purely sensory and has no actual adverse effects. Effects remain until cured, battle ends, or the victim is restored to full HP.

Borrowed Time: Balanced Glitch. At the beginning of each turn, the victim gains up to 200Hp, up to their maximum. At the end of the turn, they lose the same amount of HP that they gained. This removal will ignore undershirt, and can result in an EJO. Glitch persists for four turns, or until cured with Status Cure.

Visual Dysphoria: Negative Glitch. The victim's visual senses are impaired and they lose the ability to properly recognise structure, surface and terrain, seeing instead a rapidly shifting mass of different substances and textures. The glitch only affects their perception of the netspace itself — individuals and objects remain clear. Despite how the victim may otherwise feel about this, looking at the frequently shifting and changes terrain will feel distinctly distressing to them. Glitch persists until combat ends, cured with Status Cure, or can be negated and over-written by the Blind debuff.

Tactile Craving: Neutral Glitch. The victim's skin feels warm and slightly tingly. Outside of any other emotional or sensory states, the victim will feel like their skin needs to be rubbed or touched, or soothed in a gentle but thorough manner. Rubbing helps quell this sensation, wherever the the skin is rubbed or soothed, whether by the victim or another, but doing so causes the sensation to increase in severity elsewhere. The glitch effects their entire body, and persists until combat ends or cured with Status Cure.

"Ugh... he's a bit handsy," joked Aurora, trying to lighten up the mood, mostly for her own sake. Her WindRacket attack had connected, sending the corrupted Navi wall-bound and splattering his body all over the containment chamber's wall. Her shakes had subsided slightly, though it wasn't to say that they had disappeared completely. Even with the complete lack of wind in the chamber, the slash wound on her back felt unnaturally cold, as the invasive wriggling continued. The violation caused her entire body to shudder slightly; she certainly hadn't considered even the possibility when she had volunteered to rescue her partner. Thinking back, there hadn't even been much of an emotional connection between them. It was kind of difficult to remember any real sort of sweet memory between them. Their relationship had been mostly just her supporting Eternalis through his wild battling.

"Then again, I don't really need a reason, do I?" she sighed, trying to recall her experiences before she was rudely brought back to life.

Her previous partner -- she couldn't even remember his name or face now, thanks to a certain someone's memory wipe script -- was a Navi in Sharo's "Internal Logistics" military division. Their jobs mostly consisted of clearing up "loose inventory" and retrieving "non-compliant personnel". The job wasn't exactly easy, as her partner had a tendency to go wildly off the mark, and get caught in unpredictable situations. Still, he was reliable, as far as she could remember, and had saved her from her fair share of slip-ups as well. Until one day, both of them were assigned to test one of Sharo's prototype Navi technologies.

Her brief reprieve into her memory was interrupted as she heard Eternalis move again, and a beam of corrupted data fired unexpectedly towards her from one of the slime Navi's orifices. Having just barely caught her breath, her reaction was unfortunately too delayed, and the beam blasted through the front of her midsection. "Kh!!" Gritting her teeth, Aurora felt her shaking start up again as she felt the corruption snake through her body. Oddly enough, it felt less invasive now, and more like her body was slowly getting warmer. Heat waves gradually pulsed from her skin towards her insides, and her knees buckled slightly as she felt the heat converge in her lower core. The bodysuit that she was wearing felt uncomfortably restrictive from the warmth, but the parts that had been slashed or scorched weren't much better in comparison. All over her body, the warmth beckoned her to have it be touched, as if wanting to share it with someone else.

"W-What..." she stuttered, as her hands instinctively twitched towards her skin, before she halted them forcefully. What was worse, was that her vision seemed to be doing the same thing as her thoughts, with her surroundings appearing to melt into a kaleidoscope of colors, wireframes, and textures. Everywhere she looked, her eyes assaulted her with a blitzkrieg of conflicting information.

"Aurora, your visual processes are going haywire. Do you need me to dictate your visual?" a voice said, at the back of her head -- Reverus' voice. She held on to it, trying to use it as a mental pillar for her to stabilize herself. Looking around, there was oddly one point in space that remained unchanged: Eternalis' hulking body. Languidly, a smile crept to the side of her mouth as she tried to regain her stance and anticipate her opponent's next move. As far as she could remember, the containment chamber was mostly empty, and so the only thing she could see was the only thing she needed to see.

"I just need to last a little longer, right? Just tell me if I'm about to hit a wall or something," she said, feeling a rush of energy begin to well up inside of her, as she focused on the enemy in front of her. The enemy that was currently charging, and lunging for her, and also the enemy that she should probably be avoiding at the moment.

"... Ah."

She only managed to let out a single utterance, before her back was forced against another hard surface, blurring out her vision entirely from the shock. This time, it was the wall. Though she was unable to see, her body told her all she needed to know. Her forearms painfully notified her of Eternalis' strong hold, and her legs tried to counteract by pushing against the wall. The rest of her body felt slimy tendrils snake and twist about her body, with a few sneaking into the openings that had been torn open earlier.

Despite this, Aurora could only blankly stare forward. Her mind was telling her that she would definitely receive nothing pleasant by not retaliating. Beaten. Slashed. Shot. Possibly even more than that, but... everything in her instinctual processes was firing back. Telling her that she wanted it. The infested slime, instead of causing her to recoil, instead felt comforting, calming down her warm skin that had begged to be touched earlier. In fact, far from wanting to recoil, she wanted more, to be touched all over and completely devoured.

Suddenly, her chip processes registered two hits, and her mind was brought out of its fugue briefly. The power of the battlechip imbued her body with an explosive energy, and Aurora's body started to vibrate. Her eyes shot open, and the wild rush of power into her systems railroaded her train of thought into one single action; fighting off her assailant. Her voice first squeaked out, still a bit jolted from the inrush, before abruptly rising into a bellow of a warcry, as she attempted to force herself free.

// Summary
[Au.1] Chip: DashAttack1, on ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis, attempt to break free // Null 90, Impact, Line Attack: 5, Acc C
// Turn Splice: 4/5 Remaining (derp)

Pressed close against the corrupted entity, Aurora would be able to notice that, even as the slime and goo regenerated from the damage she had dealt it, other parts of it seemed to be rotting away, bubbling and collapsing inwards, almost like the purple fluid was both devouring and rebuilding itself all at once. She could feel its body twitching and jerk erratically as it held her, as though different impulses were warring for control. More tendrils snaked out as it held her pressed tight to the wall, creeping into the tears and burned holes in her suit and snaking their way underneath the material to wrap around her arms and slide over her skin. Even when they passed, undulating, the feeling of thick slime remained on her skin, rubbing against it as her damaged outfit pressed back in the wake of each roving tentacle. Not just her arms, but more pressed themselves into the torn opening at her back, sliding in every direction. If she was particularly aware of it, Aurora might notice that the injury on her back had been fully healed by the rush of energy before, and it returned now, filling her with vigour.

Even so, everywhere where the sneaking tendrils wrapped about her arms and her back, the warm needing feeling on her skin settled down, and the sensation grew from a soft urge to a more pressing need elsewhere. She was quickly becoming aware of every inch of her body that hadn't yet been touched or rubbed directly since the glitch had struck her, and every place the slimy tendrils soothed made the rest ache all the more. What Aurora herself thought of this sensation would have to go on hold for the time being, however, as a sudden mass of hardened spikes burst out of the creature's back and curled around finding gaps and tears in her already damaged suit and attempting to make them worse or to pull it apart completely. They made a sickly, wet, tearing sound as they emerged, but it didn't seem to hurt the monster at all. The hungry eye was watching her face through all of this, grotesquely misshapen mouth breathing over her unmoving as the rest of its body worked on hers.

It leaned in closer to her, tongue curling up to drag across her lips like it was encouraging her to open them for it, before the former navi convulsed roughly and the tongue curled away again. Its head turned, locking her with the wrathful eye instead now, and a burning urge to destroy flowed out to her through its gaze. the picking claws suddenly grew more violent, gouging and tearing ferociously without a care for whether they harmed Aurora or not; many flailed, some tore only her suit, while others sliced and stabbed with a wild fury. It was only a minor consolation, but at least these cuts and injuries didn't crawl with the unsettling creeping feeling that the first one had, even though Eternalis' slimy goo was very obviously getting into the injuries and covering them after the spikes withdrew.

About that moment, Aurora took matters back into her own hands and tore free of the creature's pin with a sudden, almost explosive dash of speed and power. She would be able to feel the wet impact as she burst free of him, slamming the amorphous body aside. the speed carried her across the room, and she would be able to feel the heat of the lava panels in the middle of the room as she passed over them, but too fast for them to cause any damage. The lighter feeling of air didn't stop when she slowed however, and as her other senses caught up, she might realise that she'd heard a more pronounced ripping sound even as she escaped.

Looking over herself, she'd find that many of the sharp spikes and claws had still been inside her bodysuit, and the result was in many broad tears and cuts that had partially shredded what remained of it. The arms were no more than tatters now, and a long slice had opened up the front from the neck down tot eh right edge of the midriff hole. this left the front potion on the right side to fall free, dangling by a strand from her waist and exposing her right breast in the process, while the back part was similarly compromised; her right arm still bore enough tatter to encircle a point just below her shoulder, but it had become disconnected from the rest of her suit. A further tear had been opened up from the hole at her middle, down her left thigh, with a corner of the material hanging away, though it settled at a point that didn't expose anything more. It would only take a tug to do so at this point, however. Finally, the open cut across the back of her suit had been torn further down in the other direction, letting similar triangles of material peel away to show the line of her back and the top of her behind as well, though it was only the slight feeling of open air that would tell Aurora so, without a more through inspection.

The feeling of thick slime on her skin was still present in many places, even once she broke free; it liberally coated her arms and her back, and much of her midsection as well, not to mention trails of the viscous fluid on her neck and cheek, and the smallest hint of it on her lips as well. Strangely, many parts of it seemed to be regenerating and developing a membranous outer surface on her skin — she could feel the goo, alive on her, even though it was separated from its source. A closer glance would show that much of this slime looked far more blue than purple.

Across the room from her, the corrupted Eternalis had flinched back from her sudden assault, jumping with surprising agility and dropping to an approximation of all fours as if by instinct. The crazy eyes was darting about more madly than before, searching for more threats to follow the first, but alongside it, the bestial eye had fixed on Aurora and the hideous mouth seemed to grow an array of hardened spikes in the top and bottom, almost like a mockery of teeth.


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 688Hp [Normal][Across the room from Aurora][Violet Death Lvl 3]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 280Hp [Normal][Borrowed Time (3 Turns)(Bestowed 160 at the beginning of this round)][Visual Dysphoria][Tactile Craving][Second Skin (2 turns)]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]



-=Aurora Has 4 Actions Remaining=-
-= ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis Has 4 Actions Remaining=-

The impact was almost imperceptible to Aurora as she rocketed forward, directly through the slime monster that had been restraining her. With the world convulsing into a gibbering mess before her eyes, as well as the sudden pressure difference, Aurora's eyes were forced shut as she allowed the DashAttack1 battlechip to drive her forward, and away from Eternalis, for now. The heat of the lava that had been made from her attack earlier whiffed by her like a miniature heat wave. As she hadn't planned the attack, the DashAttack's normally controlled bodyslam attack turned into a rather ragdoll-like display. It felt like it lasted a lot longer than two seconds, but at the end of those seconds, Aurora felt the effects of deceleration, and braced herself to stick a landing.

Her feet landed onto the floor with more control than she had thought, as she was expecting to have to roll on the floor for the last bits of her deceleration. As she did so, however, she heard a very audible tearing sound, coming from her bodysuit. A look down at herself revealed that her bodysuit reflected some rather serious damage. Or at least, what was left of it, as some of it was only left as errant strands that could just barely hold themselves together. Not to mention that she still had some of the slime left over on her body, in liberal amounts.

At this point, her eyes had somewhat adjusted to the ever-changing landscape, as she was able to use Eternalis' body as a visual anchor. However, it didn't change the fact that she still had to deal with the tactile craving that she had, as she felt the slime crawl all about her, just as Eternalis had done not two seconds ago. The heat that she had been plagued with earlier seemed to cool down from the The slime blobs seemed to gravitate to places where her bodysuit had been torn up, almost as if they were attempting to patch it up. Her hand instinctively drew up to her exposed chest on her right side, and she felt the viscous slime seeping through her suit. Aurora tried to deal with the pressing need that her body was constantly hammering into her mind, with the areas uncovered with slime radiating a needy, insistent warmth. The most pronounced area being where the heat ended up radiating towards, which was her lower core. Shaking her head, she pulled away her hand, and saw a trail of blue stick to her gloved fingers. Her eyes went slightly wider as a thought came to her mind.

However, before she could process the thought further, Aurora looked out at Eternalis on the opposite end of the room, who was reared up on all fours. One of the eyes had fixed on her position, and she inadvertently activated the second of her battlechip data in her queue. A large mechanical contraption materialized in one corner of the room, with a large number "2" on its side.

"Aurora? Did you get the chips?" a voice interrupted her, as a video screen popped up in her peripheral, which was mercifully not as garbled as her surroundings; she didn't need any more nauseous sights as she had right now. Strangely enough, she only saw Karen's face there, and not Reverus or Harke, and her voice wasn't really transferring over properly either. That, or her auditory processes were being corrupted too. Lovely.

"... Karen? I've--" said Aurora, flinching as the slime on her chest snuck under her suit, "-- just activated them. Where are the other two?"

"Um, they're kind of off to the side for a bit after your suit got torn up."

"..." Aurora's eyes darted down briefly at her exposed figure. "... Thanks. Could you send me something to hack parts of him off? Seems like it'll at least separate off some of the corruption before the time comes to unload everything on him."

"So his processes are overloading exactly like we thought, then... Do you need me to restore your suit?"

Aurora sighed. "Sorry, Karen, I'd love to, but it'd take too long," she said, widening her stance slightly. She cringed as she felt her bodysuit peel off, but a small undulation on her skin saw some of the blue slime on her body attach to the torn parts, keeping her decency slightly more put-together. The armor that had been on top of it was pretty much useless, for whatever reason, disintegrating just as easily as the bodysuit underneath. It wasn't surprising, as she had seen what the bug she was fighting had done to Eternalis when he had worn the same armor.

Karen sighed. Seeing the numerous errors appear on screen all over the analytics she had been running on Aurora's Navi container, it was difficult for her not to order her to pull out. On the other end of the room, though, Eternalis' bug progression seemed unending, but her data said otherwise, as the supercharged healing processes were being stretched to their breaking point. "All right, I'll send you the Katana. Heads up," said Karen, as she slotted in the chip with the samurai-lookalike virus on its front. Her fingers dance across the console as more and more errors appeared. Due to the remote nature of Navi internal operations, all she could do was some diagnostics, as she cursed under her breath for her lack of ability to help.

The battlechip data transferred quickly, and Aurora found herself in possession of a sheathed Electopian sword at her side. Her hands gripped the scabbard and handle tentatively, and she focused on the wild abomination on the other end of the room. The blade felt unsteady in her hand; she could tell that her shakes had acted up again, though primarily from terror at this point. Rather, her body was radiating an unreal rush of adrenaline-like energy again, which only served to amplify the unsettling discomfort she had experienced earlier with her skin. The slime snaking through her bodysuit, though appreciated for their meager attempts at protecting her decency, were also exacerbating the feeling, as the parts of her body they had not reached yet nagged her with an instinctual level of demand.

Despite all this, she tried to focus on the battle ahead, with the blade at her side ready to be unsheathed to hopefully parry any attacks Eternalis would have for her, since undoubtedly, from his previous attacks, the former Navi would want to close the distance between them. The parry would then leave an opening for a counterattacking slice, failing which she would be ready to reposition herself to try again.

"Just-- a little bit longer..." she told herself, biting on her lip.

// Summary
[Au.2] Chip: TimeBomb1HP: 100
Properties: Anchored
Object Damage: 50 + Impact
Damage Method: Telekinesis
Attack Damage: 100 + To-All-Clause (Enemies)
Accuracy: S
Description: Places a bomb on the field that will explode after two turns, damaging all enemies.
Duration: 2 turns or until destroyed.
Element: Null
Trader Rank: D: 100HP Anchored Object, 2-Turn: 100 + To-All-Enemy + Delay-Turn(2) (Acc: S) into a corner somewhere
[Au.3] Act: Parry/sidestep anticipated attack (Dodge)
[Au.4] Chip: Katana2Damage: (80 + Slashing + Wide Attack) Then (80 + Slashing + Long Attack)
Accuracy: B
Description: Creates a long metal blade with exceptional cutting speed. Hits with a wide slash, then a long slash in the span of a single action, hitting 3 and 2 targets, respectively. Only one target can be hit with both slashes. Rare
Duration: Until Overridden/Broken. Breaks automatically after 2 uses.
Element: Null
Trader Rank: B: (80 + Slashing + Wide Attack) Then (80 + Slashing + Long Attack) (Acc: B) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis
[Au.5] Act: Parry/sidestep anticipated attack (Dodge)

With the men in the room opting for chivalry over attentiveness, Karen was left to help Aurora through her encounter for now. It began with the setting of an ominous time bomb in a far corner of the room, which, perhaps thankfully, or perhaps not, the corrupted beast in front of Aurora didn't seem to notice. Fixed on her, it lunged forward again, limbs scrabbling and slapping against the ground, hissing as they passed over the lava, and flailing out at her with both of its arms raking claws that threatened to do far more than damage her clothes. The attack was wild and fervent, accompanied by more of the same acrid stench of degrading slime, but Aurora managed to duck and twist to the side, letting the amorphous creature barrel past her.

Her first slash went wide as the beasts skidded and turned, tracking up along the corner of the wall and pushing off it again to come back at her from the other side. The mouth bearing the grotesque mockery of teeth snarled at her with an almost rabid savagery, dozens of smaller waving tendrils rising and reaching for her from all over its body. Trails of the ooze dripped from its mouth and got lost amongst the wildly shifting patterns and textures of the floor. Its second attack came at her faster and more full-bodied, arms reaching to try and envelope the girl as much as slash at her, but again Aurora managed to dart clear of it, striking with her blade a second time as they passed one another. This time her stroke cut deeply, cleaving through one of the thicker limbs he was using for legs and severing it.

The mass of the severed piece began to melt away swiftly while the corrosive bug devoured itself, but on the body of her former ally, the limb itself seemed to regrow with alarming speed. Rather than fall off balance, it caught itself in a brace on the reforming limb, twisting back towards Aurora and unleashing another blistering stream of corrupted purple energy at her. Still with her back towards her foe, Aurora had no time to react before the glitch-laden beam blasted into her back, making her stagger forward with the force of it. The large coating of bluish slime on her back took the brunt of the blast, and was scattered away partially, but even though it protected her from the pain of the beam, the insidious, corrupting influence of it still began to seep further into her systems. The membranous bits of goo on her body were beginning slowly to reform themselves, though it would be a while before they could offer more protection, but worse than that, they began to grow heavy, making her arms feel leaden and her legs weak. The feeling of weight was slowing her down, but the haywire crackle of energy didn't end there; her vision began to dim and darken, just as her hearing spiked upwards to an acute level of sensitivity; a moment later Aurora couldn't see at all, but every tiny sound in the room, from everywhere, was sharp and clear.

Amongst the sounds she could hear most prominently, her own breathing, the creep and wriggle of the ooze still moving on her skin, the soft bubble of the lava, somewhere to her left... but over all of that, the thick, languid drip and ooze of the corrupted navi in the room with her, wet, heavy breaths and slavering eagerness, the sick sound of spikes pushing out of the creature's body, parting the gel as they emerged, all right behind her and coming suddenly closer.

There was no time to dodge again, as much as her suddenly sharpened hearing helped to make up for her loss of sight. There was a snarl as the weight of the beast struck her back, the hardened shell and reaching tendrils of a limb pulling down her back directly. It dragged downwards, but seemed to lack the cutting force that the claws from before held. Instead, Aurora felt a tension on the material at her hip, and a tear, then the feeling of the lower half of her suit being dragged down over her hips by the weight of the blow. The slimy limb passed over her behind, scoring painfully but leaving an almost soothing goo behind it, but as the material pulled down, she found her legs snapped swiftly together by it, and felt the impact of her knees hitting the panels as it dragged her down. She would probably need to put her hands down to the floor as well, just to keep balance from the awkward blow, regardless of what that left her body showing off.

All at once, as she hit the ground, the weight of her limbs pulled at her and the rush of energy that had come drained away leaving her weak and dangerously close to defeat. She couldn't see anything, but behind her, Aurora could hear the rapid, ravenous breathing of the creature slow suddenly, like it had calmed, or, more likely, like another part of it was dominant now instead. All the good that might do, while the various glitches riddling her body were making it very difficult for the assailed SP to keep going. She could feel creeping goo trailing over her exposed behind and down the backs of her thighs — very few parts of her body still felt the sense of tactile yearning, now — just her neck and face, one breast, parts of her legs, and certain other more delicate places... but how those places burned.


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 720Hp [Normal][Directly Behind Aurora][Violet Death Lvl 4]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 85Hp [Normal][Borrowed Time (2 Turns)][Visual Dysphoria: Cured!][Tactile Craving][Second Skin (1 turns) (1-hit shield: regenerating)][Wild Sense: (Blind Eye: Blind Status Effect)(Hyper Hearing: Improved Dodges)][Leaden Defence][Katana2 (1 Use)]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]

-=Disregarded Device=-

Timebomb: 100Hp [Normal][Anchored][Back Corner][2 Turns]

As she stood at ready, Aurora saw Eternalis dash for her, and managed to swivel about. The stench of the burning, decomposing slime had already dissolved into background noise for her, thanks to her warped vision, and she turned her rotational momentum into a swift counterattack, unsheathing her sword in one smooth strike. Unfortunately, Eternalis' lunge was too quick for her reaction, and her slash only caught some errant slime discharge from the monster. The slime splattered over her face as she clicked her tongue in exasperation.

"▂▂▃██▄▂▃▄▃▃▅▅███!!"

Eternalis bellowed again, expelling more of the vile fluid towards the floor through his repulsive-looking teeth analogues. The beast didn't take much time before charging towards her again, and this time, her attack managed to slice clean through his leg. The thickness of the leg somewhat surprised Aurora, as she was brought slightly off-balance, and she heard the dismembered limb hissing violently as it began to disintegrate from the detachment.

Unfortunately, just as she was about to turn around, a familiar blast of corrupted data shot into Aurora's back, causing her to stagger forward. "Urk!!" A lump of something rose in her throat as the invasive data snaked into her systems, threatening to overwrite her sensory data with its erratic form. Though she didn't feel the painful scorch that the cannon's attack usually brought with it, the distinct feeling of the glitches snaking through her skin was unpleasant all the same, to say the least. The wriggling slime on her body began to spread out towards the blast area, sneakily crawling further underneath her suit.

As the slime spread out, she felt her kaleidoscopic vision changing again, as it rapidly dimmed down into complete blackness. Meanwhile, her hearing turned up its sensitivity to an almost painful level of detection. Her mind slowed down tremendously as a flood of sounds permeated through her processes. Her own nervous heartbeat, threatening to burst out of her chest. The heavy breathing that accompanied that, along with the lump in her throat that refused to leave in either direction. The softly undulating slime that covered her body, which was feeling increasingly heavy against her frame. Off to the side, the molten lava bubbled quietly, which would have made for a lovely background noise.

"▂▃▃▃▅▄▅..."

All of this, however, was mostly drowned out by the gurgling and breathing of the slimy abomination hovering over her back. A feeling of dread gripped her as she tried to direct her body away, but the sudden impact from the cannon had briefly robbed her of her body's control. That brief moment was all it took for Eternalis' slimy arm to smack against her back. Aurora recoiled at the impact as it hit; she was already preparing for another hit of glitches. Unexpectedly, however, she didn't receive a wound on her back, but the slimy limb was still on it. What was he doing? Why hadn't he split her back open with a slash of his claws?

Her confusion was answered in one move, as she felt the flap on the back of her suit slowly let out an unpleasant tearing sound. Horror struck her like an arrow through her heart as her bared rear was scored painfully by the purple slime. Pulled down to her knees, the suit's remnants restricted her legs together in a lock, leaving her top half to stagger down to the floor. Aurora winced as she crashed onto her side, Even with her eyes blinded, they still locked onto Eternalis' body, following the ravenous noises that the beastly Navi was making.

The noises were beginning to slow down, and Aurora felt some of the slime begin to envelop her lower half. Unlike the earlier protective blue slime, they felt a lot more rough and invasive, trying to gain control over her, and completely possess her. Her mind slowed down as she felt the parts that hadn't been touched by the slime begin to heat up again, this time flaring up far more than before. Her face, her neck, the still-covered part of her chest, and-- Her softest parts contrasted their nature by the instincts that overtook all of her mental processes. With her vision robbed, Aurora could feel every bit of the sticky wetness that signified the violent demands of those instincts, sneaking out of the places that the slime had still yet to reach.

Then, without warning, her body erupted with unbridled power once again, and it began to uncontrollably propel itself away from the object of her desires. The surge of kinetic energy that she had been imbued with, along with the bumps of the paneling that twice or so brushed against her shoulder, forcefully gave her mind a hard reset. At the end of it, the energy began to drain out, and Aurora rolled out onto the floor to smooth out her landing. Along the way, somewhat to her benefit, the fabric that had been restricting her feet had been torn apart, and the Katana sword that she had been holding was nowhere to be felt on her person. As she rolled to a stop, she heard a small voice in the back of her mind speak clearly.

"Alright, now that you're a little ways away from him, I'm force-starting the graphical override."

"Ugh... Karen? I can't-- I can't see..."

"I know, that was a resource heap index corruption. I'll try to do whatever I can on that. Hang in there, Aurora, he's almost at his breaking point. We can do this."

Then, as Aurora tried to get to her feet, she felt parts of her bodysuit begin to phase out, and hopefully begin to repair itself. Though she couldn't see anything, she could appreciate parts of her body slowly become covered again, though not without the slime that had clung to her fiercely maintaining their hold.

"... Thanks, Karen, ugh..." grunted Aurora, struggling to keep herself mounted on her feet. Her nerves were pretty much shot at this point and her body was screaming at her to give up and take it. Even her eyes, which had been erratically giving her information as best as they could, had thrown in the towel. Still, in her mind's eye, her memory replayed the moment of the mortar explosion, and her resolve hardened, if only by a little.

"Sorry I can't do any more. Here, I'll toss you a bone," Aurora heard her operator say. Then, in her hand, she felt some form of long stick materialize. Holding it near the end, she could feel the stump of a literal bone, and she dryly chuckled.

"I swear, Karen, your sense of humor is the worst..." she said exasperatedly, as she threw the bone in roughly the direction she had been in. At the same time, she was listening to any reaction that she could pick up, to see if she could somehow miraculously avoid Eternalis' attacks, while Karen tried to diagnose her out of her blackened sight.

// Summary
[Au.1] Chip: DashAttack1Damage: 90 + Impact + LineAttack(5) + Movement
Accuracy: C
Description: The user charges forward at a great speed to ram a line of enemies. Hits a maximum of 5 enemies before the momentum is lost.
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Special: Direction of travel may be altered with chip, terrain, and sig use.
Trader Rank: D: 90 + Impact + LineAttack(5) + Movement (Acc: C) to gain some distance
[Au.2] Act: Roll into the landing (Dodge)
[Au.3] Act: Attempt to restore base appearance (RP)
[Au.4] Chip: Skully1Damage: 100 + Homing + Confusion
Accuracy: C
Description: Throws a spinning bone at an enemy, if it misses it will swing back around. Confuses enemy on contact.
Duration: Once
Element: Null
Trader Rank: D: 100 + Homing + Confusion (Acc: C) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis
[Au.5] Act: Try to anticipate attack and sidestep (Dodge)

Blind and hurting, Aurora would be able to hear, as much as feel, the weight of the corrupted creature behind her drop down, the rasp of its breathing falling forward close to her ear as her senses warned her of it looming over her. Droplets of purple goo trailed from its body, dripping and splattering over her as she felt it cover and surround her smaller form. The breathing was right by her ear, and though she couldn't see, the image of its hideous mouth and toothy spikes close by her neck would be hard not to imagine. Something like arms grabbed hold of her waist and hips, any moment now it would...

Suddenly the surge of strength came again, renewing her and lending her a fresh rush of power. with it, a chip that tore her free suddenly and far too quickly for Eternalis to react. She broke free of his grasp, propelled quickly to the other side of the chamber again, though far less nimbly than before. The sound of wet tearing accompanied it, as more of the creature's corrupted form seemed to turn inwards on itself, degrading and devouring the slime almost as quickly as it could regenerate. It gave another infuriated roar across the chamber, and though she couldn't see, hearing alone was enough to feel the unbridled rage that her escape had caused. Eyes blind, she could hear the twist and curl of many dozens of tendrils and tentacles as, across from her, the beast rose upright again, arms out as it vented to the ceiling, before lowering its head again. The one eye that fixated on her body now was full of nothing but wrath and fury, and the need to destroy everything.

While this was going on, the more bluish coating of slime covering more and more of Aurora's body was rapidly trying to regenerate itself as well, creping further and making the coverage more complete. Karen did her best to restore the one-time navi's suit and armour, but the sheer volume of body-affecting glitches plaguing her were getting in the way. Every time a damaged piece of armour or material phased away, the bluish slime crept in, and seemed to inhibit attempts to over-write it. More, it seemed to feed on the restoration processes, speeding up its own coverage of the compromised girl. The result that swiftly took place, in the few seconds that followed, weren't as bad as they might have been. Aurora was left covered almost completely now, from her neck to her feet, in a thin layer of cloudy, mostly opaque, mostly blue substance with a membranous outer surface that seemed to actively resist the splatterings of the more purplish goo that had splashed over her.

The only part of her body not so covered was a narrow, bikini-like triangle covering her groin and undercarriage; the only area of her body not yet coated by a foreign slime in some way had managed to restore its section of material successfully, although without anything else to attach to, it was mostly held in place by virtue of being hemmed in by the protective shell of slime that covered the rest of her... and that stuff seemed eager to work its way underneath so that it could complete its coverage. Given that it was the only part of her body remaining now that hadn't been soothed of the tactile glitch, however, there was the high probability that the region would be embarrassingly gooey in other ways by now. Still, at a glance, from the outside, aurora looked mostly decent. It was only if one looked up close that they'd be able to see that the covering wasn't completely opaque. There was also the issue that this replacement armour was the result of a glitch, so who knew how reliable it would be.

For her own part, aurora had no time to ponder fashion and decency; Eternalis came on, but even blind, her fine-tuned hearing gave her enough sense of the situation and easy balance to let her duck and twist away from the wrathful lunge at the last moment. The next sound was of it kicking off the wall, and the sliding, splitting sound of wet, keen-edged blades lancing outwards. Aurora managed to dodge a second time, feeling the passage of some object right in front of her as she heard it coming in. The next was a rushing sound, though, and before she could react a thick mass of slime and force struck her in the throat, driving her back against the wall behind and pinning her hard. the noxious smell of decay surrounded her as the fluid limb crushed against her throat, above where the protective blue gel stopped, and she could feel the scrambled, corrupted mass of damaged code scrawling into her skin every moment.

Her attempt to clobber the assailant with her bone club were indeterminate; the wet sounds of undulating slime and flailing tendrils drowned out all else she might have used to work out if she hit or not, but regardless, the pressure increased and Aurora would soon fee her toes leave the ground. Even if she tried to get her hands to the limb pinning her to the wall, more slimy tendrils wrapped about them trying to pull her grip away, and the next thing she heard was the tell-tale hum of energy that she'd heard each time Eternalis fired that beam. Wriggle and struggle as she might, Aurora couldn't get out of the way as the bolt exploded out from one chest, into another at point blank range. As before, she felt the impact strike her hard, slamming her flat tot he wall again, but the creeping seep of glitches was all that resulted. The ray had blown a hole in the covering over her chest, exposing it again, but no more.

Though she couldn't see it, she could feel the whole of the gooey armour covering her shudder and writhe after receiving this blow, feeling heavy on her skin. On her exposed skin, too, she would feel a mass of smaller tendrils plunge forward, joining up with the torn hole in the covering and swiftly staining the whole of it a dark, putrid purple again. It rippled and rebelled, quivering against her skin, before going still for a moment, and then beginning to creep again, hugging and squeezing her body more tightly, more threateningly now. The harsh, angry growl that had been sliding from the creature's throat as it held her dulled slightly as her eyesight began to return, but for Aurora this was just in time to see it turn its head, fixing her with the cold eye once more. instead. If she turned her eyes down, she'd see an extra limb connecting its chest and hers, as though the now purple layer of slime covering her once more belonged to Eternalis. It certainly felt like it did. The creature was panting heavily, its body decaying and regrowing in a fluid constant. As her vision returned, though, she might want to close her eyes; in a sudden movement its head lunged towards her, body pressing hard against hers and practically smothering her against the wall. His mouth met hers, but instead of the sharp, hardened spike-teeth, she felt the long, grotesque tongue once more, pressing between her lips and exploring further and deeper. The eyes never stopped glaring, and she could feel the slime coating her body trying to pry its way under her last remaining piece of armour.

The enforced, smothering kiss went on for several seconds whether aurora tired to fight it off or surrendered to the gesture, before the creature's body rippled and convulsed, pressing its mouth into a firmer lock against hers in the process. She couldn't see what happened next, but she could feel it; a thick, fizzing ball of substance was forced from the creature's mouth and into hers. It stung and crackled, sending her entire mouth numb and making her head spin in a daze even as it burned down her throat. If her tongue and mouth had gone numb, though, the rest of her body sprang to life with sensitivity. Every tiny ripple and shift in the goo coating her felt magnified. Worse, the sensation of desire down below spiked sharply too. It would take a supreme effort of will-power not to put a hand down there herself by now, whether she wanted to do so or not.

With the bulk of its body pressed against her, the tentacle limbs holding her legs had begun to pull her knees upwards and outwards now, and a heavy pressure against the seemingly insignificant stretch of material covering her made it seem like her assailant would soon help her with the problem, but all of a sudden she was released, dropped to the ground with unceremonious speed. As she struck the ground, the rush of strength faded away, leaving her weak. Most of the slime coating her continued to press and squeeze at her body, putting pressure on her all over; even though he had turned away, several long snakes of goo still connected her compromised armour to the body of the beast, and it hadn't stopped trying to find a way under her last line of defence even now.

Eternalis himself had whipped around, releasing her from his main limbs, hissing and snarling suddenly as three more images of Aurora in various states of fighting pose and armament appeared spread out behind it. Its head whipped back and forth, looking to each of them in turn as the crazy eye darted about, fixing each decoy in the room in rapid succession. There were more strange anomalies going on in Aurora's code, and there was every possibility that her mental and emotional state was in a shambles by this point... but at the same time, if there was ever a time to strike, she would be able to feel that it was now or never. Communicating that to Karen might be a bit difficult with her mouth and tongue numb, though.


-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: 720Hp [Normal][Back to Aurora][Violet Death Lvl 5][Confused!][Self-Slow]

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 35Hp [Normal][Tactile Craving: Only One Place Remains][Buster Booster][Sniper Eye][Taunting Mirror][Wild Sense: (Totally Tasteless: Can't Taste, Tongue is Numb, And/Or has trouble speaking), (Super Sensitive: Hyper sensitive sense of touch. One passive instance of Counter(on hit): Dodge)][Borrowed Time (Expired!)][Second Skin (Expired!)][Leaden Defence (Expired!)][Stunned!(1)]

Aurora Decoy A: [Directly in front of Eternalis, fully dressed, wielding a pulse rifle]
Aurora Decoy B: [To the left of Eternalis, dressed like a dominatrix, wielding a whip]
Aurora Decoy C: [To the right of Eternalis, dressed in a sun hat and light summer dress, unarmed]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]

-=Disregarded Device=-

Timebomb: 100Hp [Normal][Anchored][Back Corner][1 Turn]

With her sight completely robbed for the moment, Aurora closed her eyes, and focused on the senses about her. Besides the sounds of the room once again filling the imaginary vicinity within her mind, her blindness also brought more attention to her tactile. Close to herself, she heard the nearly imperceptible beeping of the graphical process trying to restore her suit, fighting against the various wriggling chunks of slime that had taken over her body. As the suit disappeared in places to be replaced, the slime chunks aggressively moved in before the graphical process could spawn, feeding off of the process instead. Aurora's legs locked up, as almost every single area of her body was touched and caressed by the slime, except for the most importantly needy part between them. Her base psyche tore at her own sanity as it demanded that its desires-- and hers, by proxy-- be met.

The sudden sound of a rush of wind managed to put her conscious mind on edge, however, as she sidestepped one of the Eternalis' bull rush attacks. The adrenaline rush made her entire body light on fire as the makeshift slime suit tightened about her limbs. The sound of Eternalis splattering across a nearby wall, and the subsequent sound of hardened slime erupting from his body then crossed her ears. Aurora proceeded to twist her body to the minute swish of the blade, barely feeling it pass by. The slime suit was surprisingly compliant to her movements, making it easier for her to evade the attack. In the middle of all the despair, she oddly felt good, in all senses of the word. Despite all of her injuries so far, she felt the impending rush of victory, as all she had left now was to wait for Karen's signal, and her awaited arsenal. It was going to be okay; she was going to win. Time was on her side.

-- [Fall down.]

Unfortunately, of course, the rush was fleeting at best. With Eternalis' relentless assault, she wouldn't manage to evade all of them, and cruel fate demonstrated its effects as a blob of slime slammed into her throat. What little composure she had managed to piece together was smashed to bits as she was pinned against the wall. The adrenaline that she had been running on converted its effects into a panic fever, and her blinded eyes jolted open. The noxious slime had crushed her throat against the wall; she felt the crawl and scratch of all the bugs that were being introduced through its contact. Her hands tried frantically to reach up to whatever slime part was pinning her to the wall, but some slimy appendages wrapped around her arms and yanked them off. As much as she struggled with the bindings, the brief wind-up whine of the cannon was all that responded to her as its charge was unloaded directly onto her chest.

The charge was definitely the biggest one so far, as Aurora felt the impact on her body force her against the wall even harder than the slime limb on her throat. The attack felt like it lasted forever, but eventually it wound down; she felt the ravaged part of her chest taste open air, though the snaking roots of the glitches that were crawling into her skin rather detracted from the experience. A creeping dread came over her as she knew that the weakness wouldn't be left unexploited.

Sure enough, she quickly felt a variety of little tendrils almost punch her chest through the exposed hole with a wet splat. The tendrils began sucking and rippling on the hole in the armor that it had invaded like a vacuum, almost as if it wanted to take her breath directly away from her chest. Not too much later, as if on cue, the slime all over her body that had replaced her armor earlier also began writhing and squeezing more violently. If the slime limb that was choking her earlier wasn't enough, this was almost threatening to crush her body by itself bone by bone, almost kneading it as it alternated between crushing pressure and idle sponginess. However, it never came; the torturous assault did not seem to end in deletion. Despite it looking like she was being choked to death, there were brief reprieves where she was allowed to breathe, even if it was only for a short time.

Why...?

Why wasn't he deleting her?

Aurora heard a low rumbling groan, as her eyes began to make out some color from the blackness. When clarity returned to her eyes, woefully, she met the sight of Eternalis' five eyes, one of which was coldly drilling its focus towards her. No empathy came through its gaze; all that was communicated through their eye contact was hostility, and fear. All around the eyes, a roiling mess of purple slime churned about, opening out to an unnaturally gaping mouth. Inside of the mouth, bubbling slime decayed and restored itself countless times, with a grotesque tongue directing its foul breath towards her face. She opened her mouth to scream, but Eternalis was quick to silence her, as his deformed face lunged for it in a sickening mockery of a kiss. Her screams were muffled into the slime's forced embrace as her limbs pushed and pulled at her restraints, growing ever more powerless by the second. Tears ran down her cheeks as Eternalis' glowering eye continued to bear down on her.

She felt the slime press further into her mouth, tilting her head further up. The slime convulsed profusely as it forced a thick substance into her throat. The slime fizzed and crackled down her throat, burning her insides through every inch. While her mouth was rendered numb, her body lit up with rapture, with all of the slime about her overloading her senses like a million different hands, caressing and fondling her. With the slime now stimulating her from all sides as well as inside out, Aurora's composure finally cracked, and her body began convulsing uncontrollably. The slime relentlessly continued their stimulation while her tear-soaked eyes rolled up into her head, and her hands tried desperately to find somewhere to grasp, pressed up against the smooth wall. Aurora felt her body lighten, almost lifting into the air, as the violent shocks racked her body and mind, and her consciousness abruptly cut off.

-- [Remember what you fight for.]

"Can I just say something?"

All of the eyes turned to Aurora, as she tried to stand as confidently as she could. "If we're going to try extracting it from him, I think I can help with that?"

Karen raised her eyebrow. "Aurora? But you're just a Support Program now. A regular Navi would have a hard time with him as he is now... Ah!" said Karen, before she slammed her palm onto the console desk. She turned to Reverus suddenly, staring her father directly in the eye. "Can we patch Aurora into Eternalis' executable container?"

"There you go again with your bright ideas." Reverus threw up his hands. "Yes, Aurora's been a Navi before, so she can handle the re-conversion, but what if she gets infected too? What're you gonna do then? Go through this whole spiel?"

"... Well, hopefully it won't come to that, but if it does, we'll do it your way. I'll write an automatic reassembly script to run if he goes too far to be deleted. At that point we'll just have to hope not much of him is overwritten."

"That's crazy. I'm not okay with this," said Reverus, crossing his arms and frowning.

The SP looked distraught at the middle-aged man's decision. "Please! Let me do something! I can't--" Her words caught in her throat briefly, before she resolutely stared ahead at both of them. "--I can't watch someone else disappear in front of me. Not again."

The atmosphere was tense, with all three of them staring at each other. Eventually, Reverus hung his shoulders, and sighed heavily. "Ugh, I'm probably going to regret this. Fine, let's do it. Pray to God that we manage to pull it off, because the timing window for the extraction is probably miniscule."

At that moment, Aurora's eyes lit up, and she clutched her fist to her chest in renewed hope.

-- [Then break past your limits.]

"Aurora!"

Dropped onto her back, Aurora felt the wet slap of slime beneath her, as the afterglow of her earlier loss of control diffused throughout her body. The slime was still actively squeezing her body, with a few thick trails of it still connecting her and Eternalis' body. Her skin was still extremely sensitive to its touch, but her ability to react at that point was completely shot, and her emotions was a river of static.

"Aurora! Are you still there?! Answer me!!"

However, with all of the other mental processes now locked behind a wall, her cognitive processes were racking up into overdrive. The visor that covered her eyes went up with a brief beep, immediately flooding her with information. Current self-integrity status, glitch analysis, locations on the field, enemy movements, future prediction vectors, object data, terraformed data, sensory diagnosis and system repairs. All the information passed through her mind, and not a single piece of information was left to be ignored. Her pupils darted around the visor at an insane rate, picking up all of the figures and statistics that were brought up to its heads-up display. Some of the glitches that had been plaguing here were instantly cured from the near-instant analysis and error diagnosis. Moments later, she became aware of the visual link that had been trying to transfer since quite a while ago, and opened it up with a mental command.

"Aurora! Thank God, you're alive. The data link was cut off before, and all the readings I was monitoring on you got cut off, so I thought--" Karen said, choking back something in her throat. Aurora blinked at her operator through the screen, and moved her head in a barely perceived nod. Karen stiffened up, and shook her head to clear it. "--The timing window is coming up right now, I'm sending you the chips."

Due to the small visual feed, Karen didn't appear to be able to see her current condition, but perhaps that was for the best. The visual feed cut off into an audio-only stream, and Aurora turned her attention towards Eternalis' back. Time appeared to slow down as the first of the battlechips flowed into her. Bright yellow circuit lines started to snake all over her body underneath the slime, starting from her chest all down to her feet. The circuit lines concentrated in mass quantities on her arms, which began to suffuse themselves with huge electrical arcs that rippled through the slime. An indeterminate source of wind blew a brief gust through her white hair, and each individual strand lit up with electrical crackles. Though Aurora could painfully feel every crackle and pop of the enormous amount of electrical battlechip data flowing through her skin, her reactions were practically nil as she wordlessly propped herself up by her arms, and got herself back on her feet.

Then, in an almost imperceptible blur, Aurora pulled back and drove an open palm strike into Eternalis' back, charged with all of her stored electrical current. The move was so swift that it made an audible shockwave, which accompanied the thunderous crack from the huge electrical discharge. At the same time, the air around Aurora started to warp oddly, creating little spherical mirages about her body. The floating anomalies were driven forward by Aurora's swift palm strike, which would invisibly envelop anything that it came into contact with in a special amplifying field.

Taking the momentum from her earlier strike, Aurora took her other hand, which had been drawn to her side, and rotated her entire body in an arc to come down onto Eternalis' body with an overhead chop down to the ground. Another thunderclap sounded from her attack, with an accompanying bolt of light drawn from the top of her swing into the ground. The bolt diffused into the ground, lighting up the cream white CyberPanels with its energy, which redirected itself into Aurora through her feet. The circuits from her feet started to light up wildly all the way up to her neck, turning her body into a veritable spirit of light. She then drew a fist to gather up all the remaining charge in her body into one last strike, and drove the fist towards the corrupted Navi. An explosive bolt shot forward from it, blasting through anything it touched in a straight line before diffusing into thin air at the end of its range.

The last attack having spent her entire energy reserves, Aurora felt the last vestiges of the lightning bolt sear painfully through all of the circuitry that had appeared on her body. The circuits dimmed down into inexistence as she allowed the momentum of her punch to carry herself forward, and collapsed onto the ground face-first.

// Summary
[Au.1] Act: Stunlocked (No movement)
[Au.2] Chip: MagBolt1Damage: 90 + Stun + Magnetic Pull
Accuracy: B
Description: Uses an electromagnet to pull the target into range, then stuns them with a close range electrical shock.
Duration: Once
Element: Elec
Special: Magnetic Pull: A stronger version of the Pull effect that either pulls the target towards you, or you towards the target over a greater distance than normal.
Trader Rank: D: 90 + Stun + Magnetic Pull (Acc: B) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis (+20 Elec, +100% Aqua)
[Au.3] Chip: BubbleStar1Damage: 20 + Bubble Trap x 3 targets
Accuracy: D
Description: Three Bubbles trap enemies
Duration: Once, Trap for 1 turn
Element: Aqua
Special: Bubble Trap: Encases the target in a bubble for 1 turn that makes them vulnerable to Elec Damage. Trapped targets suffer from Hold, and their attacks cannot penetrate the bubble from the inside. Any attack that hits the bubble from the outside instantly breaks it, freeing the victim.
Trader Rank: D: 20 + Bubble Trap x 3 targets (Acc: D) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis
[Au.4] Chip: Arrow2Damage: 130 + Homing
Accuracy: B
Description: Summons an Elewasp virus, and sends it flying at an enemy. The Elewasp is tenacious, and will hunt down its prey. It vanishes after stinging it's target, or after two turns.
Duration: Once
Element: Elec
Trader Rank: C: 130 + Homing (Acc: B) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis (+20 Elec, +100% Aqua)
[Au.5] Chip: DollThunder1Damage: 80 + Line-Attack5
Accuracy: B
Description: Fires a powerful bolt of lightning that pierces through objects and enemies alike.
Duration: Once
Element: Elec
Trader Rank: D: 80 + Line-Attack5 (Acc: B) to ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis (+20 Elec, +100% Aqua)

While Aurora sat, temporarily disregarded and slumped against the wall, the degraded mass of corrupted purple slime that had devoured her companion staggered and writhed, flailing about itself as the speed with which the body broke down came close to surpassing the speed that it could regenerate. It twisted and deformed, roaring wetly as its focus turned in a circle, striking out at the false copies of Aurora and flinging slime everywhere. Parts of its body came off as it swung, the break down causing chunks to detach and splatter across the chamber. More grew back, and what remained of Eternalis didn't seem to notice. Limbs sprouted in all directions, an increasingly misshapen and inhuman mass as the body fought to replace what rotted away with fresh fluid.

The tendrils connecting the constricting shell of slime about Aurora melted away and the crushing pressure stopped, but along with it the slime quickly liquefied completely and splashed from her body to the ground, leaving the dazed woman wet and bare-skinned as she tried to process everything at once. Something was going wrong with Eternalis' regeneration; it wasn't working as well as it should be, and as the creature towering above her twisted and writhed, a small, fadingly small wave of clear blue surfaced from the mass of slime nearest her, near the ground, and for a moment she might have a chance to see the navi emblem again, before a single slim tendril of blue gel crept outwards to drape itself across her nearest ankle; still recovering from her shock, it was uncertain whether Aurora herself would notice it, really, but for a few seconds a soothing backwash of healing energy streamed out to her through the thin strand of blue.

Higher up, the rest of Eternalis seemed to be half fighting itself, as two limbs tore at its own face, ripping out one of the five eyes and crushing it into goop, and then another. The crazy eye remained, as did the lazy one... of the other three, it seemed like only the wrathfully furious eye was left now. Its earlier thrashing had obliterated one of the decoys, and the other two had darted in to hold each other fearfully, but they now went ignored as the face of the creature spun about, focusing on Aurora herself. Just beginning to pick herself up, Aurora couldn't react in tie to the first strike as it lashed at her with one blade-edged limb, slicing the cut across her bare skin diagonally from shoulder to hip. Glitched corruption spread into the wound, and there could be little doubt that whatever was in control right now, the only thing it wanted was to kill her. The glitch that raced through her now was another dangerous one; her connection to the functions of her navi customiser went silent, as dead as if they'd been cut away in that instant. Still growling, Eternalis spread another limb wide to make another slash.

Then, over in the corner and completely forgotten about, the time bomb's large red display clicked over to zero. A deafening explosion rocked the containment chamber, and Aurora would probably be forced to shield her eyes as the payload detonated. The force pushed her back to the wall for a moment, and she was splattered with another coating of slime as the blast spent most of its force against Eternalis' back, making him howl. More bits of the twisted creature were falling off now, the rot overtaking his healing, but Aurora wasn't about to leave this up to chance. Her magbolt fired, drawing the main body of the slime beast to her with a wet splash before delivering an arcing pulse of energy. This close, she would be able to feel the electricity scorching through his body ad making him convulse. More limbs rose up even as he was pressed against her, but the jabbed and struck in wild, undirected ways, more defensive than anything, and none of them even aimed for for Aurora herself.

It gave the girl enough time to press her next attack into his exposed chest, sending the mass of his body drifting back from her again as it was encased in a large bubble and held still. Inside the bubble she could see, if no longer hear, it roar furiously as it thrashed about trying without luck to free itself. Tentacle limbs spread out and pressed themselves along the bubble surface in all direction, but more worrisome the glow in his chest began once again. It seemed to take a far longer time to power up now than it had previously, and the wrathful eye was smouldering at Aurora through the bubble the whole time. It didn't seem to care and the internal light of the beam started to cause odd ruptures and spurts of slime from other places in its body, either, and when the beam fired, it seemed to blow as much of a chunk out of Eternalis himself as directing outwards. The bubble contained it regardless, and it looked mostly like the blast had struck the former navi himself. Then, something strange began to happen.

Eternalis started to grow and expand, filling the bubble and forcing it to grow with him swiftly. His limbs clutched at the inner surface, dragging and stretching it. A purple film began to seep into the bubble surface, coating it liberally until it was almost opaque. The bottom of the bubble touched the ground and deformed, giving the sense of something weighty standing up again on the inside of it, yet firmly planted on the ground, and still the mass expanded. Through the hazy surface of the smooth shell, Aurora could see Eternalis, standing upright and still growing, limbs and tentacles stretching the bubble surface as he did, but even as his body expanded and grew, it was easy to see that this wasn't helping the rotting corruption; if anything it was devouring him all the faster.

Large target or not, Aurora took her shot. Whether he was still truly trapped by the bubble, or simply bending it around him, his massive size now made him a very easy target. Her arrow crushed through the bubble's surface, but the electricity skittered and reflexed, racing over the surface of the deformed sphere rather than piercing it, and when the bubble popped, all it seemed to have done was release the navi within. Eternalis snarled, open-mouthed at her, but didn't seem able to move forward. For all his increased size he was fairly rooted to the floor. Instead, he reared back, and hacked another blob of the odd white froth at Aurora. As large as he was, the ball was massive, and it gave her very little chance to get clear. Instead, the blob coated her thoroughly, fizzing and crackling with a numbing sensation and scorched her skin painfully.

It was clear, though, that Eternalis was on his last strength. His form was decaying at a spectacular rate, barely holding itself together, and the increased size only seemed to be making the strain worse now. He roared and slashed at Aurora again, but failed to connect, stumbling down and writhing in place while larger chunks, and even whole limbs dropped free and dissolved away. One last attack was all Aurora had in her, but it was all that was needed. The line of electrical energy blasted out of her and struck true, piercing through the bloated navi with a crack.

Even as Aurora herself collapsed, the remains of Eternalis gave a final hiss, before his greatly expanded size fell in on itself with a gushing sound. All that was left, just in front of her weakened form, was a vaguely humanoid shape that bubbled and rippled faintly, but otherwise lay still. Her own senses fluctuated; hearing popping out, then roaring back, before equalising to normal, while her temporarily heightened targeting burned out and left her eyes sore and aching, if they weren't already from her earlier tears. If there was any part of her that still had the energy, then the chance to save her friend was probably now or never.

-=Violet Violence=-

ｨtｴrﾅｳｲﾛlis.DAT: DEFEATED

-=Avenging Aurora=-

Aurora: 25Hp [Normal][Buster Booster][Sniper Eye: Burn-out!][Taunting Mirror: Force Taunt!][Wild Sense: Self-cancelled! (Hearing/Hearing)][NC glitch: NC Full Crash (1 Turn)][Stunned!(1)]

-=Containing Terrain=-

80% Normal
20% Lava [Two small strips, with the panel that exploded back to normal in the middle]

-=Disregarded Device=-

Timebomb: BOOM!




-=Battle Victory!=-

((Optimal Reward Achieved: when appropriate in story, Aurora/Eternalis may obtain: BugChargeDamage: 0 + Break + Bug Share + Spread 5 (Shotgun + V-Gun + SideGun range) + Bug Double Attack + Delayed Use Boost 40
Accuracy: B
Description: An unusual gun that utilizes bugs to attack at max potential. It begins at 0 damage, but gains 40 damage for every turn that has passed in battle. It possesses a fairly large blast, capable of hitting up to 6 targets with a single shot. Rare
Duration: Once / Up to 2 uses before the end of the turn
Element: Null
Special: Bug Share: Inflicts enemies hit by this attack with all bugs and glitches the user is currently inflicted with.
Special: Bug Double Attack: After spending an action to attack with this chip, you may choose to spend a second action and attack with it again before the end of the turn. This effect only triggers if the user is glitched at the time of the first attack.
Special: Delayed Use Boost 40: Gains 40 damage for every previous turn in battle that has passed, stacking.
Trader Rank: S, 5000z, 36 BugFrags.))

The server was quiet.

In the middle of the private network, Aurora lay on the floor, shakily breathing as her fingers raked through the white sludge that had been launched at her earlier. The overflow of electrical energy, the painful crackling cream-white froth, and her earlier sensory peak all seeped in through her skin. The blank paneling, combined with all the slime covering her, felt cold against her bare skin. Various muscles in her body felt like they were still twitching quite hard, in addition to the violent beating of her heart thumping against her chest. Her eyes were struggling to achieve some kind of focus, but as she was now, she could only see to her hand off to the side. Beyond that, it was difficult to make out anything. Her mind was still a mess of static, which she was still trying to clear out.

But... she was at least aware of one thing.

She was alive.

Fuzzily, in the back of her mind, something else nagged at her, but at this point, it was difficult to even make out within all the static. What was rather nice was that she could no longer hear anything in the room, besides her own breathing, and the gentle bubbling of the short strips of molten lava. Slowly, cohesion started to return to her thoughts, along with a torrent of questions. What had happened? Did she manage to defeat it? Had Eternalis been saved? Her hand feebly tried to lift itself from the floor, even as she struggled to maintain consciousness.

Then, her fingers met contact. With her bodysuit completely blown off, she felt every facet of a slimy, sticky appendage, that attempted to simulate a human hand. It was warm, and a bit exploratory; indeed, it was fumbling around her fingers quite clumsily, trying to get a firm hold. Aurora's hand trembled as she felt the hand try repeatedly, desperately, again and again, to lock fingers with hers. Unlike the tendrils from before, she felt no malice in these attempts, only an attempt to find solace in her warmth. Her eyes flowed freely again with tears as she pushed her hand gently forward. The slime hand seemed rather startled by the reaction. From her gesture, however, it finally managed to clasp Aurora's hand. The two hands grasped one another strongly, to the point where Aurora could feel the slime squeezing through her fingers.

Craning her neck to look up was painful, as her energy stores were almost entirely expended, but as she did so, she saw a barely conscious Eternalis, this time with only two eyes. Unlike before, he now had a gaping maw beneath those eyes, but at least there was no grotesque tongue hanging out of it this time around. His slime body was barely containing itself; it was merely a fraction of its size from earlier, where he was trapped inside the bubble, and pretty much had the bug eat him alive. As her eyes gradually readjusted, she saw the main object of their struggles. On Eternalis' back, a small orb contained a wildly gesticulating pile of purple slime, which appeared to be consuming itself from inside the bubble. A very faint, but shrill shriek sounded before the slime hardened into a solid purple data fragment, and the orb shattered. The fragment dropped into Eternalis' blue slime, and started to hiss and dissolve.

"Oops, wouldn't want this to get away."

The foreign voice surprised Aurora, as a gloved hand picked up the fragment, before it could dissolve fully. Her eyes were drawn upwards. A grey Official-scheme Navi loomed over both of them, with the coalesced data fragment floating in his hand. His face was averted from both of them as his other hand went up to his earpiece, speaking into it. "Jeez, the audio link to this server's completely almost blown. I can barely make out what you're saying... Yes, I've got the data. I'm not sure what you people were doing in here, but from what I can see here, I really don't want to know. ... Yeah, everything seems to be in order. Relaying the jack out command."

Aurora was unable to react to the new presence, however, as the grey Navi snapped his fingers, and enveloped the three of them in a brilliant light, transferring them back to safety.

[Z: 9600, BF: 140, F: 30]
[Jack Out - SciLab]