The Agency

Alise landed, wings outstretched, at the bottom of the pit. She was able to slow her descent just enough to avoid breaking anything, bust she'd need a few seconds to recover. She glanced up at the cornered Mendoza twins. Alise figured she'd probably be fine. Not much those two could do right now. Especially if it was only in the space of a few seconds. Right?

This was bad. First, there was 351 and Lister. That wasn't too bad, that was manageable. Then came Nas and Shred. A few more people to concentrate on, that makes things more difficult. And then came Alise and Umbrage. Now there was a teenage girl with wings dive bombing the sisters whilst a psychic musician repelled their toothpicks and repetadly threw kazoos (for some reason) while a magical warrior shot fire and wind or some shit and a freaky mustard gas spewing mutant dude kept vomiting everywhere and now Dalia had an axe in her arm. Would be nice if Alpha stepped in right about now, but Eva knew he wouldn't, because he's an ass. God, he's such an ass. The triple back flip to avoid Nas' firestorm, that was something. The leaping somersault to avoid the redirected toothpicks? Impressive.  The flying high-five whilst doing so? Probably just showing off. But now they were cornered, Dalia was injured, and it looked like it would be difficult to escape. For a human anyway. But the Mendoza twins were fast. Faster than these assholes.

Eva began by pulling the axe from out of Dalia's shoulder, which began healing immediately, then, in a circular motion, swinging it around and throwing it back at Lister. It hit him mid slam, causing him to lose his trajectory. With that temporarily taken care of, Eva lifter her foot,  whilst Dalia crouched down, grabbing the raised foot and launching her sister in the air. As she flipped over Alise, Nas, Shred and 351, she reached into her pockets and pulled out another handful of toothpick, launching them in one moment at the collected forces. Meanwhile, Dalia jumped, back flipping to above where 351 adhesive mixture had covered it, and propelled herself off the clean stone with her hand, launching a fly kick at 351 whilst slightly rolling in midair while throwing some of her own toothpicks at Nas, Alice and Shred.

Alpha watched from far above with slight disinterest at the twin's gambit. He frowned, andcontinued making his way up the ramp.

Well, No.351 mildly surprised to say the least. 5% of the tank drained as he overclocked his brain to take in the situation. He hadn't expected to be attacked directly considering he was only an indirect threat who had already served his purpose in altering the environment and had no other real way to attack the twins. Of course a damaging defense was another matter altogether. "Time for contingency plan B I guess" B for Bone that is. Another 50% of the tank drained leaving very little left "Killing pain receptors" followed by sharp spikes of bone erupting from all over his body. The twins may have been untouchable by him before, but now the twin heading towards him was controlled entirely by momentum. The same momentum that would usually allow her to shatter his bones would now impale her on the spikes.

Meanwhile Naṣāru threw away the Wind-and-Fire wheels which quickly disappeared in a shower of sparkles. "Rho Aias" He once again called up the Shield of Ajax to defend from Dalia's toothpicks relying on his comrades to deal with the other twin and her attack.

Shred still hadn't found another instrument (but at least two more kazoos), and there were even more fucking toothpicks. Shred had a radical idea; he dived behind Nas and his shield, took a deep breath, and yelled, "Guys, can we please stop fighting long enough for me to find an instrument that isn't a fucking kazoo? Kazoo-throwing isn't any fun, and I just sound ridiculous playing it."

Having been hit midair by his own tomahawk at a high altitude, Lister knew he wouldn't survive the fall, with that he yanked the tomahawk out of his ribs and threw it at the path as hard as he could, fortunantly for him the axe lodged itself perfectly at the edge, allowing him to swing, hit the wall, and stay suspended up in the air.  "Bloody hell this bitch doesn't play fair" Lister said while coughing up blood. Using the remainder of energy he had left, Lister climbed up the rope and sat on the path, his back against the wall and legs in front of him. Having come prepared, he took his shirt off and bandaged up his ribs, tying the bandages at the other side. After putting his shirt back on, Lister reassembled his rifle and began firing at the twins.

The twins were fast, damn fast, fast enough to outrun any kind of danger they'd ever gotten into in the past. However, as Dalia was about to realize, they weren't quite fast enough to outrun the laws of physics. What followed this realization was about what one would expect given the circumstances. Messy. Eva noticed what was going on a split second to late to do anything, and watched helplessly as her sister flew into 351's spiky appendages. What followed in her mind was a careful consideration of her options. After carefully weighing each of them against the current situation, she came to the conclusion that the best approach was to run the fuck away. Biting back tears for her lost sibling, she sped past the gathered Agency team, up the ramp around the pit. She reached the top, just after Alpha had reached the top himself. "And what exactly do you think you're doing, Evangeline? Core's down there." Alpha indicated lazily with his hand towards the pit. "Fuck you, Alpha. I'm not dying over this stupid core." Alpha laughed. "Oh, my dear Evangeline, you say that like you have a choice. He mimed wiping a tear from his eye whilst chuckling a little more to himself. "You know, funny thing, I really wanted to kill your sister myself. Annoying little bitch that she was. You were always a little more pleasant. Ah well." Alpha shrugged, his movements painfully exaggerated. Eva could tell he was having fun with this. "But seriously now, get back in the pit or I will kill you. And I'll enjoy it, too." Eva look into Alpha's eyes. They were cruel, filled with malice. Eva had seen him kill people for less. She knew he wasn't fucking around. He also knew she could outrun him. So, at full speed, she made for the exit that she had come in from. And Alpha pulled a revolver from his jacket, and shot her through the head before she'd made it halfway there. He walked over to her corpse, shook his head, and sighed. He glanced back at Umbrage, still hovering above the pit. "Tell your comrades then can recover the core now, if they desire. I've no idea why everyone is getting so worked up over the relics, but... Anyway, I won't stop you." He then turned towards the exit and left.

From down below, the collected Agency agents heard a loud gunshot. "Huh. Wonder what that was about."

Umbrage stayed silent as he watched Alpha kill Eva in cold blood. He stayed extra silent and extra still on his small perch. After Alpha simply gave up and left, Umbrage squinted his eyes and waited till he was gone. As quickly as he could, Umbrage jumped off his little perch and flew steadily down towards the rest of the Agency and landed with a small thud in front of everyone.

"Uh, remember that big dude, leader or something... He, uh. He kinda left. Told me that we can have the core now... I uh. I think it could be a trap or some- oh right. He just killed that other Chick.. Girl you were fighting. Crazy stuff, lets just... get the damn core and get out of here. I hate it here." He said wearily.

"Huh. Well, Alpha always was a strange one." Alise used her detect life spell again, quickly, to confirm that Alpha had, in fact, left. Confident that he had, Alise turned the spell off, and looked around at her team, making sure no one was seriously injured. Seemed that no one was. "Never really can tell what side he's on. I imagine it's less that he's working for the Organization, and more that he's just along for the ride. That seemed to be the case back when he was a member of the SS... Anyway! The core. The quicker we get it, the quicker we can get out of here, and get some rest. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going to tear someone's face off if I don't get some fucking coffee soon." Alise was starting to feel the downside to her habit of getting purposely addicted to stuff. Sometimes she didn't have any. But, putting that feeling to one side, she walked over to the pedestal in the middle of the room, and began examining it. "Looks like a lock of some sort. Wonder what the key is..." Looking more closely, she tried to make out the runes inscribed of it. "Something... something... everyone will die... something... leave and never come back... something... uh... this is either 'doom' or 'coxswain'. Probably the former. Uh... I dunno. Someone wanna try hitting it, maybe?"

Being able to quickly grow spikes of bone all over your body does make for a nice backup plan in a sticky situation. Unfortunately it also has it's downsides. For example whilst yes the bones had been instrumental in No.351's killing of Dalia, they were currently acting as an large impairment to his movement as well as a sturdy rack upon which the twin's corpse was firmly attached. "Nas, could you help me in removing all these spikes of bone" Getting rid of excess flesh was no trouble to one who could control his body so absolutely, getting rid of bone was a different matter.

"Certainly" came Naṣāru reply as he re-conjured Kanshou and Byakuya. There was a flurry of movement followed by rattling and a wet squelch as the bones plus corpse hit the ground.

"Thank you." all distractions taken care of No.351 approached the console to inspect it further "Maybe we should work our way up to that and try just pressing it in various location first?"