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Chubs got up, a bit disgruntled by the attack. He began to analyze his surroundings.
He saw there was a second floor, but how to get to it?
He was still thinking when he realized he was flying upwards to it already.
Alright, so first, run into tower, then go to middle of tower, then fly upwards...
He landed on the second circle, and a holographic screen popped up.
Hmm...
He pressed his hand onto it, hoping to be able to maybe code something to deactivate the tower.

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"Are you sure you'll be fine?" Nathaniel asked Chi as she got up, but she seemed determined so he let her go. He wondered if she'd be okay, she was going with two others and there were already three there so she should be fine... Except that she's blind. He wondered how much help Aiko would be in the cyber world. He didn't want to just sit there and twiddle his thumbs either as everyone went and helped shut down the machine so he decided to join in. "Hey Pascale do you think you can hook me in as well?"

After Chi and Nathan reached the scanner room, the four of them, Carver and Vath having joined them, stepped into separate pods.

"Virtualizing Nathan! Virtualizing Chi! Virtualizing Vath! Virtualizing Carver!"

Each of the scanners began to hum and glow, blowing hot air upwards through the capsules as the doors closed.
A two giant exclamation mark popped up on the display, a warning beep followed. A dialog message soon turned up.
"Scanners 5 and 3 have failed, please restart."
What the heck... Pascale thought to herself.
In a flash of brilliant light the capsules activated, but as they opened, Carver and Vath had remained.

Dressed in strange yet familiar garb, Nathan and Chi could both see a strange video game-esque desert filled with small mountains.
It was completely barren except for thick black wires and a strange white and black towerlike tube in the distance. It glowed with a white flaming aura.

[Charmaine hp: 150 L: 1 E: 0% sts: Fine]
[Nathaniel hp: 150 L: 1 E: 0% sts: Fine]

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Swinging down his rotating glaive as planned upon the incoming projectile to deflect it as best as he could, Sora boosted himself off the ground from his planted foot and rushed back into range of the enemy insectoids. Throwing his staff above his head for a moment, he began passing it around himself with two hands in a 360° rotation as the blades continued to spin around the handle after he made certain he had caught the attention of a good amount of the enemies moving in. As an exception, Sora opted to stay away from the vibrating creature, on a hunch it would likely explode based on it's current movements.

"Nil! Scratch what I said before, we need to get back to the tower! There's too many of these guys to fight back. By that I mean you should move back right now! This is getting absolutely ridiculous!" Sora began to walk backwards towards the tower again, this time much slower as he continued to rotate the spinning glaive around himself defensively as fast as he could with his boost on. With any sort of luck, he would hopefully draw a good amount of the creatures in to attack him in his current position.

#Just to make things clear, Aiko remained in the scanning room.

Silence...

There was finally silence... Chi stood there with her eyes closed, for a good couple of seconds, just enjoying the feeling. She could finally hear her thoughts.

"This is so much better..." She opened her eyes, and smiled, although the smile didn't remained there for long, quickly replaced by...fear?

She let out a quiet scream, that got cut short by her hands covering her mouth. Her eyes were jumping around wildly.

"I can...I-I can..." At this point she realized, that Pascale and possibly others could hear, or even see her. As hard as it was, she decided to "man up". Her hands trembling, she did what others apparently did, and extended her hands in front of her. Two big, quite heavy swords, appeared in her palm, one each. They had beautiful carvings, and the blades looked like nothing she ever heard of. Now she noticed, that her clothes were different as well, they looked quite...interesting. White, sleeveless robe, cut on the side starting on Chi's hip, going all the way down, with hardened gloves, reaching to her elbows. And two black belts, one on her stomach, tightly, and one a little bit lower, set pretty much loose.



"What...are those?" She instinctively strapped one of the blades to her back, and examined the other one briefly. After swinging it once, the blade divided itself, in a circling trajectory, creating some kind of a giant, sharp Frisbee.

Chi was still holding the handle, now placed inside of a circular hollow-center of the weapon, surprised. Although she wasn't moving her hand, the blades were spinning slowly, moved by the momentum, of weapon "opening". (#What is happening is that the weapon itself is kind of made out of 2 rings, inner and outer, that can move independently to keep the momentum, or be locked together, in order for the user to be able to spin them, and give them that momentum... Sort of...)

"How am i supposed to...Ok focus." Chi shook her head, and looked at Nathaniel. Aiko's description was surprisingly accurate... "So, where now?" She addressed this question both to Nathaniel, as well as Pascale.

"SORA WATCH OUT!!!"
10 more ??? approached from the other side of the tower. The computer beeped.
"Combatant identified as Kankrelot".
The 5 charging Kankrelots fired as the 10 fired as well all at Sora, who unfortunately, rotated his weapon at the wrong time and blocked none of them.
[Sora has taken 150 DMG!]
Sora immediately burst into tiny white pieces as well as the shaking Vibrating Kankrelot which had taken toxic damage from Nil. The remaining 16 Kankrelats began moving to form a circle around Nil.

"Chi, Nathan you've got to help him!!!"

Back in the real world, Sora emerged out of the pod winded and frustrated.

Kankrelats(x16) HP: 25
[Bob hp: 180 lvl: exp: 0%sts: Tower]
[Sora hp: 0 lvl: exp: 0%sts: Rekt]
[Nero hp: 150 lvl: exp: 0%sts: Fine]
[Charmain hp: 150 lvl: exp: 0%sts: Fine]
[Nathaniel hp: 150 lvl: exp: 0%sts: Fine]

Leaning against the side of the pod, Sora looked up slightly while breathing a bit too heavily. He was a bit pissed, to say the least. More so at himself than anything else for trying to cover for others a bit too much. It wasn't exactly like he could help it. Noticing the bird in the room, he waved to it jokingly with a semi-friendly smile on his face. Trying to throw on a blank expression, his face actually looked as if he was in a small amount of pain. Stumbling into the elevator, he made his way up to the control room.

"That... was probably a mistake... I don't think it worked for as long as I thought it would... did someone... get in the main part of the tower yet?" Staggering out of the elevator and over to the side of the computer screen, Sora laid a hand on the wall to steady himself.

Nathaniel shut his eyes as he heard Pascale say she was virtualizing him and Chi. Once he felt it was safe, he opened his eyes to find himself in an animated desert. He shifted his collar to adjust to the heat but his fingers hooked around different fabric than his shirt. He looked down to see himself in a crisp white dress shirt, coupled with a black vest that had silver pinstripes. Along with a pair of black dress pants and loafers. His tie was a rich velvet and there was a golden tie clip pinning it to his shirt. "Talk about fancy. Little expensive for my taste though."

He held his hand out and an umbrella appeared in his hand. He stared at the detailed handle and then unlatched the umbrella itself, opening it up and then hiding underneath it from the sun. "Very nice." He chuckled. He looked over at Chi and whistled. "Speaking of fancy." He looked at her weapons. "Almost impressive as your dress." He listened to Pascale and Chi before pointing at the direction of the tower. "To help Nil it seems." Setting off in a run, he closed his umbrella made his way to the clearing before the tower where he guessed Nil would be, and found him surrounded by walking turrets. "Hey Chi, do you think you can throw those accurately enough to save Nil?" While wondering, I wonder if I can use my umbrella as a shield if I open it up...

Pascale glanced at Sora as he came back from his trip. He looked tired. She was tired too, all this Micromanaging was unexpectedly draining.
"Chubs is in there, but I don't know what he's doing! We've only got 45 seconds left before the next loop! Nil is about get blown up like did too...oh...speaking of, are you alright, Sora? Maybe you should sit down."

Sora stared blankly at Pascale for a moment. There was literally no other chairs in the room. Almost getting angry at his peer, he managed to shake his immature feelings off for just long enough to sit down against the side of the wall, still gripping his practice staff from before. Face contorted, he felt a bit lightheaded for some reason.

"If we fail this time and time does somehow reset... again... I sure hope our stamina resets as well..." Sora leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling without much emotion lingering on his face for the time being.

As Chi was running, she was surprised how little it took for the weapon to spin. She flicked her wrist only couple of times out of curiosity, and she already could hear the humming of blades going through the air with quite a speed.

"Just try to distract them or something!" Giving the blades even more momentum, she made some sort of a pirouette, having her right arm holding the shuriken on the outside of the maneuver, and then threw it with a wide swing. Weapon flew in the direction of the group of the bugs, spinning barely above the ground, in a horizontal position, as it let out a loud humming noise.

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As soon as he saw Sora burst into light, Nil knew he was in serious shit. Rushing towards the six, he crouches low, to give them a smaller window to hit. He got the gist of their attacks from when they shot Chubs and Sora. They didn't seem capable of rapid fire, but with their combined might, and ambush tactics, they'd still be a lethal force. But something else he'd learned was just as important:

Their weapons were strong enough to deflect bolts.

Holding his daggers at his sides, he watches for their fire before bringing them up rapidly in a cross to deflect back their concentrated blasts. Even if they didn't hit them, it would keep him safe enough for the moment. His goal wasn't to take them all on, it was to break through their lines so he'd have enemies on one side only. As he continued, he noticed his reinforcements as well, including the spinning blur of metal coming towards the enemies backs. If he kept their attention, then his chances of survival increased even more, as it would be rather difficult to protect from an attack you didn't see coming.

Nil successfully managed to block the shots deflecting 2 of the six back at the Kankrelats that shot them. Chi's spinning dagger also managed to hit 3 of the Kankrelots as well, all of them flying into the air and 2 of them bursting into pieces.

The three around Nil, formed a triangle formation around Nil, while the 10 that were approaching him, changed direction and headed toward Chi and Nathan. The one that was knocked down struggled to get up before retreating.

Kankrelats (x10) HP: 25
Kankrelat HP: 15
Nil exp: 20%
Chi exp: 10%

"Well, that was almost kinda smart," Nil says, watching the weird bots surround him. "But now it's my win. After all, there's only three of you now." And he ducks down low, throwing a dagger straight at the target of two bots while going to tackle the third.