destinystrings | A Rescue

Who: Latooni and Asem
Where: Cancer District, early this afternoon
Summary: Attempted pest control turns into a more urgent task
Warnings: SCORPIONS, violence, Persona awakening.
All things considered, Latooni's plan could have gone a lot worse.

Earlier in the day, she'd headed out to the Cancer district - not to work, since this was an obvious emergency. Instead, she'd picked out the biggest airsoft rifle she could lift from a hobbyshop - unable and unwilling to search for real firearms as she was - and left its marked price tucked under the cash register of the store. It's not looting if you pay for it, after all, and it was the same for the taser she'd taken from the electronics store next to it.

After that her intent had been to meet up with other unaffected people to pacify the scorpion infestation, but she'd been chased up a fire escape by two of the bugs. Once they were unable to follow her though, she spent a couple of minutes trying not to scream and then practiced her aim with a handheld weapon on the two vicious creatures.

She wasn't used to fighting on foot, but the principles were still the same, and high-velocity BB rounds at below the minimum safety range did a good job of piercing arachnid carapace.

Latooni had spent around an hour picking off scuttling scorpions and hiding behind cover from enraged local Scorpios. It was fine when there were only one or two of them to take potshots at, but she couldn't really clear out enough to have a safe route back to another district with more people. If something happened to gather the scorpions into a group, well...that'd be either a good time to thin them out and make a break, or a disaster.

Judging from that skittering noise, Latooni figured she was about to find out which.

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There was no denying it -- Asem was terrified. Ever since the weekend, he'd been seeing signs, bad omens of something to come. And what was more, the scorpions and the renegade Scorpios seemed to be proving him right. All he wanted to do was lock himself away in his apartment with as many cans of food, bottles of water, and Twinkies as he could afford.

But there were a number of factors working against that fear. A sense of duty, for one, and the ideal of a super pilot for another. But, as always, one desire remained above all else:

The desire to protect his friends.

So when he saw Latooni in what he perceived as danger while he was on his way home, he knew he had to act, fear or not. Thus, with a berserker's yell, Asem ran toward the scorpions between him and Latooni, firing away as quickly as his gun could fire.

Asem. Captain. What are you even doing.

"Asem!"

A berserk charge with a handgun was all well and good (in Latooni's opinion) when you're in a giant robot that's designed for things like that, but Asem was charging into a group of scorpions completely unarmored and with more converging on him from where they'd been skulking under boxes and in alleyways. What on Earth had...

...oh. Asem had been hit with one of the effects. He wasn't thinking rationally and, in that position, was going to get himself killed.

"Come over here!" she shouted, assessing the new situation in a second or two. As scared as she was for her friend, she might as well have been born for situations like this. Carefully, she lined up shots to kill or at least stun the scorpions between Asem and her perch, wishing she had some way to even the odds.

"What are you doing!? Get out of here!" Asem emptied his entire clip. He quickly ejected it and slammed another clip into the gun and resumed firing. He, too, was trying to make an opening, though in his case, he was using himself as a decoy.

"That's not...!"

Wait, Asem actually was making an opening as the scorpions were drawn to him. Even the ones she'd seen crawl into hiding places were swarming him. Bad news for Asem, but it did mean she was safe to jump to the ground now.

Hesitating only a moment to plan, Latooni took the magazine out of her weapon and tossed it down onto a soft-looking pile of refuse before clambering down from her perch. Once she was on the ground, though, she looked up and saw him continuing to be surrounded. A toy rifle wasn't going to cut it here, she needed something more.

Her head started to hurt. A memory flashed over her. Another boy, trapped and surrounded and yelling his head off with the desire to protect everyone. All she could do was...

"Please," she said, not knowing who she was talking to, "I have to help him."

Suddenly as it arrived, the pain in her head vanished. Latooni felt whole...calm, composed, and in full control once again. Something came out of her and focused above her, telling her exactly what she needed to know.

"I am thou
And thou art I
From the depths of your heart, I come to aid thee..."

A gowned and masked figure, beautiful but strangely proportioned, appeared above Latooni, and suddenly, she knew exactly what to do.

"Persona!"

With that shout, the figure of Vasilisa reached out and blessed Latooni and Asem with strength and focus via a Rakukaja spell. "Asem! They're nothing to be afraid of now. Let's smash them so we can both get away!" she yelled in encouragement, picking up her gun and re-loading it.

Luckily, Asem had seen a Persona in action before, so he didn't question what it was. However, instead of attacking, it did something different. He felt...stronger, somehow.

"R-right!" Trying to devote little mental capacity to cognizant thought, Asem began firing again at the scorpions. Soon enough he had exhausted another clip.

The good thing about the strength boost is that it seemed to affect weapons as well, and let Latooni fire her airsoft gun from the hip and pretty much splatter scorpions even with a glancing hit. She was going to run out of air pressure eventually, but for now, she moves quickly to try and clear a path between her and Asem so they can both escape.

Meanwhile Asem continued to run around with his gun, yelling at the scorpions as he did. It wasn't long before he was on his last clip of ammo.

There are times when other pilots, especially the more 'hot-blooded' ones, could get, in Latooni's opinion, suicidally target-fixated. It was actually endearing when they did it to protect someone, but it was still dangerous.

Fortunately, in this case, unlike when she was actually piloting, Latooni has the ability to physically come up to the offending party and grab his arm after he has splattered most of the enemies. Waiting for Asem to be in the middle of reloading, she carefully approached from where he could see her and grabbed his elbow to get his attention.

"Asem, we need to go, okay?" she semi-ordered, calmly. "You've gotten most of them already..."

"AAAAAH--huh?"

Asem snapped out of it, then looked around. She was right. "Right! Right, let's go! Now!"

He wasn't sure where to run, though...

Latooni responded with a nod and began pulling Asem in the general direction of the Libra district, both her and her Persona keeping their eyes open for more hostile creatures.

"We should probably focus on residential areas, since they'll have the most people. Especially the guest apartments. Those are also tall and accessible with wide roofs, and Ruri was offering evacuation if needed..." she explained as she walked.

"All right, just...wherever." Asem was nervously looking around. "Whatever's closest."

A Rescue

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