Reaching Salvation: Post-Acer

"Might be difficult to use one considering I can't see," Tom pointed out wryly, nodding with his previous point. "But I am pretty much open to suggestions when it comes to supporting us. I'm probably best as a support unit in this kind of battle, and my only defined aim is to find that psychic from earlier and stop them. I know you're pretty much protected from them, but a few powerful psychics could reck most people here, so I'm gunnin' for 'em."

-------

Luke sighed, closing his eyes for a second before opening them, snapping his fingers and causing an eruption of flame in the other army's ranks. He followed that up with a few more, trying to spread the fire through and from the middle of where the other army was situated.

Paul nodded and blinked at Luke's attack. Well, no backing down now. "Oi Luke, if you're gonna give em a warning shot, how about a white phosphorus warning shot?" Paul called to the fire user, wondering if the man had any idea how white phosphorus worked. "You find those psychics and bullets will keep the rest of them back. They have very limited cover out there, so until we run out of bullets, it shouldn't be hard to hold em."

Kira shifted uneasily, looking over at Paul, before speaking up. "D-Do you want m-me to...to m-make the walls s-stronger...?" she asked quietly, not quite sure how she felt about directly attacking the enemy, though it was always good to be defensive.

"Uh... maybe?" Luke responded, hands glowing red as he manipulated the flames. "I don't really know anything about it."

"The second it hits the air it burns," Paul said, a glint in his eyes, "and doesn't stop burning til it's done." Paul waved a flag at the walker down the field.

In the walker, the spotted saw Paul's red flag and began instructing the trajectory for fire. The shell would explode a good fifty feet above the enemy camp. With a loud boom, the shell hit the air faster than sound and hurtled itself at the enemy camp. A show of power, no less a show of weapons.

"Now that sounds like it's be within my area of expertise, yeah," Luke nodded with a grin. "What exactly do you want me to do? This seems like you'd know best for this situation."

"Oh, you know, wreak as much havoc as you can," Paul shrugged, grinning back, "Use your imagination, the clock is ticking."

Nathan stood directly behind the foxholes that Paul had put his men in and was watching intently as Paul and Luke aimed their warning shots in the direction of the army. A frown formed over his face as he watched them all, where Luke was forming flames, they were immediately snuffed out. He could sense a flow coming off of the army and his frown deepened. It was almost like they had someone like Percy... only their version of Percy could control the space within his field and ensure that nothing happened that he or she didn't want to.

Other than that person the army was still just standing there. No doubt waiting for the five minutes to count down. Nate focused his vision and with a grimace saw the teleporter from before, only now he had about thirty people around him who from the feel of things could also teleport. He tightened his awareness as he mentally counted down the last few seconds of their five second time limit.

Upon reaching zero the force who they were looking at vanished completely....

About one hundred warriors reappeared just behind just inside their lines. In one movement they attacked. Guns appeared, grenades were thrown and flows were launched. Nathan took three bullets to the stomach and leapt into the sky. A sand user caused waves of sand to rise above the foxholes Paul's men had dug and try to drown them from both within and above, one man in the center of the circle managed to stand up whilst some of his comrades were reloading and fire an RPG missile at a nearby mountain side where some of Nathan's troops were standing.

The explosion was loud and debris began to fall. Nate himself had touched down on the ground and as the closest member of their little alliance to the combat he dived at the group, lightning sparks running down his arms as he struck out with bolts of lightning.

All of Lillian's soldiers seemed to know exactly where all the hidden troops were, the psychic who had helped Tibaris was in their heads telling them where to shoot and who to go for. They struck with accuracy and flows of all elements aimed to tear up the mountainside. One familiar face was ripping the ground up with telekinesis and using it to defend from the snipers. In the back of his mind Nate found it unnerving that they had know exactly where he would be and had effectively put one hundred people in between him and the others, on the same side as him Nathan probably had four or five of Paul's men who were all being assaulted by sand and a water flow.

Kira screamed at the explosion, ducking her head and trying not to get hit by debris. She looked around wildly, trying to discern enemies from the unfamiliar faces of Paul's men, trying to restrain the supposed enemies with vines.

Why did everything have to be so loud? Kira just felt like screaming, trying to keep all the noise out of her head. That wouldn't make everyone be quiet, though. It certainly wouldn't stop the fighting. It was stupid, thinking she could handle this.

---

Heidi jumped at the explosion, panicking a little at the sudden appearance of troops. How'd they get behind the lines like that? "Oh, fucking hell!" she cursed, letting out a string of curses as her Flow flared up, aiming to fry the brains of whoever tried to attack her. Hopefully that'd just be the enemies.

She held her spear tightly, running towards the mass of Lillian's soldiers and letting out a similar noise to the rebel yell. Screaming at the enemy tended to be intimidating, or at least that's what Heidi found.

"Shit!" Paul swore, but no orders were needed. Instantly the pillbox was laying lead into the hundred troops ahead. They had no fear of hitting Nathan, who had regeneration skills, but the allies behind and amidst the enemy were to be worried about. However, it wouldn't be so easy to split Paul's men, cause no the enemy was in a pincer movement.

"Tom, can you give us some better cover out there? Stop those fuckers from burying my men if you can!"

Paul waved off the snipers, who were having no effect. Instead, he spotted Heidi running at a large group of soldiers with only a spear. Luckily, one of his men, well a woman, had the common sense to grab Heidi before she got shot and attempt to pull her into cover.

Instead of freaking out like some people were, Paul just smirked, a deadly glint in his eye. In an instant, the reloading RPG team's rockets detonated without warning, but the force of the explosion was a lot stronger than a normal RPG shot. Paul had amplified the energy exerted by the explosion, intending to stun and bowl over all enemies around them. The men in the foxholes, since they were no where near the RPG, and under ground, we relatively unharmed and still fighting for their lives.

Amidst the enemies, muzzle flashes of bright red could be seen, indicating Paul's men, who used colored ammunition to discern friendly fire from enemy. Since the fox holes were pretty deep, they had quite a while before they would be filled up with sand of dirt. Since they were focused on not being out of their holes with the enemy, they started firing into the moronic fighters among them the instant they saw them appear.

However, the best part was to come next, for scattered around the line were planks of wood covering shotgun mines; shotgun shells improvised to go off once stepped on, spewing shrapnel and heavy pellets upwards into enemies. Paul had confiscated all the shells a few days later when Heidi had been out. The enemy had just stepped onto a minefield.

The most ironic thing about the situation was that Tokyo, aka Melanie, was in one of the foxholes with Paul's men, her foxhole, protecting a man wounded when the enemy appeared out of no where, though she had felt them before they were there. The top of her foxhole was covered by a steel hard shadow covering, no bullets able to penetrate it. Enemies within her range soon found their shadows rising out from under them and either swallowing them whole, spiking them, or slashing at the with razor wire tentacles.

In the untouched part of the line, Paul's group started picking shots carefully, a soldier with the power to refract and deflect light making the enemy think they were shooting at Paul's men, only to be shooting at the ground a few feet away. Other than the woman attempting to restrain Heidi, the other ten fighters were carefully attempting to dislodge the fighters and push them back, most not having a Flow to combat the enemy with. The LMG still rattled on, bullets flying over the foxholes and at the enemy.

"God dammit, it's too loud," Neo muttered to himself, glancing about. Oh how he would look forward to taking out some people.
Meanwhile, Zackary was hiding in the trees, waiting for the right chance to strike.

Tom reacted almost instantly, his Flow erupting into life. The old green glow surrounded him and the almost heavy force of his power made itself known. He stamped one foot, gesturing upwards. A large ring of diamond appeared in the air above ground level, blocking the Flow and grenade attacks in the at but still allowing Paul's men space to shoot because it didn't cover from the groud up. He had also created some cover for Paul and his men in the time that he had spent blocking the attacks, not wanting to have to repeat the feat.

His next contribution was to go on the offensive, the earth heaving underneath their attackers as it began to erupt, the fragments of rock forming into spars meant to attack Lillian's forces and give the people in foxholes some relief. The huge blind man panted slightly, the mental exertion of doing so much at once tiring him out and giving him a dull headache.

He knew he couldn't rest though, and his hand movements became more frantic as he created stone missiles to block and cancel out incoming Flow projectiles from his safe position underground. As he did this, however, his main focus was in locating the psychic's Flow, as he mentally scoured the opposition forces. It was going to be more of a mental war for him rather than a physical one, but he couldn't help but feel that his opponents had home advantage there.

--------

Luke swore, ducking into cover and holding Kira close to make sure she was with him. It wasn't a protection thing, he knew she was capable of doing that as he was when it came to that sort of attack, but it felt kind of like he had an anchor to safety. He looked up after a second, anger flaring up that his attacks had been stopped.

With an irritated growl and a surge of power, he glowed a violent red and shot a blast of fire skywards. After a split second, fireballs began raining down on the opposition from the sky, blazing bright orange and aiming to set the whole enemy army ablaze.

For his own part, Luke seemed to be alright, though understandably shaken as a man who had tried to distance himself from combat on the past few months. Obviously he had known the battle was coming, but he still couldn't prepare for the reckless destruction and violent confusion of it all.

Heidi yelped as some woman grabbed her, struggling against her. Half of it was out of instinct and the other half was the fact that she didn't like being told what to do. However, after calming down a bit, she poked her head up, frowning at the guns that separated her and Tom. "Oh, fucking hell goddamn," she cursed, most things she had been saying involving curse words and not much else.

The ground beneath Lillian's forces started to quake, and Heidi couldn't help but grin and chuckle to herself. Tom's attack would distract them for a bit, maybe even cut them, and then it would be an easy matter for her to bust some heads. A maniacal grin formed on her face as she picked a tall guy from the middle of Lillian's troops, listening in on his screams as she turned his own blood against him. It probably wasn't good how at home she felt in the middle of all this chaos, but that could be dealt with later.

---

Kira flinched as Luke started shooting fire everywhere, quite obviously less accustomed to the chaos than everyone else. The most chaotic she had ever dealt with was fighting the beasts in the tournament, but that was different from fighting other people with the intent of killing. Still, she tried to pull Lillian's troops into one group, with vines, so whoever could take care of them more easily, wincing as her plants were cut or trampled.

Sage wandered around the village, trying to get used to it. It was... so much more different than the other one.

---

"You lot are a royal pain in the ass." Jamie whacked another person into a tree.

Erika walked through the village, asking around who was in charge. A small group of people followed behind her, mostly children. She was holding onto Elena's hand tightly as she tried to ignore the pains from her stomach.
Simon kept silent, not liking the looks he saw from the people in the other village. He knew that they had rights to be wary, but after almost getting killed by Benji it almost felt like they all knew what had happened and wanted to hurt him for it as much as Heidi's brother did.

"Simon?" Sage asked when she saw the boy in question.

A tall boy stepped forward, having a fair complexion like most of the other people in the village. "Who sent you here?" he asked, a rather serious look on his face.

Benji pushed through the crowd, waving at him. "Noah, Noah! Hi!" he yelled, his voice seeming to wipe the mistrust off of the tall boy's face. "Remember I left with Heidi? Where she lives is under attack and these are all the people who can't fight. It's okay if they stay here, right?"

Noah glanced down at Benji, before shrugging. "If they help out, I can't see what's wrong... But if they cause trouble we'll kick 'em out," he cautioned.

The barrage of attacks that the Acer Village had unleashed appeared to continue for awhile, and Nathan for a few moments was unleashing ice shards into anyone who came near him. He felt a bullet from one of Paul's forces hit him but he healed within moments. As he cut through one man with his sword he felt himself picked up by a psychic force and thrown backwards at violent speeds. He felt himself impact with the mountain side and turned his eyes away from Lillian's group as he focused on healing his freshly broken ribs.

It was at this point that Tom, Luke and Paul's forces' attacks hammered down on Lillian's group. It appeared that many of them had fallen down, and the earth that the telekinesis wielder had been playing around with had stopped completely. Dust rose from the explosions of Paul's attacks and what sounded like screams of pain could be heard. It was then that Nathan turned his attention back to the group.

Only... they weren't there anymore. Nathan looked around at all of his allies and noticed that many of them were still attacking an empty spot. Which could only mean one thing... An illusionist or powerful psychic.

"STOP!" He yelled, using Super Speed to move himself closer to Tom after he shouted. He quickly turned to his Irish friend who he too had stopped attacking. "They used an illusion once Paul's group started their explosions, I'm guessing our psychic friend from earlier is responsible..."

The illusion that had been put up fell and all of the allied force would be able to see what Nathan himself was seeing now. They were given only a few seconds to look around in confusion before Lillian's forces next swoop came about.

About three hundred or so of their forces had been teleported into the mountain area, only this time they'd all been distributed so that they were in close quarters to the Acer fighters. Lillian's group must have realized that wouldn't be afforded much progress if they were drawn into a ranged fight.

In the first few moments of this new attack a few of Nathan's Illuminati were killed and so to were a few of the villagers. Nathan and Tom found themselves surrounded by fifteen or so individuals who were leaking powerful flows. Paul was had his gun ripped out of his hand by the telekinesis user who also threw the energy wielding man up into the air. Every single one of the Allied forces was drawn into a close quarters fight.

Up in the air Zackary found himself being attacked by a man who could both fly and shoot energy beams. With Tom busy for the moment, one earth manipulator began to force the foxholes to close up and suffocate Paul's men and another one of Lillian's forces slowly strode forward with a smirk.

He glowed silver and many of the guns that they Allies possessed were tied in knots. His power apparently that of a metal manipulator. Nathan ducked a lightning bolt and impaled his fist through the skull of one of his attackers. Unless they could get hurt the support units of Lillian's forces, they would have to retreat to the stronghold to the back of the mountain range.

Heidi felt her temper flare up when Nathan shouted "illusion," her hate for psychics only getting stronger. As the new wave approached, a red glint flickered in her eyes as crimson Flow swirled around her. "Start making peace with your gods!" she shouted, raising the acidity of the blood of anyone who dared come near her. She'd probably need someone to get Mary out of her head later, but for now she moved towards where Nathan and Tom were fighting, hellbent on keeping Tom safe.

Zackary sighed as he darted between teh tree branches. Of course, it was only one person, nothing to be worried about.

"God damn," Tom muttered wearily, stamping a foot lightly on the ground. The earth rippled outwards, moving up and down like it was water, before Tom gestured up and it exploded. He used the cover of shrapnel to sink into the floor. Since they hadn't attacked but merely gave off the appearance of a powerful Flow, he assumed that they weren't actually real people.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me He thought to himself, speeding away as the explosions continued where he had previously been standing. Whatever about illusions, he was sharp enough to have picked out the psychic's Flow signature from that egregious display of power. He had gotten good at that out of necessity, compensating for his blindness, and he now zeroed in on the psychic's position.

-----

Luke nearly jumped out of his skin, but his reactions hadn't dulled as much as he thought they had, honed in the Acer tournament and even training with Nathan. He glared, glowing violently red as his rage began to build. He blew into his hand, and a huge blast of fire rocketed forward towards the opponent, coating the area in front of him and Kira in flames.

"You. Did not. Take my gun." Touch his gun, shame on you. Take his gun, there was nothing left of you. And that's what happened. The man's head simply imploded on itself, a severe force energy fueled by Paul's anger simply rippling into the man. He had put so much power into one strike, that the ground around him froze solid and the air misted.

The confused soldiers repositioned their aim, and the gunners ceased fire until they could find a solid target. Close quarters fighting ensued and if Paul hadn't been pre-occupied, he would have had Percy set up the anti-Flow zone.

Kira jumped when Luke set everything on fire. Between the screams and gunshots, the massive amount of fire was just too much to deal with. She backed away from Luke, a small jolt going through her body before she ensnared Luke and anyone who got too close in vines. "Bastards!" she screamed, rather outraged by all the destruction of her plants.

Luke abruptly stopped the stream of flames, looking towards Kira worriedly as he was suddenly strung up by vines, only a couple of feet away from his girlfriend.

"...Kira?" he asked tentatively, battle forgotten momentarily as he looked towards her. After all, he figured their attacker would let them fight it out and focus their attention elsewhere, considering how tightly stretched it was. Besides, being hung up midair set his priorities.

"Can't you hear them screaming?!" Kira demanded, anger clearly written on her face. One of Lillian's soldiers moved in to attack, though Kira knocked them away easily with a thick vine, probably breaking their ribs. The vine holding Luke tightened around his waist, and it was fairly obvious that Kira wasn't in her right mind anymore.