[X] "We need to take the fight to them..."
-[X] "...Mash, you lead." So, the homunculi is a Pseudo-Servant. Great. That means she needn't do the hard work and can stay in the sidelines... as soon as she can figure out how competent the Pseudo-Servant is at combat.
"M-Me?" Said Mash, who looked at Hinako with surprise in her eyes. She looked at Ritsuka, who concernedly looked back before voicing her silent concern.
'Are you sure about this?'
Hinako nodded reassuringly, "She is the Pseudo-Servant, we are not. Master's job is to provide support from the backline. To give them direction and orders." The True Ancestor looked at Mashu again, who steels herself. "And should the worst comes..." Hinako points at the newly-christened Master's right hand.
Ritsuka looked at the palm of her hand, where the seals glow faintly. "...empower your Servants with the Command Seals"
"Got it! Mashu!" Ritsuka yell is met with the a steady tightening of the homunculi's hands and the simply reply of a steeled nodding.
"Servant Shielder, engaging!"
Olga Marie Animusphere must conclude that this is perhaps the worst day of her life. First, everything blew up when she made her grand speech that she prepared for a week. Second, she blacked out. Third, she found herself awoken in a burning landscape that reeked death and something awfully wrong to all her senses.
And fourth, she found herself being chased around by misbegotten magical constructs out of nowhere. "...crackle forth, Elding!" The Director of Chaldea finished her chant, sending crackling blasts of lightning blasts that course throughout the constructs. Now that she got a close look at these beings, she can conclude that these skeletal beings, shaped like human but very much not, conduct and store electricity well enough take her full attack, continuing to charge unfazed at the Director, swinging spears and swords at her without abandon.
Good thing then, that the chain lightning is only to weaken them.
"Gandr." Out of her fingertip, a hex curse the size of a basketball erupted from the Director's fingertips, simply carving and blasting through the skeletal warriors without abandon. In the hex sphere's wake, disintegrated and charred constructs are, her close-ranged pursuers all eliminated.
No time to rest, however. The Animusphere continued to run, aided with her magically reinforced legs through the blasted hellscape around her.
Mostly because while the melee foes are eliminated, the ranged ones aren't. She did not want to give time to the skeletal archers to catch up, their aim is too close for comfort and she cannot cast Gandr fast enough without taking lethal damages. Already, she can see hear their clattering footsteps from beyond the rubble, getting closer and closer. So she bounded away, striding through and evading the archers...
...only to run headlong to a flock of different skeletal roamers. These ones are much less sophisticated, what with them being 'mere' skeletons yet infused with an energy more malevolent. It's clear that these are the... victims of this hellhole, animated by the same wrong stench that she felt before.
As if this stroke of bad luck isn't enough, she felt her head and heart aches once more. Ever since she woke up here, she felt an utterly twinging ache in her vitals. She never quite felt a pain like this but she will persevere. She must. She's the Director. Regardless, she needs to deal with these before she could advanc-
"Haaaaa!"
Advancing through the rubbles behind her and the pack of roamers is Mash Kyrielight, carrying with her an oversized shield that she wield like a club. Her speed, surpassing Olga Marie's own reinforced legs, allowed her to simply crash through the pack, knocking loose limbs and shattering the disparate formation with ease.
Unfortunately, she made the mistake of stopping in the midst of the formation instead of charging through. An err, soon punished by the whacks of the clubs and poles and sharp implements carried by these beings.
Against normal humans, such faults would result in their swift and painful demise.
Against Servants, they are but mosquito bites. Pinpricks of inconsequential pain.
The Director watches as the empowered homunculi, skin remaining unblemished from the attacks, swung her shield around, knocking loose a couple more limbs and cracking several skulls in the process. She was almost awe-stricken by the feat...
....an error that nearly costed her arm as an arrow, made fully from bone, sailed and grazed her. The sharp pain reverberated oddly with her existing aches. She whirled around, seeing that seven of the boney archers lining up more shots. That first shot was just a ranging shot, she thought panickedly. She needs t-
"Director!" Mash shouted as she dashed towards the slightly wounded Master, holding the shield above her head at the same time as the nocked arrows were loosened. She intercepted the projectiles with the shield, arrows clattering harmlessly against it and not making a pincushion of the Animusphere heir. "Are you okay?"
"J-Just a flesh wound. More importantly," Olga Marie furrowed her brows, concentrating on the seven skeletal archers, some hundreds meters away. "Keep your shield steady, Mash."
"Eh?" The confusion in Mash's voice was only momentarily, before scarcely-awakened instinct stiffened her pose.
Without the threat of being turned to a bed for arrows, the Director countered. Pointing all ten of her fingers outward, she aimed at the attackers. Realizing the danger to themselves, perhaps, they fired more arrows. Arrows which clattered uselessly on the raised shield.
"Gandr." The command is simple, but finely tuned. The heritage crests of a prestigious line powers her spell and in the instant after the utterance, marble sized hexes homed in on the archers, finding their marks on the inhuman skulls. They moved no more after that, clattering uselessly on the floor. Olga Marie gasped in relief. It's over.
And with that, she collapsed to the ground, weakened and nearly unconscious.
"Director!"
As expected. Regardless what sort of Servant one is bonded with, it does not matter what strength of arms or skill they held in life if the body cannot keep up. For her part, she acquitted herself well. But 'well' isn't going to be enough. Fodder like these might be easy to deal with, but sooner rather than later, opposition will mount.
Good news, they found the Director. Bad news, she is dead.
No one noticed yet, not even the Director herself. For those without the perception, the knowledge that what inhibits the space of Olga Marie Animusphere at the moment is only her spirit — disassociated from her now cooling body back in Chaldea — is not easily identifiable.
Even for those with the perception, knowing this for certain is hard. The main reason Hinako knew that was that she knew everybody in the Command Room except her had died. Well, almost everyone. One glance at the Demi-Servant is good enough news. She was pretty sure that before her vision is blocked by crashing rubble, a particularly large piece of concrete was the process of impacting with the Director's physical body.
Now... should she tell them of this? On one hand, this is most certainly an information that needs knowing. On the other, no one could be privy of that information. No. Correction is needed. No human could be privy of that information, save for perhaps the culprits — though she has doubt that any normal human would destroy humanity. Besides which, Marisbilly's progeny might be crass and bullheaded at times, but there is a prodigious and keenly talented Magus behind that exterior. She will know that something is off with what she may say.
Regardless of Hinako's own feelings of keeping her identity as an Elemental itself however, she looks at the faces of Ritsuka and Mash.
Grateful and relieved faces. Happy and hopeful that they had found another survivor in a tragedy of this scale as they propped up the exhausted Director up the ground.
... What would they all thought then, if she said that the Director is dead? What recourse can be given then, to alleviate the situation? ... None. She has none.
[] Tell the truth.
[] Do not tell the truth.
