The Roll n' Rocker [AfriCatastrophe Act IV]

The eyeless creature was far from inept, it appeared, as that sudden acknowledgment of her presence allowed it to deflect Natasha's murderous typhoon of reishi to a serviceable degree. Beams of light clashed. Reishi danced with Cero as unintentional fireworks filled the air.

There was a meritable outcome to striking the beast true, but that quickly backfired as molten ash shot upward like geysers, as though a volcano had been set off on the battlefield. At such a sight, Natasha furrowed her eyebrows. This was less than ideal. Blut Vene, naturally allowed her to maintain a defensive advantage, but the same surely couldn't be said for Junko. In that moment, it became abundantly clear that she had to end this battle before any fatal damage befell her ill-equipped partner.

Natasha's Steigen reached critical mass as a blazing stream of reishi filled the air, her body thundering through the air in a cascade of afterimages. The spiderweb of blut she employed around her skin prior, maintained against the molten hot ash and cero clashing against her body, biting into her skin, burning away different articles of her clothing.

The burning pain was excruciating, no doubt, but adrenaline proved superior as she singlemindedly danced into Rollinragged's maw to drive her huge cannon deep into its mouth, releasing wicked torrents of reishi within its body, aiming to destroy it from the inside out. The incessant shots of reishifire would persist until one of them fell, and she damn sight intended to make sure she was the one who emerged victorious in this dance.

"Die already, ya overgrown bastard! Love dancin' as much as the next girl, but it's about time we put an end to our lil rodeo, sweetheart!"

Far from a hollow that preferred to be up close, Rollingragged was a hollow that frankly liked to avoid a fight at all. It was something close to a scavenger, one which simply waited for prey to be caught off guard and took advantage of that moment. Most of its prey fell long before they even saw it arrive; to have found opponents that did not do so was no small problem for it.

The moment Natasha had cast herself into its mouth, the hollow closed down, its furnace-like body rapidly bringing the temperature to levels far beyond what a normal human might ever hope to withstand. Even so, it did not have an answer to such a brazen, near-suicidal maneuver. It could only act on instinct, and its instinct had been clouded by the command of a higher being. So it was that it allowed Natasha to unleash that catastrophic torrent of quincy firepower upon it, and in exchange, Rollingragged simply sealed its mouth all the tighter. As its interior was obliterated, the molten rock within it pressurized, and shot up its gullet to create a magma chamber of tremendous power. In only a few seconds, its skull burst, the chamber becoming a caldera of flesh; but such an attack was never intent on protecting itself.

The smaller hollows that had swarmed around Junko were quickly finding even themselves overpowered. After all, they were not combatants. They were simply ways of carrying easy prey back to their host, nothing more than tools that happened to be able to act of their own accord. They had tasted blood, certainly, but as their progenitor self-destructed, they seemed to grow more rabid. They were no longer operating on a straightforward system; now, they were simply a pack of hollows with nothing to direct them.

At every opening Junko showed, another of them jumped on her, and as one fell, another would simply use its fallen brother's corpse as a shield, a stepping stone, even a momentary hiding spot. They had never eaten for their own sake before, but that hunger now burned within them.

The burning maw collapsed in on her like a pair of steel jaws. The furnace-like body of the beast grew to temperatures that truly stretched her Blut Vene beyond its absolute limit. The veins of azure felt as though they, too, were being burned away under the relentless sea of heat that overwhelmed her, but Natasha persisted, minorly stretching them beyond her body. There were promises she had made. There was a home she vowed to protect. None of that would come to fruition if she expired here. And so, she growled. From the bottom of her chest, she screamed with reckless abandon as she grabbed onto her cannon, driving it forward with unbridled aggression.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaargh!"

Her clothes burned into nothingness. Her body was suffering the effects of severe burns. At the moment, none of that mattered. Victory and rescuing that Shinigami were the only things on her mind. From the chamber of her cannon, she brought forth the maximum extent of her reishi expenditure as an expanding ring of reishi shot forth from her body, colliding against the molten chamber in a furious collision of energies.

The moment its skull burst, rollinragged's body now akin to a volcano in the truest sense, Natasha used the remaining embers of her energy to burst through the air like a bat out of hell, flying onto the ground with nothing but her bare body, full of severe burns, to show for.

Breathing rapidly, Natasha pulled Junko to her side as that vanishing cannon slowly returned to the only form she could maintain now. A mere handgun. Stumbling along the ground, she bit into her dried lips as she motioned for Junko to finish off what she could while she handled the rest on her last legs.

"Christ...! That was a terrible idea! I nearly died in that volcanic bastard's mouth just now! Anyway, come on sugar. Use that blade, use whatever kida ya got, and let's finish the rest of these bastards off and call for backup!"

Commanding her to fulfill that duty at least, Natasha swept that handgun around in an exhaustingly frantic spin, filling the air with bullets to eliminate the remaining bastards lining up. If the reishi ran out, she'd simply start using her burned feet and legs to kick these beasts into oblivion.

It was little more than child's play for a trained combatant like Natasha, when combined with Junko's still firm resolve, to mow down such empty creatures as these. Nothing more than drones meant for harvest, lacking in any real hunting prowess or capability. The wall formed by Junko's Sho alone was enough to momentarily confound them, but their numbers had already dwindled simply from Natasha's overwhelming firepower compared to their lesser numbers.

Those last few clamored over the impromptu defense, eyes empty and with nothing but raw hunger in their gaze, and yet it was clear that these hollows had no expectation, hope, or even care for their own victory or survival. This was simply their instinct, at the most base level; they were hardly fit to even be called hollows.