Welcome to Gaia! ::

All contact was treated as hostile and dealt with in extreme prejudice. The abominations had little time to rush before silvered ammunition poured into them. One soldier would have sufficed, his automatic shotgun dealt horrific injuries that the unholy beasts could not ignore. It was good the men were well equipped...Iden was using Infinitas to consume and encapsulate the corrupted genetics. That meant he was not changing so quickly....but he was devouring himself alive from the inside out. Physically, he was weakening, even if he did not show it. There wasn't much time at all; he may have bought extra minutes before he was totally lost to the transformation, but well before then he would no longer be working at full capacity. If the she-demon was not found soon, it would not end well.

Alyna had made the call Iden was considering. Five more minutes, and he would have ordered the detonation. They were ten minutes shy of enacting Valkyrie...meaning only twenty-five shy of detonating the charges that would render the building nothing more than rubble.

The men looked to their commander, who gave a short nod.

Two minutes later, the floor was reduced to a sizable hole. Ignoring the flames that were burning throughout his form, Iden was first down; he jumped and landed in a quick crouch to clear the room.

Once again, the soldiers obeyed. Mostly it wasn't Alyna's orders that had them immediately engaging the enemy..these were trained men with reflexes pushed to rival some lesser Cainites. As soon as the movement was registered, it was fired upon, as per the standing order to engage on sight.

As for Iden...he walked through the tide, ignoring them all. Blows fell, and his form shifted as a fine vapor to ignore the jaws and claws that sought to rip him asunder. The voice was his target, and he was getting pissed.

He was gaining momentum, until he spontaneously reformed. The butt of his rifle struck one of the creatures and crushed it utterly; Iden was acting with the full effect of every discipline he had. His moves were nigh unseen, and his strength was tremendous...all a compensation for the truth of the matter: he was falling apart. There were patches of flesh that had already been eaten away...currently his head and heart were unaffected, but that would not last. It meant the whirling melee was just another waste of time. While the men lingered above, holding the exit, he had a woman to butcher.

If not for the fact that she was already halfway through the mob to get to him, Iden would have physically thrown Alyna back to the escape route. As it stood, he could not stop her from getting up close...which meant, unfortunately, that she was preventing him from doing what he had meant. The grenades at his waist would have killed everything within ten meters if he had pulled the pins on them all...and if Alyna wasn't right on top of him, he would have done just that. The men were well clear, as they were all positioned up above. The priestess likely would not have lived, nor would the Wyrmlings. That meant Iden was now growing progressively weaker as the strain of keeping himself together, WHILE ripping himself apart took its toll. His own power was being used against him, which meant he had a scant few minutes before he was out of the fight.

That left a single viable alternative.

Anton, load red magazine. Fire for effect, danger close.

Frag twelve rounds...thirty of them. Loaded into the automatic shotgun the demo man carried, they would pulp most things present in the room. It was crowd control, given that they needed the enemy mob to be thinned out. Alyna would hear the call...she would have ample warning to seek cover amidst the sea of bodies. As for Iden...he kept moving forward, hammering and pounding and slowly being ripped to pieces.

:: And if you had let me do my thing, everything in this room would be dead already. TRUST me. ::

The sudden impact had him floored. Almost automatically, he tried to roll...but he couldn't. Not without hurting Alyna, something he would not do.

So when the WYrm rose, Iden was not pleased with the situation in the least, partially because the explosion would have killed it, too. Be that as it may, there was gunfire raking the creature, to minimal effect. The men were less pleased than Iden...mostly because they knew their firepower meant little to it until the C4 was used. The demo man was already on it...

Meanwhile, Iden took the initiative. He wasn't a cripple yet...even though as he snapped his legs up in an arcing kick to the priestess' temple, some fair portion of his skin and muscle were gone. Potence still made it a bone-crushing blow...if he couldn't kill the Wyrm, at least Iden would kill the woman.

The fact of the matter was, to ingest two of the men, the creature would have needed to rip a large hole through the cieling to fit its maw. That alone had all three others back up, cursing and firing. The demo man was gone...though the charge detonated some few seconds later. If the Wyrm liked a big bang of high explosives in its gut, then it would certainly love the shaped charge the man triggered as he was sucked screaming down into the abyss.

The remaining three were not fools. They knew attacking the beast's body would do no harm. But then again, neither would attacking its head, while she was clinging to it. Once again, the melee combatants rendered firing at the proper points a fair example of the dangers of friendly fire. Not one of the men would shoot Alyna...one of them started shouting for her to get out of the way, but then...it was too late. She was gone. With her drawn into the creature's gullet, all three opened fire with well trained bursts of automatic gunfire.

On the ground...Iden roared. He had been thrashing violently, forcing the devilish woman to be off of him. When Alyna was snapped up, he whipped around with all disciplines at full, and hurled the woman at the creature. The ROMAN thundered instants after, tearing flesh and dark ichor apart with nigh on religious prejudice. Even as he unloaded the magazine he was running at a dead sprint, where he threw himself in a flying leap to rip the Wyrm's throat out with his claws...

Iden wasn't much for listening. He had clawed his way up to the things spine, leaving oozing wounds up its hide. There, he straddled the creature and reared back. A single, solid punch was all he got before he was thrown clear. Enough to snap its neck....maybe. He was not at his best, not when he'd been putting himself through so much. When he hit the ground, he hit it hard, and was slow to rise. He was on his feet...but slow. Climbing out just wasn't going to happen without someone to help him up, not with the cieling out of arms reach. It would take Alyna's aid to get him up there.

Once he was...then it was a matter of how fast their collective legs could carry them. The three soldiers were fine...one of them supported Iden to let them all run. While they moved, the young DeSeer was calling in for picked through the radio. All callsigns were pulling out, and letting the civilians do the same.

:: Where are you going? Javos will want to know. ::

It was all Iden said to her, was the single question. She was leaving...and he wasn't going to force her to do otherwise. There was a numbness involved in the decision that was beyond unpleasant...but he would not stop the chopper to make her come aboard.

As the bird lifted off, he could hear more than one of the men grumbling a general "good riddance" sentiment. Very promptly, Iden snarled at them.

Shut. Your. Mouth.