In the middle of the frantic fight, one of the soldiers seemed unsure of itself. It stepped gingerly across the space at the base of the tower, seemingly unwilling to get involved in the battle. It turned, quickly, at the sound of Seven's voice—whirling around as the the kid began to shriek, but once the elevator doors closed, it stopped. It stood there, swaying back and forth, gently, until something burst behind it, knocking it to the ground.

One of the newly arrived raging rainbow thugs' dangerously explosive fireworks went off behind the short creature, and the meta-soldier was hurled forwards.

It jerked, violently, at the sight of the flashing, spitting light from the pyrotechnic device, and held out a hand in front of it to shield the lenses in its helmet from the glare. The soldier hopped agitatedly, and stepped from one foot to the next, looking around for the source of the attack, before seeing Vito, capering and whooping and letting off screaming fireworks right and left.

As the smoke-bomb at the thing's feet burned out, the soldier wove back and forth, rocking like a mongoose facing down a snake, before it seemed to remember something. It looked down at itself, it looked up again.

It extended a hand. There was a moment, as the air around its fingers began to glow, and then a column of fire shot out from its palm, and blasted towards the fennec fox with deep whoosh as the air in front of the soldier burst into flames.

Collab with the Greenspan.

The koala girl came at a most opportune moment-- just in time for her to see Caz off the edge of the road, gritting her teeth and wringing her hands and standing tippy-toe on the balls of her feet trying to get a better view. She probably should've been more aware of her surroundings, given the possibility of some stray zombie-troop-thing sneaking up on her and doing who-knows-what, but as it was, she seemed just surprised enough by Key's sudden appearance.

"Key?" she echoed, tracing back the events in her brain. "Oh, Key! So sorry we left you behind. The, the bad guy? Kid at the hotel? Seven! He's there now! Everyone's fighting off his cronies, I think. I can't see everything..."

And, since it was never too late for an introduction...

"Oh!" she added in a kind of frantic politeness. "And, uh, my name is Caz. We met on the skyscraper! Kind of. A bit ago. Aaaaiii can't remember sorry!"
---


Jam was decidedly less blase about the revelation than Rock was, and as Jack approached all abuzz the pink primate could only respond with an eloquent, "Damned if I know."

She cast a quick glance around to the still rough-and-tumbling, but progressively thinning mosh pit, but was drawn back to her prey -- or more specifically, his new pursuer -- via Sheffer's comment.

"He won't make it in time like that..." she mumbled thoughtfully.

Her brows furrowing in focus, the still static-fuzzed simian flexed her hands at her sides, clenching and unclenching her fists, in what looked like some bizarre compulsion; simultaneously, a faint ghost of a sphere flickered around her as her intense gaze once more scanned her surroundings.

"Hey!" she called, springing from the spot, and dashing towards the massive tortoise with a wave of her hands. "Hey, big guy!"

Skidding to a stop just behind Tank's wiry dance partner, she sent a swift palm strike at the curious cylindrical device jutting out the side of its helmet, and fired a powerful, shoving sidekick right into its hip.

"How far up that tower d'you think you can chuck me?"

Tank's head moved in Jam's direction at the 'Hey', but it was only when she addressed him as 'big guy' did he know she was talking to him. He had just finished shoving his mighty boot through somebody's face when she asked her question. "Chowk hyew?" he rrrlepeat repeated in an apprehensive buzz.

But before he could answer, the heavy plodding of berserker footsteps came from behind, and the tortoise momentarily diverted his attention to palming a soldier's fist in his own. In the same motion, he stepped off to the side, planted his foot on the ground like an anchor, and like an Olympian at the shotput, hurled the poor bastard faaarrr over the horizon. He turned back to her with the same attentive eyes. "Hebout that far," he answered.

"That'll work," blurted Jam with a satisfied nod. She lunged forward, but stopped short, pulling her hands in close to her body, as she hesitantly amended, "I'mma need my hands intact, though."

At Tank's enormous feet, she curled into a the smallest, tiniest ball she could squeeze herself into, wrapping her tail tightly around her, before instructing, "Pitch it hard, and let me worry about the landing. I need as high up that tower's possible."

With a brief pause wherein her usually repressed desire to be cool warred with her desire to end Seven, she milked the last bit of effort from the turtle as she knew how, hesitantly adding, "Justice depends on it."

"As hyew weesh," he replied, readily scooping her into his palms. And she may not have seen it herself, but... he just might have been fighting back the sniffles when he heard her last words. "Mehk me prlout," he answered, held her to his shoulder, span once, and with a passionate cry of "POWER FAST-BAWL!" was Jam flung like a bombshell.

Up, up, and away.

It was... surprisingly difficult to remain focused on the task at hand with her mode of transportation's theatrics, but Jam steadied herself, and upon feeling the coolness of the rushing night wind, unfurled just shy of the tower, which seemed as though it would fall just short of her grasp. The sliver of a second before gravity would have had its way, however, the punch-hued primate began to glow, and, as if suddenly a magnet (or perhaps magnetized), she fired forward, right at the metal girder at the center of the arch where Seven had been moments prior, some hundred-or-so feet off the ground.

From there, Jam ascended with a fearless speed, mounting each new slat with an almost unnatural, staggered momentum (most of which, the particularly astute might have noticed seemed to come after she jumped), stopping only to check the progress of the lift.

The jittery soldier twitched violently as the hat approached, batting it out of the air with both hands. As the fire-bomb came rolling in, the soldier jerked again and lashed out with a kick—not before the thing burst, however. As the soldier's foot reached the firebomb, the device exploded, and in an instant the soldier was enveloped in a wall of hissing chemical fire.

The flames wavered, and then—as they began to die down—split into two. One burning shape pulled away from the inferno, and staggered out into the field of battle, batting at its visor.

It bobbled its helmeted head violently in a noiseless scream, and whipped its hand out in the direction of the Fennec fox—sending a torrent of sparks splashing off the ground around it. Then, just as noiselessly as before, the strange soldier became a well of incandescent flames. Blazing gas–blue-and-orange fire shot out of its fist in a rolling stream. The thing spun in a circle, and a rising ring of fire began to form around it. As the soldier kept pouring flames into the air, the ring curled into an ascending mushroom cloud, as the flames ate up the air faster than new air could rush in. Debris began to roll towards the angry soldier-creature—pop cans and wrappers drifting and skipping across the damp pavement as they were caught up in the rushing wind which pulled everything around up into the furnace.

The extent of the in-turning vortex would disrupt everything nearby, pulling on Ember nearly as much as it pulled on Wild Badge and the extensive, immovable Tank who, along with Jack and Target, the capsule trooper, were in the thick of the fight, and thus much closer to the centre of the heat-wave.

In the middle, the increasingly angry soldier could be seen, wheeling and spinning and churning more fire into the sky.

Above, there was a loud, metallic groan. The surface of the tower had broken out in thousands of tiny bubbles as paint began to peel and crackle off the lower rungs of the tower. The lower bars of the structure began to super-heat, and the air was filled with a gentle crackling sound as the light bulbs that kept the lower segments of the tower illuminated started popping.