"Holy<i>shit</i>," breathed Nova, looking past Full Metal's shoulder, horrorstruck at what Blades and Sam were up to. Whatever else she might have said -- almost certainly creatively profane -- was lost in the minigun's thunder, and when the portal snapped closed and the swarm of Dusk flooded towards them, she had more important things to do than hurl more invective.<br/><br/>For one thing, trying to rescue Full Metal. She hadn't seen that first tentacle snaking out of the treeline, and he'd sliced it apart when it had reached for her at the cost of getting ensnared himself. An aura of stygian blue light surrounded her, and lit her eyes, as she flitted airborne out of her pocket of shadows and into the fight. From outstretched fists she poured blasts of dark energy, carefully modulated to smash and shatter rather than to rend or to explode, towards the base of the tentacles coiling around his neck and face. "Let. Him.<i>Go</i>," she snarled, far too busy to notice or care when his flailing hands grazed her breasts.<br/><br/>Indeed, she was so focused on trying to extricate Full Metal from Dusk tentacles that she almost failed to notice the two more creatures until they were upon her. A tendril grazed her ankle but quickly retracted when it met the protective aura of dark energy surrounding her; it nevertheless left behind a trail of goo on her leg, and though her skin crawled from the contact the scent left her tingling and warm. She whirled towards the source of the attack, gaining altitude, though well below the swarm of Dusk guarding the skies. Full Metal would have to fend for himself, for now.<br/><br/>She echoed the distant explosion with several smaller ones of her own, savagely hurling her energy in its most unstable and destructive form towards her attackers. The blasts detonated where they struck, leaving small craters in the soil while battering the beasts' exoskeletons with high-velocity shockwaves and fragments from shredded trees and stones. For a moment the two Dusk seemed to retreat, but as she pressed her attack they both lashed out with multiple tendrils, and though the creatures screeched in pain as they contacted her aura they managed to catch her from ankles to waist. "<i>Fuuuuuck!</i>" she screamed, straining against their grip, trying to fly<i>away</i>from them with as much effort as she could muster, while manifesting a construct in her hands, a fire axe of pure dark energy, with which she hacked viciously at the bright tentacles grappling her.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>