Medusa looked momentarily surprised that her stony gaze did not stop Stryka, but she recovered in time to engage in hair-to-hair combat, her serpentine hair snapping at Stryka's hair tendrils and stopping them, hissing all the while. "Looks like we'll have to make art another time. Look me up on Etsy!" She pulled out a small handheld device that the more technologically adept (like Daibuster) would recognize as a teleportation device, squeezed the trigger and disappeared in a flash of light.<br/><br/>With all their leaders gone, the cultists' nerve broke. Stryka knocked one, then two down with her hair, while the rest ran for their lives away from the tentacled horror they had so foolishly summoned. Not that they were entirely successful - two more of their number were dragged back kicking and screaming into the portal by two of the tentacles, while a third appendage chased after Scandal, who just barely managed to stay ahead of it.<br/><br/>Meanwhile, despite Daibuster's attempts to push the tentacles back through the portal, she was having about as much luck as un-spilling beverage from a can - the portal was not as simple as the opening of a bottle through which material could be forced. Knowledge of space-time physics or summoning magics - different models to describe the universe - would be needed to have any chance to figure out how to reverse the portal, whether one treated it as a partially collapsed wormhole or a botched summoning ritual. At least the main body of the creature was still on the other side, but its three tentacles on this side were holding the portal halfway open, like a foot in the door.<br/><br/>The immediate area around the site of the former burning man effigy was rapidly clearing of mundane people, who were running away anywhere as long as it was away from the site of the tentacle monster - of course, "immediate area" counted for little when it came to military-grade weapons and collateral damage. Briar Rose's wall of plants came up surrounding the portal, denying the tentacles any further victims, innocents and cultists alike. The tentacles lashed out against the living wall, but found the green barrier impenetrable.<br/><br/>"And there're hundreds of thousands of civilians in Reno!" General Irving's angry, not-used-to-being-questioned voice shot back. He paused a moment, then continued in a calmer voice. "I'll not risk the monster coming through the portal when I have the opportunity to destroy it now while it is between worlds. Lase the target, Avengers. A precision munition or carpet bombing, your choice."