Experiments to chaos

Chapter 27- The penultimate chance

At the news of Naomi's location, everyone ran over to the tree and started creating a plan. There were too many puppets for them to just attack blindly; they would be outnumbered and outmatched in seconds because, though they were all formidable foes, none of them was strong enough to take on this immense amount of puppets especially since they were down a man with Atsushi being stuck in a battle with Akutagawa. Yosano, being the last to be informed, had witnessed her friend get pulled into an unwanted fight with his boyfriend but, knowing she was needed elsewhere, just ran back to the others, only hoping that Atsushi would be alright. Everyone Knew they had to save Naomi or else they won't gain any advantage in this one sided battle. They had nothing but a pile of useless battles and were making no progress in finding their real target, Elisabeth. They were stuck fighting a stupid one sided slaughter, while the real enemy was effortlessly ticking away through her ritual uninterrupted. Everything was playing how she wanted. However if they could just save Naomi, then they could use Tanizaki to reveal Elisabeth's location and at last the tides would sway their way. Therefore, everyone knew how important this rescue mission was because getting Naomi to safety was the only card they could actually play so if they messed this up they were screwed.

To get the tides to sway their way, they needed to be able to get Naomi out without too many casualties. Charging straight in might lead to them getting Naomi but there would be a likely chance that none of them would come out without severe casualties (which Yosano can heal but not faster than they would be caused) so no one would be able to tell Tanizaki that Naomi was safe; or the more likely outcome would be that they'd charge in but be too outnumbered and ultimately overwhelmed to even get close to saving Naomi, ultimately making their efforts futile. On top of that, they also need someone to stay out of the battle looking for other places where Naomi could be, since there was still a possibility Naomi wasn't here at all and it was all just a red-herring to deter them from her actual location, which with Elisabeth being so thorough no one would put past. This meant that their already small group of three was reduced even further to a team of two and one lookout. Things seemed pretty hopeless and not likely to succeed, especially since charging in was the only plan they could think of but as already established that wasn't going to work. The strongest of the three was Kenji and he could probably knock out a good ten or twenty of the puppets but there'd still be plenty left for the other to deal with which would probably be Kyouka. Additionally they had no clue what abilities these puppets had so all they knew the odds were even more against them. What they really needed was more people, more specifically they needed people who could glide in between the puppets undetected whilst others fought as a distraction, something like that was much more likely to work. Yosano felt deep joy and pride at the fact she came up with a great plan, one which would make Dazai proud, but then felt an even greater despair at the fact she came up with something that was ultimately unplayable.... it was until a little ray of hope spoke out to her.

"Can we help?" Hirotsu asked standing behind her with the rest of the black lizard. Gin had come up next to her perfectly undetected and revealed a thin smile through her thin mask as if reading her mind and it filled Yosano with hope. Tachihara smiled from behind Gin with the same hopeful feeling in his eyes and they knew at last they could do this.

The plan was simple but perfect; it had no unnecessary details, just a surefire way to get success when desperately needed in this outright war against time. All they needed to do was get Naomi out of the van safely so that's what they centred their efforts around. As expertly displayed previously, Gin would manoeuvre herself between the puppets to get to the van and use her knife to untie Naomi and get her out safely. Meanwhile Hirotsu, Kenji, Kyouka and Tachihara would instigate a fight with the puppets as if they were plainly charging in; this way they could distract the puppets from Gin and be able to get Naomi out without worrying about the added unknown of the puppets abilities because Gin won't have to deal with the puppets. Additionally, they would make sure to  keep Tachihara close to Gin in case Naomi was tied with metal bindings or if some puppets were getting too close to the van. The van appeared to be tied underground by ship rope so Tachihara just plainly pulling the van to them was out of the question, plus that would just attract too much attention. Lastly Yosano would remain on lookout for further places Naomi could also be hidden or in case anything bad happened she could quickly heal them. As stated it was a simple but thought out plan and should hopefully work. They each gave one another a final look of hope and encouragement before turning back to the van and mass of puppets to enact the plan.