As she approaches the bridge, there's a moment of intense, eerie presence, from the direction of the unfamiliar Earth bridge, accompanied by the night growing silent and ever so slightly darker.

The first sound that breaks the silence in the insistent ticking of a clock. It sounds a bit like the bridge to Brazen did, though somehow more so without necessarily being louder.

Close on its heels, however, is a beastly noise, like someone combined a lion's roar with the hiss-rumble of an alligator and the screech of a falcon, then turned the volume way up and the pitch way down. It sounds big. It's also possible to see prismatic, multicolored light splashing off the walls of nearby buildings around the corner that leads to the bridge.

Then there's the engine of a car, revving loudly, which is promptly followed by a white SUV peeling out around the corner along what is supposed to be a foot-path, knocking over a trash bin along the way.

There's four people inside, and the driver is a man who's absolutely aflame with prismatic glow, filling the interior of the car with strange color. Thick tendrils of black cling to the roof of the car, but seem to avoid the color leaking out of the windows.

Chantal's sense, the same that points her towards the nearest bridges, is detecting this man as well, strongly enough that it's uncomfortable, like glancing at a too-bright light that just came into view. He detects like twelve bridges, all to different worlds, all squeezed into one place.

...she takes a step back in alarm when the car comes around the corner—there's hardly ever cars in the Academy, except for the occasional placid delivery van—and then squints in concerned bafflement at the figure within.

The car stops pretty quickly, when the foot-path it was driving over turns out to not connect with a larger street. The car's three passengers quickly exit the vehicle and look around with fear-wracked watchfulness, each of them dressed in golden armor that glistens in the fiery light, one brandishing a rifle and the other two wielding odd glass bows with arrows also of gold. One spots her and shouts "Civvie!" in accented English.

The man inside seems human, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, bushily bearded and thickly set. He's wearing the same golden armor as the others, and has rolled down the window of the car and is looking back at her. "You speak English? Nihongo?" He asks, loudly enough to be heard over the car's engine and the growing sounds of a struggle coming from around the corner towards the bridge.

"...y...es... are you okay?"

"Not really!"

The sounds of struggling suddenly stop, replaced by stomping footsteps. Something that looks kind of like T-Rex, but with its head covered in fucked mutant star-fish, peaks around the corner. One of the others shouts, "Kyouryuu!" which prompts all three to pivot towards the encroaching monster. The two archers both loose their arrows, but the rifle-wielder holds their fire. One arrow lands true, embedding itself in the dinosaur's cheek. The other penetrates a starfish but not the dinosaur beneath. It roars again in response, attempting to work its way through the relatively narrow corner between the buildings.

"This thing's probably not going down easy! Do you want a ride?!"

"What did you do??"

"It's complicated!"

The T-Rex is around the bend now. The archers have each nocked and loosed another arrow, one landing in the T-Rex's neck, the other lodging itself in its knee. Neither hit seems to have been debilitating. All three of the others retreat back into the car, one making rushed gestures for the driver to get moving.

"Come in or get back! We're going!"

This is all happening much faster than she is accustomed to making decisions, but between the car and the T-Rex she thinks she prefers the car. She scrambles in and fumbles vaguely for a seatbelt; it's been a long time since she last sat in a vehicle and she appears to be rusty on the exact mechanics.

Also, hang on, important question—

"Going where?"

"Kiting that thing!" He gestures with a thumb to the T-Rex, has just freed itself of the construction of the narrower foot-path.

The three other passengers are all sort of squat-standing over their seats, with their heads, shoulders, and chests held out of the car's windows, so there's plenty of seat-belts free for Chantal at least.

"Hang on!"

And the car revs and then heads on down the path, quickly enough to feel dangerous given the nature of the Academy's traffic design, but only just fast enough to keep ahead of the T-Rex as it navigates towards them. The two archers periodically pepper it with arrows, which seem to be slowly wearing it down.

"Yeep!" That was not enough time for her to put on a seatbelt. She clings to the handle above the door, squinting past the seat in front of her to try to see where the car is heading.

This is not a path where cars are supposed to be, but if she recalls correctly from when she was experiencing this scenery very differently a minute ago, that very open-looking turnoff up ahead on the right leads directly into an enclosed courtyard with a big concrete fountain in the middle, so, "Don't take that turn!"

The driver follows the advice, keeping to the path they're already on.

This is, indeed, not a street for cars, though. The need to avoid (or plow through) the occasional obstacle is slowing them down. The T-Rex is gaining on them. The rifleman seems to be getting ready to place a shot.

She doesn't have a good angle to see the T-Rex, but luckily(?) it is quite large and just the sound of its footsteps is enough for her to tell it's getting uncomfortably close. She leans forward, trying to remember the rest of the path. If she'd been down this way just one more time, she'd already know it well enough to be sure whether the left up ahead into a grassy park is as much of a trap as the courtyard or not...

Well, they'll find out soon, since the driver is taking the left right now!

"Ready, Sniper?!" asks the driver.

"Hai!" the rifleman replies.

Does it look like they've got enough room to speed up a bit, just enough to buy time and let Sniper line up a shot?

Okay, so, bad news: she correctly remembered that there was something big and bulky blocking the middle of the open park area. Good news: the big bulky thing isn't any kind of solid construction, it's just a slightly raised flowerbed with a smooth slope up from the path and a lot of flowers growing on it. If he aims just slightly to one side, between the shrubs along the border and the big tree in the middle, this is actually a pretty decent place to accelerate.

Excellent! He will do just that. The car's already in four-wheel drive, fortunately, so the slow-down from tearing over the grass is more than accounted by his briefly pushing the accelerator a bit harder.

They've got distance now, and the T-Rex's head is clouded enough with emotions and pain to not head straight for its target, Sniper lines up the shot, braces with their armor against the frame of the car, and fires.

It's loud, enough that Chantal's ears are probably ringing. The recoil was hard enough that she can feel it nudge the car forwards.

But...the thudding of the T-Rex's footsteps stops, followed a moment later by its bulk crashing into the ground not far behind the car.

"Watch the kaisei!" the driver says, getting out of the car and...drawing a sword? Made of the gold as these people's armor and arrows. The passengers get out as well, the archers still brandishing their bows while Sniper draws a sword as well.

Oh dear. They're getting out of the car. Does that mean she also has to get out of the car? What if she doesn't want to? Perhaps she will stay in the car. And lean fearfully out the door to look back at the downed dinosaur.

Well, certainly no one's making her get out of the car.

That T-Rex definitely looks dead. there's a little hole through one of its eyes that's weeping red and pink, and its snout is a little pushed in and broken from it face-planting into the ground.

Notably, that face is also no longer covered in freaky starfish. They're now crawling along the torn-up ground of the park towards the car. The driver and Sniper are stabbing starfish that get close with their swords, while the archers shoot ones that are further away.

...ah. Hmm. Non-ideal.

She gets out, checking the ground carefully in case any adventurous starfish have somehow slipped past to menace her, and picks her way through the flowers in an antistarfishward direction.

Everybody continues to not stop her. One of the archers seems to spot her as she's heading off, but doesn't say anything about it, instead focusing on killing starfish.

One of the starfish manages fling itself onto Sniper's face before they can stab it, prompting them and the driver to freak out a bit before the latter manages to cut it off, though it leaves a slick of blood across the former's faces. The two of them retreat back to the car and the driver starts...praying?

Well that's concerning!! She watches them, glancing frequently at the ground in case of further starfish.

The freaky starfish, while significantly faster than normal starfish, are still very slow. The archers seem to be handling them just fine, and over the next ten-ish minutes their numbers are steadily whittled down until there aren't any still obviously crawling around.

Then, back by the driver, there's a flash of golden light, and now there's a big block of gold in front of him, which he begins to mold like, folding over itself, into itself, until it's much smaller. Then he flattens it out, sort of tears it into two roughly equal sheets, and then bends them into a pair of helmets for the two of them to wear. Then he and the driver start tromping around the park, stabbing starfish that had hidden themselves among the bushes and flowers. The driver seems to know roughly where they are even without being able to see them.

...well, it's... good that they seem to have things under control...? What? What was that? It felt—foreign. Everything in the vicinity of the driver feels foreign but that enormous block of gold manages to have a pure enough signature to stand out amid the noise.

The swordsmen are able to finish up the remaining starfish pretty quickly, freed from the concern of getting their faces eaten. Once that's done, they wipe their swords off in the grass, sheath them, meet back up with the archers, and begin discussing what do to with the corpses, using a mixture of English and at least one other language. Eventually, the driver points over to where Chantal scooted off to, and one of the archers (bow now hung their back) heads over to her.

"Hello?" they ask, their voice quiet and with a feminine character. "Are you hurt?"

"...no, I don't think so. What... were those?" She's still repeatedly checking the ground even though presumably if the driver has stopped unerringly finding starfish it's because there are no more starfish to find.

"Those were, ano...monsters. Tokidoki- sometimes they come when Fib jumps. Two kinds, both this time. Kyouryuu, like the big one, or other kokemono, and the other, mutant kaijuu, like the kaisei, the little ones."