DeviousMe

Not if it turns around again, heh. And no worries, we didn't forget - though it does seem you forgot Lucard.

Sector D5
Within the Mine

Understood. I'll be sure to make a note of that. I've got trouble keeping up myself from time to time, so I know how that feels, heh.

And thanks for the edit, Techbot. Much obliged.

Sector D5
Within the Mine

Emerald and the DeFeurards may not have been much affected by the eruption that sent deafening crashes through the mine, but Vyachslav certainly was. Designed for the vacuum of space, his ears, though internal, weren't much used to sound of this intensity. True, he had the capability to lessen their pick-up, but his experience underground was rather limited, so when he lost contact with one aspect of XANV and the other reported the eruption, he didn't think much of it.

Big mistake.

It hit him with a suddenness too great for even him to react immediately, crashing into his head like a battering ram and sending his sense of balance and coordination zipping out the window. The shaft shook again as the huge creature attempted to rear up in pain, the only result thereof being of course that he bashed his head into the ceiling.

While thankfully this didn't cause a full-scale collapse, the resulting debris (along with Vyachslav himself, holding his head and putting his brain cells back where they belonged) formed a slight obstacle to the progress of the vampire quartet directly behind him.

Of course, if Emerald and the DeFeurards decided not to stop and try to help, there wasn't anything stopping them from phasing through the block again. Well, there was something for that in respect to Vyachslav himself. Him they wouldn't be able to just walk through. The rock around him was perfectly fine with it, though...

Aw c'mon Bunny, you too? Sigh...okay, fine. I can take a hint.

Okay Techbot, what gives? I get that your characters are supposed to be vampires and all noble and aloof and stuff, so if they don't want to interact with Big V, that's fine. But you could at least have them not blatantly ignoring him. That's just plain rude.

((Well, okay then.))

Sector D5
Within the Mine

To a human, half a second was indeed not long. To Vyachslav's people however, it was quite a sizable chunk of time. Unfortunately for him, his primary sense didn't work around here. The only clue of the passing presence he picked up was an undulation in the region's local fabric - far too little to clue him in on the nature of whatever it was. Admittedly, he also wasn't too interested in the thing.

The converse may well have been the opposite however, as the nature of both the links Vyachslav maintained with XANV and the ship offshore, as well as several of his senses felt very much arcane. Whether or not this was enough for the presence to take any interest in him was of course uncertain, but if it could pick up on such things, it certainly wouldn't have any trouble taking note.

Either way, for now at least he didn't pay it any mind, merely desiring to proceed down the tunnel more quickly. Since Emerald and the two DeFeurards hadn't shown any reaction to his proximity, he assumed they didn't wish to let anything bother them during their conversation, and as a result thought it best if he didn't impose on them by interrupting with a request to pass.

Instead, he placed his hands on the ground and began walking on all fours, creating plenty of clearance underneath his thin body for him to step over them. With room thus created, he increased his pace again, attempting to move past the vampire trio...
__________________

Unknown Location

The visibility of entries and exits into the room didn't have much relevance to XANV. Technically, neither did its appearance. After all, he was a cloud of angstromites. He didn't have any eyes.

He could probably steal some, though.

First thing was first, though. He spread out to explore, to analyze. The black sand he soon knew to be obsidian, and unless something interfered, he'd do the same to the rest of the place. What were the little silver balls? What did the red button do? More importantly, where did its contacts lead...?

So...you two gonna say anything to Big V, or should I just move him past yalls? <_<

((Dammit, every time someone writes the dang flockadiles, all I see is, "RATBIRDS!" ))

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

Vyachslav pondered. But only for a moment. His thought process was rather speedy. Still, it took him longer than usual to contemplate what had just happened - and to a lesser extent, what was happening around him.

Morons.

Well, at least they were gone from the block before the mine shaft, rendering the stuff into 'not much of an obstacle' for him. He had hands, after all. Setting himself into motion forward, he cut power to his wings, the burning-orange 'skins' of energy flickering out of existence, their skeletal fingers then coming together and collapsing into a pair of shorter, much more compact pods that he could tuck against his back.

Having thus reduced his space requirement, Vyachslav swiftly sliced his way through the collapse, walking the tunnel after the vampire trio who'd gone before. Well, perhaps walked wasn't quite the right word. Even more hunched over than normal, his avian structure produced an almost waddle-like gait, neither his feet nor the rest of his body designed for excursions by way of land. While he didn't look uncoordinated, he certainly appeared unwieldy, each step he took reverberating in the floor, walls, and ceiling of the mine...

Aw. Just when we get into an argument about law and right too. And you skedaddle the only person to figure a way around the psi-jamming. Harumph, I say. Harumph.

As to the auto-hitting another person's character, there I do have to comment, as it's something I've seen generate bad blood on many occasions. While there are of course exceptions, giving the character's owner a chance to have a say in the matter of whether or not something bad happens to their character is just common courtesy.

However, at least in my opinion, sentiments such as:

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

Vyachslav grumbled, this time aloud. Though his lack of lings kept it brief and low, the sound of displeasure was audible enough to confer his mood to those in proximity to him.

So much for melting his way down into the mine. Even if he directed the thermocannons as carefully as possible and managed to vaporize all the stone ahead of him instead of turning it to lava, the temperatures inside the mine would still become lethal in seconds. Well, perhaps not to a vampire, but he doubted they'd appreciate bursting into flames. Either way, with them in, the option was out.

He didn't really react to the arrival and actions of those not inside or in front of the mine. While that didn't mean he paid them no mind, they weren't in his way, and therefore not something with which he needed to concern himself. If they wanted to insult and fight one another, he had no problem with that.

What he did see as a problem were those people before him. Not only did they still refuse to clear the way (which at this point was a little moot, but if they'd done so earlier, he could've already been in the mine before the others had entered), but their assumptions were somewhat grating - as was the Priest's attempt to order him around.

Still, the other one had 'spoken' to him via an electronic transmission. This intrigued him. Perhaps there was merit in continuing this after all. With a quick mental command, he figuratively dusted off his EM communications and sent a response to her in the form of a UHF transmission.

'You can tell your friend that I know how your judicial and prison systems do not work.' Big V gave her answer, 'You can also tell him that I know this Tomb is guilty and that his authority here isn't any greater than mine, so if you'd like me to let her live, commanding me to stand down isn't going to you any results. At least not ones you desire.'

'As to you, no.' he directed his response to focus more on Altair than them both, 'No. I'm not a dragon, and I'm not here to relieve any pain by means of personal revenge. I really don't care if I kill this Tomb person so long as she loses and never regains the ability to harm people like she's done. Unfortunately for her, I have more than reasonable doubts that capturing her will result in that. As I said, I know your system is broken. Neither you nor any of your friends can make the guarantee that she won't be able to do more harm, can you...?'
__________________

Elsewhere

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

He glanced back to the Priest as the angstromites - or rather the someone they stood for - did their work. Even without being able to make telepathic contact with the man, he could see a the 'no' written all over him. The numbers simply spoke against it far too loudly. According to them, he'd be better off just tearing his own path down into the mountain.

Of course, according to them, the best way of dealing with this whole mess in its entirety was to turn it over to an HHe bomb, and yet he hadn't listened there. So maybe...

He gave a mental shrug. What did he really have to lose? He reached toward Pious and Altair and let his clawed finger dig more letters into the ground.

VYACHSLAV

KILL TOMB...

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

As Tomb's voice sounded, he looked in the direction of the closest speaker. The Insidium veins could try and mess with his senses all they wanted, but they were as sharp as ever, and he found the thing almost instantly, directing a good bit of attention to it.

True, normally he'd have directed his attention to the hologram, but the thick fog around the mountain hid it from view down here at its base. This was rather unfortunate (for him, that was) since if he'd known about it, there would've been a decent chance of tracking the origin of the transmission - and if it was live, right to the girl. He thus may not have known about the projection, but on the off chance she was really that careless...

He turned from the mine shaft and made his way to the speaker. While the chance was remote, and more than likely the music coming from the thing came from a recording that wasn't anywhere near Tomb, it was too good not to try. Carefully picking the little thing up between two sharp fingertips, he regarded the cables that ran out its bottom a moment. Then he began.

Regrettably, he didn't have the necessary skill to hut down a wired signal. Wireless was easy. A hard line? Not so much. Thankfully, he wasn't alone. He had someone - or rather something - that could do this for him.

Invisible to the human eye, a small number of machines no bigger than an angstrom made their way from the microscopic faults in his exoskeleton and into the speaker casing, floating swiftly to the contacts behind the magnet. From there, they attempted to hitch a ride the other way in the form of an electrical impulse. Normally, this would've worked without any possibility of failure, but Tomb was after all a supervillain, and she (or someone on her staff) might've been more clever than they were letting on...

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

Had he been able to chuckle, he probably would've. This little woman had courage, he had to give her that much. Not a lot of brains though, he thought. Personally, he didn't consider taunting someone who might consider you a light snack a good idea.

He didn't dwell on it, however. The present situation was good enough. He was here to kill someone, not make friends. Since writing an explanation in regard to there being more than enough room around him for her to simply walk past him was thus a waste of time in his opinion, he merely turned back in the direction of the four superhumans, etching another message into the ground before them.

PLEASE MOVE FROM LINE OF FIRE

The snapping clacks of his left arm's combi-cannon deploying once more gave a fairly decent indication of what he meant by that - especially once the heat the switch to thermocannon mode created could be seen in a shimmer about the artillery piece. He didn't aim it at the heroes though, waiting for them to move as he more closely analyzed the mine shaft ahead, gauging whether or not it was larger on the inside.

Perhaps large enough to accommodate his size without having to melt his way into the mountainside...?

Sector D5
Ye Olde Insidium Mine

While he didn't much care to admit it, Damsel's actions certainly surprised him, and not only that she stared down the barrel of his firearm as if she didn't believe he'd fire as soon as she began her whirling dance in the air.

Fortunately for her, she was right.

In fact, he didn't do much of anything throughout her routine, letting time pass by heedless of her motions. At least as far as the human eye was concerned, all he did was retract the combi-cannon, the artillery clacking back into his lower left arm in a heartbeat, locking seamlessly back into his exoskeleton, its upper plate contoured to mesh with the rough, asymmetric curves of his armor.

Thne the lightning struck him.

Nothing seemed to happen.

For a second or three, he merely stood there, hunched forward and smelling of ozone, wisps of dust and smoke from the bolts that had struck the ground wafting past and about him.

Then he extended a finger and began to etch something into the ground between Damsel and him.

Letters.

F A

They were large and uneven, but nevertheless clear and legible, the message he spelled facing toward the heroine to make it to read. It didn't take long to complete, spelling out two words in the soil and snow.

FARADAY CAGE...

((M'kay then, was gonna wait for more people to get a chance to post, but since nearly half of Saturday will pass for you guys while I'm sleeping on this side of the pond...))

He looked toward the bickerers, not certain whether to disregard or marvel at their ignorance. Energy-based? Alien warship? Ugly? Kill it? Weapon? Owns it? Had it been in his nature, he would've facepalmed. Had he been able, he would've told them he was standing right here and asked them if they knew he could hear them. Regrettably, neither was in the cards.

Not to mention the woman was already on the attack.

Normally, he probably wouldn't have minded getting into a fight, but right now Tomb occupied top spot on his beef list. This would have to be dealt with quickly. Thus he reacted with little thought, rising to his hind legs with much greater swiftness than his size let on, a proportional double-barreled artillery piece snapping from its storage compartment in his lower left arm. It locked back in with muzzles above his wrist - each easily a meter in diameter - aimed squarely at the approaching Damsel in an attempt to intimidate her into backing off.

If this didn't work, he wouldn't hesitate to fire, the combi-cannon already dialed in as a heavy paralyzer; a nonlethal, direct-fire energy weapon whose bolt could've laid out a raging bull elephant for a decent few hours. It directly affected the target's motoric musculature, leaving struck victims awake and fully aware, but utterly unable to move. Unfortunately, at least when dealing with 'tanker' type heroes and their related sorts, the weapon was often not quite so effective, dealing the target a sharp lash more akin to a psychic scream - a really, really vicious one, but not something that tended to knock the resilient types flat with just one application.

Good thing the weapon had dual barrels.

Regardless of whether or not he'd have to use it however, he attempted to analyze the incoming Damsel's basic capabilities, starting with the dancing lighting and what she intended to do with her fist there, and moving on from there in the direction of surface down.

What did he find?

And if all else failed...well, that black luster of his armored exoskeleton wasn't just for show. While it wasn't able to reflect attacks, it was fairly decent at deflecting them...

Well, I was more wondering if there was a ping or something or if it's just passive observation is all, so thanks, heh. Good to know. As for the moving part, I've noticed that, and I'd better clarify then: an individual impulse is just something a thinking creature has, like an overordered fingerprint. It doesn't have to be moving to be picked up. It does need a working brain, though - which I suspect Nightwalker doesn't have, being a mass of shadow and all.

Hey Techbot, quick question - what're your characters using to sense people? Is it an active sort of thing, like the scrying the Corporation's doing, or more just a passive deal?

Also - *pokes Thunderrar* - so did any/either of Pious' or my characters manage to catch Destroyer?

Sector A5

If he'd been able to frown, he would've. So much for the simple way - finding this Tomb person via tracking the location of the underground position that held the least number of people, i.e. the girl and the strongest of those she trusted to guard her. Instead, it seemed every human concentration of the island was practically teeming with people.

Well, he supposed that if it had been easy, someone would've already done the job. He'd just have to go looking up-close then.

Shifting his weight forward, he spread the black-lustered skeletal 'fingers' of his wings, then powered the projectors, fields of burning-orange energy flaring to life between their material supports, instantly vaporizing a few droplets of ocean spray that had come too close.

He performed one more self-check of all systems, then leaped from atop the ship's bridge and into the air, winging himself higher with powerful, yet somehow graceful strokes that quickly and efficiently carried him inland...
__________________

Sector D7

Love it!

Wait a sec, did I miss something? How did the feral vampires get past the mine field and pillboxes? I'm confused. <_<

Island North Shore

With nothing moving to get in the way, the unidentified vessel approaching from the NNW made swift progress toward the isle, seemingly ignorant of the passive defenses below the surface. Indeed, it didn't have much to worry about from the mines due to its nonmagnetic hull. Furthermore, even if someone decided to loose the mines to simply bump against its keel, the thick armor could simply shrug it off. There would be shaking of course, but it was an annoyance at best, not an actual threat.

On the bridge, the only living being aboard perched in thought at the curiosities observed through the craft's sensors as well as his own perception. It seemed he wasn't the only one who'd brought along some help. He wondered if the defenders on shore would be able to take down the zombies and feral vampires Lucard had deposited on the beach. They certainly had plenty of the proper hardware, and a small number of zombies going against a large number of bullets tended to concede victory to the flying lead. He wasn't too sure about the hunters, but if he were to go solely by logic, he'd have given this one to the island's defenders.

The attackers in the sky, though...well, actually he wasn't sure what to make of them, or whether to even call them that yet. There hadn't been any hostilities on their part, though whether that would remain was of course highly suspect. They were certainly of interest though, especially the one that he couldn't detect in the band humans liked to call visible light. A forward observer, perhaps? Or some kind of spy?

The latter wasn't too likely, the number of scrying beacons he detected popping up all over the island making first-hand observation redundant. True, there could've been more than one organization interested in covert observation, but the chances of it all fitting together like that came out of calculation as remote. In any case, he had other priorities at the moment.

The first was of course finding Tomb. Being unable to rely on telepathy around here would make that difficult. Fortunately, thoughts weren't the only thing that could be used to find someone directly. There were also individual impulses, commonly called double-Is. Un fortunately, he didn't have Tomb's double-Is. That meant the best he could do was sweep the whole island, plot the position of each person he found, and compare them to patterns and parameters in an effort to guess the most likely place she'd be. In short, the sweep's first result would be the largest concentrations of people in the island.

What did he find?

The second was actually an extension of the first. Tomb had a lab, and it was probably here. If it was, its location and layout would be most useful. Inside the mountain was both the most likely and unlikely spot at the same time, depending on who one asked, but it would've been where he'd sink a secret lab into the underground, so his scan for voids and hollows beneath the island's surface started there. Regrettably, it wasn't detailed enough to differentiate between materials, such as granite and steel, but he felt that finding the subterranean spaces and their distributions was a good enough result.

What did the scan reveal?

The third technically wasn't his. It was that of the ship. As it sailed into sector A5, the vessel began to project a field about the isle, the unseen sphere of energy enclosing the land and quite a bit of the surrounding sea. It wasn't solid though, presenting no hindrance to anyone wishing to pass through - at least not so long as the anyone was material. What it did present itself as an obstacle toward was teleportation, and a very specific kind at that: out of the area. Anyone who attempted to teleport away from the island would be violently hurled back to where they'd started. He didn't intend to leave Tomb any way to escape.

Naturally, this would also inhibit the functions of mediporters and such (if they worked this far away from Paragon City and the Rogue Isles in the first place, that was), but he didn't really worry about that. Just about every super-being he'd run into around here was far too 'badass' to take a defeat, and he was sure that the presence of the blockade field wouldn't change a thing in that respect.

Of course, none of this went to say that it made jumping off the island impossible - just very, very difficult. Anyone attempting a teleport away would have to get pretty clever if they wanted to succeed while the field was still up...