DeviousMe

Acid almost chortled. Almost. The temptation was strong. There was so much potential fun he could've had with those words. No. Now wasn't the time. He could jabber about welding rockets to buildings and make sexual innuendos about fire later. Right now there were more important things to worry about.

"Relax." he therefore merely returned Fox's glare with a casual smirk, raising both hands to shoulder height, palms open and turned toward the man to show they were empty, "I'm merely a historian. I just want a quote from him. Famous Last Words, if you will. And some details that didn't make it. We do like to educate our human servants in their histo-"

He didn't get any further than that as a bullet ripped through the fabric of his left pant leg and rammed into the hide beneath, kicking said leg out from under the scaleless reptilian and toppling him clean over with the transferred momentum. He hit the stage on his side, gravity rolling the Khelari over his shoulder and onto his back. Well, gravity in conjunction with the reflex of grabbing the injured leg with both hands. Oddly enough, just about any closer look would reveal that the leg's hide was unbroken.

"Sonova-!" Acid shouted loudly, vigorously rubbing the impact site that had assumed a somewhat purplish tint among the normal deep-green, "Right in the shin! I wasn't even doing anything, you inconsiderate jerk! Do you have any idea how much that stings...?!"

Happy Conspiracy Day!

Wait...I wasn't supposed to reveal that. >_> Um...hey look, a sign. It says happy mothers' day and thanks to all moms for putting all that unconditional love and hard work into raising us.

Up in the rafters, Acid took a deep breath. Here went nothing. He only hoped he'd analyzed the situation correctly - or rather that SENECA had come to the right conclusion. Even intelligence grown from machines tended to make mistakes every now and then.

Giving himself a shove, the scaleless reptilian leaped from the roof truss with hands outstretched, clawed fingers nabbing an I-beam that supported a wall nearby, and used the resulting friction to flow his descent and allow the soles of his boots to make contact with the steel. After that, sliding down the thing was a relatively simple matter, giving him just enough momentum upon jumping off the thing to end up next to Fox and Soap Box.

The hero may well have heard him coming, but the Khelari didn't much care. As he stood from the crouch with which he'd ended the drop, he did away with the deflector field, his form peeling itself out of thin air like some kind of phantom that had opted to become manifest. His alien visage, already hard to read for many a human in its foreign nature, betrayed no emotion, and the reptilian's slitted, icy-gray eyes looked upon Soap Box with a cold, calculating intelligence that only further amplified the vicious undertone of the Khelari's predatory appearance.

"For him maybe." he stated coolly, referring to Fox's remark of moving somewhere safer being a good idea, "For Humanity First? No. Sorry, Mister..."

A bemused, toothy smirk appeared upon his lips, a single chuckle let out upon the moniker, "Heh...Mister Soap Box. Today was the day you died for your cause. The day you all did. Don't be afraid. Thanks to your noble sacrifices, Humanity First was able to do so very much. No more metas, Mister Soap Box. Everything you ever wanted. Your death made it possible."

He spoke calmly, stood laxly, and was visibly unarmed. Still, he knew better than to just stand here and talk. That got people punched, stabbed, zapped, and so many other things. No, despite his relaxed and seemingly disregardful posture, Acid was prepared to throw up a field of force at any given instant to protect himself - or block the closest exit Soap Box might've wished to escape through. It was a gamble. The stakes were high. But if he won now, it'd all be worth it...

((Probably not, heh. I'd say they'd toss him into the same bin as Steve. ))

A spasm ran down Akat's body in reaction to the mending forces, her physiology not used to such sudden changes. There didn't seem to be any truly adverse reaction though, and it didn't take long at all for the Khelari to blink in confusion, wondering why she was lying on her back in a trough, covered with soil and ashes.

"Oh, right." she commented with an unworried smile and a spunkily raised finger, "Rule number one of demolitions: beware low-flying target parts."

"Looks like it was plenty." Jade couldn't help but smirk at that, Akat shooing Disys' hand away with quick motions of her own before she jumped up and started to shake like a dog, sending dirt and dust off in every direction.

"Mhm." the Khelari's smile grew wider for a moment, her eyes happily closed for roughly the same short duration as she stood upright again, head turned toward the satyr-like mechanoid, "Thanks very much. To both of you. I feel great. Where'd the flying digger imitation go?"

Jade regarded her with skepsis for a second, wondering what he was supposed to have done to help (not realizing she meant the forest), and as a result the latter words only sank in gradually, "Fly...oh! Uhm..."

He looked to Lady Aineruda, "Right. Where did it go? We have to go after it! The little machine-dude, I mean Toy Dispenser, he's still on it, isn't he? Yeah, he is! We...we have to go rescue him!"

"Can you find out where it went?" he asked Bisys, remembering her words from earlier, "Oh uh, or better yet, can you bring Toy back to us? I mean just him, not the Harvester too."

It was a valid concern. Even damaged as it was, the Harvester was still a force to be reckoned with. Thankfully, this did not apply to Toy, who of course received no response from the machine anymore. Indeed, it was doubtful that it even still perceived him, hovering there so listlessly...and actually, quite peacefully. Auto-extinguishers had taken care of the fire on its rear, and the energy field that kept it aloft made barely a sound as it turned the monolith onto its new course, commanded by its controlling programs' switch to maintenance mode.

While this didn't mean it was now defenseless - it was still operating in a designated hostile environment, after all - it certainly wouldn't be attacking anything without provocation, and thus from this particular machine, the forest of the elves was currently safe. Whether or not the same applied to the bright-white aura of light in the cloudy sky that fast approached from over the horizon, however, was another question entirely.

It passed far overhead the Harvester in mere moments, and was visible from the forest soon after, breaking through the clouds as an orange streak that rapidly descended from the vaporous ceiling...

Acid frowned as the mayhem began early. So much for Plan A. Good thing he had a Plan B. Well okay, actually he didn't but if anyone would've spoken to him a superpower, it would've been that of the immediate adapter.

He spent a few instants identifying useful elements. Cameras. Microphones. Civilians. Robots. The Chief. Fox. Wolf. Vix...

Chimera.

All useful, but with varying degrees of risk and efficiency. In addition, most would do what he wanted if he just left them alone. News crews tended to have this annoying habit of sticking around no matter how many times one told them to get lost, so the cameras would probably keep going until things really out out of hand. Same thing with the heroes. They always did their thing.

The real problem were the wild cards. The young blonde. The guy headbutting the cop. The...sensor sweep? He tapped the claws of two fingers against the small display of his 'watch'. Nope, not broken. Sure enough, something was scanning the building from outside, trying to lock on to something. Well now. How interesting. Unfortunately, he had no way of telling if it was useful or a problem right now, and he couldn't risk revealing the ace up his sleeve this early.

You sure?

He scowled. Telepaths. Well, at least this one knew to keep their 'conversations' stealthy enough to deny others the opportunity to eavesdrop.

Yeah, I'm sure. You just be ready. If this goes bad, I'm gonna need you here reeeal quick-like.

He would, too. The new plan was risky...and maybe just a bit silly. But it had potential. So until he thought of something better, he'd go for that. For Soap Box. Or more specifically, the area of the rafters right above the man, moving quickly, yet cautiously through the mess of metal...

Interestingly enough, a show may well have already begun. Well, to Lady Peppermint at least, for she might've quickly discovered that she wasn't the only one sitting in the rafters. Of course, at an event like this, that in itself was somewhat normal. What wasn't was what gave the other presence away.

Not too far from her spot, yet still at a somewhat decent distance, crouched a creature that had much in common with a bipedal reptilian, yet just as much in direct antithesis thereto. had he been standing, the Khelari would've been at around two meters, a slim and lanky build that looked almost worrisomely frail. His proportions about followed those of a human, arms and legs, as well as plantigrade feet at stretched, yet comfortable lengths for his slim build, and the claws at the end of his long, skinny fingers looked to be more akin to fingernails than hooked talons or some-such.

His head and long, whiplike tail were of course exceptions, harkening to the reptilian with their semblance of velociraptor-, or perhaps deinonychus-like physiology, but the utter lack of scales on his leathery, deep-green hide tossed that comparison summarily out the window just as the rest did the human. No, this creature was neither a mixture nor a hybrid, but something entirely different and not of this world. In the simplest of terms terms, he was an alien, despite his choice of clothing looking rather terrestrial: a pair of black cargo pants and work boots, an open leather jacket in the fashion of a biker, and a simple white T-shirt under that. That was it. Not elegant, not fancy, but functional.

Not that the crowd below saw any of this. The Khelari was of course invisible. Otherwise he'd never have gotten in here. Actually, by critical logic, being unseen alone wasn't enough for that. There was something more going on here. More than met the eye, and in a very literal fashion - for though his deflector kept most of the electomagnetic spectrum off him and he didn't carry a unique scent, it still didn't guard against things like particulates or echolocation.

Or being a loudmouth.

"For pity's sake, they're Clockwork." he whispered out with just a tad too much volume, "Just leave 'em alone and they'll go away. That's what they do. Yes, I'm sure. Look, just stay where you are and quit pokin' me. It's about to start."

His voice sounded with not much difference to the average young human male, despite the ridiculous number of small, sharp teeth that lines his jaws, and if Lady Peppermint had the means to locate and query his identity from any number of records, getting his name and public profile would be a simple matter: Acid Zero, a small-time crook from the Rogue Isles. Longbow had some kind of hate for the guy, recommending caution and maximum firepower, but Arachnos and others didn't regard him as much more than a little fish in a big pond. Just what someone like that was doing here, not to mention who it was that he was talking to, was at this point truly anyone's guess...

For a few moments, Jade didn't really know what to say to Bisys. He was a Drokar. A Dragon. It was instinct. His people protected those around them. That was the way it had always been, and even the abuse heaped upon him by growing up on Hetran and inflicted upon him by himself had only suppressed those instincts, not weeded them out.

"Okay." he said in a curt fashion with just as quick a nod as he stood again with a hand reached down to help Bisys up, knowing time was of the essence now, already looking over to where Akat had crouched and the blade was now, his gaze passing Lady Aineruda along the way, "Mh? Oh uh, yeah, I'm fine."

It was a quick and reflexive answer, given without due examination, but thankfully it was nevertheless true. While not equivalent to heavy armor or such, Jade's microscales did provide him with some protection from harm and had more than adequately shielded him from the shivers that had decided to perforate (and often stick in) his sleeveless leather jacket and pants, turning the formerly solid-black outfit into a strange mixture of blacks and browns.

"Sorry." he told Bisys upon getting her off the ground, glancing to the half-burued engine piece with concern, "C'mon, help me get this off of..."

"...her." he barely had time to finish before the gnome had already done just that, revealing the Khelari on her back at the bottom of the impact crater, the robe she'd worn burnt to ashes and a thick, purplish-blue discoloration of her deep-green hide running diagonally across her torso. It started at her upper right shoulder and ended just below her left hip, a blotched, semi-jagged line between the endpoints.

Her hide itself was unbroken, making the injury technically a bruise - internal bleeding from crushed and burst vessels in the musculature below the skin. Still, it looked (and felt) like all hell, and had Akat been coherent at that point, she'd have sworn at least two of the bone plates that Khelari had where a human's ribs would've been had been shattered into a zillion pieces. As a result, it was perhaps lucky that she wasn't.

"Hey there, everybody..." she almost slurred drunkenly, eyes moving independently of one another as the natural and artificial lenses tussled over which way to look in order to fix her presently blurry sight, "Come here often? Hee hee hee...anyone catch where that pod went? Oh aren't you pretty..."

Even the most superficial examination would reveal she'd not sustained any life-threatening or truly debilitating injuries. The sharp edge of the engine blade had been repelled by her highly resilient hide. Unfortunately, Khelari hide didn't have much in the way of mitigative properties regarding sheer blunt force trauma. She'd had the wind knocked out of her - and then some - and she'd be in a lot of pain once she regained her presence of mind. For now though, she was more or less okay, at least regarding what had hit her.

"Can you help her?" Jade meanwhile asked of Bisys with concern, having no idea of Khelari physiology, not to mention virtually no understanding of medicine, "I mean...would you please help her?"

Toy Dispenser meanwhile wasn't nearly as fortunate, the Harvester's efforts to rid itself of the 'source of foreign signal' not deterred by the sudden relocation in the least. Even more dangerous was that the machine didn't really have any blind spots on the outside. Its capture arms could very much reach every part of its exterior with ease - and there were six of them. Worse yet, the monolith once more had full sensor capability, which allowed it to focus said reaching in a coordinated fashion, eliminating the possibility of getting its claws tangled as it reached for the android.

Well, assuming he was still projecting his EM interference to jam the machine's communications. If Toy did not, the Harvester's objective (neutralization of the source) had technically been accomplished, and until the mechanoid took further action against the machine, it wouldn't take much notice of him. After all, he was by definition a machine as well, which by default put him on the Harvester's 'side'. The monolith's programming wasn't smart enough to hold a grudge, so to speak.

If he was still actively jamming though, the Harvester would soon activate the next subset of its defenses. Scanning deeply as they were, Toy's sensors would be hard-pressed to miss the turrets embedded in the machine's thick armor gradually (in machine terms) coming online...

Oh snap, I thought this had been an in-character thing until I dropped in to read this! Congratulations, you two! I wish yalls a long and happy one and that neither of ya ever has to spend a day without the other.

If one spoke feelings to the Harvester, its reaction to Toy's run up its leg could've been called spiteful. Surprises it may not have had embedded in that limb, but it did have a logical and very predictable response.

Swinging the arm.

Unless Toy's boots could attach him very firmly to the metal, the speedy swing - quite uncharacteristic of the mass of the arm - would fling him into the distance in the manner a human threw a baseball. If that didn't work, the limb behind this one was already in pursuit of the android, stretching its grapplers toward him to nab, crush, or toss the mechanical being to the ground. Fortunately for Toy, the elven darkness impeding its targeting systems didn't make its grip too reliable right now.

Other than that, the gargantuan machine didn't show much response, continuing to descend into the forest, course toward Jade. The splintering of wood could be heard just barely through the roar of its massive turbines, trees bursting to shivers under the pressure of the machine. It utterly ignored the cake and its occupant (its job description regarding humans was to report their location, and it had already done so for these two earlier; no need to repeat an action it knew had already yielded the desired result), the in comparison tiny gun barrels of the auto turret unable to harm it, and though Ildela's blades did indeed cut easily into the claws' material, they ran into much the same problem: size. The thing was just damn big, and so was everything on it. She'd have to cut away at that claw for quite a long time before she got the 'fang' away from it. All in all, it seemed the Harvester greatly had the upper hand here.

Until its left engine exploded.

Dr. Mechano's nanites had gone for the easiest atomic particles to move around: the shaft lubricant. And without that, the turbine was history. It failed catastrophically, overheating and seizing up in a matter of seconds, its insane rotational velocity becoming its own doom. From there, it took less than a tenth of a second for the couplings to fail and the whole thing to tear itself to pieces, red-, yellow-, and sometimes white-hot pieces of shrapnel (formerly turbine and compressor blades the size of minivans) bursting their way through the engine casing and ripping it to shreds in a gout of smoke and flame. The sound was deafening, like the clap of thunder caused by a lightning strike not a meter away, and the flash of light had barely subsided when the pieces came down.

"Look out!" Jade barely had time to scream and grab-tackle Bisys out of the way as a red-hot compressor blade sliced its way vertically through the meters-thick trunk of the tree he'd chosen for over, leaping it her with arms extended and wrapping himself protectively about her not two instants before the car-sized blade fragment burst from the wood in a hail of shivers.

And smacked right into Akat.

The roar of dirt and debris thrown up by the fragment's impact suffocated and squelched out her shout of surprise and fear in a fraction of a second, earth and pebbles tossed ahigh and afar as the piece dug its impact crater several deep meters into the ground.

The Harvester itself was of course worst-affected, bobbing and swaying in an unstable fashion, yawing heavily as a result of the suddenly very unequal thrust coming from its rear, where molten slag and sharp blade fragments jutting from its armor now dominated the machine. It couldn't feel panic of course, but it must've very much appeared so, trying seemingly frantically to escape the wormhole to no avail. With just one main engine, it simply didn't have the propulsion required anymore, and was thus disposed of by the elven magic, sent away to distant parts...
__________________

Paragon City Hall

Hectic.

That was the word that summed it all up. People were running, jogging, leaping, jumping, and balancing stacks of papers anywhere and everywhere up and down the corridors of City Hall. Understandable, really. The city was in a crisis, even though few of its people had realized that yet. Thankfully, this was still Paragon. The city was always in a crisis. The only thing that really varied over time was the severity thereof. Plans had been made, revised, enacted, evaluated, reevaluated, reenacted, and so on and so forth, for as long as there was red tape to go around.

Now, however, it seemed to be running out.

"Raymond...just how much can we really rely on this Blackwind of yours?" Statesman said with a sigh from his chair at the long conference table, massaging his forehead with the fingers of one had. He didn't even know how long he - how long they; nearly the whole Freedom Phalanx - had been here in this dimmed room now, watching over and over the material Positron had presented to them via the table's holographic projector.

In essence, it wasn't much. Coordinates, layouts, images, and so on that Jade had taken and periodically sent to the techno-armored scientist in the form of databursts. A map of Rauk was among them, as were topographic reliefs of where the formerly robotic Dragon had ventured to. Presently, the projector showed the eleven forest's relative location to Paragon's present position, along with a small red blip that indicated the position from which Jade had sent the databurst - the hot springs.

"Look, I'm not saying we should rely on him wholly." Positron replied wearily, pointing to that blip, "But he may very well be the only one around who knows what's happening around us, so I think we should listen to him."

"Everyone behind the war walls..." Sister Psyche rested her head in her hands, elbows on the table and fingers spread about her eyes, tips in contact with her cheeks and forehead, repeating those words.

"Yes, everyone." the armored Keyes intoned with another nod, "According to Blackwind, so long as those machines don't find any humans or others from his planet, they will leave us be. That buys us valuable time we can use to figure a way out of this mess. Furthermore..."

They were tired. They were spent. Time took its toll upon them all. If a certain vampire happened to be eavesdropping through an ever-so-slightly cracked door, chances were even Manticore and Sister Psyche wouldn't have noticed...

I just say my 'bullet-vulnerable' characters wear super-suits by Edna Mode.

Those with some imagination may very well have seen a crisp and clear exclamation point pop into existence above Jade's head upon taking note of Bisys, the Dragon quickly nabbing the metal satyr and zipping behind a thick tree with her in tow.

"Hurt?" he ran through what she'd said in his head again, trying to shoo away the convoluted thoughts her words had fallen into, "Um, uh...no. I'm fine. Well, feeling kind of dumb, but no, I'm okay."

He looked back to the Harvester, spying around the tree at the building-sized machine. Feeling dumb indeed. What had he been thinking? Now what? Without his energy artillery, he didn't stand a chance of putting so much as a hole in this thing - and to his great chagrin, it didn't look the others did either. If the Harvester even took note of all the destructive energies being heaped upon it, the floating beetle-warehouse certainly wasn't showing any evidence thereof.

Unfortunately, this was a rather accurate indication of the truth. The thing was just too big, its armor - the material properties of which were already impressive - meters thick. Steve's radiation-induced in one spot did weaken the stuff, but not enough to make much of a difference. Much the same applies to Mar's webbing. The turbine intakes alone were each bigger than a house. Even if they'd been running (at present, the monolith maintained altitude with and received propulsion from its unseen energy field), it was doubtful the web would've accomplished much.

Of course, that didn't go to say the machine hadn't noticed anything.

ERROR
AMBIENT ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE IS AFFECTING COMMUNICATIONS
FOREIGN SIGNAL DETECTED
ANALYSIS VERDICT: COMMUNICATIONS ADVERSELY AFFECTED BY FOREIGN SIGNAL

SEARCH MODE
[LOCATE SOURCE OF SIGNAL]

SOURCE OF SIGNAL FOUND
MODE CHANGE

MAINTENANCE MODE
[INCREASE SPEED]
ANALYZING ALTERNATIVES
[INCREASE TRANSMITTER POWER]
[NEUTRALIZE FOREIGN SIGNAL]
[RESET_

PRIMARY DIRECTIVE OVERRIDE
TARGET DETECTED: DROKAR
MODE CHANGE

CAPTURE MODE
[NEUTRALIZE FOREIGN SIGNAL]_

Even as Toy and the cake were on their way up a tree, the Harvester had already taken action. Power surged through its insides, preparing the works in its 'guts', and the mechanical monstrosity changed its slow, lumbering course in the direction of the Dragon peeking out from behind the tree down below. While this in itself made the android's plan to get on top of the machine easier (previously, it had been hovering above the treeline, and climbing a tree would get one near its underside at best) as it began to descent into the forest proper, the Harvester's other actions certainly did not.

Not only did the machine now deploy six large 'legs' from its sides and ventral body, the large, flexible appendages each terminating in vicious-looking clamps and claws, not to mention several bright-red-glowing lenses, but the behemoth also electrified itself with some sort of lightning field, the charge of which of course carried and radiated in proximity to the capture legs. Being caught in one of those things' shocking grasp now might not have been fatal, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant - and at least one seemed to have it out for Toy, deploying numerous smaller grappling arms in his direction even as the main claws swept toward him.

Thankfully, the Harvester's reactions were a little delayed right now due to Cerelassion's dark gas making it hard for the machine to get an exact fix on its targets. Just how long that would hold out against the thing's sheer amount of raw processing power, however, was anyone's guess.

Akat for one guessed 'not long', looking upon the descending monolith with concern. No way she could take that on with claws and teeth. She needed more. Leaping behind the same tree that Jade had chosen as cover for Bisys and himself, she gripped the crystal hanging from her neck with one hand and laid the palm of her other flat against the moist soil of the forest. Then she closed her eyes and concentrated.

The call was sounded...

Dr. Mechano's round found its target with a truly vicious collision, a large cone of fine, dusty shrapnel billowing from the impact site as the shell embedded itself in the Harvester's armor. Unfortunately, that seemed to be about it. If the man peered closely enough through his scope, he'd likely be able to see the crater it had left.

If he could find it among the hundreds of others.

By human standards, the Harvester was ancient. Weather and combat alike had turned its once smoothly curved shell of armor into mottled, pockmarked, dent-ridden hill country, so to speak, the machine having taken everything from a centuries' worth of environmental assault to the impacts of heavy ballistic artillery. All of it had left its mark. Unfortunately, nothing had impeded its function. The machine was still just as operational as the day it had been activated.

However, the doctor's close observance did yield something else: the characteristic grooves of a pair of presently-closed gates around the thing's front, just below the beetle-like 'head'. In addition, it wasn't too hard to spot the large gouges in and discoloration upon the metal surrounding, and especially below them.

Claw marks and coagulated blood.

Dr. Mechano had discovered the Harvester's intake ports. It seemed the machine hadn't found anything to 'harvest' for some time now. Unfortunately, that was about to change.

Back at the elves' cliffside shelter, Jade's visage assumed a grim determination as he charged after Toy, Kethara, and Cerelassion, staying on foot to make himself more difficult to detect. He knew the machines preferred the air, and thus he'd stick to the ground. For now.

"C'mon." Akat didn't seem to have taken on any of this grimness as she gently tugged at Bisys' shoulder after jumping up, her intention to follow to the site of Dr. Mechano's camp as well, "Let's go see if we can help."

She didn't really know if they'd be able to, or even if she should, but what she did have was a feeling - and Khelari listened to their feelings. Luckily. For at about the time Jade arrived within sight of the Harvester, standing there with a fist pointed at it at the end of an outstretched arm, he realized they'd need all the help he could get.

No more arm cannon.

"Aw spit..." he muttered with gnashed teeth...

Dr. Mechano's Camp

Mar did indeed sense the Harvester's approach - but by then, it was already too late. The gargantuan machine had detected the collection of organics lifeforms, and its sensors focused in on the area, taking stock of what they 'saw'. Granted, the Harvester wasn't too smart in that regard, promptly tossing Mar and Mr. Fluffers into the 'disregard' bin and Steve into the '?' partition, but in the end that didn't really matter. There was at least one human in that group.

And that it recognized.

Even as the massive mechanical monstrosity hovered its way gradually over the local treetops, its databurst was received half a world away. In less than half a second, it was processed, and in a dark hangar of blank, gray metal, the machine roughly the size of a small attack helicopter came to life. Crimson-tinged lenses were the first to come online, and then the hangar machinery followed, lights snapping active to bathe the machine in an eerie white glow.

A few seconds later, the three powerful, compact jet engines - mounted on a pair of fuselage winglets and in a tail sconce - howled to mechanical life. Though they weren't what kept the machine aloft (an unseen field of energy did that job), they were free to pivot with several degrees of freedom, giving the aircraft the exceptional speed that only moments later launched the engine of death and destruction out into the cloudy, storm-torn skies of the Desert...
__________________

Cliffside Shelter

"Maybe." the Dragon answered Cerelassion absent-mindedly as he undid the latches of his left boot, having finally reached the decision that walking around with just one was somewhat silly, "I don't really remember where I was anymore at the time. I guess that was one good thing about having a computer for a brain."

He spoke those last words with a hint of a smile, looking at and wiggling the clawed toes of his large, digitigrade feet after removing the boot, warming their velvet-brown microscale hide by the fire, "Might've been close to Rauk. And okay. Let's give it a try."

Turning toward Bisys, the way he looked to her made it clear that the last part of that response had been directed chiefly at her. He didn't like making her grant wishes. It felt...like he was ordering her around, subjugating her. It felt wrong. Still, at least in this case, he saw the point in it. She didn't know either, so it had to come down to trial and error. he accepted that. But he sure didn't like it.

"Bisys, I wish for you to know if you would be harmed by magical artifacts." he repeated Cerelassion's words as closely as he could, "And it's okay, please...um, I mean I wish that only...grant those wishes of me that I tell you from now on."

Akat meanwhile simply regarded the scene with silent curiosity. Things sure were weird around here. Maybe she should call a runner after all. Then she could go see her own master and drag him over here. The more she thought about it, the better the idea of hopping back and kidnapping an elder started to look...
__________________

Paragon City

Elizabeth may well have been surprised once more just a few scant seconds later, a pair of heroes joining the tram on its way out of Salamanca. One in a techno-suit with rocket boots, the other surrounded by swirls of arcane flame that kept him aloft, the two very different individuals at present had the same job: make sure people got out of Croatoa in once piece.

True, the deadly machines the Freedom Phalanx had warned the city of hadn't made an appearance yet, but the mayor and his advisors had very much agreed with the hero community that if there was truth to this, Paragon's citizens would be safest behind the closed gates of its war walls. To that end, the outlying regions were gradually being evacuated. At the moment, most people were still packing their belongings and only coming in one by one, but within the next few days, that was quite likely to change.

Especially if the machines showed up.

This was the primary reason for the hero escort - and chances were these two weren't alone. All over the city, its defenders had positioned themselves to keep watch, standing vigilantly along the city's outskirts, alert for trouble, especially here. There was good reason for this too, for the train like that connected Salamanca Station to the rest of the Green Line ran right through a portion of the bleak, gray ruins of Rauk. Just why this was so no one could say, but when Jade had informed Positron of this earlier, he'd not left out the dangerous nature of the place.

Like the dust storms.

Dirt and debris suddenly prattled against the windows of the tram, shaking the car violently and causing the lights to flicker. The wind speed wasn't anywhere near what it had been in the earlier one though, and the neither the vehicle nor its escort were in any serious danger. Still, it may well have been rather unsettling...

Jade looked into the flames again at Cerelassion's suggestion, letting out a light sigh before slowly replying, "I...I'd rather not. I know I didn't cause-cause it, but..."

He turned his head to look toward the elder elf, "Look, I'm just not real up to going around...going around broken people right now. I'd rather just go with, um...Toy Dispenser's plan. And yeah, let's wait for everyone to get back. Harvesters are pretty dangerous. If you're not something they want, they'll call a hunter-killer flight down on you."

"Hunter-killer flight?" Akat questioned at this, looking confused as she lay there, head and shoulders raised up and supported by her elbows, the tip of her tail ticking lazily to and fro in the fashion of a metronome, "What's that?"

"The um...bombers they were talking about earlier." the Dragon indicated Cerelassion, "They're pretty heavily armed, so...yeah, not something that's fun to run into. I don't think they'll stand up well to a bunch of superheroes...I mean people from Paragon and such. So long as we're careful at least, heh..."

((Neat. Thanks for the tip. And welcome aboard.))

The Desert

It didn't have much of a job. Look for useful things. That was about it. Not that it cared. It couldn't, after all. That's just the way it had been designed: to serve its function. Its physical form stood no different. A large container formed the centerpiece of the almost beetle-like monstrosity, the many crimson lenses on both its 'head' and capture legs seeming to cast truly vicious glances all about them as the building-sized machine floated listlessly a few meters in the air above the Desert's dusty, cragged rocks, spotlights lazily probing the area to see if they could stir up any noticeable motion.

It did it day-in, it did it day-out. It was a Harvester. A mighty monolith of metal and machinery with a deceptively simple purpose: look for useful things. So that's what it did. Always. Because that was its job.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

UNIDENTIFIED THERMAL SIGNATURE

SEARCH MODE
[CHANGE COURSE]
ANALYZING ALTERNATIVES
[INCREASE SPEED]
[INCREASE SENSOR POWER]
[RELAY SIGNATURE COORDINATES]
[IGNORE]

ERROR
ATMOSPHERIC INTERFERENCE PREVENTING SIGNAL LOCK
INTERFERENCE IDENTIFIED: ION STORM TYPE 4
ANALYSIS VERDICT: RELAY SIGNATURE COORDINATES OPTION NOT VIABLE

SEARCH MODE
[CHANGE COURSE]_

Millions of computations in a fraction of a second, all just to yield that one result. A human designer might've called it wasted potential. The Harvester didn't call it anything at all. It merely changed course. It had found something. Now it was time to determine if it was useful.

And so it floated gradually toward a forest. Toward a fire. Toward a human, a Shivan, and a pair of very different spiders...
__________________

Cliffside Shelter

"Probably not." Jade answered Cerelassion tonelessly, "But if there's one thing I've learned in Paragon, it's that you can't let evil have its way, no matter the odds, and even if people don't appreciate you for it. I made that mistake once. I'm not going to do it again."

"Um..." Akat finally spoke up again after the Dragon had said this, the scaleless reptilian stretching like a cat along the ground, still enjoying the soft fabric of her new robe, "I don't mean to poke you out of it, but...it sounds like this thing's a program. So software. How are you planning to find something like that?"

At that Jade grew very quiet, looking at her with unhappily embarrassed eyes. She was right. He hadn't really thought of that one...

Negativeman? >_>

Jade didn't reply right away, only sitting there in silence, staring into the flickering flames of the elves' fire. He almost thought he could see people and places from the past within...and perhaps he could. He was a Dragon, after all. There was a little magic left in him yet.

"Yeah..." he finally spoke, eyes rising again, "What do I want to do? What I should've done in the first place. I want to end this thing. I want to kill it. It's made this place a dead zone for long enough."

He looked to Cerelassion, "You said there were humans from Hetran here. I'd like you to tell them something. I'd like you to tell them them Rauk isn't going to be dead for much longer..."

Argh...so many. I think I got the biggest kick out of the beefcake calendar project, though. That was just funny.

Awesome, haha. Looks like you got the perfect present then. Happy Birthday from me as well.

"Uhhh, no." Jade's answer came in an anxious tone, and he had to take a few seconds and another deep breath to somewhat mellow himself out again. What had happened in the past was painful. He didn't like thinking on it, much less talk about it. He let out a sigh, "Maybe I'd better just start over at the beginning."

"I'm from Jorunn City." he started to explain, "That used to sit just across the plains from Rauk, one of the biggest Hetrar cities. And yeah, Hetrar are basically humans. Except for the expanded paranoia, there's not much difference. Basically, it all started before I was even born, when the Drokar, my people, wanted to leave the planet, Hetran. The humans didn't want that. There were legends about some great, big evil thing that had chased our ancestors through space until they finally found Hetran to hide on. As in who-knows-how-many thousands of years ago. No one really knew if it was true or not, but it didn't really matter. The humans believed it, and they said that if we left, it'd find us and come back to Hetran to go after them and the other species too. So they stopped us. I wasn't around yet at the time, so I don't really know how everything happened at first, but when I was growing up..."

He paused a moment, exhaling through his nostrils, then went on, "It got bad. Real bad. My people...Drokar don't like being tied down. We can't live like that. Not for long, anyway. There were...um, if it's okay with you guys, I don't really want to talk about this part. We did a lot of bad things. So did I. Anyhow, machines. No, they weren't distrustful of machines. They didn't trust us was what was the problem. So when they eventually found out there was a machine-Dragon around who could pretty much punch through anything they had...yeah, they got scared. Of what we...of what the Guardian...of what I might do. So they built their own, um, 'me' I guess. In software, at least. To defend them if I decided to do something. Well, problem was they did too good a job. Their Guardian was so smart it could protect them better than their own people. It took control of their weapons, their vehicles, their whole military."

"And that absolutely scared them witless." Jade said with another sigh, "So they tried to turn it off. To kill it, basically. That's what started the war. Or rather the slaughter. With all their stuff under its control, they didn't have much of a chance. Then it came after the other species. With us Drokar being the second-highest population, we were the first logical choice. I still remember the first time I was just sitting on a building and saw this giant army of, well, vehicles coming toward Jorunn City...and then they just started killing people. At time time, none of us even knew they were machines. We kind of all thought the humans had just finally snapped and gone completely insane. It was only when we saw there were no pilots that we started to get the picture. We beat them back, though."

"We beat them back hard." he smiled a little at this, "I heard some of the other species did too. In the end though, it didn't really matter. It turned to organic people versus machines. At first, it looked like we'd win. But then it started doing...doing something horrible. It started making machines out of people. Especially Drokar. It'd catch them, cut them up, rip out what made them..."

"Alive..." he forced out with a sob, trying in vain to keep tears from escaping his eyes by squeezing them shut, "...and then used them...used them to kill everybody, even those who used to be their friends. That's when they turned on me too. I mean, they didn't really like me before, being a machine and all, and they didn't let me in anywhere...but that's when they started shooting at me too. Eventually, I just...stopped. I couldn't take it anymore. My friends were dead, my family...everybody...so I just...I just holed up and didn't really come out anymore. And then one day, a Harvester came and, I guess exploded in a weird way or something, because the next thing I knew I fell down a hole and was in Paragon City's sewer pipes..."

Akat blinked. That...hadn't really answered her question. But a fire had been started, and it looked like they were about to be told another story. Far be it from her to want to interrupt such, so she merely lay down on her side by the flickering flames with an excited smile, eager to listen.

"I can do that?" Jade meanwhile inquired, starting the sentence with his eyes on Cerelassion and ending it with his head turned to look at Bisys, "Can I do that?"

As a result, he noted she'd knelt down before him again, and thus he reached down to her hands and gave them a gentle tug toward his person. In repetition of the very same situation back when he'd been metal and she'd been flesh, he asked of her with sincere eyes, "Please...don't do that. I...it makes me uncomfortable. Unless, I guess, you really want to...but...oh boy, listen to me yammer. Anyway, uh...yeah, can I do that? And would you want me to?"

If the answers to these questions fell positive then, he'd have no second thoughts about making that wish. If not, he'd of course refrain. He didn't want to push anything else on her that she wasn't sure about right now. Regardless of which result said answer brought however, the Dragon followed it up by gently guiding her over to the fire while he started to explain.

"No, I'm not from Paragon." was the first thing he said, and with a shake of his head, "I'm from here. Well, out there...sort of. I am from the same planet. That place that you call the Waste there? That used to be Rauk; a wide, green plain. I know this because, well, I was there when it turned into that dust sea. And...in a way, I was kind of the reason."

"See, when I was made," he took a deep breath, "made into a machine I mean, that's when it all started. I thought I'd destroyed the lab, I thought I'd stopped it when I...when I killed them...but I guess somehow something got out. And then when the news started showing pictures of me, the Hetrar, I mean the humans, they got scared of me. Well, more scared than they already were. Um, not of me, I mean. Of...aw man, I'm not making any kind of sense here, am I...?"

*shrug*

Personally, my opinion is this: it's a superhero game. Emphasis on super. Characters should be slinging around phenomenal cosmic power, whether in the form of orbital rail guns, turning all matter to cheese, or whatever else their creators can come up with. So if your character could theoretically destroy the world with it, fine. Just don't forget that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other people around who can do the same thing (and conversely the same number of people whose capabilities would save the word instead), so there'll always be someone around to stop you.

Okay, so I'll admit this approach isn't perfect, especially when you run into people who will utterly disregard this and insist their character is so powerful that nothing else can overcome their abilities - or you bump into the complete other side of the spectrum and find the 'average human superhero' whose only powers are a fancy gun and five million tons of raw grit, and whose player insists that's enough to defeat any super-powered opponent...without having a plan. Then things can get a little prickly. Thankfully, that doesn't happen too often. In general, people tend to have enough common sense to know that in a world full of supers, theirs isn't more super than anyone else because, well, everyone's super.

"Akat-Ietan Ariam'n." the Khelari told Bisys after they'd gotten out of the rain, shaking off the water that had gotten on her in just about the same manner a god would employ, then looked to her again, "But you can just call me Akat. Everyone does. So you're Bisys now, huh? How come? I liked the sound of Trisys better."

Jade dried himself in much the same fashion, though he stayed upright and shook more quickly, a flap of his wings serving to get the worst of it off him (except for what stayed in his long, wet hair, of course), and gave a sigh as he looked back outside at the downpour. It was probably about time he told them.

"Guess now's as good a time as any." he mumbled and turned to the gathered group, feeling a little awkward, but knowing he should, "Hey guys...um, about that story earlier. I'm afraid you got a few things wrong. It wasn't a city. Not all of it, at least. And it didn't turn on them. It was the other way around..."