Ineffable

((You're telling ME?

Alright people, I will admit up to this point that the RP story has been fairly inflexible. That ends now. Why? Because the certain actions I needed to take place have now happened, and therefore, anything that happens afterwards is irrelevant to the outcome I was seeking. In short, I apologize for any grievances on my part that caused others trouble because of their actions. Now you may do as you wish freely, and again, I apologize for any unfortunate occurances up to this point.))

What they saw through the wall was...interesting.

The entire place was obviously a shelter or camp of sorts put together from stone slabs to resemble the wreckage of a medium-sized building, and that would probably deter exterior examination. The inside was a large open space filled with tents, various tables, posts that held up the ceiling, a few small areas blocked from view by what were obviously improvised walls, and a few poles stuck through the walls probably used for observation of the outside world.

And the entire place was lousy with Vahzilok.

There were hundreds of them. Perhaps a thousand, all cramped up into this tiny space. (The entire camp was only about one hundredish or so yards long and thirty or so wide.) Cadavers and Abominations filled most of the available space, barely leaving ANY room for navigation by the many Reapers and Mortificators. A couple of Eidolons could be spotted by the back wall, where the various reanimated corpses slowly gave way to a large horde composed mainly of Mortificators. Where there was space, there were improvised operating tables, chemical barrels, surgical equipment, or survival gear. The place was quite devoid of flies, however, which was odd. They usually swarmed where ever the Vahz went.

The boulder had apparently impacted Ghoul, (he had been tossed against the camo-wall during the fight with Babbage) who had been in the process of being helped up by a pair of Reapers, (who thought he was one of their abominations) who were now frozen as they stared back at everybody through the breach in the wall.

Every head, dead, reanimated, or otherwise, turned to the hole to look out.

Things got so quiet you could have heard a mouse squeek.

And slowly, the Reapers dropped the dazed ghoul, (who gave out a tiny grunt) and put their hands outward at chest level. The universal sign for peace. Or about anyway. Instead of whipping out their crossbows instantly like normal, the various Mortificators simply eyed the group wearilly, and the various shambling corpses merely continued to stare lifelessly. The Eidolons remained, unreadable as ever in their normal positions, and many of the Reapers were slowly backing away as far as possible from the breach.

No attacks came. No lethal projectiles were on their way. The Vahzilok almost looked scared. Frightened.

The boulder smashed into a wall 45 yds away, and smashed right through it, which gave way to several crashing noises and tinkling delicate objects.

What sounded very much like a suppressed groan of extreme pain echoed forth from it.

After giving the D a quick once-over, Poe found squat. Finally, he took the tracker out, (something he did not want to do. Kuro was still keeping a close eye on him, and using Technomancy would set him off like a bomb if he happened to be watching) and checked it.

The gas trap was back up in the elevator lobby and quickly moving away.

Poe swore, and dashed back for the door.

Poe watched as Marcus stepped right into the elevator, which went back up.

".....Idiot....." He said, invisible behind his cloaking device. "Now where DID I leave it...?"

The various smashed furniture reassembled itself in respective small storms of glowing blue ones and zeroes.

And in more storms of this, the anti-virus applications reappeared.

They were all standing right at the boundry between the dance floor and the hero bar. The hero side must have been the 'trash' folder. So to speak. Either that or some sort of containment program.

-----

And just then, Jonas saw the elevator doors opening.

Nobody came out. The doors then closed.

Correction there sport.

Black holes are infinitely small points. It's impossible for them to be that size.

*Drops in*

Take this.

*Drops the Speaking Gun*

Bai.

*Vanishes*

The turets activated by the floor sensors were all well-and-good. Normal Clockwork would have given up and gone back to collecting scrap.

But these wern't normal Clockwork.

They waited patiently for the turrets to recede into the walls, and then after a few tests involving tossing random minions into the room and watching them being blasted into bits, they concluded touching the ground was a bad thing.

So they sent in a few somethings that didn't need to touch the ground.

Several Prototype Oscilators, carrying Dukes, knights, and other minions between them, started ferrying the infinite horde of clockwork into the place...

-----

Energon X didn't detect even a wisp of etheral power that could be identified as a ghost.

Additionally, as it had been stated before, the Soul Hound had found its target at street level in the dead-center of the intersection. Not below, above, or to the sides of it.

And indeed, it almost felt like said scrap piles were watching the group.

-----

Said sea of robots fell onto Dr. Klaus like a metaphorical tidal wave. A large group of princes, a literal battalion of various knights, and enough cogs to occupy Paris attacked him all at once, with electrical charges punches, tesla cages, ball lightning, and so forth, and from everywhere, more and more Clockwork began to rise from iles of slag. Assembler Princes out of range of the Dr. began to summon more clockwork for the hell of it.

Now this was interesting. Why was there such a huge concentration of Clockwork here and not over where the task force group was currently?

((All Clockwork in Boomtown are currently under the control of Republ-ahhh...Under the control of evil persons. Yep.))

And that was it.

Silence reigned.

The battle was finished, Babbage was down, the Princes had been pulverized, and their minions crushed.

Something slightly odd then happened.

The remaining pieces of all the Clockwork that were still intact, bolts, screws, cogs, gears, and other bits all started rolling and sweeping themselves away from the group into random rubbish mounds...

Babbage was more or less pulverized by the Energy Transfer, not even counting the Sorcerer's plasma blast. When that hit, Babbage resembled a crushed compact garbage ball with legs and arms rather than the giant war machine that it was supposed to be.

But the force keeping it together was still intact. If not greatly weakened.

And now, Energon X found himself in a very dangerous situation.

As his Defiance had gone up, his strength and vitality had gone down. Drastically.

So much so, that it would be very interesting to see what happened to him after the two vollies of Ball Lightning Babbage threw at him right before shambling over to the Sorcerer in a pitiful attempt to potentially fall on him once the massive thing fell to pieces.

The force holding the three Assembler Dukes together crumbled, leaving the last two still standing. They aimed for a new target.

They both shot two more rounds of electrical blasts at the downed Soul Hound...

-----

"You missed it. The Task Force left over half an hour ago." The security chief said. "If you want to catch up with them, head for the..."

-----

Discourse.

Manipulation.

Deception.

Control.

Obey.

-----

"want to catch up to them I would head for the Grenadier village if I were you. Check along the Western Wall once you get there." The Security Chief finished speaking to Darkvapor.

-----

Karl the Mortificator watched the giant battle raging almost fifty meters away from the camoflaged camp.

"Damage report."

When that blaster found us he managed to down sixteen Abominations and twenty two cadavers, all but two were brought back by the recovery Reapers. If they open attack on us again, and if they are all as powerful as that one...

Karl steepled his fingers.

"It's not that they are strong. You are all weak."

The Mortificator he spoke to fell silent.

"If they attack us again, there is a good chance the Vahzilok will be driven out of the zone. As a matter of fact, I guarentee it."

"So what do we do?" The Mortificator asked in a hushed tone.

Karl sighed, and reached into his black medical kit, pulling out a series of vials filled with red liquid.

"Have a few of the other Mortificators whip up some more ofthis batch, distribute it throughout the camp. This should boost our performance so that we can match them in level of skill and expertise.

"So we're saved?" The Mortificator asked hopefully.

"Oh no, not at all." Karl said. "They would still decimate all of you."

The Mortificator's shoulders slumped.

"We need to rely on DIPLOMACY, here." Karl intoned.

"What do we have that they could POSSIBLY want?" The weaker-willed Mortificator asked.

"Simple." Karl said. "Knowledge." He tapped his head knowingly.

He then shooed the mortificator away to deliver the serum.

He also prepared his means of escape, just in case things went South.

The Anti-Viruses crumpled to the ground.They all vanished in a stream of blue ones and zeroes.

Containment Protocols Initiated

The floor underneath Kip and Khelly suddenly revolved, and slingshotted itself back to the hero-side area of the club.

-----

Poe breathed a sigh of relief as he finished programing the fire-wall.

Then he noticed something.

Why di the left side of his vest feel lighter?

He checked it. The speciially modified gas-traps he had used in the D were gone. Not to worry, he had expected...

Wait.

He had used ONE trap in the D itself, and he had two modifided ones, so...

He had left his other trap in the real D!

This wasn't good, if a hero got ahold of it, they could potentially use it to track him down.

And, if luck ever did hate him, now was the time it did. It's kill-rig was deactivated.

Poe swore, and headed for the door...

-----

Back in the real Pocket D, by a certain storage door, there was a tiny silver capsule on the floor for anyone who cared...

((Ok, here is my NEW response. Please disregard my previous one.))

The Vanguard were incorrect of their assumptions that the normal and more mundane Clockwork were a mere level 20. Due to the force empowering them, they were a match for Paragon's finest, at level 50.

Still, that didn't mean the attacks and efforts of everyone were in vain.

Bladewing's katana tore into the Assembler Prince, and while it did not manage to destroy the thing outright, it did manage to bisect some critical junctions and made one of its arms fall of, along with its feet begining to wobble ominously. The force keeping the Clockwork construct together, however, held. Barely. The Assembler prince retaliated by attempting to smash Bladewing over the head with an energy charged punch.

The Sorcerers' attacks on the remaining Assembler Princes were successful-Up to a point. While they may have been considered the 'bosses' in rank of their faction, so were the Princes in theirs. The Assembler Princes recovered from the attack, navigating away from the impact site, and retaliated by firing more energy bolts at the sword members. While their attack had been effective, the damage it had done to the larger constructs was mostly exterior. A few more prods would do the trick, by the looks of it.

The remaining Assembler Prince conjured a series of additional knights and cogs to distract everyone with.

Babbage, in the meantime, would have normally more-or-less ignored Energon's energy blast attacks. It was simply too heavilly armored. However, thanks to Ghoul's weakening attacks, they did considerably more damage than they should have, causing some respectable dents in Babbage's chassis to appear.

Babbage retalliated by tearing Ghoul off of his head-Whether or not the weakening tendrils remained were up to him-and threw him at the nearest Sword Sorcerer. Normally Ghoul would have been able to resist this, except that his dark, negative armor he used to shield himself offered no protection against forces that pushed him back or knocked him around, it had nothing that could cement him in place. Coupled with Babbages immense strength, it was simple to pluck the Brute off his head. With his other hand, he threw some more Ball Lightning at Energon X.

((Yes, there is a huge edit storm coming soon, I sense. >.&gt)

((The reason I went on the "[ QUOTE ]
Powertrip

[/ QUOTE ]" Was BECAUSE you took the liberty of one-shotting everything. I assumed you would KNOW these Clockwork are supposed to be on par with everything else, I got angry. *shrugs* I thought it was obvious they were equal level to everyone.

And while you do have a small point, it is not nesseccarilly true. Why? Because the Clockwork are built in such a way that them operating by themselves with an independant power source would be impossible. The Clockwork King is holding them together through shher willpower. Thus the immense power his will has can keep the Clockwork stable and durable.

But only up to a certain level. He's only so powerful.

Definitely NOT Cohen the level 47 scrapper, on the other hand...

So if you're saying that quality = power, that would mean these Clockwork are level 50. Merely because the entity now holding them together through his/her/its power is almost infinitely more powerful than the Clockwork King. Since he's pumping more power into them, that means they can take more blows from a wider range of levels, deal more damage, et cetera, et cetera.

So while they ARE still made of cheap quality scrap, they have an additional force keeping them together and running.))

((I made them level 50 by doing the following.

A: Entering them into an RP where security and threat levels are moot.

If they have suddenly become important, I would like all of your levels please, so I can know who and who won't be dying in two shots.

Now an official RP reason as to why they are more powerful? The work of whoever is currently controling the Clockwork. I can't tell you EXACTLY why.))

Khelly reached inward to draw upon her power.

And found that she had none.

Whatever had happened when she had teleported into this virtual D, she had been robbed of all her powers while doing so. Almost as if this place had been constructed as a prison...

Which it was.

Khelly had tranmutted her own matter while teleporting into cyber space. Now SHE was an application inside of it. However, since her own self did not copy over from reality to virtual very well...

And it appeared that the "people" here were anti-virus applications...

She had forced her way in.

They couldn't force her out due to the firewall, but that left them two options.

A: Deletion.

B: Containment.

They couldn't perform A because there already a foreign application inside. However, containment was more than possible.

Khelly felt a strange sensation as the manifested anti-virus applications advanced on her...

((Either that or I just bumped them up to level 50 so you COULDN'T one-shot them all, therefore actually making them a challange. Otherwise what would be the POINT in even having them?))

That's when something proved horribly wrong.

The Vanguard troops must have read their info wrong.

Because anyone with a threat-level scanner would have identified ALL the Clockwork as solid level 50s.

While it was true that NORMAL Clockwork were only so powerful, these were hardly normal Clockwork.

Just as it was proven by Bladewing. While he might have THOUGHT he had completely deciamated the Clockwork Assembler he had choosen to attack, that reality did not take place.

His sword got about half-way through its body before stopping dead.

The Assembler Prince in question brought both its massive hands down on top of Bladewing's head in a brutal blow.

Energon's energy blasts did not impress Babbage at all. While Ghoul was doing an excellent job of corrupting the monster's armor, it wasn't enough to bring his overall resistance down to manageable levels. Thankfully, the giant did not reach up to tear him away. Yet. Finally, even with the sorcerer slowing him down a little, he still charged. He would reach the truck EVENTUALLY.

In the meantime, he threw a few more rounds of Ball Lightning at both the Sorcerers and at the annoying as ever Energon X...

The WP round aimed at the Assembler Princes did...NOTHING!

Just as the Sorcerer's shield of ignorance shielded them thouroughly from all the Clockwork's attacks, which were completely on par with theirs, it gaurded the Clockwork against their attacks as well.

The Clockwork were NOT amused in any way shape or form at being underated and underestimated. They let loose havoc.

The three Assembler Princes, having brushed aside the Sorcerer's attack, fired a return volley of their own, two of them launching lightning bolts in retaliation.

The cogs and various knights blasted away, were just that. Blasted away. They were not as powerful as their more sturdy compatriots.

That did not stop them from summoning more though. The two Assembler Princes unoccupied with attackers summoned another batch of Knights and Cogs to aid them, all of them reading as threat level 50.

This was, apparently, an actual FIGHT. NOT child's play.

Throughout the virtual D, there was a suddenly blarring noise.

*Foreign Force detected. Accessing Anti_Virus_Security*

There was a loud Pop.

Standing before Khelly was DJ Zero.

Only he had no face. Just smoothed-over flat skin where it should have been.

"You are going to have to leave." He said menacingly to Khelly.

"Indeed." Said another voice behind her as a faceless raver appeared.

"Verilly." Growled a faceless sound technician.

"I'm solid here, so let's see if we can make YOU transparent." Said a blank-faced War Witch.

Khelly was drawing quite the crowd.

-----

Poe was searching through his sources when the Energy Melding Device binged.

He frowned as he checked the monitor.

"DAMNIT. I HAD to use cyber-space, didn't I? Essence Modules were too good for me, wern't they? DAMNIT! Thinkthinkthink..."

After activating the anti-virus software for Kip's virtual prison, he double checked the firewalls as well.

Then triple checked them.

As they were set up now...Anything could get INTO the Virtual D. The firewall only stopped passage OUT from it, otherwise Kip would have fallen through the floor by now.

Poe dropped looking through his sources and started to reprogram the firewall so nobody else could teleport in.

Khelly was simply amazed.

If she was truely looking across Dimensions...

She saw Poe EVERYWHERE.

And if she could peer through time, she would also see him everywhere, at everytime.

But only if she was SPECIFICALLY looking for Poe in question.

This either meant that Poe was a god or multidimensional. Probably the latter, otherwise he wouldn't have let DJ Zero bully him back in the D.

She also came across a slight problem. Using her current means of sense, she couldn't track down Poe. Since his dimensional trails were temporal as well as spacial, he kept popping and reappearing in scattered and random places in time. Trying to track him down via his most recent trail would send her to the future. His oldest would send her to nthe past. Following his present trails could land her absolutely anywhere at all, which would not guarentee success, because Poe was everywhere...

At everytime.

Eventually, anyway.

Maybe she should look for somebody else? Maybe she should search for the people Poe ws interested in. While his trail was infinitely long and complex, a normal villain or hero he had recently interacted with would probably have a much more mundane trail. Even the average meta didn't get much time travel these days.

((It's flexible plenty!

.....

Well. At least AFTER we get past the inflexible bits. >.>

Stick to the script...

Script: Lo!))

The party, sorcerers, and Hound all suddenly heard something.

A thud!

Followed by another. Then another...

Suddenly, the wrecked wall at the blank end of the juntion exploded as a monsterous construct burst through.

Babbage, Giant Clockwork Monster

Babbage didn't even slow down, he homed in on the Vanguard Truck, charging at it. The construct also threw two rounds of Ball Lightning at Ghoul and the Soulhound. The nasty thing about the electrical balls being that they exploded, and had a very large area of effect. Throwing Ball Lightning at any one opponent was essentially the same as just attacking all of your opponents at once. However, the giant machine left it at that, and sought to ram into the truck and tear it to shreds. It didn't even matter if the truck was armored and entirely reinforced with impervium, Babbage had enough strength to tear titanium girders into thousands of pieces, and barring that, he could easily hoist the truck and toss it somewhere that WOULD wreck it.

Backing Babbage up, five Assembler Princes sprang from the ruins after it. Instead of backing the giant monster up though, they attacked everybody else. Three of them leveled lightning bolts at the Sorcerers, while the other two focused their energies and started to conjure Clockwork minions and lieutenants to aid them in battle...

(( X.X

I can't DO anything until everyone is by the Soulhound.

*Tinks berry berry lard...*))

Poe wagged a finger.

".....No.....I don't think so.....Well then, I had best be off. Feel free to take a look around. Just keep in mind that unless you've suddenly become a virus, it's impossible to escape."

Poe dematerialized.

In a storm of blue ones and zeroes.

Then, the table Kip had snapped in half suddenly picked itself up, and completely repaired itself as a stream of glowing blue teeny tiny ones and zeroes rushed over every damaged surface.

"You're just bait, actually." Poe said cheerfully. "I doubt you alone will do it though...You might have company in here soon. This is just another cliche revenge scenario, so don't worry. I just kidnap all his friends and idiotically trap them together and they miraculously manage to escape and beat the crap out of me."

He paused.

"Only remove those last two, actually. No, I think that you are going to be stuck here for a long, looooooong time."

He checked a clock against the wall.

"Now I need to go soon. I'd suggest either calling up Breaker before I go and grab another McRandell to keep you company. And who knows, if THAT doesn't bring him out, I may even have to start torturing and killing you all off. Oh, the drama."

There was a slight pause.

"Dare ya to escape. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking you're in some crappy alternate version of the D, some alternate universe maybe, either that or you're just hallucinating. Well I hate to break it to ya, but you're WRONG."