Rebel_Scum

Ok, more incoming fire. And don't think she didn't see those chainguns too. Welp, so much for just flying up to it, if she kept trying that she'd spend so much time blasting missiles out of the way that she'd never get anywhere near it. But... maybe she didn't have to? Why did she always forget she could do that, really with two of her in here she had no right to have that poor a memory. But now that she did remember... was she even close enough? She thought so. Welp, here went nothing...

Rather than blasting missiles as the machine possibly expected her to, the peacebringer was abruptly engulfed in a burst of energy and was transformed to the form of the Kurukt. Or as it was more commonly known, the White Dwarf. Admittedly since it couldn't fly she immediately surrendered to the force of gravity and began to plummet to the ground, but in Dwarf form she didn't need to fly. As someone whose name she'd long since forgotten had once said, the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line. Rather, it's a portal. And that was the reasoning behind the switch to Dwarf. Its ability to teleport. Specifically, from where she was and directly to the back of the machine, if she could reach that far with it.

Calling them mines wasn't really that accurate, as the average mine didn't tend to move that much. Pax's photon seekers on the other hand, would lock on to the HK the instant it got within about a hundred feet of them. And while not as fast as the peacebringer herself they had a fairly reasonabe turn of speed. So simply going around them might be harder than one would think. Of course should the HK avoid them by more than the aforementioned hundred feet, they wouldn't even notice it and would just sit there.

Meanwhile though, Paxtera had disposed of the incoming munitions and turned her sights back to the machine itself, flying after it with all the speed she could summon. She didn't bother shooting at it from behind - while she could go fast enough to catch up with it, she wasn't sure her energy blasts could. So instead she opted for a different idea. Land on its back, go Dwarf and rip it to pieces the old fashioned way. The fact that it may be about to be blown from the sky, and her with it, remained unknown to her. She was a time traveller, not a psychic.

"I tried archery once, back in high school", Abbie mused to herself as Josiah picked out some weapons. "Wasn't very good at it, I didn't have the strength. Probably still don't, unless they let Dwarves compete."

Somehow I doubt they do.

Oddly enough so do I.

"Anyway", Abbie continued. "If we're all ready, I'll go see about sneaking in shall I? I'll teleport you both in once I've found a relatively quiet spot inside to do it." She started to turn and go, but stopped. "Oh right, rookie. Umm... When you feel like you're being pulled in every direction at once, that's me trying to teleport you. Just don't resist it and you'll be fine." Of course he'd be fine if he did, too, but just wouldn't get teleported. The warshade waited a moment for him to either say he understood or ask for further info, then turned and walked off toward the warehouse. Faint wisps of purplish energy covered her, and then she was gone. Well, from ordinary sight anyway. Heightened senses, magical wards, or certain kinds of computer targetting could still pick her out easily enough. But given these were Skulls, she doubted they had any such thing. Even with stolen Crey tech - she'd never known Crey to use such things either. Of course, that didn't strictly mean they didn't possess them.

Thus, she was relatively cautious as she snuck, invisible, around the side of the building looking for a way in.

Since she seemed to have become the defacto group leader on this one, Abbie answered the man with a quiet chuckle. "Yeah, you might call us that. Anything we should know before we go in?"

The man started to answer, but stopped as Abbie got tapped on the shoulder.

Abbie just about slapped him, but didn't. Instead she merely gave an exasperated sigh. Did they seriously give us a rookie fresh out of basic training, with no powers at all? What the hell kind of use is he going to be for anything?

Maybe he could fetch coffee?

I don't drink coffee. Nice idea though.

I was joking...

I know. Still a nice idea.

Of course none of that was visible on the outside, save for Abbie's eyes going slightly distant as she discussed things with her symbiote. "Kid, if you who didn't think to grab some equipment that is neither my fault nor my problem", she answered him before turning back to the SWAT captain. "You have a spare gun for this idiot?"

The captain directed one of his men to go find such a thing if he could, before turning back to Abbie. "As I was about to say, there’s the main entrance, we figured it would be too heavily fortified, so we tried to breach a side door, walked right into a trap. Exploding Barrels, Men behind ‘arrow slits’, and that damn brute. Dark melee powers, the men couldn’t hit her at all, and the good shots she absorbed with some kind of Dark Shield on her left arm."

Abbie nodded her understanding. "Traps, ambushes, psycho lady. Got it." She looked around for Quex. "I think we might just have the solution to your brute problems... Hey Quex! If I sneak in past the traps, you think you can take that brute if I teleport you in right on top of her or as close to as I can?"

Even with the centuries of practice she'd had, Paxtera's aim still wasn't good enough that she'd trust it to reliably hit something moving that fast when she only had the one shot. Thus, as she approached she dropped a few presents of her own. Namely, a trio of photon seekers sat in the machine's path while the peacebringer herself concentrated on the missiles. If they were coming straight towards her, they presented effectively stationary targets and thus wouldn't be too hard to hit. The only question was if she had time to blast all of them before they got close enough to detonate.

Regardless of what happened to her, though, the instant the hunter-killer itself got close enough to her photon seekers they'd make a beeline for it, adjusting their trajectory as necessary to remain on target. Sadly they were somewhat slower than both the peacebringer and the machine, so if it were to evade them on the first pass they probably wouldn't get a second. Of course, if it couldn't detect her energy shield then it likely couldn't detect the seekers either as they were made up of the same stuff. So they'd have the advantage of it not knowing they were there and thus not trying to evade them.

"Skulls, capable of fending off the power armor guys. Right", Abbie commented mostly to herself. "Welp, nothing like a challenge to brighten up the day. Anyone who wants a lift, speak now or forever hold your peace." With that she stood up and headed for the door, proceeding at her usual fairly unhurried pace through the building to the front door. As she left the room she could be heard muttering to herself, "What the hell kind of name is 'Radialcrush' anyway?" Of course, as always she got all of two steps from the front door before vanishing into the swirling purplish-black energy of a Nictus teleport and reappearing on a nearby rooftop.

Proceeding via teleport from rooftop to rooftop to the Garment District, it didn't take her particularly long to find the warehouse. What with being surrounded by armed police officers and all, it stood out from the others just a little. She looked around to find whoever seemed to be in charge and teleported down to appear some distance away, so as not to startle him overly much. "You in charge here?", she asked just to be sure, as she began teleporting everyone who'd requested a lift back at the station to her.

(( Feel free to have your characters teleported. ))

Oddly enough, it was almost exactly ten minutes later that Ildela rather abruptly became aware of the second machine's presence. She'd been just a little too focused on keeping herself hidden from the harvester she was following to notice the hunter-killer approaching. Thus, it very nearly ran her over and she had to swerve violently in midair to avoid outright colliding with it. Price of being invisible, nothing ever knew to go around you.

She was very tempted to throw a soulstorm at it out of pure spite, but didn't. That'd reveal her to both machines if they hadn't detected her already after the evasive maneuvers, and thus ruin what little beginnings of a plan she had. So she just kept following the harvester, apart from one thing. On the same channel she'd been using before, she sent a fairly simple message: "Hate to ruin your day even more guys, but you've got more incoming." Having received no response to her earlier message she had no idea that the first ship had turned out to be friendly. Hell, she didn't even know if any of them heard her at all. But still, no reason to not at least try to give a little advance warning. She just hoped doing so didn't reveal her presence to the harvester she continued to follow.

--------------

At least one person heard Ildela's message. Specifically her mother did, at about the same time as she sighted the hunter-killer on the horizon. Given what Jade had told her regarding their sentience or rather their lack thereof, she fully intended to simply blow the machine out of the sky if she could. And with all her energy shields going in order to protect her from whatever weapons it carried, she probably presented quite the large target to its sensors.

Abbie gave him a lazy wave as the Fed started loading up images. "Abbie, when off duty", she commented to both of them before turning her attention back to the briefing. Kasoh's commentary as the various things came up helped, given the woman herself seemed content to let the pictures do the talking. That or she'd missed something somewhere which was entirely possible given how little attention she typical paid to briefings of any kind. The captain, both the old one and the new one, had yelled at her for it more than once.

"If I had to take a guess I'd say we'll be asked to find that van, right?", Abbie asked, looking to either the captain or the Fed for confirmation.

So fixated was he on Quex that he probably didn't even notice the other woman going past him. Not that Abbie was particularly noticable, most people had forgotten her face despite it being in the news only a couple of months ago. In a city of heroes, a couple of months ago may as well have been the dawn of time. And she herself wasn't particularly noticable in a crowd. She wasn't excessively tall like Quex, nor was she overly short either. Her hair these days was usually kept shorter, no longer than shoulder length at the most. Aside from that it pretty much sat as it fell, she didn't care enough to do anything fancy with it beyond keeping it reasonably tidy. Her clothing was equally average - though in the two-six it might stand out for not being a uniform. She was dressed in her usual short black shirt, leaving her arms and most of her midriff bare. Accompanying it were the black jeans with a thin purple stripe down each leg, flared at the bottom and held up by a studded belt, and the sturdy black boots. Regardless of whether he noticed her or not, though, she went right on past and into the briefing room.

"Eloquent as always, sir", the warshade commented with just a hint of sarcasm, taking a seat as the new kid came in. She leaned back in her chair and looked over at said new kid, sizing him up. He didn't really look like much of anything, but then looks could be very much deceiving especially in this city. Given her tendancy to occasionally turn into an alien monster, she knew that better than some. Still, the guy didn't seem like a hero to her. Which meant he was like another rookie cop. Or in her mind, another useless liability to worry about when he inevitably got into something he couldn't really handle - and he would, they all did at least once. Sometimes she wondered why she didn't just up and leave. Her sentence had been over almost a month ago now, so technically she was free to take off whenever. Why she didn't, even she didn't know. But so far she'd just hung around, being her usual highly unprofessional self. She didn't openly challenge authority as often as she used to, but she still enjoyed raising the captain's blood pressure whenever she got the chance. Some suspected it was why Fischer had left. Abbie knew better, but didn't care to tell anyone.

"One person could easily go in the wrong direction and miss it", Paxtera pointed out. "We would suggest everyone who can go without compromising the defences here should go. We would also reccommend that ship use whatever sensors it possesses to aid in location any inbound machines." The last she directed to Akat, before her and her daughter lifted off and flew away, specifically in the direction the Harvester had originally come from since lacking any other evidence that would seem the most likely direction the Hunter Killer should be coming from.

As they went they spread out some, to cover the most possible ground and thus have the maximum possible chance of spotting any approaching machines before they got close enough to start shooting.

Ildela of course was still following the harvester, but chances were if the machines sent something else at the forest it may well pass near her and she may well notice it doing so.

"Anything is possible, given enough time and effort", Paxtera answered absently, before turning to look at Jade. Since he apparently hadn't heard her, she restated her question. "If we might have your attention for a moment, we asked a question. Are the machines, or more likely whatever system controls them, intelligent enough to be considered sentient or not?"

The ship apparently didn't interest her in the slightest now that they'd been made aware it was friendly. It interested someone else though. Kethara flew over to it and started doing lazy circuits around it, inspecting the surface and generally being a nosy kid. As yet she didn't touch it, though.

------

Ildela meanwhile was still following the Harvester, mostly for lack of anything better to do. Besides, it was damaged. Common sense suggested that as it didn't appear to have any self-repair ability (Or at least not one capable of replacing a missing engine) it would seek repair at some form of facility designed to perform such work. A facility that if she was careful, she might be able to use to find other machines and in turn use those to track down the central core, or at least something close to it. What she'd do upon finding such a thing... she hadn't thought that far yet. For now she merely concentrated on staying hopefully undetected by the Harvester as it continued onward.

"This is Patches, as we understand it cities and such appear out of nowhere all the time here. Miracles being by definition rare, that probably doesn't qualify", Paxtera responded, before looking to Akat as the Khelari suggested they simply reprogram the robots. "Most mechanical lifeforms consider than equivalent to murder", she pointed out. "Or are they not smart enough to make that distinction? We were operating under the impression they were built to be intelligent, were we wrong in that impression? Are they smart enough to be considered sentient or not?" She looked to Jade, if anyone knew he would.

Both peacebringers looked up as the approaching aircraft made itself known, as twin energy bubbles shimmered into existence around them. Paxtera again looked at Jade for an answer to her question. One could make the assumption that her next action would be determined by how he answered.

"Hmm?" Paxtera seemed surprised by the introduction, almost confused. Then the light of realisation dawned in her eyes, and she pulled back her sleeve to look at one of no less than five watches on her wrist - only one of which was actually displaying the time as most others would understand it. What the other four were showing was anyone's guess. "Oh, right. It's now, not then. We haven't actually met yet", the peacebringer commented to herself, before sighing quietly. "Someday we'll stop making those sorts of mistakes so depressingly frequently. But anyway, we're Paxtera. The child is Kethara, and the one who flew off is Ildela."

"True.... some things you simply can't make any form of peace with", Paxtera replied slightly sadly. "But you might consider that it has vastly greater resources than you. A confrontation could only end badly, barring some miracle to save you at the last moment." She said that as though she knew for sure, too. Given what she was, in all likelihood she did. "Besides, it's not in our nature to not at least make the attempt."

---------------

Ildela, meanwhile, found the damage harvester fairly easily. It had after all not gone that far. With its lacking one engine it was fairly distinctive from any other similar machine. She was distracted however from going down to it by a certain bright white streak of light roaring past her and causing her to do several flips in midair before stabilising herself and looking after it. Not long after, all those still at the forest's edge would receive a transmission over the standard Paragon hero broadcast frequency, assuming anyone there was capable of receiving such. "Guys, you've got incoming", the stalker informed them.

Ildela seemed unconcerned at the exploding engine, much as she'd seemed unconcerned when she didn't make much of a dent in the claws she'd been aiming for. They had looked way smaller from up there. Even as bits and pieces of falling debris pinged and ricocheted off the ever-present energy field around her, she turned to Ainerda. "His name is Toy Dispenser. He's a robot from the Rogue Isles.... well, Etoile Isles. Everyone calls them the Rogue Isles though cause so many villains live there."

"I'm gonna go with them", she said, and it was quite clear she didn't mean that as a request to do so. Nor did she wait for a response before flying after the departing fae.

----------

Paxtera and Kethara meanwhile descended to ground level. The elder peacebringer almost looked surprised by the sight presented to her. Namely, that of someone who should be in another dimension. "Shouldn't you be in your own dimension?", she asked him simply.

"Wars have never really been our thing", Paxtera commented, but she followed regardless. She wasn't about to let some Skynet wannabe exterminate one of the few friendly people they'd found here on Patches. Now, exterminating them in return would be far from her first choice of action, but she would still help. Ildela muttered something about standoffs not being her style either, before the pair of them lifted off the ground and flew after Aineruda, matching her speed.

---------

"....contact with enemy made, plan dead...", Kethara muttered quietly to herself as she took off as well and went after Toy. Her mother would possibly yell at her for being so reckless later, but no way in hell was she missing this. It promised to be rather entertaining.

Being who and what she was, Ildela was something of an overly lucky person. Though that didn't stop her being rather surprised when said helmet landed squarely on her head, nearly jumping out of her skin at the impact. Paxtera looked around to see what the problem was, to see her daughter taking the helmet off her head and looking at it. "Huh. Hat for me", she commented with a shrug before putting it back on and resisting the urge to strike a pose. Paxtera just smiled slightly in amusement and kept walking, back towards the others.

--------------

Kethara looked suitably disappointed as Jade corrected her interpretation before continuing with the story. Yeah, she'd gotten that completely wrong. So she kept quiet as he explained the rest of it, only speaking up when Toy Dispenser suggested a plan.

"Yeah, that sounds like a plan to me", the young peacebringer replied. "Can we wait until Mum and Illy get back though? Probably shouldn't leave them behind, right?"

Paxtera pulled the hood attached to the high-collared cloak she was wearing up over her head, to keep the worst of the rain off her. Ildela meanwhile had an umbrella of light hovering over her, her energy shield shimmering lightly as it deflected raindrops just as well as it'd been deflecting Tafari's attacks earlier. "We highly doubt he'll find anything", Paxtera commented. "The attack on the tree was likely purely from frustration at things not going his way, petty vindictiveness. He will have run off straight afterward. Still, perhaps making sure of that isn't such a bad idea."

Having nothing further to say, she waited a few moments to make sure Aineruda had nothing further she needed before her and Ildela set off back towards where they'd left the others. They didn't fly or anything though, instead simply walking. The elven forest was a rather attractive place to just look at, after all. And this way the elves could easily follow them if they wanted.

--------------

"Not really, no", Kethara replied, sounding vaguely amused. "So lemme get this straight. You're not from Paragon, you're from that ruined city on whatever world it came from. The humans of that world were distrustful of machines to begin with, and when some mad scientist or whatever turned you into a robot they got even more distrustful to the point of open war? Which the machines took badly, I would imagine. And if movies taught me anything it's that machines always win a fight like that." She looked to Jade, asking without words if she was anywhere close to the truth.

"How do you know, aren't you from Paragon?", Kethara asked, somewhat disbelievingly but very much curious.

-----------

After Tafari disappeared, Paxtera just sighed. "So very typical. One would think basic logic would suggest he won't get very far, but no that won't stop him from trying." She sighed, then turned to Aineruda. "We presume that if this tree he was talking about does exist and is as important as he suggests, you have in place the appropriate defenses against such things as someone casually teleporting to it and destroying it?", she asked. Chances were, the elves did. After all, if it was indeed as important as Tafari thought then such defenses would be a very obvious move in a world such as Patches where every other species wants to kill you.

"Mmhm", Kethara answered simply. "You'd be surprised at the number of them people have thought up over the years." How many of them were anywhere close to correct, she didn't say. Mostly because she didn't actually know. She did however know, from experience with her mother, that time was both highly resilient and highly fragile depending on specifically what you were doing to it. Some things could be changed, and some of those more easily than others. Other things flat couldn't, no matter what you tried. Though, at times other time travellers had a lot to do with those latter sort of event.