TeChameleon

((Sorry for the choppiness of my posting- I work graveyard shift, so my schedule is a bit strange))

Target Lad stared grimly at the golem for a moment, muttering something under his breath about robot-loving tech-obsessed ninnies, then jerked his head towards Swift. "Yo... Sonic the Hedgehog... think you can hold the big tin can for a moment or three? I think I can snag the iMutt from here."

He promptly suited actions to words, shooting across the room as fast as he could fly and ignoring the golem utterly. The juniour blaster made a sweeping motion with one electric-glowing hand, sending a crackling whip of blue-white electric fire arcing across the floor towards the newly-dubbed iMutt. If it connected, it would damage the puppybot slightly, but would lock it in place with a 'fence' of electricity, preventing motion and making it easy to catch.

The Blaster raised a cynical eyebrow at the Sword Duo's casual dismissal of his accusations. If I was the suspicious type... which, admittedly, I am... I'd think that these two didn't want to pursue that any further. He shrugged and idly snapped a picture of each trooper, uplinking that to the Vanguard database to see what kind of results that got. In all probability, they were in- whoever had the resources to build human-replica automatons or other infiltration units would be unlikely to make such a basic oversight- but the very fact that the file had been accessed would raise flags.

He waved a hand. "I need some cooldown time- I'll listen in on babbling freak here via the team channel. I'll be back in a few minutes. I may have the Enterprise' long range sensors in my pants, but there are times that you need to use the eyeball Mark 1 to get a good grasp on things. If I find anything, I'll keep you posted."

With that, he was gone, speeding across the broken ground in a fairly standard search grid. Hopefully Vern arrives at the Vanguard Op Site soon- this needs to be resolved before things get any weirder. Extraneous mysteries are the last thing I need right now.

*entire Husk Corporation runs away screaming like little girls, forgetting as they do so that, by doing so, they can no longer see Chuck Norris*

*STORM OF INFINITE ROUNDHOUSES!*

*takes Mr. T and Bruce Campbell out for 'a' beer. Dies of alchohol poisoning trying to keep up*

Target Lad had drifted ceilingwards as soon as they had teleported in- by both habit and inclination, he rarely touched ground when 'heroing'. The second they had appeared in the large room, he had pulled out his bow and drawn back, ready to deliver his 'pointy present' to their captor(?). Unfortunately, they had been re-teleported before he could let fly and he relaxed momentarily, un-nocking the arrow.

"Why can't these contests of champion idiocies ever include something nice, like a pie-eating contest or something?" he complained as he drew his bow again. "Of course, there'd probably be poisoned pies mixed in, or something equally stupid..." he sighed, rolling his eyes as he drew a big fistful of arrows and let fly, neatly puncturing the throats of more than a dozen of the arachnodroids.

This was promptly followed by an arrow with an explosive head that completely wrecked his earlier targets, and he turned to picking off individual 'bots, drawing, aiming and releasing in rapid, smooth succession. Occasionally he'd wreathe one in electrical power to lock it in place, or clout it over the head with lightning-wrapped fists if it got too close.

"Whatever we're doing, it's working. The squid knows her stuff." he commented aloud. "These things have all the tactical acuity of goldfish... they're reacting like she said unkind things about their mothers." He kept firing, content to let Kheldragon take the lead.

((Y'know, we've managed to hit a fairly solid team here- Tanksquid, Blaster, Emp Defender and Controller))

*grins insanely as the Crushanoid abruptly implodes, having eaten the Black Hole that TeChameleon slipped into his morning cereal*

*steals that black hole too, stuffs it in his pocket, then gets run over by a bus while sitting at his computer*

Energon X stared at the Sword Duo for a while, hand still upraised and outstretched, then nodded. "Making me question my senses, undermining my resolve by simultaneously attacking my intelligence and my courage, and building yourselves up with the 'just plain folks' speech, all while superficially appearing to give a rousing call to arms. I'm impressed." he said, slowly bringing his hand down, to imitate Ghoul's sarcastic slow clapping.

He ignored Darkvapor and Ghoul otherwise. There were more pressing problems. Then he untensed, and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a stifled laugh. "You know, this whole thing may be resolved... to my satisfaction, at least... sooner than you may like. See this suit?" he questioned, gesturing down at the black-white-and-gold armour he was wearing. "SERAPH's packed it with so many sensors that it could probably tell me what you had for lunch last month... assuming you mimic eating, anyways. I've already called in one of my contacts- he should be arriving at the Vanguard base soon- to sift through the data it's already gathered in hopes of finding a scientific lead where magic has apparently failed."

The Blaster shrugged. "In the unlikely event you turn out to be fully human, just creepy, then I will apologize fully. But you don't get to survive as long as I have in this game by discounting the unlikely. And your 'we don't care' speech is distinctly unconvincing when it's Vanguard who are always harping on the need to fight smart and know your enemy... especially when that's what convinced Longbow to back off and let them handle the new invasion."

((... I'm guessing that Darkvapor hasn't noticed he's sharing airspace with a rather unpleasant-looking missile? E-X' LRM Rocket?))

*steals blackhole and throws it at Entropy_Aegis*

Target Lad emerged from the Tram and glided rapidly towards the 'rendezvous' point. He landed silently besides the others, nodding to acknowledge their presence, but otherwise pretty much ignoring them. Powers were a 'gift' he hadn't wanted, and the complications that came with them were a problem he really hadn't wanted. Especially not now, when he was barely thirteen.

Then Khelldragon coughed, and he glanced up at her, then down at the purplish blood. He looked at her for a moment, checking the Hero Registry on her, then wordlessly held out a fistful of crackling electricity, palm open, towards her. "It's not much." he said, "But hopefully it will help a little."

He turned to Electro Monk and Shift. "I caught a bit of your talking about 'it's a trap'. If it is, it's stupidly elaborate to the point the people running it would have to be idiots. I got the flyer at home." he commented offhandedly, trying not to blush as his voice broke (twice) in the middle of him talking. In any case, his tone made it quite clear that he wasn't ruling out the possibility of the people running the trap being idiots. He shrugged. "What are we waiting for, exactly?"

((Oh... yeah, Target Lad is just thirteen. He's also a bit of a cynical, arrogant knowitall brat, although he's got a good heart))

Energon X stared at the Sword pair for a moment before throwing up his hands. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry. I suppose I could return to pretending you weren't useless, but that would be somewhat pointless."

He jabbed a finger towards the Sword duo, pointing sort of vaguely between them for a moment. "Let's see, what possible reason could I have to be tense? Hmm... well, for one, there's Zombozo the great over here... Karl, I swear if you make one more move towards that idiot's corpse I will blow your [censored] head off... that we're supposed to make nice with because he might or might not have some useful information."

The agitated Blaster paused for an instant and twisted his wrist, throwing up a single finger. "Secondly, there's the fact that we're charging in blind after some bugger that mopped the floor with an entire Task Force... oh, wait, we're a task force, just like them!, and then nearly killed Statesman without even breaking a sweat, while inhabiting this dead body. Thus far, you haven't even suggested how we're supposed to find him now that this lead has gotten flushed, much less what we're going to do once we find him." he said, waving his free hand at Cohen's remains and throwing up a second finger.

"Thirdly, while you two are moderately useful in a fight when you actually do something, that has been about the extent of your contribution to this effort. There's the fact that you're either lying outright or concealing something about this stupid flying lizard- I know what I saw- there's an energy field surrounding it that interfered with the healing beam earlier. There's also the fact that while you may not be undead, you're not human, or at least not entirely. My best guess with the information I currently have is that you're both automatons, perhaps akin to what Nemesis uses, but, as I said, that's only a guess." The Blaster hesitated for a second, absentmindedly tossing up a third finger.

"Then there's the fact that nothing around here is behaving normally. The Clockwork have gone on a psychotic murder rampage and started drawing random shapes on the ground with their own dismembered body parts, the Vahzilok are hiding like vermin... well, maybe that's not especially unusual... the Council have gone to ground, rather than marching through the streets proclaiming their superiourity like they normally would in a situation like this, and the Lost have gotten themselves lost." E-X continued, tossing up a fourth finger.

"And fifth and lastly, there are way too many people in this group with their own agenda, not even counting the random yobbo who decided to pop out of the shadows behind me. Quite frankly, I'm going into this fully expecting to die when we run into ubergoon-of-the-week... assuming we ever find him, anyways. We may just die when he reshapes the world in his image or whatever the [censored] he plans on doing with the Malleus Mundi, instead." he finished, holding his hand up, fingers outspread.

"So, is that a good enough reason for me to be a bit stressed? Quite honestly, I rather like Vanguard- the group has guts and skill, and they do what they do well. Whether or not you two are genuine Vanguard remains open to question, though." The Blaster put his back to a wall, and glanced at the rest of the Task Force. He was fairly sure that he could count on Martin and Bladewing if things went Wahoonie-shaped, Dusan would probably back his play, and Dax would likely throw a spike or two of assistance if it came to a brawl with the Sword(?) duo. The others were iffy... a frown creased his brow and he waited to see what would happen now that he had called the duo out.

((EDIT- Wow, that came out rather long. Still, ask question, get answer. E-X has just vented all his misgivings about the weird randomness that has been happening on this TF- some of it may or may not be important, so I'd like to imagine that it's worth reading))

*shatters into razor-sharp shards and flenses Darkvapor alive*

(that's a good word... flenses)

((Ouch... this is gonna hurt! If Darkvapor hits full on, Poe's gonna get punted into the elevator to share space with a rather sizeable 'kaboom'. And yeah, where did Inky go? I would've thought she'd have some stake in where Khel went...))

((Waiting on DeviousMe, I think..?))

*somehow accelerates downwards, grabs the grappling hook gun, beats Bladeheart to death with it, then fires it towards the edge of the hole... pulling the hole into the hole after everyone and sealing it up, causing everybody in the hole to die of impossibility*

((You may find that a bit restrictive- I'm not sure how many have a character that's in their teens. I've only ever seen one around on the RP board, and she's a villain, not a hero))

Target Lad glared irritably at the flyer that had literally flown into his room, folded into a paper airplane. "Lovely." he growled, voice cracking slightly. "Even in the privacy of my own home, the stupidity finds me. Having powers in Paragon is a curse." He rolled his eyes, ruffled short dark hair, and put on what he (with distinct irony) thought of as his 'hero suit'... jeans, sneakers... and a white t-shirt with a huge bullseye on it.

Lastly, he slid on his sole concession to what he considered the rampant stupidity of the spandex set- a targetting monocle that fed back limited data on most of Paragon City's known supernatural and superhuman threats.

Then he scribbled a quick note to his parents (Sorry, have to go out- stupidity came knocking, AGAIN. You know how to get ahold of me if you need to.), grabbed his bow, double-checked that he had access to Cross-D storage, and flew out the open window.

Somebody's nosy. And 'powerful prizes' or no, they're getting a pointy present from me to remind them that when I'm off duty, I'm not interested. he thought. "And the first person that yells 'Teen Titans, GO!' is getting an arrow up their nose." he added aloud as he flew for the tram station.

"Oh, no you don't." Energon X growled. The stray sniper blast was going to peg the idiot who had fouled Fraenir's tackle, so the blaster didn't give it a second thought.

Instead, he ripped out the Frankengun he used as backup and launched an LRM Rocket through the open villainside elevator doors, ignoring the bouncer's ineffectual protests.

If Poe was lucky, he'd just be blown back out through the open doors, shaken up but relatively unharmed.

If he wasn't lucky, he was going find himself sharing the elevator car with what was essentially a detonated micronuke, a storm of fire, thunder... and enough concussive force to leave his eyeballs dribbling out his ears, forcefield or no forcefield.

"I don't recall you saying much of anything useful" the irritated blaster shot back at the Sword Sorceror. "And I don't recall you saying you knew how the tracker worked, either, which is why I bloody well asked!" Energon X growled at the double-S. "Honestly, if it's not one sodding zombie, it's another..." he grumbled, sotto voice.

He glanced over at Martin. "Anything useful, Mr. Sanders?" he asked. Then he caught Karl's question. "Don't push your luck, necrophiliac. You freaks have a distinctly odd way of trying to 'beat' death... you cause a helluva lot more than you cure, I know that much." Another shake of his head, with attendant streaks of yellow flame, accompanied that pronouncement, then Energon X stalked over to Cohen's mangled body, studying it... and making sure that his sensors got a synthetic 'eyeful' of it.

E-X snorted, once, over the team channel, as he slowly regained his composure.

"Speaking of things that are 'wrong'... Dr. Frankenwannabe over here is obviously fairly good at telling when things are dead... how did ubergoon manage to kill Cohen? As far as I can tell at a glance, his mediport is still active. He should have 'poofed' out of here... it's not easy for magic to circumvent the mediporter; that's part of the reason I'm here, because superscience and magic play so badly together."

He glided down to rejoin the others. "I've got a friend of mine coming out this way- once he arrives in Boomtown, he'll be able to take a datadump of everything the sensors in this suit have recorded, and maybe do some analysis."

Energon X stared at the dead body of Cohen for a long moment, his only movement a slightly worrying facial tic. Then he calmly held up a single finger as the hard blue glow that indicated either a massive nearby energy field or extreme emotions in the Blaster snapped into existence, scoring lines of destroyed matter into the ground as tendrils lapped out.

"Excuse me." he said, still with the same flat calm. "I'm feeling a decidedly strong need to rant right about now... would one of you mind keeping an eye on things while I do that?"

Then he put his fist through a foot-thick concrete wall. "[censored] brilliant irritating [censored] random plotting [censored] arrogant so-called [censored] supergenius [censored] freakjobs!" he yelled. "[censored] pathological need to prove themselves so [censored] much [censored] smarter than [censored] us!" He took a deep breath that had the voder/breathmask straining before uttering a few more (thankfully garbled) expletives about supersmart idiots who couldn't think in a straight line if their lives depended on it.

He hit the wall again (this time only making a four-foot across crater in it) then sagged for a moment, the blue glow fading slowly as he shook his head... at least, the hood moved- he was facing away from everyone. Turning back, he cleared his throat. "Please excuse me. Having to... deal... with the Vahzilok always leaves me somewhat tense, and dealing with yet another 'muwahaha, I'm going to blow up the world' nimrod who thinks he's clever only makes it worse." he commented blandly, with a sharp glance at Karl.

"Anyways... if his body is dead, why in the nine hells does he have any soul at all, much less that of Brighid Moreira?" He impatiently waved Dusan over. "You... cocky kid. You can do stuff with souls, right? Can you talk to this one, or otherwise access the information inside it? If you can, do it."

The blaster turned to the Sword Sorceror. "You! Zombie twin #1! Can you communicate with the lizard-thing on any fashion beyond "Go, hunt, kill Skuls"? And can you get it to follow back along the trail of a particular soul? If we can find out where this body's been, it'll be a start."

He shrugged and soared into the sky, antenna-wings spread wide and fixed, and began turning slowly, letting the sensor-crammed suit soak up the rich data of the environment while putting a call into his SERAPH science contact. "Hey Vern? Feeling up for some fieldwork? It looks like I may need to datadump sooner than I thought, and get some feedback. If you could wait for me at the Vanguard op site, I'd appreciate it- not sure how long this leg of the mission's gonna take." He listened for a moment, then nodded, closing the channel. Vern's good enough at what he does that if there's any scientific way to track this geek, he'll find it. He continued to rotate slowly, looking oddly like a huge radar antenna improbably stuck to the sky.

((considering that we as posters are wildly uncoordinated, coordination of our characters seems to be a bit unlikely- I've twice had Diov's posts turn my posts into gibberish now, because he posted at exactly the same time I did.))

A weird purple flicker suggested that Energon X was rolling his eyes. "Oh no. Please don't stick me to the floor so I can't... y'know, shoot you or anything..."

Thankfully, Poe's abrupt reversal had pulled the Tesla Cage trajectory back just far enough that the multicaging didn't hit E-X, and the blaster calmly raised an arm, readying a sphere of power at the end of his fist that would snipe Poe from clear across the club and plaster him against the wall, if it didn't punch him clean through it.

Just have to be careful not to peg Fraenir with this... shouldn't be a problem, though, I'm good enough to nail Poe even if Fraenir's in mid-tackle. He shrugged and let fly.

*rez*

*throws a huge portable hole under everyone.*

*waves as they suddenly notice gravity and disappear with despairing wails (and at least one little hand-lettered sign that says 'Yikes!')*

((*sigh*... fixed, Diov. You knew what I meant >.&lt)

((Uhm... as far as I've noticed, E-X suggested splitting into two groups, but that didn't actually happen- the group may have lost a bit of cohesion, but except for Bladewing, we all seem to be pretty much in the same area))

Energon X nodded to Dennis, being careful not to look at the phantasm. "Yes... Bladewing headed this way, so we should find Karl there as well. The Igor collective back there said that he had 'information' on the City Rep's whereabouts. I'm starting to wonder if he doesn't have a bit more than that."

He paused for a moment, then worked a shrug into his wingbeats. Politeness cost nothing, after all. "Apologies for my apparent rudeness. It is... somewhat painful... for me to look directly at you because of my specialized senses. You look like an animate Rorschach Test attempting to swallow a Jackson Pollock painting to me. Needless to say, it's rather disorienting."

The Soulhound began to bank downwards, and E-X accelerated to follow, black-white-and-gold armour glowing in the late afternoon sun, the lattices of the techwing antennae transformed into a blazing halo around him. He touched down lightly next to Bladewing, facing Karl, the drop into shadow transforming him from shining celestial apparition to high-tech hero. If he still had a mouth, he probably would have grinned... he suspected Karl would have preferred the celestial apparition.

"Karl." the Blaster purred neutrally, somehow managing to convey by that very neutrality that his temper was on a very short leash... in short, Karl was one wrong word away from a short, painful flying lesson. "You know what we want; we know what you want. Perhaps we can trade. Your information for a head start from us."