"Dammit," Penny swore, and a moment later her radio cut out completely.
Without the radio, it was impossible to hear anything over the thundering din of the portal, which had now grown to a truly apocalyptic size. In its center, different pictures appeared, as if it was a television set trying to tune into a difficult station.
The red tentacle faded away to a vision of a surprised group of Circle... they faded to a glimpse of shrieking vine monsters... who gave way to weird, shadowy figures... who gave way to cruel crystalline forms...
Then, a quick glimpse of a Rikti formation. It faded quickly, replaced by other glimpses of other creatures, places and times. Then, another glimpse of Rikti, which again faded, but not quite as quickly as before.
"Dammit!" Penny Arcade's voice cut in again, this time on a different frequency. "They are grabbing it! Hurry, hurry!"
The combined efforts of the heroes was having an effect. The head and tail of the oddly shaped portal were now spinning at drastically different speeds. The whirlpool surrounding it was lit by furious sparks and streaks of lightning. Given time, the portal would destabilize. But the glimpses of the Rikti were becoming more frequent... it would be a race against time.
Flaming couldn't hear Penny, or anyone for that matter, over the now raging portal. With the fading glimpses of ghosts and ghoulies on the other side there, Flaming was just trying to do what he did best: Control. He gave it all he had, considering his plants couldn't do **** here.....Or could they? Hmmm...I wonder... He aimed his hands at the ground, spraying a fine green mist on the ground, various debris around the area and arced the spray to the portal. A cracking was heard.... Think I got somethin'.. Several monstrous green tentacles burst from the ground and rapped around the debri. The tentacles followed the arc, tossing the rock and steel at the tail.
"Hahah! It worked!"
"Oh, I'm sure you do." giggled the veiled figure, performing a leisurely shrug to Jake, "But just how do you propose to stop me?"
"No, don't bother." the man continued lightly, holding up a hand in a pre-emptive gesture, "I already know what you're going to say. And trust me, it's not going to work. What you're dealing with at present exceeds the comprehension of your tiny head."
"Oh no, that wasn't meant as an insult." the figure moved the palms of its hands together to indicate an object about the size of a baseball, "From my point of view, your head is just...small. That's all there is to it. Of course, by my opinion, you're also not very smart. But then, I can't exactly expect that from your specie...fic organization - Arachnos, that is."
"Now, Miss Arcade," the figure turned to Penny again, seemingly not the least bit perturbed by the truly horrific images the gate presented its audience.
Was this man perhaps from one of those worlds? Did he wish to destroy the key to deny access to them? And if so, did this mean he was not a man at all, but one of those...things in but a brilliant disguise?
It was certainly possible - for where the multiverse was concerned, possibility was endless.
"Please give me the key. Or destroy it yourself, it really doesn't matter. All we wish is for all this nonsense to cease..."
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Jake's eye twitched at the manner of which the cloaked figure insulted him. His over calm and cool demeanor while making a mockery of his intelligence certainly ticked him off, but he shortly after regained his cool, after all, anger clouds the mind. He turned back to his bots to make sure they were still doing as instructed, and then leaned against the wall, closing his eyes to think.
[ QUOTE ]
"Please give me the key. Or destroy it yourself, it really doesn't matter. All we wish is for all this nonsense to cease..."
[/ QUOTE ]
Penny Arcade was not affiliated with Arachnos but didn't care to offer a correction.
Above her, the vortex was twisting itself to death. The concentrated firepower from multiple points was having the intended effect: the whirlpool was spinning one way, but the tail was now spinning in almost the opposite direction. At the base of the vortex there was a lightning storm, coloring the clouds in streaks of purple and gold. It was in its death throws, but the images in the center were now flashing very fast, and it was a question of whether or not they could close it before something came through.
"I do eventually plan to destroy the key," she said, "When I am good and ready." She couldn't destroy it immediately - she would need it before then. But she didn't care to share that with anyone here. "And no, you cannot have it. I got it first."
"Oh, I'm quite sure you'd like me to take that and leave well enough alone." giggled the veiled figure with a hapless hand gesture, "But if you'd like to imply ownership by temporal proximity, it is quite technically mine. You see, the good Dr. Malcolm is duly in our employ, and I should hate to see his spotless record tarnished by something like this. Therefore, we would ever so much appreciate our property back."
Penny had of course no way of knowing for sure, but everything seemed to tell her this guy wasn't lying. Something about the tone of his voice, the ease of his words. Nobody could lie this convincingly.
"Besides," the garbed man turned to look out the hole in the building, "if you go after him with the key still in hand, you must consider the possibility that he will kill you and subsequently take it from you."
He turned back to Penny with another chuckle, "And frankly, you are in no shape to face him, neither physically nor mentally. I should know. Now, are you quite sure you won't help me out here? If you did, perhaps I might be able to help you."
"This is getting bothersome." his tone suddenly turned very staunch and serious as he looked outside again, "Not to mention truly dangerous. You're all taking too long."
Without waiting for any sort of reply, the figure's hand drew a conductor's baton from his robes and struck it out towards the portal with all the force deserving the crescendo of an overture.
A sun-bright beam of pure white came from nowhere, without warning and from one instant to another. Strangely enough, despite its brightness, the pure white was not blinding, nor even remotely irritating to the eye. It was just...bright.
What happened to the gateway, however, was certainly not. The flash of light it vanished in was bright and painfully so, forcing almost everyone to avert their eyes as the gateway imploded out of their view.
It didn't last long, but did obscure the scene almost completely, rendering it utterly unknown if the gate had let something through before its destruction for a few more moments.
But that wasn't the half of it.
If one traced the beam of white back to its source, one would find it to be the top of a nearby skyscraper, or more specifically, the strange-looking cannon sitting there.
The thing looked like an artillery piece designed by inhuman minds, only the general shape of a cannon barrel with running lines of twisting deep-green luminescence across its deep-blue metallic form immediately recognizeable. The barrel was at least half a meter wide and maybe ten times as long. Quite a heavy weapon, it seemed.
And it most certainly hadn't been there before...
--------------------
There. That took care of the gate. Now he just had to get the key back somehow, and then the 'heroes' could take care of the rest.
And then it hit him.
How was he gonna get his gun back...?
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
Jake tightly clenched his eyes at the sudden increase in light, instinctively turning his head away and blocking out the source with his hand. Daring to squint in the general direction of the blinding light, he mumbled to himself, "That's an interesting weapon..." before continuing to shield his eyes from the source of the light.
[ QUOTE ]
"Oh, I'm quite sure you'd like me to take that and leave well enough alone." giggled the veiled figure with a hapless hand gesture, "But if you'd like to imply ownership by temporal proximity, it is quite technically mine. You see, the good Dr. Malcolm is duly in our employ, and I should hate to see his spotless record tarnished by something like this. Therefore, we would ever so much appreciate our property back."
Penny had of course no way of knowing for sure, but everything seemed to tell her this guy wasn't lying. Something about the tone of his voice, the ease of his words. Nobody could lie this convincingly.
"Besides," the garbed man turned to look out the hole in the building, "if you go after him with the key still in hand, you must consider the possibility that he will kill you and subsequently take it from you."
He turned back to Penny with another chuckle, "And frankly, you are in no shape to face him, neither physically nor mentally. I should know. Now, are you quite sure you won't help me out here? If you did, perhaps I might be able to help you."
[/ QUOTE ]
"I won't... give up the key... until I'm sure that that maniac has been stopped," Penny Arcade swayed dizzily. The drugs dumped so abruptly in her system were beginning to wear off now, and she was again starting to feel the effects of her injuries. She was trying to process the full implications of what he was saying, but blackness was beginning to edge her vision. She had several minutes left, but she was slowly beginning to lose the battle against unconsciousness.
But there was one overriding thought in her mind: the portal above was twisting itself to death. In the brilliant light it was collapsing in on itself. That meant that the heroes, no longer distracted by the end of the world, would be coming after her again. The knowledge of her certain fate, if caught, lodged like a lump in her throat. Vivisection. She had to go, quickly, before she was captured. But she also had to stay - what the man was saying here was important. She was sure of that.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a thunderous noise. The light which bathed the portal had split off from itself. They hadn't been quick enough. Something had come through, as if a bit of the light had dripped off of the edge of the portal as it collapsed.
The sound from below - an enormous, earthshaking THUMP followed by an infuriated roaring noise - confirmed her suspicions. They would have to deal with whatever the portal had just dumped in their laps.
She looked over the edge to the street below, and was vaguely able to make out a bunch of large, almost humanoid figures. It looked familiar, and she tried to recall where she had seen them before.
Wasn't it in the pictures she had seen of Perez Park....? Were those hydras.... the big one in the middle... the Kraken maybe?
Whatever they were, the movement to Steel Canyon had not pleased them. They began to scatter, roaring, and destroying anything within the reach of their large, clumsy fists.
((/pokepeople 
))
Well, this wasn't good. In retrospect, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to shoot a crossworld portal with something that made transspatial gateways child's play.
No, there hadn't been an alternative. It had been a calculated risk. The leveled firepower just hadn't been enough, and a decision had to be made.
He hated making decisions like this.
At least with the containment field encasing the area, the Hydra couldn't swarm out and all over the place - the Crawlers would see to that.
So first order of business: get the gun back before it drew too much attention...
--------------------
"Hm." the figure tilted his hooded head to the side a bit, the mask not betraying any clue as to his emotions, "I suppose I'll get back to you on that."
Something suddenly rocked the building, as if something enormous had just performed a rapid push-up on the roof. Then again, that might have just as likely been the Kraken below too. It clearly wasn't happy...
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
"Well that's most certainly not good..." Jake said, obviously referring to the spawn of Hydra. Better nab that key and get out while there's still some chaos... With Penny nearly unconscious and the cloaked figure the only one within arm's reach of her, now was the prime moment to make his move. Without a moment's more of hesitation, he immediately severed his and his robot's restrains to the floor and ordered them to... well... bum-rush the cloaked figure, while he activated his rocket boots and propeled himself into Penny, knocking her for a loop and giving him the prime oppurtunity to grab the key. The robots really weren't so much to defeat the cloaked figure as they were to try to bide him a few minutes. Right now, they had been programmed to simply get in the way, only given permission to use defensive manuevers and given the prime objective and keeping the cloaked figure where he was. They obeyed orders remarkably well, and had soon knocked the man, or entity, you could never tell, into a corner of the room, whilst he rocketed himself and penny out of the huge hole in the wall. as they began to fall, Jake grabbed for the key, immediately planning to rocket off through the hole in the field that his goggles had detected only minutes earlier.
"My dear Jake, that will..." was all the man got out in an annoyed tone before the assault bot had succeeded in bashing him into a corner of the room, a small avalanche of rubble coming from the already decrepit structure to partially bury him.
"Well, that's bothersome." he grumbled quietly as he got back up, "I still can't control this damn thing right. How do they all do it?"
Well, at least Jake wouldn't be getting away as he wanted. His goggles had erroneously analyzed the situation.
There was no hole in the field...
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
With the giant black portal gone Flaming's main concern was over; so he could now get back to robbing the.....
He turned to where the bank was, remembering he had dropped the money at the site of the vortex, undoubtably it must have been sucked in during the hellstorm. Son of a...Wait a minute! He clearly remembered a giant cannon vaporizing the portal. I'm sure those people wouldn't mind if I just grabbed that and went on my merry way. No way I'm leaving empty handed.... He could care less about the hydra; this was Paragon after all. With that, with the same motions as before, he was pulled underground by roots to his destination.
"Yeah, I was gonna say something about that..." Jake remarked, tapping his earpiece. "Seems you're using the same frequency as Arachnos..." Jake chuckled at the awkwardness(sp?) and convienance of the situation. "And I really hate to be hostile when we have a common enemy," Jake started, speaking to the cloaked figure, "but I require that key for a mission complete, so I'm afraid the destruction of it is out of the question."