The Crossing ((open RP))

(( Apologies for being sluggish. ))

The Missile lack of effect gave Ethan a problem, what the heck to try next..

Checking fire on the Missile Launcher , he took a good look around to see what the other folk where up to, someone (( Ineloo )) was using a bow, that seemed very pointless, no one uses bows, not even crossbows.
The robot thing (( Quicksilver )) seemed to be using blunt force, always a go to plan, the female who he had nearly cooked with the Missile's backblast (( Outsider )) appeared unarmed.

" Ok folks, what the hecking heck is going on here , talk to me people..."

Even while chatting Ethan was searching his packs for a new weapon idea, the Missile Launcher disappeared , to be replaced by an oversized gaunlet, with the word Fisto scrached on to its side. a small whine can from the glove as the Power Fist became active....

Kings Row, CRAB BATTLE (its some sort of cave demon)

Being sensible the tomboy who had on the spur of the moment decided to name herself Awesometastic Girl, made sure to keep things like cars, bus stops and walls between her and the crab, in fact it was leaning against cover that she called over to the adventurers and none crab giant robot.

“Ummm… just a suggestion but we might want to try moving this thing, to a park or a car park or something? I mean robots tend to explode don’t they, and that big red part sure makes it look like a trap, and well…” she gestures at the nearby buildings and so on “We’d want to avoid shrapnel if people are still in there.”

Talos Island

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano "Hold on hefty McLargehuge..." With that the Thrusts flared fully into life...blasting towards Kings Row.

Kri's emerald eyes looked after the departing streak in the sky with a thoughtful gaze. This was quite assuredly not what he'd expected of here - and while he knew more than well just how new he still was to this compared to the others, a glance to Sarkh quickly told him that the Cerosian officer found this no less odd than he.

"I see what you expected didn't happen either." he remarked in an alien tongue that a human might've said resembled a toothy sort of Italian, speaking to the sapphire-scaled dragon as Sarkh vigorously shook the water from his body and snapped tight the skins of his wings like one might a wet towel. The rest of their unit gradually emerged from cover and decloaked, assuming like the already visible duo that their presence had become public knowledge when the dragon had made himself known.

"Maybe." Sarkh replied in the same language, not skipping a single beat from English, "Maybe. The satellite is inferior to that to which we're accustomed. It might just take a while. Either that or we really are paranoid and reading vastly too much into this."

"Better too much than too little, Sir." the electronic modulation of an armorsuit chimed in, its wearer of the same tailless body type Ildela had first seen, "You never know how a little more information can change the situation. Which reminds me, Sir..."

"I know." the dragon interrupted with a casual bob of his head, laxly raising a hind leg to scratch at his flank, "It was a risk. But from what I heard at the briefing, it was about due. And I think your emperor would agree with me."

"Yes, Sir." was the respectful reply given as Sarkh turned his amber eyes once more to the lavender lizardman.

"In fact, I think I agree with the human." he told the Rulusian shaman as he lowered his wings to the ground, "We should try and make a good impression. Everyone get on..."

__________________

Kings Row

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rebel_Scum "And, you are...?", she asked, forgetting for the moment that she and her alien companions were all still invisible and thus the sudden voice from nowhere might give him the wrong idea. Or perhaps she did it on purpose to freak him out, it'd hardly be the first time.

They didn't move. They didn't speak. They merely watched. And waited. Waited to see what would happen, waited to stay hidden, unnoticed, to observe of this what they could without interfering.

Then came the message.

She almost cursed out loud. Sarkh was going off mission again. Why?! The local (and now foreign as well) metahumans and their like were already taking care of the situation, so why did...?

Damn that over-eager thunder monster!

She gave the signal. They moved out. Quickly, quietly, stealthily. Sarkh had a decent plan, but if something went wrong, the others would need backup - and she was going to make sure it was there, ready, and armed to the teeth...

Taliea raised a hand and the other two stopped ad she said in a almost casual tone, "Wait, this thing poses a obvious limited threat, it's weapons are harmless and its patrol pattern would indicate a guard device".

Banov sigheed, "Does it matter even hitting something like that makes us look good here correct?

Taliea shurgged, "Ok, you two attack, enjoy the battle, i shall just watch from here".

With that she activated hover jets that seemed to be built into legs and hovered above the ground as Banov and the robots advanced on the crab machine. Taliea didn't like this, but she was sure a little fun for the other two would do no harm, she would ahve to consider reactivating Banov's emotional inhibitors though.

Banov ran up to the crab machine and pummed into one of its legs with his fists before backing up and seeing what effect that had, as the robot stayed a safe distance and startd firing red blasts of energy from its hands at the crab.

By the time everyone's attacks had connected with the giant crab the Outsider had already sought cover in the form of a nearby building, just in time for:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano There was a brief pause where it lay still, seemingly doing nothing before the machinery inside it whirred again, flipping on it's front once more, now with the left claw gone, a machinegun looking object had replaced it. It spammed pink energy bullets in a frontal 45 degree cone for a couple of seconds before preforming a straight dash attack with the remaining claw, quickly retreating back to it's former position to once again spam more pink bullets. The body was flickering red permentantly now, the trope of a damage indicator clearly in full effect with it.

Great, she thought to herself as she watched the metal monster scrabble upright and unleash the fury with a momentary hail of... pink fire, of all colours. Now what do I do?

"OUTSIDER!"

The young woman flicked her head to the left to glance across the street in reaction to the callout coming from that general direction. Much to her delight, there stood Derek, waiting in equally adequate cover while he waved to her. And best of all, carrying more than enough metal chain to stretch across the street.

"I've found a couple of chains!" the wanderer proudly declared. "Along with some strange-looking padlocks, it seems."

"Great!" the Outsider yelled back. "Quick! Pass me one then look for a way onto the rooftops! Hurry!"

The wanderer complied quickly, swinging one of the chains in a helicopter motion above is head as if readying to throw a bolas. As soon as he let go, the chain flew a good distance across half the street and continued the remainder of its journey skidding across the asphalt, much to the Outsider's dread. All she could do was watch as a few bullets struck the chain and sent it into sloppy spin until it finally reached its destination. Fortunately, its destination was still into her hands.

"Thanks!" she shouted over. "Oh, wait! Throw me a sword!"

Confused, Derek nonetheless drew the gearblade from its scabbard, held it by its hilt over his head and hurled it toward the wall opposite. Quite how the crab's gunfire managed to miss its flightpath toward embedding itself into the brickwork was either party's guess.

The Outsider thanked Derek again and pulled the sword out of the wall before running off. Getting to the rooftop was easy enough for her. Just a case finding a way in and climbing the stairs all the way to the top, after all, but she did worry about Derek and his unfamiliarity with modern-day Earth altogether, let alone an Earth full of apparently common dangers fit for the superhumans that populate it.

Kings Row, Crab Encounter

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano The Drone continued to grumble but landed at the designated area, just as all the attacks landed on the crab creature's exposed weakspot.

Mirel stepped off the drone, already shrugging her shoulders as she completed limbering herself up for the fight, it’d be a toughie for sure, a giant crab-esq Warstrider if her guess was accurate, not something most people could take on foot.

She allowed herself a little smile as she pressed her back against a wall, as close as she dared to be to the massive hail of pink bullets filling up the street.

“Lucky for me, the scions of House Cathak are not most people” She said aloud to herself just before the stream of bullets stopped and she hurled herself out into the road, sprinting towards the metal monstrosity.

The giant enemy crab charged forwards as well, swinging it’s remaining pincer as the distance between them rapidly closed, the timing here would have to be perfect. Just in time Mirels acute senses picked up the claw about to descend on where she was about to be, this was her signal.

Just before the young Dragonblooded could be crushed however, the ground around her erupted as though a water spout had suddenly broke through the ground at her feet (Though an inspection once it had passed showed no damage) propelling her diagonally up towards the crab, neatly missing the crushing claw as she spun in the air, extending her gauntlets blades as she thrust her hands out ready for impact.

KLANG! Metal struck metal and the blades bit deep, lodging themselves firmly in the metallic shell, somewhere below the crabs mouth, holding Mirel there for now as she assessed the situation.

“Hmmm…. I was expecting there to be a door or a hatch or something for me to enter by” She said to herself again as she dangled by her arms, “Well maybe there’s some kind of weak point I can att-“

Rather quickly she noticed the rather large glaring weak point, and very carefully extracted one set of claws from the crab, embedding it a bit further down before repeating with the other arm, making her way along the underside of the crab towards the weak point with this very unusual method of motion.

Chapter One: Into the Garden of Forking Paths, Continued

Quote:

Originally Posted by synthozoic Quark Zombie, for that's who it was, dumped a small stack of papers and a bound stack of money onto reception desk. "I'm the one who will explain things," said the mathematician pulling out a notepad to refresh his memory, "we're here to hire people. This might seem like a repetition of your recent past but I can emphatically state, it most assuredly isn't, not this time."

Valley Witch, who only feigned the vapidity of her namesake as a means of misdirecting opponents, was irritated with the patronizing tone of the nameless mathematician but she hid it well, like all good receptionists.

"And these papers and money are to terminate the lease?" she asked.

"Yes, and a few minor changes to the contact information of the--" the mathematician grimaced at the name of the gang, "the melodramatically named Fallen Ones. We still wish to use the Scarlet Society's headhunting resources for recruitment."

She signed a few of the forms and locked the money in the petty cash drawer, "Fine. That's cool. Now, was there anything else?"

"If you would please post this on your secure site," he passed over a hand bill, "We'll do the same on that bulletin board over there. That should get us started. Thanks."

Quark Zombie and the mathematician walked over the the bulletin board in the lobby nearby Ruby's and the elevators. And posted the following:

Quote:

"Why such strong restrictions on time travel? Why do we have busybodies regulating metacosmic travel? "Surely anyone familiar with the physics involved would realize that most of these restrictions are completely pointless. So why do we allow self-appointed authorities, whom no one elected and whom answer to no accountable body, restrict our movements? "Do you have it in for the Menders? Do you find the Portal Corporation, neither? And who does this DJ Zero person think he is anyway?! Or are you just looking for a great deal of traceless cash for a few hours of extremely dangerous and violent but exciting work? "Exchange public PGP keys with the e-mail address below and we'll talk about a few interesting opportunities."

With that, the pair walked out of the lobby of the Chateau Rouge, onto the Rue Gimbal, to hyperspatially jaunt to their next meeting.

The meeting would be with an accomplice, a former soldier, now absent without leave and guilty of many other infractions, in Recluse's army. He desperately wanted a chance to flee to Paragon City. This was an opportunity the mathematician brought to Quark Zombie's attention. Quark Zombie, being an unfathomably alien creature who steered the radioactive corpse of a former physicist five years dead from outside space-time itself, was not really good at manipulating people. For that, it now relied on its thrall, the mathematician.

They popped back into space-time in the courtyard of Aeon University on the island of Cap Au Diable. Quark Zombie, who often went about shoeless, gloveless and maskless to use its power, donned its full suit so as to not kill bystanders with hard, ionizing radiation. This not because Quark Zombie had interest in sparing life it was merely a matter of not drawing undue attention to itself. The mathematician was able to withstand closeness with the alien monster who was his master due to powerful chelation drugs and periodic treatments with cell repair machines.

They entered the main library of the university.

There he was, in a study alcove amid all the books and terminals, the Found Spider, former trooper of Arachnos and now on the lam from Recluse's law. Obviously he was in disguise, posing as one of the students at the university. He was of average height and muscular in build, a dark skinned Latino with a strong hint of Mayan in his features. He wasn't especially striking, not at all the supposed product of mild gene tweaking that he was. It was a face you wouldn't remember well--which might have been the point.

Quark Zombie handed the mathematician the passport and plane tickets and walked back out of the building to wait, staring directly at the Sun. The mathematician pulled up a chair and sat next to the man.

"On May 11th, 2006, a Thursday, you completed basic and were assigned to your first unit. One of your first assignments in the field was at the so called Victory of Recluse. You were all sent in with flamethrowers to pacify the civilians in what was euphemistically called 'house warming ceremonies.' But you couldn't do it. Instead, you chose to spend your fuel on uninhabited buildings. You only shot at those who shot back at you. Your CO never found out."

The mathematician recited this all in a calm, quiet voice, as if he were reading off a weather forecast. Found Spider stirred once but didn't turn to face the mathematician.

"We saw you there, I and my master. It probably means nothing to you, but know for an incontrovertible fact that there were, and are, an infinite number of you that did follow your orders that day. That there were an infinite number that did exactly as you have done means nothing. You think this matters. It does not."

The mathematician plunked down the passport, tickets and other papers on Found Spider's desk.

"Here is your reward for what you did for us at the reservoir, in Faultline. Escape. Flee to your precious city, to freedom. But know this, we see your entire world line. We see the world lines of all the persons who contributed to your germ plasm. We can snuff those lines out at any point, intervene in them at any point. Go, spread our message."

The mathematician walked out of the library to join Quark Zombie. Soon they were swallowed into hyperspace.

Found Spider quietly took the papers and stuffed them into his bag. He finished the next two chapters in the book he was pretending to read, The Man in the Iron Mask. He'd already read it dozens of times before. He then walked out of the library to take a cab to the air field over in Haven.

Customs didn't even bat an eye at his travel papers or his bags and soon, he stepped off a small prop job that flew him directly to Atlanta, Georgia in the United States. He was free.

There was some worry that the FBI or INS might give him trouble in his new life but these were nothing in comparison to Recluse's secret police. From Atlanta, he had enough money to make his way to Paragon City, Rhodes Island by train.

There was one last thing he had to do for his mysterious, threatening benefactors. That was to act as a contact for the superhumans of that city looking for work.

====

((Continued in the next post where I'll set up things for hero-types to join in this crazy scheme. If any villains find any interest in Quark Zombie's help wanted ad above, please send me a PM and we'll get you started.))

Ethan stepped back .... " what the mutants lizards teeth is that thing ? "

He looked at the other people engaging the crab beasty, " anyone ? half an idea ? heck any of you lot even speak english ? "

Keeping a good solid building to his back, Ethan once more started to dig deep into his packs . . . .

Kings Row - 2 Blocks from Crabbage

A pair of armored soles clacked against the reinforced grating of the helipad, followed quickly by several more. Rifles in hand, their owners swept a perimeter before Sarkh's claws even touched the platform. The sapphire-scaled dragon smirked while he brought his wings against his back. He had to admit, the Esertosians had one heck of an organization.

"Looks a little unstable." Kri remarked, climbing from the long blue neck, the Rulusian lizardman's voice once more the electronic tone of his armor, making the alien tongue he spoke sound perpetually annoyed, "Sure we want to mess with that? It reminds me of a...what was it called again? Destruction charge?"

"Demolition." Sarkh corrected, stepping from the helipad and lying down beside the raised structure to present a lower profile, amber eyes fixing the robo-crab below, "And I am, yes. But you're right. I hope the Tech Sergeant can do something about that, yes?"

"Already on it, Sir." replied one of the armored figures who'd crouched down at the edge of the roof, PGMP rifle directed at the robo-crab, "Searching for a node."

"Then you'd better hope he finds one before I manage to get over to you." another voice crackled in from the stairs of the fire escape, where several more armored individuals had just appeared, "What do you people think you're doing?!"

A beat of silence passed. They all knew to whom that had been addressed, the two said parties just a little better than the others.

"Captain!" Kri exclaimed nervously, tail curled around his staff as if he could use it form some sort of cover, "How did you get here so quickly?"

The addressed individual didn't reply, instead setting feet into step toward the shaman, who in turn glanced to an awkward-looking Sarkh trying (and mostly failing) to squeeze his bulk in under the support structure of the helipad.

"Why are you hiding?!" the Rulusian queried hastily, the Captain still advancing toward him, "You're the dragon here!"

"I know, but she's still scary when she's mad like that."

"Am I now?" the Captain's gaze whipped to Sarkh's amber eyes, "Good. I certainly have reason to be, especially to you. Disobeying orders. Revealing your presence to a potential enemy. Compromising the mission objective. Shall I go on?"

"But Sir," the dragon replied good-naturedly, though his voice held a sneaky undertone, "you're seeing this all wrong. I merely adapted our orders to the changing situation. Honestly, if your emperor saw things that way, he'd never have begun this initiative in the first place. You know our purpose here. What better means than open contact are there?"

The Captain raised a finger, but couldn't seem to find anything to toss at Sarkh's head in reply. Another beat of silence passed. Then several more. Eventually the finger came back down.

"Fine." her armor practically growled out, "But we're having a talk after this. A very long talk."

She gave a nod to the Technical Sergeant, "Proceed."

"Yes, Sir." the armored soldier responded with a like gesture and set back to work scanning the local airwaves. With any luck, he'd be able to find some means of connecting to the rampaging machine down there. If so, perhaps it could be shut down by the right signal.

Of course, no one was betting on that. Thus he also sought out the communications channels used by Dr. Mechano and his drones.

What was there to be found...?

Quicksilver had rolled to the side as the thing flipped itself upright, transforming and driving long enough to put some distance between him and it.

Transforming back and into a skidding crouch, he brought his gun up to bear.
"Time to play it big."

There was a subtle metallic click, followed by whirring, clanking and other mechanised noises as the thing changed from a hand-and-a-half, thick-set cannon object to a sleeker, long-barrelled rifle design.
"Chew on this!"
There was a sudden whine followed by a sharp crack like a lightning bolt, as the Autobot's transformed rail-rifle kicked against his shoulder, the projectile moving so fast that it left after-burn trails in the air between him and the giant craboid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Amatus kept pace with lldela as she headed for the station. He landed on the front platform and rematerialized. The first thing he did was take a look at one of the nearby Police Drones.

"Fascinating." He said, leaning over to stare at the initialed lettering stamped onto it. "A construct that can fly. It looks rather fragile though...And what is its function? It does not appear to possess any weaponry or tools...And with these flashing lights it would make for a horrible surveillance-check on the population."

" one of the claws fired off and skidded to a halt in the road "

Ethan pulled out his tool kit and moved arcoss the road to the discarded claw, his true calling as a salavger kicked in as he searched the claw for anything of use. Long hours of such worked had trained Ethan to keep one eye on the the rest of the world, those pink bullets looked as deadly as the normal sort, and some bright spark had already mentioned that robots tend to go Boom! when defeated.

Glancing across to the bow wielding stranger, Ethan Shouted to her ..

" first come first server, turn up or missout, this thing has cost me a prefectly good missle already .."

with half an eye watching the possiblely about to explode crab beasty, a second half on the surroundings, Ethan devote one whole eye to looking at how to take apart the claw and get at the useful stuff inside.

Chapter One: Into the Garden of Forking Paths, Continued

Quote:

Originally Posted by synthozoic There was one last thing he had to do for his mysterious, threatening benefactors. That was to act as a contact for the superhumans of that city looking for work.

This required some footwork.

Found Spider arrived in Paragon without incident and found it easy, under the assumed name of his expertly forged passport, to find an apartment and to take a job as a security guard in a shopping mall in Talos. His training served him very well here because many Arachnos military personnel knew the fine points of assuming fake identities in their target countries of operation. There would be some trouble when his visa expired but that by that point he might well be on his way to being a naturalized citizen. Once the money started to come in from his day job, he thought his civilian identity was now pretty well established. Time for his next step.

His apartment was spare aside from the two large cases and some other luggage he brought with him in his escape from the Rogue Isles. He opened the large cases to break out his stolen Arachnos military gear. He'd be steadily accumulating and modifying this gear over the last few years as part of his plan to escape from Recluse's clutches. He stowed his silver, modified Arachnos combat armor into a suit case which he took as he went out to look for an abandoned doorway in an alleyway reasonably far from his apartment to change.

This done, he then took the city elevated tram to Galaxy City.

It was there he planned to register as a legal hero, the offices in City Hall in Atlas were often too crowded and slow for this purpose. Galaxy was a better choice. Regardless, the functionary who did his paperwork for this was bored and a little short of sleep and, as it was, he became a legal hero without too many questions asked.

Great! Now he could finally get that last straw of his old life off his back forever! He pulled out the papers the Mathematician had given him several months ago on that day in Aeon University. He had avoided reading these ever since he left, simply because anything associated with that mysterious, pretend academic creeped the ever living daylights out of him.

And sure enough, as he read them, flutters ran up and down the skin on his back. They detailed a plan by which he'd consult his newly assigned police radio for crimes in progress. He would be looking for one particular incident and he'd gather help to go solve that crime, simple enough. What was deeply unnerving about this was that the plan in the papers was written months ago and yet it detailed his actions almost down to the minute and seemed to anticipate everything that he'd be doing during that day of listening to the police scanner. It appeared that the Mathematician and his silent partner had extremely accurate precognitive abilities or could travel in time itself.

He had to wonder why they were interested in this yet to happen crime in a far away land. It was as suspicious as a group of deeply paranoid ravens from North Korea watching badly edited clips of the Zapruder film on a website devoted to UFO cover-ups.

But there was worse to come. As he read the papers, he saw the last line on the last page change before his eyes.

"Don't ask questions. This line of text shows that we can change your past at any moment. Do as we say."

He dropped the papers as if they had just burst into flame and then hastily scrambled to pick them up before they blew away. Shuddering, he stuffed the papers in his pocket and took the tram to Kings Row to network and recruit.

((Uhm...still curious as to why this is here, and not in it's own dedicated thread, if it's a whole seperate plot?))

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.