Robots! (IC)

[Raveled]

The close call raised Glowstar's adrenaline, but it didn't break his focus. "Sorry to burst in, Professor Clank," he said, drawing in his power. "We have a few questions regarding your civic contributions, though. If you'd kindly put the vehicle in park, we can do this peacefully." There was a sudden flashing, strobing flare of red and black energy as a hundred discrete, thin bursts of energy flew from the teen hero's hands and connected with the rear end of Wyrd's mole machine. "Or we can put the clamp on your mid-life crisis mobile. Your call."

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox sighed as the turret lasers began firing. "Well, no one can say we didn't intend to talk..." she said to no one in particular. Then she whirled, wand pointed at the cavern as her force field flared into white light.

"Terra," she stated, pointing at a point as far as possible from the group, the ground there trembling slightly, dust and stones rolling away and flying gently upwards into the air. She drew up every ounce of her will, and poured it down, through her wand, and into that one sole point.

By now, a small crack had began to appear, and the witch looked away to shield her eyes. "KINESI!" The stone exploded, shards of stone and rock flying everywhere, propelled by raw magical will and force. The air itself rumbled as shrapnel rained down on everything in over a 60' radius.

[Quinn]

When the dust settled, it became apparent that her attack had had a great deal of effect on the local landscape, if not very much on the headquarters or turrets. A crater full of dislodged stones and holes was left where she'd pointed her stick, little robot limbs and parts strewn all over the place as if swept away by the hand of an angry goddess. Still functioning amidst the rubble, two turrets swiveled their barrels around and began charging to fire while the other stayed locked on Glowstar, although some sparks and dented plating here and there indicated she'd done some damage.

Push, for his part, trusted to old experience with Wyrd, and instead of taking to the air charged forward on foot. Rearing back, he hurled a blast of kinetic force which seemed to be just sucked into the armor plating of one of the turrets. Nearly facepalming in mid-sprint, the kineticist rolled his eyes. He'd forgotten Wyrd still had those kind of tricks...hearing Glowstar's crack with the name, he cupped his hands to his mouth and roared at the top of his lungs, failing to keep a smile from crossing his face underneath the scarf.

"Oi! Wyrd-o! Long time no punch!"

A truly prodigious amount of both English and Russian curses erupted from the cargo bay, along with the distinct sound of sirens; familiar to Push, as they were ones he'd heard on a regular basis back home.

"You! Not you! Why you! Why now! Oooooooh! And it's WYRD! W-Y-R-D! Like WIRED! WYRD! GAAAAH! FIRE! FIRE! IF IT'S A CHOICE BETWEEN REGULAR AND EXTRA CRISPY I WANT EXTRA CRISPY!"

And with that, the two turret lasers lanced across the cavern, one striking the nearest wall and putting a small dent in it, the second hitting Equinox. As the blast struck her, it felt surprisingly similar to a plain arcane blast; albeit with a little...make that a lot more oomph, and a cosmetic change.

[quotemyname]

Blueshift ran. She zipped through the underground cavern as quickly as her rocket boots could carry her, never letting her boots drain so much power that her cloaking device might fail. As she ran she dodged explosion after laser blast after rock slide. The insides of the cavern were pandemonium, especially compared to the relative tranquility that seemed to be preserved within Wyrd's mobile mining station itself. Finally she was close enough to board the machine.

Saying nothing, fearing that Wyrd might have radio scanners, Blueshift simply crouched at the edge of the entrance. She removed a small device about the size of a roomba vacuum from her hip. As she powered it on, she spoke to it over the mental link she shared with it, "Running silent. Mid operation. Recon duty. NO BACKTALK."

"Roger!" Mac replied. His cloaking device was active before he floated away from her hands, ensuring that at no point in time he would be visible.

Blueshift looked toward the insides of the ship. She watched and waited for the best time to dart in. She tried to soak up everything she saw, and remember it. She tried to gather all this information from just a glance, and with her hyper active brain, she did.

[Quinn]

Blueshift's movements luckily went unnoticed by the robo-turrets, which wheeled around towards the heroes again and started charging their cannons. From her position at the entrance to the cargo bay, she could see a swarm of the smaller robots working feverishly on the humongous one Equinox had seen earlier, a meter nearby showing it at approximately 89% power!

A blur of motion on the catwalks above caught her eye, and she saw Wyrd at a large bank of machines, his fingers dancing over the keys. A dome of light surrounded him; hexagonal shapes connected with one another in a kind of pattern, it hd to be some kind of force field. The loudspeakers blared again as one of the robo-turrets outside fired another lance of light, catching Equinox full-on in the blast!

"OOOOH! Not again, you don't! This time I KNOW I've got these new robots right! Imagine how easy construction and deconstruction will be with my new mini-bots working to repair the city! And how dare you vanish like that all those years ago, when I haven't beaten you yet! GAH, I'LL SHOW YOU ALL!"

[Raveled]

Glowstar zipped around in the air, dodging shards of rock shaken loose by Equinox's magic. The hole that opened up in the middle of the cavern wasn't much of a problem for him, but he did let out a cheer when the lion's share of Wyrd's little 'bots fell into it. "Hey! Wyrd-o! Come on out here, we're breaking all your little toys!" The teen hero darted closer to the massive machine, hoping that the turrets would be less likely to shoot at him if he was too close to Wyrd's creation. Of course, the hero himself wasn't going to let up on them; he let loose with another charge off his fist, this one a bit less powerful but much more focused than his alpha strike.

[Quinn]

"IT'S PROFESSOR, YOU...YOU...YOU....!!!"

For all of Wyrd's advanced age (Blueshift could note that whatever else, Wyrd was most decidedly *not* a young man), he did have quite a magnificent set of lungs; that particularly loud exclamation, along with the follow-up litany of rude words in Russian, could be heard both over the loudspeakers and even through the door of the cargo bay. Glowstar's blast screamed across the cavern and struck one of the turrets right in a sensitive spot, causing it to whine and spark, it's charging sequence interrupted briefly as it sputtered and spouted "error!" messages. That, of course, was followed up by yet another litany of mixed-language curses from the loudspeakers, and Push simply rolled his eyes.

"Hey Prof, did you ever solve that overload problem?"

The curses stopped, followed by what could only be described as a puzzled silence.

"Overload problem?"

An exceptionally large blast of kinetic energy struck one of the still-functional drones. For a moment, the wards that flared up when he'd flung a blast at it previously started shining brightly, then the whole turret simply exploded, leaving nothing but a small pile of scrap and slag. Blueshift saw a spot on Wyrd's control panel explode, the scientist turning beet-red as he pulled a very strange pistol-like device from his belt; still keeping his hands at the computers. A dry voice came in through the door, over the sound of metal scraps hitting the ground.

"Might want to look into that."

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox, unfazed by the explosions and speechifying going on around her, just pushed up off the ground, flying into the middle of the cavern directly over the huge crater she'd created. A turret blasted her, but a quick gesture and the shot was turned aside, scorching her side but not injuring anywhere vital. Nonetheless, she winced in pain, and whirled in cold fury, wand leveled at the turret, drawing upon all her pain and rage.

"PYROKAGIUS!" she shouted, a lance of flame bursting forth, hitting one of the metal emplacements full on, with the sound of sizzling metal and a cloud of acrid smoke... and when it parted, all she'd done was melt a small chunk of the outer shell. "Well, skies above..." she muttered.

[quotemyname]

Mac, Sabotage Formation Alpha! Blueshift sent her orders across her mental link with her companion robot so as to remain silent. Roger! he responded.

The two techno-infiltrators split up. Mac zipped up to the head of the robot. The tiny little vacuum sized robot began pulling wires and futzing with systems a the spot where the giant robot's neck met it's chassis. Before long, sparks were flying and the robot was no longer functional.

Meanwhile, Blueshift, aided by the rockets in her boots sped up to where the mad scientist of the hour stood. She reached his platform just as some of the panels in front of him began sparking and sputtering. She heard the computer system cry out in what she realized was pain, or as close to pain as technological sensors like that could represent. In a soothing voice, she silently spoke to it like a mother tending to a child with a skinned knee, There, there. Let me help you out with that.

Within moments, an expert hacking job (which should have taken Blueshift hours) was bringing down the computer systems one by one, starting with his communication and detections.

"Consider communication open. I've infiltrated his systems. I'm in the process of bringing this thing down from the inside as I speak." She called to her teammates through their radio links.

[Quinn]

By all rights, it shouldn't have been humanly possible for the Russian streaming out of Wyrd's mouth to get fouler. It would have broken every natural law regarding profanity. Still, when The Notorious Professor Wyrd was involved, natural law tended to be the first thing that went straight out the window. The elderly scientist promptly erupted like a volcano as his communication systems took a nosedive and the turrets outside went haywire, and the kinetic-detecting alarms silenced with a loud squelch. His face seemed to get redder and redder as he fought with his own systems, unaware of the heroine stealthily holding position in the very same room!

As for the aforementioned haywire turrets, they started fizzing and sputtering; firing wildly in the general direction of the heroes. One bolt, a vivid neon red, soared across the room to impact right on to the unsuspecting Glowstar!

[Raveled]

Glowstar swept through the cavern, trying to track the moments of so many things at once. One of the turrets was sparking and almost done for, but the other had barely been scratched; that was obviously the more dangerous target. The young hero hung in the air and gathered power in, letting it pool in either hand. He took up a proper pitching position in the air just as the turret that he'd dismissed fired. It hit him and though his force field held, the power of the blast was enough to throw his aim off. Glowstar's blast followed a curving trajectory, carving a shallow trench in the floor and coming nowhere close to his target.