World of Heroes -- Reboot

"Come on then; this way, please..."

The older Kara then urged Alex and her own Kara to follow; off she went, flying through the tunnels along the path that was guaranteed not to get anyone killed, with the hope that Malandros and the 'past' Kara were following all the while...

edited 25th Jan '13 4:28:45 AM by kkhohoho

Malandros indeed was following, if walking on the ceiling as he did.

Baal grimaced, after wiping out his hands. Mechanical manteinance was so dirty and felt rather... tedious. But as swelled up as their ranks were, one simply couldn't afford to call the tech service. It was Strix's base.

He arrived back where the meeting of earth one heroes was.

"Psychic defense isn't impossible, however. I'm working on it. I've already two methods which to defend, but...training would take far too long. " He added, a hint of sourness in his voice. His daughter's words had managed to scrape off his indifference shell for the briefest of moments.

He looked at Robert. "Can we afford to trust them with the transporter issue?"

edited 25th Jan '13 3:52:06 PM by AtomicNut

"The real question you should be asking, pal, is why we should trust you," Wildcard said when that other man came back and started talking. "All considered, we have no idea who the hell you are. Everyone else, we at least have a copy of them back home, so we've got a frame of reference to go by."

"Thank you kindly. See you in a few minutes, ladies and gents. I don't know how, but I usually whip up something tasty for the bad guys."

Saltire put his hat back on and tipped it towards the party. "Gents. Ladies."

He walked over to the area Robert, a sensible name compared to all the madmen he'd faced back in the home dimension, had designated the armory. Saltire tripped over something that the dim hid rather well and disappeared into the organized clutter of the base.

"...Excuse me, for just a second," said Robert with a false smile upon his face, "uh, I've seem to have forgotten something. This should just take a second..." And with that, he ran off to the armory...

As for the armory itself, it seemed like a fairly ordinary — if completely loaded — armory, with rifles, handguns, bazooka's, and even giant laser-beams, as well as various other odds and ends. However, of particular note, once Saltire looked back, was the object that Saltire stumbled over. Getting a closer look at it, it turned out that he actually recognized it... and all too well. It was none other then —

"Hold it!", said a familiar voice, rushing into the armory... but it was too late. And all Robert could do now was slowly slide his right palm over his face, and say —

"Can't believe I let him see the Saltire bot..."

"...Ugh?"

While blind obedience made life far simpler, Jay decided to stay more alert, in case he missed important details.

"...I wonder where we are now?"

edited 27th Jan '13 7:02:00 AM by eternalNoob

Freefall had stayed silent, as she usually did, listening to the others talk from a slight distance away. Eventually, she followed after Robert and Saltire as they walked towards the armoury.

"Hey, boss man. Let's go back to what Saltire said before, 'cos I'd rather not blip into the middle of the bad guy's base without knowing what's waiting for us." She said, crossing her arms and leaning against the armoury door frame.

As the familiar voice echoed between the gun racks, Freefall swore, pushing herself into a ready position, tiny gravity whorls forming around her fists. "The fuck? You let one of those things inside?"

"Depends on what you mean by that," said Robert, now pinching his brow, "but yeah, we 'let' one inside, I guess. See, this world's Saltire — we don't the know full details, but we do know that, regardless of how he got there or why, he's working for the other side as a literal brain in a jar, controlling a number of robots that look just like him before he received his permanent out-of-body experience. They're all armed and very dangerous... which is why we ambushed one when it was alone, and brought it back here to study it. 'Course, without any real tech-experts here, we haven't been able to really do anything with him..."

"You don't have to. But then again, I work with these people, the resistance. You just arrived less than a day ago. Don't make me laugh with your holier-than-thou attitude. If you trust the wrong person, all you lose is your team and the other side that you came from has to start from scratch. If we trust the wrong person... well, we lose everything." Baal said, his arms folded.

"But what I can tell you is that there exists a version of me in your world. It's just that he appreciates privacy, and he is in touch with influential people. I used to be the same until things crumbled." He then looked in the direction of the ruckus of the armory.

"Oi, Robert, I told you to get rid of that thing, we don't have a Anechoic chamber to test it on. And no, i'm going to test it either."

And so, Malandros and the younger Kara finally reached the base...

Saltire got up and dusted himself off. Then he got his pant leg dirty again as he knelt by the downed machine. It looked like someone had clothed a mannequin in his outfit. If that mannequin was made of metal and essentially a walking weapons platform, of course.

Something in the back of his mind made his hands twitch as he studied the construct closer. The masked man reached out and hefted its right arm, which ended in some small-pattern high caliber cannon, like how he hefted his Webley. He licked his lips.

"I... I might know how to make it work."

"Be my guest," said Robert to Saltire.

"Granted, I only have an idea, but it's worth a shot."

Saltire took a deep breath, let his shoulders untense and cleared his mind.

Leaving Senora next to the robot, he slipped off his gloves and hat as he wandered down the racks and rows of hardware, picking out tools and other items in a dreamy, mechanical sort of way. IT was the masked man's method. While he only had hints and clues of who and what he might have been, his body remembered everything. He'd started wandering around with only vague hints about what might be useful, working slowly from generic tools, dedicated screwdrivers and wrenches to a few of the more esoteric-looking handheld mechanisms.

The masked man returned to the Scraptire 'bot, setting his garments down and brandishing out what looked to be a pen-sized hard-light scalpel and deliberately cut the robot's clothing to begin finding out what made it tick. As an afterthought, he removed his mask and put on a pair of multi-purpose goggles. He also withdrew a old data recorder from his gains and plugged it into a socket on the gynoid's chest. The tool began to whistle and beep as Saltire set to work unlocking its secrets.

"Where exactly are we?" Asked Malandros, looking around from his place.

"We're here,", said the older Kara. "Feel free to look around...". Interestingly enough, it was also at this time that Malandro's migraine went away...

"Perfect."

Why hadn't he thought of this earlier? He was lucky that he had thought of it at all; if he had just continued on and completed obliterated that welp's — Molandros' — mind, he wouldn't have been able to do what ended up doing. However, by keeping him around, and not actually doing anything else whilst in his mind, and by lessening his psychic presence just enough, he was able to hitch a ride into the rebel's base without being detected in the slightest. Of course, he would have been in any other circumstance, but thankfully, being at the sheer level of raw Telepathic power that he was, he was able to block himself off from any sort of psychic senses, or anything of the sort that either Kara might have been capable of. And this just left one thing...

Getting up out of his black recliner, in a room in one of the halls in the lab, many miles below ground, he walked over to the small prison that the lab contained; it was built just in case something like that was needed, and indeed it was. For the Transporter 1, after not being able to capture their own Transporter, had just been successfully captured 4 months ago.This'', together with memories telepathically implanted into their Transporter from spies on Earth 1, let them send troops wherever&however they please in hardly any time at all. And now, all he needed was a bit of time, and at that moment, his handpicked team for when they would next meet Earth-1'ers would finally get to see some action!

"Feeling well today," said Jake upon arrival. The Transporter simply stood blankly in front of Jack, as if he cared about nothing in particular at all. "Not much of a talker today, eh? Course, there's not much you can do about that, is there? But that's not why I'm here, not for small-talk, you brain-dead freak! Not, I need you to do something for me — and the rest of us — once we're ready..."

edited 30th Jan '13 8:48:39 PM by kkhohoho

Relieved of his pain Malandros walked around the place, plainly looking around.

And sure enough, after some tinkering on Saltire's part, the Saltire bot's red lights suddenly flashed on; it rose up in a whirl, and — whilst yelling out "GOD SAVE THE QUEEN! AAAAAAAAAALLELUIA!" — started performing the chicken dance...

"Hm?"

In the room with the giant computer-monitor, sitting in front of it in a jet-black lounge chair was a young man with shoulder-length black hair, dressed in black jeans, black shoes, and a black sweater. However, he didn't dress like this all the time; in another room, just across the one he was currently in, there was a full spandex-suit, covered in a mix of black&grey, with a 'head' shaped like that of an owl's head, with yellow lenses. As for the man himself, he had been sitting at the computer for the last hour or so. It had been his turn to check security, and he saw little reason to oblige; mind you, it could have been a vast conspiracy to keep him from some sort of secret meeting, but overall, that was unlikely. Still, it was best to cover all the bases. He was just about to see for himself what was going on out there, in his own way, when —

"...That's interesting... From out of nowhere, the computer suddenly switched to a map of the underground tunnels; there were several red dots, each steadily moving though the catacombs, and in the very routes needed to get to the base without acid being dropped or rocks falling down. And he wasn't getting a telepathic message from Mathew saying, "Please... please don't do... just stay out of this; we don't really need you jumping to conclusions, again, and nearly bringing this entire base right down to Kingdom Come, so just... please....

However, there was no such message of any kind. So, using all of his caution and foresight, he slammed down on the big red button on the lower left-corner of the giant key-pad with a wild grin on his face, setting off an incredibly loud alarm that sounded like a symphony orchestra. A very bad symphony orchestra. He then rushed straight out of the room, slamming the door behind him, and ran straight into his. It was time for Strix to get back into action...

"That's the alarm!", said Robert, upon hearing the 'grand' orchestral display. He would have wished Strix would have changed it, but he insisted, nay, demanded that if they were going to use his bay, he would still have some control over it, and include the incredibly strange — and distasteful choice of alarm. But this wasn't time or place to think about that.

"Let's move it people!", Robert yelled out. "There's intruders in the tunnels! Unfortunately, if we go in there, we might trigger the traps ourselves, so we'll have to wait at the entrance, and hit em' when they come through! Come on!". And so, Robert rushed to the entrance as he said he would, expecting the others to follow...

edited 31st Jan '13 5:28:39 PM by kkhohoho

"Hey Bobby, were those traps always there," Wildcard asked, "Or did you install them within the last... say... five years?"

"Since before then," said Robert to Wildcard. "What can I say? Strix is... he isn't even insane. He's beyond insane, in a way that makes him surprisingly more rational in some ways then the rest of us, though only when you think real hard about it afterwards. But we've got some intruders, possibly deadly ones, on our hands, so tell me, why do you need to know?"

Mr. Cliche came up from behind Robert and placed his hand on Robert's shoulder. "By chance if one of us could somehow get past those traps where is the safe zone?"

"Strix is obsessed, Robert." Baal mused, sunk in his thoughts as he readied himself for combat, helping himself with a firearm. "Just that. His thoughts aren't that different from yours. Except he's believed his whole life stuff is out to kill him."

Baal stood. "Five years —- So, you're thinking on phasing through the maze on your dimension? As Robert said, that ain't going to work. Even if the traps were gone, the maze would remain."

"Bearing that in mind, i think the maze serves a twofold function. It's not just a trap maze. If I'm right, this maze should also contain choke points and shelters pre-made by Strix in case of invasion."

edited 31st Jan '13 5:46:29 PM by AtomicNut

"Phasing through the maze? Why would I do that?" Wildcard asked. "I just wanted to pop over and steal any of Strix's shit that could help us out. He isn't using it, and I'm sure if he's as Secret Squirrel as you say, we can take his Batplane for a spin while we're at it."

edited 31st Jan '13 5:46:44 PM by nman

"It would be useless. The first thing he'd put would be an anti theft measure. Or at least , that's what I would do. So much for asking for trust when all you think is thieving, bah."

He begun to walk away. "Robert, take care of my girl for the time being. I'm gonna join our host in the fray."

Baal advanced. Okay, Baal, you're five thousand years old. You've got this maze full of traps memorized. If you were a twisted bastard, where would you pop from?. He thought, his intellecting aiming to match that of Strix's twisted way of thinking as he strided towards the exit.

Whatever his hands and subconscious were telling him, the robot was a work of mad genius. He knew the bones from whence it rose, but the construction afterwards seemed to have run away with what such a construct could do.

Saltire snapped out of his working trance when the thing surprised him with the opening lines of 'God Save The Queen' and a ridiculously outdated dance. With a panicked squawk and a scuttling backwards on his hunches, he whipped out his shotgun and filled the armory with the cacophony of shells hitting a robotic frame.

edited 31st Jan '13 6:16:28 PM by mantlemask