CoLC crossover RP, main thread

Before he could continue with the conversation, Rex was startled enough to jump out of the way—or at least try to since he ended up tripping again thanks to not getting the hang of his new legs and the fact that the world was still blurry and confusing.

Well, it used to be anyway. Suddenly it wasn't as hard to think and his vision was back to normal, although his tongue still tasted like metal. And the good news kept coming, apparently Yael was happy to see Rex.

"Oh good, for a second there I thought you were still m—" the sudden blood coming out of his mouth product of a less than friendly shot through the chest made whatever he was going to say unintelligible and he promptly collapsed.

Radio Tower- Big Mistake

Makoto did hear Rean's calling, though it was too late to pull back the strike's intensity, and Captain Kidd slammed into Kelsey enough to send her to the ground, no longer moving. Her Persona hovered near the body, tilting its head in what could possibly be confusion at the sudden silence from the girl. Makoto didn't notice at first. Good, she was finally shutting up now. She hadn't really meant to take care of Kelsey in that way, but it just sort of...happened.

"What?" Makoto said to Rean, still breathing hard as some of the adrenaline faded. The disappearing body caught her eye though, and she looked back as the pre-teen blinked out of existence. Just like Two did. "W-what..." The angry haze that had been filling her head was leaving, and she realized what she had done. Makoto took a few steps back, and Captain Kidd backed away from the spot as well, once again under her full control. "...How? I didn't mean to..."

A round of gunfire jolted her out of her stupor, and Makoto turned back to the doorway. Ghostfreak was escaping and a fight was still going on as far as she knew, but for now, she was too shaken to keep chasing after him with the same intensity as before. Wasn't Rex also over there? Captain Kidd disappeared, and she tried to make her way over to where she remembered hearing his voice, or at least the voice that he had for today. Makoto grabbed her discarded bag as she got outside, thankfully still in one piece even after the building was damaged, and was close enough to see a weird robotic creature with a light for a face standing over Rex. A weapon was in the robot's hands, and Rex wasn't moving either. Without much thought of whether the robot would shoot at her as well, she ran towards them.

"Rex?" she called. He wasn't dead because he was still laying there. He hadn't disappeared. She still had the medicine and bandages in her bag. She could fix it.

Radio Station- I'm at least six and what is this?

It wasn't really clear at all to Caboose what was going on. First he felt like he was flying which was really neat like whoosh, even if he knew in the back of his mind really far back he was just being carried, and there was a lot of yelling which was pretty annoying because didn't they get he was trying to enjoy himself? And then he could very slightly move again, though his visor still hadn't reactivated. He could only wiggle his fingers and toes for the most part, though at this point it was less lockdowned armor and more strong grip from Morty. "Neat," was all he had to say on the matter.

edited 24th Mar '18 9:22:06 PM by pillowmantis

Nails raised and eyebrow and paused for a moment. "... Well, we know you don't have anything else, so we can just leave you here alone now. I just thought that, y'know, the Riddler would rather have somebody to talk to" Nails said, his tone still fairly smug and a bit sarcastic while (s)he walked out of the cell. "But I guess getting beaten so hard has taken even your riddle habit away. Man, you are disappointing in multiple ways" the militia member snarked, as (s)he motioned the doctor out of the cell with him (her).

The doctor just looked bored and unimpressed as she walked out.

"He's normal for his universe, but everyone there has cybernetic neural mods in their brains" the Fanboy responded, still keeping it low. "So his reaction speed and thinking are better than normal. He could also be playing with his thoughts by plugging in directly, but we challenged him to do it the hard way" he explained further.

The player hit a sudden trap in the game, and paused to take a breath and stretch his arms out. "Alright, that makes twenty three" one of the other Fanboys commented, before the player got back to it, easily avoiding the trap this time and the next three as well.

"Nothing to it. Did you see that?" the ghost commented from Lewis' shoulder, pausing to glance at Lewis directly. "Exactly" it finished.

Ghostfreak snickered a bit to himself when he saw the efforts to chase him completely break down, including the psychotic girl and Rex get killed. He looked back and his smile faded when he saw the giant Morty approach him with what looked like a man in metal armor in his hand.

A man with metal armor. Metal. Perfect.

Now that the psychotic girl was dead, his electricity was starting to recharge, though it wasn't at full power quite yet. It probably wouldn't matter to deal with this situation though.

After a few sputtering cracks and sparks, Ghostfreak unleashed a purple arc of lightning aimed directly at Caboose, in Morty's hand. The voltage would probably do significant damage to the man in metal armor, as well as anything directly touching him, like a certain hulking brute ruining his fun.

"...Oh." On one hand, it deflated the numbers a bit that this guy was using augmentations to get this far. On the other, you could say the fact that there were augmentations that could do that was impressive in itself. Sure, it was probably nothing to the guy himself, but from the perspective of what...used to be a normal human from a world where those things were barely in development it was certainly something, and someone must have told him something to that effect by now.

It was kinda insane to watch, all the same. I nodded at the action figure just to show I understood, more or less.

I kept watching for a while longer, before deciding to move on and look at what else interesting was set up here. Twas the old stuff, mostly. In a touch of what might have been funny coincidence, one particular Galaga console happened to be occupied by an impromptu Robert Downey Jr. impersonator.

I quietly took a picture.

It wouldn't hurt to try one, at least for a bit. After all, that's what this place was for. But it wasn't a half-bad selection, so which...? At that moment, I noticed a console with no game, no joystick, only a keyboard and a command prompt.

"Hnh?" What was this supposed to be, some kind of old text adventure? Wait, but you'd think there'd be a name on the console. I didn't see one, examining it. But then...?

Just to see what would happen, I typed 'Sailor v' into the prompt.

Cole seemed to just be steadily more confused at the conversation, and finally shook his head somewhat, pulling at the hem of Arcade's shirt again. "We need to get what we want to take from here and find somewhere to go. You should pick out food that you like and maybe we should get clothing for us when we aren't this anymore. Do you think that would be wise? ...is there anything else people need to stay in houses?"

"Wait, is there a population decline in your world too?" Arcade asked Shenhua, "because that's why the Legion or NCR care about it. I don't get why else anyone would even care." Maybe he was just too close to one side to understand, but it really made no sense.

Cole, however, seemed quite insistent on getting back to the shopping. Arcade nodded at the suggestion. "Right, clothes that will fit us when we're in our own bodies will be good," he said, "I don't... really know what would be useful when not having to scavenge to survive."

Hercules managed to escape the chaos that was going on at the radio station and then headed straight for the Library. But unfortunately he had not taken into account that the City had started shifting around him and then sent him to a completely different location than the one he was going for. Herc then looked around in confusion: “What? Where am I?” He asked himself as he looked around his surroundings not recognizing where he was at all.

Then he realized what had just happened: “Oh that’s right. I forgot the city works differently from how Thebes operates. Now I’ve missed them, darn!” He cried face palming in frustration as he walked along the streets observing his surroundings. “Now how I am meant to reach Louie and Thomas to warn Ben?! I can’t just let Ghostfreak get to him!” He said in a panicked tone rushing down the streets looking for someone to tell the information he now had.

Not knowing that this was in fact the grocery store that Two wanted to go to in the first place, Herc then entered the store in a worried state: “Ben! Ben! Where are you?! Ben!” He called out hoping to find his friend inside the store but to no avail.

Chinese Maid, Grocery Store

"Dunno. Some Western countries. Japan. They have less people, because nobody want kid screw up aspirations, yes? Not always, but it happens." She replied with a shrug. Roanapur never had that problem; for every thug killed two more searching good fortune would take his place. "Then again, Chinese have one-child policy. You have more, they put tax on you."

It seemed that Cole and Arcade were planning to try and live peacefully from now on? Ha, what a naive notion. "Do you need help with move in?" She asked, idly playing with one of her braids. "This store big enough to have most stuff. You probably low-maintenance anyway, yes?" Then some tiny horned asshole decided calling for Ben at full volume was a good policy. "Pipe down, tiny goat!"

edited 25th Mar '18 4:19:28 PM by FergardStratoavis

It didn’t take long for Hercules to turn around at the sound of a….maid shouting at him? Telling him to pipe down of all things! How rude of her! Herc didn’t really care much for her tone of voice but pretty much calmed down once she said it and addressed her as well as the other two people who he hadn’t recognised yet as the people who were with Eve at the Library when that verbal fight broke out.

“Sorry but I’m just in a panic right now, something terrible has happened and I don’t know where my friend is.” He said in a now exhausted tone trying to catch his breath from all the rushing about he had just done but he really needed to warn somebody about what had happened. For all he knew Ben could be very far away from him and Ghostfreak could him when he least suspects it.

Looking at the other two people closely one was a man who was wearing weird clothes that had rainbows on them for some reason as well as a boy who was wearing something that resembled a bunny rabbit. Which Hercules didn’t really know why but hopefully these people were willing to listen to his plight and understand why he was panicking.

edited 25th Mar '18 7:10:44 PM by TheStarscream759

The discussion on gay rights was going to have to be put on hold. Getting somewhere safer was much more important. When Shenhua offered to help them pick out some things, he nodded in thanks. Then blinked when a satyr started yelling for Ben.

He argued with Shenhua briefly before Arcade cut in. "Are you talking about the fight over the radio?" he asked, "because we heard that too. I highly doubt Ben would have missed it."

Rick shrugged again. "Like I said. I'm results oriented."

Morty roared in agony as electricity coursed through his body, and did the first thing that came to mind - which was, in this case, slinging his improvised weapon-slash-hostage directly at Ghostfreak. As Caboose's body was slung through the air, it managed to knock over a nearby disc machine, which obligingly blared to life as Morty leapt for his monstrous equal, turning his weight into a weapon.

While Hercules was explaining the situation, the man that asked if he was referring to the fight but he used a term that again Herc was not familiar with ignored that last bit and just nodded: “I guess then you know about Ghostfreak attacking that building and wanting to kill unsuspecting people in the city if Ben is not brought to him?” Herc asked the armored man remembering what Ghostfreak had said at the radio station when he had sent that threatening message to the whole of the city.

He then continued in a solemn tone: “I’ve just come from that fight and I’ve already had one of the people in my group die thanks to Ghostfreak. I was going to warn the other City Knights about it to let Ben know about this but when I left the area where the fight was taking place, the city…well brought me here.” As he said this, Herc’s head drooped for a bit still having that horrible image of Two being electrocuted in front of his very eyes.

edited 25th Mar '18 7:17:00 PM by TheStarscream759

Lewis was left to his own devices for now, and after typing in his search to the blank cabinet, it immediately brought up one result: Silver Crystal for Sailor V.

Anyone listening to the militia channel at the moment, which actually included Riddler being able to overhear it from the guards' walkie talkies, would catch some chatter going on there.

"We've got the radio station in sight! It's the place with all those drones above it! There's weapons fire and lots of noise going on- sounds like a real mess, sir!" some militia member's voice said over the channel in a hectic tone.

"Greg, get the Thunder Child airborne, head straight there. We're on our way from the prison with reinforcements" Wells' Jim Hawking voice said over the channel.

"Yes sir" some other militia member's voice said.

"You must be one of Rex's friends. Good to see you" Yael said, his robotic tone still seemingly casual as he reloaded his weapon's thermal clip, his movements quick and professional. Tiny lasers and missiles came raining down at Yael from the tiny ships above, but were impacting a personal shield around him to seemingly null effect, and he didn't seem to care in the slightest. Once his reload was finished, he aimed the rifle at Makoto and once again held the trigger down for a spray of fire into her.

Larger, yellow-orangeish phaser shots came from somewhere behind Yael, but likewise didn't seem to be doing much to the shield yet. Two figures were firing from the cover of a dumpster at the end of an alley; the phasers made it easy to guess that it was militia members, but without a clear view of any militia badges, it couldn't be confirmed yet.

From the other direction down the street, Louie came running into view, followed a bit after by Thomas. "Crap, which one is Ghostfreak?" Louie wondered, as he grabbed two pokeballs and tossed them forward. With double flashes of light, a skarmory and an aggron appeared. "Get ready Swishee, Lil' Sunny" the trainer informed his pokemon, as Thomas surveyed the scene outside while grabbing his walkie talkie.

"Ben, Eve, we're at the radio station. It looks pretty bad; there's lots of people fighting. How do we find Ghostfreak?" Thomas asked over the City Knights' channel.

Inside the radio station, the little battlecruisers were rising back up into the air off the floor. Pointing themselves towards Zs'Skayr, they kept their distance and spread out, also holding fire since Morty was charging in there.

edited 25th Mar '18 7:46:49 PM by FirockFinion

Gon, whatever... (with Rick)

He's hard to talk to.

"Never mind, we gotta move." Gon pointed to Morty making the move on his new target, moving closer to Zs'Skayr. His finger was on the carbine's trigger guard, waiting for him to get out of the way.

Cole had been content to let the adults talk for the time being, just looking down at his handful of plastic bags, fidgeting with them, clearly ready to move on. But when the strange little man came running in, talking to them about other things, about Ben, he raised his head again.

"...is Ben still in trouble?" he asked, eyes going wide.

'You should see the other guy' was probably not what Makoto was expecting Rex to say but, dammit, a bit of levity always worked to make things look not as scary. Unfortunately, blood in his throat was making it very hard to get across anything of what he said so, with a lot of difficulty he tried to turn around and lay on his stomach. Now it was just a matter of coughing up a bit to keep talking. If you are talking you are still alive so it stands to reason that doing it was raising Rex's chances of survival. Besides, there was something else he was counting on.

"...my nanites can fi—" he coughed up more blood "...wait a minute"

Next thing he knew, Rex showed up in a random street. So... he had died. Well, that wasn't something he wanted to think about and luckily there was a nice distraction in the form of his regular clothes being gone. He was stuck again in Cricket's outfit, with no goggles or jacket to ground him.

"Aww come on! Like this day couldn't get any worse!"

Part of that rage of course, came from being so naive to think Yael would just talk. Rex was used to being able to beat basically anything in a one-on-one fight so he naturally forgot he wasn't as durable as usual and kept his guard down—specially an alien one that made regular assault rifles obsolete but that was neither here nor there. And to top it all off, his error could make Ghostfreak's escape easier. Maybe. It was hard to tell, not like Rex was doing much of anything helping in that regard.

But more pressing was the fact that two people were in the vicinity. Some red humanoid lobster and... her.

No, no, the other blonde girl. The one that was annoying, not scary. Suffice to say, things were going to get awkward.

"...hey"

edited 25th Mar '18 10:18:48 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Eve | Streets | Oh, Not You Again

Eve was silent for a while, just focusing on trying not to panic. It would be all too easy to shut down and run away, but she couldn't. She had already messed up so much. Who knows what that would do? What broke her out of her haze was the sudden arrival of a very familiar girl. Eve almost wilted when he said hello. "Rex, I'm not in the mood," she said tiredly. "Do whatever mocking you want to do and let me leave."

Ben furrowed his brow and looked into the walkie talkie.

"I don't know, I haven't seen him today! Just be careful. Any one of those guys could be Ghostfreak. You see anyone sketchy, or acting funny, keep 'em from hurting anyone else! We'll be there as soon as we can," Ben told them, before seeing someone out of the corner of his eye.

He narrowed his eyes at the girl, who Eve seemed to recognize as Rex.

"What do you want?" he asked. "We really don't have time for this. Ghostfreak's causing trouble and we have to stop him. C'mon, Eve, let's get out of here."

Ghostfreak glared at Morty, stepping aside to dodge the thrown Caboose, before moving forward and then diving to the floor towards Morty, in an attempt to either dodge underneath him or trip the hulking monster, who seemed rather top-heavy. His electric pylons were still sparking, but were crackling with purple lightning as he fought.

He was still ignoring the fight going on with Yael.

Radio Tower- Not Gun Resistant

By the time she got to Rex, he was trying to speak, but she couldn't figure out what he was saying as he coughed and choked from the blood in his chest. Right, that was what gunshots did to someone. Her stomach churned despite being mostly empty. She caught the last of what he was saying, but then he coughed up more blood and collapsed. His body disappeared.

Makoto looked up at the robot as he reloaded his gun with a strange glowing clip, and then pointed his weapon at her. His words were like TV static to her, going in one ear and out the other without much comprehension. The gunship shots and lasers being fired around her were only vaguely recognized as backup. She took a step away and had her hand on her skull mask, but she just... couldn't rip it off. It wasn't stuck to her face, but her fingers were trembling and she couldn't follow through with it. Her head wasn't clear enough to call her Persona, and a small part of her wasn't even sure that wanted to summon it, even as Captain Kidd yelled in her head to do something so they wouldn't die. Who cared? Two was dead, that girl in the black cloak was dead, and now Rex was dead. She wasn't afraid of Yael, but of herself.

Makoto brought up her arms in a weak attempt at self defense, but the rifle spray was more than enough to break through and catch her in the chest. She stumbled back and fell into a sitting position, struggling to breathe right through the holes in her lungs. Maybe Ryuji could've powered through the pain and stood up one last time out of sheer stubbornness, but she wasn't him, and she couldn't scrape together the willpower to even try it. She tipped over to the side as her vision went black, bleeding out on the street until her body vanished. Only a simple bag was left behind, next to Rex's abandoned jacket and goggles.

________________________________________________________________

Grocery Store

Coinciding with her disappearance, the pipe that Cole had with him vanished. ___________________________________________________________________

City Streets, Outside the Arcade- Need a Minute to Recover

It felt like she'd just blinked when she appeared again, standing up and in Ryuji's school uniform. She took a few panicked breaths as her brain tried to compute going from dying to alive again in the space of a second, and her eyes scanned the streets for any signs of a battle. She turned around and saw a small building, filled with people playing what looked like arcade games inside. The rest of the street was fairly quiet. No... this was a different part of the City then.

Wordlessly, Makoto touched her chest, only to find no bullet wounds. Her mouth wasn't filled with that iron taste. She didn't even feel the pain from being mildly shocked anymore, or the dull ache that came with using her Persona in battle. Was this what "respawning" was like? It was... very disorienting. Still a little shell-shocked, Makoto wandered over to the entrance of the Arcade and opened the doors to go inside.

edited 25th Mar '18 11:16:48 PM by ScorpioRat

Eve didn't even bother greeting Rex, just telling him to finish the asshole routine quickly so she could move on to do something else. That was about the only thing she expected of him after all this time. And to be fair, ignoring her nasty comment about his amnesia, he had started that fight back at the library only to lash out at someone and distract himself from the day conditions.

Ben didn't act all that different, caring more about Ghostfreak than whatever Rex was doing at the moment. Of course, he should have put two and two together and notice Rex didn't have his old clothes anymore and that it obviously meant he had died—he love those goggles after all, why would he leave them behind? He was this close to pointing out he was doing more than the self-proclaimed hero of the city—again!—but he felt so... tired. People didn't respect him, didn't trust him, didn't really think he was more than annoyance at best or a disaster waiting to happen at worst. And the few people that didn't see things that way could be counted on the fingers of one hand and were probably changing their minds as time passed.

He had really fucked up. And for once putting on a brave face wasn't going to work.

"...I'm sorry"

edited 25th Mar '18 11:35:05 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Chinese Maid, Grocery Store

Oh yeah, the radio announcement to which she paid little mind. She was planning to find Ben later, kick some sense into him, but not at the moment when things were at its hottest. There was no point charging in to get yourself killed, and after being killed by the Predator a few days back, Shenhua was through with dying.

"Well, he not here, so shouting no good." She replied indifferently. "Does freak not know everybody come back to life once you kill? Makes threat pointless, really." Not as pointless as she advertised it, but that was the only way she could calm both tiny goat and Cole down. Getting killed still hurt, and if Ghostfreak's new voice matched his new body, it sounded like he was much bigger and stronger now. "They want to help, they can come to radio, yes?"

"But, if I read Arcade right, he not want to go there." And then a pipe Cole held disappeared as well. "Especially if killing still happening."

edited 26th Mar '18 2:47:00 AM by FergardStratoavis

Eve | Streets | Nope, Nope, Nope

Eve nodded to Ben, and started to walk away, before stopping. "Ben, I don't think me trying to fight ..." she trailed off, before shaking her head to clear her mind. "Is a good idea. I don't really have anything to defend myself with. I'd just be a liability." What Rex said next, however, caused her to laugh, having to stop because the laughter was almost hysterical, a release of tension that she had apparently needed.

When she stopped, however, she raised an eyebrow. "Let me guess. Day challenge. You should work on your imitation," she said, crossing her arms. It was really obvious that this was a copy, and a bad one. "Rex doesn't apologise. Ever. That would mean admitting he was wrong, and he doesn't do that either," she replied scornfully. "Try again."

"Oh no," Arcade muttered under his breath when Cole seemed to latch onto the fact that Ben was in danger. The satyr just had to bring it up and get Cole thinking about saving people again.

"Cole, Ben isn't there," he said, "didn't you hear... this guy? He wanted to warn Ben about what's happening, which means he's not in danger." Shenhua's advice was very welcome, especially when Makoto's pipe disappeared, which could only mean one thing.