XLR8 nodded at Lune as she grasped his hand suddenly. He grabbed her with his other hand and lifted her up into his arms. "Hold on tight, this could get real bumpy," XLR8 warned Lune, and before she could react, he was off, at over 400 miles an hour, out of the library.

His first thought was to search the many walkways and bridges around the jungle, before venturing into the jungle itself. As he ran, he took a mental note of who seemed to be there, and which ones of them, as non-humans, would be in danger of Marcus' wrath.

Miss Tairee raised an eyebrow at Ben's protest to the shooting idea with the sort of expression that not only told she expected something precisely like this, but was also trying not to giggle at how amusing she found it. In short order Ben and Lune had decided to run off, Ben thankfully presumably used to doing this enough not to give Lune a very immediate and fatal case of whiplash from the sudden acceleration.

"I'm pretty sure somebody is probably getting shot right now" Miss Tairee said after Ben left, seemingly to herself more so than to anyone else. "Statistically speaking if nothing else; this place is like seventy five square kilometers and there's at least a thousand people here" she continued, being pretty close since it was about seventy eight and a half square kilometers; she then went on even further, "I doubt that blue armored fellow is the only one taking out violent tendencies on the other inhabitants. You guys have your work cut out for you if you want everyone in the city getting along with puppies and rainbows."

With a shrug, Miss Tairee looked back at Legion, waiting to see if it had anything else to say. Her expression then changed to mildly startled as a very loud, thundering roar echoed through the city a couple kilometers away, punctuated by a second roar starting halfway through the first one, coming from the same place. Miss Tairee looked out the windows in that direction, as even from here it could be faintly seen that something or somethings were tearing up some of the wooden boardwalks and buildings; though what those things were could not be seen from the library.

"And then there's that. My boss wasn't even planning on something like this happening until one of ya'll brought it up and he decided to take the idea" Miss Tairee told those in the library as she turned back towards them, her previously ever-so-faint Southern Belle accent slipping into her voice in tandem with her composure slipping away. After taking a moment to regain her composure and straighten her shirt, she added, her tone back to normal, "so I hope you are happy with yourselves."

Before anyone could manage to shout sufficiently loud enough to be heard over the general yelling of the small mob, a very loud roar pierced through the area, with a second roar starting halfway through it; both sounded like they were coming from the same general place, which was worryingly not that far away, relatively speaking. The Mob promptly all stopped whatever stance they had been taking to look in that direction as the sound of breaking and crashing wood could be heard maybe a hundred meters away. Buildings between them and whatever was happening prevented a clear look at the action, but it was fairly obvious that it involved something nobody in the mob wanted any part of.

They scattered in the general direction of opposite the noise, completely dropping the subject of the dryder in favor of just getting the heck out of dodge. "Um, thanks for the help. I think I'm going to run too now" the dryder told Rick, Morty, and Rex, then took off in a perpendicular direction from the mob's direction; he may have also wanted to just get away, but he knew better than to run the same way as his would-be persecutors.

Traveling through the city, XLR8 would soon lose track of trying to count all the non-humans. Between aliens among the same universes and the fact that they were dealing with a hypothetically infinite number of different universes, there were just so many non-humans he could see here and there doing various things that they became nigh impossible to all keep track of. Although it was perhaps lost on Ben, given his usual level of mental effort, what would actually stick out strange most of all was that, after considering those facts of alien worlds and completely different universes, there was actually an awful lot of humans among them; if this was a fair representation of the populations of all the universes then there was some rather curious connotations going on there. Maybe around half of everyone he'd seen was either a human, or some variation on, 'basically a human but...'; such as a lady who was basically a human but with green skin, the various elf people who were each basically a human but with long, pointy ears and sometimes a crazy skin tone, or for that matter those ladies from the diner yesterday who were each basically a human but with some feline features.

But even if Ben had started to register this, his train of thought would be derailed as when coming around a corner, a small vine that managed to escape his attention rose at just the right moment to snag his ankle and send him skidding across the floor after accidentally throwing Lune into a cartwheel, which ended by crashing into a wooden support beam. Fortunately Lune was fine thanks to her armor, but the support beam had seen better days, and was starting to buckle from the damage.

Now that they were stopped, XLR8 and Lune could see that they were in one of those open-walled, garden-style pagodas, though this one was a bit on the large size. In the middle was a pair of curious items: A large, pink plant bulb that came up to about four feet high, and an orange, transparent, roughly round cocoon that was about six feet high and wide. Inside the cocoon was a large, white larvae almost the size of a person. Just after Lune and XLR8 had recovered from their crash, but before either of them could do anything about it, the mistreated wooden beam finally gave and fell over... Right onto the bulb and cocoon, flattening both into different mulches on the floor with a horrible squelching sound.

Then Lune and XLR8 would likely have to cover their ears as a room-shaking roar erupted from somewhere in the jungle below the floor, followed by a second roar before the first had even ended. Behind them, one of the walkways exploded upwards in a shower of splinters as some sort of massive bee easily over fifteen feet long◊ came rocketing upwards through it, seeming no more slowed down or bothered by that action than if the walkway had instead just been a sheet of paper. In front of them, a wooden building seemed to somewhat explode outward from the inside as long vines with large, organic clamps came out of doorways and windows and through walls to grab whatever they could in the direction of the pagoda. The vines then pulled, to move forward a massive pink bulb not unlike the one that had just been squished, only easily twelve feet tall.◊ Despite its main part being smaller than the bee, the plant certainly had a much larger presence due to the mass of vines it used for movement.

QUEEN BEE AND PLANTERA

Plantera charged forward towards XLR8 and Lune, firing a multitude of pink seeds and the occasional green seed towards the duo, pointed ends first.

The Queen Bee aimed her rear end down at them; said rear end seemed to resemble a cross between a section of bee hive and the barrels of a minigun. She began to fire stingers out of it towards them rapidly.

edited 19th Nov '15 6:58:54 AM by FirockFinion

Gon decided that enough was enough. With a good weapon provided by Lune, the assassin decided to dash out of the library, follow Lune to the best of his tracking abilities and figure out what to do next.

Let's see what this city has in store.

Gon shouldered the laser rifle and searched his surroundings as he ran towards the direction of the jungle area, hoping to get a clue.

The Library

Before Legion could respond Ben had shoved his way in between the geth and Ms. Tairee, immediately stating that he did not want anyone shot, and that dealing with the "demon" was more important. Before Legion could interrupt further Ben transformed into a fast alien and took some of the others along to go find it.

The geth was left puzzled as to how quickly Ben could react, but quickly refocused. "Individual 'Ben' raises a salient point. I do not wish to self-terminate to test resurrection. I disagree with how he is handling this issue, however. Nonlethal restraint of the demon is necessary to prevent further casualties."

"I would tail Ben and his party, but they have left too quickly to track."

Sudden roaring.

"Though this may not be an issue."

edited 19th Nov '15 9:25:41 AM by SpartyMcFly

Library, 2nd Floor

Mary listened to Sadness' explanation... somewhat. She didn't understand how someone so big could fit inside the head of a person, although she did understand the part where she was some girl's sadness. That was probably why she could give her sad thoughts even though she didn't really mean to. However, there was a little detail that she paid special attention to, and about which she was quite curious.

"Say, how old is Riley?" the fabricated girl asked, visibly curious and enthusiastic. "Is she around here too? Does she know you're in the library? Do you think she-"

Her sudden barrage of questions was interrupted when one loud roar echoed through the library, followed by a second one halfway through.

"Huh?" Mary exclaimed, slightly startled by the noise. "What was that?"

XLR8 shouted as one of his wheeled feet snagged onto a vine and he tripped, falling forward and dropping Lune. When he regained his bearings, he immediately jumped to his feet, dashing over to Lune and trying to help her up. However, then watched, mouth agape, as the wooden beam fell in front of them, right on top of a couple of weird blob-things.

A sudden set of roars seemed to shake the whole city and XLR8 covered where his ears would be, wincing. He then looked up as a giant bee and a plant monster erupted from beneath the wooden walkways of the city.

"Oh, you wanna fight?!" XLR8 exclaimed to the two of them, grabbing Lune and dashing out of the way of the stingers that the Queen Bee blasted at them. As he ran, attempting to circle the two monsters, he looked at Lune. "Any bright ideas?!" he asked.

Library, second floor

"Riley just turned twelve," Sadness said, visibly brightening. It was clear that she was very fond of her. "I don't know where she is, but -"

Sadness, too, was cut off the sudden roars. She yelped and looked around in a panic. "It must be some monsters! We're doomed!"

Jungle Pagoda

Lune slowly got up and looked at the monsters. If she doesn't do something quick, these beasts are going to kill her! What to do?! What to do?!

"Not sure for now," exclaimed Lune! "We're gonna have ta play this by ear and keep going! Cross Smasher!"

Lune immediately cupped her hands behind her and charged up a quick burst of energy. She immediately fired off a pair of spiraling beams at the bee.

edited 19th Nov '15 5:43:51 PM by josh6243

Plague Knight saw Ben transform and then run off along with the new girl Lune. "If I knew he would dash off like that, I would have told him to try and preserve the demon's sword for me," he said.

The knight then looked up and outside at the sound of a massive roar. He could faintly see shapes out in the distance, and soon realized said shapes were very huge and were tearing up the city with impunity. "Oh dear....." he said. Then he caught what Miss Tairee said. "Wait, what are you talking about?!" he asked the librarian.

Agarth looked at Plague Knight and asked. "Do you want to find out what that is? There are five other people out there that might be in danger, and you might embarrass and upstage the other scientist if you rescue him and his friends." Then Agarth reached behind his back and unsheathed his Dragonfang sword.

A thunderous roar accompanied with the earth shaking made the spider person and the spear wielders flee in different directions. Another roar could be heard right when the first one seemed to be stopping.

"Did you guys hear that? I think it came from there" he said while pointing to an area filled with buildings that had been overtaken by the plants. "I hope it's not one of those cyborg soldiers again"

The teenager wanted to turn the plasma torch off because he wanted to see what was going on and arriving with a mini-flamethrower was not a smart move. It unfortunately hadn't come with a user manual, so he just used his nanites to turn it off.

Rex absorbed his mechanical arms and created a floating motorcycle from his legs. He pointed to the seat behind him and asked Rick and Morty "Are you coming or not? You can sit righ there"

edited 19th Nov '15 2:15:23 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Library, 2nd Floor

"Hmmm..."

For a couple of seconds Mary remained silent, simply staring off into the distance (or rather, the bookshelves) seemingly pondering something. In the end, she turned towards Sadness with an inquisitive look.

"Hey, should we go check it out?" the fabricated girl asked. "Or would you rather stay here?"

XLR8 continued to run circles around Plantera and the Queen Bee, making sure not to get tripped up by the vines on the floor this time. It would really be nice if he and Lune had some backup! Hopefully the others would have heard that massive roar in the distance and hopefully come for aid. But they must be on the other side of the city; there was no way they'd be here in any reasonable amount of time.

He had to stall the two bosses for now.

"I've got an idea!" XLR8 exclaimed to Lune. Using his speed, he made a beeline for one of Plantera's vine-like tendrils that was attached to the ground, and began to run up the vine towards Plantera's bulb-like center. Once he reached the bulb, he leapt over to it and tried to whack it with his long tail.

Gon kept moving towards the jungle, keeping an eye out for anything hostile.

Where are you?

The assassin moved carefully when he saw the jungle. He heard what appeared to be fighting. He wasn't sure if he should fire, but he decided to keep running to the jungle.

"Doesn't this, uh... do-doesn't this hurt you or something?" said Morty hesitantly as he climbed on the motorcycle, doing his best to look comfortable. More than a little unnerved with the process, the teenager awkwardly shuffled down into a seat, biting his lip nervously as he did so.

"Morty, wo-would you rather ride on your friend's hor-*urp*-bizarrely disfigured anatomy, or do-do you want me to rig up another dead bug f-for us to ride on?!" said Rick, cracking open his flask as he vaulted onto the bike, with a ease entirely unbecoming of an elderly scientist.

"Well-"

"That was a rhet-*urp* it was rhe-rhetorical, Morty. Step on it!"

"Hey, Rick," asked Morty from the back of the bike,"did-din't you inject me with nanobots once? Like, w-when I was sleeping or something? So I could, uh, turn into a car? Can, uh, could I..."

"Huh? Oh yeah. Yeah, that didn't really work out. I mean... turn into a car? I don't- I don't know what I was thinking there. You don't even have a license yet. Took that chip outta of you a few weeks ago, Morty; those nanobots, oh man, t-t-they were, they were getting outta control, Morty. They were turning your, your blood into gasoline atom by atom; a few more weeks and you woulda just exploded at the dinner table after they entered a cataclysmic replication cycle. You can't *urp* you can't eat with a carburetor for a stomach, Morty!"

"Oh." Morty didn't even seem shocked by this revelation; he just looked off to one side. Rick ran one pale hand across his head as he realized that his explanation had had the wrong effect on his grandson.

"What? I did you a favour, Morty!" Rick rolled his eyes. "I mean, okay, fine, I made a tiny, inconsequential mistake, but whatever."

"Rick, if you hadn't made me y-y-y-your guinea pig in the first place, then..."

"Morty, you gotta focus on the science, Morty. Someday you're gonna have to look at your friends and family and think to yourself, 'should I inject subdermal nanobot chips in their skin'? You know the answer, Morty. You know the answer. You could give 'em, c-cool powers like Rex here, and, better the whooole human race, or... something."

edited 19th Nov '15 7:04:53 PM by Locoman

Library, second floor

"Um, uh." Sadness wrung her hands. Should she stay where she was? On the one hand, she hadn't finished learning about botany. On the other, she didn't want to stay here forever. On a third hand...wait, no.

There were monsters outside, and monsters were scary. But, Sadness decided, maybe never seeing Riley again would be even worse.

"A-as long as you're going, I'll come too."

"Isn't it obvious what I'm talking about?" Miss Tairee said in response to Plague Knight, then pointed out the windows towards the signs of the fight in the distance. "What else would I be talking about right now? Today was just going to be hostile plants and bugs; nothing more special than that. But then one of you just had to speak up saying something like, 'oh I bet the guy who put is here is going to force us to do some special fight before the day's over'. He decided that was a good idea, and now there's a couple of giant ass monsters that will probably tear half the city apart before the day is done" she explained, and shook her head in some form of irritation and/or disgust before starting to type on her keyboard again.

Gon could only follow the trail XLR8 left for so long before the shifting nature of the city made it go dead cold. Now he couldn't see clues of anything except for the obvious facts; such as the city being a bunch of wooden buildings and walkways sitting atop a jungle canopy, and there being some sort of fight with very large creatures happening somewhere far away. He could try to make his way towards there, but between the shifting and the maze-like layout of the walkways, he wasn't going to get there yet.

XLR8 was able to dodge around all the projectiles fairly easily, which meant that Lune did too by virtue of him once again carrying her. Lune's projectile attack hit the Queen Bee square in its center, definitely doing some damage... But the Queen Bee didn't seem to care.

XLR8's plan of running up the vine did have a slight problem; the vine's texture, along with how it seemed to have at least one smaller vine wrapped around it, was not conducive to moving up it on wheels. This didn't stop XLR8 from moving along it fairly quickly, but it did force him to slow down slightly, relatively speaking; which was enough for Plantera to react before he had gone up the full length, and it quickly whipped the vine upwards.

Lune and XLR8 got separated a second time as XLR8 lost his grip, momentum and gravity taking Lune tumbling past Plantera between its vines; XLR8 however was launched up with the vine, sending him right at Plantera's bulb directly, which also happened to still be moving forward, thus meeting him coming the other way. The impact did seemingly nothing to Plantera, but launched XLR8 back through the air away from it, too dazed from the pain and the world spinning to do anything about the Queen Bee making a charge to intercept him. For the second time in the same number of seconds, XLR8 made a high speed collision with a very large entity moving in the opposite direction, this time sending him clear over Plantera and into a wood-converted office building, making his entry right through one of the walls.

Lying on the floor there covered in some broken scraps of wood, XLR8 would be made aware through chest pain that his ribs seemed to be broken or cracked. All of them.

Back outside, Lune was back down on one of the walkways just behind Plantera, which was starting to turn around to fire more of those seeds at her. The Queen Bee flew over Plantera, moving towards the office building to see about finishing XLR8 off.

It was about this time that a certain teenager turned half motorcycle with a seemingly unlikely pair of passengers rounded a nearby corner and could see the fight taking place up ahead.

XLR8 shouted loudly in pain as he was hit by Plantera. Dazed for a moment, he didn't react fast enough for the Queen Bee to miss hitting him through the office building, and as soon as he hit the ground in the building, a bright red flash filled the room and he was once again in his human Ben form. Now, for the second time in the past few days, thought he was dying. He tried to sit up, but the pain in his chest was too great again. It was then that he heard the sound of a distant motorcycle...

Jungle Pagoda

With XLR8 knocked into the office building, Lune screwed big time. And to make things worse, the plant-monster is shooting those annoying seeds again. That thing could fire seeds quickly like a Gatling Gun. Hopefully, these seeds aren't armor-piercing, right? That would suck immensely if that were to happen!

"Take this! Divine Blade!"

Lune summoned a katana◊ into her hands, and attempted to deflect as many projectiles as she can with the blade. At the moment, she didn't notice the backup showing up since she was too distracted by the plant-monster.

edited 19th Nov '15 11:39:05 PM by josh6243

If Legion had a mouth, the geth would have frowned. Not so much at somebody jinxing the combat, but at the fact that the several giant monsters posed a direct threat to life and limb.

"If these monsters pose a direct threat to the city, their extermination is necessary." Drawing the Widow, Legion jogged off to find and combat the threat.

Undyne leaned on her spear as the others chatted away. She had expected - or at least privately hoped - for more fights. At the prospect of fighting the giant swordsman again she almost reconsidered, remembering how useless she'd been against him, but then Ben transformed and dragged Lune off.

And as she turned to look at where he'd gone, the roaring started. She grinned as Legion said he would go fight what was undoubtedly some kind of giant plant monster (not monster like her, but something else, from another world, she reminded herself).

"Sounds good to me!" She jogged after the Geth, keeping pace with him. "From the sounds of it someone already pissed it off."

As Legion moved out it noticed that Undyne was directly behind it. It didn't call any attention to the monster following the geth; right now, the plant creatures attacking were a far greater threat.

"A correct assumption," it noted, when Undyne said that it sounded like they were already angry. "Ben has already headed out to combat the creatures; it is likely he has already aggravated them. Support was deemed necessary. Combat logs have been reviewed; I will not fire on any unidentified circuit board-patterned hostiles."

Plague Knight face palmed after hearing Miss Tairee's explanation. "He was expecting us to invoke the fight," he angrily mumbled. He then looked towards Agarth. "Exactly what I was thinking!" he said, his annoyance being only momentary. "If we're lucky, we may be able to obtain some intact pieces of the beasts for future study!" With that, Plague soon ran out of the library and was soon managing to catch up to Legion and Undyne despite the heavy drink engine still on his back.

"Has anyone considered trying to obtain an alternate form of transportation besides our own legs?" Plague Knight asked the other two.

Agarth followed Plague Knight out of the library and followed him, Legion, and Undyne.

"Not as far as I know." Agarth said to Plague Knight.

edited 20th Nov '15 8:58:13 AM by watdakstomp

Library, 2nd Floor

"Hmmm... okay then!" Mary replied with a grin. "We'll go outside! Maybe we'll find Riley or my dad while we're out there!"

She then proceeded to head towards the lobby... but stopped the second she reached the stairs. She was a bit hesitant to actually go down, and it was evident in her face.

"We have to be very careful out there," the fabricated girl stated. "I saw something that could throw fire out there, and some of the plants and bugs can be dangerous too."