Cyberworld Hero Future RP Thread

Hux

They quickly stumbled upon their foes, seemingly attempting to climb the ash-stained tower. For what purpose, Hux didn't know, nor did he care.

He raised his hand, firing off his claw at one of the machines, making sure to target one that his allies weren't currently engaged with. Then, once it struck, he swung his arm, pulling the long, connecting wire with it. At the same time he willed the darkness to erase, and the end result was that a line of pure blackness swept through the enemy ranks, cleaving whatever it struck in half as though it were sharper than the sharpest blade.

"Rest now." He whispered softly, almost as though he were apologizing to them.

Alula Seles

Alula pursed her lips once the Machines had made their entrance, and given her allies had already taken hostile action she knew it wasn't worth attempting a communion. Instead she backed up a little, and chanted in some indescribable tone of voice—fiery runes manifesting around her person as her eyes glowed brighter and her hands overflowed with swirls of ribboning energy. She flung two magick bolts towards a couple of the machines, hoping to distract them so that the heavy-hitters could finish them easier.

Sleep now, brethren. Rest.

All the while she hummed in frequencies beyond human hearing, which even if overheard through supernatural means would sound strange yet ultimately innocent. Like an otherworldly lullaby—Alula had “explained” during her recruitment that her family had its own, ancient tongue tp communicate privately with. It'd fit solidly into her current narrative, overall.

Even though this was all an elaborate farce and that she was actually singing lullabies in K'narii; hoping to soothe the soon-to-be-dying Machines that were opposing them.

Croire & Ramialia.

"It...it's not...my place t-to say t-this, but...p-perhaps it might be...b-best to save the a-arguement about r-rules until...a-after we're done...s...sorry." Croire meekly remarked in response to Sue snapping at Hux before getting ready to depart.

...Yet he didn't bother with any of the protective gear, only holding the pipe and broken longsword as he stepped out into the ashlands, glancing down at the armlets and was about to speak up only to be cut off.

   No. Just do it the short and normal way, idiot.   

"...releasing restraints..." Croire quietly stated. For a few moments, nothing happened until the armlets faintly glowed, crackling with energy before they separated and allowed him to move his hands and arms freely.

Not that the young man had much time to appreciate it as it was only a few steps before his appearance had completely shifted to Ramialia, bolts of electricity dancing between her fingers before flinging them at the nearby Machines and delivering a constant shock to get their attention. Even something mechanical would probably find it hard to focus with pain/damage being a continuous problem.

"...at least TRY to take advantage of a potential opening I'm giving you people." Ramialia's tone was clearly condescending as if expecting the others couldn't see her drawing drawing the Machines attention.

She swung out at one getting a bit too close with her pipe, making quite an impact against one of the Machines. ...A second swing caused plenty of sparks to go flying as it lashed out at Ramialia...only to get cut short by the third whack which finished the job.

Edited by TheRealWren on Oct 28th 2020 at 9:01:56 PM

Heroes vs Machines

Several machines charged Bea even as their fellows were chopped, dismembered, and eviscerated by the HEROES on the frontlines. The machines raised their rifles and fired off antique grade rounds at her - obviously these ones were older designs ambling around.

With Rami drawing their aggro, Alula distracting them and Sue slicing them to pieces, it was obvious at least for now that the Machines were being outmatched...but there were a lot of them, the little ambling circle-headed creatures throwing themselves into danger with not even a thought of self preservation.

Hux's line of shadow ripped through many of the machines, distracted as they were.

The machine Elijah impaled however cheerfully announced in a rather dissonant tone even as his sword wedged itself in the mechanical lifeform's circuits, "P-P-PRAAAAAAISE—-PRAISE PRAISE—-Engaging Self Destruct in 3...2..."

Ashlands Machine Battle

Bea shrugged a little bit, shoving the obsoleted rounds aside before drawing her sword and pistol and beginning a run towards the nearest target. She was experienced with her arsenal and it showed, opting mostly to lop off pieces with her sword rather than go for stabs that she'd have to pull off the blade after. Each strike hit home with the force of her metalkinesis and the devastated bodies of bots were simply shoved to the side once she was done with them.

"Admirable work teammates. Remember to finish them off, leave none standing!"

Sue

And they just kept coming. Sue thought maybe they would've got the point, but they kept charging forward like a bunch of braindead boars. Like, she knew they were machines, sure. But she would've figured they had *some* sense in their dense little circuits.

Whatever. Snapping her arms back in place, she slapped them together, increasing her mass and shaping and bending herself until she was a giant yellow steamroller with a pasty-white head on top. She charged forward, rolling over the machines and smashing them into paste as she yelled at the top of her lungs in glee.

"FUCK YEAH! BOOSHAKALAKA, BITCHES!"

Edited by kkhohoho on Oct 29th 2020 at 8:55:50 AM

Old Man Elijah

Elijah simply grunted a crass "Shit," before he shoved the sword yet further in the Machine and used the leverage granted by this act to crack the recalcitrant metal walnut almost clear in half. Then he reached in and, recognizing the self-destruct mechanism, ripped it out with his bare claws as sparks shot out from the carcass of the Machine.

"Here's a throwback for ya! As the kids used to say, 'This bitch empty! YEET!'" he quipped jubilantly before chucking said self-destruct mechanism at any area where the Machines were congregated in a thick mass and where his allies weren't standing, at any rate.

Edited by JumpingFruit on Oct 29th 2020 at 10:06:21 AM

"...yeah, yeah, thanks for pointing out the obvious." Ramialia replied...but at least wasn't too hostile towards Beah.

Then the old man and...that...contortionist girl just irritated Ramialia even more by opening their mouths, enough that her next swing with the pipe cleanly parted a machine's head from it's shoulders.

"...why are you wasting your breath? The ones you've wrecked can't hear you, the ones still standing don't understand and the rest of us don't give a damn about your inane and loud commentary." She rolled her eyes at Sue and Elijah...and the one machine trying to move away from the tether only to cease functioning by the increased voltage before it could do so.

...Ugh, if I knew I had to put up with such idiocy, I should've just stayed asleep.

Before long, the machine advance started to slow down, and even stopped - the heroes efforts sufficient to halt whatever had pushed the machines into such a suicidal advance. They were now surrounded by the mutilated carcasses of the various machines they had slain, a few of them still humming and letting out whirring mechanical noises.

Zhane Noon walked out before long, stepping past the dismembered machines nonchalantly, breathing, "I'm...not cut out for combat. Thanks for clearing the way." He looked over the edge of the tower, and up at some other high rise buildings before concentrating...

...and casting what looked like continuous green stepping stones made of energy out of his hand. Each guided him over to the next high rise. "I'll oversee the advance. Proceed carefully but diligently."

Down on the ground level, there were some noises and a few machines who hadn't joined their fellows were buzzing around. A few of them were moving around and pushing odd little pieces of debris, others opened some compartment on their stomach and took out tiny trinkets before seeming to trade those for select debris.

Not a single word was uttered. Just whirring, buzzing, and the occasional beep.

Old Man Elijah

Elijah merely shrugged at Ramialia's words and kicked at a Machine that was bisected but beeping near him, before descending as Zhane instructed. He hummed a jaunty tune as he did so, surveying the little makeshift trading outpost of Machines that was ahead of them.

"Are they...mimicking what they've seen?" he asked nobody in particular. "It looks like mimicry. Either way, they don't look terribly hostile. Let's just get far away from here. We don't know if we attracted anything with the fight back there..."

Edited by JumpingFruit on Nov 1st 2020 at 12:56:20 PM

Sue

"Speak for yourself! If I'm gonna beat up a bunch of dumb bots, I'm gonna have some fun doin' it!" Though she had to say, whenever Rami was like this, she was kind of cute. "You know, if you weren't such a stick in the mud, you'd be a lot more hot! Still ain't bad though."

Sue noticed the bots up ahead. She wasn't sure what they were doing. Picking up some debris and tossing out some dusty old trinkets wasn't anything she'd be caught doing. But if what the old man said was true...

"Huh. Maybe they ain't so dumb. Like, we had some sentient bots back in the old days. Not sure if these ones are that far ahead. But maybe there's more to 'em than meets the eye?"

...huh.

More than meets the eye.

Could have sworn that was from some old show or something.

Eh.

She'd think of it later.

Edited by kkhohoho on Nov 1st 2020 at 2:25:47 AM

For a bit, Bea opted to do around finishing off the few remaining twitching husks rather than join the others in ogling the scene below.

"While I appreciate your commitment to Heroic Code rule four, it would be unwise to completely drop to street level and open ourselves up to possible insurmountable odds simply to clear out a pointless tableau. Additionally, rule three; curb your enthusiasm we are on a mission."

With the job done, Bea took a deep breath and began crossing the platforms at a run.

"That said, if someone has a sufficiently powerful grenade or wide-area energy blast you can send down, that would look favorable in the eyes of the Academy."

Hux

He withdrew his claw as the machine ranks were felled. For a moment, Hux had thought he'd heard a song. But no one else said anything about it, and the sound was fleeting, so faint he almost wasn't certain he'd heard it.

Shaking his head to clear it, he gazed at the machines below. Skittering about, pushing the debris. Perhaps they were trying to clean this mess? Hux had long wondered what the purpose of the machines' construction was.

But there wasn't time to ponder that now. They had a mission. "The old man is right. Let's keep moving."

Raising his hand, he fired off his claw, which embedded itself on the next rooftop. He leapt, using the claw as a grappling hook to pull himself over.

Alula Seles

Alula hung back a moment, watching the Machines below. Listening to their whirrs and beeps, trying to decipher them. They spoke in a different dialect to her people, but she could tell they were trying to do something. In that regard, she spoke in K'narii—a frequency too high-pitched to hear by ordinary means.

“I'm sorry.”

That done, she made to follow Hux's example in moving forward—albeit by using her magic instead, skating along the rooftop for a moment to gather speed before gracefully flipping and beginning to hop from platform to platform; each movement seemingly perfectly calculated and precise to a degree inhuman.

Edited by Enirboreh on Nov 1st 2020 at 12:58:44 PM

Ramialia certainly wasn't afraid to speak her mind as she shook her head at Zhane. "Ugh, it's like I'm taking orders from HIM. Whatever, if you can't fight, just stay huddled in a corner and try not to die."

Considering they wouldn't listen anyway, she wasn't going to point out Elijah's hypocrisy of potentially attracting attention since while their shouting probably wasn't understood, it would've still made sound to alert anything else nearby as she just rolled her eyes.

And Sue's comment wasn't helping as the woman advanced, scaling a nearby building with surprising agility.

"...What, tearing them apart isn't fun enough? Hmph." The first comment simply got Ramialia to give a dismissive shrug while the compliment simply made Ramialia's face burn slightly red from anger as her expression changed to a bemused glare. "...Not going to happen."

Edited by TheRealWren on Nov 2nd 2020 at 12:32:34 AM

Zhane for his part looked down, and clenched a hand momentarily when Rami responded that way. He didn't need any assistance feeling useless when fighting happened. The dark haired kid looked around, at the more developed fighters, and then at himself. And saw his scarcely developed form. "Maybe if I wasn't small and "effete" like Doulin says, I might be useful." Zhane whispered to himself and then went on his way.

He looked over at the route the other HERO units were taking, past the strange little machine trade outpost. How odd, he ruminated. He'd never known machines to trade or have currency...

However as they started making their way past it, one particularly gutsy machine tried to move out from the number of them. It had a ball-shaped head, a glowing blue eye at the center, three jointed arms and again, tank tread legs. It stood a bit taller than the rest, and tilted its head a little as it spoke. "Excuse m-m-meeeee? W-Would you Like-Like some trinkets? Baubles and gemstones? Ev-Everyone loves m-my gathered gemstone-stones!"

It had an oddly feminine voice synthesizer effect on.

Old Man Elijah

"...You all go on ahead, I'll talk to her. Or them. I’m really not quite sure," Elijah said, waving the rest of the party on. "I can meet up with you later. I'm always looking forward to expand my collection of records, and merchants always know what's going on nearby. It doesn't hurt anyone to ask."

"Madam," he began, staying behind to talk with the Machine Merchant. "Have you found any old music records around here? Or, failing that, some shards of petrified wood? They used to call that kind of material 'jet' in my day. People made jewelry out of it. It reminds me of one of—I mean, my late wife. Jet black was the color of her hair."

"If you do have some in stock, what do you accept as payment?" Elijah asked courteously. "I have some shards of sea glass I found, as well as some quartz. If you please, would you also be willing to share some knowledge about the goings-on in the area? It would help a lot."

Edited by JumpingFruit on Nov 1st 2020 at 7:48:50 AM

"M-M-Musical records? I found p-plenty of discs!" The gem merchant happily whirred and moved about in place, "I have-have Jet!" A compartment opened on her general stomach area and a number of gems were visible inside the compartment. However the mention of wife made the machine tilt its head, "Wife...Wife-Wife? Define: Wife."

It seemed to be somewhat distressed by this for a moment before perking back up. "I acc-accept debris from S-Site Edict-0299. Please and thank you..."

The machine however seemed to pause as it went toward a particular wrecked area to go get the musical offerings. All at once there was a strange blaring siren - repurposed from an ancient fire alarm - and the machines out and about started suddenly darting indoors.

The gem merchant machine frantically started trying to pull the door open on what was possibly her dwelling, "Op-Open door! Must enter safe haven. The army inbound in 360 seconds. Dark Thi-Thinkers represent risk factor of 2586%..."

Old Man Elijah

"Someone who was very dear to me a long, long time ago..." Elijah said wryly, but before he could make the trade, it appeared that something threatening was about to happen. "Never mind with the trade then, you just...here, lemme just...get in there."

He wrenched the door open with a rusty squeak of hinges and firmly pushed the Machine-Gem Merchant inside, giving it (her?) a few words of advice: "Now, you hunker down in here and my 'friends' and I will sort this out. Though...I don't like the sound of these 'Dark Thinkers' very much..."

"You heard the lady," he grunted to the rest of the group. "Shadows are approaching, or other bigger and badder Machines. Weapons out if you put them away. And you, Zhane..."

He unholstered Abel and Seth, his pistols, and handed them to the poor boy, saying "Get somewhere far, far away, under some cover, and make yourself useful. Shoot anything and everything that tries to get in close to you. I can hear you thinking you're nothing in that noggin of yours. Don't, good laddie. Just don't. And not a scratch on my brothers when you return them!"

Edited by JumpingFruit on Nov 2nd 2020 at 6:22:11 AM

Alula Seles

~Bending rules,~ Alula signed, acknowledging the obvious upon registering this new development. She cautiously looked at some of the others, and would have swallowed hard out of nervousness if she'd had the capacity to do so. ~But good information. Play along. For now.~

Really she meant ‘forever.’ But she couldn't exactly say that. She snuck a pitying smile at the Machine merchant, but otherwise kept her expression carefully neutral. Cautious, also—in case they got snuck up on.

Oh no the machines are merchandising

Bea was halfway to her sidearm when the panicked flight of the local quasi-sapient machines happened. She took a deep breath, eyeing carefully Elijah outright assisting before she spoke up.

"Very well. We will deal with this incoming threat and then proceed with the mission. This enclave will be in my after-action report for further investigation at a later date. Prepare yourselves."

"...You give someone advice and they run off and sulk. Whatever, still probably more useful than my partner at least." Rami simply shrugged at Zhane and not really caring what Elijah did or talked to at this point.

...probably...not wrong about that...

I'd tell you to be silent, but considering there's more potential headaches from them...and on the way, you're taking care of the rest. Have fun.

Before he had a chance to object, Ramialia went 'back to sleep', causing the transformation to revert back to Croire and giving him control again.

Sue

So this here robot was some sort of talking merchant thingy? Like, sure. It was stuttering, maybe had some issues.

But other than that, it was talking and thinking just as well as anyone else.

And maybe the rest of this 'enclave' or whatever wasn't far off.

"Uh, you sure that's a good idea, Bea? I mean, if the academy gets wind of this, chances are they're gonna come in and nuke the place. Like, if they were trying to attack people and shit, or were like the ones we just totalled, then sure. But these ones don't seem too different from us. If they were, I don't think they'd be runnning away with their tails between their fucking legs."

Edited by kkhohoho on Nov 2nd 2020 at 8:33:02 AM

The Encounter

Before long, it became obvious what was encroaching on both the HERO units and the machines trying to live out their lives in some approximation of a trading outpost. A large number of black and spotty green painted machines, moving ahead of a dust cloud, coming from the direction of the energy signature.

Knowing his place wouldn't be in this fight, Zhane took up position further up one of the business places here, standing on the roof shortly after his ascent via his floating green constructs. He started scanning the enemy machines, and took in their unique coloration in contrast to the machines they fought above, and the seemingly peaceful ones running around trying to get to safety. In principle, I'm with Bea. But we have to find out more about what's going on here. So maybe it would be wise to postpone the creatures' destruction.

He noted there were Shadows among the Machines, swirling masses of eyes, teeth, and darkness only forced into shape by a large number of metallic plates. It seemed they were used by these Machines as something like war-beasts, marching at the vanguard.

There was a definite emblem visible on a few of these new Machines as they moved in, a six legged insectile emblem resembling a beetle of some kind. A display of loyalty...? That was new.

The machines among these ones were vastly more streamlined and humanoid, customized with a number of skulls on the shoulders and rhinoceros beetle horns. Each armed with a sizable launcher of some kind in one arm, and a sparking laser sword in the other.

Old Man Elijah

"Alright, we can always lie about wrecking this place later," grunted Elijah, holding up a hand for peace. "Machines working with Shadows? Now that's strange. I always knew that some Machines at least had some capacity for thought, but this is—never mind..."

"Oh, dear Holiday, you must be spinning in your grave," he sighed as he readied his own weapons. "What would you think if you saw this happening? What would Thomas + Selby think? This is a great fucking bother..."

Edited by JumpingFruit on Nov 2nd 2020 at 9:59:34 AM