NPF Avatars 5 - Capitalism Has Made It This Way

[POS Industries]

"Why is POS Industries under attack? Why is Doukhobor Labs doing this?"

"Perhaps I can field that question, my dear," Doug Doukhobor replied from his floating monitor as it hovered next to Mauve, "You see, we at Doukhobor Laboratories have a dream, the dream of bringing new technological advancements to the NPF community at a fair price. A massive corporate like POS Industries is only after your money, and they'll not think twice about squashing in the small business owners and mom-and-pop operations under their boot to do it. Why, did you know that POS Industries refuses to inspect every single shipping crate out of foreign ports for explosives? POS Industries clearly supports terrorism! Not to mention the slave wages paid to their employees and lack of benefits...."

"Now wait just a kitten-hugging minute!" Rei interrupted, leaping to the stands after having left Asheth to her own devices and addressing Mauve, "Let me tell you something, Mean Gene: Doug Doukhobor is a chump that likes to run his mouth about how his company's better than POS Industries. He likes to say how we don't pay our workers and how we support the terrorists, brother, but he won't tell you how he used to work for us and all he did was steal our designs and take a bunch of our equipment to make a name for himself in this business. And the Rei-ster's here to tell you, brother, that he can build his robotroopers, say his prayers, take his vitamins, and put out his smear campaigns but when it all comes to pass, brother, the name POS Industries, the company POS Industries, is too much for him to compete with..."

Grabbing the microphone, Rei pointed her finger at Doug's face on the screen, "Now, what'cha gonna do, brother? What'cha gonna do when POSamania runs wild on YOU?!"

As everyone in the immediate vicinity stared at the android as she began flexing and growling energetically, a dumbfounded Doug finally stammered, "Uhhhhh...... Wait, aren't you supposed to all smiley and happy all the time? What's the deal with all--"

"Huh? Oh right," Rei snapped out of her spiel and pressed the button that read "Power" on the bottom left hand corner of Doug's floating monitor, his face vanishing from the screen as it dropped to the ground with a dull crack.

"Woohoo!" Rei cheered as the crab battle continued to rage on behind her, "A winner is me!"

[Arhra]

Arhra, clinging on like glue, stayed in place when the crab rammed Rhiya into the stands. Her grip on the reins she had fashioned remained strong. Having Rhiya's head in the way also quite fortunately protected Arhra from the explosion that further damage to the crab's maintenance hatch had caused.

Now was the time! All she had to do was steer Rhiya, making her flip the crab over and exposing its voonerables for all to see and shoot at. She'd probably be able to make Rhiya do a nice victory lap around the arena after that too. She pulled on the strands of magic she had tehtered to Rhiya's horns, trying to force her head down.

Rhiya didn't like the reins, fighting against their pull like an unbroken horse. Arhra strained back, fighting back with her inhuman strength to keep Rhiya's head on target. This struggle for control had an unfortunate side effect: a stray missile hit Rhiya's neck right near where Arhra was bracing herself against the dragon's pull.

Knocked off her feet by the concussive blast, Arhra lost her grip on one of the reins, the magic falling away into a string of caterpillars. She fumed as she swung around on the surviving rein, hanging in mid air suspended from Rhiya's horn. Letting go to drop safely to the ground, she yelled up at Rhiya. "That's the second plan you've messed up today!" First the arena filling stratagem had gone sour and now there would be no crab flipping or dragon riding. This was simply intolerable!

Rhiya looked down at Arhra snorting imperiously and eyes flaring. "What plan?!?!?!" she bellowed angrily and confusedly. Rocket launching killer robots and enemy crabs of great stature were beneath the arguing pair's notice at this point.

"Oh, so 'I don't understand and it makes me angry!' you say? How predictable!" Arhra sneered back.

"What do you mean, predictable?! Oh I'll show you PREDICTABLE!" Rhiya roared, head suddenly striking at Arhra, ravening maw agape to swallow her dimunitive target whole.

Arhra had seen it coming. She leapt nimbly to the side as the night black head, lit from within with a crimson glow, plowed past like a train. As huge jaws clicked shut on nothing, Arhra jumped back on Rhiya's neck. "Trying to eat me?" she yelled in outrage, "I'll eat you first!" Though Rhiya was more than a thousand times her size, Arhra meant it. She was nothing if not persistent.

Arhra grabbed a ridge firmly with one hand, crouching spiderlike, with her other hand splayed on Rhiya's flesh. She concentrated on ripping energy out of Rhiya's crystalline body, flowing through the physical contact into her.

Rhiya didn't like this at all, flailing her neck around to attempt to dislodge her tiny attacker. Clinging on grimly, Arhra knew it was just a matter before she was flung off. She decided to pick her moment instead.

She struck, punching heavily at the area she had been touching before. To everyone's vast surprise, the diamond shuddered and cracked beneath the blow, crazed flaws in Rhiya's hide radiating from the point. A chunk of Rhiya's chaos-diamond body gripped in her fist, Arhra released her grip as the dragon whipped her neck in outrage, sailing smoothly through the air and landing in a crouch, incidentally smashing a missile trooper into the ground.

She straigtened and, making certain Rhiya could clearly see what happened next, Arhra popped the chunk into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Draining energy softens you up nicely." she said, eyes glinting, "You're quite tasty really." Arhra rather thought she tasted like rock candy.

Rhiya's reaction to having the tables turned on her was going to be quite memorable.

OOC: Rhiya and I are putting an idea we had into action.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

High above the rampaging dragons, giant enemy crabs and multitude of explosions, Hawk was soaring and circling the arena, keeping well out of the way of the haphazard destruction below. But he wasn't just being cowardly, oh no, he was providing important aerial support for the group, his airblasts and gales making short work of the flying robotroopers, the concussive blasts particularly adept at destroying the sensitive electronics within each one with pure blunt force trauma. The destruction of each robot would generally be accompanied by a hefty explosion for some strange reason.

Of course, this didn't stop it raining chunks of exploded robot parts on the npfers below, but that wasn't his problem.

[Rhiya Ravenwing]

Rhiya flipped.

Granted, All Arhra really did was just tear a small, insignificant piece off the gigantic dragon, but the wound stung like a papercut. Tail lashing in fury - a dozen robots had decided that Rhiya was now a threat and were quite definitely hovering in the air aiming their freeze rays at her - and swatted the robots off into the distance, smashing them from the sheer force of impacting solid diamond.

Rhiya's head swung down again, but was once again too slow for Arhra, who nimbly sidestepped again, grasped a head horn, shimmied up her neck, and punched another piece of chaos diamond out of her shoulder blade. Rhiya swiped at Arhra with her claws, missing as Arhra continued down Rhiya's back punching small fractures and wounds into Rhiya's back as she went along, popping them into her mouth as she dodged, weaved, and duck her way down Rhiya's left hind leg and knocked part of a claw off.

The effect caused the rest of the claw to snap off. Rhiya, rearing and roaring in pain and anger, lost her footing and with a deafening crash, landed and demolished a good part of the stands, crushing a few innocent bystanders who were too stupid to get away when there were two gigantic monstrosities fighting in that region.

Arhra grinned impishly, still on the crab.
"Too good for you, huh? Oh yeah," she did a little dance number, unaware that Rhiya's tail still hadn't left the question.

*THMP*

"You're never too good for THIS!"

Arhra was sent flying towards Rhiya, who opened her mouth again to swallow Arhra whole. But she timed it a little wrong, and her mouth was only halfway open before Arhra would hit her teeth.

[OOC: wreckless violence to the max!]

[TheBlindMime]

"You saw it all right here first," Said Mauve Mage, the camera panning further to the right to get her back into the shot, which confused Tuxedo Ecurt slightly as he thought Mauve was on the left. "Doukhobor Labs is dumb enough to place power switches on there invasion robots, spread the word, we know how to take them down."

As the sound of a telegraph wiring a message irritatingly sounded over the Crab Battle the actual Mauve walked into the shot from the left, TBMauve Mage just smiled politely. "Uh... Hi there.... This just in, two Mauve's are doubly awesome."

[PyrosNine]

Asheth, annoyed that the losers who tried to protect the panels were taking potshots at her and failing miserably, proceeded to hit them with a multitude of flame until their metal bodies became fused together in a manner that would be to inferior fleshy bags extremely painful, also disabling their ability to move.

"Sorry my lil' babes, but Asheth needs some candies!"

Snapping back her armbands and freeing up the legs of the crab, she then proceeded to return to Pyros form.

"Alrighty! Now I just need to focus on my CQC!"

With a quick roll, Pyros was under the crab's yellow pane, flametongue ready.

[mauve]

"Well, they say imitation is the highest form of flattery," Mauve said, eying TBMauve. "But I'm honestly not sure if I should be flattered or disturbed right now."

[POS Industries]

((OOC: You know, controlling Fenris' character while he's extensively indisposed brings back some Avvy 3 nostalgia. Let's see if I'm rusty...))

Having decided not to use Phoenix's space-time distortion o' death, POS, Fenris, Nikose, Black, Melfice, the millionaire and his wife, the movie star, and the rest had finally arrived on the scene of the crab battle. As the rest of Team NPF: Flavor Police leaped into action, a series of beeps were heard from device on Fenris' wrist, followed by a man's voice.

"Hey Jerkass," Fifthfiend greeted the hobo moderator, "The Kurosen's under attack by some killer robots. Go deal with that."

"Me? I'm kinda busy here! And with, well, more killer robots, apparently. Can't you get someone else on it?" an annoyed Fenris inquired.

"Well, Shiney and Rai are off in silly Korean MMO land, I'm busy with very important none-of-your-goddamn-business, CroTeam and Viper Daimao are clearly mythological, and Meister's in Germany. I mean, what's he gonna do from there, throw bratwurst at the problem?" Fifth informed him, "You and Krylo are the only ones whose mere existence I can even verify, and Skirtboy's not answering. Besides, it's your turn anyway."

Seeing Krylo standing in the center of the ring taking potshots at robotroopers, Fenris sighed, "Yeah, I can see he's occupied. And when isn't it my turn, by the way?"

"Well, the rule is that, upon becoming a mod, you owe the team retroactively for all the turns that you missed before your promotion, which is about two years worth," Fifth explained, "So I'm gonna go with never."

It was about this time that Pedro, who had been standing behind Fenris conversating with a Rei hologram, prodded Fenris in the back with his cane and pointed toward the cluster of robotroopers guarding the underside of the CRAB. "Yo, hobo. Be a dear and plow a thread through that mess over there. Chop chop."

"Hey, POS, I'm a bit busy here if you haven't no--hey! Hey!!" an increasingly more exasperated Fenris growled, caught between fiend and the industrialist who had resumed prodding him with the cane, "You know, things are different now than they were a year ago. I can just ban you if I want."

"Uh huh, yeah. I love you too, buddy," Pedro muttered, pointing back toward the CRAB, "Less talky, more thready."

Mumbling under his breath, Fenris pivoted around to face the CRAB and began directing one of the threads he had moved into the arena, plowing it through the legs of the massive cyborg crustacean and driving many of the troopers beneath into the wall.

Meanwhile, the android Rei had busied herself with hugging the two Mauves and giggling about how adorable they were when she suddenly released them and began charging up an energy attack. "S'cuse me while I whip dis out... DOOM CANNON!!"

A massive beam of white light exploded from her hands, tearing along the ground just left of the thread and blowing apart most of the remaining robotroopers positioned under the CRAB and opening up a path of attack for the NPFers.

((OOC: You're welcome. Fuckers.))

[TheBlindMime]

TBMauve mage shrugged before letting one of his/her hands rest upon her/his newfound bosoms, "Probably a bit of both." S/he said calmly before turning towards the action in the arena, "Shouldn't one of us report this?" TBMauve asked with his/her hand still tentatively upon his/her bosom.

[Bailey]

The Keymen, having finished their assigned task of mauling robots with large implements normally used for locking doors, looked about. Their new mommy was nowhere in sight. They vaguely remembered something about a blue portal though, although they were sure that that was a different show and they were supposed to get from place to place via edible starship. Having no better plans, they stepped through the gate.

****^&^*****

The Red arrived first, followed by Green next to him, and then, the odd distortion in the portal which looked like some bizarre smiley caused Blue to come out sideways, slamming into Red and Green and knocking them over.

As this was a collision, it was required by the laws of narrative comedy that something had to roll away. In this case, the headband of the shattered soul.

Red got to his feet, clutching his head, and nudged Green and Blue with his feet. Then he spotted the headband. "Oh shit, that's not supposed to happen."