Avatar VIII: Chapter I: The First

[PyrosNine]

"Huh. No soul, it seems. Or something to that extent. Okay, we'll play!"

Pyros sunk back into the darkness, ducking his head as the robot came near. While a mess of hair remained where the robot stood, Pyros emerged from the darkness far behind him.

He yowled.

His hair, which had already looked about ready to pour off his head, began to stretch and grow, spilling out onto the battlefield, filling the streets, running out of gutters and up telephone polls. The other forumites found themselves walking on a carpet deep in need of either a towel or some deep conditioner.

Pyros, all obscured by hair save for a bright, brilliant eye gleaming at the android, cackled quietly to himself.

His hair began to convulse violently, slipping, sliding, snaking where it lay

An end of hair, as thick as a ship rope, stuck up out of the ground, and shot at the robot.

[Teal Mage]

Wasting no time with words, Mac hurled blast of lightning magic down from the sky above the crater. The bolt of magical power briefly illuminated a certain cat-eared mage, reclining leisurely on at the edge of a roof bordering the battle zone, one leg crossed over the other.

"Boring!" He decisively pronounced, popping a crystal spoon filled with blue pudding into his mouth. He writhed momentarily, thrown into ecstasy at the taste.

Mac’s spell had little visible effect, "Predicted." Teal commented mildly, part to himself and part to whoever might be listening. "No style!"

A chi blast from one of the newer residents caused the obviously evil-and decidedly ugly!-droid to stumble, leaving it open to get better acquainted to the cement. Bard’s summon raised a fist triumphantly to follow up, only to meet the battle droid’s foot.

Teal popped another spoonful of pudding into his mouth.

Driven by magic, five daggers closed on the droid. Teal grinned delightedly; Mauve’s style was not to be underestimated! She had been a reporter after all; one did not simply stumble into such an honour!

[Master.]

The droid countered Mauve’s spell by giving a red bull wings, and turning it into an improvised meatshield. A single knife managed to get through, inflicting minimal damage.

"Feeling left out Dee?" More pudding.

[Why don’t you stab people with me?]

"Honestly Dee!" Teal replied, exasperated. "You have such a terrible mind."

Pyros attacked with soul crushing black fire.

"Thinking I’d support such deviant social behave…" He trailed off.

The droid walked out of the fire, entirely unaffected.

"Oh." The crystal chalice of pudding lulled in his hand, "That’s never a good sign."

[Is it time to rend flesh?]

"Nonsense." Teal redoubled his efforts at eating. "Blood and pudding don't go together."

The mass of magical butterflies flitting about the roof behind Teal obviously had nothing to do with anything. It was completely coincidental that they had been multiplying since he’d arrived in a brilliant burst of light, glitter and flower petals a short while ago. He'd proceeded to the edge of the roof, offering a cheerful greeting-and pudding!-to Wizzle before swinging down to his current position, and beginning to, nonchalantly, eat said desert. He couldn't have been planning anything! After all, what could butterflies do?

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Shyria barely had time to register the failure of her fireball attack before narrowly dodging an incoming Beserker-douken. Now she was getting concerned. If this thing got its act together, it could do even more serious damage. She saw that Pyros was charging another attack, and decided to give him some cover now that their old tank had been lost. Claws and teeth bared, she charged at the bot like an oncoming train, cursing how much she knew this was going to hurt.

[Overcast]

Well the image of his compatriots' first attacks was disconcerting at the least. I mean the Berserker was definitely out of the picture. Lightening died, as did dark soul stealing doom. The knives had done little and that made his coins look a bit dimmer as a weapon. Though he had already pulled out his change so he had to do something with them. He tossed up his coins for a moment, taking the small time they spun in the air to come up with something,

He didn't get much.

"Beggar's Nightmare!"

He grabbed the coins in mass from the air and tossed them in rapid succession at the hulking automaton, concentrating on it's life giving power lines. He figured like most machines while the rest of the body was made of ridiculously tough materials hit the primary power source and it'll become a useless git.

Buuuuuut just in case he made sure to give the creep something that it couldn't just block without consequence. He pulled off his head, and tossed the explosive thing with full force at its head. Hoping to give it the most explosive kiss to occur in NPF for at least a month. Sure it might hit a few of the other guys, but he was always a little bit blind to that if you weren't talking to him. The body was already running off like a little girl for cover on the assumption things were going to go horribly wrong.

[Relm Zephyrous]

The setting was dark. Matter streamed along randomly and in no real formation. There was light, of all sorts and shapes, no end in any direction, and no beginning. In 'a' middle of all the matter Rella floated, tinted in an aquamarine light, scribbling in a orange book and a diamond-like device. Both of these were almost made of that light and flickering wildly.

The girl looked up, a bright black star flickering noisily in the distance, against a backdrop of stellar yellow streams. There was a moment of her questioningly looking and peering at it, looking into the thing and running over the basketball sized globe, before smirking and laughing slightly. She closed the book with a definitive snap, and it vanished into a wisp of pure light, floating away and into the nothingness. Then there was a simple nod, a deep black flash appearing all around her, and the girl herself vanishing without a trace from this world.

Rella was far away from NPF, technically farther than it was possible to get from the city of commotion but that wouldn't inconvenience her. The residence at the time was one in between realities and dimensions, although she managed to keep track of things. And as she moved closer through the black spinning tunnel of smoking illumination she could start to see things from their city, and the event of interest that alerted her.

A mild sense of disappointment fell upon her face as she looked at the scene. Just an ordinary brawl going on. Except... wait. There is only one opponent fighting all of them, and he's actually doing fine. For now that is. Once this set in, the disappointment vanished almost instantly, and she overviewed the scene with the intent to find the vantage point most needed. Hmm.... Oh, looks like I've got a couple people staying in the back. I might actually have to help out the NPF in this fight and thats where I'll belong.

There was a brilliant flash of black light and a lingering trail of black stars behind her as she crawled out of the spiraling rift, making sure to start herself almost in between Wizcat and Teal, and more importantly, on solid ground. The black stars following her soon faded into black dust, though more seemed to come out of the portal, forming into a dark onyx complex diamond object.

Also emerging from the chasm was formed black energy of the same sort, this tinted in a cold space-esque form but otherwise looked like raptors. The six semi-formed knee high beasts looked over the roof as Rella momentarily got mesmerized by the butterflies about, then shook her head slightly and looked to the duo. "Would either of you be polite enough to explain to me exactly what kind of mess we're into this time?"

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Circling high above the battle, Hawk looked on with mild concern. The robot was damaged, but somehow still managing to hold off a whole horde of NPFers, no mean feat on any day of the week. Hawk watched intently as lightning attacks failed, knives failed, dark magic fireballs failed, everything seemed to be failing!

Hmm, interesting. Well, I don't imagine wind powers are much use here, and I don't exactly want to get in close for sword fighting, seeing what happened to IC. If magic fails, maybe technology will have more luck?

He went into a dive, pulling up and slowing a feet feet above the ground some distance away from the rampaging killbot and landed back in his human form. He drew his Warbringer, flipped a switch on the side from full-auto to three shot bursts and aimed for his target.

"Let's see how bullets work on that armoured shell!" Keeping the bot in his sights, Hawk began to pull the trigger, sending burst after burst at the machine.

[Bard The 5th LW]

"Owww, that's going to leave a few marks," Bard muttered to himself after he heard the sound that came from his behemoth after getting a kick from the android.

Bard decided that Berserker wasn't going to be of much use for now, it would be best if he went off the wherever summons went to when they weren't used to heal. He then rolled up his sleeve, noticing that the fall hap re-opened the cut on his arm, so bard just slid his knife across the wound. "Geist, time to kick ass," he said as Berserker dissolved from their plane of existence.

In his place a spectral mass of something-that-hurts appeared and let out a screechy cackle, this was the anarchistic sociopath known as Geist. "Geist, kill the robot, and just the robot. Geist turned to Bard and gave him an angry look "You're no fun, you know that?" he responded.

He then turned his attention towards the robot, and decided that it would have to satisfy his urge to kill for now. Geist formed two arms on him, which made into spikes, he then took aim and charged for android with the intent of jackknifing him through the skull.

[Arcanum]

Arcanum had arrived in time to watch the first few attacks unfold before he decided to strategically retreat behind a building and plan what he was going to do. Things didn't look good so far, with the violent automaton managing to hold it's own against an onslaught of NPFers.

Good thing it doesn't have both arms, Arcanum thought with a wry smile. He needed to come up with some sort of attack plan that would actually work. He'd witnessed P9's darkfyre attack, and while Arcanum knew that his Darkfire worked differently (everyone knows that fire and fyre are completely unrelated) he had a feeling that any fire-based attack would just piss off the machine.

"I'm a genius!" he exclaimed to nobody in particular. He snapped his fingers and with a slight pop an off-white colored, blob-like creature appeared.

"Sliggy, go and distract that machine over there. Dance around, make fun of him, but make sure to try and avoid his attacks. Got it?"

Sliggy's mouth opened into a wide grin. "Sure thing mister! I like to play with new friends!" Sliggy then turned away and pranced off towards the machine while singing "Tra la la. Tra la la. Tra la la."

"That's distraction number one," Arcanum muttered. "Now for number two."

With a quick thrust of his hands (that totally wouldn't infringe any hadoken-themed copyrights) Arcanum unleashed a bird-shaped mass of black fire. Well bird-shaped was a slight exaggeration. The fire had something that resembled a core, and two things that flapped like wings. Regardless, another quick jab unleashed a second bird-shaped mass of fire, and with a wave of his hand both fire birds flew around the building and towards the machine. Their goal wasn't to attack the thing directly, but to fly around it and hopefully distract it and mess with its optics.

[Wizardcat]

I hate androids, Wizzle thought.

While Teal had been chatting to various individuals including him, himself, and his dagger and Wizzle had been busy ignoring said chatting, he had been busy trying to think of a tactic that would work against the foreign android. From this distance, and he wasn't going to be moving closer if he could help it, he had two options available: crossbow and magic. The feline doubted he was accurate enough to hit the quick-moving robot and not to hit anyone else who happened to be nearby. Also, he doubted arrows would have much effect against a machine enemy aside from denting it slightly. That left it up to magic.

There was no sources of elemental magic nearby, given that the power was out in the district. Even the crystal hanging inside his robes was empty of magical energy; he would have to remember to remedy this soon. Twilight magic it was. The only question now, was how? Judging from the way that the robotic foe had shrugged off all attacks aimed at it so far, he doubted that a direct assault, especially with distance, was going to do much, if anything. He was beginning to wonder if taking the high ground as well as additional distance had been a tactical error.

They're more likely to hit each other than it if this pattern continues, Wizzle observed. Especially the way they're all running in to attack at once.

Stopping momentarially to respond to Teal's greeting and turn down the offered yogurt, Wizzle paused, becoming aware of yet another arrival. Rella and her raptor entourage stepped out of a black portal of some kind, looking somewhat incongruous amongst the storm of butterflies that were gathering. He mentally blamed Teal for the glittering arthopods as the newcomer spoke.

"Would either of you be polite enough to explain to me exactly what kind of mess we're into this time?"

Wizzle was more interested in the miniature creatures than answering, but given that Teal was busy with his blue snack (what kind of pudding is blue, anyway?) and that a battle going on took precidence over examining them more closely, prompted the mage to reply.

Pointing towards the action, he informed Rella of the current situation in a matter-of-fact manner: "Chrome Dome over there crashed here and is wreaking havoc. The NPF is trying to teach it that only we can destroy stuff around here." The purple-clad individual stood up during the report, a familiar glow surrounding him, this time a stormy dark grey hue. As the illumination flowed to his outstretched forepaws, the traditional casting pose, Wizzle turned away from the nearest raptor and towards his target. Earlier, he had thought of an idea when he saw Mauve cast her Slow spell. It was a good idea, he thought, but he felt a different approach was needed.

With a slight increase in the luminosity of the cloud of twilight magic and a brief crackle, streams of magic shot forth like lightning. They spiraled dizzyingly through the air as they homed in upon the mechanical intruder. Within a second the glowing strands had reached it, and within another, they would start wrapping themselves around the the thing's limbs and body in an attempt to bind the android to the spot. Wizzle, looking like the puppetmaster pulling the strings, was preparing for the imminent struggle to hold his magic there. Each and second he could might be crucial, as it losing its ability to fight back would be the best oppurtunity to dismantle the thing.

"I hope this works," the feline hissed through his teeth. Judging from the way his tail thrashed, quite the effort was being made.

[mauve]

Originally Posted by Mac

"Hey, you wanna help a real mage here.

"I would, but it looks like Wizzle is doing okay on his own," Mauve said. "I wouldn't want to intrude."

Floaty Mac continued anyway.

"I have a plan, but it involves you dropping a moon or something on this Ahnuld wanna be," Mage said with a grin, jerking his thumb towards the bot.

"All's I got is an X-wing," Mauve said, pulling the keys out of her pocket. "The button on the key fob summons it to me, assuming there's enough room for it to land. Normally I save this li'l plot device until the point in the RP where I'm falling to my death and have run out of ideas, but I'm willing to try a change in tactics, assuming I don't get killed in the process."

"Oh, and I guess there's some risk of collateral damage," she added. "X-wings tend to explode dramatically, even in the vaccum of space. So maybe that's not such a good idea after all."

"Aside from the X-wing, though, I've got enough magic spells to flatten a small planet. Once I figure out something that won't be useless against it, we're good."