Athinar — Roleplayer Guild

HEAVY METAL

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	Angel nodded, listening to War-Pulse's explanation. So that's what was happening. Some Meta was extremely dangerous and volatile, and Evergreen wouldn't give up her location. Seemed refreshingly straightforward, compared to what happened three months ago. 

	Looking around the now-destroyed warehouse, Angel spied a service ladder to the roof, and dashing off, as soon as War-Pulse blasted away, he made for the ladder to the roof. Pulling himself up two rungs at a time, he quickly made it to the second-story roof, scrambling to his feet on the flat concrete of the warehouse rooftop. The hole was large, and it took up quite a bit of space, but there was enough room to let Angel run to the opposite side of the building, giving him a clear view of the fight. 

	They seemed to be keeping their fight in the nearby area, for now, at least. That'd make it easier for Angel to join in when Sherlock arrived with the ATD. At least something is going right for me. Keeping an eye on the fight, and making sure to stand away from the edge of the building, Angel called Sherlock on their secure line. 

"Hey, what's the hold up? There's a fight going on and I'm still squishy lil' ol me."

	Sherlock sighed exasperatedly. "Let's just say I ran into an... incident."

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

	Sherlock transferred over to the system in a blink of an eye. It was nothing for him to go through backdoors, cover his trace signature, and take over the ATD. Isolating it from intrusion, he jarred it into motion, casting off the sheet that covered the mech. Walking forward from its' charging station, Sherlock pushed a button, and the garage door rolled up, letting Sherlock onto the streets. There weren't any eyes on the garage, especially not at this time of night, in its' little nook behind an apartment building, letting out into the alley. Taking a running start, Sherlock leapt into the air, activating the jump jets, flying high, and landing on the roof of a fairly tall apartment building. Taking a second to charge the jets, Sherlock was able to hear quite a few of the inhabitants of the building wake up, startled by the building's sudden shaking. And as quickly as he had landed, he was gone, blasting off into the night sky.

Rach’s feet smacked the ground, her legs pushed her along and at a clip superior to a human’s normal stride. It wouldn’t take her long to get there at this pace. When a strange noise caught her attention, her head turned backwards. She frowned when a small, building hopping object darted between the second and third story ones before vanishing from sight upon landing. Her eyes tightened in confusion. She gradually slowed through she was several blocks ahead. 

If she hadn’t had binocular ability to zoom in and examine the vehicle, realizing it was a fucking ATD, she might’ve never paid attention at all to it. Lost Haven kept getting weirder and weirder by the moment. 

Without much thought she jerked to the side, her mind triggered her magnetic ability through the metal in her soles. She then leapt onto the nearest steel building. Her boot bottom instantly stuck fast to the surface and allowed her to scale it in a diagonal trail. Rach pulled onto the roof just a few blocks in the ATD’s path. Her arm gestured upward causing one of the roof’s steel beams to screech and twist upright, likely smacking into the mech’s right ankle. 

Sherlock had been out of the garage for precisely thirty two point eighty five seconds when he got batted off course by an errant steel beam that appeared to just leap out at the mech. Correcting his course almost immediately, and landing hard on the building’s roof, Sherlock scanned the area for the source of the attack. He found it within seconds, a woman standing on the roof, and making gestures with her arm, much like someone pantomiming an action.

Following her with most of the cameras on the ATD, Sherlock stood there, inquisitively gazing upon the Metahuman. There was something different about this one, Sherlock began to think. Her temperature was several degrees lower than normal humans’, in a range that would be lethal to most.  However, he did not have enough data to make any conclusions, only the random appearance, low temperature and strange pantomime. 

>Fact: Metahuman has attacked this unit > Fact: Aggressor seems to have control over either metals or magnetism. >Conjecture: A Metahuman with such abilities would risk significant harm coming to this unit and Angel’s ATD. >Recommended Course of Action: Diplomacy or fleeing. 

> Begin Dialogue and Analysis of Metahuman_friendly.Discourse  

From the loudspeakers on the outside of the suit, a pleasantly British voice came, sounding suspiciously like that one English actor, Benedict Cumberbatch. ”Hello, miss. Might I ask you why you have hit me with an I-Beam?”

 “Great, a talking tincan.” Rach blurted out, her expression unsure what to think as she continued.  “Well, it seemed like the only way to get your attention and ask where the fuck you’re heading. Usually, when I see a walking metal suit that looks like a walking weapon, my alarm bells go off. That means one of two things…”

She held up one finger for each point she made,  “You’re going to cause some trouble for someone or two, something is going down and it’s not going to be good for anyone. Considering you’re heading the same direction I’m heading, I’m going to bet it has something to do with that large, destructive fight up ahead.”

Sherlock was mildly surprised by the assumptions she had leapt to upon their first meeting. So she was quite jaded and aggressive to the unknown or mysterious. That little piece of information added about 2.5 % to the total personality analysis that Sherlock was currently running. Not enough to base a Psych File on, but enough to gain a foothold in a discussion with this stranger. 

While Sherlock was running the Personality Analysis, he was also performing a secondary task that only required a connection to a local woman’s wifi and Google images. Taking several pictures of her costume, Sherlock found that the mysterious Metahuman was not a known hero, vigilante, or villain. Interesting. He’d have to archive the thought threads and audio logs for review when further investigating this individual. 

”Yes, it does have something to do with the fight up ahead. However, I don’t know if you are trustworthy, so I must keep silent on this matter.” Sherlock did not have any illusions that she would take this well; persons of a combative temperament don’t usually find mistrust very endearing.

 “Nice to know a bot isn’t completely stupid. The bad part, since I don’t know you then letting you head up there puts a friend of mine at risk. Something I’m not going to allow.” Rach said then twisted her arm up causing the beam that tried to hobble the mech earlier coil about and lash out at the machine’s back, in hopes of bring him down in one shot. 

As soon as the I-beam began to twitch, Sherlock’s mind began to overclock itself, cutting off any humanesque thought threads, and began processing things five times faster than he normally did, which came close to twice the speed of human thought. The world outside  the ATD began to slow down to a leisurely pace, with one second passing for every 5.6 milliseconds. 

>I-beam: Animated? Threat. 
>Action: Slash in half with DMS, then flee
>Execute

With the grace of an inhuman dancer, surprising for such a large mech, Sherlock activated the DMS, diamond-edged chainsaw popping out in half a second, whirled around, slicing the twitching I-beam in half. Knocking the two pieces aside, Sherlock unfolded the Hellbeast Model 18 (HM-18) from its shoulder plating, while running forward towards the edge of the roof, charging both the laser and the Pegasus jump jets. 

Rach growled when her attack had been stopped in its tracks. Her teeth gritted and her expression glared, her eyes pure black under her mask through the mech couldn’t see it. She rushed forward with her fist reeled back as she manipulated the bicycle chains on her neck. They liquified then slid across her surface, their material glided across her shoulder then her arm until it coated her hand into a metal glove. Her skin glistened in the moonlight through it moved more like skin than a gauntlet. 

Her reflexes were faster than her thought process when she performed a sloppy upper cut into the mech’s gut. 

>Target: Rushing this unit
>Appears to be baseline human? w/Metahuman abilities.
>Action: Allow target to strike, and then knock unconscious 
>Light blow to the head should suffice
>Execute

Sherlock allowed the target to strike the ATD’s midsection, but as soon as she had, he hit her on the top of the head with a karate chop. It had just enough measured force to knock any normal human unconscious without killing them, although cracking their skull was an issue if they had brittle/weak bones.

Rach’s eyes widened as she reacted, much slower than she wanted, to the chop downward on her head. Her mask being the only metal closest to her skull and able to protect, she focused on manipulating that. The mask hitched up revealing her lower jaw, her nose and gradually her whole face to defend her skull from the blow. It smacked against it with a loud bang but merely dented the metal surface slightly. 

 “FUCK!” Rach snapped as the metal once more slithered back to her face when the mech lifted his arm upright. She pulled her fist back for another swing, her last left a slight indention in the armor but seemed to affect him very little. Her palm faced down then sudden the metal roofing, namely the material underneath his feet, started to shake and rattle. In moments, the place the mech was standing on ripped up and shoved him backwards putting up a thick wall between him and Rach. 

>Fact: Target is stronger than human norm
>Fact: Target has quicker reaction times than human norm
>Updating Target profile
>Plan Formulated based off data
>Execute

Sherlock aimed at the corner of the building at a 50-degree angle with the HM-18, and firing, he swept the laser across in a line, shearing off a good quarter of the roof, and quite a bit of the top floor’s western wall. Firing the charged jump jets, Sherlock leapt over the steel wall the Metahuman had constructed, and just as the roof began to fall to the ground, he pointed the Pegasus Jets down, and aimed his foot at the Meta. Rocketing down towards her, his foot made contact, slamming her down to the ground. 

Rach jumped instantly to avoid the laser clipping her feet off. Her figure curled then jerked back down and expected to smack upon solid ground. That didn’t help. Instead, the roof edge tilted then crumbled downward to the alley below. She tried to catch her balance only to find her footing slipping away from the roof’s surface and her form tumbled backways. The huge ass robot didn’t pause when she saw him rush at her then pop on his jet, intending to bounce on top of her. 

The hell she was going to let that happen, Rach thought in annoyance. Her magnetism immediately kicked in but instead of latching upon the steel building to stop her fall, she repulsed from it. She stared to flip in mid air just when the mech’s first foot reached her. Crunch! Her foot slammed into the metal and left a heavy dent, disrupting the bot’s aim. 

>Fact:Target has disrupted aim of foot
>Fact:Target stronger than last assessment
>Updating Target Profile
>Modifying plan
>Executing

When the ATD’s foot was deflected, Sherlock didn’t stop the boosters. In fact, he continued to boost, while forming a fist with his right hand. Using the momentum of his downward boost, he punched the target, sending her flying downwards. 

Quickly changing the mech’s course, Sherlock managed to angle himself to a shorter building’s roof, one about half the height of the skyscraper that he had just knocked the target off of. As soon as the target hit ground, and was covered in rubble, Sherlock scanned for life in the crater, which he found. So the target was also MUCH tougher than the human norm. This Metahuman was proving to be interesting. 

Running off, and leaping from building to building, Sherlock restored his human-esque higher thought codes, and stopped overclocking himself, getting a moment to think. This was bad. He had to warn Angel, this Meta could seriously threaten him, if pushed far enough.

Sherlock was beginning to form a theory about her abilities, but even though he didn’t have the data to even make a conjecture, he allowed himself to flag a single thought on a ‘whim’, a human notion of irrationality. 

>The targets’ abilities scale to the threat? Investigate

Coming near to the battle between War-Pulse and Evergreen, their fight causing explosions of dust, holes in buildings, and quite an impressive amount of property damage, Sherlock landed on what little remained of the warehouse roof, and opened the cockpit, welcoming Angel inside.

- - - - - - - -

Climbing in the mech, Angel asked Sherlock, ”What ‘incident’ could possibly delay you when you’re in my baby?”

”Well, there was a fairly powerful Metahuman with magnetic manipulation and abnormal strength and toughness. I have the info all recorded in my thought logs and my video files.” Angel simply sat there for a moment before strapping himself in, shaking his head. He wouldn’t ask, he wouldn’t ask, ”... And she’s headed our way.”

Leaning forward, Angel indulged himself in a brief headdesk by slamming his forehead into the piloting console, sighing. ”I knew it, I goddamn knew it.” Sighing, he jumped off the roof, and onto the street below, approaching the battle between Evergreen and War-Pulse which still raged on.

Patching himself through to Trent’s personal comlink via his Metahuman ability, Angel spoke briefly, and got to the point quickly.. ”Metahuman, apparently on its way. Metal manipulator. Trade enemies?”
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