ic Incursion: Stop-Thrust (IC)

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel gave a frustrated sigh as the remaining two drones turned and "ran" away from him. Had they been mortal, he would have taken it as a sign of fear. As things stood, he took it as a sign of shifting tactics. He did not enjoy getting close to the metallic monstrosities, but better him than some of the unpowered and untrained technical staff of the Lighthouse.

 

With but a thought he was moving through the air, squinting his eyes a bit before finally closing them entirely as he navigated with his superhuman sense of hearing, helping him move about like a bat or a dolphin might.

 

Which was why when he went through the doorway, he simply raised his right arm and plastered the drone there with another sonic barrage.

 

"A good effort, but insufficient."

[Thevshi]

GM

The two remaining antibodies had not moved far away, just beyond the doorway so they were waiting for Gabriel when he came through. The spearwielding hero's sonic blast slammed into one of the pair, sending it spinning way through the section of the station.

The other pushed off the wall it was clinging to, propelling itself at Gabriel. As it drew near, it slashed with its claws at the white clad figure. But even though he had braced himself somewhat to help counter the unusual feeling of fighting in a gravity free environment, Gabriel was still quick enough to pull aside and avoid the antibody's attack.

Up on another level, the antibody that had slashed Tiamat earlier reached out toward her again as both were now floating in the air. The creature’s hands crackled with green energy, and Tiamat was still too groggy from the last attack to avoid the attack. Pinpricks of pain course through her body as the antibody touched her, the energy arching through her. Just as she had been about to get her bearings once more she was almost overwhelmed by the shock but fought to keep conscious.

[Avenger Assembled]

The antibody attacking Tiamat crumbled to frozen ash as Frost's cloudy form passed right through it. "Lady Tiamat!" he suddenly opined, sounding no more than mildly annoyed at their change in circumstances. "There are far too many of these fellows. I have perfect scheme." He reached out and tore open a nearby firehose locker, casually wrapping it around his waist all heedless of the battle going on around them, solidifying himself into solid form. "Take other end of hose and we will find exterior wall arguably!" He waved a pale hand. "Come on, is fun, you can hurl me into depths of space if you so choooose..." He winked.   

[Thevshi]

Velocity managed to work the manual door release and push the two doors open enough so she could slip into the central core of the Lighthouse. The round shaft travelled the entire length of the spacestation, allowing the lifts to travel to all the station's decks. Right now the shaft was pitch black, but luckily the speedster's goggles compensated for that.

Pushing off a wall, she angled herself downward, floating though air on her way down toward the engineering level. She did not travel far when she spotted a pair of Communion clinging to a wall and apparently trying to hide in wait. One hand quickly reached down to a pouch on her belt, pulling out a handful of steel ball bearings, which she then hurled at one of the antibodies in a blur of motion.

*CRACK* *CRACK* *CRACK*

Miniature sonic booms echoed in the confined space, as the ball bearings broke the sound barrier on their way toward the target. However, the speedster aim was off due to the zero gravity, and the hypersonic projectiles ricocheted off the walls, missing just to one side of the antibody.

Velocity's momentum kept her moving down toward the antibodies, both of which pushed off the walls they were clinging to and up toward the speedster. Green energy crackled along their clawed hands as they slashed them toward the yellow clad speedster. But even floating in the zero gravity, Velocity was still too quick and agile to be an easy target, and she twisted and turned out of the way of each attack.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Thevshi

[Electra]

Fleur let out a rather unheroic yelp of surprise as the two drones rushed her, knocking her flashlight to spin crazily for a moment before she caught hold of it again. "When the hell did this become survival horror?" she griped to  no one as she shook off the effects of their attacks. It hurt, but nothing that would slow her down. She just needed to get back on Earth with some actual sunlight and native plants, preferably sooner rather than later! With a tremendous effort, she blanketed the entire corridor in thick vines, wrapping the two drones tightly and leaving them hanging. 

 

"This is Fleur deJoie," Stesha spoke into her communicator. "Can anybody hear me? Does anyone know how many more of these things there are?" 

[Fox]

Gaian Knight's evasion of his attackers was, perhaps, not as graceful as it could have been: more out of surprise than anything, his platform spun over onto its side - and, dragging him along with it, that had put a rather solid shield of rock between the geokinetic hero and his attackers.

He didn't give them a second chance; the bottom of his platform went off like a claymore mine, rock fragments splitting off with a harsh crack! and spewing forth from the lift doors with precious little regard for what was in their way.

"Too many, Fleur," he replied, putting a hand to his ear and re-orienting himself within the lift's shaft. "Far, far too many. I'm trying to head down to the core to give Velocity a hand, and I keep getting ambushed. Better here than more of them down there, I guess."

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel just let himself roll a bit as he moved aside from the pathetic creature's attack. He used subtle "bursts" of his sonic power to orient himself as best as he could (still cursing the lack of orienting gravity). He spread his legs out a bit and bent them at the knee, using the slight amounts of thrust he was generating to provide a (poor) substitute for a solid surface under his feet. He raised his empty hand and loosed another barrage of sound at his target. Once more, his bolts of invisible sonic force struck true.

 

He then reached up and activated his communicator.

 

"This is Gabriel. Just finished the last drone in my area. Where do you need me next?"

[Thevshi]

GM

The two antibodies engaged with Velocity continue to try to hit the speedster. The antibody on the right tries to slash at her to make her move away an into the path of the second antibody's attack. But even though she was floating in the air, the speedster was still incredibly quick, and able to quickly guess the intention of the feint and just hold in place. When the second antibody attacked, Velocity easily twisted aside and dodged it as well.

Up on another level, Gabriel's sonic blast slammed into the last antibody near him, smashing it and sending it spinning off through the area until it hit a distant wall.

In another section of the space station, things had gone quiet around Tiamat and Comrade Frost. The remaining antibodies that had been near the pair had withdrawn into the darkness...

[Fox]

Whatever the antibody invaders had hit Tiamat with, they seemed to have hit her but good - she spent much of the fight disoriented and sluggish, barely putting up a fight and certainly not accomplishing much. It was, oddly, the loss of the fighting that seemed to snap her out of it. The sheer, dual affront of being saved by Frost and the retreat of her enemies brought something awful out of her; for a moment it looked like something was straining just under the surface, something far, far bigger than she was fighting to break out of a too-small cage.

Her head snapped forward as the last of the antibodies disappeared, and with an inhuman snarl (and a quick hand on a nearby door frame for leverage) she stretched her jaws open wide and spewed a column of fire down the corridor and into the darkness. There was nothing there - newly-scorched walls and holes of less-than-mysterious origin, illuminated by her ire as it ate its way down the hallway. She snapped her mouth shut with a snarl, the last of her fire leaking behind her teeth and, just briefly, making her more dragon than woman. "Tiamat here," she announced, putting a hand to her ear...and pointedly disregarding Frost's firehose, which she gave a look somewhere between confusion and contempt. "They're in the structure - had some tear open wall panels to escape. I doubt this was the only group to think of that. Watch your backs."

[Avenger Assembled]

As Tiamat was speaking, a thoroughly-disgruntled Frost was watching the machinery, pacing around it and stroking his pale chin thoughtfully. "Say, Lady Tiamat," he finally said, still casting narrowed eyes at her despite his civil tongue, "do you see this here and here?" he inquired, pointing to the damage done by the antibodies. "This is intricate work - not mere vandalism by rough-handed robots. They are rewiring station's power for some sinister purpose - perhaps to blow us up, or make us blow up some other place!" He snapped his fingers. "Station's reactor, if rigged to detonate, could damage entire hemisphere if brought low enough - or station's weapons could burn hole in atmosphere. At least, hah-hah, that is Russian scientific analysis for completely irrelevant contemporary scenarios. Now come along," he said, heading for the emergency stairs, "let us find reactor before we are all killed." 

[Thevshi]

GM 

"We are pretty much blind up here for the moment as to what the Communion might be up to."  Responded back one of the technicians from the Lighthouse's command center over one of the League communicators.  "Last information we had was there were at least two groups of boarders within a deck of the reactor." 

"They must be up to something, as the Communion spacecraft has stopped firing on us.  But it looks like more of the needle fighters are on their way.  We have no weapons to try to stop them at the moment, and shields are operating a minimal power.  Most of our emergency power is currently going to life support."

[Thevshi]

Velocity heard the transmissions from her teammates and station personnel, but at the moment the speedster was still facing off against a pair of antibodies that were trying to tear her to shreds.  Luckily the speedster was still quick enough to easily avoid their attacks, and though she was not accustomed to the weightlessness, she still was more than quick enough to hit them with little effort. 

*CRACK*

Her fist shot out at the antibody on her right at blinding speed that broke the sound barrier.  The hypersonic punch hit the antibody just below what generally appeared to be a chin, snapping its head backward as the force of the blow began to send it backward toward a nearby wall. 

*CRACK* 

But Velocity had already used the momentum from her first attack to send another hypersonic punch at the second antibody with her left hand, catching it square in the stomach.  As with the first one, the second was sent flying backward by the force of the attack, both slamming against opposite walls at nearly the same moment, then floating motionlessly in the zero gravity.

"This is Velocity, I just dealt with two more of them in the central core.  I still have a few more levels before I am down where the reactor is, just not able to move as fast without gravity."

[Fox]

"As long as we can get there, we'll be okay," Gaian Knight insisted, orienting himself in the lift shaft and starting a descent that was less flight and more dropping like a...well. Like a rock. "One step at a time. There can't be an infinite number of these things - if we can get the station back up and running, and clear them out as we see them, maybe we can--"

He never got to finish the thought. Too late, he saw the antibodies lying in ambush - he couldn't feel his surroundings out without physical contact, and the nightvision on his goggles left his sight too limited in scope and detail to notice them before they were already on top of him. One didn't get much purchase, his not-entirely-human-anymore biology absorbing the brunt of the attack, but the other had better fortune and dropped the geokinetic hero flat on his own platform mid-sentence. This, he thought to himself, back burning as he tried to clear his head enough to mount a proper defense...or keep from falling off his platform into the darkness below. This is going to hurt.

Edited May 6, 2015 by Fox

[Fox]

"Perhaps I was not clear," Tiamat growled, nearly shoving Frost's head into the wall as she maneuvered her way into the stairwell. "I am not your friend. I am not your companion. I do not 'come along'."

She kicked off the stairwell, launching herself down the gap in the stairwell toward darkness. "If the earth mage did not count you as his ally and act as a neutralizing force," she explained, a voice and glowing red eyes in the darkness, "I would blind your goddess long enough to cast you, screaming, into the coldest void of entropy I could find. Now let us drive the Communion from this station before they give you a harsh lesson in why mere men should not play gods, hanging death and fire in the sky above their own."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Feh," said Frost with a wave of his hand and a wink as he dissolved into a cloud of icy mist, "already we are like old married couple! The romance wears so thin. I will scout out reactor - am not tied to gravity as some are. If I am slain, you can tell others you did it." And with that, he turned and flashed away from Tiamat with a speed that belied his icy nature - as if the power of a god itself was driving his movements. Eyes glowing red as he went, Frost made his way through the station, his undead nature and misty form making the journey something he could do in mere moments.

Down on the reactor level, he reformed behind a convenient strut and watched as the machines went about their terrible work. Over his communicator, he said "Everyone converge on reactor - they are here in great numbers and rewriting thing in their name." A low hum came over the comm signal. "And reactor has been reactivated. Do come quickly, please." 

[Thevshi]

GM 

As the reactor came back online, lights flickered back on across the station, a number of power conduits within the reactor room sparking slightly due to the modifications that had been made.  In one section of the reactor room, some sort of circular object had been set up, and apparently attached to the reactor.  As power was restored, there was a flickering within the circle formed by the machine as some sort of energy distortion formed. 

Then, dozens of antibodies emerged from the distortion, fanning out in the reactor room as they arrived.  Several moved to start working on additional modifications alongside those already present, while others were carrying what appeared to be some sort of energy weapons. 

As power was restored, the station's artificial gravity reactivated as well.  Fleur felt the sudden lurch of the restored gravity as she was gliding down a flight of stairs in the emergency stairwell.  She fell the last few feet to the next landing, but was able to react quickly enough to land safely on her feet. 

In the central core, Tiamat was starting down toward where Gaian was fighting against two antibodies when she felt the gravity restored.  Too far away from anything to catch ahold of, Tiamat began to fall, unsuccessfully trying to twist around to land on her feet or catch something.  She landed on her back on Gaian's rock platform, next to him and the antibodies he was fighting.   

Further down the core, Velocity also felt the sudden return of gravity as she started to fall.  But the young speedster had years of gymnastics training, greatly enhanced by her superhuman agility, and she easily flipped herself around and landed in a low crouch down at the bottom of the core, now on the level where the reactor was located.

[Thevshi]

Quickly reorienting herself, Velocity heard Comrade Frost's message and knew she had little time to waste.  The yellow clad speedster began vibrating the molecules of her body, until she became almost translucent.  She then started off in a yellow blur of motion, passing easily through the walls over the core and out into the hallways beyond.  It took her less than a second to arrive at the reactor, and finding the door closed and sealed, she stayed in her insubstantial form and passed through the heavy door into the room beyond. 

This brought her face to face with dozens of antibodies. 

"Frost!"  She called out as the nearest Communion turned to regard her.  "I need you to get the door open so the others can get in here while I try to keep them busy!"

Edited May 21, 2015 by Thevshi

[Electra]

Fleur was making her laborious way through the hallways, bumping off walls and trying not to hit the ceiling, when the gravity suddenly came back on. She eeped, flailed, and then managed a surprisingly graceful landing on both her feet, bending her knees to absorb the impact. She looked around to see if anyone noticed, but of course she was quite alone in this corridor, with nothing but the hope that she knew where the others were headed. Scurrying to the nearest access ladder, she began climbing down as quickly as she could, a spill of vines tumbling after her like a green waterfall. 

[Fox]

Gaian Knight was just getting his senses back together when something slammed into the platform next to him; he'd rolled his head to the side to see none other than Tiamat, who was having difficulty reconciling a growl and an attempt to get air back in her recently-evacuated lungs.

"Nice catch, knight," she groaned, glaring up at the antibodies as if daring them to try something.

"I do what I can."

"Uh huh. Gravity's back on."

"I noticed." The geokinetic didn't quite get back up onto his feet, but he did at least haul himself back into a sitting position and gesture, hands glowing. Rock from his platform flowed out like something alive, crawling up the shaft round them and then back together like a lattice of vines. They grabbed and wove at anything in their path - though mostly each other - until they formed a near-solid plug in the shaft that wouldn't let anything bigger than a seed through.

"Going down?"

He didn't reply, but the platform broke free of its new anchors, leaving the crumbling 'roots' of his elevator plug behind as it carried the pair down into further danger.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Fox

[Thevshi]

GM

As Fleur reaches the floor where the reactor was located, she heard a faint *whoosh* behind her as Gabriel came flying down the emergency stairwell.  "Got caught up with some of those antibodies."  The Irish hero replied.  "Allow me to give you a lift!"

Scoping up the plant controller, Gabriel swiftly moved the pair through the halls toward the reactor.  The pair arrived just as Gaian Knight and Tiamat did riding on one of Knight’s rock platforms.  The heavy doors of the reactor were closed and sealed. 

Just beyond those doors, a pair of antibodies dove at Velocity, passing harmlessly through the speedster as they tried to attack.  Four of the newly arrived antibodies aimed the energy weapons at the young woman and opened fire.  But the speedster had little trouble dodging the blasts.

Meanwhile, other antibodies in the room continued at their tasks, making alterations to a variety of systems….

[Avenger Assembled]

"Oh, please, what is this." Frost laid his hand against the door and opened his inner heart, the icy cold of Nifleheim - even the reactor doors gradually freezing over beneath that celestial cold. Albeit slowly. "Hm. Heavily armored." He laid both hands against the door, his eyes glowing red as shimmering blue-white energy erupted from his midsection, coruscating around his arms, and up into the metal of the door. "Designed to stand against orbital heat and cold...nfff...but WILL fall." He flattened both hands against the door. "Will be too cold for humans to pass in moment." Sure enough it was getting cold, the super-cold metal seeming to 'radiate' intense, freezing cold that turned everyone's breath to mist, for all that this was just an illusion. He gritted his teeth, the latter bulging ominously in his mouth. "Gaian Knight, will need your services when the door falls..." He turned his head and looked right at Tarrant. "Will need you to cut my hands from door." 

[Thevshi]

Velocity shivered as Frost went back out through the door and then began to freeze the metal, the cold penetrating through to interior and even overcoming the heat given off by the reactor.   

As the door came crashing down behind her, the yellow clad speedster took a quick glance back over her shoulder (even though her goggles allowed her to see her teammates on the other side of the door just fine).  "Well, there are plenty for all of us."  She said with a half-smile and then became a blur of yellow. 

*CRACK*

The speedster's fist shot out at one of the nearest antibodies, smashing in its chest and lifting it off its feet from the force of the impact.  But that had barely begun to happen as the speedster was already onto another antibody.

*CRACK* 

Again her fist shot out at hypersonic speed, smashing into another antibody.  There was a rapid succession of mini-sonic booms as Velocity moved quickly through the room, punching every antibody she could reach.   

A mere moment later, antibodies she had knocked of their feet slammed into each other seemingly simultaneously and crumpled to the floor.  Others smashed into walls, similarly down.  All said, well over twenty of the antibodies were down, but some managed to withstand the speedster’s powerful attack, while even more continued to emerge from the portal.

[Electra]

"Thanks, Gabe." Fleur found her feet and moved to one side of the room as the door opened up, her vines racing across the floor, around and over the feet of antibodies as they spread to line one side of the room. "Stay away from the portal," she called urgently to her allies, "I'm going to block it off, but it'll be lethal to you as well." As the first of the climbing vines reached the ceiling, a dimensional portal sprang into being, cutting off the first portal and the antibodies it was discharging from the majority of the room. On the otherside of the portal was blackness and silence, flecked by distant starts. It  did not look at all inviting. 

[Fox]

Gaian Knight paused for a moment, looking at Frost, before shaking his head and stepping past him. "....no. They've been allowed to cause too much damage already. Tiamat, please do what you can to get Frost unstuck."

She made a growling noise, but it died to a grumble when he glanced back, eyes already glowing through his goggles. "Please."

When his head turned back to the Communion it was with all the urgency and pity of an earthquake. His platform had broken apart entirely, and the cloud of debris seemed to be multiplying: twisting and churning as it became a storm of shards and stones, a maelstrom of angry earth which - at his gesture - reached out into the room to tear through as much of the invading force as it could. "If someone can get through all of this, we need to figure out what they've done and stop it before it's completely out of our control."

[Thevshi]

GM 

Even as dozens of the antibodies go down under the onslaughts from Velocity and Gaian Knight, there were dozens more still active.  Fleur's portal served its purpose, as the first ranks of another wave of antibodies exited the Communion portal, only to pass into the one established by Fleur.  But the Communion adapted quickly, as after the first ten or so antibodies, no more came through the first portal. 

Six of the antibodies still in the reactor room leapt off where they had been working on modifications up on the walls and swarmed around Velocity.  The majority of them were trying to make the speedster off balance so two of them might have an easier time in hitting the agile young woman.  They were at least partially successful.  While Velocity easily dodged one of the actual attacks against her, the other managed to land a hit, raking its claws across her left shoulder blade, leaving cuts in her costume and small gashes in her flesh, causing the speedster to cry out slightly in pain. 

Two other antibodies charged toward Fleur, their hands crackling with green energy as they tried to slash at the plant controlling heroine.  But Fleur was able to avoid both attacks, even if one came far too close for comfort. 

Gaian Knight found himself facing a pair of antibodies as well, both also using the energy charged attacks they had hit him with back in the central core.  He parried the first of the attackers, but the second managed to land its attack on his right leg, sending the jolt of electricity into the earth controller.  But this time Gaian managed to pull free before too much of the shock was transferred, and though it stung a bit, it was far from serious. 

Gabriel managed to block one of the antibodies that attacked him, and his armor stopped the other. 

Up on the commanded center, once the power had come back up, the gathered technicians quickly began gathering what data they could from the systems, trying to determine what the Lighthouse’s status was.  There were a number of things to be concerned about.

"This is ops," one of the senior technicians stated into a League comm., "according to sensors, we seem to have dozens of these Communion crawling around on the hull of the Lighthouse.  They appear to be making some sort of modification to our systems.  That Communion cruiser is still sitting a few thousand meters off, but it is no longer firing on us.  Unfortunately, we do not have power to the defensive systems at the moment, so we have no way to engage."

"Also, we are reading a massive energy build up taking place in the power core.  From what readings we are getting, there is some bleed into some of the systems that have been altered by the Communion."