Gizmo

Chitin Initiative: 1d20+10 22

"I wouldn't say 'enemies'!" Chitin protested, holding up both hands in front of himself. "See, he was just super down about a fight he had with his friend and I gave him sort of a pep talk only I kinda assumed they were trying to start up like a food truck business and not selling assault weaponry out of an abandoned warehouse. Really, I think there was a lot we agreed on in principle but things escalated a bit when it came down to specifics, y'know?" The armoured youth shrugged helplessly, a gesture exaggerated slightly by the plates on his shoulders. "Hopefully we can talk again once he gets out of jail. I'll be honest though, it's a little frustrating to be dealing with somebody else who just wants to sell things to people who want to hurt other people. Like, what are the chances? Oh!" He straightened abruptly, having been momentarily distracted from their immediate objective. "Was your 'mad scientist' person named Michael, too? That'd be wild."

"Your eyes are gold?!” Chitin tried to turnaround to face Nocture and get a better look while staying in the circle of reversed gravity but had to abort the attempt as they dropped back to the floor. He landed in a three-point crouch, metal and carbon fibre echoing off of concrete in the largely empty room before he bounced back up to his feet excitedly. "Cool.” Black fluttered down along with them and landed atop his head like a horned hat. "This version of the suit’s not that dangerous! Better than getting shot by robots or guys named Mike.”

"I don't actually have a good explanation for the fart smell," Ryder admitted to Mia, sitting crosslegged with his armour returned to its dimensional pocket. After returning to the lab he'd prioritized making sure the kids - and to a lesser extent Yellow - had calmed down and we doing alright but with that accomplished he looked over his shoulder toward Eira. "Hey, I'll be back in a minute, okay?" he told the inquisitive little girl before getting to his feet and sauntering over, hands in his pockets. "Heeeey. You, uh, you doing okay there?" He leaned over to try to catch Eira's gaze with her hands over her eyes. "You're probably pretty bummed out about them not letting us help deal with the digital demon bugs, huh? Infernal insects? Infernects? I'm working on it." He hopped up onto the side of the nearby table and swung his legs back and forth. "I get that. They ate a picture of my head, which seems like something I should respond to personally, right?"

"Thanks! Ah, this is super cool, haha!" Chitin replied cheerfully, observing his own feet as he walked inside Nocturne's circle of influence with fascination. "Your powers wild! Did you make your outfit to match the particles or can you change the particles to match what you're wearing? Strong aesthetic choices, either way!" As they switched planes again to travel along the ceiling he put his hands behind his helmeted head and considered. "Deathtraps, huh? Not really, unless you count stuff I've built. Like, wearing a bunch of heavy machinery around your squishy, breakable human bits isn't super safe, especially when I was testing it during development. For sure could have hurt myself way worse than I did and that's before even getting into the whole dimensional, folding space aspect. Which is why you don't test this stuff on other people, right?!"

Chitin threw his head back and made an irritated sound. "You'd think she'd have a little more respect for gig economy workers, then. Gross. Black, could you take a closer look at that for us?" The robug made a clicking approximation of a grumble and began crawling cautiously up the wall and across the ceiling to the air vent. He was able to get close enough to send a video feed back to Chitin without triggering the trap. "Ah, yeah, cheaped out on the camera, that's just a commercial model hooked up to the flamethrower. Cut-off for activation would be any slower than, like, walking speed. Could probably break the cover with a good punch if I was up there or if you just want to, y'know." He mimed crushing something between two gripping hands. "Crunch. Or we could slo~o~o~owly slide something in front to block the camera! Take your pick."

Chitin Using ESP via Black. Knowledge (Technology) Check: 1d20+16 30

Chitin stopped in his tracks and cocked his head to the side. "Hold up a sec," he asked Nocturne as she walked up behind him, simultaneously increasing the gain on the HUD overlay his helmet showed him into the ultraviolet spectrum. "The room's all weird, see? Like there's something that's supposed to be-- ah, yeah, bunch of laser tripwires all over the floor." He looked over his shoulder and shrugged at the other teenager. "Too much empty space, right? When you're building a bunch of stuff nothing ends up cleared off like that unless you need to use it for something. Anyway!" He looked up and down, considering. "Hey, can you reverse gravity so we can walk on the ceiling? That'd be perfect!"

Chitin Notice Check: 1d20+5 24

"Okay but why?" Chitin demanded, arms wide in obvious exasperation. "Why did you need it on short notice? What's the deadline for? Why do you need a bunch of robot drone soldiers? Seriously, if it's just to sell them to fund something else I'm going to be... I mean, not throw-somebody-through-cement angry but definitely getting there." His animated body language made the threat seem less serious but the way the sound of a fist hitting his palm echoed in the corridor brought it some of the way back around.

Chitin tapped his gloved index fingers together pensively. "So I'm picking up that you've had some bad experiences with, like, experimentation? Unethical 'ends justify the means' sort of stuff?" He ducked his head in apology and started off in the direction Nocturne had indicated. "Sorry if it sounded like I was defending, y'know, all of this. It's just that I built this armour so I could help people, not just be stronger than anyone I disagree with." His tone suggested he considered that to be a ridiculous reason to do anything and considered the point self-evident. As he walked he held up a hand to the side of his helmet's mouth plate as though trying to prevent anyone from overhearing. "And it was easy to tell where their locomotion gearboxes were because she made them humanoid. Like, where else was it going to be? Boring design. Right, Black?" The glossy black robotic beetle made clicks of agreement as it followed along on one wall of the corridor.

"It's easy to miss problems when you're focusing on achieving your dream," Chitin noted with a shrug just before a blaster shot near eye level sent him ducking down into a roll. "You're right about it being hard to have this conversation in the middle of fighting robots though, yeah!" He bobbed and weaved as he closed the distance between himself and the remaining automatons and took a few jabs in return. His heart didn't seem to be in it however, as he gave more attention to examining the workmanship and trying to understand the mind that had made those design choices than he gave to reducing them to inert chunks. "Why even build soldier drones if you're not actually trying to hurt people?"

Chitin Move Action: Jump! Standard Action: Unarmed Attack: 2#1d20+6 9 20 Chitin will spend an HP, too so Nocturne doesn't feel bad! What a good friend. Reroll: Unarmed Attack; HP Reroll: 1d20+6 20 Okay, so keeping the original second roll that's two hits if the first one fails the DC 20 Toughness Save.

"As someone who's been propelled into cement a few times please don't test that!" Chitin called as he hopped a half-step away from the robots engaging him and lashed out midair with a pair of snap kicks powered by his amour which reduced the general areas where the gearboxes responsible for their locomotion must have been to screeching, sparking scrap metal. He rebounded from the attack high into the air flipping into a backwards bicycle kick that took the robot attempting to menace Nocturne in the space between its head and shoulder, cleanly separating the two while the talkative teen landed upright next to his new friend. He caught the airborne robot head in one hand like a basketball. "She's kinda bouncing between being super focused on one thing and ignoring the obvious problem with it and being really easily distracted by all sorts of tangents, right? I'm not a professional or anything but I do sort of know that feeling." He turned the head over to inspect it briefly. "Like, this is actually really good work but all of this is a really dumb way to use it." He tossed the head over his shoulder and sighed, putting his hands on his hips. "We're probably going to have to force her to stop before she'll sit down and talk it out. Man."

Chitin Let's try this again! Unarmed Attack; Power Attack 5: 6#1d20+1 13 18 18 14 5 11 That's now a DC 25 Toughness Save for the first four of them in sequence.

Chitin Toughness Save vs Damage: 1d20+5 21 Vindication!

Mentioned in the IC post but he’ll target a ranged model first since he’s not clear how durable Nocturne may be yet.

"Making therapy a taboo subject only makes it less accessible to the folks who'd benefit from it the most!" Chitin called over his shoulder while launching forward, little clouds of dust kicking up from the concrete floor where his boot kicked off. He closed the distance to the first of the robots in a blink and brought a fist down hard into the thinnest part of its arm above the ranged weapon mounted on the end. The metal buckled and broke, separating the limb in a splash of sparks and shards. He sacrificed his momentum to drop back into a relaxed pose that put him between the group of robots getting back to their feet and Nocturne. "Speaking of therapeutic, you know people actually pay to go to rooms where they just break stuff with baseball bats or whatever? You could probably pitch it to super teams as a team building exercise! Look at me and Nocturne! We just met and we're already buddies!"

Chitin Move Action: Line 'em up. Standard Action: Unarmed Attack; Power Attack 2: 5#1d20+4 15 17 10 13 20 This is using Takedown Attack 2 so the hits are only relevant if the one before fails a DC 22 Toughness save.

Chitin Initiative: 1d20+10 20

"Wow, that's actually a lot more elaborate than I was expecting. Neat! C'mon, Black." The robug walked into the room, made a few disapproving clicking sounds at the television set and proceeding to climb up the back of Chitin's armoured leg and back to perch on his shoulder. "Like I said, I left the cricket at home," he told Nocturne. "Today's beetle day!" He led the way into the corridor, switching his helmet's HUD to overlay data from past each end of the visible light spectrum. "Y'know ma'am, if you could hire construction crews and guys with guns and all and you're not actually trying to hurt anyone especially you could have just hired people to test whatever this is for you. Probably would have been safer and easier for everybody?" He looked around, trying to spot additional cameras their host might be using to monitor their progress. "Just seems like you're not being as rational as you think. Do you have somebody to talk this stuff over with? Like peer review or, y'know, a therapist?"

Chitin was silent for a moment and the quiet made the clenching of his fists audible. When he spoke it was a in cold contrast to his earlier cheer. "You don't deserve to wear that lab coat." He rolled his shoulders to get rid of some of the tension that had built up there and cracked his knuckles. With more of his usual energy he continued, "We're going to find you and free those people and you're going to feel really dumb for having been such a massive jerk about all this. That's a Chitin guarantee!" He turned to the young woman in black and gold and gave a small shrug. "Sorry, I shouldn't speak for you, obviously!" He extended a hand toward her and cocked his head in a way that reminded her of an enthusiastic puppy. "You up for teaching this lady a lesson?"

"Wait, seriously?" Chitin looked from the television set over to the camera, then to the suspended mercenary and back to the camera. Squaring his shoulders he thumped his fist against his armoured chest twice before pointing an accusatory finger at the lens. "Hey! Listen up! When you hire somebody, whether its to delivery your food or be muscle, you're making an agreement to support each other! And if you can't get volunteers and you're not willing to experiment on yourself you just have to make do without human test subjects!" He crossed his arms and glowered. "You're a lousy boss and a worse scientist and I can't forgive either of those things!"

"I actually left the cricket at home today," he told her in a voice that suggested he thought he was answering more questions than he was raising. "You can call me Chitin. Or stick with Cricket if you're going for like a cool girl, giving-people-nicknames thing, that's fun too!" The armoured teen gave her a thumbs up that seemed disturbingly free of irony. "And I was thinking less letting him go and more just tying him up and calling the cops? Probably stick around long enough to make sure things don't escalate again. Ask about their plan while he's not borderline suffocating?" He snapped his fingers, the metal caps on his gloved fingers amplifying the sound. "Hey, did you guys order a bunch of takeout to get delivered?"

"Oh, I'm just one guy, y'know?" Chitin replied with a cheery sort of wave that showed his empty hands in an effort to appear nonthreatening. "But I think everybody's important, right? We've all got dreams. I've been having a tough time lately with folks who think guns and hurting people are a good way to reach their dreams, though." He titled his head toward one of the broken pieces he dropped to the floor and took a cautious step forward, addressing the floating man. "Your friend upstairs is mostly okay, so you know! Probably going to have a headache, plus he landed on his gun but it's kinda harder to feel too bad about that." He turned to face the young woman and from her expression decided against trying to move any closer. "That's a pretty cool thing with the, like, black and gold stuff. The particle field is making me think more gravimetric than telekinetic? Maybe? Either way I don't think he's putting up much of a fight so how about just easing off a little?"