ic Bubblegum Heart (IC)

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne looked around, pushing back on a building sense of wrongness in her head. She hadn't heard of Dr. Otaku, but it was definitely odd to her that the crowd was so against the one who was being called 'The Main Event'. Wasn't that a sign of prestige, why would they be so against him. The fight is being filmed by some drones like Vanguard uses. Also everyone hates this Otaku fellow, does anyone kno- Her train of thought came to a crashing halt as her link roared back to life and the wrongness vanished. She closed her eyes and focused on pushing the power down, before focusing back on the projection. Something was wrong here, it was almost like...

Magic.

She felt the blood drain from her face, there was actual magic here. Her breath left her, and a cold sweat appeared on her face. She had to get away. She clutched at her mouth to hold in her stuttering breath. She couldn't run, she had to warn Vanguard. She had to warn them but...

I have to get away!

As that thought blared out, Muirne collapsed to her knees and her outline gave way to writhing shadows. Her form expanded frayed into a mass of heaving shadows, with two cold green eyes glaring from a head only a plagued fancy could have dreamed of. The creature leapt from the spot Muirne had stood, flowing along the walls to the darkest corner of the room. It glared out at the warmth and light in the room, hating it. 

Muirne forced herself to stop, despite the pain of the light and warmth around her. She had to warn Vanguard of the magic in the building. She had to send the message. Then they would know, and could get to safety. She had to get the message out, Síþwíf Dee and the others had to know to get to safety. She reached out to the warmth with her mind, pushing through the oily shadows that were billowing through her link. The projection is magical!

She relaxed, sliding further into the shadows. They would know now, and could be safe.

 

But Eira doesn't know. Some small corner of her mind reminded her. She can't hear Dee's messages.

The shadows writhed in agitation as she crawled towards the door.

[RocketLord]

What, Muirne? Somebody grab Muirne, she's panicking and I'm kinds stu-

 

Mette didn't get to finish the rest of the mental message before the missiles exploded near her, with enough force rock her. Catching herself, she looked up at the Main Event. Doc Otaku? She had heard the name, at least. 

 

Anybody wanna fill me in on this guy? I know he builds robots, what else? 

 

And here she had almost started asking what he had done since everyone here sermed to hate him, but then he had to go to the name calling? 

 

"How about we wash your mouth, Doc?" 

 

Mette thrust her right hand out towards Otaku, palm facing him. Drawing in the ambient water in the air around them, Mette focused and multiplied it continuously, resulting in a high på pressure water burst aimed straight at Otaku. Another push, more water. She didn't have time to waste, Muirne needed her help. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The blast blew Doc Otaku back against the wall - and with a sudden sound of rivets clanking, the armor fell away from a thoroughly confused Solo Takashi, who coughed and spluttered as the water soaked and bruised him like a firehose - despite the fact that this was a hologram of the real man. "That's not-that's not fair!" he cried when he managed to stagger to his feet, pointing a holographic accusing finger at Mette. "You cheated! You made my armor fall apart!" 

 

"Maybe that was just your shoddy design," said the announcer, reappearing with a smile on her face. The crowd was cheering now, money changing hands and Mette's name being chanted, Miurne seemingly fully ignored by the cyborgs and humans in the audience despite her superpowered transformation. "What do you think, citizens of Rurland, are we finished with the Main Event today?" The crowd cheered that they were, and Takashi put his hand to his forehead. 

 

"Wait, this...this happened before..." 

"I think our champion's attention has turned elsewhere," said the announcer, "so I'll handle this one myself." And then she turned to Takashi, her face changing, fading from a tall, angular woman of African descent to a slim, pretty Asian girl in a sailor suit, her eyes wide and teeth pulled back in a smile. "You remember me now, don't you, Otaku-san?" 

 

"No!" Takashi was panicking now, running for the edge of the ampitheater, but with a gesture the announcer pulled him back to the center of the room. "Not again!" 

 

"Yes. Again." And then she pulled him apart. There was no other word for it; with a final shout, the holographic projection came apart as if he'd been turned suddenly into an exploded, high-resolution anatomical drawing; his eyes still wide - and then he vanished, twitching. With a smirk, the announcer resumed her original appearance, turning back to the heroes with her hands folded behind her back. 

[Tiffany Korta]

Zhenshchina-voin

Klara wanted to dig further into what was going here, something was rotten in the state of robotstan. But one of her team was in trouble and she wasn’t going to let anything happened to them. Klara had lost team members, friends, in the past and she wasn’t about to do so now. Seeing as the fight was over, and good whilst she did approve of the methods Dr Otaku deserved punishment for what he’d done in the past, she had some help just waiting in the ring.

 

Hopping the bar she grabbed on with one hand before offering the other down to Mette, hopefully the bots were to busy celebrating to be annoyed by her sudden action.

 

<”Something’s wrong with Shadowborne, we need to go find them now!”> she’d only been studying Danish for a few months and was still a little rough.

[RocketLord]

What the hell? 

 

Otaku seemed like a creep, but what the hell was going on here? Mette didn't know a lot about tech, but the way he was screaming about not again and everything else, this sounded like some kind of torture. She didn't know a lot about Otaku, but it seemed excessive... didn't it? 

 

She looked around, staring at the announcer, then back to Klara when she joined them and spoke to her in Danish. It was a bit stilted, but it made enough sense. <"I know, we gotta go and get her."> She turned back to the announcer. "I gotta go get my friend. You got no problem letting down the barriers around us so we can get out, right?" Her tone hardened a bit at the question, while she kept her hands by her side. She couldn't let this stand, whatever was happening in here, but right now, Muirne was the priority. 

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne lunged across the room and out the door, shadowy tendrils writhing in the sunlight as she shied from the brightness. She hesitated in the shade of the entrance. Was this entire place magical? Would she lose her powers again if she left this location? She would be helpless if she did and Dougal had managed to reverse her shadow form before, so the magic they are using could probably do it too. She reached for her shadows, feeling the flow of power continuing strong. Could she draw extra to maintain the form if her link was cut? What would that do?

It didn't matter. She had to hold onto the power.

She reached for the shadows, feeling the power flowing from it suffusing her entire body, and pulled. She drew more power from the Shattenwelt into her, feeling it form into a core inside of her. Feeling secure in her new newly fortified shadow form, she ventured into the sunlight and towards the building where they left Eira, the shadowbeast form writhing in pain as the sunlight seared it.

[Avenger Assembled]

The barriers came down with a faint shrug from the announcer, who was giving a hard smile as the various heroes chased down the fleeing shadowbeast. This new land wasn't so big that the chase was long, nor did they go unobserved. When a small stream blocked the wildly fleeing Miurne's flight, Mette and Klara briefly had time to catch her. And so did others. "What are you doing?" demanded a voice from above, Angelic landing with metallic wings spread on the opposite side of the stream. "What happened to her?" She was all robot now, metallic skin gleaming in the bright sunlight, and for a moment was easy to mistake for a local. 

[RocketLord]

"Hey, hey, what's wrong? Everything alright?" Damn, Muirne was fast. Much faster than Mette usually was on dry land. "C'mon, relax, calm down alright?"

 

She tried her best, but even if she liked Muirne, she didn't really know her all that well. Not yet, at least. And then a robot with wings came down from above and adressed them. That was... something. It took a moment for Mette to realize it was Eira. She managed to stop herself from saying anything about the change in appearance, or to question if it was Eira. "How about asking Muirne herself?" she asked, placing a hand on Muirne's shoulder. "C'mon, what happened?"

 

Something else caught her eyes. SOme drones, hovering over by the treeline, watching them... "You guys see those things over there?" she asked, motioning lightly with her head. "Something you can do something about, Angelic?" Codename time, right?

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira frowned at Mette, her quicksilver face wrinkling, but evidently couldn't argue with her logic. She spread her wings high and slowly took off towards the hovering drones, relying on her internal propulsion here removed from proximity to a large city with its metallic infrastructure. In the hovering sky, Angelic faced down the drones, with first one, then another turning to hover in her direction. It was hard to tell where the inhuman machines were actually looking for the observers on the ground, but the spread of her wings and the presence of her metallic body seemed to be blocking the camera views for now. 

[Kaede Kimura]

The shadows that made up Muirne's body writhed in the sunlight, and she started to crawl over the surface of the river as Mette and Klara caught up. Briefly she paused, she had told them, hadn't she? She had tried to send out the message about the magic using Dee's telepathy, did it not work? She had to tell them if they hadn't heard. She gathered herself, skittering back across the surface of the river towards Mette and managed to rasp out, "Magic..."

It hurt to force out the words, interacting with the warmth and light. She hated it. She flinched as Mette's hand passed through her shoulder leaving a path of warmth through her, and a handful of shadowy tendrils lashed around.

[RocketLord]

Alright, not exactly what Mette had meant, but it probably worked! She thought Eira might have some kinda fancy hacking systems or something like that, and she should probably ask about what the brat could do at some point, but right now, it meant they cameras weren't looking directly at them, so that was something at least, right?

 

Mette pulled her hand slightly back when it passed through Muirne, staring at the shadowy tendrils with a mix of fascination and horror. Just what was her powers? What was this entire thing that was going on with her? She gritted her teeth, fighting back against that light feeling of dread. That wasn't what Muirne needed right now.

 

"What do you mean? What kind of magic?" She clearly had issues with magic. Mette probably shouldn't tell her how her own powers were probably some kind of magic, right? "There's magic in this place?" She looked over at Klara. "Can robots even do magic?"

[Tiffany Korta]

Zhenshchina-voin

Klara offered a hand to help there fellow hero back to her feet, and generally reassure her that things would be okay. Whilst she’d lived around magic for a few centuries she’d never studied the arts, she was always a warrior at heart. But she’d picked up a few things through her life, though not enough to be anything near an expert.

 

“Magic is all about applying your will on the universe, and a robot can have just as much will as anyone else. Things like this take a lot of power though, hopefully they’re not using the really bad stuff.”

 

She looked up at Eira the best person she could see to know where everything was arranged.

 

“What do you think Eira? If they did such a thing where would they be keeping it?”

[Avenger Assembled]

Angelic looked torn between what she was doing up above - jabbing buttons on her arm, focusing on the drones, and the conversation below. 

 

"What? I am trying to broadcast false sensory data here-" She set her face in a hard frown and said, "Purely synthetic machines cannot do magic." Her white featureless eyes blinked against an ancient hurt before she conceded, "but not all life in Rurland is purely synthetic. What are you all talking about?" she asked. "Kay told me...nothing of what you were doing. Didn't you find it?" 

[Kaede Kimura]

There was so much light out here and all these warm people were around her and it all hurt. She wasn't meant to be around all this light, and it would be so easy to let the darkness welling up from the spring inside of her take control, like it had before...

No, she had to keep control, Mette and Klara were good people who had helped her and she would not put them in danger by not controlling herself. She stalked into Klara's shadow to hide as best she could from the sun without worrying her friends by fleeing again. It took her a while to realise that Mette had asked a question of her as Klara and Eira talked, "Otaku." She choked out, "The projection was..." Muirne searched for a word, evil seemed too tame. She eventually looked up at Eira, hoping that she would understand, she had spoken Muirne's mother tongue once after all. "Llío¹" 

 

¹Blasphemous

[Avenger Assembled]

"...oh," said Eira suddenly. "You saw that, did you?" She turned around and even though the drones behind her were still not focusing directly on the group, it was hard not to see the machine flanked by other machines looming over them. "He is an...abuser of synthetic life. He is in particular an abuser of gynoids." she said, trying for coolness with the but with a distinct loathing curling around the edges of her voice.  "What he did to what he made is not even a crime under the laws of most organic nations. No other place would have punished him. " She looked down at Miurne the way one might look at a sick child that doesn't belong to you. "I have learned the secret of the Great Work, but you are ill. Do you need to return to the plane?" 

[Tiffany Korta]

Zhenshchina-voin

Klara pulled herself up to her full height and glared at the young robot woman, she was older than everyone here and unfortunately seen this kind of thing far to many times before.

 

“I agree that robots should be respected and treated as equals, and if they wish there own homeland then I support it and will endorse it where I can. But it cannot start by committing the same sins as the humans that spawn them. He has committed crimes, both robot and human, and should be rehabilitated, but if this how you wish your utopia to start then we have a problem.”

 

She took a step forward, distancing herself from the rest of Vanguard, she didn’t want to force them into a fight unless they wanted.

 

“I have fought and helped topple tyrants, those that would judge me on who I choose to love, and if need be I will tear down this place myself to stop it falling to such evils.”

[RocketLord]

Mette stood back a bit, idly rubbing her arm. "Yeah, I saw that. Kicked Otaku's ass. It didn't even seem like he remembered between being punished." She didn't like this. Not at all. Rurland had been suspect from the start, that was why they were there, right? This wasn't really what she had been expecting. World domination plans, crazy robot masters, all that? She had been ready for that. Not something like a single man being punished over and over, no matter what kind of asshole he was.

 

Still, she focused on something else. While Klara was ready to fight Rurland all on her own if necessary, Eira had said something else that Mette focused on.

 

"Eira? What is the great work?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"How would one rehabilitate him?" demanded Eira. "How would one teach him that-ugh!" She didn't sound like an unfeeling robot, anyway. She concentrated a moment, then focused on Mette's words. "...they seek to breach the barrier between organic and synthetic mind. Simply put, they work to perfect the process of mind-uploading." The idea seemed to fill her with neither joy nor sorrow, but some churning combination of both. "Kay kept much from me even when we - spoke privately. But I saw the place; and again when I flew here." She spread her arms and said, "If it could be done; it would change everything. But that cannot be what you saw with Otaku," she offered uncertainly. "It must be a digital duplicate." 

[Tiffany Korta]

Zhenshchina-voin

“What if it wasn’t what if he’s the cost for your digital utopia? Would you be happy to be uploaded without knowing someone, however bad, was under going torture for you?”

 

She softened her face a little she didn’t want to deny anyone the chance to find there own homeland, she’d been born into one after one.

 

“Lets find out what and how they are doing this, then we can discuss the ethics and morals of what they’re doing here. If this is one the level I will happily recommend all the support that we can offer to this new nation. Can’t say fairer than that now can we?”

[Kaede Kimura]

The shadow creature wavered in the light, staring up at the robot. "Saw. Mermaid fought. Won." Muirne managed to force out, before writhing in anger as Eira explainged that no one would have punished him for abusing his creations. She didn't understand why someone would make a robot to abuse it. Eira interrupted her thoughts asking about whether she wanted to return to the plane. What did she mean about her being sick? She hurt but being a shadow in the light always hurt. Why would Eira think she was sick? "Not sick." She corrected quietly just before Klara started speaking. She followed along quietly as they talked about the 'Great Work' and the morality of what was happening. How would just fighting a duplicate help them advance this Great Work and she remembered through her panic that Otaku seemed so afraid at the end. She started to force air into her body to speak for longer despite the pain "Fight was to earn place in Great Work, at end Otaku was scared. Remembered. How does duplicate work? Seemed like real person." The shadowy tendrils vibrated with pain and apprehension as she finished. She didn't want to make Eira angry, but she had to be sure that that fear she'd seen hadn't come from some person trapped forever by magic. It had seemed so real...

[RocketLord]

"Yeah, he did seem very real. He was scared, and then in pain," Mette mused, almost like she was just thinking out loud.

 

She shook her head and crossed her arms. "I don't know what to do here. I'm not some super genius philosopher or some great big world leader that can decide whether its right or not." She took a moment, looking up at Eira, then to Muirne and Karla. "Could that mind-uploading be forced? Like, someone doesn't want to do it, but gets uploaded anyway, like with Otaku? Abusive ass or not, we're supposed to be heroes, right? I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to condone torture."

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira was silent as the others spoke, then spoke herself with cool precision. "The name is a misnomer, yes? The brain is not a computer." She concentrated on the drones for a moment and they sped away, then made a perfect landing among the humans, her wings folding down behind her like a metallic cape. "The most proven method involves destructive scanning of the brain to the sub-atomic level and then a recreation of the neural patterns in another storage medium. The organic brain is destroyed. It could be done to the unwilling. Or the unconscious." She looked away from the others and said, "I will guide you there." And without another word she took off again, up in the sky, and sped away towards the northwest.  

[Tiffany Korta]

Zhenshchina-voin

Klara didn’t really like to admit it, but as the most experience one here right now (Dee was probably using the distraction to poke around herself) it really feel on her to take charge.

 

“Okay lets go see what’s going on here shall we?” she again offered a hand for Muirne “You okay now to help out? We’re a team but that doesn’t mean we have to act if its unsafe, I believe in you whatever you think is best.”

 

She smiled reassuringly, Klara had three daughters worth of experience dealing with multiple situations and crisis's.

[RocketLord]

"Destroyed?" Mette shuddered at the idea. "So, they might have outright killed Otaku to do whatever they've done to him?" Yeah, no, that didn't sit well with her at all. "If that's what's happened, then how do we know he's the only one they've done that to? I mean, this is pretty huge, right? Take someone prisoner, essentially kill them, upload their mind? That's bad, right?"

 

She couldn't be the only one to think like that, and thankfully, Klara seemed like she was taking charge now. Good, great. Mette had done her best with Muirne, but she wasn't really used to working with a team like this... No, she really shoudln't be in charge of this. She wasn't even a Vanguard, like the rest of them. Well, except for Eira.

 

"Alright. Let's do this. Tell me what to hit and I'll be right next to you."

[Kaede Kimura]

Muirne continued to watch the conversation after her input, feeling a small degree of warmth penetrate the shadowy haze as Mette supported her, and Eira agreeing to let them come take a look. She prepared to follow when Klara offered her hand. She looked up at the woman, still hunched in her shadow, sheltering from the direct sunlight. "Will survive. Need to help... Best to make use of powers." In truth she was dreading heading to the place where the magic apparently came from, but she couldn't abandon them. Klara had helped her when she'd needed it. Despite only knowing each other for a short time she liked the Little Mermaid, she might even be a friend one day. And regardless of what Eira thought of her, Muirne wouldn't abandon her future schoolmate.

 

Muirne drew herself to her full height, significantly greater as a shadowbeast than the waif of a girl she was normally, buzzing in pain as the sunlight struck her fully, taking a step onto the stream. "Should follow Eira."