White Saturday (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

Fusion hmmed, seriously debating what to do as she studied the fallen people inside. Well, she decided, I can't just leave those people in there. If they're in trouble, they need help, particularly if that creep Otaku is using some kind of perverted knockout gas or sleep ray on them. Trusting to what sounded like a very impressive distraction to keep Otaku's attention, the invisible octopus slipped under the fire door into the loading dock, muttering a curse as she squeezed into the building. That was a very narrow opening! She was just about to move on when she felt a strange tugging at her mind, a faint urge to...NO! Writhing, she clutched the floor till the urge passed, and when it had she was on her feet, moving quickly and invisibly through the corridors. She was going to find Otaku and smash his face into his mind control machine till he stopped moving.

[Electra]

"Get in line," Stesha muttered to the voice over the loudspeaker, too quietly to be picked up on. "Been there, done that. It's creepier with bees." She waved a hand, tossing one of the robots high in the air before catching it mere inches from the ground. As soon as the tentacle robots arrived, she figured, she'd grab Gabriel and make for the building. That had to be long enough for any distraction Fusion or Midnight could need. She just wished she'd thought to set up a signal ahead of time.

[KnightDisciple]

Hearing the "Doctor" rage over the loudspeakers, Gabriel couldn't help but grin. He ceased his over-acting, his objective having been achieved. Well, mostly.

"We're the perverts? As opposed to the pimple-faced child showing dirty cartoons on television, probably because he can't pick up a date to save his life?"

He hovered up next to Fleur de Joie, arms crossed over his chest. His voice was still projecting.

"I wager those robots are pale imitations. Really, that's the worst part of your work, Otaku. You're an imitator. Your country's made a lot of good things, all over the board. Even in the realm of entertainment. But where you fall down is throwing away your true creative spark for mere imitation. Imitation of women, imitation of powered individuals, imitation imitation imitation. Think of what you could have done with your genius! You could have been the one to cure quadriplegia, or cancer, or who knows what! You could have revolutionized the computer industry, or really any field you wanted to. All of it completely honestly. Where people could actually respect you. But no, you decide to come to America and confirm all the worst stereotypes about young people who like Japanese entertainment. It's people like you who make kids ashamed to like your country's animation and comics. Incidents like today."

He shook his head in an exaggerated manner.

"Seems like you haven't grown past about age 5 yet."

[Avenger Assembled]

Suddenly, two black-skinned figures erupted from the building's windows, falling a good three stories before they rolled and came to picture-perfect landings! Having already looked very disturbing over the cameras, the Fusion-Angel Androids were even more horrible up close: still clearly wearing their schoolgirl outfits, now cut to allow their writhing, wriggling robotic tentacles free access to wave around their bodies as one hissed: "We will punish you for disrespecting the great Doctor Otaku!" She snapped and snarled, her tentacles clinking like steel chains. The other took a more sinous pose, twisting her body around itself as she cartwheeled towards the heroes. "Yes, punish you with our powerful tentacles of powers!"

Around the side of the building, Midnight slowly made his way past quiet, peaceful office after quiet, peaceful office, the people inside laying down with an eerie serenity that was frankly difficult to look at for long. Luckily for his calm, it wasn't long before the teen adventurer came upon his goal: the broadcast studio for the morning show had evidently been the site of Otaku's first arrival. Inside he could see a slumped-over crew and a thrumming, glowing cylinder as large as he was, its red-ribbed sides radiating a mental energy he could feel even with his shields on, like a man in a wetsuit sticking his hand in a river. This was the place!

[Electra]

"Okay, looks like it's time to get out of here," Stesha told Gabriel. "I'd say he's pretty distracted." Letting the vines and robots fall to the ground in a lifeless heap, she grabbed hold of Gabriel's hand and centered in on the flower she'd given Fusion. With her other hand touching the flowers braided into her green hair, she teleported them both into the building, giving Fusion only the advanced warning of the flower growing very large seconds before they arrived. "What's going on?" Stesha asked as they stepped out.

[KnightDisciple]

Gabriel barely resisted slapping his forehead at the entrance of the Fusion-bots.

"No class, no style, no taste. This kid needs to go do-"

And then he was moving through the wondrous world of flower teleportation.

"-wn. Okay."

He blinks and shakes his head.

"That is always just weird. I'll probably do that hundreds of times, and it will never stop being weird. I always taste mint in the back of my mouth when I step out..."

[Avenger Assembled]

Fusion put her finger to her lips, tentacles writhing about her body as if she was feeling the movements of the very air around them, her posture tense but determined. "He's using some kind of drug or mental agent," she said, shooting hard looks at the others to make sure they weren't affected. "I felt it when I came in. He's told everyone here to just lie down, and so they have." That otherwordly whisper she'd been using earlier sounded angry. "I lost Midnight. I think he was scouting around the edge, but if he went in...I don't know what would have happened to him. We need some way to search the whole building, and fast."

[Gizmo]

Easily opening the window from the outside, Midnight slipped into the studio, climbing talons retracting silently back into his gloves and boots. Padding forward with feline stealth, he stepped nimbly over a sleeping cameraman to get a better look at the pulsing device emitting palpable waves of mind affecting signals. Only too late did he recognize the motion sensors he'd inadvertently tripped. Cursing his carelessness inwardly, the black clad youth prepared to face whichever of Otaku's automatons responded to the alarm.

[Electra]

Stesha felt drowsy for a moment as soon as she teleported, but she was able to shake the feeling off. At least it wasn't only her this time! "I can do that," she murmured. "This whole building is full of plants on desks and in corners. I should be able to search through it without much trouble. Just watch my back for me." She stepped over to the nearest houseplant, a wilted african violet that perked up noticeably just at her approach, and carefully laid her fingers on it, cautious to keep the touch as light as possible. Closing her eyes, she began to search the building, floor by floor, plant by plant, looking for signs of Midnight or Doc Otaku.

[KnightDisciple]

For just a moment, Gabriel imagined a warm bed, and just slipping under the covers to sleep for a week. However, a blink of the eyes, and he was back in the present, with danger looming all around them. He gave his head a shake, trying to clear the final cobwebs. When he spoke, his voice was at a much lower volume.

"Will do, Fleur. We'll watch your back, then move in together. We just have to hope Midnight can make it until we meet up with him."

With that, the hero in white took up a defensive position near Fleur's new location, facing one direction while clearly expecting Fusion to face the other. His hands flexed, as if wanting to do something, but he kept a tight lid on his powers, to prevent any potential detection.

[Avenger Assembled]

On one side of the building, a tentacled monstrosity peeled her way out of the shadows to give a smile to Midnight that might have been seductive if he had no personal life, or if he found undersea monsters personally interesting. "Well well well, if it isn't Midnight-san," she hissed in an East Asian accent that was obnoxiously stereotypical for the product of a Japanese programmer: Otaku really did have some weird fetishes. "Perhaps you would like me to give you a grip?" She flexed her tentacles, the suckers gleaming with the metal beneath. "Because when I grip you, you know you've been gripped!"

-

Across the building, Fleur de Joie finally found Midnight, the teen hero facing off against a tentacled monstrosity that looked exactly like Fusion! Except maybe bigger around the bust.

[Gizmo]

Midnight barely spared a glance at the robot as he quickly pulled an escrima stick from its holster around his lower leg. A deft movement of his thumb clicked a rotating dial, concealed and flush with the rest of the matte black cylinder, into place, releasing a reservoir of gravimetric energy which crackled about the far end as he stepped forward. It wasn't something he could keep up indefinitely, but it added enough crushing force to his blow to rip through the machine sending sparks flying in all directions. As the robot's sensors compensated for the sudden lights, the black clad vigilante was suddenly gone, hidden somewhere out of sight.

[Avenger Assembled]

The robot hissed and whirled around, her tentacles seeming to snap at the air, the metallic tips moving so fast they actually cracked like whips. "That's a pretty good trick," she purred, sounding for all the world like Otaku had ripped the voicebox out of the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp. "But I've got one of my own that I think you'll like..." And suddenly she whirled around, vomiting a thick, black wad of ink from her mouth that splattered all around the room. "You can't run forever, you coward!" she taunted.

[Electra]

"I see them!" Stesha reported from across the building. "Midnight's fighting the tentacle robots, he needs backup. I'm going to send you all through to him. Everybody join hands!" As soon as the others had complied, she grabbed hold of Gabriel's hand, since he was the closest, and sent them all through the network of green to the place she'd pinpointed. She herself, though, stayed behind. Through the mental link with a dingy little potted rosebush, she saw them arrive at the scene of the battle. The rosebush, meanwhile, began to grow.

[KnightDisciple]

This time, Gabriel had some warning before he took the Green Express, and so he was better prepared for the sensations. Still, he couldn't help but feel a bit odd coming out the other side. Maybe he just needed more practice with it. No time for that now.

He landed in a crouch, surveying the scene in a moment. The robot seemed distracted, searching for someone else.

"Waste of time and materials."

His left hand rose, and a blast of sound roared out, aimed center mass on the robot. Hopefully, he could give his comrades an opening to exploit.

[Electra]

Though Fleur de Joie hadn't arrived with them and was nowhere to be seen, her presence manifested itself quite visibly in the form of two large and extremely fast runners extending themselves from the rosebush. In two blinks of an eye, they'd shot across the room and wrapped around the robot, binding its tentacles, arms and legs in one messy and rather thorny package. To add insult to injury, little red flowers began blooming all over the runners, looking quite festive.

[Avenger Assembled]

Fusion set her teeth and strode up to where the robot was bound and still weakly struggling against Fleur's plant bonds: she didn't hesitate, shoving her tentacles through the tiny gaps in the plant matrix to grab the robot within. There was a short metallic shriek from inside as she squeezed, hard, and the sound of crunching metal as she crushed the robot to fragments, all the while fervent imaginings flicking through her head. "Perverted little bastard," she muttered out loud. She knew how, and why, Otaku built his robots, and just how invested he was in accurate reconstruction. How long had he been making Fusion-bots? How long had he...her costume briefly flourescented red as her skin's chameleon cells shifted in anger. And they were surrounded by cameras, she reminded herself, cameras that he could no doubt use to film every filthy moment of it and broadcast it for the dubious pleasure of the filthy degenerates who admired him! "All right, what we need to do is-"

Suddenly the big monitor in the corner snapped to life, the noise rousing some of the sleeping morning crew and camera people as newscasters and crew were roused from what had become a normal night's sleep. "So, Fusion, your sinuous tentacles have penetrated into my lair! Ahahahaha!" Otaku laughed, putting his hands together before him, the blank wall behind him giving fewer clues to his location. "You think you have stopped me? Pshaw!" From the room's two exits appeared two black-clad robots, the two Fusion-bots evidently having the same rapid movement abilities as the real thing. "While you and your new friends play with my girls, I will build a wireless broadcaster out of the control booth so that everyone in Freedom City will learn what a saucy minx you are! Ahahahaha!"

Fusion responded with a string of violent obscenities, ignoring the oncoming robots as she snatched up a camera and threw it right through the screen in a shower of glass!

[Gizmo]

Making a flat face behind his featureless mask at Otaku's obnoxious prattle and Fusion's subsequent outburst, Midnight stepped out of the shadows behind the tentacled robots and without preamble dropped a nondescript sphere about the size of a softball at his feet. The ball hit the floor with a metallic clang then with a brief, high pitched hum, let out a white flash of light. As it faded, the automatons jerked back and forth as energy crackled over their surface, thin wisps of smoke rising with an acrid smell. Their creator had provided them with EMP shielding, but predictably his work had been shoddy and incomplete. "Wasting time. Hurry," Midnight rumbled to the others.

[KnightDisciple]

"Yeah, yeah, hurrying."

Gabriel wasn't a huge fan of how bossy this Midnight fellow was. Even if he was a veteran of crime-fighting, it's not like they weren't trying to take down this madman's machinery.

...Though Fusion could stand to display some self control.

"Why hello there Miss Robot, why don't you fall down today?"

Gabriel pointed his hand to the robo-Fusion to the left, and let loose a blast of sonic energy at it, striking it quite nicely. Hopefully it would bust it up at least a little bit.

[Avenger Assembled]

The Fusionbots took a heavy beating from the near-simultaneous attacks from the dark detective and the white-clad wonder, both of them sparking and jerking, the one blasted by Gabriel actually beginning to smoke! But they both stayed on their feet, the one nearest Gabriel (the one he'd targeted), giving him a creepy, malevolent leer. "You've got a pretty mouth there," she said with a wicked smile on her face, "We'll see about putting it to use! Ahahah!" She suddenly leaped over Gabriel's head, tentacles wrapping around her in a cephlapodic mating dance, a sight so utterly bizarre that it blinded Gabriel to an attack from the rear!

The other robot Fusion came up from behind him and punched him in the head, tentacles sliding over his body as she did so in an effort to bring him very close indeed!

[Electra]

No sooner had the second robot sucker-punched Gabriel than the rosebriar vines were upon it! They slithered around the robot's feet with a soft rustling-leaf sound, climbing its legs like a trellis and wrapping around all its waving limbs until it was bound even more securely than its predecessor in the sweet-smelling trap.

Outside the room and outside the fight, Stesha made her way across the building towards the battle, picking her way carefully to avoid running over anyone while her attention was split. In her hands she still carried the violet, which by now was looking great and almost needed repotting.

[Avenger Assembled]

"You perverted little sex toy!" Tentacles whipping around her in rage, Fusion stepped up and drove her fist into the second robot's smoking face, driving her hand deep as the robot's head jerked backwards, sparks and chunks of metal flying everywhere. "I'm going to rip you limb from limb, then use you to beat Takashi's head in!" With Fusion's second punch, the robot's head exploded with a shriek and gush of fluid and parts! Whirling, Fusion turned on the other robot, fighting mad!

[Gizmo]

With the multilimbed mechanoids well in hand - or, at least, well in vine - Midnight stepped surreptitiously back away from the fight a pushed one sleeve of his black jacket up his arm slightly, revealing a back-lit screen installed into a bracer strapped to his forearm. A few taps were all that was required to access the GBN building's internal network and pull up a series of floorplans. Sifting through them, the masked mystery man soon found was he was looking for. "Know where the control room is. Finished here."

[KnightDisciple]

"Hold on, we shouldn't split...up. Blast it all."

Gabriel turned to face the robot, a look of disgust on his face.

"So much genius, put to disgraceful use. Time to recycle."

He lifted his arm and flung an over-charged blast of sound at his mechanical foe. It struck center mass, mainly due to its immobile nature.

"We need to catch up with him and fast."

[Avenger Assembled]

The robot imploded in a shower of sparks, collapsing in on itself with another wet shriek. Fusion walked up to the fallen machine and drove her foot through its fallen head, stomping down so hard she broke the linoleum floor beneath. The shuddering rage seemed to have left her body, and at first glance she was perfectly calm. "All right. Let's find Otaku and put an end to all this madness. Midnight, if you can use that EMP device on him, you can keep him from using his mechsuit: Fleur, wherever you are, you can grab him with plants, and Gabriel, you can shout him down. Between all of us, we can take him. Lead the way, Midnight."