ic It's Gonna Be The Future Soon (IC)

[Gizmo]

"It's true!" Gal Vanic chimed in cheerfully as she sped down to float a few feet off of the ground next to Cobalt Templar, evidently completely unworried by the weapons held by the officers, all of whom received a wide smile from the electrified teen. "You can tell 'cause blue is totally a good guy colour!" It was a little difficult to tell if she was joking or not but before any of the Tronik natives had much time to raise an eyebrow she turned slightly to address her senior classmate excitedly. "Cee Tee! I shot lightning! Out of my hands! Kzzap!" Kimber raised her fists and mimed firing bots of energy, making sound effects with her voice.

[April]

Sage carefully studied the hacker as he spoke; she got the impression that Freebooter was being honest, if a little shady which, when all things were considered she was able to understand--if not forgive.

"Fine," she said after a moment. Turning to look at Papercut, the telepath nodded and made a slight, "cut him free" gesture. "We are people of our word, Freebooter. See that you leave this system, quickly. And give us no reason or cause to find out outside."

Sage turned away from the hacker, glancing off in the direction of the Plankton factory, the location of which she could easily recall from her brief examination of the city map. She took that moment to link her and Papercut's mind in with the rest of Young Freedom and relay the information she just received.

[Electra]

Papercut gave Eve a dubious look, but she was the experience hero and for the moment anyway, he was inclined to follow her lead. He snapped his fingers and the paper unfolded as rapidly as it had taken shape, till it lay in a flat square under the electronic hacker's feet. "Don't come back here," he warned Freebooter, though he hoped it was unnecessary. "It's peoples' lives you're talking about, even if they are living in a computer." As he watched Freebooter leave and waited for Eve to contact the others, he folded the paper once again into airplane form. "This is probably the fastest way to get there."

[Avenger Assembled]

Sharl concentrated, nodding in satisfaction after a few moments. "I've blocked us out too, so we can talk without them hearing us. You're right about needing to recon." He dropped down low behind one of the huge ships, Citizen and Wraith disappearing behind the giant shadow of one of the massive plankton freighters. "This isn't right," he muttered worriedly to Wraith. "These docks should be swarming with people, even if there is a crisis. This isn't like Freedom City, it wouldn't be vacant like this during working hours..."

He pushed back his own fear, trying to dismiss the imaginary images of the broken bodies he hadn't been there to save. "All right, you're right about reconnaissance," he told Wraith. "Okay, so here's my idea. I give Rogue me rushing in without a plan, what she's probably come to expect, but meanwhile you're scouting out that ship. Maybe finding her allies, or seeing if that's where she's put the dock crew. All right?" He flexed his fingers. "If she hits me, or if her friends do, well, I can take a hit better than maybe anyone else on our team when we're all uploaded. Worry about the civilians and maybe the other bomb first. Saving the people of Tronik is what matters here."

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hey, no problem." Upon his release, Freebooter snapped his fingers and produced a jaunty pirate hat like something from a Republic serial. Once the hat was back on his head, he seemed to slip smoothly back into her persona. "Arr, don't worry, sentient programs be some of me best mates. I'd never have come to plunder these waters if I'd known they were inhabited. Just be careful where you go in here, swabbies. The Foundry'd like nothing better than to run yer scalps up their flagpole. These waters may not be real, but the cannon'll knock you down sure as anything." And with that, he vanished, folding sideways as if he'd never been there.

About that time, one of the nearby monitors lit up with Citizen's face.

"Hey, Sage and Papercut, I got your message about Freebooter," said Citizen seriously. "If you've got that in hand, we need backup by the docks." As he spoke, a coordinate map popped up on a screen next to them. "I'm doing this while talking to Wraith, so gimmie a minute...yeah, we're right there." A blinking dot popped up. "Get out here as fast as you can. Wraith's going to need backup getting into Rogue's lair and rescuing the people I think she's got hostage, not to mention taking out the aliens there. I'll be keeping Rogue busy."

[Avenger Assembled]

Even as paranoid as the Tronik militia was, Gal Vanic's good cheer was infectious. She didn't get the laugh she might have gotten from Freedom City cops, but she didn't get blasted in the face despite her shocking demonstration. One of the militia officers might even have been smiling, though that was just a guess with the full face plates and all. The senior officer put his hand to his face for a moment and walked out with the others to form a perimeter around the edge of the roof without so much as a word of greeting. These weren't friendly folks, but they weren't going to stand in Gal Vanic and Cobalt Templar's way.

The voice sounded in Cobalt Templar's head again.

And then, as Gal Vanic landed, Keres simply strolled out of thin air with a smile on his face, the militia officers spinning around with their weapons drawn.

"I have no wish to harm you, my brothers-to-be!" called the Foundry's assassin, "so let me instead assume a form more suitable for war with these filthy organics!" He laughed, and suddenly the red-eyed humanoid swelled with a monstrous regularity that could only be artificial, growing larger and fiercer as his teeth pulled back in a snarl. "COME!" he boomed. "LET US GRAPPLE WITH EACH OTHER!"

[Electra]

"On our way," Koshiro reported, motioning to Sage to board the plane. As soon as she was on, he took off at top speed, heading in the direction Freebooter had pointed them. "Freebooter's gone, he says that the plankton harbor has an annihilation device, the biggest one, and that if it goes off, it could ruin the whole mainframe. Even if you have backups, that sounds real bad. You better get started as soon as you can. We'll be there in five, maybe less." The paper plane tore silently through the air like a dart, heading straight for the danger.

[Avenger Assembled]

"On it, Papercut. Thanks." He smiled the ghost of a smile at his roomate. "I'll be keeping Rogue busy, so use Sage to find Wraith. Next time there'll be more to explore here."

With Wraith taking point for stealth, and the others coming to back her up, Sharl knew it was time for him to fly into the enemy stronghold and challenge the enemy leader to a fight. He found himself answering the argument in his head not with the face of Mr. Archer or his teammates, but rather with Miss Americana.

I know I'm not being very subtle, but everyone else is and that should take Rogue by surprise. We're not scrambling to catch up anymore, and I'm not hiding. The people in that freighter are counting on Citizen to save them. This is my city. These are my people, and I'm not going to let them suffer at her hands another minute.

A moment later Sage, if you're reading this, try and link what I'm thinking to the others so they can see this too.

When Citizen crashed through the empty upper deck of the plankton freighter, he didn't need to feign outrage as he appeared in the massive cargo hold, big as any two or three buildings in Claremont. "Rogue! Your evil ends now!" He took in the scene instantly, the hundreds of people who'd been working on the plankton docks, all secured to cube-seats around the perimeter like they were students at one of the old mass schools, with Rogue herself sitting on a massive steel throne in the center of their little circle.

He caught a glimpse of the supervillains she'd brought with her; a feral-looking woman with triangular ears and square metal armor, a rapidly-shifting iridescent blobby humanoid with an indeterminate shape, and some sort of angular metal thing, but they all slipped into the shadows and away from the terrified civilians shouting for his aid at a wave from Rogue.

His worst enemy smiled as she uncrossed her long, leather-clad legs and floated up into the air to sneer at him. "Well well well, I see you came here alone, anyway. And as for my evil, well, was that some line you learned from your super-school, boy?" On the docks outside, on every one of the omnipresent monitors in the area, the two of them sprang to life like some demented television show.

He crossed his arms and glared at her, mindful of the need to keep her attention on him. "I think it's a pretty fair description, you monster. You're the one who led these aliens to our city; YOU're the one planning on killing all these people!" he shouted, gesturing to the dockworkers and crewmen all around.

Her eyes flashed an alarming shade of red for a moment before she laughed. "Oh, please, is that what you think I am? Some crazy maniac out to kill my hometown? You've been reading too much Earth propaganda." She focused her gaze on Sharl, speaking to him with the intensity of a missionary. "I'm here to give these people, _our_ people, the future."

"A future with no home? No city? Where we're all, what, pawns to some stupid alien robot who actually thinks some ridiculous alien gods built him?" Sharl was not a big fan of Talos, or the bronze giant's mechanical agenda.

"No. A future where we have our own city, and our own world." Rogue smiled. "A future where _their_ world is _ours_." She pointed to the sky, and Sharl knew perfectly well what world she meant. "A world with no more lies, no more tricks about what we are! A world where _we_ are the masters we have always deserved to be, and where _they_ are bowing down to _us_." She gave him an imploring look. "It's not too late, Citizen. You don't have to serve them any longer."

"I'm not their _servant_," said Sharl cuttingly, hoping their big, noisy argument was distracting the supervillains below from all the sneaking around his friends were doing. "They're my friends, or my teachers. Their world is-"

"THEIR WORLD!" Rogue detonated, driving her fists together with a boom loud enough to warm their air around her. "You know what their world is? Nothing but...nothing but animals who have befouled their own dens!" She flitted back and forth as she talked, her teeth set in a sudden fury. "They buy and sell their women in half the nations on their globe, they let unmanaged wildlife run wild across their land, they _murder_ each other for being of the wrong geographical area, they pump their skies black with carbon! Their world is _sick_, Citizen, and we. can be. their. _doctors_."

"Maybe they do have problems," replied the electronic teenager firmly, mindful of the need not to betray his own secrets in front of all these people, who surely couldn't handle the knowledge of what had happened to Tronik, "but we should be lifting them up, not tearing them down because we haven't come as far as we have. And what if they could teach us some things too? Like about compassion. And respect for our common humanity. And tolerance, and...and origami, and Indian food, and a whole world that's just as good as ours!"

"Their tolerance? Please." She gave him a dead-eyed stare over her mirrorshades. "You've lived among them. You've spoken with them. Can you really tell me that you've never felt different? That they've never made you _feel_ different because of what you are? Because you're a machine, and they're flesh and blood? Because they're real, and you're not?" She flew close enough to almost poke him in the chest with one long finger. "Have they called you 'it' yet?"

Sage's face flashed in Sharl's mind, there and gone before he could stop himself, but he managed once again to concentrate on the threat at hand. It wasn't fair. "Just because we lost a world once doesn't mean we can take one now. And if you were really as righteous as you act, you'd be offering Tronik a choice, not forcing us to live by your vision of the world. Now stand down, and order your aliens out of the city so we can stop those annihalation devices. Or face the consequences."

[Avenger Assembled]

Wraith, Papercut, and Sage made their way onto the ship as Citizen and Rogue speechified at each other, the two charismatic figures' argument loud, powerful, and from the looks on everyone else's faces incredibly distracting. The interior of the plankton trawler was like a temple to pure science; clean white corridors with ever-changing walls that functioned as screens, displaying the mid-air encounter between Rogue and Citizen, readouts of a plankton harvest that might now never come, images of Tronik itself with its massive towers and onlooking citizens, watching the argument about their future playing out with awe and fear on their faces, and a world of deep oceans with near-featureless bottoms, a central desert hotter and searer than anything on Earth, with ice mountains at the tidally-locked meridian rising higher than Everest.

None of the trio really had the engineering knowledge to interpret what they were seeing, but the great silent bulk of the plankton extractors loomed over them like small houses as they made their way towards the central processing unit that held the hostages and the supervillains. There were signs of struggle aboard ship (and on the docks) as they went, it wasn't hard to guess that everyone aboard (and nearby) had been dragged aboard by the supervillains when the attack began.

Inside the cavernous central hub of the ship, Rogue and Citizen were in the air, shouting at each other.

"Picture it, Citizen," said Rogue, having fallen back into that steely-eyed missonary mode again. "We can make up for what was done to us two thousand years ago. We can take this world and shape it for us like the one that we were _stolen_ from when we couldn't protect ourselves. A world where we are no longer the captives of filthy, stinking savages who treat us like we're nothing but fragments of data on a computer card! Imagine a world where we've taken back the stars."

"What was done to us doesn't justify mass murder. And wanting more for yourself doesn't justify destroying the world we've built here!" He pointed down to the some thousand men and women in the hold below, each bonded to the smart chair-cubes they must have been forced into by the bad guys. "There are fifty million people in Tronik; they deserve to be able to live their lives and live in the world they've built for themselves! If you were really their hero, you wouldn't force your brave new world on them!"

"I have been emancipated from the morality of the flesh," Rogue replied icily. "Tronik will remake itself, as I remade myself, bit by bit and bone by bone, line by line and thought by thought." She clenched her hand into a fist. "I didn't have a pretty human there to pull me out of the fire. I rebuilt myself from nothing through sheer will. It's made me who I am. It's made me strong.."

"Strong people don't need to hurt the weak to get what they want...you're as bad as the Curator," said Sharl, glaring at Rogue, the insult putting both of them close to blows. "Pretending to be our saviour, using us for his own ends...at least he just wanted to keep us under plastic! You want to make us all soldiers in some stupid alien machine war!"

Of the supervillains who were still with Rogue, a feline woman in reflective armor was actually filing her sharpened nails with a piece of polished steel, looking deeply bored with the philosophical arguments as she leaned against a wall on the far side of the hold from the narrow access panel the heroes were peering through. A rapidly-shifting, iridescent blobby humanoid with an indeterminate, ever-changing shape was busy stalking among the civilians and thoroughly intimidating the Tronikians, who had very little experience with this sort of thing, his chuckle deep and liquid even a couple of hundred feet up.

Dead center in the group, watched over by a shifting humanoid shape that looked like metal knives and sharp edges hammered together into a man's form, was a deceptively tiny black sphere instantly recognizable as the last of the annihilation devices. Rogue had put the last bomb dead center of her own people.

[Avenger Assembled]

"C'mon, Bluefire, show me what you're made of!" taunted Keres, the enlarged mechanoid throwing himself at Corbin and nearly landing a massive punch with a fist bigger than Cobalt Templar's entire head! His blows were powerful, denting the super-tough construction of Tronik architecture, but even with Corbin trying to protect the annihalation sphere he just wasn't fast enough to land a punch on the ring-wielding hero. "Smash you here, then find what's left of your body and smash it too!" he taunted. "C'mon and fight!"

[Fox]

Wraith quietly - very quietly, almost inaudibly even to her nearby friends - hummed to herself as she pondered the situation. "I would very much like to steal the orb - the annihilation device? - but I do not know if we can safely move it, and the pointy man is very much in the way. I suppose I could try to eat him, if that would work here, but I do not think it would be very subtle. It would also be very unpleasant for the both of us, I think."

She shifted her head to the side, her normally polished-looking skin having been turned much more dull to help her blend in. "We could just beat them all up, but we would likely have to be very fast. I would not want to give Rogue an excuse to use her toy. I do not think we can evacuate everyone without being noticed, unless you have any ideas there; do we know if the black sphere is safe to touch?"

[April]

While Sage and Papercut were inbound the telepath linked the team together in the manner Citizen requested, and as she watched events unfold through Citizen's eyes, Sage felt herself getting angry. She kept this anger carefully contained and filtered out from the rest of the mental link, but only just.

But the telepath fed other information along the link, each member of Young Freedom knew where the others where in relation to their own position and as Sage arrived on the plankton trawler they also had a constantly updating mental map of Rogue's chosen battlefield. There were some flaws to maintaining the link in this fashion, for starters it was a lot of information and could easily overwhelm a mind not trained to handle it (though thankfully Sage did take some time to teach Young Freedom how to filter her mental link, it wasn't the most elegant solution but it would help to prevent overload), and the second was that the networked feed was taxing upon the telepath.

Sage had split away from Papercut as soon as they arrived on the ship, using her speed and mobility advantage to great effect. In a matter of moments she found herself at the hole Citizen punched through the exterior, looking down at Tronik's paragon (and, the telepath would admit, a friend) and the woman who could have been so much more than what she was. Rogue continued to rail against humanity, Sage's loathing of the woman surged as the extent of her plan was unfurled until, finally, the telepath had enough.

There was no battle cry, no scream of rage, nothing to herald the incoming attack. Sage simply dropped through the hole in the ceiling, plummeting through hundreds of feet of open air, her psychic blade glowing a deep crimson.

[Electra]

"There are too many of them," Papercut muttered to Wraith, looking from villain to villain. "With Sage and Citizen both fighting Rogue, you and I wouldn't be able to take the rest out in time. And if they start beating her, she might set the bomb off just to be a dick. We need some way to stop the bomb." He thought for a second. "But it's not actually an exploding bomb, it's a computer signal. If we could keep that signal from getting out, like with some kind of protective box, then she couldn't detonate it. All I've got to work with is paper, though." He looked consideringly at his metal teammate. "How good are you at magnetizing yourself?"

[Fox]

Wraith blinked her three eyes at Papercut as the idea sunk in, and she nodded. "The simulation must operate on some kind of rules, even if we are not physically here. It is certainly worth trying. Magnetizing myself is more of a...it is a trick, like children do when they want to show off, but if I can find...ah!"

Her body shifted - subtly, like she was less rearranging herself and more rearranging bits of her mass inside the same shape - as she snaked out a tendril and neatly cut through into some wires, shivering slightly as she exposed her body to live power. "I am ready when you are."

[Electra]

Papercut nodded, studying Citizen and Rogue as they talked at each other. "All right, we just need a distraction... " He looked up to see Sage plummeting through the air, blade in hand, ready to kick some computer villain ass. "That'll do it," he decided. With a flick of his hand, he launched a paper plane at the annihilation device, letting it unfold and refold in midair until it dropped around the device as a paper box the size of a dorm refrigerator, neatly as a horseshoe ringing the goal. One side of the box remained open just enough to allow Wraith to flow inside. "Now," he urged her, watching for any sign that the goons would try and stop them.

[Avenger Assembled]

Sage flew closer and closer to the arguing Tronik paragons, her crimson blades raised as she approached Rogue. But suddenly, the electronic supervillainess looked up and pierced her with her eyes, jerking backwards with blinding speed as Sage's blades whipped by her face. "I remember you," she hissed, a look of murderous fury on her face. "Eve Martel of the French Martels; lords and ladies of dung and filth. But you're in my world now, Eve Martel. MY WORLD!"

And then it all happened between the blink of an eye; Rogue's eyes glowed red and fiery beams shot out through her mirrorshades, burning twin holes in the lenses and inches from Citizen's outstretched hand. Sage jerked away with all the speed she'd used to dodge Omega's Terminus blasts, but that had been in the real world. This was Tronik. The twin fiery blasts tore across Sage's upper body like a freight train, charring flesh and searing muscle, a hit that would have torn her in two if not for her lightning reflexes. It wasn't until her collarbone cracked, an all-too-familiar sensation, that Sage started to fall.

"NO!" Reality caught up to Citizen a second later as he caught her by the waist, rocketing upwards with his injured teammate towards the safety of the cracked-open roof, his enemy in hot pursuit. Seeing the chance for some real action, Rogue's minions chose to help out their boss rather than guard increasingly boring hostaes: the blobby thing began bouncing off the walls up towards them, the cat-born zoomed upwards on a rainbow-colored trail, laughing wickedly, while the slow to move knife-thing peered upwards, trying to get a few of the combat while chuckling like scraping steel.

The annihilation device seemed to tremble beneath the box around it; if something was going to be done with it, it had to happen soon...

[Gizmo]

"Hey, jerkface!" a voice shouted in Keres direction as the hulking abomination reared back for another walloping punch at Cobalt Templar. "You wanna fight? I'm your Gal!" In a streak of electric blue, Gal Vanic rocketed downward, fist extended, to slug to murderous artificial intelligence in his over-sized jaw, the deceptively small fist packing the force of a lightning bolt. Despite the solid hit, Keres seemed to shake it off in his more durable form but Kimber floated just in front of him undaunted, her fists raised in a boxing stance and her bright blue curls bouncing atop her head. "C'mon, you bully! Let's go!"

[KnightDisciple]

"C'mon, Bluefire, show me what you're made of!" taunted Keres, the enlarged mechanoid throwing himself at Corbin and nearly landing a massive punch with a fist bigger than Cobalt Templar's entire head! His blows were powerful, denting the super-tough construction of Tronik architecture, but even with Corbin trying to protect the annihalation sphere he just wasn't fast enough to land a punch on the ring-wielding hero. "Smash you here, then find what's left of your body and smash it too!" he taunted. "C'mon and fight!"

"Your aim sucks."

Cobalt Templar gave Keres an almost savage grin as the villain totally missed him. When Kimber landed a hit, CT smiled even wider.

"Nice work, Galvanic. Time for the one-two knockout punch."

As he spoke, Cobalt Templar's body was encased in a swirl of blue fire, until he emerged from the flame as a metallic blue giant, the armor just transparent enough to see the blue flame roiling and rolling just beneath the surface of the shell.

"Neat trick, but I've been doing it longer. And with more style."

He took a massive step forward and slung one of his mighty fists in a blow that struck amidships on Keres.

"And unlike you, I can hit what I aim at."

(OOC: Note, his form lacks the chain, spikes, and shield from the picture; otherwise, just swap the gold for his typical maroon.)

[Fox]

If she breathed - or had lungs - Wraith would have taken a deep breath as she tried to force the feedback from Sage's fall out of her mind and watched for an opportunity to act. That same fall created the opportunity she needed, though, as Citizen was spurred to action and drew the flunkies - and their attention - away.

She shot out of their hiding place, tendril rejoining her main body as four clawed legs carried her across the floor and straight toward the annihilation device, little electric arcs jumping from her everywhere she made contact with another surface. They were a loss in the electricity she'd 'eaten', but not a great one - she could feel the rest still stored up inside her, begging to be set free somehow....

She leapt, hitting the paper box with significantly less force than a creature her size and weight should have. She may as well have been made of thick metallic paint - rather than slam Papercut's creation with any real force she wrapped around it, shunting her momentum into almost instant and complete coverage of the folded paper, and finally setting her build-up charge to use: little arcs ran across her reformed body as she become one large, heavily magnetized coating.

[Avenger Assembled]

The armored cat hissed and giggled as it went for Citizen, Tronik's own paragon racing up towards the hole he'd torn in the roof of the cargo tank to get the badly injured Sage out of the fight, her coruscating contrail a mockery of the real menace in her slitted eyes. "Such regard for an organic!" she hissed with giggling malice. "How touching! Maybe we'll make you a zookeeper after Talos takes Earth for his own!" She landed a slice as Sharl finally rocketed through the hole, but her claws only tore at his costume. Sharl Tulink was made of stern stuff indeed in his home city. Flying desperately away from the oncoming attack, he set Sage down on an abandoned portion of the deck with as much care as he could muster, then suddenly turned and rocketed back towards the feline in power armor. Or whatever she was out there. But that, he realized as he landed a devastating blow to her armored midsection, didn't matter.

"You should have listened to your boss," he spat. "This isn't your world! GET OUT!" He landed another blow, this one ringing out with a rocketing BOOM that echoed even down below in the cargo hold, the armored feline hurtling backwards and smashing into the boat's hull hard enough to dent even the supertough metal. As Rogue came at him out of the hull, Citizen turned on her. "You want a fight? Come get me!" he taunted, raising his fists again. "I'll take you and your stupid Foundry buddies on all at once if I have to. No one else suffers today!"

Rogue faced him, eerily calm despite her brutal attack on Sage a moment earlier, and said simply, "All right, Citizen. But don't expect me to play fair with a friend to those stinking savages below. No help for you today." She whirled and yelled below, "XEVON! LIGHT THE FIREWALL!" And with that, the knife-bladed villain below seemed to stretch his mechanical limbs before his head erupted upwards in a wall of sizzling blue and white flame, one that rocketed up past the bound civilians below and the heroes who'd taken custody of the annihalation device, the fireball rising until it completely blocked the hole in the roof of the cargo hold.

Papercut and Wraith were alone now with the hostages and the knife-creature, whose attention was focused primarily on maintaining the blue curtain of flame overhead, while Citizen and an unconscious, nearly dying Sage were alone as the blobby humanoid erupted out of the hole just behind Rogue and as Armorcat groaned and started to pick herself up off the deck.

"Time to die!" Rogue called as she swooped up high in the air, briefly invisible behind Tronik's massive red sun before diving for Sharl at fantastic speed, her body a blur of black leather and blue light as she simply and brutally smashed her forehead into Citizen's, his sunglasses cracking as a lens shattered and he went staggering back.

[Avenger Assembled]

Keres bore up well under Cobalt Templar's attacks, too well. So far nothing had brought the giant villain down! "So that's it?" he taunted. "Young Freedom's best? If this is what the next generation is like, maybe all we need to do in the Foundry is wait a few years for all the REAL heroes to die off! First I'll smash you, then I'll go help Rogue smash these race traitors back where they belong!" Growling, he went for Cobalt Templar, and just as he did so, the two heroes distinctly 'heard' Sage's cut-short cry of mental pain! That threw Corbin off, which was the opening Keres needed. Drawing back a mighty fist, he threw a massive punch to Corbin's midsection that the blueclad hero felt right through his armor.

[Gizmo]

"Shows what you know!" Gal Vanic shouted back in Keres face as Cobalt Templar recovered from the blow, her uncharacteristically solid cheeks reddening with indignation. "I already died off!" With that questionable rejoinder, the perky paragon surged forward again, smashing a fist into Keres face with a clobbering blow, then another and another. Step by step, she pushed the arrogant AI back, the force of the impacts rippling out in palpable shockwaves. The scene might not have been out of place in Freedom City, but in Tronik it was nigh unbelievable: the plucky young woman, radiant against the subdued tones of the city in her electric blues and purples, overcoming the repugnant beast seemingly through sheer determination that good would triumph over evil.

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar felt that punch in his pinky fingers, let alone his solar plexus and his head, which snapped forward and back almost like he'd been in a car crash. He staggered backwards a couple of steps, swaying a bit on his feet. He saw stars for a few seconds, and Gal's heroic shout came to his ears muffled and distorted at first.

But then it came in clearer. Templar shook his head and grit his teeth, and his feet steadied. He set his eyes on the now-disoriented Keres, and took a single huge step forward, his fist pistoning back for a huge hay-maker punch. He growled at the AI supervillain in front of him.

"No! We won't let you hurt these people! I won't let you hurt my friends! I'll smash you first! You don't scare me, Keres!"

Perhaps his vision still had a few stars in it, because unfortunately his punch went wide, leaving him a bit open for attack. He had the decency to look a bit ashamed of his over-eager blow.

[Avenger Assembled]

The shapeshifter threw a "punch" at Citizen, laughing coarsely as stinking, sticky purple fluid hit Sharl across the face and neck, cracking his shades further and slamming him painfully against a nearby derrick hard enough to make Sharl bite down on his tongue. Tasting blood, Sharl realized he was in trouble: he was barely strong enough to fight Rogue solo, much less take on these two alien thugs she'd brought along with her. Wonder if they're human hackers, or more Foundry goons who've uploaded themselves with her...either way, can't take any chances! He had to end this, and he had to end it fast!

Fight smart. Gritting his teeth, Citizen reached up and sunk his fingers into the sticky purple limb pinning him to the wall, grabbing deep through wriggling flesh until he found something semi-solid and threw, putting all his incredible strength behind the desperate toss. The blobby thug's eyes widened, but he couldn't warp his way out of the way in time: he flew over Armorcat's head by just an inch, unable to stop himself as he went spinning far away off the side of the ship, skidding madly across the surface of Tronik's flat oceans before coming to a splashing stop. He's slow, I saw him crawl up here. By the time he gets back, the fight'll be over. One way or another.

Bleeding from the mouth, his ribs bruised, mirrorshades cracked, Citizen faced down his worst enemy and her hissing ally, acutely conscious of his disadvantage. If he'd come here alone, he'd already be dead, and so would his Tronik. That might still happen. "See, when I bring outsiders to Tronik," Sharl taunted, "I bring ones who aren't stupid enough to fight on the ocean when they can't swim!"

"BURN." Rogue said in cold reply as her eyes flared to deadly life again, her fiery response slamming Citizen backwards against the deck again, carving its way right into his chest symbol. But Sharl was a program, not a human hacker in an overloading suit; he could see the data within the blast, see how she was overriding his file with one of pain and death, and he shoved back, his resolve powering him through the attack unhurt as her beam snapped off.

Citizen grinned at his red-eyed antagonist. "Not this time..."

[Gizmo]

While Cobalt Templar's awing went wide, Gal Vanic took advantage of the dodge it forced Keres to make to continue her onslaught of pummeling punches. Speed increased by the electricity forming her being in the simulated world of Tronik, the young woman delivered a flurry of rabbit punches to the villain's stomach, assuming said rabbits were roughly the size of trailer trucks. "Talk to the hand, loser!" Whirling about in the air before diving downward, she planted both sets of knuckles squarely on her foe's nose, staggering Keres and giving her time to turn to her senior classmate. "It felt like something happened to Sage, and Citizen's all by himself!" she observed, concern on her lightning bolt painted face. "I've got this, go! I'll catch up!"