The Closed Circle! (IC)

[VideoGeek]

Cosmos tilts his head confusedly for a moment, and then points down, briefly. "I know I'm not floating real high up or anything, but I hardly ever touch the ground in costume, man. Once I'm off the ground, I can hardly bring myself to land. As for electric floors, gimme just a sec." He fidgets with one of his gauntlets for a brief moment, which then emits an emerald dump truck scoop, that the Corporal pushes ahead of him, calling, "This hallway is not safe for civilians, please return to the hall and wait for the authorities, thank you!" in an attempt to usher the innocents out of the way before the area becomes dangerous.

[Raveled]

"Ironclad," the heroine said as she knelt down next to one of the devastated robots. "This is actually not bad work, you know. If he wasn't twisted and evil, Weissnacht could be an okay guy." She stood up, shaking her head sharply. "Guys like the Contenders, I can take them or leave them. But folks like Weissnacht are wasting so much potential, so many chances to do good. And that just makes me angry."

Ironclad gathered the heroes close. She projected a hologram against the wall of the skyscraper's schematics. "If there are explosives," she said, "they should be placed here and here." She pointed to two places, one very close to the building's foundations and one partway up the building's core. "I figure, one of us each goes to the explosives, just in case he has more robo-bullies standing guard. And the rest of us will keep Weissnacht busy, directly."

[VideoGeek]

A moment of silence passes as Corporal Cosmos considers the implications of Ironclad's plan. "Um, how big a boom are we talking about, here? 'Cause I'm not generally the brains of the operation, and deactivating a bomb always looks tricky in the movies. Or is this gonna be more of a 'Smash 'n Grab' kind of situation? THAT, I can handle."

[Shofet]

The Penitent nodded, floating in the air.

"I'm supposin' that it's going to be you for both, Miss Ironclad, since I'm figuring anything I might have learned at Seminary won't be much use with these bombs. But whatever you think works."

He looked Corporal Cosmos and Ironclad up and down, and then began to communicate with both companions mentally.

"From what I've gathered by my little mind-conversations with Weissnacht, and what's going on here, I'm thinking he's probably unhinged. At the very least, he's an extremist, so if sees his plan starting to go South, well, I'm worried he might just let the other bomb go just so he doesn't "lose". Dangit..."

He sighed audibly.

"But I do know he's not watching carefully. He's focused on something else, which means we will need to be fast, and I mean fast. Also means we should try to not draw attention to ourselves. That means we should not keep calling him out, since it's already got him fightin' mad and well, we all know what crazy people do with bombs when they're provoked."

He clicked his heels. "However, I think he has a special hatred for me, which means I might be able to draw attention from you guys if this is just a smash and grab. I don't mind putting myself on the firing line if you both think you can disable the bombs. Is that good?

[VideoGeek]

"Ugh, that just feels awkward. Like somebody's running a back massager across the back of my brain. A cold one." Corporal Cosmos rubs at his helmeted head a moment as he responds in his mind's voice. Turning to their other compatriot, he continues, "Ironclad, can you fly, or should I be taking the one further up? And any idea how I can disable the thing? Push comes to shove, I can just cocoon it in a light-box, but I don't know how well it would hold a bomb at close range."

[Raveled]

"Depends on the kind of bomb," Ironclad admitted. "If it's directional, just putting it in the middle of a room without anything around it might serve to effectively disable it. Something like thermite could be broken into little bits, with C4 you could just pull out the detonator as long as it isn't booby-trapped." She shrugged and stepped back, the map snapping off. "I'll take the one in the elevator shaft, I'll need to fly for that anyway. Cosmos, search the foundations. Penitent? Go ahead and be an annoying bee." She rose into the sky with a burst of thrusters and made her way to the nearest bank of elevators. She didn't wait for them to respond to her call, simply forcing the doors open with servo strength. There was no car waiting for her and she simply headed up, thrusters flaring in the darkness of the unlit shaft.

[Shofet]

The Penitent nodded, and shot a thumbs up to Corporal Cosmos, before taking off down the hall and into the stairway, flying upwards

"Now, oh wise Whipper-Snocker, you said something about shocking me? Funny how you never went through with that, huh? I suppose it's because you're actually scared of me. I'm bigger than you and that threatens you, but not enough to risk making me mad and beatin' you something fierce. But that's okay. We can't all be masculine. Some of us have to be wimpy little eggheads, or there will be no one to fix my cable."

"You hide behind a bomb because you can't fight. You use robots because you're too much of a coward to fight for yourself. You're no Napoleon. Even Napoleon went out to the front of the battlefield. But not you. You'll never be one of the greats. Just a mediocre jerk who got his butt landed in the slammer by some half-bit Southern hayseed."

Suddenly, he switched to a perfect form of Viennese German.

"Oh, und Weißenacht? Ich spreche Sie Deutsch." He switched back to English. "I just love how mad you get when I mess up your name."

[VideoGeek]

Corporal Cosmos followed Ironclad into the elevator shaft, but shot downward, instead of going higher. Once he reached the basement level of the building, he activated his sensor suite, and began searching for the theoretical bomb. "Man, this is all conjecture, and now I'm searching for a bomb I don't know how to disarm instead of fighting the bad guy. What a day," Steven thought to himself bitterly. "I guess if the hero thing was always as simple as knocking a mad scientist on his @#$, everyone would do it, though. And it IS a bomb, pretty important." Having reminded himself of his task's gravity, Corporal Cosmos began his search in earnest.

[Ari]

GM

The people who had wandered into the hallway had begun to look more and more concerned as they overheard the heroes discussing the issue of the bombs. Killer robots were one thing, and a sight most Freedonians saw at least once in their lives, bombs set to destroy the building they were currently trapped within were another matter entirely. The situation the nervous, whispering people glancing worriedly at their currently only chance of rescue found themselves in had at least some precedent, but knowing the weapons of sudden death lurked somewhere in the skyscraper would have been unsettling to practically anyone.

Ironclad found the bomb without difficulty, a large blue spherical thing attached to one of the doors with a large magnet. It had everything a bomb-defuser could wish for: a large digital countdown showing 'precise time to detonation' as the interface declared, with the count reaching into the milliseconds, an outer shell with easily discernable detachment points, even a diagram for which wires controlled which elements of the device with clear signs which to remove in what order. At present it was at 7.45.58.807 hours and counting.

The Penitent 'heard' a sudden blare of red, vicious anger, a chorus of injured pride at being taken in, and at the intentional slight, that only barely covered the din of the furious Weissnacht as he vented his rage on the roof. With a whine and screech of static the monitors came back to life, showing the bandage-like helmet, bathed in the livid glow of the powerful force field. The security cameras turned of seemingly their own accord and fixed their lenses on the Penitent as he flew, and the younger man's cool voice slid through the sound feed. In Austrian the armored man said <"I see you've decided to actually back up your words. Please don't hurry, I need a few minutes to finish sketching out how much pain I'm going to put you through for that">

The feed cut out with a jolt of static.

Meanwhile, the soaring Corporal Cosmos had quickly located a bomb identical to that Ironclad had discovered underneath an astoundingly expensive-looking car. Either Weissnacht traveled in style, or else he had unresolved issues with those who did.

[VideoGeek]

Corporal Cosmos interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles before generating a hard-light vehicle lift and boosting the luxury auto to just high enough that he could stand under it. After looking at the magnetic plate for a moment, He conjured up a crowbar as well, and began working at prying the explosive from the vehicle. At first, he just grunted and strained, to no avail. After a few moments, Cosmos decided to try from the other side, and the thing popped off with ease, and he crafted a box around it before it hit the floor. Once he was out from under the car, he lowered it back to the ground and dismissed his tools, leaving just the box around the bomb, that he trailed, hovering, behind him a ways as he looked for a way outside the building. From what he heard earlier, Cosmos was guessing his target was at the top of the building, and if this gadget was dangerous, he couldn't think of a better place for it than right next to its builder. "I find this guy, the real fun starts," Steven mutters to himself, smirking.

[Shofet]

The Penitent chuckled, and sped up, zipping through the stairway and then into the last level of the building, before reaching top speed and ripping open the door.

He smirked at Weissnacht, and landed, wiping his sunglasses on his shirt, talking to Weissnacht without looking at him. He maintained the Viennese German.

He put his sunglasses on, and looked up at Weissnacht, cracking his neck.

[Raveled]

Ironclad pulled a face at the helpfully-provided diagram. "Right," she said, rotating one wrist and causing a pair of thin metal rods to pop out of her gauntlet; she plucked them free and began to work on the seals of the bomb. "Malcolm Dawes didn't raise no stupid granddaughter. You're not going to get me with something that stupidly obvious. She carefully teased open the face of the bomb, ignoring the diagram and time display both. She briefly considered contacting Corporal Cosmos and talking him through the disarming process, but she didn't even know if he had a cellphone or commlink or anything like that on him.

[Ari]

GM

<So, fraulein, let's dance.>

<"Agreed"> said the armored Austrian as he raised a hand, the metal bands sliding back to reveal the maze of interworked, pusling green tubes that lay underneath. With a dull whine, a lance of power blazed forth from the outstretched hand, slamming into the Penitent with enough power to turn the world into a wheeling mass of color and dull pain, leaving a painful bruise on the man's chest.

With a grin that could be detected even while his head was so covered, Weissnacht continued <"You won't mind if I lead, do you? The 'Beating You to a Pulp' dance is a favorite of mine"> his electronically-smoothed voice gave a slight hiss of static as the metal-shrouded man walked towards his temporarily disoriented foe, the metal around his hands thickening for the blows he was about to strike with them...

Meanwhile, the science heroine Ironclad had needed only a few moments to look the innards of the spherical device over before the true purpose and intent of the things became clear.

[VideoGeek]

Upon reaching the exterior of the building, Corporal Cosmos found a usable gap between the walls and the force field, and knew exactly what he'd be doing next. He removed the bomb from the hard-light casing he had built around it, and took it in his arms before flying up the side of the building, careful not to touch the building or the shielding, and not to go full speed, to reduce noise. Upon reaching the roof, the first thing he saw was the German jerk approaching Cosmos' devilish new friend. No one would be able to see Steven's wide grin as he quipped, "Hey, Weiner-Shnitzel, you left something downstairs!" While holding up the bomb in his left hand for the villain to see.

[Ari]

GM

The shout from behind halted Weissnacht in his tracks, and with a slight click of metal on metal he turned to face the corporal. "Really, Penitent? You could-OH NO!" he exclaimed in horror, glowing blue(their color rather overpowered by the sickly sheen of the field) slits scattered over his helmet suddenly widening as he saw the pale blue orb held aloft. Quickly regaining his composure he declared with as much severity and dramatic power as he could "That..that will not avail you, Starblazer, or whoever you are! Come face me, I am more than a match for your cosmic might!" he adopted a combat stance, seeming to disregard the Penitent as he put up his strengthened fists in a boxing position.

[VideoGeek]

For just a moment, all Corporal Cosmos could do was stare, dumbstruck, at the megalomaniacal moron. "...You took over a skyscraper, during a science expo, and expect I'm dumb enough to come and let you punch me?" he responded casually, while he made some odd finger movements with his right hand. "I really don't think I'll be doing that," he finished. Cosmos stretched out his right arm and opened his hand, issuing forth a shape like a giant green clamp, which snapped shut, unfortunately just short of its target. "Well, crap." Cosmos muttered.

[Ari]

GM

Weissnacht rolled his eyes(an action wasted, as his ocular ports couldn't replicate such a motion), saying dily through his voice synthesizer "Buddy, don't talk big if you can't even judge distance properly." He had stepped back a few inches in sheer surprise when he had seen the incoming clamp, but he saw no need to make his foe aware fo that. Spinning on a metal-shod heel, he resumed his earlier walk towards the dazed Penitent. Looking his horned enemy over for a few seconds, he snickered, drew back a suddenly much spikier arm, and slammed it into the side of Bram's head, using the momentum of a slight turn to the right to add weight to his already powerful attack.

He scowled when he realized his enemy was simply cut and lightly concussed, and muttering obscenities prepared for another try. he had absolutely every intention of beating his insulter to death, which would have a profound effect on negotiations with the outside world(and maybe the other heroes too he thought).

[Raveled]

Ironclad looked at the components in her hands. There wasn't any explosives there at all; just the countdown timer and something that looked a lot like what Mara used for her dimensional work. In fact, if she assumed that the green writing was coordinates in Eisenstein space/time, this wouldn't blow anything up. It could move something all the way to... Oh no.

The heroine dropped the bits in her hands and rocketed up through the elevator shaft, dodging around cars and heading for the top level. Before long she had pried open the door at the top of the shaft and flew out to the roof, where Corporal Cosmos and Penitent were already confronting Weissnacht. "Don't let him get the bomb," she called out to the other heroes. "It's not a bomb, it's an escape route. Designed to send someone straight to the moon, isn't it?"

[VideoGeek]

Corporal Cosmos glanced at the gauntlet on his right arm for a moment, before drawing his arm back and thrusting it forward again to send out another grasping tool to hold the Deutsch douche in place for a moment. Even worse than his prior attempt, however, Cosmos' projection merely fell flat on the ground only a few yards in front of him, never nearing its target. Cosmos dismissed the apparition, in hopes no one had actually noticed it, and took to the air again to try his luck from a further distance. "Yo, Ironclad! What do you want me to actually DO with this thing?" he shouted.

[Ari]

GM

"Of course not!" exclaimed Weissnacht hotly, turning away from his bloodied foeman to confront the gadget genius "Whyever would I do such a thing? That's just a bomb meant to destroy this building and kill everyone, not some teleportation device! And now let us consider other things" he continued, the armor sliding back from his left hand as he pointed it at Ironclad "Such as the durability of that suit's armor, for instance!" With a noise like a thunderclap, a colorless ray slammed into the scientist.

"I'll be with you in a minute, just stay right there" he called over his shoulder to the Penitent "I just need to get rid of these guys and I'll get back to turning you into a smear on the floor"

[VideoGeek]

Corporal Cosmos took advantage of his new vantage point to once again attempt to detain his felonious foe in his glowing green grip. He only managed slightly better than the previous attempt, however, and the projected pincers fell straight down, clattering against the roof of the tower. Sighing, Cosmos took a moment to swith settings on his gauntlet once again, and prepared for his next opening.

[Ari]

GM

The armored Austrian stared at the energy construct falling short for the third time that battle. "Good Lord, what is WRONG with you today?" he demanded in bafflement, stepping a little closer to examine the thing before it winked out of existence "Is that some kind of cut-rate space-armor thing? Pretty sure Star Knight never misses like that" he added with a hint of a sneer behind the electronic masking of his voice.

He glared at the three heroes, especially at Ironclad for ruining his ruse, and suddenly realized something "Wait..why am I fighting you alone? That's crazy!" tapping a panel on an uncovered portion of his suit, an electronic pulse could be felt, the purpose of which was revealed when ten of the hulking robots spilled out from the ventilation mouths on the roof, single eyes narrowing as they took their targets, but at the moment they were in a bit of a jumble, some of them having trouble keeping their limbs out of each other's way.

"Much better!" exclaimed Weissnacht, who spun on his heel, took aim at the floating Corporal, and fired a nearly invisible blast of power that warped the air as it struck..the forcefield several feet from the cosmic champion. In the brief silence that followed, the roboticist looked in confusion at his suit, muttering "Did I cross that power source while getting the cells to fit? No, maybe...." he peered at the electric blue sheathe that lay under his armor, eyes narrowed as he searched for the problem. One of the slits was still on each hero, however.

[Shofet]

The Penitent's mind ceased whirling as he finally managed to sustain the pain of the blows, and he sucked on the new wound in his mouth, spitting out a gob of blood. His sunglasses lay broken on the ground beside him, and his shirt had more or less been destroyed, so he just tossed it off as he got to his feet, eyes searching for Weissnacht. His eyes narrowed into slits when he saw what the armoured villain was doing.

The Penitent ignored the robots completely, and took up into the air, surging forward. His fist slammed into Weissnacht's armour, not focused on the body but the plates themselves, and suddenly, an unholy force surge through them, weakening the plates and bonds and loosening the rivets.

"Don't ever turn your back on an opponent" His voice had gained an almost infernal edge to it as he barked. "Especially one like me!"

He raised his hand, hellfire appearing suddenly in a dull flash of light, but this blast was different than the ones before. This one was bigger, hotter, more powerful. Suddenly, he slammed it down into the side of Weissnacht's head, knocking the opponent unconscious.

"You alright, Corporal?"

He panted, sweat dripping from his brow as his bruises ached.

[VideoGeek]

Corporal Cosmos gave Penitent the A-OK with his free hand while replying, "He didn't get any closer than I did. So much for all his brainy bravado." Cosmos' right hand fidgeted a moment, before he again extended his arm, this time towards the nearest Weissbot, and shot forth yet another green claw of force. Finally having hit his mark for a change, Cosmos proceeded to pull on the tether of force with all his might to slam the captive automaton into one of its fellows. The ambling androids slammed into each other with a crash of metal and sparks, and Cosmos pulled away to hover off the edge of the building, maintaining his hold on the hull of his first target.

[Ari]

GM

The force of the throw, and the impact of the two bots, sent reverberations through the roof. The two robots fell to the ground as the one was sent crashing into the other, a tangle of twitching metal bodies writhing as they both struggled against one another. The one that had been used as a projectile however, had been horribly damaged from the impact, its chest caved in, head snapped nearly off, and most of its limbs bent double from the smash into its comrade who had activated its force dispersion field in time.

Shrugging off its mangled comrade, the sleek robot turned its single eye cooly at the offender and assaulter, and with a sharp electronic chirp it and 7 of its fellows opened their gun ports, firing a vicious salvo at the three rescuers. Three concentrated their fire on the star-spanning Corporal, two aimed their pellets at the Penitent, and two others rained fire on the second ironclad.