ic Incursion: Uploaded to the Cloud

[Fox]

"I have never understood your kind of...philosophy," Wraith criticized, though she shot a concerned glance toward Ghost Girl. Her friend seemed to be holding it together, but with all that fire....she had to keep this thing's focus elsewhere, lest it turn the sun's fire on Kimber and either truly harm her or push her into truly harming someone else.

Both hands bloated into spiked hammers, like over-sized meat tenderizers, as the arms they attached to spooled out into long, thick tendrils. "It is a kind of...egotism, is the word?...to assume a divine, a damnation. Your hubris is to believe that your final path is right above all others, and that it allows you to force it upon weaker beings."

She jerked back a step, the two whip-hammers lashing forward to slam together on either side of the "angel"'s head. "It is not acceptable."

[Ecalsneerg]

Equinox contemptuously swept aside the last trails of energy clinging to her shield. "And my will is strong, false god," she said confidently, pulling her wand forth from her robes. She twirled it once in her fingers. "And in deference to my ghostly compatriot, whose needs I must apologise for forgetting..." Cold air swirled in the gap between the Angel and Dr Drake. 
 
She thrust her wand sharply forward. Lumps of ice began forming in the air, swirling and coruscating in a cyclone towards the Angel, sweeping over it and merging, freezing and solidifying into a solid mass as it went. "Class, observe how even the air heeds that will."

[trollthumper]

"You know," said Nick, "I've seen a lot of divines. And I mean, a lot of divines. Some are nice. Some are stern. Some are, by all mortal definitions, insane. And others are, by all moral definitions, absolute bastards. So, you showing up and touting yourself as the will of some divine entity is not exactly the reassuring offer you think it is."

 

The angel was still bound and drowned out by the force of air pushed by Equinox... but the cloud of silver particles seem to bristle at Nick's invective, churning like a small sandstorm in the twilight sky. Before it could move, however, the air around it likewise began to congeal. A mist of ectoplasm wafted out of the bricks of the street, coalescing into something like gelatin around the storm of nanites, trapping it in place. Nick poured his will into the construct, but he knew it was somewhat shoddy - he was better skilled at crafting arms meant to capture flesh, not some sort of goo meant to capture tiny particles. But perhaps it would do...

[Gizmo]

"I think you don't belong here and you should get out!" Ghost Girl demanded in a voice like howling wind rattling rotted window frames and whistling hungrily through gaps. The phantom sped forward, her mutable form elongating slightly as she blurred through the air and came about on the opposite side of the angelic figure from Wraith. He immaterial hands passes easily though the icy bonds Equinox has formed until her fingers could slip around the inhuman evangelist's throat and behind to squeeze. They passed only barely into her victim's heck before sparks and wisps of black smoke began pouring outward, the electronics there crumpling and failing at the poltergeist's unnatural touch. Face still hidden in shadows apart from cold blue points of light and glinting icicle teeth she snarled, "How certain do you feel?"

[Ecalsneerg]

Hayley dashed into a nearby bush, panting slightly from the exertion. Her paws powered up until only her head was poking out of the top of the bush, looking left and right fretfully as the battle raged around the angelic figure. 

 

She lifted her nose, closed her eyes... and sniffed deeply. She didn't really look for normal interesting smells, like food or food or drink or anything like that. The weirder, boring stuff, like spells or talismans or chalk circles. Magic stuff. If she could find stuff, she could tell her mistress, who'd help her figure it out.

[MisterShoebox]

Phantasmo realized that birds weren't the way to go here. NO SIR. Not for Mrs. Trent's boy. Still, he did have his ace up his sleeve - hah, that was a good one -

 

The zombie gave off a wild laugh and 'ported up to the roof of a small, two-story building so he could get a good shot at yon Big UGly Angelpants. "EEEEEYAAAAAHAHAHAHA! PICK A CARD, ANY CARD! THEY'RE ALL WILD, DUCKY!"

 

Phantasmo gave a flourish of his hand and a large, razor-sharp playing card appeared. He gave a flick of his wrist and flung it  at the Errant Metal Angel, but...*WHIFF*...missed entirely. "Doooooh, this  just isn't my day." he muttered to himself as he leaned against a convientent chimney. "C'mon, Harry!- " he told himself - "Time to show this lot you're not ENTIRELY useless..."

 

Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. He pulled his communication device from his pocket and addressed the others. "Ooh - 'scuse me, duckies!  Do any of you manic members of this magical menagerie have a means of drawing power from outside sources? Because it occurs to me that this big angelic bastard - powerful and winged as he may be - is flying, making hapless villagers go *Poof*! and all sorts of fun tricks. As such, it requires energy, right? D'you think any of you could siphon the power from his batteries a bit?"

Edited February 19, 2015 by MisterShoebox

[Fox]

"Hmm." Wraith rose above the angel, most of her mass shifting up into a single, over-sized arm, though the distribution seemed uneven. It was a surprisingly unagile choice for her usual fighting methods, but the reason quickly became clear: while the spiked hammer-fist that descended on the 'angel' would have been bad enough, the piston-like descent of her body's mass down the arm after only multiplied the damage.

"I could make myself conductive to electricity," she belatedly replied as her mass re-balanced, "but I cannot guarantee it would not harm me, and I do not know that I would be useful draining a more exotic power source. I believe the amount of damage necessary to physically tap into our enemy would leave me better-off simply eating it, as well."

"Which I will," she added, sternly, three eyes frowning down at the Angel admonishingly, "if you continue to attempt to hurt innocent people and my friends."

[Ecalsneerg]

<Issue! Issue!> came Hayley's voice in Siobhan's head.

 

"What?" she snapped, out loud instead of in her head. <What is it?>

 

<No magic, no magic. Not any magic.> Equinox frowned mentally as the raccoon clarified. <It's not magic.>

 

Equinox lifted her wand, to point dead at the nominal angel. "Well, so it'd seem, Mr Divine Emissary, that there's absolutely nothing of the magic to you. The only magic in this area is what we brought, and I got confirmation. Sir, we deal with real divine emissaries. I'm going to give you a chance to acknowledge this and accept the implications of aggravating us if we can deal with them. And stand down."

[trollthumper]

The angel smiled, but between the beatings from Wraith and everything else, it looked more like a demented rictus than anything comforting. "You do not know divinity," it said. "Your patrons hide behind the veil of reality, not daring to weather the storm of existence. Mine is the living god, the true divine, the apotheosis forged from steel and souls. The glory that lives forever and ever --"

 

"Ever?" Nick willed phantom flame to his fingertips, letting it run up his arms and shoulders to form a spectral aura. "I don't know who you're carrying water for, and I highly doubt you're going to tell me. But I know a thing or two about life and death. The gods I deal with may hide in their underworlds, but they know things about existence you couldn't begin to grasp. Lesson number one: everything ends." 

 

The ball of flame flew from Nick's hands, catching the angel right in the face. The psychic flames licked into its consciousness, struggling against whatever impulses were holding its form together. Slowly, the metal began to melt like candle wax, starting from the scalp and working its way down. "Such... aberrance." The dulcet tones were gone now, shot through with notes of static and dying recordings. "You will not... embrace the divine. You must... be made... to see."

 

The angel collapsed, suspended in mid-air like a hanged criminal. Its form began to slough off in waves, the metal flesh washing down on the ground like rain. As it did, though, the cloud of nanotech - the ascended cultist who had tried to protect its savior - swept into the inert mass, whipping up a storm. Sparks flew as the metal rain ceased to fall, rising up and creating a greater storm. The mass shifted and twitched, lashing out at the walls of the Museo Nacional. In some places, the stone was worn away; in others, it took on the same sheen as the storm, metal leeching into the stone and spreading like an oil slick.

 

"It's trying to take the city with it!" said Nick. "If anyone's got any containment, disruption, storm, or destructive talents, now's a very good time to use them! Rein this thing in and tear it apart!" 

[Ecalsneerg]

"On it," said Equinox, lifting her wand above her head. She screwed her eyes shut, dimming their glow. Light crackled from her feet, up her body, going upwards and upwards into her fingertips. As it went, the colour drained from her already pale skin. The combination of this, and her eyes being shut, lent her a different image, one of fatigue and weariness, rather than super witch.

 

The light shot upwards from her wand, into the clouds, causing them to whirl and spiral around the beam of light. The spiral grew wider, and wider, and wider, grey spreading across the sky. Equinox let out a single breath, and brought her wand down slowly, the light dimming.

 

She opened her eyes suddenly, and as light flared from them once more, the clouds swept downwards, into a whirling corona of wind and water vapour, tight around the area of combat, trying to keep the nanobots contained within one area.

[MisterShoebox]

Phantasmo wasn't as experienced as his other compatriots, and he'd felt like an eighth wheel ever since he had arrived; his attacks hadn't done much and his trademark hamminess had failed him (shock and horror.) However - never let it be said that he was unable to try something...unorthodox.

 

 

The gallivanting ghoul leaped off the rooftop where he had been standing and let  out another booming laugh. He booked it as close as he could to the nanite swarm. "AND FOR MY MOST AMAZING TRICK - FEAST YOUR EYES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ON...." He gave a flourish with his hands and a swarm of razor-sharp playing cards flew from his sleeves, which he aimed at the cloud as he 'ported around it. 

 

"...A GAME OF 52 PICKUP! EEEEEYAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!" he crowed as the cards pelted and sliced the nanites, disrupting the pattern and making it hard for them to reconstitute...he hoped. If this didn't work - he'd feel very foolish indeed. 

 

Still, he persisted 'porting around the swarm and giving it his all. Never let it be said that Mrs. Trent's little boy gave up easily, NO SIR!

Edited February 28, 2015 by MisterShoebox

[Fox]

Wraith hesitated for only a moment before narrowing her eyes and rushing what had been the angel creature; she didn't get to it in time to stop it from dissolving, but she did what she could to surround and engulf the remains that hadn't disintegrated and escaped yet.

And 'engulf' was certainly the right word - she ballooned outward, thinning into a large, thick sheet of liquid metal that swallowed the angel's rapidly-dissipating form up and held on tight. Unseen by human eyes, the inside of the new Wraith-bubble became a thousand minuscule mouths, a legion of all-devouring metal-grinders. The Kinigosi's biology was certainly well-suited to the task of dissolving any metallic substances, macro- or micro-scopic, but she just had to hope that she'd eat the nanites before they ate her.

[Gizmo]

Ghost Girl let out a cry that was half disgusted, half frustrated as the artificial being came apart around her incorporeal fingers. Shaking off the last of the terror-induced rage clouding her senses she sped through the sudden clouds and mad flurry of projectiles to better position herself before unhinging her ectoplasmic jaw and unleashing a gale of winter into the thickest spot of nanites she should see. Ice crystals formed around tiny groupings of the microscopic invaders as the blizzard blasted into them, snowflakes that were quickly caught up in Equinox's wind and swept away. "How do we know if we got all of them?" she shouted quickly before letting loose another literally bone-chilling scream.

[trollthumper]

That was a good question. Nick didn't know much about technology, but he knew enough to know why they were called "nanobots." From what he saw of the storm, however, it was clear that if these things were active, they'd be consuming and converting. Then he realized something. If the "angel" had been talking to them silently... "I've got a way with machines!" said Nick. "If I just open my ears, I can --" 

 

The word of rust went both ways, as he could now hear the nanobots at the heart of the storm. They were screaming, their internal memories shredded as they were either consumed, dismantled, or shorted out. But behind the tinny, tiny screams of the swarm, there was something deeper. An echo like the horn of the last angel, filtered down into such tiny steel. The magnitude of the voice behind it all almost left Nick stunned. But in time, that voice fell still, as the shrieks of dying nanobots faded into nothingness, leaving only the din of the storm. 

 

"Bring it home," said Nick. "The machines are dead. Well and truly dead." 

 

With the storm down, there was little left but silver slush and glitter on the ground. Parts of the museum and the pavement had taken on veins of black and gunmetal where the storm had started, but said veins showed no signs of expansion. They were frozen, just fixtures now. 

 

"I think it's dead. But I got a look at the man behind the curtain. Something was trying very damn hard to evangelize through this thing. Something massive."