DragonRage

"I have yet to find myself in great peril in this location," Alexandria observes mildly, "I believe your assessment underestimates myself and my subordinates. However, I have no desire for unnecessary conflict. What does your test entail?"

Alexandria raises her shield as a precaution, and steps between the fin and the portal. She then attempts to open a dialogue. "Hello there! Are you capable of communicating with me?"

"No! Wai- And he's gone," Lexiel sighs. "With that ID chip in him, they'll tag him the moment he steps through the door. And we're wanted for attempted murder, because Halley got trigger-happy, so we'll be easily recognized. Stealth is not an option anymore! Well, give me a sec and I'll summon something we can use to breach. We can grab him on the way. He can't have gone far." Lexiel gathers mana, and summons Hypersonic Dragon! She then jumps onto its back. "So, who wants to ride a rocket-powered dragon over and through their defenses instead of getting arrested at the front door?"

"I POSSESS A DOCTORATE!" The armored man declares, "A DOCTORATE IN DOOM! AND ALSO A DOCTORATE IN QUANTUM PHYSICS. DOOM IS AS VERSATILE AS HE IS MAGNIFICENT!" That clarified, Doctor Doom steps through his disc, and does not appear on the other side. The disc vanishes silently, leaving you free to loot the room. Items Gained! [OOC: You now have all the major loot items save the potential bonus rewards for the Sombra side-quest. I'd strongly recommend deciding who gets what and equipping what you can before proceeding.]

"HA! HA! HA!" The armored man's laugh sounds incredibly fake, but there's an air of sincerity to it that makes anyone who cares think maybe he actually laughs like that. "YOUR BANTER IS NOT OF THE QUALITY THAT DOOM HAS BECOME ACCUSTOMED. BUT FEW CAN MATCH THE MOUTH OF THE MAN OF SPIDERS, SO DOOM CHOOSES TO APPRECIATE YOUR ATTEMPTS TO MAKE DOOM FEEL AT HOME, RATHER THAN CRUSHING YOUR FEEBLE SELF-IMAGE. "OF COURSE DOOM KNOWS THAT THE CHRONAL ACCELERATOR MUST NOT REMAIN HERE. DOOM IS REMOVING IT FROM THIS PLACE. IT WILL BE SAFE FROM THE CREATURES FROM BEYOND THE VEIL INSIDE CASTLE DOOM. BAH, DOOM HAS NO TIME TO PLAY WITH YOU. TAKE THIS WORTHLESS TRINKET, AND PERHAPS IF WE MEET AGAIN YOU SHALL BE WORTH DOOM'S TIME." The armored man tosses a small, metal bracelet, which bounces off Wyvis' forehead, before turning back to his green disc and walking toward it. Friedhold is able to deduce that "Doom" is heading for the portal, that his armor restricts and weighs him down enough to make dodging bullets unlikely, and that he doesn't have any obvious physical weaknesses.

"Yes. Those are leaves," Taylor confirms, having followed out of curiosity. Struck by a hunch, he uses his A-comm to scan the gigantic palm tree. He doesn't quite know what has raised his suspicions; the material was probably on one of the tests he very carefully bombed to maintain his barely passing grades.

"Don't worry!" Harbin contributes, "I know how to cast a death ward! All deaths here shall be explicable and mundane!"

30th Floor Labs Friedhold pushes through the elevator door along with anybody else feeling brave and curious, and finds himself in a large, open machine shop. Some of the heavy tools he recognizes, and a lot he's never seen before, but the finished products are easy enough to spot. A fuzzy-collared blue and white jacket, entirely inappropriate for the climate outside, sits on a manikin. A thick, metal cylinder is affixed to its back, with several hoses leading off that don't seem to be attached to anything on the other side. Standing next to it is a suit of plate armor in Vishkar white and purple, equipped with a predatory, beaked visor and short, mechanical wings on its back. On a nearby table, a thick belt with some kind of gadget attached to it sits next to an ornate, silver ring with a skull on it. Oh, and a man in gunmetal-grey plate armor and a green cloak is striding towards a glowing green disc floating in mid-air, a white harness with a blue glow in its center clasped in his right hand. He turns towards the group, and though his visor is down, his body language is of mild surprise and moderate annoyance. "HEROES!" He exclaims in a heavily synthesized voice, "DOOM HAS NO TIME FOR YOUR PETTY MEDDLING. GROVEL BEFORE DOOM OR BE GONE WITH YOU!"

"Some experimentation required," Samantha confirms. The pen, still floating in her telekinetic grip, has gotten a little bent, but otherwise seems more or less intact as she watches it from the corner of her eyes. "But that's stuff to test when I have something to hit I know can backstop me. Still, thank you for your advice. I'll be sure to try your suggestions when I get the chance, Navin. In the mean-time, I'll work on doing what I can do without the power-up with it on, see if I can get some finesse. Worth a shot, anyway."

"...You're probably right. I don't know if I like it, but you're right. If I just clamp down all the time, that's asking for an explosion the moment I get distracted or another telepath has a go at me," Samantha reasons unhappily. "Okay, you might want to stand back a bit, just in case. And, uh, knock me out fast if you start feeling any inexplicable pain." Tension drains from Samantha's entire body, as though she had dropped an incredibly heavy backpack. Golden-yellow flames swirl around her body, leaving her clothes rendered in clean white and metallic gold, a stylized, golden Phoenix emblem taking shape on her breast pocket and back. They intensify briefly over her chest, face, and right thigh, leaving clean skin and pain-free movement behind, before dying down somewhat to linger in the air about her, dancing merrily. They feel warm, but not painfully so, like sitting next to a blazing hearth on a cold winter's night. "Holy moley. It's like a little star, right here," Samantha mutters, sounding a little breathless as she taps her breastbone. "Nobody's brains dribbling out their ears? Try not to startle me too badly; we want to keep things that way until I get a firmer handle on this. But... Maybe I won't have as much trouble with that as I thought. I can already tell the other stuff is going to still need work. I feel like the Phoenix will give me more power if I ask, but it's actually trying to keep from overloading me. Not totally succeeding, but loads better than the last time I tried this. You're definitely right. Practice. I need it. But if you've got any tips or tricks for controlling large amounts of power, I'm all ears."

"Well, if you're not from the same universe as me, you're probably not going to execute me for something my sister did," Samantha mutters, "Okay, there's this entity called the Phoenix Force. It's existed for as long as the oldest universe, the embodiment of life and growth. But it doesn't exactly understand people on a personal level. The scale difference involved is... well, beyond our comprehension. So it bonds itself to humans, and for whatever reason it thinks its perfect host is going to come from my family. It tried my cousin Jean first. She kind of went full-on supervillain crazy, killed a lot of people, and died. She got better, of course, and everybody on Earth forgave her, because Jean Grey can do no wrong, but pretty much everybody on every other planet has decided that all Phoenix hosts must die just to be safe. So if I'm wrong and you're from my world, I might've just signed my death warrant. But when Jean came back, the Phoenix didn't come with her. Instead, it tried her alternate dimension possible future daughter, because that was totally the logical second choice. Rachel didn't go crazy, at least, but the Phoenix eventually left her too. A week ago, it decided I was the next Grey to try. I can call upon it to make my powers stronger, but I've got almost no training in using powers that don't suck, and it's incredibly hard on my body. Professor Xavier said it's because my base powers are so weak, channeling that much energy places a lot of strain on me. Draw too much energy, and I'll burn from the inside out. And when it's on, just keeping everybody else's thoughts out of my head is almost more than I can handle, let alone actually doing something useful," She buries her face in her hands, rubbing her temples. "Before, I felt like my powers were useless. They were so weak I didn't even consider becoming a hero. And now I've got all the power I could dream of, but I feel like one wrong twitch and... Well, you get the idea. Unless you have any ideas for safely using omega-level powers I can barely control, the best I can do is keep them bottled up as best I can, and hope the Phoenix moves on before I leave somebody braindead or worse."

"Huh. Of course we are," Samantha goes to facepalm, and then winces again as doing so jars something inside her. "Fucking ow! Well, I suppose I can't be too surprised. Although I do wonder if maybe they weren't looking for my cousin. She's the one who's done this sort of thing before. Are you with the Avengers? If not, well, most superheroes are pretty solid. I'm Samantha Grey. Pleasure to see we've got a real hero on this thing, if one I've never heard of before. So, I'm given to understand that super team-ups should start with showing off our powers? I've got this," She concentrates, and a pen hovers out from the inside pocket of her denim jacket to hover between them. She then waves her hand between herself and the pen. "Check it out: no strings needed. But I gotta wonder. I do pencils and I can convince people to do stuff they were already probably going to; my cousin Jean can throw cars around and make people do whatever she wants. She's the superhero. I'm barely above baseline. So what am I doing here?"

"Oh, thank God. Assuming that saw trap wasn't here, this probably isn't Murderworld. I'm Samantha Grey. And I'm not sure what power surge you're talking about? I wasn't doing anything. ...Not on purpose at least," Samantha asserts, glancing around the room curiously, "So who are you? You don't have the blatantly crazy evil guy look, so I'm at least prepared to consider you friendly until proven otherwise."

The Servants' Quarters The door to the bedroom makes an unholy screech of rusty metal-on-metal as Aurora and Masaru cautiously push the ancient portal open. The noise prompts the woman, barely more than a girl really, in the bed to jerk upright. Her hands twitch toward her stomach, then her temples as she winces in pain. The fiery presence inside her recedes somewhat, like a very bright lantern that's been shuttered. Then, with practiced motions, she sucks something into her mouth with a dry rattle, and spits a mouthful of blood to the side. "Fucking ow! When I sleep now too? I- I did not go to sleep in this room," She realizes, instantly going on guard. Though she's clearly not quite up to it, she pulls herself out of the bed on slightly wobbly knees, revealing that she was in fact fully clothed in there. "This could be really bad. I sure hope it isn't Arcade, the little creeper. This is so his style." And then she notices Masaru and Aurora, visibly relaxing at the sight of an obvious non-human. "Hey there! Assuming there aren't killer robots right behind you, do you know where we are? I think somebody grabbed me while I was sleeping. Unless it was you...?"

Servants' Quarters With an understated, anticlimactic 'pop!' a young woman clad in an almost excessive amount of denim and a dark T-shirt with a set of sleek, yellow, antenna-ed goggles printed on it appears on one of the beds in the servants' quarters. A trickle of blood, a few shades darker red than her hair, oozes from her right nostril, but though her face scrunches up in pain, she doesn't awaken. To most people, she wouldn't stand out in a crowd. But to anyone with good magical senses or a particularly strong connection to their instincts, she stands out like a glaring beacon of fire and terrible power, only dimmed to tolerable levels by the thin, fragile flesh that it shines through like a lampshade. Outside, the sun flares bright, golden yellow, extending wings and a beaked head of flame for barest seconds before returning to its usual shape. But nobody inside the castle could have seen that.

Team Roof The gravity in the elevator is wonky. The shaft wall that the door is in is 'down'. This does at least make it easy to climb down, which Friedhold does. The elevator car appears to be absent. As he and anyone who feels like following him travel downward, the doors in the 'floor' do their best to open at just the right time to dump them on the floor. However, this trick only works once, and Friedhold is able to make it to the 30th floor labs, or any other floor he'd like, without losing more than his dignity. Team Basement "Ah, you are in the presence of Sombra, hacker extraordinaire. You've probably never heard- You've heard of me," Sombra sighs, "Well, even if I'm a prisoner, can you at least take me with you? Vishkar hasn't checked on us in over a day now, and I'd rather be in official jail than die of thirst in here. Oh, and get my coat from the gear stash in the guard house? I really like that coat... Unless you think I could be more helpful to you free? I'm certain I can make it worth your while." "You're with Overwatch? Thank goodness. I knew they would come if they could, but Vishkar's security measures are quite formidable. I designed many of them personally," Symmetra informs Isobel and LOTUS. "Please, we must retrieve my equipment from the locker in the guard post, and proceed to the 30th floor. Ordinarily, I would suggest we leave as soon as possible, but Vishkar's experimental technology cannot be allowed to remain in their hands. Something strange is happening. I am sure you have seen it. Unfortunately, the labs have been attempting to replicate a piece of technology called a chronal accelerator. If it were damaged or altered by the events, I shudder to think what might happen to everyone and everything in the area. Possibly in the city. Additionally," The former Vishkar agent grimaces in distaste, "We may need to take Sombra with us. We'll need to crack the lab's computers to learn how to safely transport the accelerator."

Alexandria has been updated. Now she actually tanks. Though without somebody to keep her patched up, she'll be in an even worse spot than before...

Alexandria cautiously examines the risen structure from a safe distance. Can she tell what it's made of? Is it doing anything?

Team Roof Friedhold finds a staircase and an elevator that go down. It seems the non-euclidean geometry that funneled Kagari and Genji to TILT's office vanished with her demise. Team Basement Wyvis feels around the elevator shaft, and (dex 22 vs 20) finds a nearly imperceptible seam in the wall where he suspects a door might be. LOTUS' scanners are able to confirm the door's presence, and the AI uses a dummy program, on a quarantined internal emulator just to be safe, to disable the motors holding the doors in place. Good thing they weren't high security, because he did not want to hardline or go wireless in a place where Sombra, God Programs, and who knows what else is mucking about in cyberspace. With the motors offline, Wyvis and Sachi are able to muscle the doors open. Inside lies a guard station, with no guards, and behind that six small, barred cells. There are numerous sentry turrets all over the rooms, but they sense the group's Vishkar ID cards and do not open fire or sound an alarm. Two of the cells are occupied. The first contains a woman the group recognizes as Symmetra. The second holds someone none of you know: a young latina girl, perhaps 18 or 19, with smudged, dark make-up, very long, glowing fingernails and a rather memorable purple mohawk. Symmetra doesn't react to you, as you have enough Vishkar uniforms on to look like a change of the guard, but the teen's eyes pass over the group's nonstandard gear before she slides up to the bars, eyes wide and pleading. "Hey there, amigas," She calls out, in a tone that's probably meant to be friendly, though there's a bit of a biting edge under it. "I always wanted to have some friends who were good enough to infiltrate Vishkar and not get caught." Symmetra visibly perks up at that assessment, giving the group a second look as the punk girl keeps talking. "So why don't you do your new friend a favor and spring me out of here? I'd have gotten out of here already, but some pendejos have been locking me out of the system. I'd be real impressed if it wasn't keeping me stuck in a cell. So you think you can help out a friend? I'm sure I could find a way to make life easier for my new best friends in the future..."

Lexiel gets a rather curious look on her face as she examines the presented weapons. "OOooh, energy weapons. Integrated power pack, deflective plates, old school ballistics... Axe Lightsaber?! Not bad... But we can do better," She assures the group, patting her narcojet rifle, which sends a wave of ozone smell wafting over the group. She then pulls out a darksteel stylus, a few glowing, blue and bronze vials, and an amber rod that crackles with electricity. "Give me half an hour with these beauties, and then we'll really see some fireworks!" Assuming nobody has any objections, Lexiel sets to work in the inimitable Izzet fashion. Although the gleeful cackling as her projects near completion could be a bit unsettling. The laser pistol is pretty cool already, but that's no reason to not make improvements! Lexiel attempts to incorporate a widget she picked up on Zendikar into the design. Maybe if it's fit with a Prophetic Prism, this thing will be able to shoot the future! Then she adds some blue mana, heavy with the scents of sea spray and well-loved books, because blue mana always makes artifacts better. The vest seems rather plain and a bit thin for armor on its own, but some runes of order and protection, charged with white and red mana, ought to change that! Just standing near the raw mana as she infuses the garment with it evokes the sounds of swords clashing, bones breaking, and orders shouted over the din of battle. Anyone with a modicum of pride can't help sitting a little straighter after feeling it. The axe, on the other hand... Too vanilla, and way too predictable. Lexiel adds a small speaker loaded with the classic lightsaber sound effects, and a heaping dose of red mana. Axes are very red weapons already, so why not give it some lava and chaos to spice things up? And the shotgun. Boooring. Lexiel gives this one the most complex rune-work, and infuses it with weird mana. An Izzet specialty, weird mana is quite literally contradiction in its purest form. Fire and water, heat and cold, plasma and liquid, in a chaotic loop that probably should explode but somehow manages to stay in dynamic equilibrium... most of the time.

Team Roof Kagari changes tunes! Venus and Genji regain 5 HP apiece. Bridgett fires her mighty Mithral Buster, dealing 42 damage! The force is so great that TILT is knocked backwards several yards despite her heavy armor! Venus fires a magical bullet that heals him for 6 HP and deals 18 damage. The bullet actually punches through the invisible helmet that TILT is wearing, nicking her neck on its way out. Session activates! Hikari blasts away at TILT, dealing 11 damage Ana pulls out a grenade, yanks the pin, and bounces it off of TILT’s head, covering the lunatic, Kagari, and Venus in yellow fluid. Kagari and Venus each recover 12 HP. TILT yells in surprise and slight pain. Nanoboost is charging… Genji performs several insulting gestures in TILT’s general direction, before diving for cover. Hikari uses Dia on Genji! Genji is healed 14 HP. TILT attempts to do… something. None of you are sure what, because it doesn’t seem to work. “You bastards! How dare you keep me from restoring my health?!” The armored woman screeches. Ana gives her the finger. “That’s it! Time to die! HAMMER DOWN!” TILT brings the hammer up, and she slams the hammer down. Everyone except Kagari and Friedhold take 10 true damage and are stunned. Friedhold fires off a sonic blast, dealing 6 damage. TILT staggers backward, collapsing against a nearby wall. “You cockblocked my ult!” She exclaims, sounding somewhat concussed. “And where the fuck’s my team? Everybody knows you follow up on a hammerdunk! This is bullshit! This team sucks! You know what? I’m rage-quitting! Have fun dying without your tank, losers!” Then, she smashes herself in the face with her own hammer. The orange glow vanishes immediately, and the ooze sigils and her hammer evaporate in puffs of purple vapor, which seals the holes Venus and Hikari’s bullets put in it before dissapating. The corpse inside disappears into thin air, before the armor’s helmet flickers into view. Then, the machine’s torso unfolds, opening up invitingly to reveal the padded interior and controls. “Crusader Mark III online,” a cool, vaguely feminine voice states from a speaker inside the hulking armor. You have defeated Vishkar CEO TILT! Items acquired! Team Basement Wyvis, Isobel, LOTUS, and Sachi enter the elevator shaft again, where the gravity is still wonky. Since there isn't anything for them to do on the lower floors, they start walking upwards. As they travel, a chill wind sweeps through the shaft, piercing all clothing as it freezes them to the bone. Yes, even LOTUS. However, even as they begin thinking of ways to seek shelter, the wind abruptly vanishes. The cold too, albeit more slowly. Soon enough, that distraction aside, the group makes it to what LOTUS is reasonably sure is the 13th floor, assuming some weirdness hasn't mucked up his mapping. There isn't a door on this level, but perhaps something could be done to breach the wall...?

Lexiel heads outside with the rest of the group, and repeats the plan she detailed earlier, and her suggestion that somebody catch up to Bullet before he gets arrested or shivved for his pocket change. Then she turns to Halley, and twitches a bit, before the red and black bands on her hair and wings grow a little wider. She also picks up a dusting of what looks like black blush on her cheeks. "It seems I owe you something of an apology Halley. I might not believe your actions were just or well-conceived, but I can respect the spirit behind them. And, might as well get this out of the way, yes, I am blind. Yes, I'm usually very good about getting around it. But I had no idea the Councillor and the guy we fought on the roof weren't the same person, or that there was a cop right next to us when I confronted Halley. So if people could try to head me off when I make a mistake like that, it would be very helpful. Oh, and also stop waving written things at me. I'm not going to have any idea what they say unless I can use my braille translation spell and then touch them. So, who wants to ride a rocket-powered dragon through the wall of an arcology and kill some apocalypse cultists?"

"No! Don't run like- Aaand he's gone. Urza's bones! We have a big problem. Why didn't anybody tell me she was a police officer? Regardless, there's probably an APB out for us already, thank you Halley. We need to hit the Aztechology now, while we can still move freely," Lexiel states shortly, "We don't have the luxury of gathering intelligence and making a minimal-causalties, low-impact surgical strike anymore. Fortunately for us, I have a lot of experience with the less subtle side of police work, and working with limited resources. We don't have time to acquire heavy ordinance or a sneaky way into the Aztech compound, but I do have a large dragon summon. We can ride him over or through their outer defenses and breach their high security areas. From there, we do as much damage as we can, hope we can get to our objectives before they rally against us, and fly off into the sunset to lay low and teach Halley why murder is bad. Unless anybody has a better idea, we should go outside, catch Bullet, and I'll get started on summoning my dragon."

Lexiel goes absolutely, inhumanly still for about a minute. She isn't moving, she isn't even breathing, and her long hair doesn't so much as twitch in the breeze of passing people. Then, the ashen tinge at the tips of her feathers and hair darkens to a pitch black and spreads upward to be about an inch wide. A similar band of rich crimson expands upward from that to a similar width. Her nails and lips also turn inky black, the temperature in the bar feels like it's gone up about ten degrees Fahrenheit, and everyone with decent magical senses or a good connection to their instincts within a few miles experiences a sudden, inexplicable urge to convert their savings to hard currency and crawl under a rock somewhere for a while with their liquid assets. The animals in the area of effect are supremely confused by this. "Greater good, greater good, greater good," Lexiel mutters to herself, "Rinse and repeat until it sticks. But this is not over, Halley. You will learn to respect the sanctity of life and the law, or you will pay for your crimes. But in the mean-time, I suppose atonement will have to suffice. Oh, you want an AAR, Edmund and other person who I in no way know? Well, I trust you at least, Edmund. "We visited Weapons World to buy armaments and a fresh SIN, the latter from a Councillor of some high rank. Names were not exchanged. While one of my companions was preparing to get the SIN, I went downstairs to shop, because standing around there was getting boring and Halley and I didn't both need to watch his back. The next thing I knew somebody dropped the elevator. I flew to the roof to attempt search and rescue, where the Councillor himself, affecting a bad Germanic accent and equipped with a jet pack, attempted to bomb the entire building to slag and knife Halley while ranting about vengeance. We drove him off with no fatalities, and I set up a ward to direct the bomb's blast into him as he fled. Pretty sure he's dead or at least laid up in traction; I heard and smelled him fry. Except apparently what he wanted vengeance for was Halley pumping him full of bullets. Urza's bones, what a mess."

Lexiel stiffens at Halley's admission, and sighs heavily. She carefully, methodically checks over her narcojet rifle, flips the safety off, and turns toward Halley, holding it in a relaxed grip, face completely blank. Even though it is pointed toward the ground at the moment, anybody who knows guns would know it could be brought to bear in moments. "You tried to kill the councillor, Halley? He did not initiate hostilities? That is murder, Halley. Cold-blooded, pre-mediated murder. That is illegal. My lack of knowledge of local ordinances has seen me this far, but murder is never legal. You seemed like such a nice kid, too. Yet you don't feel a shred of remorse. Urza's bones, I hate dealing with psychopaths. Especially the ones this good at hiding it. Well, unfortunately for you and very fortunately for everyone else, your twisted, possibly nonexistent moral compass doesn't get a say in this. Justice must be done."