DragonRage

"It is factory equipment. And if our luck holds steady, it will come to life and attack us."

Alexandria synthesizes a flare and tosses it into the room to give us better lighting and blind anyone who might have set up a killzone on the other side.

"I am endeavoring to protect him from himself. And everyone else in the group. Time will tell whether this will be a rewarding venture."

"We are in an underground location of indeterminate origin. However, it is likely magically reinforced, was concealed behind a pile of boulders, and is the most logical source of the shadow creatures we battled earlier. I believe the owner may have triggered a deadfall when he realized his minions would not halt us. The rocks did not halt us either. The enemy population of this location is unknown. Becoming insensate again is not recommended."

"If you remained unconscious," She states flatly, "The odds of your death to enemy action increase dramatically. Sentient life has intrinsic value, until it decides it no longer desires that right."

Alexandria considers that Visrii is unconcious in an unknown dungeon, and thus somewhat likely to die. She sets her finger taser to medium rare and gives him a poke.

"Would you believe that I actually don't know the answer to that question, Solomon?" Alexandria smiles ruefully as she steps forward, taking point to shield the meatbags from any incoming pointy things. "When I first came online, someone certainly went to a lot of trouble to make me believe I was Senator Alexandria Constantinou of the planet Platesta, in hopes that their deception would last long enough for me to back their highly important bills. However, I later learned that the original Alexandria had been dead of a heart attack for weeks, and I never did figure out what happened to the body. The technology to transcribe a human's memories into a machine does not, to my knowledge, exist, but I do not claim to know everything. And I was able to impersonate her for nearly a month without realizing that I was not human, or giving myself away, hidden by a layer of synthetic flesh. Even her staff and close friends could not tell the difference. So, the best answer I can provide is 'maybe.'"

"I am scanning," Alexandria informs Edmund, "I shall notify you the moment I detect approaching hostiles." "I currently only have one functional thruster. The process that brought us here damaged and decalibrated many of my nonessential systems. I am capable of self-repair, but progress is slow. Only one is no use for movement. However, it does make a far more damaging and intimidating hammerhead than a simple block of metal. Additionally, some enemies are able to ignore physical hits, no matter how powerful. They usually have less luck against this." "Hm. Something is off about these torches. I recommend we stick together. There is likely magic in this place. Or technologies so advanced as to make little difference."

"Huh. Been a while since that happened," Alexandria mutters, gazing at the door with a raised eyebrow, "That is probably very heavily enchanted." She hits it again, just for the novel sensation of something that doesn't break when she touches it carelessly.

Alexandria vents the last of her rage by introducing her foot to the door.

"A what? A tank? A destroyer? A fortress? Oh, look out, wide load coming through!" A whir begins to rise underneath Alexandria's words, along with the surrounding temperatures, as her systems dump waste heat into the surroundings. "'Oh, that floor must've been defective, great and merciful Primus. Otherwise, there's no way it could have collapsed under you. It was rated for ten tons!'" By now it's clear she's not really talking to Solomon so much as railing against the unfairness of the universe. "But they knew. They knew. And set it up just for me! Slagging, void-sucking boot-lickers should just say what they think!" She then turns, and hammers a boulder into the air with a scream of frustration. The rock does not come back down.

"I prefer to think of myself as a condensed space battleship, but I suppose armory is not inaccurate. But a hanger? And what's so impossible about flight thrusters? How fat do you think I am?!"

"This? It's built in," Alexandria states, pausing her hammering to facilitate dialogue. "It is the only one of my flight thrusters to be currently functional, attached to a pole. Oh, did you want to know where I was keeping it? My entire body is composed of Galvanium, a metal that I believe is unique to my home universe. Galvanium becomes smaller and more dense, but not lighter, when exposed to electricity. I was constructed very large, and shrunk to human size when my power supply was installed. By shifting the degree of miniaturization of different components, I can store my integrated equipment inside compartments that would ordinarily never fit them. Including my hammer."

Alexandria deploys her rocket hammer, lights it up, and starts smashing rocks.

Alexandria turns her scanning suite on the end of the canyon, searching for a hidden door or cave. Perhaps there's one behind the boulders?

Alexandria crushes the creature's throat, and then twists its neck 360 degrees. Holding it in that position with her free hand, she begins charging her plasma cannon in preparation for the barrier to go down, making the area inside uncomfortably warm as the ominous whine fills the air.

Not in such a way that it can't regenerate. They have to die together or they will come back.

Alexandria prepares an action to snap the neck of her captive the moment she sees the other shadow beasts go down. She also preemptively clamps down on its throat in case the resurrection ability requires it to screech. It'll take a few minutes for it to die of asphyxiation, so the others won't get triggered.

The pillar is disappointingly untouched by Alexandria's thruster, so she decides to change tactics. She turns to regard the shadow beast she taunted earlier, which has been working through the fray in her direction. As the heartless thin out under the group's attentions, the creature was able to pick up speed and actually reach her. Its claws put a shallow set of gouges in her chest, before she puts it in a full nelson. "I have one ready for termination!"

Alexandria considers the pillars briefly, and drops her barrier. Ignoring the heartless that claw and beat at her frame, she raises her hammer and turns it on. With a deep, bone-rattling thrum, the hammer's head expands and glows. A heat shimmer extends from the striking head, followed by lazy purple fumes. The fumes increase in speed and increasingly orient away from the head as the thrum revs up into an earsplitting roar. With her strength as diminished as it is, Alexandria would never use the hammer in battle on this setting. She couldn't hit anything with it, or even swing it. But she can brace it against herself, and hold the business end up to one of the pillars. She can expose the magical object to the ravening, disintegrating power of a dark energy booster rated for solar escape velocity. [OOC: Alexandria holds a surface-to-orbit booster rocket up to the pillar, and sets it to 'exit stage left'. She's too heavy for it to move her on its own. What happens?]

Alexandria sighs; using her plasma cannon in such close quarters would roast her allies, and hammering these things one at a time would be a very inefficient use of her time. Instead, she angles her shield and calls out to the most vicious-looking enemies, "Hey, you! Your father was a welding arm, and your mothers reeked of WD-40!"

Alexandria notices Gwaendu's flare, and that Katsuo is cut off, isolated, and going in the wrong direction. No matter how good at killing things he is, that's a death sentence. He'll get tired eventually, and the enemy's numbers are limitless. She gestures in his direction, and a faintly glowing, yellow cocoon of tiny hexagons wrap around him, taking the few hits that break through his guard in his place. Text and images scroll across the hard-light projection in big, purple letters just below his line-of-sight, visible without impeding him. "You're going the wrong way!", accompanied by an arrow pointing him back toward the main group and the factory's predicted location.

"Eh?" Alexandria turns to look at Visrii, ignoring the creatures clawing fruitlessly at her shield and leaving scratches in her armor. "Are you unharmed? Do you require assistance?"

As Alexandria continues her push, a couple of the bird creatures get the bright idea of flanking her shield. "Barrier dropping!" She calls out, "Cover me!" As fire lances out from whoever was backing her up (I think Izumi and Edmond were behind the shield, but I don't want to speak for anyone's characters, so I'll keep this generic.), she turns and hammers the birds into the ground as they dive to attack. Then, she turns back to the front and charges her plasma cannon. The shadow creatures flinch back, not out of fear. Fear isn't something such beings feel. But the waves of scorching heat emanating from her transformed right arm evoke an instinctive response. A high-pitched whine fills the air as her plasma reservoirs fill, and she sends a brilliant beam of white-hot power sweeping over the battlefield, charring and incinerating the small fry, to rest on one of he huge, spherical creatures. After a few seconds of focus, the big beast slumps to the ground, the beam bursting out of its back just before she runs out of plasma and cuts it off. Her right arm emitting hisses and pops as it slowly cools, Alexandria raises her barrier again and resumes her slow advance.

"I suggest you follow me and fend off flankers," Alexandria states, "I will be proceeding down the path." She then deploys her hard-light shield and rocket hammer, and wades into the fray, bulldozing the small fry aside.