Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Septette Arcubielle      For the first time, there are no scrappy commandeered teleporters, no spaceship joyrides, no chaotic entrances. Here, you have a common goal. Here, Nessos welcomes you with open arms. The teleporter pad is elegant steel and silver, placed in the center of an antechamber carved smoothly out of the asteroid's rock. Set up around the room are high-tech portable stations and equipment racks; medical equipment, life support systems, mining scanners.

     A heavy metal airlock-door opens up when the hunting party is fully assembled and equipped to their liking, leading into a winding tunnel lit by hanging mining lanterns. Soon the lanterns give way to the gentle purple glow of unrefined crystal erchius, and then to the shifting blue-green light of... ocean shallows?

     First the floor shimmers with wave-like light. Then, further in, the rock turns paler and grayish, and the air turns thick and cool against the skin, though still mysteriously breathable. Outcroppings of crystals shape themselves into coral or clusters of shellfish, and grow more and more convincing in their imitations as they become more common, until the walls and floor are covered in impeccable imitations of seafloor life.

     When the tunnels open up into a larger chamber, the environmental transformation is complete. There is no roof above- instead, hundreds of feet up, the "surface" of the water is visible, moving in waves. Diluted sunbeams shine down between the pillars of rock and stalagmites, backlighting translucent green seaweed. Crabs scurry underfoot, and small fish "fly" overhead. So far, the journey almost seems idyllic.

     Only two little clues hint otherwise. First, a severed robotic arm hidden behind a rock- one made of red ceramic and black metal, rather than the cheery pastel plastic seen in Nessos's guardians so far. Second, a dark stone monolith carved with unfamiliar shifting runes and painted in inexplicably nauseating shades of pink and green. Loops of brass are laid around its base lke reverent offerings.
Starbound Flotilla     The racks feature Biteblade's favored works. Melee pieces crafted from esoteric bone, huge chunks of crystalized flesh used to reinforce steel armor, pastes and collections of unusual herbs full to the brim with healing power and impossible stimulant energies... exotic hunting rifles and bows. It feels like a safari. Or a hunt of the deadliest game.

    Biteblade leads the group out. "Floran will remind! Dronesss, anything machine out here, isss not for kill. Help maybe, leave alone mossstly." She insists. "Never never never for kill. We are here for cryssstal prey and censssored prey." She continues. "Floran have big recommendation for hydrating. Before get into fight, drink up lotsss. Extra hydrating bottlesss here!" They did offer canteens, after all. The rebels might have had something to say about that, but...

    She's armored up. Bone, steel-like wood, and spliced technology gleam with powered mechanisms, linked to her bow and her sheathed twin daggers. "Hmmm..." She takes a hearty swig of her own canteen before she looks over the monolith, as if it's going to give her some key information on where to take the party next. Maybe there's more information to find in it that she can't articulate?

    Time to cull, either way. That means finding the things.
Android 17 With a sound of science fiction teleporter sounds, the arrival of Android 17 is marked.  He has to admit, not teleporting in through jury-rigged options, dramatic near misses, or everything on fire is an odd but welcome change.  Not that he was going to get used to this, but likely after this team-up they'd be back at each other's throats.  

However, they cal all agree that the NEOs are bad news, and need to be culled.  Though Seventeen was more on the 'all of them need to get the hell out of the station forever' camp, instead of whatever Septette was doing.  He didn't trust the Furby sounding robot at all.  

Walking alongside the group down to the tunnels and ocean shallows, Seventeen had to take a moment to think about this.  This place is an asteroid, why is there an ocean here?  A thriving one at that.  His eyes looking up and watching the fish for a brief moment.  It's at least relaxing.  

His eyes focus on the path in front of them, seeing the broken robot arm, as well as monolith apparently carved with runes that hurt the brain to look at.  Is this the NEO?  Or something created by it?  Was it actually worship or just...that fear thing they try to do to feed.

The offered canteen is rejected, Seventeen revealing his own supply of water.  "I do a lot of traveling, I tend to keep my own," he says, perhaps with a slight 'because I don't trust you to either poison it or put a tracker in it,' tone to it.  

"What does the monolith say?" Seventeen asks.
Note     Monsters on some kind of space station that need to be beaten up? If there's awesome fights to be had and test herself against, then Note's all for it! And that's why the little girl with the Saiyan tail and the swishing black ponytail secured by a cutesy red bow's joined the party. She... looks to be on the short side for an undertaking like this, all things considered!

    Wearing a chipperly confident smile, she steps forward with the group into the weirdly alien sea-scape with the rest... and is pleasantly surprised to see... "Seventeen!~" Note immediately puts her whole effort into waving enthusiastically at the Android. It's obvious that she's pleased to have him as a team mate!

    In other concerns, meeting Biteblade the Floran, well.... Biteblade is probably used to weird, awkward stares by now. That's exactly what the Floran earns from Note for the first ten seconds or so. The confusion cracks when a canteen's offered though, which the girl takes politely. That leaves her just blinking bewilderedly at the fact that there's a LIVING PLANT PERSON here.

    Because this is apparently so much weirder than Animal People.

    "I-it looks like there's plenty of water here...?"
August Kohler August rejects the canteen. He doesn't have a drink, but for the same reason as 17, he doesn't want to trust their generosity, as good as it is to be hydrated. If he dies of heatstroke, it was because of his rebellious spirit.

As they approach the clues, August gravitates towards the robotic arm. He wants to see where it was severed, and try and figure out what it went to. Was it someone's prosthetic? Was it similar to the Nessos' robots, even if the color is different?

From there, August will continue forward to find monsters to kill. He's armed, and has a mirrored bracelet to summon his Persona. He should be fine.
Septette Arcubielle      The monument's shifting runes accelerate slightly as people approach it. They're hard to read, not because they're indistinct, but because they're hard to focus on- like a painting with its focal lines, something about the runes seems to deflect the eyes off of them without a concentrated effort to scrutinize. Even the green-and-pink paint starts to shift, the brushstrokes rapidly flickering between shapes as if they're ribbons being twirled by unseen dancers.

     August will quickly discover that the limb might be cumbersome for even him to lift- it's the same size as a human's, but it must weigh two hundred pounds. That alone disqualifies it from being a prosthetic, but it doesn't look mechanically complete for a robot either; vital components like cooling systems and tactile sensors are simply absent. It looks like it was ripped off at the shoulder-joint rather than sheared.

     He'll find an ominous dark tunnel to go down in search of danger before long, but something interrupts him before he can. First there's a near-silent rumble from the ground, too low for human hearing but perhaps detectable by 17. The fish instinctively scatter a second later. Then dozens of unnaturally-elongated arms made of purple crystal erupt from the patch of ground around the monument, trying to grab and claw at anyone in reach!

     The brass rings around the monument chime together four times with a distinct and piercing sound over the scrabbling and rumbling of the disembodied limbs. The nascent monsters are still brittle and easily-dispatched, but erupt in crackling arcs of scorching energy when destroyed.
Android 17 Seventeen's head turns as he hears something.  He also notices the fish scatter.  "Get ready," he warns the others.

Ten seconds in, and they're already being attacked.  He can't see the runes on the monolith well, but the claws he can clearly see.  He dives back, flipping on his hands and pushing away from the mass of claws and tentacles.  

Already, he brings his hand back, firing a blast of energy towards the clawing monsters.  No hesitation in his actions this time, unlike the first time he had faced them down.  The Android hits the ground and slides across the earth, before coming to a halt.  

Hands coming up in a fighting stance, watching now.  Luckily, he had the advantage of good ears, but now that the surprise is over, it's a matter of seeing how the creatures react.
Starbound Flotilla     Biteblade seems to be being unaffected by the convulsing markings, though it motivates her to take another long drink of the water. She has her head quite together, therefore, once the arms emerge. "Here isss good example!" She shouts, snatched briefly, almost crushed at one arm before she slices the offending limb. "Be careful! Erchiusss, ssstill fuel, ssstill lot of energy. Can dissscharge, very dangerousss!"

    She leaps back, performing a superhuman backflip and striking with arrows intent on pinning the arms down. "Good idea isss to keep from essscape. Very good at healing! And ssscar isss usssed to make more fear to eat. Immobilize or ussse clean killshot, Floran alwaysss do!"

    If they can clear this out, they can take that tunnel! Looks like whatever Biteblade saw seemed to motivate them to, anyway.
August Kohler The arm is left there, instead of carried off. It's filed away as a clue, but August approaches.

17 warns August of the attack, so August brings up his mirrored bracelet. "Persona." As he does so, Dietrich is manifested, and as the gem monsters attack, the massive sword in the massive knight's hands goes flying, moving to just shatter through the creatures with raw strength. And then, they backblast.

Explosions batter Dietrich back, August out of range, but feeling the pain as he clutches at his skin and armor is blown off of the Persona. "Agh...!"

If more appear, August has a new plan. Dietrich's sword is transformed into a chainsaw whip, and swung out at any gem monsters, as August leaps onto Dietrich's back. The whip is durable enough, so the backblast won't hurt Dietrich as much if it's at longer-range melee. When Biteblade says to immobilize, the whip is used to try and grapple around one as it's crushed, too.

"These things common?"
Note     Note rubs her eyes as she glances over the weird monument. It's gotta be the weird lighting in here that's making it hard to read, right? She, though, isn't the sort to pay that thing much attention at the moment. She's on the hunt for monsters, and a monster it isn't!

    All's going well enough in the trip until SUDDENLY SHE SENSES A THING out of nowhere. One moment, nothing. The next, it's just THERE. "EEEEEEEE?!" This takes her by such surprise that she tenses her muscles and powers up in a visible display of whitish Ki swirling up around her body, kicking up a wind. "What just happened...?!"

    Seems she's onto the same trail as Seventeen, though, because she looks the exact same way, at the same time. ... just in time to see the WEIRDEST THING.

    Quickly though, the little martial artist joins the Android in launching simple blasts of Ki from an outstretched palm at the creatures, realizing they wouldn't be much fun to fight up close if they can't at least handle a bit of a bombardment!
Septette Arcubielle      17's early warning gets him out of the way of a patch of arms that lunge for where he was standing seconds earlier, scrabbling at the stones and then flailing blindly. The energy blast shatters them into pieces like glass, destroying them before they could materialize any further.

     The ones that Biteblade immobilizes with her arrows try to pull themselves out of the ground, revealing the rest of their bodies- hunched humanoids with tapered snout-like heads and extra appendages like fins or tendrils, still made entirely out of geometric purple crystal. Fortunately for the group, being nailed to the ground prevents them from moving until Dietrich hews through them with the chain, blowing them up in spectacular sprays of shrapnel and crackling energy!

     One brings up its free arm to stop Dietrich's attack, and just before the moment of contact, its arm fuzzes and blurs in chromatic aberrations before settling into a black silhouette- even without detail, cleaner and sharper than the geometric approximation. The newly-solidified limb blocks the chain, groaning and cracking on contact but not fully breaking. The censoring black void spreads across its body rapidly, giving it the speed to duck under the coiling chain, rip out the arrow embedded in its other arm, and sprint forwards...

     Only to get hit squarely in the chest, one of the few remaining places the void hadn't yet engulfed, by a ki blast. It staggers a few more steps, then collapses into liquefying purple ooze. The few remaining grappling arms retreat back into the ground, their offensive broken almost as quickly as it started.
Septette Arcubielle      The monolith remains as inscrutable as before, though by now there are no consequences to examining it beyond perhaps a mild headache. Further in, down the tunnel that August noted, the natural seafloor stone and coral slowly gives way to brownish-gray cyclopean stone etched with unreadable sigils and decorated with brass baubles. Fear is a taste in the air here, palpable outside even if it doesn't manage to worm its way inside. The environment is arranged with an artisan's hand for unease, like some kind of negative feng shui.

     Finally, the corridors open up into another room- this one with an armored humanoid robot slumped in one of the corners, badly torn up and missing one arm. Its face is a red visor with two oversized eye-holes reminiscent of an owl's skull, the sockets dark and empty. Around it, ghostly blue flowers line the walls in stone flowerboxes. Brass portcullises block the path further in, but wouldn't be too difficult to destroy.

     More pressing are the scratching-skittering in the walls, and the subtle crooning whalesong-like impressions that shape themselves out of silence. Unless it's an acoustic trick of the walls, they're getting closer by the moment.
August Kohler As they tear through the monsters, Dietrich is repairing his damage the whole time, but it's still wearing down on August. Once they're done, and reach the robot body, August doesn't take a break. Instead, he heads right over to it, and tries to use his mechanical engineering knowledge.

He's not a genius in the field, and doesn't have experience with supertech robots, but he wants to try and figure out if he can tell what exactly caused the shutdown internally (beyond 'being torn apart') and if it'd be possible for the robot to be repaired, or if it's a lost cause that they should leave behind. Once that's done...

"They're getting closer, aren't they? How effective is fire against these things?"
Android 17 Seventeen shakes his head, strange that such a creature, so weak, would be able to destroy the robot so easily or cause so much trouble.  No, this was likely a small fry, which means the bigger fry is deeper in.  For all they knew, this thing could simply have been an early warning system.  

Of course, moving in gets them to the other half of the torn apart robot.  Seventeen examines it, noting it was torn out not cut out.  A frown, whatever did this was incredibly strong.  Standing up fully again, his eyes darted around, looking at the various runes.  Experimentally, Seventeen attempts to dig his fingers into the earth and tear them along the runes to try and disrupt them.  

Maybe they can weaken them...

But the oncoming sounds cause him to fall into a stance.  "About as effective as anything else.  Let's watch our backs and beat them back."
Starbound Flotilla     "Very common. Ghossst in other moon, ever sssince human friend planet exploded, but here, like thisss. Pop up once enough psychic ssstuff build up! Low threshold." Biteblade says progressing through and restoring arrows to her quiver. "They live in water. But... we alssso are in water." She's making vague gestures to August, as if she's having trouble articulating something. "Are you trying to help robot friend? Might help robot friendsss if find more around hunting groundsss?"

    She has a particular curiosity, and for some reason, August might get the sense that his answer and its precise wording will be extremely meaningful and have a significant impact on certain future events. She busies herself, though; "Cover Floran. Floran isss gonna open up big gate. Takesss time, gotta not have monssster fight." She sets about manipulating mechanisms and even engaging in raw, barehanded, superhuman lifting.
August Kohler Responding to Biteblade, August considers his words carefully. "I'm an engineer in my heart. I'm going to help them if I can. Can't repair them myself, but I may be able to diagnose what's wrong. Other hunting grounds...?"

But then Biteblade's busying herself, so August returns to what he's doing. Here's hoping he picked the Right Answer.
Septette Arcubielle      Seventeen's minor sabotage has a noticeable effect- the runes aren't magical in a traditional sense, but altering the environment like this reduces the atmosphere of anxiety. It's so well-calibrated that even a small disruption like gouging one of the runes offers some reprieve. From certain perspectives, Septette's proposal to just collapse the whole cavern is seeming awfully tempting.

     August doesn't need to look very far to find the probable cause of the robot's nonfunctionality- its inner workings are bewilderingly alien, unlike anything that a human engineer would choose to design, but its 'spine' is clearly cut in half. Re-joining the severed halves prompts them to weld them together, sparking a flickering red light behind its visor. Its body starts to groan and shudder subtly, perhaps going through some 'reboot' procedure, but it doesn't do anything immediately.

     They've got bigger things to worry about anyway. A half-dozen arms erupt from the floor and walls again, grasping at ankles and necks, but no tougher than earlier. The brass portcullises all open with a nerve-grating shriek of metal, trying to drag Biteblade right into the ceiling. A handful of fully pitch-black NEOs swarm in, their edges flickering with chromatic aberrations like misaligned anisotropic video. Some are armed with brass pitchforks; others lunge at the Elites with razor-sharp claws; another conjures up a shotgun-like blast of magical icicles that fills the room with scouring shrapnel.

     But all of them are perfectly silent. The whalesong-like keening gets closer, echoing around corners. It's something else.

     Over the noise of battle, a voice shapes itself out of quiet, carving its photo-negative audio into syllables of bone-rattling silence.

                                 Ah,  Visitors.                                

                 It  Has  Been  So  Long  Since  Last  I  Supt.                
August Kohler August reunites the spine. It starts flickering back alive, and he wipes his head of sweat, but it doesn't immediately do anything. Before he can stay there and try to talk to it once it awakens, more arms erupt from the ground and grab at him. Dietrich moves his sword, back in sword-mode, to slice the arms off, as August leaps back on and dances away.

It's hell in here. August determines what he needs to do, and it's the full NEOs he focuses on. The others can deal with the babies. The sword is wreathed in fire as icicles fly out, swung into them to block and melt several while others skewer the armor, causing August backlash pain, as the Persona bursts forwardwith superhuman speed to attack the epileptic horrors.

Snicker-snacker goes the flaming blade, trying to carve and burn into them, or at least knock them back, when the voice 'speaks'. August grates his teeth together, speaking. "Sounds like a leader. Try and thin these guys, quickly, before it attacks!"
Android 17 More claws, more tentacles.  Seventeen notices his work is not fruitless, so he'll have to remember this as they continue.  He looks back towards Biteblade, who asked for cover, and fires a barrage of shots towards the claws that come from above her.

Seventeen attempts to keep on the move, but he was more focused on his allies than himself.  This costs him as one wraps around his neck and attempts to choke him.  He growls, in pain as he starts flying forward, attempting to either tear the thing out of the shadows...or tear the arms off of the creature if it doesn't let go.

Rubbing his neck, he stands back up.  

"I don't consent to be your food," he responds to the negative voice.
Starbound Flotilla     Biteblade's arms are nearly caught up in the thing. But she's fast, she's strong; while she's nearly crushed into the thing, she manages to flip around, brace her feet against the top of the mechanism, and hold it with her enhanced strength for a moment. Long enough to pull her arm out and leap down. "Kill!" She calls out, a sort of one-word command to the others. But she doesn't use just one word. "Kill kill kill ssstab punch hunt KILL!!" She shouts, immediately diving into the NEO crowd, twin blades out and ready. "Clear them! Get lotsss of corpse! Lotsss of dead prey! Fill mind with only thisss!! Thisss image! Memory of dead prey!"

    She shouts, with a particular firmness. "You think /only of dead prey/ until big speaking guy is /dead/! Underssstand Floran?" She takes another swig of her water amidbattle, suffering a pitchfork wound just to get a biiig gulp, and resumes her efforts to dodge around the shotgun blasts as she shouts battle-cries and fills the room and the minds with the image of dead NEOs.
Note     Note has l earned a few useful things in the Multiverse so far. One of them? MOST THINGS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO FLY. So when things start progressing towards a rumble with monsters, she simply TAKES OFF and hovers twenty feet off the ground, fists clenched at her sides while the ground churns with claws and tendrils and... good heavens, what -is- this mess...?!

    Note's not safe up here! She's shot at with icicles. With a startled yelp and a shriek, she spins about and starts batting the projectiles away. Most of them. A few get lucky and pierce her defenses, slicing along her arms and legs and drawing some blood and a hiss of pain from the girl.

    These, of course, are answered with a few well-placed Ki blasts! All until that weird... voice cuts through her psyche, causing her to shiver and freeze in the air.

    "... What.. who... was that...?"
Septette Arcubielle      From down the long hallway ahead, soft and heavy footsteps echo around the corner. A monstrous shadow looms around the corner. Then an enormous chalky hand with fluked, webbed fingers grabs the wall and hauls itself forward. It's a bipedal creature easily fifteen feet tall, so large as to be ungainly and painfully hunched in the twelve-foot-tall corridors. This isn't a "NEO" anymore- it's a full-fledged Deep One. It has a face like a beautiful woman, hair like a river of fins and flippers, and a white/pink/green-stained body wrapped in gossamer fins like a wretchedly thin humanoid fish. In its webbed hand is a brass staff tipped with loose, clanking rings.

     Its three piercing yellow-and-red eyes are genuinely best not looked at. They burn themselves into one's vision, supernaturally visible even through closed eyelids like the Sun. Its silence-voice clicks and chides, like a shepherd reining in stray sheep, but with a biting undercurrent of smug malice.

                        Come,  Lay  Down  Your  Weapons.                        

                     Look  Into  My  Eyes,  Lost  Children.                    

     The fully-censored NEOs are tougher opponents than the partially-chrysalized one fought moments before, able to stand up- even if only briefly- to an Elite offensive. Dietrich lunges forwards towards the spellcasting NEO, but gets intercepted by one of the trident-wielders; it parries the first two flaming swipes with its own weapon until the brass breaks in half, then trades blows, stabbing at the black knight's helmet with superhuman vigor while unhesitantly taking the heavy slice to its chest. Its flesh sizzles, and it staggers back, gravely injured.

     The one that tackled 17 tries to hold his neck with one arm while raking his back with its claws, but it can't stand up to his superhuman strength like that- he tears both of its arms off, making it bleed purple Erchius tinged with noble blue. It opens its mouth in what he might mistake for a silent scream, but instead of reeling back in pain, it wraps its weaker tendrils around his torso and tries to bite into his shoulder with its needle-like teeth!

     The icicle-wielding mage gestures at Biteblade's canteens of water and they abruptly explode like miniature grenades, robbing her of her supply of drugs! It's about to press its momentary advantage when Note bowls it over with a blast, scorching its thinner skin and sending it slumping back against a wall.
Android 17 Seventeen, with a dangerous-looking scratch along his back, turns only to avert his gaze from the deep one.  Well, that's a problem.  The burning gaze lingers, but he needs to deal with this without looking into those eyes.  His fists bunch up as he considers his options.

He wonders...

He taps into memory, he tries to remember what he was thinking about when the flowers went black.  He holds onto that memory and crouches down, aiming to dive at the center of mass of the deep one.  His fist glowing with energy as he tries to repeatedly punch it back.  He just needed to get it deeper into the tunnel and away from them.

He can't fill his mind with murder as Biteblade suggested.  That wasn't him, it would never be him if he had anything to say about it.  But he will drive it back as hard as he can...and if they can bury it deep.  
August Kohler As the Deep One approaches, August does his best to look away, focusing on the NEOs he's fighting, not wanting to sear his eyes or get mind-controlled or whatever it does. He manages to gravely injure one, at the cost of taking a head blow - it doesn't pierce completely through the helmet, but it staggers Dietrich back, and has enough force to cause August to start bleeding from his nose, clutching his head dizzied. They might be able to get another attack in, but soon, August is back on the mend, regenerating the damaged helmet, and Dietrich moves in on the trident wielder. The sword transforms into a chainsaw whip again.

Swung at the trident-wielding NEO, August moves to grapple it, grind into it with the chainsaw blades until it's just about a corpse, and then /throw/ it at the Deep One as a weapon-slash-finishing blow for the NEO.

August is thinking about dead NEOs. Their corpses littering the battlefield. He can do it easily. He hates monsters. They need to die. And so, he won't have a problem with that.
Starbound Flotilla     There goes the cantines. Luckily it wasn't mid-sip. Unfortunately, that puts shrapnel deep in the armor. And it leaves Biteblade unslaked, unfilled. There's a moment, just one, where she crouches low to the ground, thinking hard, and choking down the urge to dig in and start chewing on the censored flesh. No, no, no, keep that together. She focuses on what's coming down the hall, for her own value of focus anyway.

    "It isss corpssse! It is /corpssse/! Prey doesssn't know yet! But isss corpssse!" She declares firmly. "Ugly fish monssster isss pre-dead. Isss pre-hunt! Make fishface /post/-hunt!" The wonderful, wonderful thing about having Biteblade be in charge of NEO management around here is that she has the distinct advantage of having a built-in trauma and fixation when it comes to three big red eyes on an aquatic humanoid beast. One of the many reasons she must have been assigned to manage these efforts must be the fact that the irrational cognitohazardous effect has to fight /another/ irrational prejudice and hatred.

    All that, combined with the drugs still in her system, means she can rush it down and... leap above. Grappling to the upper walls, tunneling up, where she starts to dig out something. Presumably this is, at least mostly, adhering to Septette's plan. Must be the only reason Septette's willing to delegate to anyone else. "Keep eye above! Floran gonna crush!" She intends to start carving out as big a series of wall-chunks as she can manage, ones she can start trying to smash over the thing's body. "Cover Floran! Not want to get smashed! Remember! Think /Deep corpses only/!!"

    She's treating this far more seriously than usually treats most things. She has the look about her of someone who has been doing this for weeks, maybe months, and even might count as "trained" in some sense.
Note     What the hell IS THAT THING?! Fear flickers in Note's eyes as she gazes upon the freaky creature that has emerged like some kind of fishy crystal goddess. It is very definitely NOT GOOD.

    Its very presence makes her cower back a few feet until she can steel herself, tail thrashing back and forth.

    With a deep breath though she wills her muscles to resume obeying her properly. "HuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuAAAAAAAAAH!!!" And with a challenging kiai, the whitish energy swirling her ignites into a golden blaze, and her hair raises up into an arrangement arrangement of dramatic spikes, the golden power filling every strand and overpowering the natural black. Pure force rolls forth from her in a single shockwave as her now fierce warrior's gaze levels against the distant... THING.

    "No way! Even a toddler can tell you're not friendly!"

    Flexing all her muscles, Note digs deep into her power and causes it to skyrocket, the aura growing wildly in size. The very next moment...

    She simply *BLIPS* out of view, accelerating beyond what normal vision can track. She only becomes visible again when she's -RIGHT IN FRONT- of the great big monster, attempting to drive a kick into its center of body mess and send it toppling backwards!
Septette Arcubielle      August's opponent makes a sluggish token effort to deflect the chainsaw-attack, but it's torn to shreds after a moment of resistance- his initial blow took enough out of it that it can't effectually fight back. He throws it at the advancing, fully-formed Deep One... which slams it out of the air using its staff with an echoing, sickening crunch. The others show little reaction to the loss of their comrade. The armless one that 17 mangled even staggers forward, trying to slip past Dietrich and take a chomp out of August himself...

     But before August can dispatch the crippled threat, the repaired robot surges to its feet and slams the wretched NEO into the wall, crushing its head. The robot's flickering red eyes focus on August for an instant... then swerve to the Deep One at the end of the hallway. It limps forward towards its new target, battered but determined.

     As the Elites approach their new opponent, there's a tension in the air that could suffocate a man, building with every step forward they take. 17's meditative techniques and cognitive exercises (and Biteblade's irrational hatred) stave off its effect on their minds, but it might still worm its way into their bodies: quickening the breath, fluttering the heart, setting the hands shaking.

                      We  Walked  The  Stars  Before  You.                      

                           Kneel,  Cur,  And  Bleed.                            

     Even with his eyes closed, 17 has the Deep One's glowering three-eyed gaze to guide him like a lodestar. The eye-seared image moves when the creature does, hinting at its motions and the distance between them. It shifts slightly as it blocks his punches with its staff, each time bludgeoning his hands and unleashing a blast of withering energy. Clang, and a gout of scorching fire. Clang, and an electrical shock that could kill an elephant. One-on-one, it shows no signs of yielding to him.

     Fortunately, he doesn't have to. It brings its staff up to shatter one of the roof-chunks that Biteblade hurls down on it, and in that opening, 17's fist hits clammy, slick flesh. The creature staggers back a few steps- then a few more, and a few more, as it lashes out to strike Note's leg, or block 17's punches, or get clear of Biteblade's debris. With its back against the wall, it opens its mouth and lets out a deafening howl that plunges the area into absolute eerie silence for a few seconds, smothering out even the sound of one's own heartbeat.

     It lashes out with its staff, crackling with lethal black energy... and the robot grabs the end of the rod, walking forward even as the energy fries its remaining arm to slag and the Deep One tries to reclaim the weapon. It's opened up to a few more bodyblows from 17, cracking the stone wall behind it with the force of the impacts, but the Deep One is still very much on its feet. It's already glowing with a sickly luminous aura, the fruits of its brush with determined wills.

     The robot turns, looks back over its shoulder, and shakes its head. A blinding red light seeps out from the cracks in its torso's armor as it pins the Deep One that the Elites have staggered. That's all the warning that they get before a ball of energy expands in slow-motion, engulfing the robot, the Deep One, and half the corridor in a monstrous implosion, still utterly silenced by the Deep One's shriek.

     When the dust settles, it's all buried under hundreds of tons of rock. The aura of menace is gone.
Android 17 Despite everything, Seventeen just focuses on the attack.  Even if his hands shake, even if his breathing becomes ragged.  It's all he can do to focus his mind against the irrational horror.  His sounds are just focused grunts, trying to keep himself going.

His push is joined by debris from Biteblade, and shots from Note.  In the end, the robot that August got back up and working comes to the front, and...

His Android barrier flashes just in time, trying to provide cover for the other people.  When the smoke clears, the barrier turns off as well.  Leaving the android to collapse to one knee and start trying to gain control of his breathing again.  

"I really hate those things."
August Kohler August is almost chomped by a Deep One after his failed 'swing a guy at another guy' attack. But the robot he helped earlier comes in for the rescue, and then fights the Deep One. It manages to go in for the battle before August can get in and fight the Deep One himself, and sacrifices itself. It didn't speak once...but August wished he could have communicated with it. It was a hero, in his eyes, if it was a person.

As the room collapses from the explosion, August leaps backwards with Dietrich, and gets behind the barrier. As the smoke clears, August turns to see if everyone's okay, and sighs. "It came in for the save just in time. Anyone know where it came from?"
Starbound Flotilla     Biteblade's mining laser pops out of the top of the pile of rubble, and she emerges, coughing and bleeding. "Hate fish. Hate fish. Hate fish." She mutters, distantly, sort of... disorientedly. "Hate fish... Huh? Oh, came in... robot friend? Wasss robot friend?" She approaches August much more firmly, and briefly speaks more clearly. "Wasss it the robot you repaired that causssed the explosssion? A ssself-destruct?" That seems to be a particular point of interest for her, for some reason.
August Kohler "Yes." August replies to Biteblade, and then watches her reaction firmly. Does she approve of that, or is she against that? Is he going to get stabbed for repairing robots now?
Starbound Flotilla     Biteblade doesn't seem stressed at /August/, per se. She looks disappointed, in a way. "Blehhhh. Alright." It looks like that changed some kind of arrangement she needed to make. "Thanksss for trying, engineer friend! Bleh." She gives him a quick hug, which leaves a purple, red, and blue bloodstain shaped exactly like the side of her face on his chest, then starts heading back. "Okay, everyone head back to ssstaging area!"

    She grabs the broken arm on the way back. It takes a bit of lifting.