Chipped Chaos Session 5

Princess Guard - The New Era 2016/07/21 	 Titan Charm Harlequin Caleb Cheshire Quiet 14

Fighting Replicators
The Princess Guard heroes are fully involved in the fight versus the Replicators now. The 12 smaller spiders have swarmed to the door blocking it with their bodies. Titan is inside with 'Mother' and the rest of the characters are outside the secret room in the basement of the store. Mother has been reduced by Caleb and one of the spiders has been struck by Harlequin. Charm is providing extremely useful music complement.

Cheshire, who was, in the way of her people, patrolling, looking for mischief, hears the sounds of battle and goes to investigate, appearing the middle of the store in a faint flash of blue light, her parasol open over her right shoulder. She head-tilts as she observes the scene with evident curiosity.

Quiet hates extended downtime. A little R&R is good, but too much makes Quiet a dull girl. The fact that her last after action report involved her delivering her opinion to her employer via a left hook hasn't helped her workload any. Wandering, patrolling, looking for trouble... whatever one chooses to call it at that minute, she wasn't terribly far away when picking up activity through the air: sonic, radio, even sight. An Anti-grav-assisted leap or two carries her over nearby buildings and near enough that she can get eyes on the store.

Charm has learned something else about the emotional state, if one can so call it, of these machines: they have an analogue of aggression. She changes her song, singing a spell in an attempt to make the replicator that attacked her with a laser aggressive towards the other one that attacked her.

Caleb's attention is mostly occupied by keeping track of the various bricks and blocks and spiders and whatever else HeXer may have left behind to attack unwary adventurers. But the arrival of a young particolor girl in pink and white, with a parasol no less, certainly merits _some_ attention. "Don't tell me," he mutters, "you're looking for a white rabbit?"

Titan didn't manage to hit the 'mother' hard enough last time. Might as well put more into it. He winds up for a huge double overhead smash down at the replicator.

Caleb figures why break up a winning combination? He smacks a spider with his detached hand.

Caleb is concerned about Titan being cut off from the rest of the team, and considers porting to the other side of the spider-wall to provide backup, but decides that punching through the spider-wall is ultimately more cost-effective. -POW!- Spider is now half-a-spider. Just goes to show you, four-armed is... um... something.

A spider in the doorway fires a laser beam at Cheshire.

The spray of acid aimed at Cheshire misses.

Cheshire smiles blankly as the laser burns a small hole in her parasol and clips her shoulder, failing to deflect the shot.

A spray of potent acid lands on Harlequin's right shoulder.

The burst of acid that is shot at Harlequn is intercepted by a blue disk and significantly reduced in size before being blocked by a silver disk. The mage mutters as few drops get through and eat small holes in his tunic, "Thiraltha will not be pleased."

Quiet seems to have stepped too near at the wrong time. She is zotted by a beam of coherent light that ... is diffused and scattered by her armor.

Three of the spiders direct their hostile attention at Caleb but laser fire, acid, and a pulse of plasma all miss.

And finally one spider seems to have changed sides. It fires at the spider next to it in the doorway.

But the laser beam is deflected by the interlocking gleaming force field generated by the bricks that make up the targeted spider.

Mother has many more bricks than the spiders, and as HeXer warned, that makes it smarter. It scuttles away from Titan on eight legs and the bricks that were dedicated to replication switch linkages to form a heavy duty plasma cannon.

Titan mutters to himself as the replicator moves away from him and he gets hit in the chest. The hit barely registers, but he still looks annoyed. "Figures it would start to move now."

Harlequin looks at the replicators that attacked him. With a flick of his hand, a dome appears around him formed of perfectly interlocking octagons. The mage then makes a hooking gesture with his left hand and wrenches his hand upwards as if pulling. A crack appears in the cement floor beneath a spider and a burst of flame reeking of brimstone shoots up out of it beneath the replicator.

Cheshire brushes imaginary lint off her wounded shoulder and smiles, staying in a defensive stance, her parasol back on her shoulder for the moment.

Quiet was just zotted, but if that's the best the little ones can do, she's not terribly worried about one. Unfortunately there are way more than that here. Fortunately, there's a weapon for that. Her INCAWS rifle alters itself, bore expanding in diameter to something more appropriate for pest control. She points it at the largest collection of robo-arachnid...things and fires.

Why shoot all the things individually? When you absolutely, positively, must clear a room, a high-velocity spray of hundreds or thousands of pellets is the way to go. Spiders, doors, walls. None of them like canister shot. When the blast clears nearly all of those things have vanished. Did someone call for an exterminator?

Hundreds of Replicator bricks shotgun through the secret room as Quiet blows the small spiders apart, the bricks embedding into the far wall and bouncing off Titan and Mother. The table in the room is reduced to matchwood, as is the door. Plus chunks of wall fly around doing yet more damage to everything inside the secret room.

Harlequin smiles behind his full face covering mask as he thinks. o O(Well, not like any of us are criminologists anyway...)

Cheshire holds her parasol in the crook of her arm and applauds silently.

Some of the bricks are dull and discolored. They are the ones that were knocked loose and then blasted again. Most of the bricks still gleam with active micro-force fields.

Cheshire flickers and appears next to 'mother', twirling her parasol (folded closed) and lunging at the bot.

Titan sighs and stalks over to the 'mother'. He takes another swing at it...but without the windup this time.

Titan hits the replicator pretty solidly, knocking a good quarter of the bricks comprising it loose.

Caleb was about to try something complicated to get through the wall when Quiet took care of that little obstacle. He turns to her and nods approvingly, then gets back to the business of tearing down this homicidal erector set.

Caleb 's hand pops out of a portal near where the previous attack damaged the assembly, dividing the spider roughly in half. The smaller part promptly falls apart.

With so many bricks knocked loose the Mother Replicator reforms and is now no larger than the small spiders were.

The much reduced Mother-no-more fires a laser beam at the nearest opponent, which is still Titan.

But it slips on one of the hundreds of loose bricks and the beam goes wild.

Harlequin notes the condition that 'Mother' is in after Titan and Caleb's attacks and lets the impossible barrier around him fade away. The mage, however, stays where he is and gathers raw magickal power into his hands from the surrounding area. Well, those with the proper sense will realize that: visually, it looks like he drawing some sort of iridescent energy into a compact ball from thin air.

The mage then launches the ball at 'Mother' with a pushing motion.

Charm keeps up the playing for a bit just in case anything is capable of re-forming.

The iridescent energy seems to sink into 'Mother'. For a brief moment, nothing happens then the replicator explodes as the energy bursts back out of it. The bricks fall back down with a light patter and stay motionless.

Titan smiles and nods to the two newcomers. "Thank you." He looks to the others, "Can we figure out if Snakebyte has been in here?"

Caleb takes a deep breath. "OK. Well, that's something. But the laptop is gone... I guess Snakebyte has it after all." He turns to Cheshire. "And... thanks for the help."

Cheshire smiles, curtsies, her parasol open and resting on her shoulder again.

Charm stops playing and puts her harp away as it becomes clear the danger has passed.

Harlequin looks at the mess that is the secret room. He takes a few steps forward into the room then murmurs, "We-elll, I could try a metaphysical reconstruction, but they are notoriously unreliable."

The bore and forestock of Quiet's weapon reduce in size, returning to their original configuration. After she stows the weapon on her back, she acknowledges the thanks with a thumb up. As for the who has been here, she isn't sure and only has a shrug to offer for that.

Quiet may not have an immediate answer, but she can take a look around to see what she might see.

Caleb shrugs. "Not a clue."

Titan looks over to Caleb, "So, if Snakebyte has the quantum computer...Qubit thing, do you think he set up the replicator defense?"

Harlequin sees a vision. Not a very clear one. All he sees is a hand unplugging cables from a black cube on the table. As the hand reaches for a cable the sleeve moves up and he sees tattoos on the wrist. Then another hand drops some small item into an ashtray that is on the table and the two hands pick up the cube.

"I have no idea," Caleb tells Titan. "I'm not sure why he would bother... it's not like it's actually defending anything. Maybe he meant it as a trap. But from the way HeXer talked, these things self-organize if they feel threatened... maybe he set them off accidentally when he took Qubit, and they just... hung out here waiting for something to happen?"

The mage steps to the center of the secret room and raises his hands. For a number of seconds, nothing happens, then there are flickers of light that roll around the room and back to the mage. Harlequin mutters, "A hand unplugs cables from a black cube on the table...As the hand reaches for a cable, I see the sleeve move up and see tattoos on the wrist..Then the another hand drops some small item into an ashtray that is on the table and the two hands pick up the cube..." His shoulders slump in tiredness as he says, "That is all I can see..."

"What do the tattoos look like," Caleb asks.

Cheshire head-tilts and listens, curious.

Titan sighs quietly. "Well, I suppose we know how Snakebyte pulled off the ATM hack, since he had the assistance of HeXer's machine. I guess we should look for clues..." He furrows his brow at Harlequin's description of events. He then looks for the ashtray that might still be around.

Charm looks about, wondering what a clue would look like.

Quiet's search finds a few things other than replicator bricks. A broken plastic ashtray with a few flakes of ash stuck to it and a crumpled up empty matchbook with most of the front cover hidden from sight

Caleb smiles. "Sometimes, a clue looks like a matchbook cover," he says to Charm.

Charm says, "The trouble is I don't know what is normal and what isn't."

Caleb nods. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I spent a few years hopping from world to world every few days... it gets really confusing. Matchbooks... well, the important thing is that they're a small common item, and a lot of stores and restaurants give them away to customers. With a little luck, this one will give us a lead to check out."

When the matchbook is carefully un-crumpled the front cover shows it to come from the Red Rose Club. Which Caleb, Harlequin, and Quiet know is a wretched den of iniquity in the docks district.

Harlequin murmurs with a chuckle, "Ah, The Red Rose Club: a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But with unwatered drinks. So, a balance overall."

Caleb grins. "I've been there once or twice, actually. It's not as bad as its rep." He adds darkly "It's worse. Don't try the chicken wings, whatever you do."

Charm tries to get a sense of the place. "Is it dangerous?"

Quiet retrieves the matchbook and ashtray with grav tractors, hopefully preserving any forensic evidence, or at least not damaging them. She holds them up the same and nods to Harlequin, giving him a directed thumb up. It seems she's familiar with the place, too. Friends in low places.

Caleb shrugs. "To us? Nah."

"I mean, as long as you avoid the wings."

Titan says, "Well, I guess we should check out that place next. At least we know he's likely been there recently."

Harlequin looks over to Titan. "As we are, no one will talk to us. But, if you all stay close by me, say no more than, hmm, 15 feet away, I can make it so we blend in appearance-wise."