Log:New Starguard Adventures, Scene 2

New Starguard Adventures 2016/02/15 	 Chen Grimm Malcolm Star Girl Showdown Torus Victory

2

The Wraith zooms away from the Starguard flying van, banking, preparing for another attack run.

Victory continues to lean out the open door of the flying van. "I guess we'll see how adaptable the AI is, if I pull this off a second time." He preps another shield launch for the next attack run by the Wraith.

Chen continues to engage in what she calls the 'Paragon Maneuver', using her mass to provide a living layer odf extra armor to the van against the possibility it will be hit by one of the missiles the Wraith is launching.

"So I was talking to this lady about these strange sounds happening at the park at night--" Adam Lamont starts to drop work into the conversation with one Gabrielle Grimm, Mistress of Tenebration, Duchess of Darkness, etc, etc, She of Many Titles that are really starting to rack up.

"Not another case," Gabrielle groans with a roll of her eyes. Last time it was a family of possums. Adam means well and wants to help by bringing problems to Gabrielle's attention, but she's got enough on her plate. Another wild goose chase is not what she--

ChirpChirp!

Gabrielle's saved by the tweet. She fishes her phone out of her pocket and gets the alert from Starguard and HeroNET at the same time. "Oh, gee, sorry, Adam, I gotta go," she reads over the alert. "Emergency of some sorts."

She figures Malcolm would be the best to fill her in. Without saying anything else to Adam, she starts to flicker out and darken like a digital ghost, a sound of dark, whispering voices heralding her disappearance.

And reappearance. Right next to Malcolm. The flying van's maneuver's jolt her and force her to fall into a seated position on the co-pilot chair with a surprised, "Omph! Oh, hey, Hand--er...Agent Gibbs. What's the sitch?"

Star Girl radios: "Reinforcements incoming -- but you've probably noticed already." There's a short pause, "Look guys, Admiral Wolfe has requested that, if possible, take out the Wraith without damaging it too severely. That's a half-a-billion dollars of hardware attacking the city..."

Victory mutters to himself as he hears some of the radio chatter, "Lives matter more than dollars."

Showdown flies closer to the Wraith, going towards it as he moves past the van again by hopping on the green fields that appear briefly. Stopping in the air on one green field, he brings his hands together as a ball of red-black forms between his palms over his head. Then he chunks it at the Wraith. Once it gets close, it literally implodes with a loud bang sound.

Chen laughs, "That's USAF's priorities for you. I think the city is worth slightly more than a half billion dollars. If one or the other is going to get damaged I know which I'd pick."

Showdown's blast is dead-on target, but the Wraith emerges mostly unscathed. It sways slightly, but it's onbaord systems adjust it's course swiftly.

Showdown snaps his fingers in response, as if he was planning on that doing more.

The hovervan and StarGuard contingent pass under it as it shuts off it's warp field and plummets about 2m before it's Gravitic Impellers rollover and stabilized flight is activated.

The Torus is currently shaped like a sphere approximately the size of a baseball. It is featureless beyond the occcasional bright blue glow coming from its Impeller reorineting itself to a new targetted center of gravity.

If it had difficulty finding the area, Showdown's explosion would certainly have guided its way.

The Wraith slows in its approach. One of the missile bays slides open and a rocket drops out, shooting forward at the flying van before it's more than a few meters from the unmanned fighter.

Victory uses another energy charge from his shield. The circular energy barrier zips out at the Wraith like a discus, striking the machine.

Victory's shield knocks the Wraith sligtly off course, glancing off it's steel hide. The missile is already away and zooming straight for the flying van.

Chen whoops with delight. "Great shot, Victory. If I had any mass free I'd create a hand to give you a high five. And great piloting too. Keep it up. Malcolm, and I could afford take a nap."

Somewhere in the middle of maneuvering the flying van to track after the Wraith's attempts to break away, Malcolm realizes that important sensory clues are present inside of the van. There is the dark susurrus of unintelligible voices next to his head and the faint, fruit & vanilla aroma of Velvet Sugar in his immediate proximity.

Before Malcolm can open his mouth to ask questions, Gabrielle Grimm is talking. His head jerks sideways to peer at the Grimm in his co-pilot's seat. Opening and closing his mouth a few times, Malcolm eventually finds his voice enough to say, "Runaway US Navy aerial combat drone. It's trying to enter the city's airspace, but it's mostly blowing up whatever the Navy or we keep throwing at it. Don't suppose you can give a drone some waking nightmares enough that it'll shut itself down for recovery?"

Looking back out the windshield, Malcolm adds, "You, uh... Glad to have you on-board, Ms. Grimm," more or less in time with him noticing the Wraith going on the offense again. Malcolm twists the control yoke, bringing the craft around broadside to improve Victory's chances of hitting the Wraith. And then, of course, Malcolm realizes that there is, in fact, a missile headed his way.

"HANG ON! DEFENSIVE MANEUVERS!"

The Starguard flying van barrel rolls away from the missile, still broadside to it, before it abruptly plunges downward several meters as the missile roars past overhead. By the grace of superior aeronautical engineering, the flying van pulls out of its barrel roll and surfs the blast wave from the exploding missile forward in appropriately 1980's dramatic action movie fashion!

Victory hangs on during the defensive maneuvers. He's still clipped to the door at the moment, "I can only keep this up so long, though. The batteries on my shield can only pull this off so many times." He preps again, waiting to see what the Wraith does.//Hold a full action to take another shot at the quick AI craft.

Chen was quite happy clinging to the outside of the van protecting it and the people inside it. A stray thought crosses her mind... o O(Maybe I'm growing up? A couple of years ago I'd be frustrated as hell just being defensive. What a dreadful thought!) But Victory's comment alerts her to a possible need for a more active response. Still reinforcements have turned up. She'll continue with the Paragon Maneuver for now and see what happens next.

Grimm grips the armrests tight as Malcolm gives her a warning to hold on. She's jerked about by the barrel roll and no seat belt. Thankfully the forces at work push her down into her seat while she hangs on tight. Once it levels out, Gabrielle ungrits her teeth and nods to Malcolm. "Well," she catches her breath once the hover van stops shuddering from the explosion shockwave, "I don't think nightmares will do the trick, but I may have a few more things up my sleeve if I can get close enough." She shoots a mischievious grin and a wink at Malcolm, but keeps it professional and not -too- flirty.

"I'll help run interference." She vanishes again with the sound of those dark, quiet voices whispering forbiddin knowledge, then flickers into existance outside of the craft some fifteen meters away.

Gabrielle hovers in the air, as light as a shadow, as the wind at this height buffets her hair about wildly. She stretches her hand out towards the drone, fingers splayed. A black portal swirls into existance several meters closer to the drone, before a blast of dark energy surges from the portal towards the drone.

Grimm's blast of dark energy punches a hole into the right side of the fighter. There's a small secondary explosion, and smoke begins to pour from the gap. It's knocked backwards and begins to spiral out of control.

Showdown flies after the Wraith. He's not quite sure why it was trying to attack or anything, but he's sure that maybe... yeah, no, he'd better make sure it doesn't crash. The gem on his hand glows a blue-white color before he manifests a whip as he moves his hand back, then cracks it forward as the long rope of energy flares down towards the spiralling fighter, attempting to catch it by wrapping around it multiple times and hold it in place.

Showdown has managed to rope the fighter, for now.

Torus shrinks down to a much smaller size as it passses by Grimm and her mind-breaking darkness.

The warp of spacetime registers on its senses and redirects his attention away from the Wraith, and onto Gabrielle Grimm.

The Torus/tetrahedron spins in response to the rush os spatial data buffeting its systems.

Calculations complete it decides to reorient itself to her movements to better understand the creation of these spatial 'shortcuts' throught he Dark Plane.

The spinning tetrahedron stops dead center of Grimm's view.

The Wraith fires its jets at full power, to try and get free of Showdown's grasp.

Chen uses the voice of a British air force officer from a film she saw recently, "Persistant little blighter isn't it?" she says.

Showdown tries valiantly to hold on to the Wraith, then the electricity rope just bursts apart into little static that disappears. Showdown, if one could see his face, is probably getting annoyed. He even shakes a fist at the Wraith and yells, "That's the last time I try to save something from crashing!"

The Wraith tears free of the Showdown's ropes of light. It no bears it's guns to bear on Grimm. It fires a missile at her.

Victory launches another energy shield at the Wraith when he sees it getting ready to fire, striking it solidly.

Victory's energy shield digs deeply into the left side of the craft, leaving a deep gash into it's wing an fuselage as it dissipates.

The craft begins to nose down and slip out of control again.

The spiralling fighter takes a wild shot at Grimm.

Gabrielle winces at the hole she punched through the Wraith. Especially as smoke starts pouring out. "Oh boy. They said don't damage it, didn't they?" she groans, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly. She totally thought it was more durable after all the other heroes were trying to stop it! Or maybe...it's because all the other heroes were trying to stop it that it finally broke. She can hope!

Suddenly Gabrielle's eyes narrow their focus to something vaguely familiar floating in her field of vision. It's...she's seen that before. Somewhere...but it wasn't just floating like that before. It seemed inanimate.

"What...-is- that?" she asks as she drifts a little closer, squinting. Her momentary distraction could've cost her if not for Victory's quick actions, which bring her back to the current fight. She fires off a distracted salute to the star spangled hero, not seeing the Wraith recover and fire towards her...

The Wraith, despite all the damage, manages to right itself in mid-air. It takes aim at Grimm again, and fires a missile.

Chen stretches out to shield Grimm, and this time she takes the full blast of the missile on her extended mass. The missile rips her ballooned extention apart with a stray of blood and messy fleshy chunks. "Oww! Damn. That hurt." she says in a pained voice.

This isn't goign to be anyone's day, is it? Gabrielle glances up at the oncoming missile just as Chen stretches into the way. She flinches and turns her head away just as the missile is stopped. But gets splattered with a spray of blood and flesh chunks. Gabrielle gags slightly after being covered in gore.

Also in the path of the Chen provided gore-showers- The Torus turns itself inside out. But when it does- it would seem another spher was hiding isndie.

The Torus ignores Grimm's question, but not the heroes' actions & their saving of Gabrielle Grimm.

Their actions tell it that The Demiurge made the right choice deciding to keep to observation standards.

Sphere-side out, it seems that The Torus is sparkling clean again.

The missile strikes Showdown's force field and detonates, showering Grimm with mostly harmless debris.

Showdown calls towards Grimm, "Hey, I think you made it mad! Think you can do that again!?"

"The Navy would appre-"

And Gabrielle Grimm is no longer in the co-pilot's seat. Malcolm facepalms for a moment, somehow keeping the flying van level with one hand. He lifts his head a moment or two later and shakes the cobwebs out of his brain whilst he straightens the craft's flight path.

"So, uh, can you fly a van?" inquires Malcolm, tone almost conversational, of Victory. He tries not to think too hard about how weird that question is. It is probably also helpful for Malcolm to not think too hard about the missile hurtling toward Grimm... Or, well, the new lack of a Chen-based protective layer on the flying van.

For the most part, Malcolm keeps the van flying in the general direction of the Wraith and all of the action. Though Malcolm does take the opportunity to examine the Wraith in as much detail as he can while it's not shooting at him.

Gabrielle flinches away from the debris. "You want me to make it -more- mad?" she asks incredulously. "Maybe I can at least keep it from shooting up the city," she mutters under her breath despondantly. It's LIKE helping. A chunk of you don't want to know what falls from her bangs and tumbles to the ground far below. Best. Day. Ever.

Victory takes another shot at the Wraith, muttering to himself about not being able to hit hard enough. Cobalt's name gets mentioned under his breath. "Three shots remaining after this one."

Victory's shot is a glancing one, unfortunately.

This time, Victory's shot skips off of the fuselage.

"Yeah, yeah. Cobalt's a space cannon," mutters Malcolm toward Victory, "But can you fly a van or not, my man?"

Victory nods. "No problem. I can fly this thing."

In response to Grimm, Showdown shrugs and calls back, "Well I can't exactly get it's attention, else I'd take it on, lady! It's kinda been a close call a few times with the missiles and guns!"

"Brotha, time for you to get out of the door and into a seat," replies Malcolm. He grins and starts preparing the van for the controls to switch to the co-pilot's seat. "I'm gonna need some altitude on that big bad birdy if I'm going to be of any help to anybody with taking that thing down. Sound like a plan, Victory?"

Victory nods. "Sounds good to me. Be there in a sec. Try to keep it level when I come back forward."

Knowing what it knows of the Wraith, The Torus/Sphere transforms from a sphere to a perfect statue replica of Grimm.

The statue hovers near her and begins to emulate her movements as it drifts between her and the Wraith.

The Torus may be a pacifist & an observer, but perhaps a little misdirection won't be too much of a violation to his creed.

Chen is going to try and give the Wraith something else for it's deranged programming to deal with. Growing a pair of wings she flies back towards the drone and aims straight for it, reducing the toughness of her skin in favour of more agility.

Chen says, "grows a pair of wings. Otherwise it's a long way down. Flying back towards Grimm and the van she is ready to stretch out and intercept another missile if it comes."

Gabrielle Grimm runs her hand down her face to wipe off what she can, her expression direly seriously. "And after that, we're still not supposed to damage the thing? Because I'm like THIS close to dismantling it." She double takes towards the replica of her just before she vanishes again, flickering into existance closer to the drone. No time to think about that! They have to stop this thing!

She reaches out her hand again, and a dark portal forms again some distance closer to the drone. Several long, boneless, shadowy limbs pour forth and stretch unnaturally long with grasping claws and hands towards the drone.

The Wraith's frame creaks under the pressure, but it holds firm.

Showdown brings his hand back as another green rope appears and he cracks it to try and join in on the holding of the drone. "Someone should try to hit it right now! Like REALLY HARD!"

Torus follows in close pursuit of Grimm as she teleports away- though she has to actually re-emerge from the Dark Plane before he can engage his own Warp Field.

The Black Matte Statue Grimm disappears and reorients itself to the drones primary visual systems.

The Demiurge realizes that this is becoming a slippery slope. Every action it makes taking it a single step closer to actually intervening...

The Wraith, wounded and smoking, try to power it's way to freedom with its after burners.

Grimm grunts in exertion as the shadowy limbs wind tighter around the Drone, which jerks and pulls as the afterburners go full burn. "G-guys...it's really hard to hold down. Just...ungh! Need to get a bit closer to get a better grip and I think I can hold it. Anyone got another idea of how to shut it down before we just have to dismantle it?"

Whipping the green whip around the Wraith, Showdown hangs on with both hands as he digs his feet into the green platform he's currently on. "YEEE-HAW!" He calls towards Grimm, as he tightens the whip, the whip shifting to what looks like solid electricity. "Urk... she's not joking!" The solid green electricity crackles a lot more with the Wraith's afterburner stunt and Showdown moves to both hands to hold on to the line, jerking it to one side. "Hold still, you ugly tin can!"

Malcolm keeps the flying van level and steady as he waits for Victory to hop into the co-pilot's seat. He keeps his fingers ready to hit the buttons to transfer from primary to auxillary controls, grey eyes scanning over the aerial battlefield intensely. Gritting his teeth, Malcolm hopes that Showdown and Grimm can keep that damn Wraith stationary for a few moments longer.

Victory unclips himself from the door and makes his way to the front, where he settles into the co-pilot's seat and straps himself in. "Good to go."

Chen says, "flies past Grimm towards the drone and - stretches - to the point of real pain. But that gives her the reach, just, to make a grab for the drone, clinging to it if she succeeds."

Chen gets her hands on the Wraith and tries to help Grimm and Showdown keep it restrained.

Victory looks at the Wraith, "You know...there are a couple of holes in the thing. Maybe we can bypass the armor by reaching in and ripping out parts?"

Gabrielle tries to get a tighter grip as they all dog pile on the drone. She flickers in closer, her portal vanishing along with the shadowy limbs holding it. This causes some extra strain on the others, but hopefully only for a moment.

The thin black field of energy that outlines and protects Grimm begins to expand and shift. Four long, thick, shadowy tentacles begin to spread out from her field, two at each side and reminscent of some inky kraken. They reach out to try and encircle and wind around the drone.

Grimm's blast slams into the Wraith. There's an explosion as both jet engines flame out and start streaming smoke. Finally it start to sink, held aloft only by Showdown energy tether.

Chen is slowly beginning to knit together again. But she sounds cheerful as she hovers and watched the Wraith being lowered to the ground. "That went well I thought." she throws out in everybody around.

Malcolm stands in the open doorway of the Starguard Flying Van, waiting for the van to both gain some altitude and for an opening to present itself for his daring plan. Grimm, Chen, and Showdown promptly cause the drone to blow out its engines, straining its afterburners in a vain attempt to escape their overlapping nooses.

"... I... Well that was not at all the outcome I was expecting..."

Looking sheepishly over at Victory, Malcolm offers a fist for congratulatory fist-bumping. Malcolm also starts to slide back into the pilot's seat because why not?

As the Wraith falls the Torus teleports towards the real true Grimm.

When it emerges from the warp field it is no long Grimm shaped, but once again a featureless sphere.

The sphere continues its relatively quick orbit of Grimm still trying to analyze the nature of this dark energy.

Victory bumps Malcolm's fist and starts to bring the van down to where the Wraith is settled down. "Well, that went...reasonably well, all things considered. It didn't even crash out of control."

Star Girl radios in: "Come in, team. What's your status?"

Keeping hold of the Wraith as best as he can, Showdown fires off another of the green energy whips to further help him control it as he starts to glide down on a trail of yellow sparks. He looks for a suitable area to set the thing down as he goes and angles his flight towards a spot if he needs to. Calling back towards the others, he says, "I'm going to set this thing down somewhere! So who knows what this thing is anyways!?" Ah, the joys of actually not having a radio. At all.

Victory says over the radio to Star Girl, "The Wraith has been taken down. It's...kinda broken, but mostly intact. More or less."

Grimm, being a student already faced with school loan debt, is horrified as the very, very expensive drone goes kablooey. "I. Uhhh. That...that was an accident," she laughs nervously to avoid freaking out completely. Okay, that really is an 'I'm having a nervous breakdown' laugh. Her tendrils slowly unravel themselves and retract back into her energy field as Showdown takes the thing down.

She looks over to Chen, surprised by her chipper behavior. "Didn't...didn't you blow up? Are you going to be okay?"

Grimm's eyes are suddenly drawn back to the now sphere circling around her. "What -is- that thing? Is it like some military monitor or something?"

"Any injuries or damages?" Star Girl asks. "We can route emergency services to your location."

"The Navy's going to want to send out a tow truck to pick up their drone," replies Malcolm on the comms, "It burned out its engines."

Chen grins, "Yes, and yes." she says to Grimm. "I'm indestructable. Well more accurately I come back from anything. Give me an hour or so and I can even come back from being dead. Sorry about your clothes and face though. That second missile hit was harder than I expected. Lucky I didn't get hit again. It might have killed me and then I couldn't have protected the van and people."

Victory says over the radio, "Chen took a missile hit. But...uh...she appears to be getting better?"

The Torus changes orbital paths smoothly, choosing to orbit Chen now as she heals and repairs her incredibly diverse physical form.

It 'watches' the process with all due attention, but it remains silent as it loads its experiences in this pursuit to its historical database.

"Yeah, thanks for the save. I'm going to need a long, scalding shower as soon as possible," Gabrielle says, making sure to keep her arms separated out from her sides to avoid more gooeyness or grossness. She looks positively miserable. But, they saved the city at least. She'll feel better about the whole thing once she's been hosed off.

Star Girl says. "Roger that... good to hear." There's some silence on the line. "Forge... Spirit wants you to prep the Wraith for transport back to SGHQ... We... might need to move quickly on this."

Chen nods and then looks around. "Losing bits of me always makes me hungry. I need to replace the lost mass. Who's up for a pizza?" she asks.

Setting the Wraith down on the ground, Showdown starts to wipe at his brow, then sighs. "I just had to have an armored helmet." Walking over to the Wraith, the armored man looks it over, whistling a bit in appreciation. "Vertical flight, afterburners... nice way to drop missiles. Maybe I should look at getting a piloting license."

Grimm's cheeks puff out a bit and she keeps her mouth sealed tight. The idea of being hungry after that doesn't seem to agree with her. She vanishes quickly, reappearing inside the hovervan and flopping down into a seat to let her stomach settle.

Victory looks back at Grimm, "You okay? You're looking a little pale."

The Demiurge wishes to help the assembled heroes more, but has few options at its disposal that don't violate causality. That is unttil Chen mentions pizzas.

The orbiting sphere disappears mid-orbit as Grimm does thesame. The coincidence will likely tie the two together in people's minds but it really was just coincidence.

Roughly 15 seconds later a hypercube appears between Chen and the downed StarGuard hovervan.

Inside the hypercube is a table piled high with pizzas.

The Hypercube slows its motions and reforms itself into a tetrahedron.

Crouching down, Showdown leaps upwards, stopping near the van. He knocks on the door to the van. Even if he has to keep pace with it. Yep. Odd hero knocking on a van door.

Grimm could be auditioning for the role of Carrie in the near future. "I'm--urrf." She covers her mouth for a moment, then lets out an unhappy sigh. "...fine. Thanks. Just need a shower and something to settle my stomach." She's seen a lot of horrifying things, but she's never felt quite so icky before.

"I'll see what I can do about getting it mobile again, Star, but I'd send a secure heavy transport out to my coordinates anyhow. Only so much I can do with burned out engines," replies Malcolm. He doesn't bother to lash himself into the pilot's seat again, climbing out of the seat instead. Malcolm looks over at Victory and offers a cheery smile as he comments, "See you on the flipside," before the tall man simply steps out of the flying van.

Whirling uncontrollably in air, Malcolm eventually somehow manages to torque himself into a tightly compressed spiral that zips toward the ground at high-velocity. Spreading his arms wide, Malcolm inexplicably appears to have metal foil glidersuit-style wings. His downward acceleration is arrested rather quickly, the tall man wheeling gently about as he glides at a more controlled rate toward the ground.

The reception area has muted black tiled floor, with the walls and roof painted off-white. The secretarial desk enclosure is barely twenty feet from the double set of glass doors. To its left is a large double-hinged door ominously labeled 'Security'. A seating area full of soft couches is to the right. Down the hallway that leads deeper into the building is the office of the Director of Operations and the exit to the landing field outside.

Chen grins, "Yay! Pizza! Hey everyone, PIzzas." she shouts out and stretches out a hand to grab a decently large slice of pepperoi pizza.

You stand in a large open area about 80 meters on each side on the sixth floor half roof of the building. The perimeter is surrounded by heavy electrified fence and the only doorways lead into the reception area and the security area of the facility. In the center of the open area is a circular concrete slab, large enough to land a helicopter or a VTOL-type aircraft. It is painted with white and yellow symbols and stripes that have meaning only to pilots and landing crews. Just off to one side of the concrete landing pad is a windsock. To the south side is a maintenance shed, and next to that is a small shack that serves as a secondary local radio "tower" for signaling incoming craft.