Avatar RP VIII: Chapter V: Beatdown
 

Listen to the Strider Style.

The droid reached out and caught the box. "Really? A cardboard box?" The droid asked Bard as he ran around the corner. Though the box was screaming which was a bit disconcerting. Cardboard normally didn't scream. Before the droid could shake his head trying to figure out why he threw a box the ninja turtle popped out of the sewers, throwing a grate which was easily side-handed.

Then Nin shot fire out of his eyes. The droid threw the box right into the flames, and without realizing the box was actually indestructable, it went sailing through knocking Nin on his back.

The droid turned towards Arhra III, and was suddenly underfire from hundreds of rounds. Some rounds bounced off into other forumers, most tore into him and went right through, screwing over anyone behind him. Thadius was smart enough not to exactly try sucking out any energy while his opponent was under fire from bullets, as he knew he had a weakness for those.

The droid started walking forward even under the barrage after Arhra III, who was then promptly stolen. Finally the barrage stopped, and the droid started to move faster as he pulled himself together anyway, pieces coming off the ground and setting back in place. As he started to put himself together enough to run, *CRACK* a lightning bolt tore through his chest. The three more followed suit, electricity causing enough paralysis so that Hawk came in and cleaved the foe in two.

The two halves stood on their own for a second, and soon the pieces started reattaching. One arm just smacked Hawk in the chest, sending him flying into Thadius as Thadius snuck in to drain energy. Overcast picked that moment in time to reach in and underwealm his opponent. The droid slammed into Overcast full frontal style, sending him straight into Shyria, which knocked her fire attack right into Thaidus and Hawk, poor guys.

The droid focused for a second, and activated his drive, teleporting after Arhra III. Well, at least he was going to, but nothing happened. He turned towards Overcast, pulling out two blades of that damn furian energy. "The hell did you do to me?!?!?!" The droid said, showing the first signs of anger before charging him full on, pieces chasing after him as he pulled back together.

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As Pyros ran, he tried over an object that randomly appeared on the ground. After recovering from the fall, examining closer it appeared to be a portable dimension drive. A quick examination showed that it only had enough power to teleport itself and nothing else however.

"Well that went fairly well," Bard decided aloud. At least he wasn't getting hurt. Unfortunately it seemed that Shade failed to get a strike in. Bard then turned to notice the ninja walk over to him, his head bowed in failiure. "Its OK pal, maybe next time," he told the summon as he patted him on the shoulder, before the ninja vanished in a cloud of smoke, like ninjas tend to do.

The summoner then lifted his blood-stained knife was again to his arm, 'I'm going to need a White Mage soon' he mused to himself as he re-opened the initial wound.

"Fire in the hole!" Bard then abruptly yelled as the blood hit the ground and he sped off and scrambled to find a place to hide, finding refuge in an empty trash can.

"WHERE THE HELL IS HE!" screamed Geist as he formed above the spot that Bard was once standing at. He was pissed, he had been ripped apart by magic, forced to fight a god, and had a very unpleasant experience in Australia that he did not want to talk about, all in the same day; he had alot of anger to vent, and he wanted Bard as his victim.

That was when he conveniently noticed the giant robot that the forumers were fighting, he decided that since his summoner was hiding, the robot would be his punching bag today. "I KILL TODAY!" the ghost like being yelled, and then split into an almost uncountable number of needle sized blades and charged at the robot. He was intending to get into the robot (no foe yay intended) and tear apart its circuitry or whatever it had from the inside.

Oh shit!

Hawk slamming into Thadius caused his arm to jerk around, pointing at nobody. Damnation! My attack missed!

And then he had a bigger reason to curse. Mother of-

Needless to say, the next few seconds would be incredibly painful. Thad had no means to deflect the misdirected flame attack. Unless Hawk could come up with something, he'd have to resort to his cloning process to come back again.

"Ha ha! I have taken your power and put it up here!"

He pointed to the Box and a large middle finger illustrated itself for the robot to stare at while it moved in to try to kill him hard, and that would be part of the hopeful distraction that would give him the chance to put some more of his quirky energies inside the thing,

"And you will never break it open to get it back!"

And he dashed off, it was all a trick. Though he was hoping it was a trick that worked. Distract the bot, and make it concentrate on a target that would be completely impossible to win against. Oh yes, if this worked maybe he would be able to save the day after all.

It was good to be alive again.

"Ha!" Hawk cheered, seeing the bot sliced in two and now full of very many bullet holes. He was not cheering a second later as it began to reform. "Crap!"

The next thing he knew was he was thrown across the road and into Thadius. He was a little dazed from the assault, and he was pretty sure he might have cracked a rib, but it could've been worse.

"Son of a bitch-Oh shit!!" Then there was fire. Lots of it. Dragon fire no less. There was only one thing for it; it was time to use his second, super secret alien item, which had been kept super secret and almost forgotten until the right plot convenient moment to reveal it and Deus Ex Machina his way out of certain death. He pressed a button on the hidden device, with a satisfying *FWUMP* signalling it was active. A moment later the wall of fire hit... and was deflected a good five feet from Hawk and Thadius.

"Go go go MOVE!!!!" Hawk yelled at Thad, pulling him to his feet and dragging him away from the flames which were miraculously not burning the pair alive. A few seconds later they were clear, and not a moment too soon, his new device was beeping, indicating it was out of energy and needed time to recharge.

"Well, that was close." Hawk then noticed Thads obvious look of confusion and smiled. "Portable force-field generator," he told him, indicating the small device, "also has some slow, but not entirely useless health regenerating abilities."

Even as he said it, he could feel his wounds healing and there was an audible *pop* as his busted rib fixed itself. "Aaahh, precious, delicious health...." It was quite a nice feeling.


"Right sooo.... yeah I have no idea how to kill this thing then. Thoughts?"

Thadius sighed in relief as he realized he wasn't dead. Yet. Again. Thank you, Murphy, for keeping your baleful eye off me!

"Well I was trying to do something that would give us an edge earlier. Maybe if I don't screw up again, it'll work." Thad replied to Hawk's question.

Before Hawk could indicate his approval or condemnation of the tactic, Thadius turned and pointed at the robot again. "Oh gods, I hope this works this time, or we are all so dead. BETA!"

Mystical energies swirled around Thadius, then immediately shot out at the robot, intent on ripping out whatever magical energies they could.

"Freakin' worthless," Armored pouted, now in her original clothes. Her minigun had been so useless that it wasn't even mentioned in IC's post. And her mana was so low she'd only tickle that damn robot.

It was obvious what needed to be done. Time for the kinds of attacks that caused collateral damage. But she'd need mana and time and she had neither at this point. So, just to waste time, she assessed her foe. To put it simply, the droid would have to be absolutely annihilated by the most powerful attacks anyone could muster. "Like my ship's own Aesir Cannon, but the other forumers would have to be evacuated while the droid will have to stay in the same position," Armored speculated. "Otherwise, god knows what destruction will befall this forum while the beam chases the droid."

And then again there was the obvious fact that she had no way of contacting her ship. She really didn't think battles would involve this level of counter action. "Geez, what the hell'm I supposed to do now?"

"Ha-HA! Did someone call for some magical destruction?" Mauve yelled out gleefully, appearing behind the group with a grin and a dramatic swoosh of her cape.

"No," someone said after a moment of disinterested silence. Mauve looked disappointed.

"You guys are lame," she muttered. "Ruining all my fun."

Some might wonder how Mauve ended up down on the battlefield, since the last time anyone had heard from her, she was up on a rooftop waiting for Arhra to make a post. Well now they would just have to keep wondering! Mauve was annoyed at having her dramatic entrance being ignored and was in no mood to make an explanation!

"Well, you're getting magical destruction whether you like it or not, dammit,"she huffed. "So there."

She clenched both fists; a purple orb of magical energy forming around each.

"Time for some rapid-fire spell-slinging awesomeness!" she declared grandly. With a yell, she hurled one of the purple orbs at the robot.

"Water!" In the instant before the spell impacted, the purple smoke hazed into a ball of water.

Not waiting to give the robot a chance to respond, she hurled the second spell. It grew larger as she fed more MP into it.

"Thundaga!" Again, the purple orb changed form. Alone, Mauve's spells probably weren't enough to damage the robot. But maybe combining them would be effective. With any luck, the low-level water spell would boost the power of the lightning enough to do some electrical damage to its inner circuits.

She started preparing another volley of magical attacks, waiting to see how the robot responded.

Her buffs had worn off, her armor was a wreck, and 'Operation: Kill it With Fire' had not only failed miserably, it had almost gotten two of her co-fighters (including the love of her life) turned into crispy bacon. To say Shyria was in a bad mood would be an understatement.

"Have I mentioned today how much I! FUCKING! HATE! ROBOTS!?", Shyria roared, ripping out another good sized hunk of pavement out of the street, charging it with fire energy, and hurling it at the robot. She knew sooner or later she'd have to find a way to expand on her moveset, but for now, all she cared about was grinding this T-800 ripoff into scrap.

Dr Ethington held the doodad over her head.

"Wha wa wa waaah! You got the teleportation device!"

Then she noticed what wasn't in her hands: an Arhra!

"Triple I! Where'd you go? I can't bloody well rescue you from evil alien robot's sexual advances if I don't know where you are!"

She pulled out the moolah device and pointed it at a nearby minivan.

"Are you under there?" She promptly earned some scratch an found where Arhra wasn't, so she moolahed the nearest truck, and her search for Arhra became increasingly lucrative.

(typed on an iPhone!)

Bailey opened his eyes slowly. Last thing he knew clearly, some idiots had shot him with tranquilizer darts made out of cold iron when he was in full on lion form. After that, it was all a hazy blur of zoo transport trucks and talk of experiments in infusing different animals with fae-stuff to improve the zoo experience.

Now he seemed to be sitting in a pile of money, and he had no clue why. Well! First thing to do, stop looking like a plain-old-ordinary lion, and go back to being humanoid. He had noticed that zookeepers showed a marked reluctance to fire tranq darts at humanoids, even if the idiots persisted in capturing quadrupedal sentients.

Wait, there seemed to be a doctor-y person over there, with a funny looking device aimed in his general direction.

This could not stand!

"Hold, foul zookeeper! No longer shall I suffer the indignities of cages and sedation! Repent your vile kidnapping ways or pay in equal coin of humiliation!"

Bailey swelled up to a good seven feet tall and made use of dramatic finger pointing action to better emphasize his conviction.

Steel peered down at the battle from on high, or at least on high-rise flat. He wasn't actively using any powers at this very second, so the red aura that had covered him since he'd downed the fury pill was no longer present, save for the red glow in his eyes.

Even with his now boosted power set, he couldn't really see a way of fighting the droid. Physical damage didn't seem to really do anything to slow it down, and however much fury it had in it, it seemed more than capable of overpowering him in every aspect. 'cept looks, natch.

It was after Arhra III, but Asheth had already run off with her, so Steel couldn't contribute on that front. Everyone else was dog-piling the droid and having about as much luck as they'd had during the rest of this battle. For those who've just joined us, that would be 'very little'. He figured he'd be able to get a surprise attack in on the mechanical meanie, but that'd only be good for one shot. It'd have to be good...

"Maybe my new attack? No, wait, the good Doctor said to save that stuff for the final battle, and I am listening to her apparently. Lame. I guess it's old favourites time then!"

Steel held out a hand towards a nearby skyscraper, and the fury aura flared back to life around him. The building shook slightly, before ripping itself out of the ground and into the sky, spining over 180 degrees as it did so. Taking a moment to aim the very pointy tip of the roof with the droids head, he made sure his aim was true. And then, with a yell, he brought his hand down and the building was thrown directly downwards far faster than gravity was capable of.

"We really are throwing a lot of those around this RP. Wonder if it's becoming cliché?" he mused. And then: "Oh right, uh, team-mates. Oops. I guess I hope they can dodge that down there? Aheh..." He stepped away from the edge and out of sight, slipping into acceleration mode once again. "Well they didn't see me do it, lets see 'em prove anything!"

"Why must they always charge in?" Arhra II asked, allowing some of her annoyance to show through. Blasting things half a block away seemed to inevitably be complicated by people wanting to punch that thing. The sorceress raised her hands, magic beginning to crackle about her. "I ought to blast them anyway."

"No, you mustn't!" Arhra I cried, a decent approximation of horror on the white mage's face. She interposed herself between the sorceress and the melee.

"Mustn't, mustn't, musn't." her darker twin echoed, also getting fed up with her companion. "You used to be fun."

"I'm fun!" the healer protested. "I'm lots of fun!"

"Also, getting robots, dragons and soul fragments to do your dirty work for you doesn't count as pacifism." Arhra II added, on a roll now.

Something very ugly began to surface on Arhra I's face. Quivering slightly, she pinched herself and it vanished. Eyes almost shut and expression smoothed into calm joy, the healer replied happily. She started advancing, the collected killer robots of the forum defence force folowing. "Even if I've made some mistakes, I'm doing my best to help everyone. And that's the best I can do."

"Like talking me into hosting spiritual tapeworm?" Arhra II called after her. She was still hungry.

"I resent that!" Arhra IV complained, the parasite in question.

"You can start doing some work too, little voice." Arhra II added softly, clasping her hands over her chest. There was a smoky crimson glow as her lips moved, muttering something to herself. She pulled out an eel-like spectre with a draconic face. Arhra IV.

Holding her squirming captive in one hand, the sorceress held out the other. Darkish energy congealed into a baroquely carved bow.

"I am not liking where this is headed!" Arhra IV shouted with gleeful alarm.

A thin brilliant line of purple light appeared for a bow string, the ghost wrapped about a sliver of darkness that was the arrow. "I don't care if you're a robot, a devil or a god," Arhra II murmured, "my missile will make no distinction. Envelop the target and consume them entirely!"

She fired into the fray mere seconds after the skyscraper hit. "GLAAAAAAAAAH!" her missile roared, dripping specks of profoundly corrosive fluid in it's wake.

* * *

Having temporarily escaped both robots and scientists, Arhra III knew what to do. She was equipped with what was supposedly a sniper rifle and it was time to find somewhere to snipe from with it.

So she did. Finding a convenient building, the succubus set up at a window and began sighting in on the rampaging killer robot, the moment the fray got clear enough to establish a proper line of sight.

* * *

"I feel that the robot is after her, largely because while I have noticed the fury particles do tend to fade after some amount of time." Dr Ethington said. "Probably that bracelet doodad you got may stop that. I dunno. I haven't spent enough time in a proper lab sciencing things lately to make any more brilliant deductions!"

"Oh no, the interaction of the Furian energy with it is nothing like that. I think they wanted to Nothing-proof their silly robot." Arhra V replied brightly to her rival. "I can speak with certainty because I liberated the enemy's technical database." the cyborg announced, looking disgustingly pleased with herself.

"Anyway, I don't think we have time to build a spaceship. But that's alright, I have a plan."

She did.

It was a plan to directly assault the alien mothership.

They most conveniently had two mechanically inclined individuals, two dragons and two people who were very good at making things happen better. Assuming you counted boxes as people.

From these troop transports could be made: dragons with jet engines strapped to them and the metaphysical equivalent of red paint applied to make them go faster. A small escort wing could be assembled from those people blessed with personal fighter craft.

Some means of surviving in a hard vacuum such as spacesuits, forcefields or innoculations was needed for those who could not breathe in space. They had enough magic and technology to work out several solutions. Redundancy is good when continued breathing is on the line.

So far, this only got them into space. They were mostly likely headed into the teeth of bullet hell. Rather than rely on shielding alone, they could unload every form of sensor spam they had, even going so far as to physically conjure up ice and other objects to confuse the enemy targeting.

Then they had to hit the mothership with everything they had, and they did have a few useful little tricks to prepare an alpha strike. Time control, augmentation and combination attacks, oh my. From there, if it survived, they could board.

For a Plan B, Arhra V was debating sending someone off to attack from another angle and ride the bomb in if the frontal assault stalled, but that was a secret.

The droid came charging after Overcast head on, blades of red energy glowing at either side. Pieces of him were still trying to reattach, and were floating after him. Geist's little needles were following him as well, trying to enter via the still missing wounds, but the droid was angry, and fast. Overcast ran, teasing the robot with lies on what happened to his teleportation device and getting it to chase him faster.

Then the machine slashed at Overcast as he bolted, nipping the cardboard box. It didn't seem like much of a big deal, you know damaging a box. Then after gaining some distance from the droid again, Overcast noticed that the damage actually had stayed on. it was a small corner peice, but it was definitely missing now. That was not a good sign.

The thing had slowed down because Geist finally made it inside, and started tearing into peices. What it found inside was no actual circuits or anything of the like. If he focused, he would have seen the pattern. He could had learned that each piece in the thing was sentient as well. It was a bloody droid made with nano-technology. Then suddenly, the entire machine turned into a mist of metal, attacking each countless needle with its own countless parts.

As the pieces duked, Mauve took the moment to rain on the parade, soaking every little bit of machine. Then hit the entire area with a Thundaga blast, causing the pieces to scatter in a million directions. The pieces started to form together behind a building, but Shyria in her frenzy hurled a flaming boulder at them, scattering them again.

The thing hovered between everyone in a cloud, rough shapes formed the body and limbs, but kept the pieces apart now, flying around like a swarm of flies. The blades it held reformed, but floated around the cloud, having no limb to restrain them, they were free flowing and dangerous. Arhra III took a shot then, aiming to tear one of the blades, but another swooped in and tore the shot. It was really hard to tell where it was looking considering it was a freaking swarm of nano-bots.

Then Steel dropped the skyscraper on it. He was probably hoping something along the lines of swatting flies or something, but he just dropped a massive shape on it. As ground zero started to explode, sending massive chunks of building and concrete across the area, forcing everyone into cover, Steel saw his flowing up through the skyscraper, going through cracks in the building, windows, doorways, anything that would allow it to flow up and avoid the attack altogether.

It closed on Steel, threatening to engulf him. Arhra II fired her shot, the missile sailing straight for the swarm. The arrow knew its mission, and split into a thousand-fold, each aimed for a nano-bot. It passed through, visually taking out hundreds of the suckers. Those red blades came to life, tearing out many of the arrows in the sky, leaving quite a bit of the swarm left. The thing wasted no time after that, and in a matter of seconds, Arhra II found herself surrounded by the swarm, light growing dim as the things engulfed her, using tiny pincers and blades to cut into her. The blades of red energy floated around, ready to deflect or tear into anything that came near.

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AB stood there, confused on what to do. Her mana was low, her ship access was denied, and was curious if there was anything left. The monstrosity was practically ignoring the attacks of the others. She looked around, and noticed something. Little pieces of nano-bots were lying around. Few, but there. They were damaging it, it just didn't look like it. Hell the thing was being hurt, each attack taking out some, tearing apart the nano-bots. So they were doing something effective, its just that the way this machine was designed, it could keep a 100% effectiveness even when at 1% health.

Then something crashed behind her, sending up a cloud of smoke and dust. It cleared back, and on closer inspection it was an escape pod. Before she had time to react, it opened up, but nothing came out. Instead, a white flag flew off the door, and inside was both a note and a box. Quickly reading the note,

-To Whom it may Concern
This should give you guys the energy to finish off these guys. I got them on the ropes up here, but they are about to release their final weapons on NPF. Be careful though, everyone should only get one, the body can't actually take too much before the energy burns it alive.
-IC

AB opened the box to reveal what IC was talking about. Inside was a bunch of the same furian pills that the super soldiers were taking when they crash landed. This was the stuff that was giving them incredible toughness and strength, and now, it was about to do the same for NPFers.

With there being a hole in the Box Overcast stopped and touched it a moment...that was a hole. He turned around and looked at the droid as what was best described as light poured out of the Box. Though even that didn't quite make it proper. It was...like light. It was like a lot of things in fact, but light was the best one. Though the whole of the element was Lovecraftian, completely beyond proper description, and if there was such a thing as something not meant for the eyes of man this was it.

The Box exploded. Apparently not harmfully to anyone nearby but the whole area shone with the impossibility. The unaturality. Madness. Chaos.

Then nothing.

Overcast was gone.

Bard stumbled out of the trash can he had taken refuge, dizzy due to blood loss, in as Overcast exploded. That was not something seen commonly. "The box was a person!" Bard exclaimed to himself. The he noticed a dark shroud slowly moving towards him, the injured Geist. Before he could run, the summon called out to him, "I'm not in the mood to kill you right now," it said in a pissed off tone.

Bard then stopped and took a look at it, the fighting the robot thing obviously didn't end well. "I'm too pissed off at that thing over there to hurt you now, so I'll tell you what I learned, its actually made of a bunch of little robots, rather than being one big one." It was with that bit of information that the ghost floated away, leaving Bard to his own devices.

"Little robots huh," the summoner muttered to himself. Maybe explosives would work on it, he mused to himself as he staggered,away from the machines position, not quite sure were he was going, and eventually stopped a short distance away from where AB was, although he didn't the box of Fury Pills.

After some debate, Bard decided that he had to summon Pluto Armor, despite the fact that electrocution wouldn't help his situation. "Bolt," the summoner said with a resigned say as the electricity coursed through him, causing him to collapse to his knees as the Magitek Machine appeared.

"Just destroy the robot," Bard said as he pointed to his foe, before collapsing, in need of a healer as Pluto Armor moved a few feet closer to the enemy. At that point, the summon stopped in its place as its missile launcher lifted from its shoulder, ready to fire, and it started charging a bolt beam to throw at its enemy.

Thadius was stunned. "Nanotech. Nanotech. Bloody nanotech. Weaponized bloody nanotech. These guys have nanites and this is what they do with it."

++To be fair, Sir, the nanites they possess are not like your own.++

"Yeah, well, now there's two reasons to beat them up. If they learn what I do with nanites...with you, ALAN, then we're not just facing one attack anymore."

++On the downside, Sir, I don't think you can properly kill it.++

"Yeah, I figured that."

++I have a plan, though.++

Thadius grinned. "I'm listening."

++The exterior of the building remains intact, along with EMP shielding around critical junctures. I can charge an EMP pulse at the top and release it, which should short-circuit the nanites without causing undue harm to myself.++

Thadius pondered a moment. "I don't want to put my agility to the test for too long, you're a ways away and-"

Something crashed down on the other side of the battlefield. "ALAN, where'd that come from?"

++The ship in orbit, Sir. There appears to be nothing mechanical beyond the ordinary or living inside. It seems to be a mostly-empty escape pod.++

"I should investigate anyways! Where are those smoke bombs..."

Thadius found a smoke bomb, tossed it at his feet, and was gone. The next time anyone saw him, he was by the escape pod that had crashed near AB. "Hello, I don't believe we've met prop- Is that what I think it is?!"

Thadius grabbed three pills of the Fury right out of the box. "Oh yeah, it's payday! Hey ALAN, start charging up that EMP, I've got an idea!"

Stashing two pills and downing the last one, Thadius turned towards the nano-tech monster. "Oy! Big, metal, and ugly! Let's have a race! If you can catch me, I'll let you eviscerate me in the most agonizing way you can imagine. If you fail, though, I'm going to take you apart slowly to figure out all of your secrets."

Thadius hoped two things more furiously at that moment. The first, that the machine was listening. The second, that the Fury would enhance his already high agility so that he could outrun this monster to his tower so that it could be killed.

Shyria'd managed to duck behind another set of buildings just before the battleground went up like a massive claymore mine. Shaking off chunks of rubble and dust, she saw Thadius and AB dart towards what looked like a space pod that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Following them, she noticed IC's message and plunder; a box of pills containing concentrated Fury energy. The taste of the soldier's corpse from earlier hung unpleasantly in the back of her head, but things were getting desperate. The nanobots were threatening to tear one of the Arhras to pieces and Overcast (she finally had a name to pin on the mysterious box from earlier) had apparently been erased from existence. Besides, she was hungry for payback.

So she forced herself to down one of the pills. Though no smaller than a grain of dirt compared to her current size, the energy inside hit her with the metaphysical force of a speeding train. She felt like she could take on the whole Furian invasion force with one claw behind her back.

All she needed was someone to point her in the right direction...

EDIT: She decided to follow Thadius' example and try to draw the nanobots off of Arhra; she'd overheard him discussing a plan with ALAN that apparently involved an EMP burst centered on the ThadCO building. Hey, it was something.
"Hey UGLY! That half-assed AI of yours makes Microsoft Bob look like HAL 9000!"
...she never was good at technology-related insults, but hopefully it did what it was meant to.

-To Whom it may Concern
This should give you guys the energy to finish off these guys. I got them on the ropes up here, but they are about to release their final weapons on NPF. Be careful though, everyone should only get one, the body can't actually take too much before the energy burns it alive.
-IC

Armored Bishoujo frowned. "Man, and I was just about done perfecting something just like this! Awww, man, and it's in a small pill form. My Maximum Output solution has a long way to go to become something this great and convenient."

Heartbroken, Armored took one of the pills and stored it away, determined to research it in order to improve her own research on performance enhancers. Besides, both Thadius and Shyria had already swallowed them. They really didn't need a whole bunch of amped up NPFers going around, annihilating entire city blocks by sneezing on them. Instinctively, she hoarded the rest of the pills, intended to not let Thadius get anymore pills. There was barely enough for the rest of them since he took three. "Greedy, greedy bastard." Armored said, and remained in the cover of relative safety, wondering just how they were going to get to where Inbred Chocobo was. He seemed like he was doing fine, but nobody should go it alone against these guys. She would need to get a signal out to her ship.

Arhra II's first thought was nanomachines are incredibly aggravating but she then realised that couldn't possibly be true. These were visible to the naked eye and merely mega-nanomachines at best. This was accompanied by the realisation it didn't make them any less aggravating.

A tenuous field erupted about her, a soap bubble of restless grey shades. The drones mobbed it, tearing into the thin film with their tiny weapons. It would only last seconds. But that was all she needed.

The sorceress raised one hand above her head, a sphere of desolation forming in her upthrust palm.

"Dispersal? How foolish." she murmured, preparing an incantation. But then she sighed. "I would speak longer, but you're not an appreciative audience." As the sorceress did not explain, by breaking into a lot of tiny units and mobbing her, it was vulnerable to area attacks.

So for an area attack, Arhra II focused and the sphere in her hand slightly contracted and then expanded smoothly to become a dark mass hanging over her. Its interior was a bleak mess of smoky energy, the dissolution of order and uncaring, indifferent to rage. Black turbulence raced across its surface from where the wind touched it.

She bowed her head and smiled, eyes lidded. "Instead, accept my apathy."

Her shield collapsed and she loosed her attack. The hanging globe rushed outwards, engulfing Arhra II and roaring out into the street, puling debris and tiny robots into its destructive maw. Protean wings closed about Arhra in a protective shell, in the last sight of her. She knew the NPFer's normal strategy and was standing on ground zero. Pushing out until the blast butted up against buildings on either side of the street, the dome lingered as a howling void of hungry shadows before finally cutting out.

* * *

Shyria had just gotten hopped up on Fury pills and was looking for a fight.

"The enemy is that way." a soft, helpful voice came, indicating a blackened, luminous dome taking up most of the street half a block away. Arhra I was speaking, hair and robes tugged by the air rushing away from the explosion and most of the area's remaining forum killbots still following her around.

Seeing she had the dragon's attention, Arhra I waved politely. The petite white mage was carrying Bard's limp body in her free hand. "Since they're split up, I'd suggest fire and lots of it."

Armored Bishoujo was standing nearby and carefully protecting the stockpile of fury pills. "Man, and I was just about done perfecting something just like this!" she lamented. "Awww, man, and it's in a small pill form. My Maximum Output solution has a long way to go to become something this great and convenient."

"Cheer up!" Arhra I said happily. "Those pills are possibly a cosmic horror." She had no idea if this was true, but it was probably a safe bet.

At this point Arhra V fell into their midst. She landed in a crouch, pavement buckling beneath the impact. She'd left Asheth to her own devices giving vague instructions for the Action Scientist to start on jet engines and or space suits. Arhra V did not like being around her rival while in her less than fully equipped version 2 body. The under-aged cyborg was starting to hate the Valkers more and more for their inappropriate timing.

"Inbred sent us drugs huh?" the cyborg asked brightly. "What a jerk. Have you given them out yet?"

"I do not trust the pills for they are full of angry." Arhra I said solemnly. "I will not be taking any of those angry, angry pills."

"Then can I please have your pill for science?" Arhra V asked winsomely.

"I... guess?" Arhra I said uncertainly, torn between preventing drug use and politeness.

"Fork 'em over, Bishie." Arhra V said happily, turning to address the guardian of pills and holding out a cupped hand. "By the way, Inbred's wrong. Two should be safe. I know this because I know stuff." She allowed a moment's pause. "Bad guy database stuff." she added, slightly more helpfully.

* * *

Used as ammunition of the 'fire and forget' variety, Arhra IV was stuck as a ghostly little serpent wrapped around an arrow, sticking out of the ground at an angle.

There was a clear choice for what to do in this situation.

"Haaaalp!"

The arrow suddenly shuddered and lifted into the air "Your performance is just embarrassing lately." Arhra III commented, looking at the arrow's passenger with a faint smile.

"I beat up the world serpent once you know." Arhra IV announced, undermined by her frantic scrabbling to avoid slipping off the arrow.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen." the succubus said flatly.

"Well," Arhra IV blushed, "I did have an idea we could maybe combine?"

"Fusion? Ha! What's in it for me?"

"Amazing powers!"

Arhra III was sceptical. "What, becoming a big, dumb dragon that eats everything?"

"I'm not saying you're dumb." Arhra IV said with mock hurt. "Although you don't see me going around making dumb bets with demons."

"I almost won that bet." III, demonic minion, grumbled.

"The difference between almost winning and actually winning is infinity." the little dragon said, imparting her wisdom. "Anyway, I'm sick of not having a body to call my own. While you have a great body and a crappy brain." She might have leered at this point. "Everybody wins!"

"Why you -"

"So... Three, idiot." the little dragon said affectionately. "Wanna merge with me, to become one mind and one body?"

Arhra III looked thoughtful for a moment and then her expression turned devilish. "I'll tell you later."

"Waaah! That's so unfair!"

Turtle-boy's been spoiled by funny book super-villians.
 

Meanwhile...
It is 3:56 p.m. on ------- --, 2010. Nuklear Power City still stands for the most part. I have a bloody nose and have been stuck on my back for the past ten minutes and twelve seconds. I will continue to move my limbs in a panicked and ineffective manner for another eighteen seconds before my human mentality takes control again. In four minutes and thirty-seven seconds, I will make a very grave error in judgement. Twelve minutes later, I already have a plan of attack formulated. Four months later I am in Fresno, staring at the burnt remains of the Miyagi Dojo. There is no one left alive to hear the curse I scream out.

A young man is putting together a comic using sprites from an old video game in 2001, and it all goes down hill from there. That has nothing to do with me. Al Gore's wife's name is Tipper. There are over 365 species of squirrels on this planet and none of them have good taste in music.

"Wait, what?" Nin said as he jolted onto his feet. Oh hell, I was knocked onto my back again. I hope nobody saw me wigging out.

"But if they did see me wigging out, why didn't they help me up?"

Probably because you're a jerk. While the Shelled Slueth was standing around lost in his thoughts, the droid that put him on his back in the first place was now a swarm of not-quite-nanobots that was trying to kill one of the Arhras while Thad and Shyria were trying to goad it into chasing them. Nin regained focus and took notice of this.

"You!" Nin moved faster than a falcon on the wing, too fast for even nano-sensors to follow. A split second later, he was in the air above the swarm with his trusty battery extended into bo mode and ready to strike.
"ROLL FOR EVASION, YOU DUMB SH-no. You know what, forget this." Nin retracted the battery and double-jumped to avoid the swarm. He landed with his back to creature and promptly adjusted his hat.

"I'm not wasting another second in this joyless fray, you dull nameless over-powered robot. Not because you're small fry compared to the mother-ship or because Inbred might be in some kind of trouble up there. It's because you, as a character, are incredibly stupid." And with that, the Green Gumshoe walked away from that fight.

As he sauntered off, many ideas began to bounce around in Nin's head (Much to the displeasure of the imaginary denizens of his mind). Most of them pertaining on how to get to the mothership.

Pedro probably wouldn't mind me taking his airship and converting it into a space-dreadnought, right? Then again, do I even know how to construct a space-dreadnought? I know a great deal of ninja-science to be sure, but that seems like it might be way beyond me. But if I had the help of a super-genius scientist... it would still probably take too long to rebuilt the ship into space vessal. That venture's definitely a no-go. I still have one other option-*GRRRRRRRRRRM*

The low rumble of Nin's stomach interupted his train of thought. No way he could plan a space assault on an empty stomach. There was also no way that In n' Out burger would still be open during a robot invasion. It was at that moment that he spotted Arhra III talking to a small whisp of a dragon that was clinging to an arrow. One eye-blink later, Nin was standing uncomfortably close to Arhra.

"Hiya, Arhra Somethin'somethin!" shouted Nin, who was drooling just a little bit. "Lovely weather for an invasion, ain't it? Ooh, is that a Dragon Satay you got there? Looks real tasty...would you mind if I... just a small nibble..."

...

"Okay, I'll cut the crap. I am very hungry and willing to pay you-" Nin quickly yanked all the dollar bills from his wallet, sending out a small spray of gas receipts along with them. "-93 dollars and a picture of my parent's dog in a santa hat if you give me that skewer and it's meaty, succulent portion! What do you say?"

During the long break, Dr. Ethington had not only managed to accumulate a large amount of money, but also a ring and half of someone else's estate. The old man's death was quite tragic, and she cherished every moment during the brief time they were together.

To show her mourning, her hot pink shirt underneath the lab coat was slightly darker than normal. Slightly. It may have been normal colored and she was just standing in the shade.

With a pair of oversized scissors she cut the ribbon on the new NPF R&D labs, which were a gawdy shade of hotpink and black, and had 32 bathrooms, a day spa, and a full featured theatre that showed alternative movies after midnight. Asheth had some pre-puberty snuff films with this girl in a well, and it had always been popular save the rumor that you died after 7 days upon watching it.

Unfortunately, she'd used up the rest of the money researching the weapon and lining her personal bathroom with solid gold bricks, and her new lab coat was suspiciously made out of a platinum polymer, but the development would surely create further revenue to build that starship or some decent rocket boosters to stick to Shyria.

She decided to check on the forumites, only to find them still bothering with nanites and satays.

"Damn it guys, get your act together and get enemy mashin'! Don't make me take the GM reins again and move this plot forward! You all know what will happen, a fight against an army of leprechauns from space and a tricky boss expy who kills Toastburner and maybe Fenris!"

Armored Bishoujo produced a single Fury Pill and placed it in Arhra V's waiting hands. Then, with a small sigh, she gave V another pill. "Remember that the fight isn't over, so you should only use it in an emergency, which is right now I suppose."

Almost with a ping noise, Armored's mana had finally regenerated fully. "Time for some much delayed fanservice," she said, engaging the BUTTSECKS. With an over-the-top flashy transformation scene, Armored lost her normal clothes and weapons and donned the ultimate armor...

A damp bath towel.

To complete her new look, her hair had the damp and unkempt appearance of one just exiting the shower, and she smelled of fragrant shampoo. Then she ruined the whole theme by yanking a very large sword out of nothingness. "Okay, I'm ready for round two," Armored breathed, and left her exposed hiding place to face off against the robot. Despite the ridiculous length and weight of the sword, Armored wielded it was all the strength and finesse of a heavy duty swordfighter.

Machines do not have feelings. They only hate.

This is why it was unmoved by Thadius and Shyria's insults. Oh, it hated them for it, but it would have hated the meat-beings equally for anything they could have done in this time instead of fruitless mouth flapping.

But it chased them anyway.

The floating tiny machines that composed its body billowed back from Arhra II's desperation attack like dust in a sudden gale. Stragglers were caught in the dome of degenerative energy like flies trapped in amber but the vast majority swirled about its perimeter and coalesced back into a vaguely human form. It had lost much of its substance from the attacks the NPFers had piled on; smoky, particulate flesh wrapped around a denser skeletal frame.

The tech-wraith twisted its body to hold one blade up in a defensive posture as Bard's Pluto Armour fired one of its special missiles at it from behind, charging its bolt beam as well. The hand the droid held the blade launched off like a rocket, crimson energy gushing at the point of severance like a tongue of flame.

Spinning like a propeller blade, the energy blade chopped the missile into thin slices as it jetted past. They exploded a split second later as gravity started to claim them, the red buzz saw speeding onwards at the Pluto Armour.

Pointing the stump back at Thadius and Shyria, the killer robot's nanomechanical substrate flowed and configured into a heavy rifle in that hand. This was against both the terms and the spirit of Thadius' proposed race, but the machine did not care. It hated him.

It swung the rifle in a horizontal arc, sweeping the street ahead of it with fully automatic fire to gun down Shyria and Thadius.

They might be able to outrun robot, but could they outrun bullet?

* * *

Responding to Arhra V's request, Armoured Bishoujo handed over a pair of Fury Pills. "Remember that the fight isn't over," she cautioned the cyborg. "So you should only use it in an emergency, which is right now I suppose."

"Actually, the effects of the pills have a half life of a little over a week." Arhra V told her, with the authority of someone who had stolen files on the subject. "And the overall effect of multiple dosages is roughly exponential." she added with a smile. She popped the first pill.

AB was distracted by something on her body going ping. "Time for some much delayed fanservice," she said, activating her unfortunately named cosplay device and donning... a wet towel.

"You're doing it wrong." Arhra V said critically, already red eyes burning redder with something that wasn't quite anger.

"I think you look very nice." Arhra I lied to AB with the best of intentions.

"No!" Arhra V shouted, closing in on AB. "You're not really fanservicing it up, are you? Put some effort into your pose!" she commanded, hip thrusting the cosplayer. "Towel should be TIGHTER!" the cyborg had her way with AB's towel and tightened it for her. "Hold that somewhere more suggestive!" she barked, wrapping her arms around AB from behind, body in close against the cosplayer's. Putting her hands over AB's on the hilt of the cosplayer's oversized weapon, she used her berserk strength to force it lower and closer into to AB's body.

"Smell's alright." she admitted grudgingly, face buried in AB's hair.

She released her grip and stepped away, hands brushing AB's body as she did. "Now I must destroy everything!" she laughed maniacally. "DEATH TO THE VALKERS!"

She ran off.

"I think she's a little over stimulated." Arhra I apologised, trying to heal Bard at the same time.

Within the perfectly circular area of Arhra II's attack the road surface had been degenerated into something gooey and tar-like, settling slowly towards the oozy crater at the centre. Arhra V ran over the top before she could get bogged down by the yielding terrain.

Closing on the robot that was using full auto-fire on Thadius and Shyria, she shouted to hopefully distract it.

"Hey, mystery space robot, I'm going to fight you at 110%! The fire burning inside me demands I annihilate you, down to every single particle of being! Pray to your cold and distant makers as you are ground to dust by a splendid combination of magic and science, beyond maximum power! TRIPLE BUSTER!"

Arhra V raised her arm cannon and... flickered. Two images of her appeared and then vanished like mirages, several meters to either side of her.

The charged shots from their mana cannons were quite real however.

From Arhra V's perspective, she took up her firing pose and suddenly ran to the side. Flame blast fully charged, she activated her Ouroboros Drive and tunnelled through time back to just before she'd started moving and fired it from the left side of the street. Charging a second blast, she ran to the right and looped back through the tiny handful of instants that her device could access to fire a frost aspected blast from the other side. Wheeling back into the centre, she looped back again to release her final lightning.

The finalised timeline that everyone else saw had Arhra V teleport to two positions for a split second to synchronise attacks with herself, effectively tripling her firepower.

Three horizontal columns of light, red light bleeding from the beam cores converged on the Valker terminator and smashed into each other like colliding freight trains.

"We're the NPF!" Arhra V screamed at the explosion. "Who the hell do you think you are?!"

With a boom, Pluto armor released the bolt beam at the propeller blade, which slowed it down enough to make the damage less significant when it collided with the plated armor. "For a quiet boy, you put on quite a show," the machine said, using the voice of duo from Gundam wing as it retreated back, the blade having made a visible dent in the armor.

---

Bard awoke from his unconsciousness just soon enough to see Ahra V give AB tips in fan service. Needless to say, it was an unusual thing to wake up to.

"How long have I been out?" he inquired aloud as he picked himself up off the ground. It appeared that he was healed, as he noticed his self inflicted-wounds were gone and he had some balance.

'If Ahra V had time to tip AB in fanservice, then was the killer robot even still around?' he pondered, completely oblivious to the enemy behind him, as he walked over to were the fury pills were. He examined them for a while, unsure of what they were. It took him a while to put two and two together and realize that these were the things giving the Valkers their power. Not wanting to be greedy, the summoner picked out two pills from the case and looked over to the battle, and witnessed the immense explosion from Ahra V's attack.

In awe, Bard looked at the pills in his hands. These things were incredible if it gave her potential to do that. He thought of the power any of his summons could get from it. He decided that he was going to save these for a while.
---

Unsure of whether or not the enemy was destroyed, Pluto Armor decided to return to Bard for further orders.

Bard saw the machine as it made its retreat towards him, and ran out to meet the machine midway. He was unsure of what it had been doing, but the dent had indicated it was losing. Nevertheless, Bard decided to keep it out to fight longer. It was a robot, it felt no pain.

"Lets go see what remains of the enemy," Bard commanded as he climbed into the pilot seat and the mech steadily made its way towards the machine, Missiles at the ready.

Armored slapped her cheeks to clear her head of what she had just been through with Arhra V. Then she joined Arhra V and Bard near the explosion. The heat blast instantly dried her moist skin and left it flushed. Since she wasn't actively fighting, the mana drain from the cosplay was only very little. "Oh come ON, it's gotta be down by now, right?" Armored groaned. "Please don't tell me it can last this long against concentrated NPF pwnage."

Still, she was more than prepared to fight in case it somehow survived all of that raw destructive force. 'Cause they sure as hell didn't have any way of retreating, and what would happen to the forums if they did?

Scientist's log: Stardate some random point in time, as time in RP's is a timey wimey ball of stuff that makes no sense.

Have begun selling enemy weapon reproductions and mass producing them as fast as I can. Have not built the factory, but I have hired 5 newly made orphans and can at least equip a single squad every 5 minutes. They are much more effective on enemy units than the current pea shooters.

Have sold "primo" versions to black market dealers for various other uses and for other companies to build their own, as I believe in good competition for a strong economic future. The money is a windfall, and I believe I can finally finish bricking up my bathroom in gold. And then, maybe start pushing pennies towards that large scale factory for building weapons and giant space ship thrusters to stick to Shyria. Eventually. Not now.

Tasks:
Make $800,000,000 more monies to cover expenses of living and maybe science.
Do more research on alien science, like the furian particles.
Or ask Arhra for the deets, but talking is over rated when you can techno rape.
Finish making Saturos Boss fight video, and not tell people that you accidentally already defeated Saturos, but flubbed the recording, and therefore are already at the next city and are just trying to find time to grind a much earlier save to a level that can defeat Saturos much more quickly.
Find Method of using pre-puberty powers as an adult.
Buy Rob Thomas CD.

Current thoughts:
Where the heck is ole Kentucky Firaga Chocobo's tasty self? Does this mean Arhra's active leader while I slave over a hot lab making weapons? Did supercharging the kids on Furian particles to boost efficiency lower my Obligation, and I'm one step closer to becoming an unmada? Is Arhra trying to steal more of my needlessly sexy machismo, Should I tackle AB while wearing a bunnyhood and Zelda related kink in retaliation? Does anyone miss normal style Pyros, or is Nin filling the void?


Dr. Ethington finished her report as she constructed yet another gun with her feet, then swung an disproving right hook at a 7 year old who had the guts (and the fury) to attack her boss over more juice and longer breaks. The fury did do wonders though, though weakly diffused from one capsule into each kid, they were still quite energetic to form unions, claw through solid titanium, drink 12 gallons of juice and then piss through solid titanium,and still have plenty of energy to watch an episode of Keroro Gunso before getting back to work on making weapons. She was a little worried that Kimiko, the adorable asian one, was getting too comfortable with the feel of the scoped variant with the laser sight, and pointing it at her peers.

She would have to get her working on other projects like drawing pictures of Dragons with rocket boosters on their backs, like Tommy, who also had drawn pictures of Dr.Ethington with two large circles in the midst of her stick figure, and Chuckie, who drew pictures of the Valkers who killed his parents. He did it with such conviction that Dr. Ethington didn't have the heart to say that his parents were perfectly fine after being stitched back together with thread and the stuff she used to contain furian particles, and were just getting looked over by more doctorly doctors who had PhD's in medicine instead of generalized action science. It'd be a nice surprise, she hoped, once the factory was built. Dr. Ethington was full of kind responsible adult caregiver like things.

"Aaaand I'm out," Shyria murmered, taking to the sky and making a beeline for the ThadCo building. The nano-construct's gun would be a pain to deal with, especially if it aimed for her wings, but as long as she varied her flight pattern it wouldn't be able to get a straight shot for long, and even if it did, it still had a newly recharged Arhra to deal with. And for another distraction just in case, she blasted a few nearby skyscrapers with her firebreath, reducing glass, concrete, and even asbestos to ash with the added strength of the Fury pills and choking the air behind her with a thick miasma of rubble.

Somewhere on a strange ship in orbit, a figure walked across a blood soaked deck. Broken soldiers, the furian energy that burned in their eyes long out, laid strewn across the room. Pieces of what used to be battle droids, their power drained from them, crunched under the leather boot that stepped forward. The blade in one hand shown signs of wearing, cracks appearing along the blade. The stress of the fighting that had been going on was becoming too much, even for a blade designed for a true guardian. The other, a unique weapon all on its own, leaked a dark and sinister power. The chains that held the demon in the god bone weapon had started to snap, and it could feel it, and it was dying to break free.

Holes appearing in the arms that gripped these weapons that once poured fountains of blood had drained down to a trickle. Whatever had wrapped around his chest was long torn, a casualty of the war being fought. Gashed and wounds along the legs gave all the indication of collapse, yet they still stood. The man's tail still glistened with its golden feathers even through the thin coating of dark fluids, a mix of blood and oil. Sweat dripped from his face, the effort put into these battles pushing his body farther than he ever has, but yet he felt it, he felt the strength it gave, the endurance it granted. His eyes glowed with it, and he knew when it died off he was a goner too. But he still had work to do, so it would have to hold for now. He reached down, picking up another one of those red pills that seemed to burn at reality itself. It was his third one as he took it, and sadly enough he needed every bit of it as he walked into the next room, and stared at his next opponent.

The Admiral spun his chair around. Drave Sonnel looked upon the Forumer that had broken through all defenses, and now challenged him. "Shall we begin?" He asked as he rose from his chair, downing his own few pills as he stood to face IC.

The bullets that hit Shyria were mostly stopped by her angry, angry scales and then she was out of there, trailing destruction behind her as a smoke screen.

Damaged by the Pluto Armour's bolt beam, the Valker robot's fist corkscrewed away erraticly.

Where the robot itself had stood, the maelstrom of three different elements plus energy of pure rage died down.

The Valker S-class droid was in the center, all of its surviving components pulled tightly into a fetal curl. Flickering, unsteady red clung around it in a close embrace for maximum shield strength.

"Hahahah! You can build your angry sandcastles but you cannot stop the tide of asskicking that is coming!" Arhra V exclaimed. "You think you are clever but you are taking arms alone against a sea of trouble! Each wave, which is a kicking, will crash down with burning justice! NPF JUSTICE!"

The robot said nothing as it released its shield, foggy substance and the vague suggestions of a skeletal structure within reassuming a vertical configuration. But it hated her. It hated everyone. The deteriorated, pockmarked fabric of its flesh shifted again, a weapon assembly forming on the right shoulder, expending some of its remaining reserves to lob a blueish energy ball at Arhra V.

It burst with an pulse of disruptive energy, specially designed to fry electronics. Arhra v had blipped out of existence before it hit, reappearing to the side. It wasn't far enough, just catching her on the outskirts as she she tried to leap clear.

"Cheap shot!" Arhra grunted, energy crackling over her suddenly heavy feeling body as she tried to reboot her system core. She looked back over her shoulder at Bard and AB. "The second wave is one that exceeds the first!" she told them, eyes blazing. "You are the second wave now! Go! FOR PEACE! TEAR HIM APART!"

Pulling back, the robot retreated in Thadius' direction, spraying a quick burst of fire back towards the NPFers. The blade it had launched at the Pluto Armour finally came back under control and returned to the swarming main mass.

* * *

Nin was standing uncomfortably close to Arhra III and thus her passenger. The turtle detective drooled over the ghostly little dragon haunting an arrow that was Arhra IV. "Okay, I'll cut the crap. I am very hungry and willing to pay you-" Nin procured a fistful of dollars in a stomr of receipts. "-93 dollars and a picture of my parent's dog in a santa hat if you give me that skewer and it's meaty, succulent portion! What do you say?"

Arhra IV curled up her little body like a spring to leap onto his face and show him this was a dragon-eat-turtle world. And if she had not been tethered to the arrow by ghostly metaphysics, perhaps she would have suceeded.

"No. Mine." Arhra III told Nin, uncharacteristically not punching him. Ramming the 'skewer' into her mouth, , she crunched through the shaft with an alarming flash of white teeth. She had decided to take IV up on the merging offer.

Her eyes suddenly widened, pupils contracting. Falling to her knees and her hands clawing at the ground, she began heaving her guts up. It was not vomit. Not unless vomit was the colour of dried blood, sticky, glittered like an oil slick and was highly corrosive to bitumen.

Fusion, perhaps, did not agree with her.

Bard took cover, ducking inside the shielded pilot center to avoid the spray of bullets. He remained unharmed, although Pluto Armor received even more dents, and some bullts managed to pierces it and lodge themselves inside the armor.

Despite the damage it had received, the machine was determined to go on. Unlike other machines, Pluto Armor did not run on electronics, it ran on the souls of mecha pilots, meaning that the disruptive blast had little effect on it.. This gave Bard and his summon the element of surprise.

It was very unlikely that the enemy would realize Pluto Armor's odd fuel source, and would instead assume that it had been fried and rendered unable to move. With this in mind, Bard jumped out of the armor, hoping he would provide a distraction.

Once he was out, the summoner made a quick dash away from Pluto Armor, putting distance between them, and sent several scattered dark missiles at the enemy as he moved. The low-level spells would have admittedly little to know effect on the foe, but it would hopefully provide a distraction, letting the summon make its move. For added effect, Bard even shouted at the robot to takes its focus off of Pluto Armor, "over here jerkass, I'll keep this up all day if I have to!"

Meanwhile, Pluto Armor sluggishly raised its bolt cannon, and slowly made its way from the nano-bot machine. It intended to get as close as possible while firing off its weapon for the most effect., possibly getting in a melee attack if possible.

Armored whirled her immense blade over her head and then stabbed it into the street just before her, then braced herself up against the wide body of the heavy blade. Bullets pinged off the blade, but the mass of reinforced steel held up like the door to a bank vault. Once there was a lull in the gunfire, Armored leapt up and took the hilt firmly in her hand, jerking the blade from the ground. Then, setting her sights on her target and possibly oblivion, she rushed the droid with all the speed she could muster.

When she got close enough, Armored took to the sky and used her sword to start up a wild series of somersaults that turns her into a whirling nightmare. "Bisecting Blade!" Armored shouted the attack name as gravity and momentum conspired to bring the blue-haired tempress and her endlessly-swinging blade down on the recombining robot with immeasureable force.

At the very least, it should get sick on the robot.
 

"Aaaaaawww." Nin moaned as he watched Arhra III devour what he had believed to be a South-East Asian dish. A single hard-boiled tear rolled down his cheek. "Meanie! You could've at least let me have a bi-" Then she doubled over and started puking out... stuff that really shouldn't be in one's digestive tract. Nin crossed his arms and shot an incredulous look at Arhra.

"Pfft, oh sure. 'Pretend it was poisonous and that you saved my life by eating it'. Like I'd fall for that one again!" He continued to stare at the succubus, waiting for her to quit the act and stop retching. And as you might imagine, she didn't stop. Good lord, where is it all coming from?

"...Okay, fine. If you're gonna be like that I guess I'll have to play along and exorcise that 'poisonous' and 'not tasty at all' satay out of your gut since it seems to be the only thing not coming out." Carefully stepping around the growing puke puddle, Nin got behind Arhra and, despite the wings, managed to get his arms around her waist.

Good thing I picked up how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver during my stay at the Miyagi dojo... which seems very odd now that I think about it. Hey! I should pick a target for the soon-to-be-expelled and quite-possibly-covored-in-disgusting-demon-juices skewer to hit.

The Turtle Tracker quickly scanned around the area and his private eyes fell on many a potential target: Thadius (I do owe him another blow to the head.), Shyria (Then I can finally scratch that one off my list), Dr Ethington (I've already had enough catty girls full of maternal-like instincts to last a lifetime.), A.B. (She too reminds me of someone I never want to see again.), a deity that just seemed to be walking around aimlessly (Is he looking for a place to put his signature?), A.B's exposed cleavage (...), Steel (I don't dislike him but that don't make him exempt from being a target.), A.B.'s barely covered rear (...), Bard (Who the skrakk is this shmuck?), A.B.'s rear again (Ellipses.), and finally the boring but-as-it-turns-out-not-so-invincible droid enemy.

"If there ever were a more deserving target, it's that guy!" Nin pulled Arhra up so that she was upright and facing the robot. He made a fist over Arhra's abdominal area and squeezed-thrusted her with all the turtley force he could muster.

HEIMLICH MANEUVER!

We apologise for any inconvenience
 

Blocking the Valker machine's gun-related onslaught with the wide blade of her oversized sword, AB emerged to use her impromptu shelter as the weapon it was intended to be.

"Over here jerkass, I'll keep this up all day if I have to!" Bard shouted, hurling bolts of dark energy at the droid and hoping his bluff would work as his Pluto Armour sluggishly advanced, appearing crippled.

Spinning about, towel in danger of failing at its duty, AB descended on the droid swing her blade down like a giant cleaver. The robot billowed out to the side as its top divided, starting to split into two groups to evade the attack entirely.

But Bishoujo's Bisecting Blade was faster, swinging down through the split and catching it where it forked. Fury energy gushed out like a geyser of blood from the split as she dragged her blade down clear to the ground. The tattered edges of the wound waved aimlessly, seeking their opposite but the right hand side still raised it's rifle to fire on the cosplayer at point blank range.

ZAP!

The weapon was pierced by a finger of lightning, Bard's fully operational battlemech entering the fray. It vaporised into a spherical explosion of greasy mist about the burning core of lightning, the bolt beam going on to strike the central mass but failing to fully penetrate, leaving a circular glowing indentation in the right side of the bisected machine's torso.

The scattered particles of the rifle halted, drawing back together in glitching patterns as the gun began to reassemble. The Pluto Armour swung its claw at the two halves of the robot. The left side sprang into action, parrying the attack with its energy blade, shoulder module writhing and reforming into a launching tube.

A missile screamed directly skywards and exploded, becoming the swarm of deadly explosives the NPFers had encountered previously. The robot appeared to be perfectly willing to cluster-bomb itself and the NPFers engaging it. The right side tried to pull back, wanting to get time to restore its own weapons.

* * *

"If there ever were a more deserving target, it's that guy!" Nin declared, that guy being the robot. The thing it was a target for being his Heimlich maneuver on the undoubtedly faking it Arhra III.

Hauling the suffering succubus upright, he reached around Arhra III's small, batlike wings that seemed to be trying to turn into something subtly different to get his hands in position. She felt as though some rather intense internal rearrangement were going on, body fighting to hunch over and continue producing more than should be humanly possible of a substance that should not be producible by a human. Or a demon for that matter.

"HEIMLICH MANEUVER!" Nin squeezed with all his might, for satay!

It was difficult to tell if the skewer he wanted was in the spectacular arc of projectile vomit produced.

Arhra V slipped out of his grip, perhaps fortunately. She was sweating the weird acid too now.

The ol' Missile Massacre
 

“Right. Robot. Made of lots of little robots. That kinda makes breaking you with a swird tricky. You're very inconvenient, you know,” Steel sighed, watching the battle from above. Still. “In fact, you're so inconvenient, I'm going to have to do something I really didn't want to do.” He dug a hand into a pocket and pulled out... a small paper booklet.

The name, clearly emblazoned on the front cover, read 'NPF Avatars: The Instructions!'

“I'm going to read the manual! I hope you're happy! You've driven me to this!” And so, with tears in his eyes, Steel opened the booklet and began to read.

“Welcome to NPF yadda yadda... People to fear, Shiney, Brian... Pyros, POS, Arhra, Mesden... Hm. 'helpful tips'? #27: Have you tried throwing Toasty at it yet?” Steel looked around. “Damn, I don't think he's in this one.. or he's hiding. #28: Rocks do not make good eatin'. How helpful. Blah blah blah.. Ah! Tip #99: When hitting it with your sword* doesn't work the first time, try, try, try again.
*Or axe, gun, spear, fist, head, magic, or weapon of your choice. Hmmmm. That... is insanely stupid advice.” He closed the booklet and slipped it away. “However, as I am pretty much out of options anyway, why not?”

Then the robot launched a missile that became many, many slightly smaller missiles. “Or, I could deal with that. I think I'll do that first, I dislike being blown up.” And so he took to the skies.

The thing about being one of the fastest members of the NPF on a normal day (Which Steel wasn't, but let us not shatter his dreams) was that when you got an all around stat boost like, say, fury pills, you left realms of 'quick' and 'fast' behind, and entered the lands known as 'teleportation' and 'How-did-you-break-the-sound-barrier-tripping-up?' Knowing this, you may find it logical and fitting that every one of those many micro-missiles suddenly found itself firmly redirected back upon it's master. Alternativley, you may find it hAx!@*. Nevertheless. Some of them tried to detonate prematurely, but their vengeance was not to be, as the man in Orange wove between them all in the blink of an eye, then got the hell away from the explody little bastards.

Armored jerked the heavy blade out of the gash in the road it created from the powerful impact, then backed away to survey the damage she did. Bisecting Blade had done what its name implied and neatly bisected the droid right down the middle. It was almost symmetrical.

Armored released her blade just long enough to retighten her towel and then hefted the giant sword, hoping to hell that it was sufficient to finally take the damn thing down. It killed admins, Armored thought to herself. It killed moderators. I wonder if this means that I got stronger?

I had to make the picture quickly. Consider it stylistic suck.
 

Bard dismissed Pluto Armor from the battle. It had done its part and the fight was just about finished. "So is it dead?" Bard inquired to the others. It seemed to be close to it. Then it took it upon itself to prove to the summoner that it wasn't dead, and fired a missile into the air.

"Well that can't be too bad," Bard said, sure that they could protect themselves from a single missile. It was at that moment the missiles burst into more missiles. Obviously Bard doesn't seem to understand the concept of tempting fate. He was about to run, but the man with red eyes who seemed to have 'accidentally' threatened him earlier had them taken care of.

With the missiles put out of his mind, Bard resolved to the boss was finally dead. Determined, Bard pulled his knife out of his sheath, and after looking to see if their was any dead or dieing comrades laying around who could bleed for him, decided he had to do it.


"Its almost done for," Bard shouted to his allies. "With the power of friendship we can do anything guys!", the summoner said as he cut his arm again, adding another scar to it, and summoned his snarling hellbeast Berserker to the plate.
http://www.nuklearforums.com/pictur...220047&thumb=1

"Beserker, use murder on the warbot!" Bard shouted. Berserker didn't need to be told twice, or once for that matter, as it had already taken it upon itself to charge the enemy and lunged itself at the wild Warbot, intending to tear it apart.

Asheth worked through the break with "broken flashlight" and created "Anti-son-of-a-bitch machine"!

You got "Anti-son-of-a-bitch machine"!!!

* * *
"Yes." Came an impassioned voice, stepping from a street corner. The Red Kimono put a hand on AB's shoulder. "You have indeed grown stronger, and I have realized it. Therefore, I shall no longer begrudge you my failure to have been in an RP with a meaningful conclusion. Especially since I can't be a pokemon. I concede to you, Armored Bishoujo, I concede. May your journeys hereon be well!"

The Red Kimono shook AB's hand, then walked away with a smile to the sidewalk, and began to walk away. She then stopped, turned around, waved, but didn't move, and waited for the Bus to show up, because gas prices were outrageous what with the alien invasion. The Bus Stop sign was on fire, after all, so that meant the Bus wouldn't be that late.

***

Dr. Ethington got in her new goldplated Hummer that ran on diamond based fuel, and drove back down to the scene of the battle, and stepped out of the car, her hair shimmering with purpose.

"GENTLEMEN, BEHOLD! I have performed great research with the limitless source of information known as the INTERNET, with which to create a hypothetical means of defeating this foe of ours whom, even if we defeat, will just rebuild himself. To that end, I reveal my latest and greatest boredom device created in pastime, THE ANTI-SONOFABITCH Machine. It's only failing is that it does not work on dogs for some reason."

Dr. Ethington pointed at the motley group of forumites, with such vigor that they felt as if an arrow had struck them. "YOU! ONE OF YOU WILL HELP ME WITH THIS DEVICE! IT IS IMPERATIVE OR SO HELP ME I WILL TEST THIS ON YOU!"

She pulled a box from an uncomfortably large bulge on her lab coat, and opened it to reveal two pairs of gloves, one labeled "chakra" but scratched out and replaced with the word "science", and another labeled "wind" but taped over with the word "awesome" scribbled on it with a black marker.

"I just need someone to charge and aim the damn thing while I mold my "science" into a spinny ball of doom!"

Dr Ethinigton stated a plan to make things spin and cause science to happen, needing a second person to pull it off and threatening anyone who wouldn't help with a spinning related fate.

"How can you use it on someone uncooperative if you need them to aim?" Arhra V asked her (currently more mature) rival with impeccable logic. She was currently regretting her incomplete 2nd generation chassis more: with her Mana Cannon out of action, she had no ranged weaponry at all. Her original adult body had been stacked to the gills with stolen military grade hardware.

Her gaze wavered between the battle and her arm cannon, deeply torn by two mutually exclusive priorities.

"Got to fix... Laser... Not difficult." she panted, probing at her weapon's partially fried, Fury charged innards innards in a frenzy.

"RIP AND TEAR!" she distractedly shouted at the battle. "I am not seeing enough ripping and tearing!" Tearing her gaze away from her task for a moment, she got a glimpse of Berserker making his violent contribution to the fray.

"Who is that tall man?" she asked. "I LIKE HIM!!"

In the fray, the half of the killer robot wielding a glowing blade tried to keep everyone busy, leaving trails of red light as it swung its sword like a madbot. But then it met many tiny missiles, acidic goop from the belly of hell and had an angry demon tear bits off and jump up and down on the pieces. It ceased to exist, and thus hate.

There was a chance the robot might make a comeback in the second half, which, hateful as ever had drawn back. Using the precious moments bought it had reformed its rifle into something that - if not examined too closely - passed for functional. Using the underslung grenade launcher, it lobbed three grenades in the NPFer's general direction, aiming to catch everyone who had or was thinking of engaging it.

Armored Bishoujo barely had time to lodge her massive sword into the ground to work as a shield again. "Damn, I need to stop thinking about videos on YouTube when I'm supposed to be fighting," Armored groaned. This was a shitty defense mechanism, even by shitty defense mechanism standards. It took some effort and exposure just to pull the sword out of the ground so she could fight, and if the drone could just circle around where the blade was plunged into the ground, it'd have her.

One Immelmann turn later, Shyria was (literally) blazing back over the battlefield, strafing what remained of the robot with her fire breath. She was going to see peace back on NPF if she had to melt every one of these bastards into slag with her own goddamn flames!

"Holy obscenity!" Bard shouted as he pressed himself againt the groung, and formed a shadowy dome over himself. He was obviously not prepared to properly defend himself against a direct attack.

While Bard was crouched on the ground, trying his best to not get killed by grenades, he decided to give a command to Berserker. There was a possibility that he may not get to give out another command an time soon, so he may as well offer one last attack

He looked up briefly, hoping to get a glimpse of what it was doing. Through the dark walls, he could vaguely make out the shape of the summon making another charge at the droid, screaming wildly. "Just... keep doing what it is you're doing boy," Bard shouted. There was no way that a command like that could backfire. Ever.

"I have no idea what's going on over here," a voice rang out over the battlefield. A silhouette in a billowing cape and pointed hat appeared in a dramatic burst of purple-grey smoke. "...but I intend to make it worse!"

Mauve raised both hands, glowing magical flames appearing around each clenched fist.

"I hate alien robots!" she declared, lobbing a basketball-sized orb of purple flame at the aforementioned object of her displeasure.

It always smelled like dead guy.
 

As noted, a great amount of... stuff was expelled from Arhra III. It wasn't clear if the satay had been as well, but it probably didn't matter since it would've melted away in the acidic stomach contents just like the half of the droid that was hit with the spray of sick."Hmmm, not quite what I was hoping for but it wor-" Nin was cut off by the back of Arhra's head smashing into his beak as she wriggled about trying to break free. Almost immediatley, the Shelled Slueth released his grip and the succubus slipped away. Nin covered his smarting nostril area and muttered some made-up swear words.

"Ssssssskrakk! Ugh, did you not consider maybe asking me to let you go first? I woulda done it!" Then Nin noticed something strange on his sleeves. "I'm not looking at my sleeves right now." Just look at them. "What, do you think I'm made of money? Just tell me what's wrong with them." Sigh, if the dumb turtle bothered to glanced down he would've seen what had been the reason for the demon's abrupt break away; it seems that she was now sweating the corrosive crap and some of it was on his trench coat's sleeves and its front as well.

"What?!" Nin finally looked and, sure enough, there was goop on his coat that was already starting eat through the fabric. He then panicked and flailed his arms about trying to shake the acid off while making silly frightened noises. That action would work alot better in a visual medium, wouldn't it? Anyways, eventually his brain started working again and he quickly pulled the coat off and tossed it... right into the puddle of puke.

"Wha! No no no no no no-Awww!" Nin ran over to the puddle and tried to pull it out but it was to late. The demon acid had dissolved the trenchcoat completely. It was gone. However, he had no time to grieve what with the droid's grenade landing right behind him and all.

"The what now?!" BOOM

The grenade detonated before Nin had a chance to leap to safety. However, as the obligatory dust cloud caused by the explosion cleared, the Green Gumshoe was still standing and, aside from the back of his suit being blown to tatters, seemed to be completely unharmed.

"Ow... internal bleeding." Emphasis on 'seemed to be'.

Jeez, how hard is it to kill one boring robot? Seriously, he doesn't even have any good dialogue. I said I wouldn't fight him anymore but it looks like I have no choice. Besides, I kind of already went back on my word and launched another attack at it and was thinking about trying to fight it again anyway. Okay, how to attack it? The acid seems to affect it but I can't squeeze it out of Arhra anymore since she's perspiring it now. If only I had another cannon...

"Oh wait, I do. Now how to..." Nin fiddled around in his pockets and sudddenly his eyes lit up. "Now there's an idea!" He shouted as he whipped out a fistful of smoke bombs and a ladel. With ninja-speed, he unscrewed the smoke bombs, ladeled in the goop, and screwed the tops back on; thus changing them from smoke bombs into acidic gas bombs.

Hmmm, haven't got much time before the spew eats through the casing, thought Nin, noting the now melted ladel. He quickly tossed aside the ruined impliment and made a very loud finger snap.

"Innuendo!"

Like a faithful steed, Nin's scooter sped out from nowhere and stopped right in front of its master. He hopped aboard the crimson motor bike, slapped it's side, and shouted "Allons-y!" Suddenly, a great big cannon barrel extended out from under seat and the windsheild became a targeting screen. Nin quickly stuffed the bombs down the barrel and turned the scooter around so that the 1/2 battle droid was in his sights. Before he fired on it, Nin decided to do one last stupid thing. He alerted the droid to his presence and wasted a few precious seconds with a good-bye.

"Hey, junk-heap!" the deranged detective shouted, hoping to pull the droid's attention away from Shyria's fireballs and on to him. "When you're in robot hell and you see all the other automatons I've killed over the years, tell them I still think they're worthless piles of scrap!"

And with that, he fired on the fucking robot.

Flame washed over the half of a killer robot as it fired on the NPFers, a fly by flaming delivered via dragon. the last of the last of the grenades it fired was caught in the torrent of flame and detonated prematurely, catching the robot in the blast as well. It's dark mass glowed cherry-red in places but this did not stop Berserker from PUNCHING it, a grenading having made the angry demon much more charred and much angrier. It billowed backwards from the blow, struggling to reform itself enough to counter attack.

Not know what was going on, but knowing robots and aliens were not to be trusted, especially in combination, Mauve Mage returned to the fray, hurling magic of a dark muavish hue and fiery nature at the robot as Nin gave a one liner and his own contribution to the fray: bombs carrying a payload from a dubious source.

Smoke cleared and the end result was revealed.

The robot was still standing. A shadow of it's former self, substance a smoky network of tiny machinery cobwebbed over a fractionally denser framework. The left side of it was missing entirely, terminating in jagged tatters, head lolling to one side. It hovered, lower body fading out into an indistinct haze, malformed rifle raised. Fury energy pulsed through its form and turned where its eyes should be into burning pits.

It didn't move.

The crimson light gave out and the robot lost cohesion, falling apart into a cloud of black ash with a weird ringing sound as it slowly drifted to the ground.

"This is angry defeat for you!" Arhra V shouted at it as she strode forward triumphantly. "Ground to dust!" she looked upwards, "YOU ARE NEXT, VALKER JERKS!" she shouted ecstatically at the sky, eyes burning red. "I KNOW YOU ARE OUT OF KILLBOTS! I HAVE READ YOUR FILES! But this bloody tide is still rising! It will reach beyond the Moon! YOUR EVERY LAST PARTICLE IS NEXT! To be torn and kicked and guh wah huh?" Arhra V suddenly passed out with a dopey smile plastered on her face.

Arhra I had snuck up behind her and poked her in the small of the back with a finger.

"Is everyone all right?" the psuedo-white mage asked with concern, catching her doppelganger before she could slump to the ground. "If they're really low on forces, maybe we should take some time to recuperate before storming the castle." She looked worried. "I'm sure it's not healthy to do it on an empty stomach."

She hadn't spent this entire battle lugging around the mainly confectionary related supplies they'd picked up earlier for nothing, she hoped.

Armored Bishoujo unearthed her giant sword and slung it over her shoulder, surveying the battle. "I haven't had to fight this hard since my epic escape from the Star Dungeon," she said to herself, then disengaged her BUTTSECKS. Now with a normal-sized bastard sword, Armored slowly approached the droid wreckage.

If their foe was in space, she'd need to get in touch with her crew and have them pick her up in the Azure Aesir...if they weren't already engaged by the Valkers. But the ship was a very stealthy craft. It pretty much had to be when most of the work she and her crew did weren't exactly legal, even if it was something one could do with a clear conscience. She was much closer to the droid now, and her left hand was charging magical lightning should she actually need it.

But she found her preparations useless. That thing wasn't getting up anymore. Time to get her ass to outer space.

Then Dr.Ethington who had taken some time to run a comb through her hair and catch her breath from getting to the scene of the battle so quickly, ran the Red Kimono through basic instructions for the Anti-Son of a Bitch machine.

"Basically, you hold up your hand and make whirring noises with your mouth, and I focus my science. This is all very technical and sciencey, so don't you worry."

RK held up her hand.

"Um. Whir?"

"No, longer.

"Whirrrr?"

"EVEN LONGER. And with an accent."

"WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRR?"

"Okay, so just do that, but remove the ? and keep it up. Also don't move in any direction or you might end up teleporting to Eagleland."

"What, you mean like this-"

Suddenly RK took a step forward, and in a flash, was gone.

Dr. Ethington was annoyed, to say the least. "Damn Borange Fobbies..."

But then they went and killed the sum of a witch without her.

"Oh well. It's not science unless there is a chance for catastrophic failure. Now, EVERYONE! To the lab! There are pancakes and puppies!"

****
FLASHBACK to the FUUUUTUUURE!
****
"Welcome to the NuklearPower Science Foundation. Thank your for expressing interest in possibly mandatorily being involved in optional pan-dimensional experimentation involving various ingredients warped through space and time via a timey wimey ball in the interest of creating pan-cakes. I am certain they will be delicious. Please take your personal companion mixing bowl, and place it on the NPSF shiny red button."

"Pancakes and puppies, eh?" Armored asked, looking thoughtful. She hadn't had pancakes in a very long time, and puppies were always a joy to play with. Maybe she could delay signaling her crew to come pick her up for a little while.

Inside Dr. Ethington's lab, Armored stood still as a message played from some unknown source.

"Welcome to the NuklearPower Science Foundation. Thank your for expressing interest in possibly mandatorily being involved in optional pan-dimensional experimentation involving various ingredients warped through space and time via a timey wimey ball in the interest of creating pan-cakes. I am certain they will be delicious. Please take your personal companion mixing bowl, and place it on the NPSF shiny red button."

Armored frowned. "Pandimensional experimentation? Timey wimey ball? What, is the professor too brilliant to simply use pancake batter, cooking spray and a skillet? It's stuff like this that turned the city of Rapture from Bioshock into an undersea necropolis chock full of insane splicers."

Still, Armored had some of the best times of her life exploring the unknown, and unwisely decided not to back down. "Let's see here, personal companion mixing bowl, personal companion mixing bowl...wait, is that like the weighted companion cube? If it talks to me, should I probably disregard what it says?"

She did find what appeared to be a large mixing bowl, then searched the area for a shiny red button, which wasn't difficult to find by virtue of it being well-polished and somewhat luminescent. To best prepare for whatever might happen, she engaged the BUTTSECKS and transformed into a bunny girl. "Now's probably my last chance for famous last words, so...tell my dating sim games that I love them." And then she placed the mixing bowl onto the NPSF shiny red button.

Sirens blared, and Red flashing lights flared from every corner of the room, and a ginormous rumbling noise as unseen machinery in the rooms to the left, right, above, and below whirred into existence.

A song vaguely similar to "Shut up and Jam" involving the word "Whir" began to play, and suddenly, AB wasn't there anymore. At least in that room, anyway, in this dimension.

Wherever AB was now, there was darkness. So much darkness in fact, she didn't see the person/thing standing in front of her, breathing heavily, as if all it's existence was devoted to breathing.

Taking a break from breathing, it shoved something moist and sticky into AB's hands.

"Here....here is batter!" It said breathily.

Then it breathed really, really closely into AB's face.

"TREAT IT GENTLY."

Then, with a flash of light, AB was somewhere else.

The lights came on, and Puppies McPuddington sighed. He was such a lonely anthropomorphic puppy, who wanted to play with someone. And it was kinda hot in there.

Then, AB found herself surrounded by five year olds dressed in savage flowery, in a similar room to the first one, armed with spears, spray bottles, and skillets, with which they menaced to her.

"Booka chaka chaka!" Their leader inquired.

The mixing bowl and button were still in place.

If mixing bowls could talk, which they very well can't, it then told her in a desperate, voice from beyond the veil: "Go back Armored, Go back before it is too late! THESE PANCAKES ARE NOT FOR YOU!"

But it couldn't talk so it couldn't be creepy. It then threatened to stab one of the five year olds.

Bard was never particularly interested in science. He acknowledged it was useful, but in a world with magic, it sort of palled in comparison. Bard was interested in pancakes and puppies. It was because of this he willingly went to the NuklearPower Science Foundation

"Huh this place is pretty, don't you think so boy," Bard said to Berserker, whom he for some reason thought it prudent to bring with him. "RRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWRRR!!!!I'm not one of your pathetic human canines, I will rip this entire building apart and let the remains collapse on your skull!!!!!!" it cried. Bard didn't understand him, but it was a rather empty threat either way.

"Shush Berserker," Bard said as he grabbed a mixing bowl. "Look at this boy," he said presenting the bowl to the monster, "this means pancakes." Berserker wasn't interested obviously, and seemed pretty pissed."Lets go look for a kitchen," the summoner suggested, motioning for his summon to follow him "Come on, I may need a dungeon bypass or two, and I can't rip the hinges of those doors on my own." He then set off to find someplace to make the pancakes, completely ignoring the red button. Berserker grunted and followed, having to duck to avoid hitting his head.

The sight of naked turtle-man shall haunt Mr. McPuddington till his dying day.
 

And so the droid died. Finally.

"Is everyone all right?" the Arhra I asked with concern, catching her doppelganger before she could slump to the ground.

"We got another man-er, demoness dupicate down, Fill-in Fearless Leader!" shouted Nin, pointing to Arhra III who was still hunched over, most likely in a small pool of her own sweat and vomit by now. "Although it's worth noting that the person in question is probably faking it and is also a greedy little hedgehog who wouldn't share her lunch with a poor starving detective!"

Then Dr Ethington said something piqued both Nin's interest and his appetite. "Oh well. It's not science unless there is a chance for catastrophic failure. Now, EVERYONE! To the lab! There are pancakes and puppies!"

"Did you say pancakes and puppies? And lab? Like the kind where one could manufacture a fleet of space worthy vessels of war? Wait, don't answer that. Even if it's not true, I can still believe it is and then do it anyways. Time to get to work!" The Turtle Tracker hopped off his bike and promptly slipped and fell forward into the growing puddle of acidic goop.

"EEEEEEEEEYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" screamed Nin as he leapt out of the puddle and dashed into the laboratory, stripping as he went. One trip to the emergency wash station later, the carapaced crimebuster came marching back out wearing nothing but his fedora and an angry sneer. He stopped in front of Arhra III and crossed his arms.

"What is with you today, young lady? First you won't let me have even a nibble of your lunch, then you start expelling weird corrosive crap from your body! Crap that has destroyed nearly every article of clothing that I have worn today! Where the hell am I supposed to get another trenchcoat like the one I had? Can't ask the guy I lifted it off of because he was already dead at the time. Where does that leave me, Arhra? Hmm? Am I to just walk around without a coat? How can I be a lousy detective without it? But enough about that, because my lack of distinctive dress is not the problem at hand. The problem is this acid excretion of yours, Arhra. I want to know why you're doing this and I want to know now!"

A recovering Arhra III was slowly sitting up, pulling herself out of the mire of horrible Arhra fluids and scrubbing her face clean. It had set into something inert, but with a consistency somewhere between latex and porridge.

She was accosted by an angry terrapin.

"You're not that only person who prefers wearing clothes." the succubus told Nin sourly, covered in goo. "Why don't you go back in time and steal your dead man's coat again?" she taunted.

"Wasn't there a towel here just before?" she complained, dripping as she rose unsteadily to her feet. It had been protecting the modesty of a nubile young woman, but Arhra would have stolen it anyway.

She stood there frowning, hands on her hips. Unaccountably, a smile crept across her face.

"I have a proper body again!" she shouted gleefully, hugging herself so violently that what could be called droplets were sent flying. Alternatively, chunks.

She seemed to take notice of him a second time. "I am Arhra IV!" Arhra III? declared, loosening her death grip on herself. "And Arhra III. Integration is not easy!" This clearly explained everything.

She put a finger to her mouth thoughtfully and then made a face - goo was not tasty. "I need new clothes and then a new name." she decided. "I've been living in hell, trapped on a crumbling planet and/or dead for the past several months," Arhra told him, expression slowly darkening to something more typical for III as she remembered two lives of recent misery. "so you'd have a better idea of where to find something decent than me."

New Quest Objective: Unlock New Costumes!

* * *

Arhra I had wondered if she should suggest they find a cafe that hadn't been evacuated yet, or some other lunch option that was less likely to open a portal to hell in an unfortunate science accident. But she was too polite to say so.

Instead, she decided to get the strategy talk out of the way first so they could concentrate on enjoying themselves/finding who was the demons. She carefully put down the bags of dessert-type foods she'd be carrying on a covenient science table.

"Um..." she began hesitantly. "I had a thought for something we might want to try when we storm the castle. While, as I said before, I do not trust those pills containing anger, it seems wasteful to have this cache and not use it." Arhra I told the semi-assembled team happily, nodding at AB in acknowledgement. The bunnygirl was still acting as Keeper of the Pills. "Since their effect is amplified in multiples, maybe we should get a small number of people on a high dosage? This Team A, or the Angry-Team if you would prefer, would then be able to use the villain's power against them if it turns out to be the key to victory, while we would not be fully compromised if it turns out there are bad side effects and we were fools to have used them."

She ducked her head, clearly intent on playing the shy healer. "What do you think?"

Shyria glanced between her personal companion mixing bowl and the large candy-red button next to it. She had originally come to the lab hoping she could get her armor patched up and help figure out a plan to attack the Valkers on their own turf (ignoring the question of how a full grown dragon could fit inside a space like this in the first place. It's mad science after all).

"On the one hand, this will probably result in anything from massive sanity loss to grievious bodily harm and several black marks on my test record...on the other hand, the sooner we get this stupidity out of the way, the sooner we can get down to actual business....besides, I DO like pancakes." And with that, she plopped the bowl down on the button.

PYros hasn't slept in a while, can you tell?
 

Shyria found herself about a year in the past, surrounded by pancakes, which a guy with long brown hair was swapping for crepes.

He turned and looked at her with a glare. "Don't worry....THEY WON"T NOTICE!"

He drew back a curtain to reveal the party at the end of Avvy 6, except everyone was a penguin, except for Mauve, who looked out of place.

The guy closed the curtain and kicked the red button with a kung fu action kick of legend.

Shyria was zapped back to the present with 3 metric tons of pancakes. There was something clearly missing...

***

ALL AB knew next was that she was in a giant flask of maple syrup, as a sacrifice to the pancake gods for defiling the sacred pancake batter with her hands.

The dark lord, leader of the pancake Pygmies was full of fury.

"May you forever drown in sticky sweetness for ruining what could have been the most tastiest pancakes in the history of confectionery breakfast food!"

Just before he could add the maple extract to seal AB's syrupy doom, an eggo mini plunged into his kneecap, sending a delicious waffley smell into the air.

"Blargh!! We're under attack!"

The Waffle Pirates had struck, in the nick of time!

Tripping over, in his waffle based pain, the Dark Lord of the pancakes fell onto the red button, and Armored Bishoujo was gone, never knowing what the hell was going on.

Needless to say, both AB and Shyria were surprised to find themselves drenched in pancakes and syrup in a giant, yet so clean you could eat in it, Eatorium, which was conveniently located next to the Petorium, which contained over a thousand puppies. It was also unconveniently next to the Don'tPetorium, which had all those radioactive vampire Chihuahuas from previous puppy based jokes.

"Thank you for assuming the party escort position, this experiment was a huge success! And I didn't recycle half as many old jokes from yesteryear to make it!" Dr. Ethington sighed, sipping some orange juice.

"And before you complain, you don't want to know what I had to do to get the orange juice."

***

Dr. Ethington sat on her hands and knees, her face over her mouth in horror.

"AARRRRRGGGH!!!" went the gigantic Orange man.

"Squeeze him tighter in that vice Charley, she said she wanted it FRESHLY SQUEEZED!"

"Oh god, no!" Asheth cringed as they pulled the vice tighter.

"MY EXISTENCE IS MISERY!"

"I heard the lady, and I think I'm gonna squeeze this fat round orange punk till he becomes part of a balanced breakfast, and full of more water content than milk, which a growing body NEEDS."

"AAAAAGGGH!!" The orange screamed, juice pouring from his noise and the cracks of his eyes.

It was then that Dr. Ethington would realize that she would regret having also asked for "extra pulp".

* * *

Dr. Ethington shivered, sipping through the straw.

"It's...it's not....I just ended up going out and buying some Sunny D....I....." Dr. Ethington curled up into a ball, and then fell on her side, shaking slightly.

Two juicer punks in black leather walked by in the nearby hall, wiping their hands clean with towels.

"So then I tell her, when life hands you lemons, you gotta make lemonade, so I borrow my old buddy Vince's trash compactor and stick a car battery to their-"

Dr. Ethington twitched.

Armored was exhausted and disgusted at what she went through. "You know that picture with the bunny that has a pancake on its head?" Armored asked no one in particular. "This is the fanservicey version of that."

She remedied the problem of being all sticky and sexy by disengaging her BUTTSECKS and turning back to her usual clothes, which only left her with the sexy part.

She approached Dr Ethington, looking more annoyed than angry. "Could I, y'know, kinda get out of here? I have other pressing matters...like a bikini photoshoot or something, I'm sure."

"Only if this photoshoot will earn us needed funds to afford....THIS!"

The walls came apart that contained the pancake making room, and removed any barriers separating the traumatized and their pancakes from the others in the lab, as well as revealing a construction stockyard, with a big empty space that just screamed "place kick-ass space ship here."

A screen came down from the ceiling near Dr. Ethington, who pulled out a laser pointer, as a hidden projector flicked into life and revealed massive blueprints.

"This is one of three different design choices for the future of Valkyr ass kickery. First, the popular intention, called operation "DragPack," or "Captain Pyros Del Sol" as I like to call it, as it involves sticking an operations center to a party member with wings and calling it a battleship. As you can see, the meat of the battle station will rest on Shyria's back, with attached thrusters for propulsion in space, and a gigantic airtight helmet for her head to supply her with oxygen. Any further armor is unnecessary unless she requests it, becuase clinical studies have proven that dragon skin is proof against interstellar rays, tachyon pulses, and pulse torpedoes. There is also some experimentation to make her shoot lasers when she roars, but it will require extensive modification within a dragon's hungry jaws, and therefore is purely optional at this point."

Another blueprint showed up.

"Next, is the Interstellar Space Fortress: Markoth, built with advanced Valkyr technology, demonic spell weaving, and copious amounts of unobtainium, which our contacts in Gaia and Rhiyaland (also known as Hell) can supply us with regards to the last two. There is room for a full crew, and entire city sized living quarters complete with townspeople whose homes have been destroyed by the Valkyr, and a special docking bay for Shyria to sit on, with a nice dragon sized seat warmer, and a cup holder."

There was a Giant picture of a Bishonen pacifist Ultrazord.

"The final design is the combined mecha of all individual NPF'ers, but I have just decided to scrap that idea as silly and heck no we're not doing that again. Even If I'm not that other Pyros as I have a different backstory that incriminates POS for killing my father."

A final picture was off a bar chart, and a line chart that was moving steadily upwards.

"As you can see, I am earning a nice 10k per post in this RP thanks to Valkyr reproductions and selling the Anti-Sonofabitch machine to Naruto fans, along with pictures of AB and Shyria covered in pancakes. This means that within a standard Avvy flurry of posts, we should be able to cover any expected costs on whatever we do, even if we have to buy licensing rights to any franchises that we may be parodying to make a ship."

She took a dramatic pause.

"So really, all I ask is for your input, and put this to a democratic vote. In the meantime, I'm going to use these scale models of the DragPack and the Interstellar space fortress, and have them play fight. Skew! PEW PEW! RAARRRR! We're jumping onto white base! Dinotron!"

Armored had shut off her brain less than halfway through Dr Ethington's...what, sales pitch? Strategy meeting? Survey? Armored couldn't help the woman in any of these capacities, except to just not bother getting her ten percent for those photographs of her being sold. She preferred to earn her money.

"Well, whatever you want, I guess you got it." Armored said with a noncommited tone. Anyone could see that she just wasn't getting what Dr Ethington was trying to do. But Armored knew one thing. "If I ever want to make pancakes or play with puppies again, I'm sure as well doing it without anyone offering to help me."

In this post, Bard succumbs to insanity, and murders his mixing bowl.
 

Meanwhile, a summoner named Bard had been exploring the lab, on a noble quest for pancakes and puppies. He was not a Bard who sang songs and wrote epic poems, and he did indeed exist, despite sharing the name of a man who had the occupation of a Bard, and didn't exist. He may be spoony though. He and his loyal snarling hell beast traversed the corridors of the Nuklear Power science center on this most essential of goals. It was as he delved his way through the labrynth, mixing bowl in one hand, ritual knife in the other, and summon in tow, that he came to a realization. He had no idea where the heel he was going. He barely even knew what he was doing.

Nevertheless, he pressed on through the architectural anomaly that confused him so much. Bard never lost hope that he would succeed in his adventure, and never lose sight of his ill-defined purpose.

There were times where he lost faith however, only going forward by the moral support of his loyal summon, Berserker, as he struggled to find the cafeteria or kitchen or whatever to make the pancakes, and possibly see some puppies. His resolve was indeed, made indomitable by the power of friendship alone.

"This is starting peeve me off a little bit," Bard said aloud as he looked at the room he was trapped in. It was the same exact room he started in. From Bard's furtive examination of the enplacement he had been struggling to escape, he had realized that there were no doors described to use as a means of travel throughout the facility. There was only the closed-off white room and the red-buttons. Truly, there would not be any pancakes for the summoner, only defeat.

"It appears that we are trapped Berserker, my friend," Bard said to his summon. "GRRRAAAAHHHThen let me leave and starve to death on your own then!" it responded.

Bard assumed that Berserker had promised to stay with him as he perished in the empty room of dehydration, starvation, and asphyxiation and simpley said, "thank you," at a loss for words over his summon's percieved gracefulness.

He then turned his attention towards the mixing bowl. The mixing bowl carried nothing but lies and death. Bard was probably right where it wanted him, it would presumably stab him in the back the moment he turned the other direction. It had planned this whole thing! Well Bard would have the last laugh today! Bard placed his once trusted bowl onto the red switch, and drove the knife through it and onto the switch. The bowl would no harm no one ever again.

Arhra I looked downcast as her plan of tactics discussion went unnoticed. Lowered eyes stared unseeingly at her furiosuly knotted fingers, staring into a distant crimson inferno with a dull roaring in her ears.

When she looked up, she was all smiles again.

Sensing a lot of pancakes, she did not trouble herself with mixing bowls and delicious candy-red buttons. Instead she simply walked into the Eatorium.

"Could I, y'know, kinda get out of here? I have other pressing matters...like a bikini photoshoot or something, I'm sure." AB said, confronting Dr Ethington.

"The way out is through that door." Arhra I told her, pleased to be helpful. "But are you sure your photoshoot would still be on given the invasion?"

Dr Ethington's talk of Science appeared to revive Arhra V. Rivalry was a powerful force.

"I have a few concerns." the cyborg said, much calmer than before. She extruded a wire-thin mechadendrite from her hand and made it rigid to use as a pointer. "For the first plan, an enclosed environmental module would be quite bulky, negatively influencing performance. This issue could be partially avoided by using a larger dragon, but it would still limit the ability to deploy personal firepower, depending on the passengers. We might also want to consider what weapon system we can install."

"Next is this." she rapped her pointer on the bubble helmet. "Dragons breathe fire. They cannot breathe fire on things while their heads are inside a hermetically sealed helmet! I've had some thoughts for several minimally invasive systems to forego the need for a helmet, which I will report on after some initial modelling. As a backup, the Fury in Shyria's body should stop her dying from exposure to hard vacuum anyway." Arhra looked at Shyria thoughtfully. "Some testing will be needed to confirm this."

"I'm sorry to say the space fortress concept is at the higher end of impossible. Even with construction facilities of an appropriate scale and enough resources we do not have sufficient time or skilled personnel to design and build it."

"We will not speak of the third idea."

"There's one idea that's been ovelooked too." Arhra V turned and, on a convenient white board, wrote a single word.

Flotilla.

"We may not have the time to construct a battleship, but some people have their own rides, we have Shyria and there's a battlefield full of space junk we can salvage and kitbash into light vessels." Even if it was little more than 'Let's strap two jet turbines to a cockpit and call it a racecar spaceship.' Arhra V smiled in what she thought was a winning manner. A lot of teeth were involved. "Historically, enemy bases have proven vulnerable to assault by fighter craft."

"Well, I'll be seeing THAT in my nightmares for a while now. But hey, I got my pancakes and that's all...wait a minute, where's the syrup? And the butter? The semisweet chocolate chips? This is some culinary bullshit right here!"

Swearing that this would be the last time she trusted a kung-fu hippy and his penguin hordes with her breakfast, Shyria settled in and listened to Dr. Ethington's presentation.

"Oooh, fancy. Not sure if my dental plan covers lasers though, so we may have to wait on that, though I'm sure I could just "borrow" some extra cash from the ThadCo Christmas bonuses if it came down to it."

"Oooh, even fancier and stimulates the local economy. Seems like it might take a long time to put together though, and I doubt the Valkers are going to sit still for long."

"Where the hell did you get those!? Thad swore he was going to delete the files and burn the cameras for good measure!"

In the end, apart from an empty stomach and a severe blow to her ego, Shyria felt this was a plan she could behind. Now there was only one thing left to do: wait for the others to agree and watch Ethington act like a kindergardener on speed.

Steel diligently copied down Dr. Ethington's plans for the Markoth, trying to duplicate every last line perfectly. When he was done, it wasn't the best replica, but it would do.

"Be back in a sec.”

His time powers flared in a blast of red, and he vanished into the time stream.

---Meanwhile, in Avatars -13---

It had been an eventful day. The Spam-bot army had been driven back at long last, if only by the barest of margins, and the low level troll infestation had been dealt with. Now the area was mostly clear. The battle had been hard fought, and there had been casualties. Not everyone had survived the transfer over from their old homeland, in that far away place known as 'EZBoard', and now with the casualties from the war on top of that, the future of their culture was uncertain.

Still, the Warlord mused, that was all speculation. He and his lieutenants busied themselves settling the area, preparing it for the future. Plans were formed, designs drawn up, all to shape the future of the place that would one day be-

"Oh oh, question! Why did you call it Nuklear Power? I've always wondered.”

The Warlord blinked and turned. His questioner, a man wearing a blue headband, waved at him cheerfully, then froze.

“Oh. Wait, don't answer that! Time paradox stuff. Tch, I really should be more careful.” The man rubbed the back of his head guiltily, “Um, whatever you do, don't tell anyone I was here. Especially Hawk. He'd never let me hear the end of it. And you can bet he'd bring it up every time he screws up time and space, to. Oye, I should get going.”

The odd person vanished in a blur of reddish orange. The Warlord shrugged and went back to what he was doing. Time resumed it's normal path, with only one teeny, tiny change. No one noticed the replacement of the NPF-city master plans...

---Time Travel!---

“Did it work?!?” Steel looked around eagerly.

“No,” said a random passer-by.

“Phooey.”

---Time Travel! Again!---

Deciding that the plans had obviously not been convincing enough on their own, Steel added a few helpful notes to them.

*Scrt defns plns*
*Cool megr-weapns systms!*
*Valkr sucks*
*Not Pyros' plans*

His helpful note handwriting left much to be desired.

---And back!---

Steel looked around once more. There were still no obvious changes.

“This is going to take some work.”

---88 miles per hour!---

“And so you can clearly see on this pie chart, having a city that can turn into a flying death-fortress with space flight capabilities is 253% cooler than having a regular city.”

---Don't believe the critics, flying around the world really fast does turn back time!---

“Huh, so it's 'cause of the book?”

---Zoom---

“And so, ladies and gentlemen, when the Zombies come here, and they will come, where do you want to be? Cowering in your homes? Fighting in the streets? Or do you want to be fighting in your homes and cowering in the streets in SPACE?!”

---Let's do the time warp---

“So, this is to be our final battle, is it? You've been a worthy foe, Sakuya. I have enjoyed this lethal little dance of ours, our clashes over the years. But I suppose all things end. It is a pity it must end this way.”

“Well if you'd just stop dragging dirt in on my floors...”

“NEVER!”

---And Finally---

Steel returned to the present, breathing hard. Fury may have boosted his powers considerably, but it still had to compete with a lifetime of air-breathing.

“Long trip. I hope I didn't break something...”

Normally this would be when Steel, or any time traveller who's just gotten back from a paradox tempting trip, would look around and see something out of place, like Dinosaurs drinking coffee, or posters declaring the glory of the soviet union. This would clue the traveller in that something he or she had done in the past had majorly screwed up the present and needed fixing. Wacky hijinks would then follow as they tried to undo what they had done, finding it more difficult than they would have expected, until they finally learnt their lesson about messing with time travel.

Since none of those things would be out of place in NPF, however (those crazy Neo-communists!), and Steel was unlikely to learn anything anyway, he just shrugged and wandered back over to the others, wondering if the plan had worked.

Pyros Nine in his sciencey dark yellow sunglasses and cool futuristic gear (because lab coats are stupid and antiquated, and only worn by silly women) stared Arhra in the face for her distaste for the DragPack.

"It won't matter if she needs air to breathe fire in space, when it's lasers she's breathing, which as my last check on Awesome Science weekly, can work perfectly well in a vacuum. As for fury, I'm not interested nor willing to have more of that abominable stuff in anyone, especially the dragon we're riding on. And while being in a vacuum wouldn't kill her with the fury, the entire trip would still not be a pleasant one. Finally, the idea of a flotilla would be even more time consuming even if we appropriated all the miscellany enemy craft, or used existing earth craft, as they would still have to be checked and upgraded to deal with possible enemy weaponry. Furthermore, we'd have to fix said enemy craft before they could be used, and we'd have to research them to know how to fix them."

Pyros made a wave of his hand, and a wall rose up, revealing what used to be a Valkyr craft. There were more pieces than a box of legos.

"It doesn't help that during the course of the battle, we kinda blew them the hell up."

Pyros then noticed Steel, which was rare because Pyros never notices Steel until he punches time in the spine.

"Hey Steel! Long time no see! Last time I saw you, you handed me that pamphlet for turning NPF into a giant spaceship and gave me money for a start up venture, for some reason. And then I spent the money on Sun-Drop and Dave and Buster's, and used the plans as a napkin. Good times."

There was this light, a nice little item floating in nothingness made of impossibility and rather pretty if you put it in the middle of a dancefloor. Unforunately it was just stuck here for now waiting for something to give it some purpose. It had happened a few times before, when the ability of the light to creep around another universe for a moment had been drastically interrupted by outside forces beyond it's control.

Now it was stuck. On haitus until it found a way back in again.

Little warps in the nothing started pulsing off to the...left? At any rate it caused the light to drift that way. Someone in there was messing with the universe, making it drift and bend like it had too much to drink and was about to purge the night of all it took in. The tear opened up, as Nuklear Power started throwing up the bits of reality that whoever had been messing with time had broken. In drifted the light with the form it knew well in that world coming into shape.

The light was covered by a cardboard box, the only item stopping the whole "cannot possibly exist in this world" thing. All the rest formed with it, luckily he had none of that awkward Terminator nudity since the clothes were part of him now. He looked around for a moment and saw a door, stepping through it toward the awkward situation being discussed at the time.

He made sure to get a forward order for those pancake pictures.

Take a drink every time I use the word paranoid or paranoia.
 

After pressing the enigmatic and ignored button during his murder of the devious mixing bowl, Bard found himself reunited with his fellow forumers. They appeared to be arguing with the details of a plan, to defeat the aliens that plagued their city like loot ninjas in Border Lands.

Bard was not quite interested in them at the moment, and he silently went about scribbling on a piece of parchment to himself. This was his List of Paranoia. Throughout his journey through NPF, Bard had been plauged by mystery in the form of people knowing his name when they shouldn't. This was making him Fairly Paranoid* throughout his journey. What with the deception brought about by the Bowl however, the final nail had been riped out, and Bard was now Somewhat Unhinged. He had started compiling a list of people who he had doubts about, and their current status. Each Color representing a status, green meaning they were out of the way, yellow meaning that it was unknown or of question, and red meaning that Bard may begin to flip the fuck out.

Bard then looked up from his Paper, only to find that a new person had entered the room with them. And the man had the very box that Bard had carried for AB on his head! He had also seen the illogical being explode in an explosion of reality. This meant that Bard was carrying the man's head around with him! That definitely raised his paranoia a bit. Bard was now Moderately Unhinged. It is only a matter of time before things get worse. He quickly added the Box Man to his List of Paranoia.

*bold represents bard's current mental state

*Beep beep* ... *Beep beep* ... *Beep*

"Hmmm??" Hawk looked down at his forearm. His Timelink was going "ding" cos there was "stuff". "Interesting, I appear to be picking up the tail end of a closed time loop." He pressed a few buttons, tracing the source. "Several of them in fact. Someone's been busy, I wonder who... ah, Steel of course, I'd know that temporal signature anywhere!"

According to readings, several time jumps were being made, resulting in a handful of minor paradoxes. More than a handful even, the whole place was bristling with them. "Strange, why did I... oohh, my new sheild, it automatically interfaced with the temporal shielding and fixed it! Awesome, I have retroactive time sheilds again! I think it's time to utilize this fact."

With the push of a button, Hawk vanished in a flash of light.

-----------------------

In the past...

Hawk materialised within NPF City, only it wasn't NPF City, not yet anyway. It looked like, well it looked like Rome during the Renaissance. Lots of very nice statues, cathedrals, construction work and people in very odd clothes. "Weird, it's only the 11th century. Damn Steel and his meddling."

Speaking of his elusive partner in time, he was to be found just down the road near a local cafe standing on a box surrounded by a crowd. He seemed to be trying to convince them in a very loud voice just how awesome the combustion engine was, and how it would revolutionise the day to day lives of sheep farmers, or something. It was time to intervene.

"Steel!" Hawk called out, pushing in front of the rabble.

He was greeted only by a groan.

"Don't give me that look, you know you're happy to see me and for once I'm not gona chastise you on the blatant disregard for causality. Things are getting heavy in the future, peeps be gearing up for the final assault on the Valkers, and as awesome as that sounds, I want out. I already died once today, I do not plan on repeating it. Unfortunately last time I died the Timelink suffered even more damage than usual and well... I'm stuck. I was only able to travel to here because I found a crack in time thanks to you and seeing as you're all juiced up on that Fury stuff I figured you could give me a boost to get me back to the future. Specifically 51754. Co-ordinates are all set, I just need you to siphon off any energy you can spare."

"I promise if you do this for me I'll stay out of your hair for at least a century." He held out his arm, showing Steel the Timelink. "Would you kindly??"

"Welll, alright, I guess. Are you sure though? Last time I did something like this you opened up a portal to the god of nothing and died. If the god of nothing comes through here and wipes out all the progress I've made, I'm gunna be annoyed."

Hawk didn't change his mind though, despite Steels warnings, and so he charged up his timelink and sent him on his way, before returning to his crowd preaching.

"So you see, if you'd just invent this thing, it'd be really useful! I'm not really sure how they work, but I hear it has something to do with cyclinders and explosions..."

------

Back in the present, Steel slowly counted the changes and paradoxes, wondering if any were worth trying to fix, before deciding he was far to lazy.

"Hey Pyros! Yeahhhh, I remember that... Did I mention the interest rate on that loan, by the way? Getting pretty close to repayment day. Oh, and hey Bard!" He waved, ignoring the poor man's jitters.

For Nin, this is the same game played out in a different way every RP.
 

TL;DRSecret room with secret outfits or smelly hole in the ground. The choice is yours!

You're not that only person who prefers wearing clothes." the succubus told Nin sourly, covered in goo. "Why don't you go back in time and steal your dead man's coat again?"

Hmm, an interesting notion. In the past, my coat is still whole and just as righteous as ever. I could simply go back and take it off of Drebin's corpse before my past and, coincidently, also naked self happens upon it. But without the coat, I may not want to get the fedora to go along with it and then Macchio wouldn't follow me into the cave and die. And I want Macchio to stay dead!

[Hey stupid! Demon thingie wasn't making an actual suggestion, she was just taunting you! And why the hell would you think that messing with the timeline again is a good idea?]

Yeah seriously, when are you going to learn your lesson? Time travel fucks up everything!

"Ugh, I hate having multiple inner voices." Nin muttered under his breath.

"I have a proper body again!" Arhra shouted gleefully, hugging herself so violently that what could be called droplets were sent flying.

"Buh? Did I miss something?"

She seemed to take notice of him a second time. "I am Arhra IV!" Arhra III? declared, loosening her death grip on herself. "And Arhra III. Integration is not easy!" This clearly explained everything.

"Ohhhhh, time clone fusion eh? Well, that clears everything up. No wonder you were ralphing acid! Why I remember one time SSB repaired a temporal disruption doing the same thing. Don't really recall when exactly that happened though... hmm, weird."

She put a finger to her mouth thoughtfully and then made a face - goo was not tasty. "I need new clothes and then a new name." she decided. "I've been living in hell, trapped on a crumbling planet and/or dead for the past several months," Arhra told him, expression slowly darkening to something more typical for III as she remembered two lives of recent misery. "so you'd have a better idea of where to find something decent than me."

{Quest log updated.}

"Something to wear? Yes. Decent? Well, that remains to be seen." Nin snapped his fingers and like magic his scooter pulled up alongside him. He opened up the top-pack and pulled out a wooden chest labeled "Box fulla disguises". Nin began to rummage around through the box when he noticed Arhra staring at it.

"Oh this isn't what I was talking about, this stuff is for me. (Ooh, this shirt looks good.) I don't have women's clothing in this thing. Well, I guess I can't really leave you all dripping wet and completely nude until we get there. Here, dry yourself off." Nin handed her turban made out of bath towels.

"As I was saying, since stealing from a store in the name of the greater is not something I can condone, I thought of another way to get a new set of permanent attire. You see there exists a myth, a sort of Nuklear urban legend, about a secret room in this city. One that is stocked with alternate costumes, rare weapons, and special items, one that is unlocked only after a non-NPC (Normal Powered Citizen) performs a certain action or completes a challenge. So far, nobody's ever found the room. All there is to go on, as far as directions, is the phrase 'It's at the beginning, you need to finish the game and then playthrough again'. Here, put this on for now."

Arhra suddenly had a very large, male Japanese school uniform type jacket thrusted into her hands.

"I only know about this place because apparently I unlocked a new outfit there. Maybe you have too. I've already completed the game before, that I'm sure of. The only thing that's left is to find it and, in my investigations, I think I uncovered where that room is. It's in the place where all the craziness in this city can be traced back to: Santa's Workshop, Little North Pole-town in the RP section. That's where I think it's at anyway."

While he was talking, Nin had put on his temporary replacement clothing: an orange shirt with brown slacks and a coat with its collar popped up. The shelled slueth then pulled his fedora inside out, somehow changing it into a top hat with a red band, which he then placed upon his dome thus completing the outfit.

"We could try pursuing this rumoured room of rare rewards," said Nin, who had now adopted a proper English gentleman's accent for reason, "Or on the other hand, we could simply go back to humble abode and scrounge together some equipment for the space armada there. I may have some lady's clothing left over from a certain period of time that I do not wish delve any deeper into. The decision to go either of these places, or none at all, rest with you, Arhra-er. (You are a new Arhra and you need new name.) Would you mind if I called you Gestalt Arhra for now?

On the battlefield

Nin spoke of rooms and clothes and leftovers, of urban myths and wins.

"We could try pursuing this rumoured room of rare rewards," he conluded, inexplicably British, "Or on the other hand, we could simply go back to humble abode and scrounge together some equipment for the space armada there. I may have some lady's clothing left over from a certain period of time that I do not wish delve any deeper into. The decision to go either of these places, or none at all, rest with you, Arhra-er. (You are a new Arhra and you need a new name.) Would you mind if I called you Gestalt Arhra for now?

Gestalt Arhra? The Arhra who was now technically an unholy mix of succubus, dragon, ghost and magical rock in an uncertain ratio briefly ran through synonyms in her head and decided it was better than the alternatives. For plans of action, she briefly debated another option: mug Nin and steal his clothes. This was oveturned and replaced by a lively debate over blackmail potential vs likelihood of him having good lady's clothes.

"Gestalt is fine. We'll try the room of legend."

She vanished into an alley with the proffered towel and school jacket, before reappearing sans towel and goo. The jacket was very large, and Gestalt Arhra was very short. The net result fit reasonably around the chest on account of the succubus not being a male student and having the folded bulk of now dragonish wings on her back, but then hung loosely to her knees.

"Let's do this thing." she growled.

* * *

In the Eatorium

"Well, I'll be seeing THAT in my nightmares for a while now. But hey, I got my pancakes and that's all...wait a minute, where's the syrup? And the butter? The semisweet chocolate chips? This is some culinary bullshit right here!" Shyria was not happy.

Arhra I patted the angry (and hungry) dragon on the flank placatingly. "I'll go buy some condiments." the healer said soothingly. It was essential that people started relaxing and eating with this free lunch. She was the type who felt bad about letting good food go to waste but eating it all would leave her the approximate size of Shyria. The fact it should be physically impossible was small consolation. Clearly, they needed more options than ridiculous quantites of syrup.

She walked over to a small gaggle of NPFers. "Bard, Steel, Mr Box, how are you? I'm going to do some food shopping. Would you like to come with me to help bring the supplies back here so we can have lunch?" Arhra was sure Shyria needed to stay and be fitted for space gear.

* * *

A few meters way

"Oh, don't misunderstand me," Arhra V replied to Pyros about the Dragpack plan, looking at him as if slightly uncertain that he should be there. "I'm all for flying a dragon into space, but the implemention needs to be tweaked. Firing through a helmet aside, I have a feeling a plasma weapon might be easier to implement. Since it is basically science-fire, all we'd need to do is filter Shyria's normal fire breath through a scientific device." Her eyes wided slightly as this realisation dovetailed neatly with one of her earlier thoughts for space survival.

Excited by having science to do, she turned to acknoledge the massive dragon in the room. "Shyria, how would you feel about swallowing a thingy to breathe in space and shoot plasma?" Arhra V asked, her hands tracing the outline of a vaguely cylindrical object.

"I'm not sure why. All the documentation we've found and testing done so far has shown it to be suspiciously side effect free!" she said, eyes burning balefully with said 'side effect free' energy. Hmmm, unless we were to synchronise people with robot doppelgangers and feed the robots the drugs." Arhra V had an alarming far off look in her eyes. She already had some basic chassis to work with. And robots could breathe in space.

A flotilla plan was knocked back by Pyros on account of the enemy ships being a) poorly understood alien technology and b) in pieces.

"You don't need to fully understand a thing to abuse it!" Arhra V declared with passion. "Black boxes are an engineer's romance!"

"A handful of fighters should be easy to whip up given the abundance of premade components. The dismantling has been already done! We have the building blocks of glory scattered across the floor for us to assemble into victory!" She wondered if she should have acquired a lab coat to look more respectable. "Maybe victories, plural." she added to strengthen her point.

Pyros then noticed Steel, which was rare for some reason.

"Hey Steel! Long time no see! Last time I saw you, you handed me that pamphlet for turning NPF into a giant spaceship and gave me money for a start up venture, for some reason. And then I spent the money on Sun-Drop and Dave and Buster's, and used the plans as a napkin. Good times."

"Finally," Arhra V plunged on, "as I was saying with the battleship plan, even if we were to decend into the mysterious catacombs beneath NPF and activate the machinery there to fly it into space and do battle with our enemies, we couldn't -" the cyborg paused and looked confused for a moment. "I guess I wouldn't have a problem if we decided to do that?"

"If you go, make sure you don't get the store-brand syrup. I tried that once and it gave me hives!"

"That depends: is it going to taste like stainless steel ass going down, or can I at least cover it in peanut butter or something? Because as long as I can stomach it, I'm all for anything that makes it easier to kick Valker ass."

So the plan was to ride the nice dragon lady into space and take on the Valkers with offensive prejudice. Seemed about fine to him, of course this required they do all sorts of sciency type stuff, and he barely existed properly. He doubted he could actually bring anything particularly helpful into the mix. So he was stuck being one of those listening buddies until it all turned out complete.

BORING.

So when healer Arhra dropped by to bring them food shopping he was quite easily persuaded into the quest for good eats,

"I'm doing fine, could use some food myself since the whole actual death thing took a bit out of me. I hunger...for things."

Really he typically had no appetite thanks to the supershirt, but he had just made this body and he needed to break it in before it started working right. So it was worthwhile to do a little something before they took on the Valkers and he possibly died again.

Bard looked a bit more dis-shelved at Steel Shadows greeting. It wasn't so much the knowledge of Bard's name name, that was already there, as it was the acknowledgment of Bard's presence. It wasn't quite enough to raise his Insanity Level anymore though.

The healer person, Arhra, had asked them to go shopping for food. The box-head person seemed willing to go and run the errand. 'A perfect time to make an assessment,' he thought to himself. "I'll go with him," Bard said, trying to hide his hysteria.

As he walked off after Overcast, Bard briefly felt something was off. There was something embroidered on the back of his robes! Being the paranoid Summoner that he is, Bard took the robes off of him for a moment (his shirt had returned with Dr. Ethington's chronological death). There was a peculiar emblem sewn on the back of his shirt. "When did that get there?" he pondered to himself as he examined the new decoration on his outfit.

http://www.alexanderhaberbush.com/Ha...d%20sickle.jpg

"Now that's bizzare" he muttered to himself as he put the robe back on. He didn't remember being a member of the communist party, but he supposed that if his summoner robes said he was, then he was. He better get to work then! Those Valkers will surely get in the way of him and his comrades if left to their devices. For the Motherland!

Temporal Conversion to Communism has caused Bard's paranoia to lower. Current mental state: Loyal Comrade!

Armored promptly left out the door Arhra I had told her, only remaining long enough to tell Arhra I that she was being sarcastic.

Outside, Armored transformed back into a bunny girl and with some rather simple leaping and wall-kicking and running, she found a very high roof to stand on. She needed to transform to utilize her communicator, but didn't bother. The rest of the NPFers weren't ready to head to the stars, yet. No need to bother her crew for a lift into outer space if the others weren't going to be there to help her when she got there.

The NPFers disturbed her. Armored herself didn't dabble in creating time paradoxes and messing with timelines and stuff like that. In fact, she had no time manipulation powers whatsoever and neither did any of her crew or craft. She supposed it was possible to make things that could affect the flow of time like that, but it just wasn't Armored's style. Too many risks and too much technical nonsense and too much outright silliness. So Armored sat on the edge of the very tall building and waited.

Steel chewed his lip, looking around. There were a lot more paradoxes popping up than he'd expected. Maybe there really was something to the 'stop messing with the time stream' stuff he was always telling other time travelers. "I dunno. I think I might have to go fix all this before-"

~Vvvvvvvoooooom~

"-I can... Oh." Steel looked himself up and down. No red glow, no quiet voice in the back of his head telling him to break things... "Huh. It wore off."

Indeed, all the time he'd spent in the past, not to mention the incredible burden he'd placed on his powers to actually achieve time travel on that scale, had finally taken its toll. Steel Shadow was once again a mere mortal.

"DAMNIT!!!" *Crunch* "Ow ow, pain bad, pain bad!" He handled it about as well as can be expected. Unfortunatly for him, so did a nearby wall.

Nursing his now acheing foot he turned/hopped back to Arhra I. "Screw it. Yeah, food sounds good right about now. Will there be pizza?"

Plot twist?
 

Arhra V had enquired if Shyria would be interested in a swallowable plasma breathing/life support device.

"That depends." Shyria replied. "Is it going to taste like stainless steel ass going down, or can I at least cover it in peanut butter or something? Because as long as I can stomach it, I'm all for anything that makes it easier to kick Valker ass."

"I can guarantee no stainless steel asses will be involved in the construction of this device." the cyborg told the dragon solemnly. Her derriere was mainly advanced composites. She decided she shouldn't mention it was a bad idea to combine a device that goes in your windpipe with peanut butter.

"If you'd just come over here, I need to measure you and do some quick tests." She pointed at an unoccupied section of the stupidly huge room. "For a start, could you breathe fire down that way? Do it for as long as you can hold it."

She wasn't going to be sitting around when there was science to do.

Meanwhile, Arhra I had discovered that Overcat hungered for... things, Bard was fine with helping up with the shopping despite an ulterior motive and Steel was wondering if he should be more careful with time travel.

"I know dying always used to take a lot out of me too." the healer said symapthetically. to Overcast's comment. She wondered how he ate.

"DAMNIT!!!" Steel had run out of Fury and hurt his foot. The wall remained at the scene of the accident. "Ow ow, pain bad, pain bad!"

Nursing his foot, he hopped to back to Arhra I. "Screw it. Yeah, food sounds good right about now. Will there be pizza?"

The pale healer was standing awfully close. Arhra could move very fast when she wanted to. "Yes, yes there will." she replied happily. "Let me fix that for you." she reached out a hand, golden light glowing about it, and numbed the pain beneath a wash of positive energy.

This good deed done, she pulled out her shopping list and updated it so she wouldn't forget. Glancing at Bard, she added another item to the list:

- limes
- sugar
- other pancake toppings
- Not store brand syrup
- Pizza
- borshch

Putting it safely away in her robes, she clapped her hands softly and looked pleased. "Yaaay. Let's go then."

And so they did.

The shopping complex was deserted, half filled shopping trolleys visible from the cavernous mouths of stores, dotting the aisles like migratory beasts.

"Oh, err.. I guess we'll just leave some money at the checkout?" Arhra I said. She brightened. "That should do it! Grab a trolley and we'll grab our snacks." she told Bard, Overcast and Steel. "I'm paying."

Thinking this over, she worried she might have hurt Bard's communist feelings.

* * *

A very high rooftop

Armoured was put out by the NPFers' relentless disregard for causality, technobabble and silliness and decided to have a moment to herself. Letitng her legs dangle off the edge of the roof, she sat and waited, cosplaying as a bunny girl and still minding the box full of Fury Pills that Inbred had apparently donated to the NPF cause.

"Hello Bishoujo." the soft, slightly slurred words came, somehow carrying across half the roof top.

The attack accompanying the greating was primed to hit a split second afterwards: a dark mass of tangled energy, wound taut around itself to explode in a burst of dark energy and knock the bunny girl from the ledge.

The dark sorceress who had spoken raised one hand, the movement dragging choppy, afterimages, jumping side to side and out of place. A spear of similar energy formed in her hand. Her pose was off kilter, as if she was dangling from that wrist. Her head was slightly bowed, the spidery fingers of long bangs hiding most of her face. But that elaborately styled long hair and revealling outfit were very distinctive.

Arhra II was inexplicably murderous!

"Not a problem," Shyria replied, "though I'm not sure just how much of a kick this Fury stuff's packing, so you may want to stand back."

She turned to face the far wall, took a few good breaths, and exhaled a jet of flame long enough to barbecue a small apatosaur from tip to tail before petering out almost immediately.

"That's about the best range I can get," she explained. "However, I can get longer burns if I focus on something a bit closer, usually around thirty feet or so. Anything else?"

Bard was indeed slightly ashamed at his support of a capitalist system, but he supposed that it would be effectively impossible to bring about a massive change in government and economy in such a short time, and with an alien invasion to fend off. In fact, the alien invasion may prove beneficial to him. If they succeed, he will be a sort of hero, and hero's can always get political influence.

With the decision that it was for the greater good, Bard set out into the store to help find some items on the list. 'Borsche first, lime second,' he decided. Between the three of them, each of them could handle two food items and finish quickly. Remembering the threat of the migrating beasts, Bard used Communistic Resolve to cut his arm open and summon Geist without fear of retaliation.

"<You take the lead and shut it,>" he ordered, inexplicably speaking Russian. Geist was rather frightened by the summoner's translated bilingualism, and simply went forward, subdued by Communism to much to hurt Bard. "Onward to the Borsche," he proclaimed as they indeed, moved down the long aisle.

Overcast had gotten a good look at the list when they were on their way and figured the best part of it for him to take was, 'other pancake toppings' primarily because it could be anything he felt like would go good on a pancake and considering that without syrup it is basically just a spongy bread like material that left his options so wide that his desire to consume things would be easily satiated.

So off he ran with his jolly cart, sneakers pushing them forward at a speed that could be considered dangerous to some. As he zipped past the aisles, using the suction from his leather sleeves to pull at whatever he almost missed and tossed it in the basket. And he was definitely starting to fill up on things.

Bacon, assorted fruit, jam, jelly, preserves, peanut butter, ice cream and chocolate syrup, coconuts, applesauce, whipped cream, tofu, vegemite, fried chicken, and it seemed to go on. Perhaps it was irresponsible for him to be getting so much when he wasn't paying, but he was sure that his pockets and half the companies here were proof enough that there was no such thing as an economy on NPF.

In the end he seemed absolutely naive to the possibility that in the empty hulk of a store anything dangerous could be around the corner. At any rate if it got in his way he'd just eat it. After all he had more than enough toppings to eat just about anything. It was good to be back in existence.

Armored managed a successful landing without breaking the heels of her go-go boots. Struggling against her aching body and legs, she turned an angry gaze up towards the building. "Hey, what the fuck!?" she screamed, angrier than she had been when fighting that robot. Who the hell was this bitch that suddenly attacked her?

Armored sized up her opponent...what she could see of the opponent, anyways. Some kind of dark magic user was all she could come up with. Armored was pretty good at taking down mages. If you could see their attacks coming and were fast enough to dodge, you could exhaust them and then finish them off when their mana dried up. Armored clenched her fists and looked at the surrounding buildings. Plenty of ways to kick-jump up to the sorceress. "I dare you to come down here and try that shit again!" Armored shouted defiantly, getting ready to move quickly in case the sorceress took her up on that offer.

"That's about the best range I can get," Shyria explained about her fire. "However, I can get longer burns if I focus on something a bit closer, usually around thirty feet or so. Anything else?"

Arhra V whistled. "Very good. Although your use of dinosaur based metaphor concerns me." she added distractedly. The cyborg seemed to be using one of her mechadendrites as a measuring tape, wrapping it about one of Shyria's forelegs. Being full of robotic tentacles was almost as useful as it was worrying.

"Could you open wide?" she asked next, wanting to get a very close examination of Shyria's throat.

* * *

In a spectacular display of well mannered looting, Arhra I, Bard, Overcast and Steel quickly stripped the supermarket shelves of what they needed.

The faux white mage had decided to concentrate on drinks, cutlery and other odds and ends that Pyros had overlooked in providing lunch. She'd also picked up a few other food options in case, nameless powers forbid, that there was someone who did not like pancakes. Also, desserts.

Moving back to the entrance, Arhra I walked behind the checkout and looked at the cash register inquisitively. Surely this machine couldn't be too difficult to operate.

She looked thoughtful, starting to scan the goods, and bag them. "We'll just finish things up here, then see if we can get some hot food like the pizzas." She was wondering if they should hit the bottleshop as well. But some of the NPFers might hit the bottle pretty hard. "Should we get some other drinks as well do you think?" she asked with a smile, pleased with herself. That question was a decent compromise to bring up that option without outright stating it, she felt.

* * *

"I dare you to come down here and try that shit again!" Armored shouted defiantly, ready to get moving in case the sorceress took her up on that offer.

"No." Arhra II said, looking down at AB far below from the edge of roof top with half lidded eyes. The bunny girl had fallen that distance without any real harm. The sorceress found that mildly disappointing. It wasn't a huge problem - there was more than one way to skin a rabbit. "But with such a dare, perhaps this will make you a little happy."

She raised her hand. "Entropic Lancer." Purple will-o-wisps flashed one by one into existence around her, triangular wedges like spear-heads coalescing out of them.

"Shoot." Arhra dropped her hand like a guillotine.

Light flared at their blunt ends and the swarm of hovering spell-bullets launched off like rockets to saturation bomb the ground where AB stood. The girl was fast, she knew, but that was only intended as a distraction.

Following it up before she'd even seen if it connected, the sorceress cupped her hands together, a crimson sphere of featurless light forming, a large sphere of darkness around it.

"Draw."

Something similar appeared practically on top of AB, a metaphysical vortex seeking to pull in her loosely secured belongings and transport them back to the caster. An attempt to rob Armoured Bishoujo from a great distance! Fiendish!

"Right. Don't trip now, and watch where those things go", Shyria replied, opening her jaws as wide as possible. It wasn't pretty; several teeth were chipped or cracked, a few broken off completely, and all stained with oil or hydraulic fuel of some kind, though the worst had burned off during the flame test. The smell wasn't much better.