TEXTUAL CUT SCENE!!!!!1!
 

"You know, this is going surprisingly well. The machine's working, your friends have been distracted just long enough, and after the past few minutes of this procedure you've run out of the necessary energy to scream. I could get used to this..."

Doug Doukhobor was obviously more than a bit pleased with himself, as the above noted. His captive, Pedro O'Sullivan, was hanging limply in the anti-gravity security field, bolts of electrical energy coursing through him as the extra lives were ripped from his body and stored in the machine around him.

"Well, look at that," Doug commented as he paused the process, "We're down to your last life. I'm wondering if I should just kill you now or let you watch as I imbue myself with all those handy little lives of yours. What do you think, O'Sullivan?"

A quiet chuckle came from the Hazel-Eyes White Capitalist. "Whatever you do," POS grinned, slowly raising a finger toward the room's entrance, "You'd best get on with it, Dougie."

"...And so even though our hyperlink portal system mostly specializes in more of a spacial-based travel thing than inter-dimensional, it's very possible that we could modify it to return you to your home," Rei explained to Alt-Pyros as the NPFers entered, "I think it's really just a matter of--Oh, we're here. Hiya, Doug! Pe-chan! HIIIII!! We're here to rescue you!"

"Glad to see you, Rei," Pedro smiled weakly, "Now if you could ju--"

"No, no, NO!" Doug shrieked, "This is my moment! Shut up, all of you, and behold! With this machine, I have stolen away all of Pedro O'Sullivan's extra lives and will absorb them into myself. With this new immunity to the call of the Grim Reaper, I shall begin a new rule of the NPF. With just a push of this button, the final stage in my plan will be..."

It was at that moment that a burst of electromagnetic energy struck the machine, causing a chain reaction and blowing the whole contraption apart. Rei charged up another attack and took aim at Doukhobor himself as the security field around Pedro faded, dropping him to the ground.

"H'okay, you done yet?" the android asked.

Eye a-twitchin', Doug stood in shock for a moment, staring in horror at the destroyed hulk of his masterwork before regaining his senses slightly. "Eh, erm.... No, of course not! Now, witness Plan B! Haha!"

And with a quick press of a button on his console, Plan B was initiated and a forcefield sizzled into existence between the man and the NPFers before him. Safe for the moment, Doug began pressing another sequence of buttons, glancing up nervously at the unimpressed band of heroes.

"Get ready as I unleash the full power of this secret villainous lair as you watch helplessly, Nuklearpower Forumers! Nothing can stop me! Nothing!"

And then he fell to the ground, a sharp blow to the back of his head being delivered by the one NPFer that he had forgotten was on his side of the forcefield: POS, who stood woozily behind Doukhobor wielding a hunk of the machine's outer casing.

"Worst supervillain ever," Pedro sighed, deactivating the forcefield and dropping the metal shard to the ground as he stumbled toward the group, struggling to maintain his balance, "Thanks for the help, everyone. I think you guys have earned some Burger King, on me. Now let's get out of...."

A gunshot echoed through the room, reverberating off the walls of the office. Body aching horribly from what the life-stealing machine had put him through, POS didn't even realize a bullet had gone through his chest until he looked down and saw the blood covering his hands. "What in the.... OW," he hissed, turning to face Doug, who still stood pointing the smoking revolver, "You stupid son of...."

"PE-CHAN!!" Rei screamed as Pedro crumpled to the ground. Unable to bring herself to move, the android's scanners told her the unfortunate truth: Pedro O'Sullivan was dead.

"This... this can't..... You." Rei looked up from the lifeless body to Doug, eyes glowing bright red, and a split second later she was across the room, holding him in the air with one hand by the throat.

"W-wait, isn't this..." Doukhobor struggled to breath as Rei choked the life out of him, "Isn't this what you wanted? Yeah... You think--You think I couldn't trace who was helping me?"

Rei loosened her grip for a moment as she looked at him in surprise.

"I won't be your patsy! It was your plan all alo--GHKKT!!"

"I'm really sorry guys... I didn't want for you to have to hear that," Rei sighed sadly, dropping the broken-necked body of Doug Doukhobor to the ground as she turned toward the group, energy swirling all around her, enhanced by the specially-designed sailor fuku she wore, before unleashing the massive attack upon the NPFers, "DOOM CANNON!!"

Mauve's brain stopped working for a minute.

"What did...? Why did...? How is...? Bwuh....?" she demanded. She looked from Pedro's bleeding body to Doukhobor's, then to Rei. "But..." Finally, something in her mind managed to shake some sense into itself as Rei turned on the 'rescuers.'

"DOOM CANNON!!"

"HOSHICRAPCRAPCRAPMOVE!" Mauve yelped, elbowing Ecurt and Inbred Chocobo aside. She threw her arms up into an X in front of her face and braced herself. A faintly glowing shield of magic energy leaped up around her, stretching past her to form a convex wall in front of the people behind her. The doom cannon fire hit a second later.

"Stay in the doorway," Mauve said through clenched teeth to those NPFers not yet fully in the room, trying to use her shield to minimize the Doom Cannon's blast as much as possible. She didn't know if it would be strong enough to withstand the whole force of the impact, but she figured it was better than nothing. "I can shield a small area for a short time."

(OOC: Totally up to other players and the GM on whether it's at all effective, and whether you guys wanna actually do what she says.)

"Huh. I totally thought it was Pyros' fault on this one." Ecurt pointed out as he hid behind Mauve. "No offense strange, alternate Lawful Good Pyros."

"None taken, friend. Personally I thought it was Kirakiri's fault, but I'm far, far from home, and I made sure Redwing was dead. I think. Give me time, and I shall return this cannon with full force."

Alt-Pyros stood safely within Mauve's shield, and charged up his own attack, hoping the Mauve one could hold out long enough for him to charge it to match the blast which came for them both.

Ecurt recorded the display of lights and sound, particularly saving what he'd recorded that was incriminating about REI. But then he wondered....wasn't REI censoring the film as he filmed it?

***


Pyros made his way down M1A1, running over a tank, aliens, and a few zombies, amongst other possible meanings.

Santa was still a present force, for while Pyros had eluded him for while, the two had inexplicably bumped into each other when Pyros made a stop for donuts. Damn his need for Devil's double chocolate with sprinkles....

Turning around and yet still going at full speed, Pyros decided to share some of his thoughts with the Jolly fat man.

"Y'know, it's awful odd, now that I think about it, that you have memories of me killing you, despite being pulled from a small, intentionally created interdimensional bubble of little substance. I can't say I know everything about other dimensions and their workings, but if POS had simply taken a snippet of previous times, then the events would have rolled as they originally did, and you and the others would have no memories of what we did to you. And it did happen like that...at first. But after the mixup, all of you villains from previous suddenly gained awareness beyond your own existence, yet only in that you knew we killed you, and hated us for it."

"Aside from the fact you're all psychos and unwilling to rationallly accept this as a second chance not to mess with us again, this is rather odd, no matter how you look at it, Kringle-deux. Especially when Mr. Sullivan and his Relatively Empathetic Interface shouldn't have even been aware of all the details of that little adventure to be able to recreate it..."

Now actually sitting down in the hamsterball as it sped just as fast as ever, Pyros was in full out thought.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted....oh well. It probably doesn't even concern me this time. Sorry for taking up your time with my meaningless drabble. Let us carry on our chase to the death with gusto."

With a casual *beep beep* and a few flicks of his tongue, Pyros burned down the road/tank/spaceship.

While instead of hiding behind the shield like everyone else was doing, IC got the fuck out of the way of the blast. He found the best way to stop a blast, was to be where it wasn't. After hightailing it just slightly after Mauve put up a shield, he looked across the room from the wall to the right. Ends up most of the NPFers where hiding behind Mauve, which means that it would only be IC going into melee with the battle ready robot.

Well, at least he was a battle ready man. IC went running across the wall, trying to move fast as he could, so that REI wouldn't have much time to react. Then again she was busy with the doom cannon, so that should hopefully work out. Once he was practically looking up at her, he jumped hard off the wall, and went flying at her, Wind Edge in hand. He was hoping for a good blow before she could do anything, but who knows.

"Damn incompetent villains." Arhra Two fumed in an undertone seeing Doug's villainouly incompetent display of incompetent villainy. He'd just been clubbed from behind by his own prisoner. "Doesn't he know anything? Forcefield then activate doomsday device. Monologue only when you aren't open to being interrupted. It's not that hard!"

Pedro got shot. Shocking that Doug had the foresight to bring a sidearm and had the nerve to actually use it. Rei reacted with an act of great violence, ending the would-be supervillain's career and life. But in his last words, Doug had gasped out the surprise twist: Rei was the evil mastermind behind this nefarious plot!

Also, she shot at the NPFers!

"...Instrumentality is just screwed now." Four said, safely spectating from behind Mauve's blast shield as she squinted into the explosion.

"It just goes to show." Two began. "You can never trust robots. Much like clones they will often inevitably betray you." The other two Arhras present nodded solemnly in agreement.

Of course, they now were faced with how best to deal with the newly revealed traitor in their midst.

"Divide and conquer!" Arhra One said, misusing the term, "That cannon takes a while to charge up! She can't hope to hit everyone at once!" She sprinted out from the cover of Mauve's shield. Fortunately, Inbred was making his attack, making her hope she'd get away with what she planned.

Running towards the controls, One was keeping her eyes peeled for a base self destruct button. Press that and all of Rei's plans would come crashing down, maybe! Hopefully it would be a big red button with a handy label like "Base Self Destruct Button: Please Do Not Push". She doubted Doug had been intelligent enough to make a button like that actually do something horrible to whoever pressed it.

Arhra Two edged partway out of the shield, unfurling the shimmering wings of light she possessed, ominious looking magic crackling through them, arcs leaping down to pool in her cupped hands. "Oh no." she said in a monotone. "I do hope that Rei does not shoot me with her Doom Cannon while I am getting this very vulnerable fight winning technique ready. That would be 'bad'."

Four politely excused herself, shoving through the shielded NPFers to exit via the doorway the NPFers had come in through. She had a dragon form to finally properly try out and she (A) didn't know how vulnerable she'd be while changing, (B) needed a little more room to do it and (C) wasn't certain if the change would be harmless to her spiffy new suit.

Their plans of varying complexity and probable usefulness unfolding, something suddenly smashed through the wall. "OH YEAH!" blared from loudspeakers on its body. It was a mechanical monstrosity, the destroyed remains of the robotic boss trio of before cobbled together into a mostly operational whole. Somewhere inside, Arhra Five was using strange machine fusion powers to pull the strings.

She'd taken the Flarecobot as the base, being the most intact of the three. Parts of the Robohobo had been grafted on, including its legs and an arm to replace the Flarecobot's damaged one. The arm gatling gun had been remounted on the left shoulder. The torso had strange protrusions from where the body cavity had been opened up and more components pulled inside, extra armour crudely layered over it. One arm waved a hammer, another wielded a spear and the last flopped around uselessly. The only thing that could be recognised from the iCurt was it's tophat, perched atop the composite's head at a jaunty angle.

Still being rebuilt, parts being tugged into place, sparks and glowing metal visible in places as connections were made, the giant robot lurched forwards.

"FLAME CANNON!" it bellowed, fire gushing at Rei from several points on its body.

If someone guessed that Arhra had rather unimaginatively rigged several flamethrowers to fire at the same point simultaneously, they'd be entirely correct.

There had been a bit of clapping as O'Sullivan had disabled Doukhobor, when O'Sullivan had been shot, as well as when Doukhobor had been strangled.

"If O'Sullivan gets Phoenix Down'd or revived in any such manner, remind me to never help him again, 'kay?" Wizzle asked of the assorted NPFers, as well of the still-struggling plushies on his shoulder. Of course, this was before the quite possible fatality-inducing Doom Cannon had been fired. The name probably wasn't a misnomer, he decided.

The cat mage leapt forward to land beside Mauve and gathered magical energy in his right paw. "Mauve, dear, mind if I assist?" A visible sphere of energy of the color of twilight levitated in the air above the paw, giving off a fair amount of illumination as it grew larger. At Wizzle's sweeping gesture, it merged with Mauve's defensive spell, augmenting its range of effect and capabilities. "Theoretically, this should be able to hold the Doom Cannon for a while," Wizzle dutifully informed the forumites in the immediate area. "In any case, I'll continue strengthening the shield as the barrier being broken would be a bad thing."

Tail twitching somewhat, the anthropomorphic cat focused the entirety of his attention on the magical defense, watching it accumulate. It now had a slight glow of color, as well as the sparkling common to Twilight Magic that grew more pronounced as more magic was added. The miniature Plushie Wizardcat had created a smaller version of it that surrounded both of the plushies. Just in case. Plushie Hikari was trying to do something about the lack of battle music.

The thoughts of the three were nearly identical; Will the shield(s) withstand the attack?

Samurai-TBM scratched at his minimal chin stubble while admiring the bright flashes of light and swirling power of the mages, his billowing kimono opened slightly as a tiny figure came out of the safety of TBM's pocket and began shouting up to TBM histerically. "Get in there, everyones fighting and if you don't help someone could die!"

Samurai-TBM eyed the little plushie version of himself incrediously, "Listen buddy if I go in there and help the one who could die is probably gonna be me. Besides you were evil just a minute ago till I offered you candy, what do you care if everyone dies before I lift a finger."

"Well now that I have candy I'm good, and good people save the day! So save the day already!" The little plushie TBM started eating some of the candy he'd recieved as payment to switch alliances. "I'll give you some candy if you help them."

What the plushie samurai-tbm didn't know was that the candy he was eating was nothing more then an illusion created by TBM since he didn't have the heart to cut his own cute little head off. TBM on the other hand knew fullwell the candy was only an illusion, "Deal!" but he's just such a sucker for candy. "Ok, here's the plan..." The two whispered back and forth before shaking hands proudly at their own ingenuity.

Plushie samurai-tbm jumped up to Samurai-TBM's shoulder and then began mimicking every movement his larger cohort made, together they went through a quick set of needless hand gestures that the real TBM thought would 'look cool' then they finally crossed their fingers in the traditional transformation style. "TRANSFORM-" Called the little plushie, "JUTSU!" Called TBM. Before the smoke even cleared a familiar and poorly dubbed voice cried out, "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" The smoke swelled then seperated into nothingness as dozens of Naruto's jumped out and stormed out of the magic shield and towards the Relatively Evil Interface. Though many wandered directly into the path of Arhra's flame attack, a few more were stumbling into IC's attack and plenty of the idiots were between Alt-Pyros and REI.

Unfortunately for TBM and his plushie accomplice the shadow clone technique had divided their intelligence equally amongst all the clones. So in the end, these Naruto's would charge REI for a single punch, hit her and then they'd probably just stand there looking confused and wondering what that pain in their hand was from. Fortunately for TBM and his plushie accomplice however, there were pretty good odds they wouldn't be the first to die.

"Hoshit!" I said, and Jumped out of the way. "REI, you know I can bring him back. Just give me a chance, and I'll do it for you." I told her, landing near her.

At about this point, a red flare appeared- directly interposed between Rei's Doom Cannon and the other forumers. "Eh, time's up," came a voice. Nikose had enough time to straighten his shirt as he appeared in view, looking at the other panicking forumers- before getting struck and nearly obliterated with the Doom Cannon, receiving what was most likely a nearly fatal injury as his flesh melted from his bones, and his bones became brittle and began to slip into dust- the entire form of him melting, and fading away, while at the same time trying to regrow and recreate itself.

Really it was pretty gross to watch, especially since afterwards He'll probably be naked again.

Impacting upon the magical shields of Mauve and Wizzle as well as the meatier shield of the recently unbanned Nikose, the Doom Cannon attack exploded, causing the area to shake and filling the room with a flash of metaphorically blinding light. As the light faded back to normal, the several individuals who had leaped into attack mode against Rei (included the less-than-leaping flamethrower blast from one of the Arhras) found their combined assault impeded by the energy shield bubble that the android had put up around herself.

"REI, you know I can bring him back. Just give me a chance, and I'll do it for you," Flare pleaded through the forcefield.

"That won't be necessary. We've got it covered," Rei winked, a low hum emanating from her body as her artificial gravity generator activated, nullifying the G-force several meters around her, Pedro's body, and enveloping the surrounding NPFers, lifting her slightly off the floor and forcing the attacking heroes to float helpless about.

Suddenly, the direction of the gravity field shifted, hurling all of them toward the door where they came to a dead stop, with Rei in the middle of the rest of the NPFers, catching them in her zero-G field as well.

"Come with me...."

Rei and the NPFers rose several feet into the air, the android spinning slowly as the others orbited about her.

"....and you'll be...."

A hyperlink portal burst into existence in the middle of the room, the white energy swirling and churning about at everyone stopped in place.

"....in a world of pure imagination!"

Another sharp gravity shift and everyone was flung into the portal before it withered to a close behind them, leaving the room empty of nothing but the soft crackle of the fires burning from the destroyed life-transferral machine.


Santa Claus suddenly came to a stop in his pursuit.

"I... have no idea what you're talking about, Pyros," Santa stated, obviously appearing quite confused, "You never killed me. Nor did I provoke the attack that caused your attempt on my life. And I'm the only Sa--Wait...."

Old St. Nick closed his eyes and felt through the Spirit of Christmas, sensing the world's niceness, naughtiness, cheer, wishes, elves, candy canes, reindeer, and..... another Santa Claus.

Letting out a loud, high-pitched whistle, Santa waited a moment before a jingling of bells approached from the distance, carried by the sound of his sleigh and eight reindeer. Leaping into the air, Santa landed in his sleigh and took the reins.

"I can tell if you're being naughty or nice, Pyros Nine," he called out as the sleigh took off northward, "And I can tell you are being honest! Let's hope our paths don't have to cross again for a while! HO-HO-HYAH!!"

And off he went into the distance.


The portal having closed behind them, the NPFers were dropped on the ground before Rei took off into the air. It was dark here, wherever they were, and somewhat cold. Or chilling, at the very least. There was certainly pavement beneath them. A faint violet light cast shadows against the urban sprawl, revealing a massive city populated by motionless figures who, as the eyes of the group adjusted to the dimness and they could investigate further, appeared to be noobs, lurkers, flamers, trolls, and assorted other forum trash.

In what appeared to be the center of the city, the source of what little light there was became evident. A large apparatus had been constructed, advanced equipment surrounding a large crystalline artifact at the base with a smaller such crystal hanging down from the top. Between them, a field of shadowy energy swirled about the figure of man who was only visible from the waist up. He appeared unclothed, a slimly built figure with pale skin and paler hair that hung at length from his head. His eyes then opened, glowing bright red, and he greeted the NPFers with a hauntingly familiar voice that echoed through the cavernous expanse.

"Why, hello there! I'm so glad you could all make it! You've no idea just how much I wanted you to see what you helped me create...."

"Everyone, if I could have your attention, please! *Ahem* I would like to welcome you all to Gaia Online," Rei announced, reading from a small card as she hovered high above the heroes with POS' body--his human body--hanging limply beside her. She reached out her hand and gestured toward the crystal at the base of the machine, "Behold, the Pedrosen! And high above it, the POShirosen! With their combined power and the spirit of the late Pedro O'Sullivan, they have been the instruments to give rise to not only an ascension beyond the plane of the mortals, but to give birth to a new entity entirely! Ladies and gentlemen of the Nuklear Power Forums, I present to you..... Pedros Nihilem, God of Nothing!"