008 [Accidental Video] PLAYER EVENT, forward dated to the evening of July 6th

[deathsdoctor]

[Good evening, Luceti. Good evening, Community Housing Unit Two.

How is your night going? Are you with loved ones or friends tonight? Having dinner? Working? Perhaps, just perhaps, you’re contemplating turning in early for the night. It’s peaceful, as evenings go, after all. The stars are bright, the winds soft and perfumed with the scents of the nearby forests.

And over the journal, there it is…

… the sound of glass breaking. A book falling and thudding open… a snarl.

Here we go, that same old song and dance.]

Wha--- [ka-chink] WATCH OUT, BEPO!

[It happens with brutal speed and the journal window is obscured in blinding blue flaring light and shouts and screams and panic are drowned out in the sound of crashing and the ever rising roar of destruction and tremors that crescendos with an explosion. An explosion that tears out the exterior walls of Apartment 40 and most of the roof above it upwards and outwards in a cloud of concrete and twisted metal and other debris to fall like rain below.

Michael Bay would be proud.

And then a soft voice, horrified:]

Bepo…

[The voice changes then, becomes cold and unyielding as something looms into view. It is limned with blue fire and heavily bleeding, and it wields a sword.]

… listen up and listen well, you and your masters eavesdropping, because I’m going to say this only once. No one fucks with a man’s nakama and should expect to live. You want me?

[Death beckons.]

GET OVER HERE.

[And everything is drowned out in light and fury and rips outward from the apartment, ripping and slashing through the walls to the rest of floor eight and through the floor downwards to leave gaping rifts and wreckage in its path all the way to the sixth, and the roar only rises and the building shakes again.

Then it stops.

Eerie silence reigns.]

B-bepo? [COUGH. HACK. The sounds of someone dragging themselves across the floor.] … still alive. [The voice is wavering, relieved, before steeling.] Still alive.

[Bloody tattooed fingers pull the book closer, and something drips on the pages, and the man makes another wet, hacking sound.]

That can’t be…

… all of them…

[ And through that crimson veil, NOW you see it, in amidst all the wreckage and blood splattered everywhere, the remains of droids. The undefeated droids. Now empty eyed and shattered and reduced to no more than useless pieces. They don’t even twitch… just spark. Impossible, isn’t it? But long moments pass and yet…

No more come.

Look. The impossible is impossible no more.]




((OOC: For the sake of keeping the timeline somewhat together, I ask that there’s no multiple people arriving first at the scene in the action threads. I will be providing scene descriptors as necessary. The droids will be returning in one hour, wherever Law and the rest of the characters may be, and they cannot be stopped and they will do anything and everything to stop your character from halting them from catching their prize. I’ll be keeping a countdown of time left until they swarm like the zombies of The Night of The Living Dead. Please threadjack all over the place here.

As a bonus, here’s the music that would have cued up in the middle of the attack.))

Comments

[daisy023]

[The Chief suppresses her irritation and the instinct to tell him she is far from a rookie. They had a job to do, and Law would not last. He was right.

That, and keeíng mentally aside the fact that her protector was a phoenix of mythology would help her cope with Luceti.]

Affirmative.

[She continues her work. She studies the source that emanates the highest heat.]

Battery seems to work not through conventional means of energy of either modern era or of Human-Covenant War era. No presence of lead-acid, or of galvanic or hydrogen cells.

[She opens the CPU... This one looks even more alien.]

Design of Central Processing Unit module of unknown technology. Means and time to process data unavailable at the moment.

[SPARTAN-023 blames herself. If they had cables to manually link her helmet with the droid's CPU, she could've stolen the data to de-encrypt it later. But then again, even the UNSC had troubles deciphering Covenant technology.

Her body language is faster, but like the times when she holds a weapon in the battlefield, no part of her shakes. She is entranced on her work. All to keep her mind off the very monsters she was studying.]

[fierybluebird]

[Keeps circling, trying not to feel like a bird of prey about it. His eyes are focused on the ground, though his ears are trying to pick up everything she says. Let's just hope the droids can't teleport.]

[daisy023]

[This time, she inspects one of the legs. She would try to understand the performance of these machines.]

Legs function with an advanced pressure system spread throughout the thigh in a manner emulating human muscles. [The helmet turns to the arm.] Arms have a similar system, likely aiding the units perform with efficiency against stronger targets. Material of unknown design -- probably nanofibers to emulate muscle fiber.

[The more she learned, the more they could resist against the droids. Then, an idea comes.

She tries to continue around the chest, trying to locate anything that could look out of the ordinary, unable to find anything that looked a lot more alien than the things occupying the insides of this droid, but nonetheless recording everything she sees. There has to be something that may be the power dampener that had caused them so much trouble. If the residents got to know where it was, they could have a fighting chance against these droids.

SPARTAN-023 grabs a head part of the droids.]

Dismantling head unit for future theorical inspection.

[Her helmet aims at it, then puts both fingers to split open the head, before she sets it on the ground. Once again, more machinery that looked alien... More to inspect, and record.

She wished she had Robert or Donatello in here. She wished she had more time to inspect those things. But Law wouldn't last, and she knew it. So she focuses on what can she learn to use it against these things.]

[fierybluebird]

[While he's still not picking up anything special, that in itself is making him nervous. How has it been? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Less than that? He gives a few more loops before whistling softly. Might as well head someplace else rather than push their luck.]

I'm thinking we should switch up locations. Just in case. Think you can carry all that?

[daisy023]

[Her helmet turns quickly towards Marco, then nods.]

Yes, sir.

[She dislikes having to do this, especially with two open parts. Nonetheless, she puts the dissected parts first, face-down, before putting the rest of the pieces back. Then, she puts her tools back in her box.

Once done, she runs towards the Phoenix with both heavy elements.]

[deathsdoctor]

[Good thing too. Look below, you two. Look below...]

[fierybluebird]

[Mumbles quietly to her once she's on.]

I have awesome timing.

All right let's go. [Swerving and going a little higher to keep to the skies.]

[daisy023]

[Her hold on Marco turns stronger once she sees the droids below them. She contains her strength, not wanting to hurt the person that was transporting her. They were running out of time... if they hadn't already.]

Where else do we go?

[fierybluebird]

Preferably someplace they won't expect. For now though... [He cuts diagonally across the village over to the rooftop of Community Housing 1. It's not as far as he'd like, but it should given them a little time unless the droids can go through the trees. But any time he sees the droids he veers in another direction just to (hopefully) throw them off.]

I'm loathe to involve anyone else, but they probably won't want to waste time anyway. [Lands gracefully. Who says you can't have finesse and speed?]

[daisy023]

They'll only go for us. They'll leave the rest alone.

[If no one stood in their way, Daisy hoped.

She leaps off Marco, drawing the contents one by one, before she carefully sets the head on the floor for inspection. Her hands are faster. She is being followed.]

Head contains visual receptors for detection. Possible uses for this part of the droid are communications, data storage, commands, and detection. It is possible that the chest and the head share these tasks.

[And judging by what her feed showed, the plating was hard to remove. Daisy assumed it was the rush she felt giving her extra strength to open this thing.]

[fierybluebird]

[Watches for droids again, careful to keep his yellow tail up near the sun. He only picks up or understands about half of what she says, but good enough. Electronics are definitely not his thing.]

[daisy023]

[She resists a brief glance towards the sky. She takes another hi-def image and heat signatures.]

There are cables inside a metallic tube that crosses through the spine that connects the functions of the head with those of the chest. Droids were designed in a matter not unlike biological anthropomorphic bodies. General body alloy has a hardness similar to Covenant ship hulls or Hunters' shields.

[She picks the bigger pieces off the head, and spread them on the ground, keeping priority over the heat signatures they emanate.

A part of her knows the dangers of this. If your enemy has intel in his hands, you destroy it before he reads it.]

[fierybluebird]

[Flies around in circles. Vaguely wonder if they'll have the sense to start splitting up their force making it impossible to land anywhere else soon... yup that would suck.]

[daisy023]

[She picks the pieces of the chest, then those of the head, and lays them out on the roof. Likewise, studying their heat signatures.]

Current objects lined up have greater mass, distinct forms, and more variable heat signatures when compared to the rest of what lies inside their bodies.

Possible objects listed in here may be the CPU, heat sink, power dampener, battery mechanism, comm systems, and others that may be unknown to us. Exact identification without proper time and equipment is impossible at the moment.

[Marco's fears are justified, and the Chief Petty Officer shares them. It's what logical tacticians would do against a mobile enemy strictly forced to be on the defensive... Moreso if even one of them can put them down easily.]

Where are they at?

[fierybluebird]

I don't know yet. If they're circling... [Then no matter where they land it'll be the same problem.]

Do you want to get going or make them try to close in first?

I'm so sorry, I'm running out of technobabble. ;__;

[daisy023]

We'll have to wait. If we fly now, they'll still be spread out.

[Better to face one or two at a time than the whole bunch...]

Wires seemingly based not on copper or any other known conductive materials. Use of optical fiber in the transmission of information possible. All elements inside the droids are connected, likely noting a synchronization of the entire unit in the middle of the Operation.

Maintenance costs for the deployment of even one droid of this technology should be big on most worlds, but it's possible shifting technology may have made reduced the costs.

[She attempts to pry open one of the mechanisms laid out. If there were things she got to see inside of them... Know how it worked...]

[deathsdoctor]

[Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak. That would be the door to the roof opening.

Didn't see them come into the building, did you two? Did they sneak in... or were they shifted in?

But that's not all. There's more circling the building now, though sparser numbers. Like the other droids are somewhere else. Positioned.

Tactics are changing. Can you adapt?]

s'ok There's only so many times you can describe circling like a vulture

[fierybluebird]

Shit...

[Aims a flying kick at them to keep the door shut.] Better hurry, leave the parts you've already got data on, eh? We can toss the rest along the way.

[daisy023]

[Every sense in her jolts when she hears the door. She tames her instinct to fight and kill the most she can muster. They're coming.

With Marco's word, Daisy stuffes her tools back into the box, and hastily puts into her bag the innards and mechanism she had yet to study. Then runs back towards him, with a grip stronger than before.]

[fierybluebird]

[In full phoenix levels out on the side of the building so she get on and they can immediately fly off.]

[daisy023]

[She gives a quick peek around the area. The droids had gathered around the area. They could be preparing someplace for all she knew. It could mean the Malnosso knew of the mess this would cause.

Or that Law was already taken.

She jumps back, her actions gaining speed. She opens the bigger mechanism to try to inspect it and--

...

It doesn't resemble anything. Her mind pauses for an instant. It's as if it was Covenant technology with even less attachment to the laws of physics.]

Mechanism analyzed of unknown property. Unable to be compared with sorts of technology known at the moment. Possible use is engine.

[fierybluebird]

What does that mean, that they're brain-powered?

[Flies and tries to keep smooth rather than quite as fast, if they can't land... might as well stay up high for now.]

[daisy023]

It's something with a lot of energy that I can't identify. Infrared image is flaring. It's not built like anything I've ever seen before.

[Her voice is a little higher so Marco hears him. Once again, she tries to do away with the "If I've had more time".]

[fierybluebird]

Infrared? The hell is that?

[Swoops out towards the mountains, hoping he can confuse them into giving up the village.]

[daisy023]

Electromagnetic radiation with wave longer than light. Heat that we can't necessarily see. Every form of energy shows it. Things like the slipspace drives and shifts should show a lot of it.

[Which makes her suspect. Can shifting technology be used as energy?

Her heart races. Still watching the equipment she is inspecting, she has not seen the bluff that Marco has tried to pull.]