Strain

[terribleyetfun]

The fight unfolded infront of him, the closest thing he could compare it to was something out of a comic book, he was mesmerized for only a short while before being thrown back to reality by the sight of a missile flying towards him. Jason fell to his hands and knees just barely avoiding the missile exploding against the wall behind him. Pieces of debris raining down upon him he managed to pick himself up and scramble forwards to avoid the majority of the rubble, a rock about as big as jason's fist smacking into his spine sending him back to the ground.

"okay...that does`nt usually happen in hallucinations" jason whimpered as he slowly got to his feet taking the rock from his back sizing it up in his hand taking his eyes from it to the metal colossus in front of him, the voice of common sense muffled by the alcohol in his system telling him to run he tossed the rock into the air catching it before pelting it at 2W hitting him directly in the eye before turning and running refusing to look back on the fear that he`d see 2W chasing after him.

 

[Zemalac]

"Inviolate?" Christian cracked a smile, freezing with that expression for a moment as the agents swung in to hit him again. They were fast, to be sure, but not quite fast enough. He could keep up with their movements, he thought, freezing himself in place an instant before they connected. Or he could for a little while, anyway. He'd have to keep them both in sight, and if they started offsetting their hits from each other more he'd be in trouble, but for now he had some room to work. Which was all he needed, really.

"Did it ever occur to you that you two that I might not be a super?" he asked the agents. "Maybe I'm just really good at my job, eh?"

The agent in front threw another punch. Christian reacted. This would take split-second timing...

Aaaand crack, the agent's fist was enveloped by Christian's large hand. Christian's skin absorbed the force of the blow like a sponge soaking up liquid, and then he was moving. He couldn't quite match the agent's speed, but he didn't really need to--he just had to pull like so and lift like so and then the surprised agent was rolling over Christian's shoulder and falling to the ground behind him.

The other agent was moving in now, dancing forward on jets of flame, and it was now that Christian really went for his gun.

Blam

He shot the man in the right foot, the bullet smashing the microjet to unidentifiable pieces. The remaining jet sent the agent into an uncontrolled spin for a moment, cartwheeling crazily across the street. He managed to cut the power moments before hitting a wall with a dull thud.

Christian didn't have time to pay attention to the man after that. The other agent was up and coming back for more, fast and angry. Christian didn't even bother freezing this time, just letting the agent swung right into Christian's own massive fist. The blow didn't seem to damage the man much, but it did shake him back a step.

When the agent looked up, he found himself staring down the barrel of Christian's pistol.

"Now let me tell you how you should have done this," said Christian.

 

[Xero Scythe]

Damien danced out of the way of the force gun, using his powers to operate his body like a marionette. He put away his phone, and brought out his right fist in which he had been gathering gravitational force. When Damien saw the missiles he laughed and curved both of them away from himself and Dyme and caused them to impact each other in midair. The gravity-ball had become a deep black by now, and Damien launched it at 2W, disappearing from view and reappearing right next to 2W, grabbing the force gun. Damien used his abilities and began to crush the metal, so that 2W would hold on and get hit by the supercondensed ball of gravity, or dodge it and lose his gun.

 

[Sam G]

Dyme spotted the incredibly stupid drunken man hit 2W with a rock, and for a moment he simply stood, confounded, wondering why on earth anyone would do that for any reason at all. Then his heroic instincts took over and he reminded himself that, as a super, it was his duty to protect civilians, however ridiculously stupid they may be.

After Damien diverted the missiles and vanished from Dyme's side, Dyme broke into a run, cutting through the small smokescreen created by the missiles and making his way towards the ineffectually-fleeing homeless man, and as he ran he played; an old favourite [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMD7FIpq11Q] he'd picked up from watching the news one day, and had set about learning immediately after.

It was fortunate that he had, it seemed, as without this one the homeless man may have been reduced to so many homeless chunks of smouldering homeless flesh; a large transparent ball, composed purely of energy, engulfed him, cutting him off in his sluggish escape but sealing him in an impregnable ball which would hopefully protect him from any of 2W's attacks. Heroic instincts still controlling Dyme's actions, he spun around so that his back was to the ball and his front to the murderous robot trying to kill them all, leaving Dyme standing between injustice and the innocent.

 

[terribleyetfun]

Jason slammed against the casing of the orb flying backwards and bouncing against the wall behind him as well he leaned against the front wall of his makeshift prison hitting his hands and his body against the walls in a fruitless attempt to get out. He was slowly becoming more desperate wanting to distance himself as far as possible from this fight he turned around and stared at his captor wondering why he had to go and put him here.

"well once again my bad luck has run me into a fucking corner, I`m trapped in an invisible cage...I think ,where I will most likely be torn to pieces or blown into tiny specks...oh goodie, maybe something else will happen to me tonight, like I dunno I`l step in something" He then let out a short sigh before sitting down staring up at the night sky, after a short while of nothing a twinkle appeared in the night sky, playing it off as nothing jason shook his head before looking back up this time seeing a bright blue streak of light burn through the sky crossing directly over Jason's head.

"huh....that was actually pretty cool" He mused to himself shrugging it off and focusing his attention on the fight in front of him.

 

[ThreeWords]

The agent's face had registered a combination of irritation and puzzlement, but at Christian's words it's expression cleared and it smiled slightly. "Knowledge is power; give me your analysis of the combat"

---

2W ignored the rock, which bounced off harmlessly, and as Damien latched onto it's gun turned, steadied itself and heaved. Against the odds and the massive gravity, Damien was lifted bodily. 2W took one flowing step to avoid the gravity ball and hurled Damien through the air toward Dyme. As he flew, the gravity fields around Damien warped the ground crazily and launched small objects in improbable directions.

The robot fired a second salvo of missiles at Damien even before he landed, and as soon as they left it's body turned toward it's next target. Now facing Dyme, a new weapon unfolded from a cavity in it's left arm. The barrel swung up, and a deluge of napalm surged toward the young musician

Spoiler: @Xero

For this batch of missiles, could you please tell me what you try to do, and I'll tell yo what the result is

 

[Sam G]

Well, this is gonna hurt, Dyme thought to himself. He could quite easily play some sort of song pertaining to water, or another shield-song or something, but that would involve leaving his ward unprotected, and that was something no hero could accept; so Dyme simply waited for Damien to save him again.

You are a taker, Dyme Allesandros, a voice reverberated in his head. He couldn't remember who'd first told him that; was it his mum? His dad? Just a stray thought that had occurred to him a while back? Regardless of who had said it, it was true; even though Dyme liked helping people, he always inevitably ended up getting helped a lot more than he helped others. It was simply the way things worked. Honestly, Dyme wasn't really suited to being a hero; he had the right attitude, but was unfortunately hindered by the terrible affliction of being almost completely useless.

Well, maybe Dyme was sick of being useless. Maybe it was about time he broke the trend he'd been setting for his whole life and did something for himself, rather than waiting for someone else to do it.

All these thoughts had taken about two seconds to go through Dyme's head, and now the napalm flames were uncomfortably close to his clothes. Clenching his teeth, Dyme plucked a song out of the infinite bank in his head. Ring of Fire [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRlj5vjp3Ko]. How apt.

The flames coursing towards Dyme slowed as he started to play, and when they neared him they changed course and moved in a wide arc around him, encircling the now-shieldless stupid homeless man. Dyme foolishly took a hand off his guitar and fired a thumbs-up in the direction he thought Damien must be in, even though he surely couldn't see through the flames.

No worries, boss. I've got it covered.

 

[ThreeWords]

2W strode forwards, ignoring the flames that licked impotently against his chasis. He moved with no apparent hurry, but about a meter and a half from Dyme, he lunged, blurringly fast as he hands reached for Dyme

 

[Sam G]

OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GOD, THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA, Dyme thought, as the metallic hands closed around his throat.

He'd changed his mind. Independence wasn't that great. Saving himself and protecting the homeless man had been pretty cool, for sure, but that plan had unfortunately boomeranged around and thwacked him in the forehead, as the fiery barrier he'd created clearly wasn't doing much against the evil horrible robot with all the guns. Quite the contrary; now his only hope of survival (that is to say, Damien; yeah, it was nice being able to do things for himself, but unfortunately he'd yet to overcome his crippling affliction of being useless, so he'd have to go back to the old ways of getting his ass hauled out of jams by other people for a while) was sealed from him by the flames, meaning it was just him and the robot here in this fiery cage of death. Oh yeah, and the homeless man. But what was he gonna do? Light himself on fire, then hug 2W?

Oh, heck, there goes the oxygen, Dyme mused, and passed out in 2W's grip.

 

[The Clown]

James stood up and turned to see dyme thrust up into the air, a metal had closing around his throat, "Dyme! I'm coming," He yelled as he dashed towards the fight. Ideas had eluded him, was this brave or stupid? he didn't care, he leapt towards them, flipping in the air almost in slow motion, he dived head first into the solid concrete as if it were water, there was a ripple of stone towards 2W as he approached him under the ground but the rippling stopped as he got deeper away from the surface, into his rocky sanctuary, or would it be his tomb.

James circled the scene like a shark, then chose his moment and sent s spear of rock up through the surface, lodging it into the elbow joint of the arm holding Dyme, "Once again I'm underground, and if that wasn't enough I have to look after this fucking child, I'm guessing he's going to fish me out somehow.... better go deeper for now" He sunk a little deeper into the earth, filtering air down through the earth, as if he was wafting a feather through the air.

 

[ThreeWords]

The impact loosened 2W's grip on Dyme, who, being unconscious, was promptly ignored. The robot allowed Dyme to fall, but stood unmoving. A vibration rippled through the ground, barely enough too echo off James...
A second after the sonar, the ground shook, rattling James violently as 2W deployed further force-based weaponry

 

[Xero Scythe]

Damien was sick of all the W's. He simply spun out of the way of the missile salvo, inherently suspicious of any idiot who would try a tactic that had already proven to be useless. "If Carter churns out a 4W, so help me God, I will blow his brains out with his own damn gun." Damien balled his right hand into a fist and started walking towards 2W. "All of you W's, save 3W, can go screw yourselves. I've had enough of you bastards."

Damien began slowly jogging, then breaking on into a full-blown sprint before accelerating even more using his powers. "Here's a little physics lesson for you! Force is equal to Mass times Acceleration!" Damien condensed all the gravity he could in his right fist in that short time period. While he hadn't personally destroyed Gen City, if he had used this, he might have been able to. Damien aimed right at 2W's side, ducking underneath the force gun, aiming right for that nice, juicy tangle of wires that was 2W's driving force. Damien so wanted to punch through that metal, grab as many wires as he could, and rip them all out as he watched that damn annoying light in 2W's eyes wink out.

 

[terribleyetfun]

With the invisible prison fading jason fell backward catching himself before scraping his feet against the ground his body running on pure adrenaline and picking himself up his pace quicker and more focused the alcohol in his system being replaced with a desire to live he continued bolting down the alleyway covering his face before realizing the flames had faded as well looking around before continuing down the alleyway his breathing heavy.

"god....damn it....I`m really unfit" he espoused in between breaths holding his hands on his knees for a second before continuing to run, he always did this, run when it got serious, but he was right to, what could he have done? get in the way probably, his only ability was that he could take a hit extraordinarily well and that would`nt do much against missiles and whatever the hell the weapon 2W was wielding fired so he kept running not stopping for anything or anyone.

 

[ThreeWords]

As Damien's fist shot forward, 2W's hand moved with inhuman speed. The fists met, and Damien simply stopped, the energy seeming to simply vanish...

---

Below ground, the shock suddenly increased tremendously, crushing James with insane, bone-breaking force.

---

2W was channeling the energy of the impact through the force weapon and into the ground, but suddenly, a limit was reached. Systems overloaded, controls enacted too late, and suddenly the remaining force of the punch had nowhere to go, except as impact.

The robot and gravity wielder had stood still for a second, fist to fist, when suddenly 2W exploded backwards, spinning crazily as the punch finally caught up with him.

 

[The Clown]

James screamed, his arms cracking from the enormous tremors, he squirmed under the soil, desperately trying to get to the surface "Why did I go so deep? I knew this would be my tomb!"

He rose further and further upwards, his whole skeleton creaking as he rose, with a cry he burst out into the open, about 20 metres away from 2W. James coughed dirt, then stood and blasted all the mud and sand away, "Talk about playing dirty," He thought, a slight chuckle passing his lips at the pun.

"This will end!" James yelled at 2W who was on the ground after Damien's punch. He stomped down onto the concrete with immense force, sending a pillar of rock shooting up underneath 2W rocketing his immense bulk a few metres into the air then concentrating his power he launched a train-car sized lump of concrete hurtling towards the airborne 2W.

 

[ThreeWords]

The concrete smashed into the robot, once more altering it's chaotic course, which ended in a brink wall. In the rubble, nothing stirred, for a moment.

Then, the piles of bricks shifted and the robot emerged once more. The chassis was dented, it moved with a slight limp, and the flamethrower was a mangled wreck, but 2W still functioned,and was back for more.

The robot began to vibrate, oscillating at extreme speeds that produced a whining roar where it touched anything else.

 

[Xero Scythe]

Damien heard the roar as 2W made contact with an errant building. He shook his head in dull admiration at the sheer stubbornness of 2W. "The bastard turned his entire body into an oscillating blade. That means to cut him I have to match or beat his oscillations per second." Damien thought. He looked around for a minute before setting his eyes on a steel I-beam that had been abandoned for the day. Damien used his power to crush the I-beam into the shape he wanted, then put an edge on it. Using his power, he made the new spear as light as air. Damien used the weapon as an extention of his body and concentrated his power on the blade. Damien winced as he heard the steel groan under the stress. "Only got one shot." He muttered underneath his breath. Damien twirled the spear around before aiming it at 2W. "You know, the Irish have pretty amazing stories. One that I always loved was the Treasures of Erinn, specifically, Lugh the Long Arm's spear. It thirsted for battle so greatly, it had to be constantly drugged to not kill everything in its path. I always did like old stories." Damien smiled, before he threw the spear straight at 2W and accelerated it. It was aiming right for the chest. Damien reckoned, that as the main body, it would have the least oscillations per second and couldn't move as quickly.

 

[Zemalac]

"Analysis of the combat?" said Christian. "You did fairly well there, actually. The paper was a neat trick--you probably would have taken anyone else in only a few seconds with that one. But then you assumed both that I had powers, and that you knew how they worked. That mistake was forgivable, I suppose, if you aren't used to people being able to take a punch or two. You're a bit stronger than normal, aren't you?" Christian grinned. "Funny thing. A lot of people these days are 'stronger than normal.' A guy like me has to work a lot harder to work around that, sometimes. What I mean to say is, I'm used to getting hit by guys like you."

He paused for a moment to glance at the other agent, still crumpled against the wall on the other side of the street. "No, that little fight was full of small, but forgivable mistakes. You gave up the advantage of your blinding device too quickly, you were too quick to jump to conclusions about what I was, and you tried going hand to hand with a guy who's job is to punch people until they come quietly. Nothing too egregious, eh?" He sighed. "Now, how you should have done this, see, is with tact. Don't say 'You're required for questioning,' say 'Our employer wants to speak with you.' Make it congenial. Make it polite."

He smiled, a thoroughly good-natured expression. "See, I'm not about to be dragged off somewhere where I'm in someone else's power. That's my job, right? But I will, say, agree to meet for a casual chat in a coffee shop or bar somewhere. I'm an easy man to talk to, my friend. All you have to do is treat me less like a game piece and more like a player, and I'll do the same for you."

 

[ThreeWords]

A look of pain crossed the agents face while Christian was talking, and something behind it's eyes faded. When he finished, however, it looked up at him again; though with a difference in it's gaze.

"All you need is a little respect? How quaint. You almost sound like an angry teen." The agent's voice had changed, become high, sarcastic, lisping, "Well, we can allow for that. This unit will need repairs, but it will contact you."

"Take this," it reached out a hand, jerky like a puppet. In it's hand lay a little device, like a cuff-link and shaped in the symbol of the Company. "Find Leir if you can. If not, analyse the documents; we have diagnosed your judgement, and find it sound. Oh, and dispose of the other unit as you see fit"

The agent stood, still moving awkwardly, and took flight on its jets. As it soared away, the other stirred. It's face was dented inwards, and one leg crushed and beyond help. It did not even try to escape Christian, just looked at him mournfully.

---

2W's hand snapped up to catch the spear, but as the two vibrating surfaces met with a sudden screech and flash of sparks, and the spear bounced away wildly and impacted in the robot's shoulder, pinning it to the wall behind it.

The robot struggled, but the arm below the spear moved spasmodically. It's head dropped, as if in thought, and then suddenly, it's body separated; the arm and upper right quarter of the body coming smoothly away like a lizard shedding it's tail.

However, the robot had by no means got off easily; it's body spouted wiring and fluids, and it was clear that this was more like emergency surgery than a simple escape. With it's remaining arm it fired a parting burst of missiles, then fled into the sky.

 

[Zemalac]

Christian watched the agent fly off until he--it?--vanished into the darkness. He didn't move a muscle, not even so much as a twitch.

And then, after the black-suited form had disappeared from sight, he stirred. "Asshole," he grunted. "I wasn't fucking talking to you."

He really couldn't complain about how things had turned out, all things considered. He'd have to take a look at the device the agent had given him--he suspected it was a tracking device, but it would be good to be sure--but these people, the Company, seemed willing to play the game by Christian's rules. Which meant they thought they understood him.

He allowed himself a grin that would have made the agent rethink trusting him if it had seen it. "You almost sound like an angry teen," the strange voice from the agent had said. And yet I've still got you right where I wanted you.

Let's see...he'd gotten the token, a bruised fist, one bullet expended, and...the second agent.

He tracked down and picked up the shell casing from the shot he'd fired before wandering over to the downed agent, putting his pistol away as he did so. He looked down; the agent looked up unblinking.

"'Dispose of the other unit as you see fit,'" he said finally. "That's what the other guy told me. You two, you're robots of some kind?"

No reply. Christian looked down at the agent, into too-human eyes. He put his hand on the pistol under his coat, and the agent closed its eyes, waiting for the blow.

Christian sighed.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you on your feet, eh?" He held out a hand. "I don't know much about robots, but I might be able to find someone who does. We'll see what we can do."