Night 52: Sun Room

[composers_proxy]

[from here]

Last time he'd been in the Sun Room at night, there'd been some crazy guy with a gun and Neku really wasn't looking to have another bullet in him, so he was cautious as he pushed the door open, his flashlight darting from place to place.  He might not have all his old psychs on him, but he still had a few of Mr. H's pins and those would

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[composers_proxy]

As if he had to be told to stay on guard. The last thing he wanted was to be taken by surprise in the middle of the Sun Room. As the others made their way in, he glanced around, drawn immediately to the sound of the little boy sobbing in the corner. Neku wasn't exactly great with kids, but he didn't like the idea of one of them being left here alone to fend things off.

Even as he started to approach, Soma voiced some of his own silent concerns and he nodded. The buzzing seemed like it might've been coming from the intercom, but wouldn't that be broadcast on the radio as well? He kept his own with him at all times, plugged right into his phones for easy listening, so it didn't seem likely he'd miss something that obvious, but the sound was there alright. It even sounded like... someone was laughing?

Maybe if he could focus, he could find the source. Neku's lips formed a thin line and he put his hands to his headphones, attempting to read anything around them that might be out of the ordinary. The static that usually hummed in the back of his mind only got louder, intermingled with the buzzing sound.

"There's something else here," he told the others. He wasn't sure what, how, or even where it was, but something was definitely up.

[scintillatingly]

While Sora normally wouldn't have hesitated to run to the aid of a crying child, this place (and some of his previous experiences) had taught him to be more careful than that. And with both Soma and Neku approaching the situation with caution, he had to do the same. Besides, it wasn't as if they were ignoring the boy. They were just keeping their distance.

He also noticed that noise that only barely seemed to be there, buzzing at the back of his mind. He glanced around from one side of the room to the other, looking for a source and not finding anything. He honestly couldn't tell where the noise was coming from, and if it was laughing or something else...

"How did you get here?" he asked the boy, watching him with some guarded concern in his eyes. Nothing had lashed out and attacked them yet, but this whole thing seemed like a set-up. He wasn't going to fall for a trap so easily!

[piggy_king]

"Please help, I'm so sca-" the boy sobbed, stopping short when the group kept their distance. Almost instantly, his demeanor changed. The terrified look on his face vanished and was replaced by an annoyed look, "Tch. And here I had you pegged for a bunch of idiots that would rescue a child in distress without a second thought. Well, no point in drawing out this charade any longer."

The "boy" jerkily rose to his feet, every movement stiff and mechanical, a whirring filling the air as he did so. "Now I guess the only question is whether to use the tear gas or the superglue?" the boy said, his voice changing from a young boy's to that of an old man, "Decisions, decisions..."

And with that, the boy fell to pieces. Literally. His limbs separated from his torso, revealing sparking circuitry and gears beneath his synthetic skin. Just as suddenly, a large spiderlike mech dropped from the ceiling on top of the robot's remains, an elderly man piloting it from a glass tube in the center. The low chuckling in the background grew louder as a green gas sprayed out from the mech at the group. "This ought to be fun!" the man cackled.

[madeinthehrl]

The change in the boy's demeanor was something Soma had practically expected. What happened after--the corresponding change in voice, the boy falling apart, some sort of spiderlike mobile suit dropping from the ceiling--was something she had not.

But there was barely time for her to be surprised. Already some sort of green gas was spraying at them--tear gas, he had said. Soma returned the spear to its resting place at her back and withdrew her gun. This didn't look like a fight that could be resolved via hand-to-hand combat.

One last glance to memorize the scene in front of her, one deep breath just before the gas reached them, and she shut her eyes and fired at the glass tube. She wasn't trying to kill the man, and she highly doubted she would, but there was little else she could do at the moment.

[composers_proxy]

The change was immediate and more than enough to put Neku on his guard. Robo kids and now a giant mecha in the shape of a monster was about to descend on them. It was like something out of those zentai-suited live-action kids shows. Only real. And about to confirm everyone's suspicions that the Sun Room was a very bad idea at night.

He didn't have a way to equip all the pins at once, but the three he had on hand should be enough to help out. Radio Waves had worked well last night, and he didn't like to be without some kind of healing spells, so Run for the Clinic! was kept close at hand too. Last was Scalpels and Swords and he hadn't had a chance to break in either of the last two. So trying them out for the first time on a giant hulking metal monster spraying some kind of gas at them? Not ideal.

"Oh shi--"

Neku backpedaled as much as he could, though the gas was already starting to spill down around his ankles and slowly choke the air around him. Force rounds, he decided, would have to do. Soma already had a similar idea. He decided to take her lead and aim for the glass tube, static buzzing in his ears as he fired off several psychokinetic bullets.

[scintillatingly]

The act hadn't been kept up for long. Sora frowned as the boy's tone suddenly changed, becoming deeper and cruel. The idea of someone falling for that and then paying the price was enough to bother him. Who did this person think he was, trying to pull that sort of trick?

But Sora didn't have much time to be bothered, since in the next second a huge machine fell from the ceiling, crashing to the floor and causing him to jump back in surprise. "Whoa!"

Still, the boy (or man? it was hard to keep track) had made one big mistake, and that was revealing his plans. If they knew what was coming in terms of attacks, it would be that much easier for them to dodge, learn the pattern, and then search for a weak spot. Though really, that space in the middle of the mech that housed their opponent was already standing out to Sora as the place they needed to aim for.

It seemed that Soma and Neku had come to the same conclusion, as both fired off shots. Unfortunately, Sora didn't have the luxury of something like that, and so he fell into a dodge roll to try to get out of the range of the gas. He ignored the way his eyes started to sting and instead rushed forward, straight for the mech, so that he could force his Keyblade to appear to him. In Landel's, he always had to do things the hard way.

[piggy_king]

Porky yelped as the girl fired her gun at directly at his tube. The mech he was in was not known for its agility, and it certainly didn't help that he was backed up in the corner in a room as comparatively small as the sun room. Perhaps it would have been better to be hiding in the center of the room so he could attack from behind. While Porky lamented his poor choice of hiding places, the bullet pierced the glass tube easily and missed Porky by mere inches, lodging itself into the metal headrest next to him.

"It's times like these that I consider investing in a plexiglass tube..." Porky muttered, shaking his head angrily, "That or one of those physical force fields we've got for the infantry. Then again, if I didn't have a psychic shield, I wouldn't be able to do this!" The psychic bolts that one of the boys had fired off at Porky were repelled by a bright pink force field and sent hurtling back at its sender. "You may as well turn back and run away, little boy! You're going up against the one guy in the institute with anti-psychic technology!" Porky snickered.

While he laughed at the psychic brat's misfortune, Porky raised the front two legs of the spider mech to deal with the other idiot. "Listen, kids..." Porky said, sneering at the group, "There's no real point in dragging this out, don't you agree? You can't beat me, so why even bother trying? All you'll do is end up getting hurt or maybe even dying. Why bother with all that when you can just go back to your rooms and have a nice, peaceful nap?" As Porky gloated, he raised one of the legs to shield his tube and thrust the other one forward, it's pointed tip aimed at the boy rushing towards him.

[madeinthehrl]

So the tube could be pierced by bullets, judging from the yelp and the sound of shattering glass. That was an encouraging sign, and one Soma hadn't expected. Less encouragingly, whatever Neku had attempted to do had evidently failed--but if he possessed psychic abilities, surely there were other things he could do to fight. The mobile suit was similar in build to the Agrissa, and while she'd never seen the AEU armor in action herself, she'd seen footage of its destruction. If they could upset its balance, reaching the pilot would become far easier.

She concentrated, but there was nothing for it; she couldn't tell what was going on. If her brainwaves hadn't been dulled, she was sure she could have fought the entire battle with her eyes shut. As it was, she could only tell that the mobile suit was still in front of her, and that wasn't enough.

Her eyes began to water almost immediately when she opened them, but that didn't stop her from seeing the leg now shielding the tube, and the other leg descending rapidly toward Sora. She was too far away to reach him in time, but she shouted, "Look out!" and began to run toward him anyway, letting off a shot at the attacking leg.

[composers_proxy]

Neku was a little too focused on his own attacks to notice Sora charging without so much as a weapon in hand until it was too late to call him back, but he'd fought together with Sora before, so the guy had to have an inkling of what to he was doing. What took him completely by surprise though, was the fact that his own force rounds bounced off a bright pink field with all the speed and focus he'd sent them out with. Just his luck. What were the odds they bastard would have anti-psychic tech?

He had a scant few seconds to ponder it before the rounds came back at him, one catching him in the stomach, the other in the shoulder, hard enough to send him to the ground and facefirst into the clouds of teargas. Last night those blasts had been strong enough to tear up rock, so having them send back at him managed to be equal parts humiliating and painful.

The gas burned his eyes, nose, and throat, true enough to its name and the psychic blasts were enough to make him seriously reconsider standing up again; there was a deep cut in his shoulder, the skin burned in places, and a similar one on his stomach, though the bleeding there was harder to stop. He had the healing pin, which would help, but he could hardly see where the next attack might come from.

But if Sora could rush the thing with nothing more than the hope that his keyblade would appear, Neku could do his part too. He pushed himself up from the floor, concentrating on his other senses to tell him where the fight was. The wounds were annoying, but he could still fight. Better to save his healing spells in case someone else was worse off. He needed a weapon, a physical one, or he was screwed. The chairs in here were too big, but the ugly paintings on the wall might do. He tried to rub the irritant from his eyes as he reached for the nearest one. Psychic attacks might not work, but that didn't mean projectiles wouldn't.

[scintillatingly]

One attack had connected, but the other one had been reflected back at Neku. Sora was only vaguely aware of how that turned out for his friend, though he did hear him yell in pain, followed by the thump of him falling to the floor. As much as he wanted to turn back and help the other boy, he needed to focus on what they were fighting. If they held back with their attacks, then chances were the machine would just overwhelm them.

Besides, he had his own problems when one of the thing's legs started to come down on him. Hearing Soma yelling for him helped him to react. His hands went up into the pose he'd learned for when he wanted to block, and his Keyblade manifested just in time. The metal leg hit his weapon, causing a large clang as sparks flew. They were bright enough that Sora had to wince his eyes shut for a moment.

He knew he didn't have the strength to overpower the leg, and so he was forced to jump back and out of the way; still, he had his weapon now, so all he had to do was weave in toward that weak spot and hope that he could do something once he got there.

But at that moment the intercom suddenly came on, flooding the whole Sun Room with the Head Doctor's words. It was hard to focus on them when he was staring down a machine that was piloted by some weird figure who wanted them dead (or at least injured), but Sora did his best to listen with at least one ear as he charged once more.

He just had to dodge the legs until he got close enough to where the figure was seated in the middle, and then --

[piggy_king]

"Such a pity..." Porky sighed as he shook his head sadly, the attacking leg recoiling from its failed attack. If that bullet hadn't knocked it off course, there was no way that key-brat would have survived, "Here I was offering you a chance to just retreat and relax in your rooms, but youinsist on duking it out. Well, don't blame me if you get hurt. I'm just doing my job here, kiddies. Anyway, I may as well bust out the big guns now." Porky scratched his head. Landel had been pretty cheap with what he gave Porky. Normally he'd be throwing bombs all around the room and sucking up their life energy with all sorts of crazy gizmos and whatnot, but all he'd really let Porky have was the mech and some teargas and superglue. Looks like he'd have to be creative if he was gonna fight back with any efficiency.

Suddenly, an idea struck! What if he devoted two legs to parrying attacks targeting the glass tube and had two legs dedicated to attacking? Yes, it would allow him mobility, defense, and offense! "Mech transformation! Change from spider style..." Porky shouted as the two back-middle legs rose up and flipped over to form an X in front of his tube. At the same time, the the two front legs rose up, their new configuration resembling the scythe-like arms of a mantis, "To mantis-style! Now let's get this show on the road, with a little music to get your blood pumping!"

With its four remaining legs, the mech charged forward at Soma, the two "arms" clawing forward menacingly. Finally, two speakers popped out of the side of the mech and began blaring music that made the fight seem a lot more climactic than it really was. "Don't think I've forgotten about you guys yet! I've just got to take care of your little girlfriend first!" Porky laughed as the two arms of his mech shot out to stab at the girl.

[madeinthehrl]

Soma had heard Neku hit the ground behind her, but she hadn't had time to look back. With any luck, he'd be all right. Besides, she seemed to have the pilot's attention now; hopefully she could keep it.

The old man was still talking. He talked too much, she decided, though she wouldn't say it out loud. It gave them something of an advantage. If he kept revealing his plans like that, like some sort of terrible movie villain, she wouldn't be needing her brainwaves for the fight at all.

She tensed but held her ground as the mobile suit charged at her, Marie thrumming like a taut wire in the back of her mind. Closer--closer--now, and the supersoldier ducked and rolled forward, past the arms' immediate range and toward the protected glass tube. She had misjudged her timing, and one of the arms tore across her back as she hurtled past, but she pushed the pain away and kept going.

"You'll have to try harder than that, old man!" she shouted. If she could irritate him, keep him distracted, it would give Sora an opportunity to get closer.

[composers_proxy]

It didn't help that it was hard to see, his eyes red and watery from the gas, his stamina hurting after taking those rounds, but to have to be beaten by this guy who seemed like a third rate throwback to every old video game boss fight ever was just humiliating. When he shouted out the order for his mecha to transform, Neku had to fight the urge to mutter every profanity he could think of. Really? Was this seriously happening? So much of it seemed like something out of a bad dream.

As if that wasn't enough, there was battle music. Battle Music. In all of its 8-bit glory no less. Music while fighting, sure. He listened to his headphones all the time while battling the Noise. But this? He couldn't even find words to describe it. If it weren't actually happening instead of being something he'd see on a Saturday morning anime for children, he might've spared a moment to face-palm at it all. But since the giant robot mantis was attacking his team-mates, that made it a little harder to ignore.

Of course, it was even harder to concentrate when the radio broadcast came on and the lights flared up. At least once the commotion was over there was enough light to see by, but if the doctor's words were anything to go by, it was going to be a busy night. For now though, they better concentrate on the walking cliche' or they really wouldn't have to worry about much at all later.

He grabbed a second frame from the wall and made his way closer, flinging the first frisbee-style at the mecha's legs with all the force he could summon up. Physical combat wasn't his best, but he didn't suck either. Maybe if they could topple the thing, or at least distract his attention a few different ways, they could get to the old geezer piloting it.

[scintillatingly]

It was easy enough for Sora to ignore their opponent's taunts, since he was pretty used to that sort of behavior from the people he fought against. Actually, a lot of this was old hat for him. The changing of form, the taunting, the multiple targets to attack (first the legs, then the middle -- there had to be some trick to it!)... The only thing he wasn't used to was the music, but that was easy enough to ignore.

Normally Sora might have protested the comment about Soma being his girlfriend (or Neku's, for that matter), since she was more than that -- she was a teammate and this old guy shouldn't forget that -- but he didn't have the time for it. Instead, he dodged to the side of the mech as the lights went haywire overhead, barely getting out of the way when one burst and almost sent the glass shards down on his head.

He thought back to all of his previous fights, and came up with an idea. What had he had to do with the Cerberus, the Hydra, and so many other enemies? Jump on their back.

So Sora worked his way around to the back of the "mantis," taking a running leap in hopes of landing on top of it. Then he'd be close enough to do some real damage to the weak spot in the center! He just hoped that Soma would be okay fighting it head-on like she was...

[piggy_king]

"Idiots, all of you!" Porky roared as he began to hammer on the mech's control panel, "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" First that girl had decided to be able to dodge Porky's brilliantly telegraphed attack and roll closer to the tube he was in, putting the king in mortal danger, then the emo jerk and spiky-haired brat had thrown paintings at him and jumped on him! Respectively! Well, Porky could put up with shenanigans like this! He wouldn't be shouting out his attacks anymore!

Gritting his teeth angrily, Porky activated his PSI counter device, surrounding the mech with a bright pink light that faded away within moments. In addition, shields appeared around the girl and the boy who had jumped onto the mech, as well. Porky didn't doubt that the psychic brat had healing powers, but with the counter shield on his two little friends, any healing that he tried to do on them would be reflected back to him, leading not only to guilt for the healer, but sustained blood loss for the intended target! And this time, Porky didn't shout it out for everyone to hear!

But that wouldn't be enough to take down this brats. The painting hadn't been enough to knock over the mech, but it did cause one of the legs to slip momentarily, leading to the lapse in defense which allowed the key boy to jump on. Grumbling, Porky reverted the mech back to "spider mode" with all eight legs back on the ground. He grinned. "Quick question," he sneered, "How exactly do you think I got up on the ceiling in the first place?" As the pneumatic joints on the mech's legs hissed and released air, the body of the mech lowered for a moment before the legs stiffened and sent the entire machine flying into the air.

Porky couldn't help but laugh as he deftly controlled the machine, leaping over the girl on the ground and landing a good ways behind her, the mech crashing on the ground. Hopefully that had been enough to shake off the brat that had hitched a ride, but Porky wasn't feeling too optimistic. Besides, Porky could deal with the key brat while his friends were dealing with the spray of superglue that Porky just shot at them. Like a spray of spider's silk, the glue shot across the room at the girl and the emo kid.

[madeinthehrl]

Something glowed pink around Soma as she headed for the tube, and she tensed slightly as it faded. It seemed harmless for the moment, but it had appeared similar to the thing that had repelled Neku's attacks just moments ago. Her eyebrows furrowed together slightly: why would he do that? Didn't that mean she was protected from psychic attacks as well? Unless Neku has healing powers, too--

That seemed unlikely, but in any case there wasn't time to warn him. There were knoblike protrusions sticking out from the side of the tube closest to her--something that looked like a face, in the flickering light of the Sun Room--and she leapt for them, hoping to grab on and climb up from the front, even as Sora appeared on the back of the mobile suit--

Soma hit the ground hard as the mobile suit leapt over her, gritting her teeth as she tucked into a roll to cushion the fall. Timing. Her reflexes were too slow here, too sluggish in comparison to her movements at home, always half a step behind her brainwaves. She rose into a crouching position and turned back just in time to see some unknown substance sprayed at her. She whipped her head back again, closing her eyes, but the stuff managed to cover the better part of her body even as she tried to evade it.

She managed about three steps back before she encountered resistance. The substance had fused her shoes to the floor, and stuck parts of her clothing fast to her skin. Glue? Some sort of powerful adhesive? Whatever it was, she was stuck here for the moment, and it probably wasn't wise to try to slip out of her shoes until the area around her had dried, too.

The shields, prompted Marie, and Soma nodded grimly. "Neku!" she called. "Try not to heal at all if you can help it! I don't know what that light was, but it's best not to risk hurting yourself again!"

She pulled at her shoes again, hard: still stuck. Instead she leveled her gun at the back of the mobile suit and waited. Too risky to fire now--she might hit Sora--but as soon as she saw an opening...