Night 52: Rec Field

[tsunagari]

[from here]This was already further than Sai had gotten the past couple nights, which was saying something. It was getting over the wall that would be the real test, though. The actual act of scaling the brick would be simple, but the night had an odd way of ending before he'd gotten beyond that point. Hopefully the same wouldn't hold true this

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[sixth_attack]

Sechs' mean-spirited laughter filled the air as he watched the two men scramble around the collapsing wall, only to tumble back down to its base in a dusty mess. If they could only have seen the looks on their faces! And despite their fall, they went straight back to crawling back upon the wall. Just like dumb little ants! It was so pathetic and amusing at the same time! Sechs would have found the whole thing almost cute as well if he hadn't been so disgusted by that word and its annoying connotations.

One of them seemed to have had enough with Sechs' teasing though, as he drew out a gun and pointed it right at the Replica. Sechs just stood there, his shoulders slouched forward like a great beast on the hunt; he eyed the weapon with no ounce of fear in his face, but with an expression of curiosity and a challenging curve to his smile. Then the trigger was pulled, and the night air was struck once again by another metallic sound.

The bullet hit its target, but Sechs barely even flinched from the impact. Only a tiny crack was left upon his armor. Sniggering, Sechs gazed down at the offending bullet and plucked it out from the grass, its mushroom-like shape now apparent in the moonlight as Sechs rolled the smashed bullet between his fingers.

"Hollow points?!" Sechs laughed, "Is that all you got? Shit like that doesn't even leave a scratch on me!"

A loud hiss snapped at the air, followed by a deep FWOOM as Sechs ignited his hand into a ball of plasma. With an electro-magnetic field to control the super heated gas, the smashed bullet instantly evaporated from the tips of Sechs' fingers and merged with the intense power ignited within the palm of his hand.

With the white-hot flame lighting up his metallic (and very beastly) features, Sechs gazed back up at the third man standing upon the wall, his toothy grin unwavering in the face of his taunting. Hmph! So the big guy with the deep voice wasn't impressed so far, huh? If he wanted to see a "performance", he was going to get one!

"Or else you're gonna hurt like HELL in the morning! That's what!" Sechs answered with a cocky tilt of his scruffy head, "And that's IF you survive!"

And with a blinding motion, Sechs threw his arm back and shot the ball of plasma off the tips of his metal fingers, its dangerous trajectory aiming for just below where the large man stood.

[its_the_mileage]

Indy paused in his climb to glance back as Dent fired a shot at the guy. It didn't work. Since "just shoot him" was Indy's preferred solution for grandstanding morons with sharp weapons too, he went back to climbing.

The guy didn't attack the wall again, so when the worst of the landslide subsided, Indy was able to haul himself up relatively easily. He edged over a couple of feet to get on top of a more stable section, where he'd be able to make a good landing on the other side. But Dent was still climbing and Richter looked like he was about to get--set on fire? Jesus, after the initial second of alarm, it was almost old hat--so Indy figured it was his turn to be the distraction. Hopefully Richter would be smart enough to get out of the way on his own.

He reached over to the broken area of wall and grabbed the heftiest chunk of rubble that fit easily into one hand. "Hey--catch!" Not much of a line, but Indy was less worried about scoring style points than about getting the guy to look his way, maybe even waste time picking the projectile out of the grass again. He wound up and pitched as hard as he could at the guy's head. Balanced precariously as he was on top of the wall, though, it wasn't an easy task.

[unheroed]

Surprisingly enough, Recluse was doing a good job of distracting the kid who was antagonizing him. The man had never really come off as a team player, but maybe he was the sort of person who agreed to work with others so long as it got him somewhere. And honestly, Harvey could understand that sort of mindset, so he wasn't going to question it overly much.

He had also gotten to the top of the pile of rubble, standing up next to Jones -- though the man was now drawing the attention to him. Harvey made sure to keep his head ducked down in case any stray bits of flame came their way (there seemed to be a lot of fire-breathing people or monsters in this place, come to think of it). He noted that his bullet hadn't done a thing, but he wasn't too surprised by that; just mildly annoyed. He also noted that Jones had a pretty good arm on him, but other than that, he didn't really have much to add to the taunt.

He wasn't aiming to get targeted, after all.

"First chance we get," he told the two other men, "we all just jump onto the other side. He probably isn't going to keep after us once we're out of sight." Harvey was testing a theory that had held true thus far, but at this point it was really their best shot.

[In MMO parlance, we would call this “drawing aggro".]

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse very slowly raised an eyebrow at Sechs’ reaction to the bullet, maintaining a façade of unimpressed observation. Well, frankly, he was still unimpressed, but he was gathering himself to dodge further along the wall as discretely as possible.

The sudden burst of light hurt, his already narrowed eyes closing shut with an irritated snarl, turning his head to look away. Even beyond his peripheral vision, it felt almost scalding to his senses. If only he had proper control over his own eyes!

Despite the near blinding, he was still able to keep a sighting on the direction he intended to dodge, and when the painful glow moved, he waited until the last possible moment and leapt to the side, separating himself further from the other two. If he could continue to draw fire, then they could escape without too much of their time wasted.

"Then get moving!" he hissed to the other two as quietly as he could. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been waiting.” He then turned his attention back to Sechs, intent on continuing the taunt until the other two got done talking about escaping and actually did.

"You expect me to be impressed by something I have seen thousands of times before? I first faced a man who could do that almost eighty years ago!" The sneer was back, voice slipping into a sort of theatrical patter that he usually avoided, unlike some other archvillains he could mention. It usually just ended up distracting yourself, but if you needed an eye-catching performance, then it was a natural fit.

"I see that there haven’t been any advancements since then. How disappointing," his voice was dripping with condescension, starting to wander almost casually further down the wall, wanting to allow himself the option to dodge in more than one direction and still remain a viable distraction. "Are you trying to tell me that I should be intimidated by that kind of threat? I’ve fought gods before. You are nothing." Take the bait, you idiot.

[sixth_attack]

The colossal weapon whipped forward, its solid form almost bending from the high velocity of its speed, and cracked through the air, rending the thrown boulder useless and cleanly sliced in half. The two pieces fell to the grass with a dull thud before Sechs' feet as the Titan blade shot up again, this time its owner struck its end into the ground, propping it like a mast close to his side. "Close but no cigar!"

Sechs' wolfish grin viciously twitched at the persistent taunting. That big guy was really asking for it, wasn't he? He may not have sounded impressed by Sechs' attack, but his pained blinking told the Replica a different story.

"So you've seen that before, huh?" Sechs said, jerking his head to the side to throw out a wad of spit to the ground. "Then tell me, have you seen this yet?!"

Allowing his Titan blade to stand by itself, Sechs raised his gloved hand, fingers outstretched in front of his wild, metal-plated face. A wave of power rippled through his body, sending an energetic tremor to resonate off the ends of his limbs and into the very air around him. The hissing of growing plasma grew stridently loud, followed by an overwhelming flash of light, and then--

"ELITE PLASMA BOOST!"

Within an instant, the Replica became engulfed in raging white fire! His entire body now transformed into an incandescent being, every detail of his form now perfectly emulated by the tightly controlled plasma! If his first plasma ball was bright, the whole field would be lit by his show of wild power now! And it only got worse; another second later, and the luminous android instantly split into a dozen copies of himself, each one making a vicious leap towards the three men, most of which had the largest one as their target.

"Let's see if you can dodge my plasma decoys, you big stink'en blowhard!" Sechs shouted within another fit of wicked laughter. Each doppelganger resembled a blazing ghost of their original, leaping and bounding and soaring around the men and the blockade they struggled to clamber over. Parts of the wall suffered more damage while nearby trees were suddenly set ablaze by the decoy's flight. Their scolding presence sizzled the air and banished shadows as they made teasing swipes and punches at their prey. Throughout the sudden chaos, most of them swirled around the tallest man, striking at him from every direction, some just feint punches to torment him, while other attacks were made to leave a more lasting impression.

Meanwhile, the real Sechs was busying himself in the shadows of his attack, lifting the severed block from the wall with just one hand, readying to toss it at the escaping patients...

[its_the_mileage]

Fine. If Richter wanted to play the hero, with the high chance of getting killed that implied, Indy was prepared to let him. Leaving people behind never sat well with him, but he'd done it before with people he knew better and liked more than Richter. The rock trick hadn't worked anyway. He motioned for Dent to give it up and jump down on the far side with him.

He didn't quite make it before the fireworks show started, rapidly followed by...well, if he'd had to give an objection description as a scientist of what had happened next, Indy would've been forced to admit it looked like the guy split into ten or twelve identical guys who then lunged at him and the others, but obviously that couldn't be it. Even after the physics-breaking girl in the nightcap the other night--Jesus, you had to have some standards of rationality!

Real or not, the doppelgangers were coming after them. If he didn't jump soon the choice would be made for him, and not necessarily on the right side of the wall. Indy leaped down to the far side and landed in a crouch, then immediately craned his neck upwards to see if anything was still attacking him. Hopefully all three of them would make it over, but he was at least going to wait for Dent.

[unheroed]

The second that Recluse took on that tone, Harvey was pretty much finished with waiting around for him to get done with the taunting match and get moving. He wasn't sure if he and the brainwashed patient had some sort of history or if he was just that interested in mocking dangerous people into attacking him, but...

Harvey couldn't judge too much. He could have been a lot worse off if Recluse hadn't been there, after all.

For now, he was going to listen to the man's words. He knew when a fight was out of his league, and this had dipped into that territory the second that he'd seen that elongated sword, to say nothing about the optical illusions that were now flitting around the area and attacking Recluse.

Jumping down after Jones, Harvey startled when a nearby tree caught on fire. He was pretty sure illusions couldn't start fires, and yet he was feeling the heat pretty definitively.

Glancing up to Recluse (it was hard to tell what he was doing when considering the darkness and the flurry of movement), he tried to wave the man down with a sweep of his arm. "Come on, let's get the hell out of here!" If there was a time to run, it was now.

[tartaros_avatar]

[Wow, Sechs. You have part of a powerset that is among the most annoying to fight in CoV!]

This is just wonderful. The least desirable side-effect of drawing the ire of an attacker was of course the distinct possibility that you were going to get hurt. But seeing how damned long it had taken the other two to climb the wall, he really had no choice. It was that, or directionlessly wander around the woods while the other two burnt to a crisp.

He didn't even try to hit the decoys, bringing his arms up to protect his face, snarling as they burned him, portions of his clothing catching fire. This was as far as he could take the distraction. Too much longer, and one might hit the gun he was carrying, and that carried a risk of the gunpowder cooking off inside the pistol. Whether the others had finally made it or not, he couldn't tell, he was absolutely and painfully blinded by the light from the doubles. But if they hadn't, he was going to leave them, consequences be damned.

He launched himself off the wall, unable to see the ground to land, he kept loose so that when he hit the ground hard, he rolled. It was undignified and still painful, but it put out the flames on his clothes. "You took your damn time!" he roared at the other two, the pain of the burns and the whole sorry situation putting him well past the point where he cared enough to maintain any sort of selfless façade. He struggled to his feet, still blind. "Now point me in the right direction, because I cant see!"

[sixth_attack]

Once the flaring decoy's victims tumbled down the wall, their glaring forms gradually evaporated and melted back into flying streaks of plasma before their energy dissipated into the night like a cluster of rogue fireworks. The plasma's vanishing presence ignited the night sky one more time and fell back into the shadows, leaving scorched dents in the wall and flaming patches crackling away in the nearby trees.

Sechs was nearly beside himself with barbarous mirth as he watched the tallest man catch fire and plummet off the wall. So much for being some guy who fought gods before! That ought to teach that big blowhard not to mess with a warrior like Sechs! The Replica's display of power may have been finished, but he still had one more treat for the escaping men...

As his own skin of plasma burned out into the cool air, Sechs lifted the enormous slice of concrete over his head with a single hand. "HEY ASSHOLES!" he shouted to the prisoners on the other side, "Got a parting gift for ya! CATCH!"

With very little effort on Sechs' part, the immense block was then catapulted over the wall, its huge form spinning dangerously in the air before crashing to the other side with a deafening CRUNCH!

As the rectangular boulder heavily rolled to a sluggish stop, Sechs' laughter echoed throughout the institute grounds, reverberating in the night like a triumphant beast's roars to the moon.

[its_the_mileage]

"We were trying to make sure you made it!" Indy shouted back defensively--more as a reflex than in actual anger, since by that time Richter was already down and he'd seen the burns. He did appreciate the decoy act, but now didn't seem like the time to get sentimental about it.

He almost reached out to grab Richter's arm, but thought better of it at the last second (the man's sleeves were still smoking). Instead, he grabbed the far end of the whip and pushed it into Richter's hand, wrapping a foot or two of the slack of the near end around his own forearm at the same time so they'd have freedom of movement but not so much distance Richter would lose him.

The giant rock crashed with a loud noise and a violent tremor just feet away from them, admittedly startling the hell out of Indy (who'd had bad experiences with boulders). Nothing obvious was following them, but he wasn't waiting for it to start. "Come on!" he barked, and started moving north at the fastest pace he thought Richter could match blind.

[to here]