RP: The Wayward Out at Sea (Ep.5)

Space Battle

Brigid watched the destruction of the larger craft, a sadistic grin crossing her lips. She switched targets, struggling at first to turn the bulky Frame towards the small crafts. She accelerated towards them on an intercept course. "Moving to block their path."

In a sultry tone she added, "Quinn, Adiel, would you be good boys and take them out for me?" She brought her expression back to its normal facade of lusty yet ultimately harmless Doctor. If they discovered she was not just a Doctor but also an assassin she wasn't sure if they would let her stay. It occurred to her that Tanja might already be aware of her side job. What Captain would allow someone on their ship without doing their homework?

Space Battle

Ash rolled and dodged with the shuttle as more of the bugs closed in from behind. She strafed some of the Cloudbugs that were harrassing the Anbruch, hoping they would follow her and not notice the giant cannon that was getting ready to fire. She pushed the shuttle as hard as she could, putting it at full throttle to keep her pursuers at bay. She circled around the Anbruch and headed back towards the bow, hoping to cause more of the Cloudbugs to collide with each other.

Space

"Quinn, Adiel, would you be good boys and take them out for me?"

"Little bit busy sweetheart. Adiel can come to your rescue though." Quinn was indeed distracted simply trying to keep both of the bigger ships, and his pursuing fighters from blowing him to pieces. His goal, at the moment, was simply to stay in one piece, and to keep the Cloud bug's smaller ships thoroughly distracted so they'd stop taking pot shots at his only ride home. He wasn't the hero type, but the adrenaline, and the overwhelming sense of jealousy perhaps, were the only things driving him to be a little more insane than he was typically comfortable with.

Of course he quietly keyed up a line to Ana. "You can do it Ana, whatever Captain's got you working on. Get creative, you're a smart girl. I believe in you." And he left it at that, hoping his words of encouragement would give her a little more confidence since he knew she wasn't at all familiar with any situation even close to this, or at least that's what he understood. He was sure she'd give him an earful later if he was wrong.

Nan's body shook slightly as a thin line of blood soaked into the sleeve of his T-shirt on his left arm.

REAL Space

Nan hissed lightly through his teeth as his computerized form and stylish yet functional super costume was torn on his left arm. He reflexively grasped his upper arm with his right hand but then turned quickly to the approaching Hornet. His thoughts rushing through his head, "That should have worked. Automated defenses should not have been able to simply sidestep a direct push like that.

"If I die today how many people will go to my funeral?

"This thing must have some AI behind it and it's speed suggests it is trying to keep me off balance.

"I wonder if I could get Ana to dance to some sick techno music. That would be adorbs.

"These things want to keep with the bug theme let's give them a show."

He quickly set about weaving a new defensive program with his left handed defensive gauntlet. This was a bit more complicated then his last few tries but nothing he shouldn't be able to handle. It would replicate a smoke that would coalesce around the hornet, it would need to be able to stay self producing, constantly re-writing itself. It should cause a stack overflow within the Hornet program thread causing the thread to devote all of it's functions to dealing with the overflow. The only real conclusion for the program to dump the overflow would be to terminate the thread thus eliminating the Hornet program.

Lastly, "I wonder what's for dinner tonight, I could really go for some noodles..."

REAL World

The smoke would take some time to write and that was time that the Hornet would not wait. It made two more passes as Nana tried to finish the program, both of which managed to leave shallow cuts that would bleed. The hornet got closer to its mark with each pass, the fourth would be dangerous.

Fortunately for Nan, that fourth pass did not come, the smoke was finished and it quickly spread around him, masking him from the hornet and 'clouding' its vision. AS long as the smoke was there, if he stood in it he might as well have been invisible, but he couldn't just stand around, he needed to move.

Whatever was behind the hornet was pretty advanced as well, the program was not terminated, rather it got distance from the smoke and waited, sorting through the influx of data to try and find the intruder.

Anbruch

"An EMP?" Tanja questioned at Ana's words, considering them for a moment. "Okay the suits should be able to handle it, they are meant to handle ambient space radiation. Just make it quick, I don't have a lot of ammo." The Abwehran continued to fight off the CloudBugs with knife and gun, protecting Ana and TB.

TB, of course, would charge up the EMP, it wouldn't even take a minute for him to build enough to cover the room, but it would indeed likely fry the little robot.

Space Battle


Everyone did what they could to keep the ships distracted, and that effort quickly paid off. The main Gauss cannon of the Anbruch fired and two massive shells rushed across the battlefield before they slammed into the 'mothership'.

Though the source of the CloudBugs looked like a Starship, they were told it had no power coming from it, and when the two rounds slammed into the bow directly, causing a significant explosion, the lack of shields all but confirmed the absence of power.

The ship did not make any significant moves in response, however, the CloudBugs did. Suddenly they all converged in front of the ship at top speed and became one large mass as it tried to restructure itself into something. This lift an opening for everyone to act, but how to approach such a large mass that could lash out at any time was a question.

Anbruch

Ana waited as TB charged up the EMP blast. She knew that the little bot would sacrifice himself in this, but she also knew she could easily rebuild him, thanks to Nan's workshop.

"Now, TB!" Ana yelled at the right time. There was a burst of electrical failure coming from the bot, and if successful, Ana would quickly finish sealing up the breach as she pushed out the intruding ship.

REAL Space


Obviously Nan had met a worthy adversary, this thing was taking everything he threw at it and just working through it. He took a moment to assess the damage already done. He knew physical damage here wouldn't translate but it would still leave quite the headache.


He bent at the waist and placed his hands on his knees, a couple of deep breaths and he was ready to go. He briefly shook out his virtual muscles.

It was apparent this was far more than just a computer or a person working against him. It was processing too fast and too efficiently for those options. It might be an artificial intelligence or it is using some kind of combined intelligence. Either way Nan was sure bypassing this Hornet and reaching the castle was the key to his success.

Well, one old school way of accessing any computer was being invited in and these flying ants may be just that. They were there buzzing around even in this chaos so he figured he would capitalize on that.

He didn't have long and he knew it. The intelligence was eating through his trap and would eventually succeed, in that he had no doubt. So, he timed himself just right and made a reckless attempt to leap on to a passing ant. He trusted his belief of his levitating Minkan body would still translate virtually. If he landed he would use his defense gauntlet to create a seat belt of sources and reigns.

It was time to take a virtual flying ant who, of course, he would name Ant-ony.

Space

"Uh...guys? Those cloud bugs are doing something..." said Ash over the comm as they converged into a mass in front of the larger ship.

"Looks like we hit them where it hurts and they are trying to defend themselves. Maybe we can try to go and finish them off? Get around that mass and take out the big ship."

She brought the shuttle back around, staying near the Anbruch. She waited for the others to respond, her hand on the throttle to react to whatever plan they were going to cook up.

Space

Adiel fell in alongside Ash, gazing through his cockpit-bubble at the mass.

"They all appear to be protecting the front of the ship." he observed. "Perhaps we should go around back and further divide them?"

Space

While all of the weird Cloud Bugs were distracted Quinn took that as his chance to skitter away and regroup, pulling up on the other side of Ash and studying the formation. "I'm not sure what they're up to, though an educated guess, and from careful observation, they're likely gearing up to reform the main ship from the smaller ones." Seeing as they had smashed together and formed bigger ships it wasn't beyond possibility that they would repair their main ship and likely strike back. "I'm all for splitting up and taking shots at the back of the ship, if they're deciding to fight back instead of flee I think keeping them distracted is the best bet."

Space

"Well then, shall we?" Adiel asked with a wry smile, charging up his cannons.

Space

Brigid watched as the large Gauss rounds slammed into the ship-like mass. She was astonished when the mass of bugs started to do something to the remains. Her first thought was repairing it. She dismissed that thought with a shake of her head. No, this is something new and I get the feeling that if we don't stop, it will be bad, she thought.

The others seemed to have a plan. "Sounds like a plan. I can't maneuver this thing as well as your ships, though. That's why I'm going to hold their attention while you three sneak around back." She said with determination. "Besides, someone has to defend the ship in case this goes to shit."

REAL World

Nan managed to hop on an ant as it passed by and rode on it's back. It was a surreal experience, visually he was blatantly obvious to the hornet and the ant, but both seemed not to notice. It reminded him again that it all was just imagery or what was happening in the digital space.

However, he managed to ride the ant into a building, it was not the castle, but he at least had gotten past the hornet. The room was a bit strange in itself, however. It was filled with floor to ceiling stacks of...well Nan isn't exactly sure what he saw, the REAL system could not interpret the data in a way that Nan could understand, so it became a blurry unrecognizable mess.

Anbruch

The EMP triggered and there was a loud whizzing and sparking from TB before it shut down, however, there were several thuds as the CloudBugs fell to the ground, also offline. The EMP worked, and with Tanja's help, Ana was able to push the device out of the ship.

There were more than a dozen CloudBugs still in the room with them, but they were all disabled, so Tanja let herself relax and sat down on the floor as a sigh escaped her lips. "This was the only breach, I think we're good, by now the beacon is almost ready too."

Space Battle

With no interference from the crew, the CloudBugs were able to finish their fusion. The large mass of material spread itself out into a lattice structure. The branches were narrow, but the size of the lattice was enormous, it practically created a 'fence' in space that was over 50 kilometers in each direction. Though it would not offer much protection based on appearance.

There was not much time for the crew to think, however, soon after the lattice formed dozens of needle-like projections were flung their way. Each one of them would not do much damage, but the sheer volume of attacks heading their way would be more than an issue if they stood around.

The Anbruch

Ana didn't even look back at ToolBox as she worked. She had said her goodbye to the little droid, focusing on closing up the gap now that they had effectively shut down the bugs. Ana frowned a bit as she worked, worried that maybe it was just a bit too easy...but if it worked who was she to question?

"We were about to push it out when they hit," Ana replied softly, glancing over at Tanja. "I did all I could do here on board with it. I think...I think maybe I could devise some sort of device that would do an EMP blast remotely...and maybe even something that the others could shoot out of their ships. But it will take a bit of time...and I need to rebuild TB to be able to withstand a blast of that magnitude at least." Once she was finished, Ana gave a small sigh that sounded a bit sad. She knew that even working on TB would have to wait until she at least had the hand held EMP bombs finished.

Space

"Quick little things, aren't they? Looks like we lost our chance to get around-wait..."

"Oh nightmares! Here they come again!" Said Ash, pulling the trigger on her cannons and firing at the projectiles, weaving where she could, but mainly trying to keep the shards away from the Anbruch.

REAL Space

Nan looked around him at the stacks of blurry information in what could only have been some sort of hub or side program. A place to store either outdated, deleted or even cached information. It could very well be a buffering situation causing the blurriness due to the information only really being broken up data. If he had days he could piece this all together because, beyond popular opinion, deleting a file did not really delete the file.

Theoritcally, if Nan's asumption was correct he could attempt to restore the files and follow it back to the root directory which should be the castle. With a shrug Nan began digging in to the blurred mess, his goal was simple, keep rifling and he hoped he would eventually find the doorway or tunnel he would need to access the Castle root directory. This world a real challenge on the normally boisterous and flashy young man, he felt out of his depth here and in a way, really enjoyed it.

Space

Brigid was prepared to charge forward with her Frame. To her surprise, the creatures had changed strategies and decided to target all of them at once. She wasn't good enough with this thing to dodge that many projectiles. If she didn't move the Frame would surely be torn apart. She decided to do the unexpected.

Activating her jump jets, she launched herself towards the lattice structure. She fired on the projections heading towards her, trying to clear a path for herself. "Keep as many as you can away from the ship. Maybe I can stop them from sending another volley. I'm betting they won't expect this," Brigid said. She attempted to weave in and out, hopefully avoiding the projectiles she couldn't destroy.

Space

Quinn muttered un-quinn-like curses under his breath as the wall formed and shot projectiles like no other. He got his little sword breaker moving and settled down to shoot down as many of the incoming projectiles as possible, trying to clear as many of them as possible so they wouldn't hit the Anbruch. He really didn't need his ride out of here getting shot out of the sky. He was far too busy removing the threats to the ship that he didn't notice if Adiel was helping or not, but he staid clear of Brigid and Ash's fire, letting them deal with the more direct threats since he could maneuver far better than either of them out here in space.

REAL World

Nan began to sort through the information, however, once he was hands-on with it, he quickly came to realize it was not deleted data. The first idea was that it was maybe encrypted, but there was a very real possibility that the data simply was not 'readable' by any methods Nan had access to. Whatever the case, Nan would not find anything combing through the data without the ability to properly understand what it was.

As he combed through the data though he had noticed that more than one of these flying ants had come and gone inside the building to deliver these packets. Maybe that was the key he needed, or rather the 'car' he needed to get to the castle unnoticed.

Anbruch

"That sounds good, but once this is done, you can work on TB." Tanja spoke softly, finally able to rest some. "We can't use powerful EMPS haphazardly anyway, we don't know what kind of damage we'll cause...Gabi won't like the EMP's anyway."

Space Battle

Everyone, even the Anbruch began to fire at the hail of needles to try and stop them from connecting. However the sheer volume of the attack let several through to collide with the shields.

Brigid was able to slip past, but at the cost of one of the spears connecting with eh arm of her suit. The spear shattered on impact though, it seemed to be hollow. It looked like not all the spears were solid, likely because how much material it would take. Either way, Bridgid was now close and a volley did not immediately come out.

The others had to deal with what was already there, as a cloud of smoke formed from the debris, the way it stuck around was unnatural, and it gave an eerie feeling.

REAL

With a big harumph and a bratty crossing of his arms Nan saw the futility of his sorting. He had hoped for a gold mine and found coal instead, dirty annoying useless coal. He watched a few Ants fly in and out, sometimes from different directions noting how busy these little suckers were. Well, that first ride had gone smooth enough and this particular shanty was a dead end he might as well see how far these ants go.

He prepared the same set up as last time, jumping on to a pass ant and settling into his phantom saddle with reigns, he even added to his ensemble with a glittery cowboy hat. If your going to ride an Ant in to a castle, you might as well arrive in style is a saying he coined just then. He made a note to add that to his memoir when he got back to the real world.