They found themselves entering the city limits of Sixton, the cool winds traveling over them as they saw the sign...
"Welcome to Sixton."
"Population: 358"
The trees swayed in the wind as the three kids stood upon the road leading into the forboding looking factory town. At least the sun was up though.
Dracos
Phil took a deep breath as the familiar landmarks of home came into view.
"Okay, here's what I'm thinking. We avoid town completely, unless we need supplies, but I've got enough stuff from Saturn Valley to make it up into the mountains without any problems. We head through the caves for the construction site, then figure out what to do from there. Unless someone has a better suggestion?"
The young boy looks between his two companions for confirmation.
"That makes sense to me," Liao said with a shrug.
"Sounds good. As fun as frying Zombies would be, probably better to cure them than kill 'em. Lead the way, O' Holder of the Railgun."
And with no further ado, Phil leads the intrepid trio into the mountains, towards the caves through which he found the alien shipyard.
"And can we avoid setting chickens on fire on the way?"
"Fine, I'll settle for freezing them instead," Jade grinned.
"What about leaving them alone and quietly being on our way?" Liao asked. "We want to be quiet and keep the ... robozombiens ... from noticing that we're coming."
Jade rolled her eyes. "It was a joke, Meow."
"Oh, okay," Liao says, before his stomach grumbles, reminding him that he hasn't eaten much since that cookie last night.
Phil manages to overhear the noise from Liao's direction. "Sorry... we can eat now if you want to, but I figured we'd stop outside the caves for lunch if that's okay. Should take us a couple of hours to get up there."
Liao's stomach grumbling reminds Jade that she hasn't eaten anything at all either since lunch yesterday. The thrill of seeing a railgun fired and other such things made her forget about it. Her stomach started rumbling also.
"Urk... Uh... I'm in favor of eating now, if that makes any difference. Man, I should have at least taken a cookie or something last night."
Liao wordlessly offers Jade the cookie he stashed in his pocket the night before, for just such an emergency.
"Sure, we can stop now," Phil says with a nod. "I'm not that hungry myself - I usually snack while I'm working - but I wouldn't mind having something to eat."
So saying, he sets down his backpack, unpacking food from it to share with the others.
Liao eagerly makes himself a sandwich, or in the words of his village's youth: A sammich. "Thanks, Phil!" he enthuses. "I never got a last meal from my village," he muses. "I guess this'll be it, then."
Jade accepts the cookie, thanks Liao, and starts digging through her bag while munching on it. She pulls out her lunch from yesterday, only having partially eaten it.
And so they ate in the underground caves that Phil had traveled through earlier in the mountains. the steady drip-drip of water audible to their ears, echoing in the stony passageways.
It was about mid day now. A few more hours travel and they would be at the alien base. Assuming it was still where it was.
Dracos
Sorry sorry >_<
After a good meal, Liao carefully packs all of his things away (cloth napkin, empty cookie-bag), and stretches a bit. "Are you ready?" he asks, not eager to help Phil with putting any of the machines away.
"Ready if you are," Phil nods, putting the last of the lunch equipment away (of course they have to have an automatic pickle slicer!) "Shouldn't be too much further now."
With the meal behind them, Phil starts off through the caves once more, wielding a flashlight as he makes his way through the winding passageways towards the far end of the mountains.
They headed out of the caves, the sound of construction audible as they stepped out. The winds were pretty warm, this time of year and the sun was still reasonably high in the sky, giving them easy visibility. The trees were pretty packed, keeping them relatively hidden as they slipped out of the cave.
Dracos
Phil leads the way towards the construction noises cautiously, making sure to stay under the cover of the trees for as long as possible.
"Sounds like they're still going up here," he says softly to the other two.
Liao nods wordlessly, keeping an eye out for any immediate threats.
"I'll say," Jade whispered back, ready to blast the aliens with her firepower if necessary. And even if not, if it wouldn't get them killed.
Sneaking past the pile of junk Phil saw earlier, they got a good glimpse of the layout. Not much cover aside from the UFOs themselves down in the valley. If they weren't careful, some of the robots might hear them and attack. The robots were scattered around the valley, some patrolling, some building, some just seeming to be walking back and forth as if they were following some estoric commands.
In the center, the same huge radio tower stood, lights flaring on it.
Dracos
Phil takes a moment to study the radio tower, trying to see if there's any good way to shut it down. He expects that his railgun can definitely put a dent in its operations, but where to shoot it?
Liao studies the tower. The Tower is a martial arts stance, one that can be defeated simply by attacking the base of the tower.
But this tower is a person, not a martial artist. Still, the theory should stand, soo....
"I think that tower is the middle of their base," Liao whispers to the others. "We should figure out a way to knock it down."
"I think you're right," Phil agrees. "I'm trying to figure out a way to do it with one shot though. Right now they don't know we're here, though, and if I can get rid of that tower with the first shot I take, it'll hopefully mess them up enough that we can take care of the rest of this a lot easier. I'm just trying to figure out the best place to hit it to do that, though."
Liao nods, and then looks at the tower. Were this martial arts, he might have an answer. But this is a tower, and Phil's got a gun. One or the other might make sense to Liao in some form of obscure martial parable, but he can't come up with one for this situation.
Well, not a good one, anyway: "I'm thinking we'll need to do something to the base of the tower."
Well, he could try for the antenna. But that's going to be hard to hit with how thin they are. He could try for the antenna base, easier, but still a bit tough shot. He could also try for the base itself, easy to hit, and he might just blast through and hit some circuitry.
Dracos
Phil considers his options for a moment, finally deciding to aim for the base of the tower. It's easier to hit, and if he hits it on one side, he MIGHT be able to make the whole tower collapse, antenna and all.
Digging out his gun, he takes his time in aiming, lining up the shot carefully before...
*click*
"...I forgot to load it."
The process repeats, this time with an actual ball bearing loaded into the strange contraption. Once again the trigger is pulled...
The antenna tower shook as lights flared and alarms sounded, sparking visible far off down at the base where his shot smashed into.
the base though was now on full alert by the loud noises and it'd be hard to judge from here quite how much damage his shot did.
Dracos
Phil grimaced. Large scale destruction - well, intentionally anyway - wasn't something he was used to causing. Quickly taking out another ball bearing, he loads the rail gun, aiming for the tower base once again.
"Think you can give me enough time for another shot if they come this way?" he asks Liao without looking up.
Liao considers this. "I can buy us some time," he agrees, wondering how quickly the robots move when they're fighting.
Once he hears the gun fire, Liao will wait a moment to see how effective the shot was against the tower. If no damage has been done, he'll use Flash, and then run away from Jade and Phil. After a few seconds, he'll do it again, to give the enemy a really clear and obvious trail into the woods. After running until they're about to catch up with him (or he loses them), he'll try and teleport back to Phil and Jade.
"We really need a way to talk to eachother when we're far apart," Liao mumbles, before falling silent while Phil works on making the tower explode.
Jade stops gawking at the shot after a moment. While Liao's off distracting them, she'll stay nearby and ignite any Aliens that wander this way anyway.
"Cool effect, at least," Jade comments after deciding this.
"Remind me of that when I'm not trying to avoid getting beaten up by robots," Phil mumbles, lining up his second shot. A few moments to aim for the other side of the tower base, a pull of the trigger, and...
The shot goes in, more sparks flaring around the base of the tower, a few lights near the top going out as robots charged in towards them, neon laser beams flying their way.
Blinding light hid them all as Liao leapt into action, the robots temporarily malfunctioning in face of this mysterious power that he brought, giving a moment for Phil and Jade to flee, all sorts of odd noises coming from the stunned robots before them.
Dracos
Liao shoves Phil away, to the left of the charging robots, and expects that Jade will follow. Then Liao sets his feet and charges a step or two (no, laser beams are dangerous -- he charges one step) towards the robots before hitching sharply to the right, hoping to use the screen of trees to keep them from getting a good line of sight to him.
Phil stumbles to his feet awkwardly from Liao's shove, stuffing the corded rifle into his backpack as he takes off through the woods in the opposite direction from Liao. "I hope that did it," he mutters to himself as he runs, glancing over his shoulder for any signs of pursuit.
Jade smacks herself, realizing she didn't understand that Phil was going to be running away as well. No point in staying around, then. She quickly follows Phil's trail as she runs away from the base, checking behind her shoulder every once in a while as well.
`I sure hope Liao's better at this running away thing than anything else he does,` she thinks for a moment before charging on.
The two of them managed to hide a bit away as the robots charged on after Liao. It was pretty close with about fifteen of them on his tail.
Dracos
Once the robots start catching up, Liao realizes he can't teleport well if he can't run in a straight line. Hmm.
Skidding to a halt, he wheels around, uses his flash ability again, and then bolts off in an entirely different direction. Sure, he's getting lost, but those robots that are following him will get lost too!
Part of Liao's mind tells him that this isn't really a good idea. Most of the rest of his mind is concentrating on running.
Phil and Jade watched as Liao led the robots astray, giving them some breathing room as they hid in the forest near the now alert camp.
Dracos
Jade relaxes a bit when she sees nobody coming.
"Phew. He did it..." she looked around again. "So... do we just wait for Liao here, then?" She looked at Phil to affirm what she thought the plan was.
Either that or correct her and make her look stupid. At this point it doesn't really matter.
"I'm... not sure. I don't think I could find him again in this forest, anyway - I don't know it THAT well."
Withdrawing a pair of binoculars from his backpack, Phil looks towards the tower. "Right now, I'm thinking we either sneak into the factory and mess as much stuff up as we can while he's distracting them, or else we wait here until we can find him again. I'd like to make sure he'll be okay, but I don't see how to right now."
"Well, the way I see it, if we wait around for too long something will find us... probably the robots if we wait around for too long."
After a moment of thinking she started again. "Besides, this is probably out best chance for hands on destruction, with most of the robots combing the woods for us. Why not take this chance to go shake things up? With fire?"
There's some robots still around the field, but the tower seems semi-abandoned, save for a few repair drones trying to patch it back up.
Dracos
"Think you can take them out?" Phil asks, glancing over at Jade. "I don't know how well they'll burn, though."
"If they don't burn, they'll melt. If they don't melt, they'll freeze. If they don't freeze, I'll hit them really, really hard."
She looked around the area she and Phil were in for a thick Stick and or a rock as she spoke.
"Besides, they're just drones. They shouldn't be too hard to take down."
It was the woods. A stick was not hard for her to procure.
As they talked, the robots continued to repair the damaged tower.
Dracos
Phil pulled his rifle out of his pack, quickly making a few adjustments to the rifle attached to it.
"There, hopefully that'll work. That SHOULD fire bolts of electricity, but there's not enough time to test it right now. Ready to go?"
Jade pounded the stick against a nearby tree to test its worth. Satisfied, she nodded almost gleefully. "Ready. Let's go." She started off towards the tower before Phil had any time to respond.
"Ok... hey, wait up!" Phil grabbed his new modified electro-gun and pounded off down the hillside after Jade.
They made it over halfway there before a weird looking robot rolled out in front of them with a set of misshapen mechanical appendages: Here a screwdriver; There a spinning hacksaw; and it even looked to have a jet engine on it's back levitating it.
"Beep. Intruders detected. Sounding Alarm..." It's head began to flash red as it came at them.
Dracos
Phil hopped back in alarm. Warring instincts kept him rooted in place; on the one hand, this thing looked like it could really cause some grievous bodily harm, but on the other hand, it looked... rather cool. And like a great source of spare parts.
Shaking out of his brief reverie, he raises his rifle. "Eat voltage, chromedome!"
The robot lit up like a big lightbulb.
And then pointed an arm at them. "Intruders. Kill."
Charge quickly built up there as it redirected the energy at them.
Dracos
Jade attempted to dive out of the way. As soon as she caught her balance, she threw fire at the bot. Attack now, check wounds later, she thought.
Phil's eyes widened for a split second as the robot returned his own fire - but only for a split second as diving out of the way takes priority.
Jade's fire went astray as they both dove apart, dodging the blast and getting cover behind two separate UFOs.
Dracos
Jade took a moment to catch her breath. Calmer and not dodging a blast, she abandoned her cover momentarily and attempted attacking the bot with a fireball again. This time, she actually aimed.
A spinning arm disappated the flame blast, heating up in return and getting quite red as the robot moved towards the flame blasting meat-bag.
Dracos
Jade reaches for her stick. If fire doesn't work, beating will!
But she stops, and flashes back to a winter's day she was playing with glass over a camp fire, because watching the soda in the glass boil was pretty damn cool. She ended up burning her hand because she is stupid, and had to throw the superheated glass (and her hand) into a nearby almost frozen stream, which caused it to shatter instantly.
Maybe the same thing would work with robots? She attacked the bot again, this time with her ice thingy power!
OOC: Sorry, took me a full day to recover from that post o_o Ow Ow Ow.
IC:
The red hot arm promptly started to sport cracks in it as she blasted it with ice, the robot spinning and catching her in the stomach with a pole, sending her flying back even as the first arm sparked dangerously.
Dracos
"Jade!" Phil yelled as the robot sent the girl flying. Quickly looking through his backpack for something to do - since his gun doesn't seem to work here - he grabs a thermos full of water. Maybe with the wiring broken, he can short the robot out more - so he tosses the water at the robot's red-hot, damaged arm.
Live wires plus robot?
Plus water?
Well, it did stop the robot....as electricity started running over it as it fitzed around and exploded noisely.
Phil quickly dove for cover as the robot overloaded. Spare parts are fun, but generally not as fun when traveling at high velocities.
"Are you okay?" He turns to look at Jade as the explosion stops echoing in his ears.
Jade's stomach was bruised, but she'd be okay.
Dracos
With the reassurance that Jade isn't too seriously hurt, Phil scrambles to his feet to take stock of their situation. Have any of the other robots been attracted by the noise? How far are they from the tower? Or from someplace where they can get cover?
"Ugh," Jade clutched her stomach standing up. Serious, no, but still painful as hell.
But no time to worry about that. Fighting more will take her mind off of it. She picked up her stick and began helping Phil look around for Robots.
He sees four robots with brooms and sweepers approaching.
Dracos
Phil fishes in his backback for a few moments, finally coming up with a rather nondescript spray can. "Thought I'd packed some of this!" With a grin on his face he approaches the nearest robot, emptying about half of the can's contents all over its surface.
The robot promptly started fizzling as rust covered the exposed area.
The other robots moved on to clean up the mess that had been made.
Dracos
"Huh, must not be programmed to defend themselves," Phil comments. Taking a minute to reorient himself, he continues on his way to the tower to finish the job he'd started.
"Wow. Pansy robot won't fight back. I'll have to return to kick them after this," Jade says to herself, following Phil to the tower, still Clutching her stomach.
They reached the tower where repairs were still going underway by the maintainance bots. They were fast, but at close, it's clear Phil had caused a lot of damage.
Dracos
Phil rummages in his pack once more, withdrawing a large string of industrial-size firecrackers. "Figured these would come in handy," he says with a grin. "Hey Jade - you think you can keep the 'bots occupied while I set these up?"
Jade looked at the maintenance bots Phil wanted her to "keep busy". The ones that didn't fight back.
Jade grinned widly. "You bet!" Weilding her big stick with two hands as one would a baseball bat, and trying her best to ignore her stomach pain, she ran at the maintenance robots wailing away at them. Yay, beating those who don't fight back!
Alarms quickly began to ring.
Dracos
Phil grimaces at the alarms, but begins working quickly. Firecrackers, strategically placed....
His work done, he lights the fuse. "Get moving, Jade! They're going off!"
Jade frowns. Just as it was getting fun. But things were about to explode soon, so she beat a robot one last time with her stick for effect, and ran the hell away from the tower.
Phil beats a hasty retreat as well, heading for the nearest cover he can find. He's fairly sure the tower will go down at this point, but which way it'll fall is anyone's guess.
They hear a shout 'Close your eyes!'
Seconds later a blinding flash fills the area.
Dracos
Phil throws up an arm to shield his eyes from the brilliant blaze of light.
Jade quickly covers her eyes as well with one hand, waving her stick around with the other to make sure she doesn't run into anything.
The two ran off eyes slightly tinged but mostly safe as they moved past the UFOs. Were they running all the way free?
Dracos
Thankfully unblinded, Liao speeds in front of Jade and Phil. "This way!" he says. "How did you guys do?"
"We'll know in a minute!" Phil shouts back, blinking furiously to clear the afterimages from his vision. "Those firecrackers should take the tower out completely in a few seconds!"
Liao beams a smile at his friends, suddenly very glad he didn't try and sabotage the tower further while they led the robots off.
The explosions followed...and stopping would be a poor idea as if they glanced back, they could see the radio tower falling towards them.
Dracos
"Quick, let's run faster," Liao says, trying to utilize his technique to carry everyone (or at least, everyone else) to safety before the tower crashes down. Did that thing get taller while they were fleeing? Probably.
Stupid aliens.
As the shadow came down on them, the pitter-patter of their feet rushing away from the doom that awaited them seemed louder and louder, the seconds lengthening before space seemed to twist...
and they found themselves running towards a collection of trees!
Dracos
Moving to another thread.
With a zoom...they returned at the outskirts of sixton.
Dracos
Liao wheels to a halt, his feet backpedaling comically for a moment before he slips, and lands on his backside, bouncing once before coming to a halt. "Oof," he mumbles, shaking his head to clear it as he looks around. "I must stop doing that."
Jade manages to trip over Liao as he falls over backwards. Stopping her, but also getting her a nice big face full of ground.
"......You really need to stop doing that for all of our sake's."
Phil manages to trip over the pile of Jade and Liao and is sent rolling down the road, head over heels.
"Are we there yet, Dad?" he says woozily, staggering drunkenly as he tries to regain his feet.
And so the three were in a pile outside of sixton.
The city seemed livelier than when they'd last been there, at a glance.
Dracos
Jade attempts to get up but is knocked flat on her face again by Phil.
"Get... off... of... me... you... mfpfphm... can't... breathe..."
Liao climbed to his feet slowly, thankfully not really hurt by all the tumbling, but still a bit sore. "Are you okay?" he asks Jade and Phil, before turning to look at the city.
In daylight, the city seemed far brighter, more lively. They could hear the sounds of cars beeping in the distance.
Dracos
"Yeah, I think. Ow." Jade dusted herself off. "Huh. I guess we did fix the zombie problem, what with the horns and stuff."
"Zombies have horns?" Liao is now very curious and somewhat worried about confronting any.
Jade looks at Liao, squinting at him with a "You can't be serious" look. She says nothing.
The town continued being lively as the young adventurers stood there talking with each other.
Dracos
"I don't want to fight horned zombies, but it's a martial artist's duty to protect others," Liao decides. "We should ask those people if they know where the dangerous zombies are."