Engine of Our Destruction

[Narrator]

The engine didn't blow up. And as Madrox and Bobby watched the hall, nothing came.

In the room all around them, though, machinery came to life, the machines of the room serving a duel-purpose as the automated defenses which reached down to grab, stab, and shoot at the X-Men.

[Calvin Strong]

"Shit!" Cal yelped, jumping back and opening up with a blast of electricity at the closest newly-living machine, trying to weld it to the floor.

[Madrox Saavedra]

"Aaand the threat is inside..." Madrox frowned. He rushed back inside, rapidly firing his palm laser at various mechanical arms.

[Narrator]

The defenses somehow slowed, hesitating for some reason. Then two, which Cal had managed to weld together with a blast of electricity, began swinging hard down at Madrox like a club, while an arm seemed to be trying to pull a floor panel up over the niche Rob had entered so that another could seal him inside. Cal, in the meantime, had his hands full with a few arms that were intent on gutting him, which he was only barely keeping ahead of.

[Madrox Saavedra]

Madrox just barely flipped out of the way in time to avoid getting smashed into the floor. He popped off a few shots at their bases as he kept moving.

[ASHLIE]

In the chaos, one section of the animated machinery freezes for a moment before seemingly forcing itself out of the surrounding framework. An array of sensors rotates 360 degrees and then grabs one of the arms attacking Calvin, attempting to rip it out of the wall.

[Calvin Strong]

Cal blinked. What the hell? He aimed another blast at an arm that was (brilliantly) coming at him with exposed wires to try to shock him, then shifted his aim to try to blast off the arms that were trying to trap Rob.

[Bobby Bowen]

bobby, meanwhile, formed his arms into a wedge, and went to pry the panel trapping rob from the other side of Cal.

"urrgh!" he grunted, forcing it.

[Robert West]

If Rob was concerned about this development, he didn't show it. He continued to work quickly as the others worked to prevent him being sealed into the engines.

[Narrator]

The defenses were forced to halt their work at sealing Rob in, turning their defenses on Bobby and Cal instead (partly because in the struggle, the welding arm was destroyed). Still, the defenses seemed much more manageable with Ashlie disrupting the systems' full functionality.

[Robert West]

The lights in the room flicker and the engines come to a grinding halt as Rob finishes his work.

"Gentlemen!" Rob says, "We have control!"

"....What the hell is going on?"

[Calvin Strong]

"Defense systems!" Cal shouted, smashing another arm to the side with his staff.

[Robert West]

"When did that happen?" Rob asks, dodging a particularly frisky arm.

[Bobby Bowen]

" When you flipped the off switch?"

bobby kept prying with one arm, while shifting his other into a fine shield to buffer the blows.

[Calvin Strong]

"Somewhere around when you started pulling wires and crystals!" Cal added, fending off another arm with his staff and taking a shot at it with his blaster.

[ASHLIE]

"Engine room control has identified you as a threat because you attacked it's system." ASHLIE points out, apparently having cobbled together a loudspeaker in the piece of engine room she's steering.

[Calvin Strong]

"Observant of them!" Cal called back over the battle. "Is there anything you can do about it?"

[ASHLIE]

"The system see us as intruders." she points out, but still tries to access it.

Code: Select all

>> Sending message to Central Core
>> "Intruders are not attacking the ship. They are trying to gain control in order to force the Shi'ar to stand down."

[Madrox Saavedra]

Madrox blasted yet another arm apart as he continued to evade.

"Any time now would be great!" he called out. He wasn't normally impatient, but fighting with one functional arm wasn't easy.

[Narrator]

For a moment, the defenses all hovered in mid-strike.

Then after an agonizing moment of indecision, they retracted, and began repairing the machines they could reach. Which apparently didn't include inside the engine.

[ASHLIE]

"Countermeasures have ceased." she states the obvious, her frame not joining the rest of the machinery, though it is still whirring and clanking as she tries out various configurations.

[Bobby Bowen]

bobby scratched his head, looking on in a slight confusion.

"ok.. We won?"

[Robert West]

"We should get on the horn with the others," Rob says, "See what's going on."

[Calvin Strong]

"Yeah, give me a minute," Cal said, checking over his dedicated wireless link to Taliyah.

"Ah shit," Cal griped. "So guess who just got a fast one pulled on them by Skrulls. Yeah, that'd be the Shi'ar. Looks like it's time to regroup. ANd hope they aren't too pissed that we wrecked their little ship."