The barefooted stranger stepped passed the bleeding, unconscious body of X-Acute. He didn't even notice the man, eyes fixed on the spectacle before him. Brianna suddenly zoomed past him, straight over his head, swooping in for another pass at the massive creature known as T5.
Thirty-feet away, tentacles whisked through the rain trying to locate the contstantly moving targets of the Vanguardians. Bri swept in, diving for a screaming strafe. A sudden sheet of hypersonics washed over ground-zero, sparks flying from the mechanical monstrosity.
Bullets freckled its frame in a glittering orange, Smith's recovered MP5's keeping the rebuilding nanotech quite busy. Montag stood off to the side, his arms moving fast and furious. As if climbing a horizontal mountain, his hands moved end-over-end, each palm finding another chunk of electronics and metal in each grasp. His teeth gritting from the exertion, Grissom was trying to literally take the thing apart with his bare hands.....trying to break it down faster than it could rebuild itself.
Rama ran cover for the thief, slicing any and every tentacle that arched too close. The gleaming blade of ancient Caliburne in his grip, he effortlessly countered every strike with precision and grace.
The stranger watched Rama, fixated on him with a sense of awe. Avatar's expression was solid and composed, moving in a single-step dance. Fluid form, and slight of wrist, the weapon would twist and flow through the air in a calculated sway. Then, once a tentacle reached too far, would instantly strike in clean sweeps, like a cobra striking its prey....returning to the relaxed sway without missing a beat.
"...Gaius Apuleis..." the stranger mumbled, seemingly recognizing something familiar about Rama.
On the exact opposite side of the creature, Ben Phillips and Edulcore Cicciotto worked their own special blends of magic and mayhem.
Brute Force clenched a massively thick tentacle with both hands, heaving with a strained expression. And, slowly but surely, he ripped it completely out. Swinging it up over his head, Ed folded smoothly under the swing, coming in for a quick and direct clap of mace-thunder, cutting a deep swath into the belly of the beast. Following his turn, and dive, Phillips slammed the fractured tentacle deeper into the gash, a fountain of sparks flying from the exploding circuitry.
Phil glanced to his right, swinging a gun around at the approaching stranger. He paused, the two making eye contact. He hadn't been conscious long enough to have even acknowledged his presence until now. Quick tele-sweeps gave up the last half-hour of the man's life.
He scanned through his immediate memories like flipping pages in a cheap novel. He got far enough back to see the man trying to pull the neural-transmitter from his temple, to realize that he wasn't a threat.
"You!" Smith yelled out at the stranger, spinning back to T5 for another shot. "Get the hell out of here, or get into the game!"
The stranger's upper lip curled a bit with seeming indignance, and nodded once. He began running forward, a tentacle spinning to meet his path. It coiled quickly around his wait, even as he immediately countered by gripping it with both outstretched hands. He lunged back hard, pulling the metal coil momentarily taught. Then, with a quick kick-up, snapped his barefoot straight through the metal. The damaged appendage recoiled, even as the stranger...still holding the metal around him...began spinning around and around in place.
The tentacle swung out further and further, as he gained speed, Brianna quickly doing a sonic fly-by. The dishelved man suddenly released the tentacle, the thick metal coil colliding with the machine in heap of sparks and smoke.
Another tentacle shot out, catching Phil by the ankle, with another following at the stranger.
Smith leveled the MP5 down point-blank at the metal, the resulting fire sawing it in half. The stranger rammed a ridgid palm straight into the underside of the new tentacle, ripping a small hole in the coil. He quickly jerked his hand back with a grimace of pain, the metal having cut his hand up.
Bullets whizzed by his head, pushing the tentacle back, Smith running up behind him.
"Careful..." he stated, glancing at the man's hand.
"I...will be fine..." he replied with a nod.
"By the way, who are you?" he asked, opening fire again.
"I do not know." the man shrugged.
Phil cocked an eye at him, a small smile forming.
"...join the club..." he mumbled.
"Raaargh!!" Ed roared out in fury, ramming the mace through another portion of the adapting creature. Lightning flashed with the strike, peels of thunder following. "THIS IS GOING NOWHERE!"
"YOU HAVE A BETTER IDEA?" Phil yelled back from the other side, guns blazing.
Without warning, a small, metallic creature known only as RoboSquirrel whizzed by, heading straight towards the heart of the beast.
"Assistance has arrived."
"Somebody get that damn thing off the battlefield!" Grissom yelled.
"Speak for youself." Rama countered.
RoboSquirrel dove in, weapons blazing. His path veered to and fro, as he ducked and avoided wildly lashing tentacles. He flew right up to the center hub of the creature, brandishing a small buzzsaw blade.
Sparks began to fly, as RoboSquirrel started sawing into the belly of the creature. Suddenly, a single tentacle snared him in its grasp, quickly retracting, pulling the metallic squirrel down into its form....
...to absorb it like any other technology.
"ROBOSQUIRREL!!" Brute Force yelled with sheer dramatics.
He paused, looking at the rest of the Vanguardians, who kind of stared at him funny.
"...what...not so much?" he shrugged.
