2013-01-14 Cyber-necro-gorillas from a loose universe.

Noh-varr crouches atop a gargoyle atop one of the older college buildings in the neighborhood. His sporadic contacts with the Omniwave transmissions and attempts to triangulate faith-based cosmic energy emissions have led him to this neighborhood. On the surface, nothing unusual. Young humans walking busily between school facilities or congregating in pairings or small groups. Less cars and more bicycles, which is a relief for his sensitive nose. The cilia in his lungs actually consume the carbon emissions and use the material to rebuild is bodies' cells. Now where would the Marvel be if it were close by? And why are his attempts to contact Plex meeting with no success? >>PLEX! This is ensign Noh-varr of the 18th Kree Gestalt. Do you copy? Repeat, Plex... do you copy!?<< Omniradio silence.

And not far off, landing on top of another building, is Jacob. Something about universities that draws his attention, but the recent encounter he had with the Martian Manhunter and the Metropolis P.D. now leads him to observe things from afar, to examine the ground before stepping on it. His interest in the happenings below don't seem to have alerted him to the presence of the young Kree yet.

Mutual alien obliviousness. Noh fiddles with a small contraption he cobbled together by modding a Starkphone with parts from other gizmos and some native Kree coding. The pulses should be stronger here, but instead seem to be diffuse like a mist. He snarls.

Suddenly a square of three-by-three windows on the side of the lab building explode outwards, expelling white bursts of flame along with the glass and smoke. The stone masonry making up the wall crackles and cracks, sagging somewhat as people begin screaming and running away. A few stand as close as possible and point at the destruction, horrified. From inside come screams of pain and screams for help. Some of the voices are quite faint.

Jacob looks onward in the direction of the windows, senses sharpening enought into full alert. An attack? Looking about, he doesn't notice anybody else. But his attention is caught by the screams and pleas for help. He takes balance and lunges in the direction of the new doorway, set on trying to help.

Inside the charred, burning labs: humans in lab coats in disarray. Some corpses. Those closest to a large white splotch covering ceiling, floor and nearby wall are themselves all-white; superheated so totally that they are basically white ash just holding their form. The vibrations of the building shifts cause parts of them to blow away in the wind. Wounded cry out in pain... some blinded, some scarred with burns, some still on fire. A small scratch of white energy pops into existence mid-air in the white-stained area and then vanishes. Pop in. Vanish.

Noh-varr stands and stares. his contraption is making all kinds of squawking noises every so often. "What in the name of..." Best check this out. Backing up a few steps he launches off the head of the gargoyle and soars over the heads of the panicked crowd below, pumping his legs a few steps in the process before landing with a soft thud on the grassy earth. He looks up at the blown-out windows. >>Plex?<<

Jacob makes haste in carrying the wounded out of the area -- cameras pick him up, though he ignores them --, those on fire he's even carrying them off to immerse them in water at the nearby fountain. Some could even argue he'd be trying to drown them, but it's nothing of the like -- it's to drown out the fire, after all. He does take notice of that strange event, but every problem at a time, priority are the wounded.

Out of the corner of his eye, Noh-varr catches the young man helping the wounded. Something familiar there... no time now. He looks back at the wall and leaps, clinging to the blistered, charred, cracking surface. He slips for just a moment as a chunk of stone collapses beneath one hand, but quickly rights himself and pulls up through a window before it slides off the face of the building. CRASH! Inside his eye acclimate to the strobe of electrical systems gone awry and his lungs begin processing carbon triple time. He begins gathering people who need help towards the windows remaining, worrying about the pulsing, random energy bursts near the exits to the hall. Now how to get them down fast... "OY!" he hollers to Jacob. "CAN YOU CATCH?"

Jacob looks at Noh-Varr, and he frowns. He jumps through the window, and proceeds to mash the rest of the windows in that room to allow for the smoke to be cleared. "These beings are fragile, and they are afraid. To encourage their fear by mistreating them is ill-advised." He then shapeshifts his arms into tendrils of biomass, grabbing as many people as he can, and carrying them off to the ground.

Noh-varr stares. "Well then. I owe you one." He turns to scan the room one more time for any living and, finding none, closes with the white blip which is cycling in and out of existence more quickly now. "What is that? It almost seems like--" BLOORP. BlOORP. BLOOOOOOOORP. What looks like nothing so much as a man in an old-fashioned gorilla suit wearing a 19th century diving helmet with two huge car antennae on it and inside the view hole a skull instead of a face steps into our universe. Then another. Then three more at once. They turn to each other and luminescent glyphs appear in the air between one and all the others. Then all of them share glyphs between them. Then the first turns to Noh and a tall, bold series of glyphs with what have to be three exclamation points at the end appears in the air between them. Noh smiles. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "No."

That's when the second explosion occurs and the Kree comes flying back out of the building, and not under his own power.

Jacob looks at the Kree just in time to see him fly. He walks to him, senses sharp to pick up any sort of lifesigns. Then, he looks towards the source of the explosion, keeping himself ready for anything.

"Ggnnn." Alive, then. But smoking from the blast. "What... was.. that." He squints up at Jacob and gets to his feet. A ro-man looks out from a hole in the wall three stories up. A bit of electricity arcs in a straight line between the tips of his antennae in typically accordion fashion: ^v^v^v^v^v^. WHUDDD! He drops to the ground with all the grace of a boulder. Two more drop right behind him. WHUDDD! WHUDDD! They begin lumbering towards the two aliens.

"I need to get back up there. Whatever's going on, it's in there and needs to be fixed." Noh looks at Jacob. "Can you slow them down?"

At Noh-Varr's immediate question, Jacob shapeshifts his arms - one into a long blade, the other one into a shield. He doesn't bother commenting on his question; he just speed dashes towards the first of those guys, ready to slice one up.

The single ro-man in front zip-zaps his antennae again, and then the other two respond in perfect stereo. Ro-man designate Abe suddenly hurtles forward with blinding, disconcerting speed. The wind whips up behind him and the turf he tears rises in its wake like a supersonic jet flying just above water. It hammers both fists down attempting to crush Jacob into the ground. The other two (Babs and Cletus), equally as quick, circle around the pair at 3 and 9 o'clock, waiting.

Noh-varr nods and does a little blurring of his own, hurdling the combatants, landing, and then springing immediately to the lab room again. Inside, the two ro-men in here, Dirk and Edna, are standing opposite each other with the white source floating in between their chests. They each reach their hands into the phenomenon and begin tugging, then pulling with strain, each towards themselves. Reality screams (literally) and the source begins to stretch larger with their effort.

>>PLEX! If you're here, I really need your help!<< "Gentlebeings. I don't suppose I can convince you to cease and desist, can I?” Options, options, options... "Because I really do not want to experiment with shooting energy into that reality you are trying to pull into this room. Univercide is not my style."

Jacob shoves his bladed arm into the ground, the biomass in it projecting underground, to form a rather sharp barrier of super-sharp spikes through the ground, hopefully right in front of him, where he'd cut himself. "Time is of the essence", he warns Noh-Varr.

Able's arms impale on the spikes but keep pushing downward, demonstrating no sense of pain or possibly organic life. They terminate on Jacob's shoulders with enough force to flatten him. The other two are still standing at either side of the fight, still as statues. Babs raises two hands without moving anything else, as if signifying that the field goal is good. Cletus raises arms to shoulder height, extending them out to form a T.

Inside, Dirk and Edna swivel heads to peer at Noh-varr, but keep pulling. The pulsing white universe is growing every so slowly, but accelerating. "I know!" Noh yells to Jacob. "If I let this thing in it will overwrite our entire reality, taking its place completely and ending us all! And if I kill it I kill untold googoleplexes of lives!" Noh-varr of the Kree lives for these high-pressure moments. He begins running in an arc around the two, shooting at the floor near them. VORP VORP VORP. It begins to shred, collapse and fall. "Just you keep them busy!"

Jacob lands on a ground with a huge THUD! sound, "That won't be an issue", he says with face shoved under the ground. Immediately, he proceeds to get up, shapeshifting his blade arm into a form of organic tendril launcher. Jumping off the ground, he fires at each of those things a tendril-like form with a pulsating core; if all goes well, they each latch onto their designated targets, squeezing ever tightly, then intertwine onto one another to bring all of the goup together, and... BOOM!!

Okay, the floor is gone. The... things... are gone. Noh-varr looks at the baby universe, growing on it's own now. What do I do? "What do I do?" he whispers. >>XXXRTTTTHCKL---oh-varr!--NCONSOKDPOKF--lex. Plex. Plex here! Can you hea--SCRRRRRRRTTTTSL--r me okay?<< Noh-varr's face bursts into joy as the flooring continues to collapse underneath him and he is forced to continue his sprit on the wall and then the ceiling. >>PLEX!<< Time for greetings later. >>I need help, there is a baby universe here about t--<< >>Noh-varr, it is caused by the Marvell's nacells misfiring as I try to boot them up. There was a corruption in the sequence code. They punctured a single-dimensional point through to the Kirbyverse and this is the result. Listen Noh-varr! You must distract the universe while I reverse the damage!<< Distract the universe? Done.

Noh-varr picks up speed as he loops the room and then flings himself forward towards the universe, suspended in the air as he cradles it. Noh-varr bends his head forward -- here goes everything -- kisses the universe. He puts his entire soul behind it. Out on the grass...

...the blobby tendrils stretch forth, one-two-three, whipping around the ro-men's necks and constricting. As the pulling commences, the ro-men begin digging into the turf, trying to resist, but faster and faster they are drawn together. One last series of ^v^v^v^v^v^ and floating sigils accomplish nothing except to say that they've always loved each other. BLAM! Bits of cyber-necro-gorillas explode everywhere. Meanwhile, back up in the lab...

SQQQQUUUUUEEEEEE! is the sound that the now pre-teen universe makes as Noh-varr kisses it. The white universe lays back, stunned, with a smile upon it's... uh... face. >>NOW, Plex!<< >>Initiating... initiating... EXECUTING!<< BRAP VORP THRRRNGLE ZWOOOOoooop. The universe folds in on itself in a m-13 dimensional origami kind of way and vanishes. Noh-varr falls two stories and lands on a lab desk, crushing it. >>Plex... I'm hurt. I'm... I'm...<< Unconscious.

Jacob looks around. The creatures are blown. The universe that was to be seems to be no more. The people are saved - for the most part, anyways. And the biomass manipulator dusts himself off, and heads on his way as he hears the police sirens off in the distance.