2014.08.11 - Summer Solice

21st of June, the day of summer Solstice, the shortest night in the year. Day and night blur into each other, and the same do the worlds of living and dead in some places. One of these is the old Silver Lake Cemetery on Staten Island. Surrounded by a small water channel and patches of silver under the ground, there is only one way that is possible to leave for a soul - the small dam with its wood bridge in the east of it. As the night falls, the sun trying to hide behind the horizon, just to come back in about 8 hours, 55 minutes. A narrow timeframe, a narrow gap of space.

Robyn had been hiding in the woods close by, trying to weather out a bit attention she had drawn upon herself in New York, trying to let some trails to her cool down. In her quiver was a bunch of normal hunting arrows and she had the longbow with her, the one that carried the red gem above the hilt. As the sun was setting, her feet almost accidently hit upon the path towards the old burial place, just when one of the gravestones began to shiver. While Nth-metal would be the best to fight them, the best she had with her was the blade of her dagger, which was forged from other planar iron and the arrowheads, which were from the same material.

HAR-V had been doing no such thing, itself. Wandering the skies, listening to radio and internet broadcasts... Generally soaking in the culture... So when it sees a young Earther wander over one of those places best forgotten... Well, the silvery-grey cloud of micro and nanobots floated downward. It's almost like watching a small shiny tornado drifting down from the sky. When it coalesces into a mostly humanoid shape complete with clothes.

Then it begins to talk. And talk. And talk. "Hello there, Earther! Wow, that sure is a neat primitive hunting device you've got there! Whatcha doing? Some kind of fulfillment of native atavistic urges related to some religious burial ritual? Or are you an archery enthusiast! Oh, I know! You're a reenactor! Wow, it sure is nice to be here!" And on, and on, and on.

The sudden voice draws the unpleasant attention of Robyn, her hand pulling a bodkin arrow from the quiver and hooking it onto the string and raising the tip towards the origin of it. The dead eye of her glows up, just like the gem on the hilt, the blue eye looking stern at the forming robot. "Get your bloody..."

Before she can finish her sentence, the gravestone that had shivered before topples over, ripping open the ground in front of it and landing with a loud thump on the back. The name long washed away from rain and wind, it is not the stone itself which makes the whole thing creepy, it is the hand, which had been unearthed by it. A moment nothing happens, then the bones shiver and begin to move, starting to glow in a faint blue as they twitch toward the grave, eventually pulling up a radius and then an upper arm bone, re-assembling the left arm of the man buried. And then... it is not alone anymore, several other graves breaking open and bodies pulling themselves out of the ground. Some are conserved from adipoceratous, others rotten to the bone, others just the bleached skull, surrounded by eerie blue fire.

The shape thumps to the ground, now, looking at the girl, "Oh, neat! Your prosthetic eye sure is pretty and glowy! Is it furnished with smart-aim? Do you have the schematics for it? I sure would like to look at it!" Either she lacks self-preservation instinct, or arrow to the face bothers her relatively little. Whatever the case, she just.... doesn't... stop...

"Oh wow!" This is for the corpses rising from the grave! "Gee, I'm pretty sure your species doesn't have a necro-larval stage." She holds up an arm which forms into a long, slender, glinting blade, and looks at the nearby undead creature crawling out of the ground, "Seems like a level 3 mystic event, manifest risen dead. On most planets, they just destroy these things. What about this one?"

"I do have no damned clue what to do with condemned undead buggers, but ending them sounds like a damned good plan." Robyn tells back with a glare, turning the bow towars one of the skeletons that slowly began to move towards the only exit they had, the bridge both of them stood on. The arrow shivered a tad on the wood, then it passed it in a hissing sound, taking off the skull, but the body continued to move on, as if nothing had happened. As the un-bodied skull hit the ground, it burst aflame in an orange blaze, consuming the arrow in its last moment, then fell to ashes itself. "DAMNED! That arrow was from Myst you ass!"

"Myst? Oh, hey! I've never been there! Oh, I'm a H-A-R Mark Five, but most people just call me Harv! Nice to meet you! Wow, this planet sure is busy! So much diversity!" A spike juts out of her chest towards one skull's broad face, while her now-bladed arm swings for a decapitation. The air is going to smell of burning bodies very soon at this rate. "Boy-howdy, I sure could use some music, what about you?" With that, Frank Sinatra fills the air, courtesy (inappropriately, perhaps), of the weird root-thing. "You mind buying me a moment or two? I sure would like to reconfigure for optimum smashing."

The comment - and especially the singing - draw a glare of Robyn, but then she is occupied by the undead plague again, placing another arrow on the string to shoot the broadhead right into a middle vertebrae of another skeleton, the bone shattering under the contact. Engulfed in the orange flame, the projectile moves on, hitting into the sternum of the next undead behind. The first undead collapses, burning up suddenly, and the same does the one behind, which was impaled in the chest, and again, the arrow is taken by the fire. "Why you have to go up in flames?!" the archer yells, pulling out the next arrow to stab one of the well preserved undead, yanking it back before it bursts up in flame from the contact with the hand smitten iron. But the decapitated bodies... move on!

"Spine it is! Fascinating oxidation reaction. I'm afraid I don't have anything like your muscle-powered projectile weapons." A whirring sound emits from her, and her sheen takes on a metallic blue tint to it. HAR-V's body bloats, taking on a spherical shape, blades jutting out from its surface all over. She then goes spinning into the crowd, causing undead parts to go flying. They don't exactly burst into fire the way Robyn's arrows cause them to do... but in-pieces is in pieces, after all.

The pieces of bone go flying as HAR-V goes to do what looks like a silver copycat of the Red Tornado, and as they hit the ground in the trench, the glow turns into red flames too, consuming them.

"Less talking, more killing!" Robyn demands, tossing the arrow she had in the hand to get one more of the undead off 'her' bridge, the blue eye averting as the third arrow in this evening is lost in flames. Within a moment she jams the bow to her quiver, pulling out one more arrow, one with a bodkin, and then pulls out the dagger. The arrow might be just a bad stabbing weapon, but it was better to stab for them than losing more arrows. With a jump forward, she impales a one armed bandit with the arrow and what looked like a ragged cowboy in the moldy leather trousers it still wore with the dagger, before she retreated to the square meter behind.

"But I can do both! Why? This isn't enough? Okay. Fine. Just... stay clear of the haze then." The Frank Sinatra doesn't stop playing, but... at least she shuts up after a moment. Her form ripples, losing cohesion, and begins to spread out. It forms an odd silvery grey mist through which floats small, spherical, almost dragonfly-like robots. A low hum escapes it, and then a pulse of red light escapes. It literally drifts THROUGH corpses, powdering whatever it touches and throwing off sparks and fire for whatever hits the ground.

A snort comes from Robyn as the undead that try to escape fall into ashes, but others jump the gap to try to leave in a seemingly eternal onslaught. For each that is send back to the grave by the cold iron, another seems to raise on another spot to the graveyard, the supply of former people digging themselves up being huge enough to last the whole night. Again, Robyn leashes out forward, making it two yards and three skeleton-shaped clouds of flames further, but then her momentum runs out and she has to retreat back to where she started to avoid getting run down. "What're you doing there?"

"I am composed of many trillions of small devices roughly eight atoms in size supplemented by larger devices varying in size, with between six and eight grams of mass per device. By dispersing into a cloud, I can literally separate the bonds between molecules, thus dispersing their matter into inert dust." No telling how she generates sound when dispersed like that. Whatever the case, a thickly clustered group of skeletons and fleshy corpses go up in a puff of dust that ignites upon hitting the ground. "Do you have specifications for your arrows?"

"You want to know my Bow? 85 LBS yew, 27 inch pullout!" Robyn answers, stabbing another zombie with her dagger as she retreats another foot, so she can better assault the next two. "Spine of 0.34 for 11.8 grains tips, 0.39 for 10.8 grains." The two Zombies turn fire as she jumps forward, stabbing in symmetry, then jerks the weapons free and storms in forward for another jab. "Shield fletching, any shaft material that works and any tip that works with it."

"Converting mass. I'm extrapolating based on several factors. Apologies if they're not quite what you're used to." The cloud has begun to catch up bits and pieces of inert matter, dust, wood, etc... It passes over more zombies, collecting even more matter as it powders them. Even branches and bits of stray wood get caught up. Soon, oddly grey, silvery, arrows coalesce in a pile as the cloud drifts by Robyn, "I'm utility fog. Manufacture and repair were my purpose once upon a time. You don't seem to like this Sinatra fellow. Any requests?"

The battle rages on, and even if the undead fall en-masse, more turn up every minute. But as the robot returns to the bridge, it gives Robyn some moments to breath and pick up one of the arrows, giving it a test bend. "good enough for now." she claims, putting her own arrow back to her quiver and sheeting the dagger before she pulls out the bow again, giving the new arrow a test, shooting it at one of the more distant undead, pinning him to a tree where it bursts to flames "Ok, this actually might be fun..."

"They don't seem particularly intelligent. Let's turn this into... What's the English word... A meat grinder? I will keep them off of you and retrieve or fabricate arrows for you as necessary." The fog tightens and coalesces into a smoky bar of silvery material in front of the bridge. Corpses that try to walk through it? They all end up missing their legs, making themselves easy prey. And HAR-V? HAR-V tries playing Metallica now. "If you need modifications to the arrows... please be specific as possible."

"We make this their shambles." Robyn answered to the robot, sending one arrow after the other en route. Hours pass, and at around 11 PM she switches her bow to the other hand, so she can relax the bow fingers, which start to cramp, and at 2 AM she does again, the bow back to the right. "Will they have no end?!" Is all she comments, as the music changes through the tracks, becoming a background sound between the hissing of undead going ablaze, the thumps of arrows hitting their targets and the sirring sound of the arrows launching. 5 PM closes in, and again she has to switch the arms to relax the fingers, her eye showing signs of tiredness. "When will this damned sun come up?" And it was still half an hour till the first rays of sun would come...

"You have thirty minutes yet. Do you tire? I'm afraid I'm not quiet conversant on humanoid biology yet, or I would create the appropriate stimulant. I'm afraid I might cause cardiac arrest if I attempted it." In all this time, she's just been patiently grinding, "If you've suggestions, then I will hear them. I am quite used to taking direction, I assure you."

With a groan Robyn eyed the Robot, somewhat relieved that the sun would come in just a short time. "Great, hope that will solve it." The tiredness is noticeably on her, but still she tries to keep up her pace. The onslaught goes on, seemingly to even press more. But eventually it is the sun that comes over the edge of the horizon, casting it's light upon the graveyard. In the dusk, the stones slowly seem to re-erect themselves, the area seeming intent to return to the state it had been the night before. Tired, Robyn collapsed, searching for her own three arrowheads to get them back in the pile of facsimiles. "That.... Was a hard night..."

"Really? I thought it was very bracing. More exercise than I've been used to having recently, truth be told." She coalesces into a physical, humanoid shape to reach for the girl,"For now, let's get you back to a human repair bay... what's it called... a home? A hospital? I'll figure it out. Come one. This was fun."