2012-11-30 Golden Dawn

The Suicide Slums aren't so-called because they are a particularly pleasant place, it must be said, and with rebuilding efforts underway, the general feel of the neighborhood has become 'on edge'. Whoever hired the Wrecking Crew has managed to put everyone on edge, even if the actual damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could be.

Strife likes it.

The pale woman is walking down the street, midday sun beating down overhead. It is winter, but the sun is bright and brilliant in the sky, even if it isn't particularly warm. One of those horrible days that makes you squint even as you shiver, and that, too, brings a smile to Strife's lips. "I hope you enjoy the show, Brother."

And as with any good show, it starts off relatively small. The tension in the air begins to bubble over. There's an ... electric feeling, crackling and eager in the atmosphere, but impossible to attribute to any particular sensation. And then?

Quite suddenly, there's a shout, and a pained cry. Far up the street, one of the builders working on the strip mall has suddenly punched his supervisor, a spray of blood, and before the boss can even begin to raise a hand to defend himself, he's been punched a second time, hard, taking him down. Not seriously hurt, but, definitely unconscious. For a moment, there is stunned silence...

Metropolis usually isn't Curtis' scene but he'd gotten a little lost playing around with one of his creations and stopped to rest. Plain old, mild mannered Curtis Doyle was just hanging around a fast food place and chatting up some random guy when the shout caught his attention. Frowning, he stepped outside to take a look around. Seeing what's going on at the strip mall, Curtis lets out a little 'huh'. "Someone didn't get the raise they were after."

Whoever hired the Wrecking Crew, put Emmy in the hospital for a few weeks, and she's only been home for a week or so. She is still a little bit sore, but she's back at her scrapyard. She managed to put together something to help her survive should she get thrust into heavy combat like she did with the Wrecker last time. Now, Emmy doesn't really think she's a hero so much as just someone who knows right from wrong and really likes to test her gear in the field.

Speaking of gear, once she had her armor ready to roll, she tested it the other day and well, it was fun... aside from the thruster assisted leaping still requiring practice to actually land on her -feet-. But she is in her yard, putting the finishing touches on what she plans to test out very soon... her giant robot. Yes, the thing is like a fifty foot tall (half size) version of the robot from the animated movie. But it looks right finally. Of course, getting the look right was what took so long in the first place. She didn't have the ability to put some sort of controlling intelligence into it, so she simply linked up controls in the chest with a camera and an X-Box controller. She had just powered the thing up when she heard a cry. So she heads over to the gate of her scrapyard, which opens right out into the Suicide Slums, and she calls out "Come on! I haven't even turned it on yet! No point in screaming yet!" But she has the controller in hand, and with a flick of a switch, she could have the thing standing up and stepping over the fence at the edge of her yard.

Metropolis /is/ Xavin's home, in lieu of anywhere else to lay his head. Nevermind that he generally has to resort to anything from filthy old blankets to concrete when it comes to actually finding something particular to rest his head on; it's a whole lot better than war-torn world he /came/ from.

Then again, when the sounds of violence abruptly interrupt his perusal of a gas station's small display of women's hair accessories, he can't help but feel a little twinge of homesickness. After quickly sliding a polka-dotted scrunchie off of his wrist and tossing it on the counter before the bewildered clerk, he takes off running out of the store... and then settles into a leisurely stroll across the street to see what's going on at the strip mall without arousing too much suspicion. Just another gawking bystander--one whose purple and black bodysuit gently shifts into a purple tee shirt and black jeans somewhere along the way.

Things go from bad to worse.

The moment of silence is broken when one of the other builders, suddenly hits the initially violent man across the back of the head with his hammer. The force is staggering, and at the moment of impact, it is as though the whole world takes notice. An almost visible ~shimmer~ of energy rolls out along with the *CHOCK* noise that accompanies such a blow.

Anyone looking in that direction can feel it. A sudden upsurge of anger; of the desire to inflict violence upon their fellow men, because THEY are not WORTHY of continuing to live! Needless to say, most heroes will be able to shake it off; it isn't a particularly insistent thought, just a single moment of magically-enriched emotion...

But there are a lot of bystanders, and most of them are weak-willed. The noise is deafening as a veritable riot breaks out, one poor young man hurled through the window of a cafe by a furious old lady, the builders tearing out onto the pavement as a hooting mob, screaming and hollering and brandishing tools, the sudden lack of respect that pedestrians have for pavements means that a sedan veers violently towards Emmy's junkyard, the driver taken by sheer surprise as madness unfurls onto the streets.

There is one notable island of sanity in all this. Strife seems to be ignored by the growing chaos; stepping nimble around one person and having produced an apple from somewhere, from which she takes a bite, a faintly amused look upon her ugly features.

Eyes narrowing, Emmy has a suspicion here. She reaches up to put her sunglasses over her eyes. This happens as she sees the car starting to turn. Of course... this tells her... magic is flooding over the area and headed her way. So she activates her jacket's shielding effect, allowing her mind a chance to resist the incoming effect. She's not immune to it, but... the combination of her wandering mind along with her protective energy helps. Before she shakes it off though, her hand whips down to the weapon in her holster and she draws... yes folks, the Star Trek prop phaser before she shakes her head. She sets it not only to stun, but to wide angle stun and aims it at the oncoming car. But that's when she comes to her senses and puts the phaser back away. Putting the driver to sleep won't stop the car and might get the driver killed. So.... she grins a bit and as the car gets closer, her hands work her controller and suddenly... a -giant- robot is standing over the fence of her scarpyard, one hand reaching down to pick the car up with the wheels still spinning. "Giant. Be gentle with him. He doesnt understand." she says... as if the robot actually listens to words. Then Emmy redraws her weapon and aims it out at the pedestrians so -they- can be put to sleep should the need arise.

As Xavin begins to work his way in amongst the other bystanders, one of them happens to jostle him /just/ hard enough to knock him off-balance for a moment, and before he knows it--

The alien is /aflame/ with rage; fire leaps from his arm, his eyes, his head, and he almost seems to grow several inches to loom over the offending bystander with a snarl. "/You/," he hisses. "Watch--"

There's a moment of hesitation; the guy /did/ only barely push him, and it was probably an accident. Even if it weren't--it's /hardly/ an afront worth burning someone alive over. Just as the alien's anger fades fully into confusion, the violent emotions that nearly overtook him seemingly spread, and within moments, he's standing in the middle of an all out brawl.

"--crap," he exhales; the fires die out, and his arms both stretch to impossible lengths to coil like serpents around that offending bystander before he can seek revenge on the alien. "Calm down!" he demands of the man--of anyone who can actually hera him over the chaos, really. "Stop this at once!"

Emmy's sunglasses tell her more than that there is 'magic' here. It tells her that there's a very definite source to that magic; buried in the wall of the strip mall, there's a glowing orb which practically THRUMS with power. Quite how it has gone unnoticed for so long is a mystery. Whether or not it will ever be solved is a question that only time and fate may answer.

Xavin's efforts to calm down the people going crazy around him don't come to much; though he can restrain them, they are berserk in their rage, and whilst, thankfully, nobody has the presence of mind to pull out any particularly lethal weapons that they might have access to, they are not calming down in the least. "E'S ONEADEM MOOTIES!" Someone shouts, and that, too, stokes the flames. Quite suddenly, the crowd is turning on Xavin; it is as though they are composed of one entity. One furiously angry mind determined to tear itself apart, and just as eager to tear apart anyone who might try to stop that.

For her part, Strife is mildly amused by the giant robot. "Its no Colossus." She muses aloud, taking another bite from her apple as she steps to the side of a young woman who seems not to have been effected by the infectious madness; whose desperate course is sending her weaving throughout the spontaneous riot. Her own bobbing course, with apple, takes her stepping up next to Freedom Ring.

"You probably ought to help that young man." She says, nodding towards Xavin and his growing crowd control situation. "When he's got such long limbs, it'd be sadly poetic to see him torn from them, wouldn't it?"

Once the car is handled, Emmy locks the robot in place and eyes the orb in the distance. "Hold that thought... and that car." she mutters to the robot that's just standing there now doing nothing since she's not making it do anything. She tucks her weapon into her holster, and clips the robot's controller to her belt as she reaches up and unhooks her hoverboard from her back. Setting it down, she steps up onto it and starts moving towards the source of this magic. "Seriously? Someone set up an anger enging?" she asks with a snort as she drifts over the crowds at maybe ten to fifteen miles per hour. No point in rushing headlong and crashing. She also maintains her shielding spell so she'll be very difficult to harm with small arms. Of course, she's totally forgotten that she has a whole suit of armor back in her workshop waiting for her. Halfway there, she has a thought, and whips out that controller, turning to look back at her robot before she makes it move to block the gate to the scrapyard. After all, she doesn't want crowds breaking in.

"Okay, for the record...this is totally not my fault," Freedom Ring remarks. Who's he talking to? No one, really. He just does that sometimes. His easygoing nature and the general mess the cosmic energy from his ring makes helped him avoid being effected by the madness. He stares at that giant robot for a moment before looking towards Xavin. "Okay, that's awesome," he declares, enjoying the sight of powers in use. As the mob turns on Xavin, Freedom Ring jumps. Then there's suddenly Strife. The reality altering hero stares for a moment. "Right! Uh, you should probably head inside away from all this stuff. Safer that way. And we'll need doctors and you'll be keeping them away," he remarks. Yes, Curtis tries to joke about the apple. Looking around quickly, Freedom Ring jogs over to a fire hydrant. He grins when he gets an idea, creating a fire hose attached to the hydrant. A little more cosmic twisting and he turns on the water. "Hey! Cool off!" he calls to the mob, turning the water on the mob.

Once it's clear that the first guy /won't/ calm down, Xavin just tosses him aside to free each arm up for another civilian. He struggles, briefly, to keep his unnaturally writhing limbs wrapped around the rioters, but soon enough, he's casting /them/ aside too; none of them will end up with anything worse than a few bruises. For all that the rampant violence is bringing back memories of home, the suddenness of it all does quite a bit to keep any excitement he might otherwise feel in check.

They, unfortunately, seem to lack such limits; when that cry goes out, the Skrull barely has time to figure out where it came from - or what it might mean - before a crushing mass of innocent Metropolitans bears down on him, shoving and punching and kicking and pulling--

--and pulling--

--and--pulling at the increasingly overwhelmed Xavin's body. By the time Freedom Ring turns the hydrant on them, the alien is stretched out limb across a good portion of the street and sidewalk like a mass of purple, black and brown fettuccine. The whole pile wriggles a little while the water comes down, and then out pops his head from the center; judging from his expression, he's more shocked and angry than he is /hurt/, appearances aside.

Sailing overhead makes life much easier for Emmy, and there's little resistance to her doing her thing. Strife certainly doesn't seem to be too interested in her right now; she's far more fascinated by Freedom Ring and his reality-warping power, which gets her attention instantly, even if his rather poor attempt at a joke had just made her roll her eyes.

The pale woman with the ragged hair doesn't seem to pay much mind to the fact he asked her to go away. Instead, she walks over to him, and, taking another bite from her apple, watches as he douses the crowd. "What an interesting ability." She says, "Tell me, do you do other tricks?" The possibilities, why, they practically write themselves.

The crowd, of course, turn on Freedom Ring, and it is at this point that there's a subtle hint things may not be entirely as they appear. Strife is smirking at Xavin's discomfort, mockingly eating her apple, when the deafening rush threatens to interrupt her conversation with Freedom Ring.

If Emmy happens to be glancing in this direction, she can see the waves of anger that continue to throb through the crowd, disperse around Strife and her friend, and the civilians halt in mid-step, before, instead, falling upon each other. There's no words from the woman, no visible sign of it other than that she met the eye of the man barreling headlong towards her when it happened, but like a pebble thrown in a lake, the fact of the disruption - and the rather confusing effect as the chaos has a very obvious 'safe point' spring up in the middle of it - is undeniable.

So many times, Emmy gets distracted by crazy stuff, but this is some of the craziest stuff she's ever been distracted by. Drawing her phaser again, she shakes her head and aims it at the angry crowd below. She turns back towards the source of this energy, and starts to accelerate. However, she pulls her trigger and causes a wide angle burst of sleep spell effects to wash over much of the crowd near to her. It's a cone shaped effect, and she's hoping that it'll help and not make things worse. However, when she gets closer to the source... she shakes her head, "Someone needs to stop playing with Weapons of Mass Upsetting." and she clicks the weapon over to her dispel/drain magic effect, points the holographic targeting device at the orb, and holds back the trigger to put a constant beam of magic disruption on said source.

"Ha!" Freedom Ring seems pretty pleased with himself that he's getting results. Grinning wide, he glances over when Strife approaches. "Oh yeah. I'm magic. I can do all sorts of awesome stuff," he says, puffing out his chest. He's distracted by the approaching mob and the firehose vanishes with a faint 'pop'. Thankfully the hydrant gets sealed back up. "Oh man this isn't..." Freedom Ring starts scrambling for a plan idea and ends up looking confused when he doesn't get mobbed. "Uh..what just happened there?"

"Nngh--thank you--" Xavin tersely calls as he struggles to pull his body back together; it really isn't terribly unlike watching silly putty, or--well--a Stretch Armstrong doll contract back to its 'natural' state, save for how /much/ of him there is to deal with. Thankfully, getting a breather from being mobbed means that he's able to accomplish this fairly swiftly.

And once everything is right where it should be, the alien lifts his right arm, clenches his hand a little, and forms a couple of invisible bubbles around clashing civilians.

"Hh--there," he murmurs, working his way back to his feet. "Back to square one." So long as he's not interrupted, he'll try to bubble more civilians for their own good; standing there, concentrating intently on nothing while the people are mysteriously encapsulated might not be the best way to divert attention away from himself, but if it stems the tide, it's worth a shot.

"Probably nothing worth worrying about." Strife replies to Freedom Ring. She then narrows her eyes at Emmy. The sleep spell had some minor effect, but the anti-magic doesn't really do an awful lot against the rolling waves of chaos that swim forth from that buried orb. Given that it is still underneath an awful lot of rubble, and quite some distance away, that might have something to do with it.

The bubbles do have a significant effect, locking down civilians from hurting themselves or others, though they do struggle and fight as much as they can against the effect. Strife has apparently decided that Freedom Ring isn't worth worrying about, though, given her supremely relaxed nature, she might not be worrying about anything at all. She is, instead, allowing her gait to wander in the direction of Xavin, picking her way through the growing number of bubbled civilians.

"Its not a bad idea." She says, idly. "But until you get to the source of this, it is unlikely things are going to calm down any." She then gives a meaningful look up towards Emmy. "The woman with the toys seems to have a lot of purpose, don't you think?"

Hrm, Emmy stops firing her phaser, checks the power supply and inclines her head. She's never had it do so little before. Well, there's other solutions to that. Shaking her head, she holsters the weapon and draws her silver cylinder. She turns on the accelerator of her flying snowboard and aims right for the orb. Once she gets close enough, she presses a stud and ... well, sci fi geeks might recognize the visual -and- audio effect as the cylinder sprouts a blue-white glowing shaft of energy a meter long... with a *snap-hiss* followed by a *vwooom* as she attempts to cut the orb out of wherever it's settled into. Her plan is to retrieve the orb, place it on the flying board, step off the board and have said board carry the orb -away-... like straight up.... for miles and miles.

"What?!" Xavin snaps as he jerks his head towards Strife. He gives the strange woman a quick onceover, and then after briskly scanning over his handiwork thus far, his glower of concentration relaxes a little. "I--obviously, yes, but--" he quickly admits when she gifts her advice, only to be cut off by the look she gives Emmy.

Once the Skrull sees the focus of her suspicion, his glower returns anew. Where /did/ she come from? Was she out here when this all began...?

"I do," the alien lowly agrees. And then, Emmy will have another orb to contend with--only /this/ one is invisible.

And filled with a person.

"Lay down your weapons and surrender!" he demands as he holds his hands to his temples to focus on launching the force field/bystander Emmy-wards, "I'd like to get to the bottom of this--your suspicious presence is /not helping/!"

Achingly beautiful.

It is a term which is often taken to be poetic. In this case, it is quite literal. The 'orb' is sliced free from the wall, and as plaster and brickwork falls away, it reveals brilliant, glowing energy. Golden and wonderful, the dawn captured behind building materials. When the light saber finally cuts away the last of the building materials shielding it from view, it is then that the 'orb' coalesces into something like physical substance.

Hovering in the middle of its own corona is a beautiful golden apple, inscribed in an elegant hand: KALLISTI.

To try and grasp it, the apple has weight proportionate to the amount one feels inadequate about their own self-image. If Emmy believes she is the most beautiful person in the world, it would weight as much as a regular apple. Below that, it gets proportionately heavier, with an 'average' self image ensuring that it weighs several tons. If people know their greek mythology, they may be able to decipher why this is!

Strife herself is more interested in the fact of Xavin's intervention, and the spiraling discord which the act is likely to ensure. She walks at a leisurely pace, and as she gets closer to the apple, the waves of madness which had been spreading out from it begin to die down. Violent argument begins to turn into merely raised voices; insults and offense over matters too incoherent to be rendered plain making themselves known, but surely a far less objectionable form of chaos to the mad rioting which had been taking place before.

At first, Emmy doesn't even pay any attention to the approaching alien. She's focused on the task at hand, but then... hey... sunglasses flare as motion is incoming. She looks up just as the force field/bystander is launched her way, "I'm working here! This is the source of the anger power mind control dark side rage crap!" she says. But then she's got a bystander/force field striking her in the face and she goes flying off her hoverboard to fall and splat on her back several meters below on the ground.

"Ow..." she mutters as she shakes her head and lies there, pulling out her x-box controller. She flips her sunglasses over to view out of the camera in the front of the giant robot, and she starts making it move. First, it puts the car down on top of some other scrap where it won't be able to drive off. Then the robot is walking this way. Loud... slamming footsteps that Emmy is being careful to avoid people with.

"Woah! Dude!" Freedom Ring calls over his shoulder when he sees Emmy get smacked. That is not what he was expecting at all. "Why'd ya do that?" he calls to Xavin. Emmy's yelling gets his attention though and Curtis forms himself a pair of wings on his back. Flying up, he peeks towards that glowing apple and tilts his head to the side. "Uh huh...so if that thing is causing all this, it'll stop if I blow it up, right?" he asks, creating himself a rather oversized gun that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi movie and taking aim.

"Look!" Xavin jabs an accusatory finger towards the fallen technomage, and then as he turns to face a group of civilians who are merely yelling, rather than trying to beat the crap out of each other, he adds, "They're calming down! She /must/ have been connected." He would fold his arms indignantly, but he's still concenrating on keeping his fields intact, just in case.

Of course, focusing as he is on maintaining dozens of independent constructs while angry people beat on them--it's distracting work, enough so that noticing little things like, say, 'a suspicious golden apple' near the assaulted scientist is difficult.

The apple, to avoid confusion, had been lodged in some building work at ground level, underneath rubble. There's no flying necessary to get to it, and Emmy certainly couldn't lift it; she's just not vain enough to think of herself as the prettiest person in the world, and therefore the effect of the apple is at full force.

Strife, though, is continuing her lazy walk when she becomes aware of the Iron Giant. The robot is huge, and it is being very careful, but, really, you give a Goddess of Chaos such a big, obvious target, and arguably? She has no choice at all.

Which is why she stops in her tracks, and as the massive metal construction moves to go past her, she sticks out her leg.

The intent is rather simple. She's small, yes (right now), but she's also insanely strong. Divinely so, in fact, and if there's one thing that Strife knows, it is how to leverage force into chaos. Strife is leveraging one of the oldest truisms in the universe.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Well, one thing Strife may not realize. Emmy believes in being accurate to source material. As the robot trips, which she notices because the angle of view is suddenly changing, she scowls, ignoring Xavin now as she pulls her left trigger. Yes, she has that assigned to this, and the robot's feet suddenly vent power which launches the creature into the air at a forward angle. "No... no making the big guy fall on civilians. That's bad." mutters the operator as she lies there on her back and grins now... of course, she's distracted by the flying controls and has forgotten her plan to have the robot grab the apple.

Curtis knows he probably didn't have to fly. He's showing off. Freedom Ring can be a bit of spotlight hog you see. "Maybe she is," Curtis remarks to Xavin. "But I still think that freaky glowing fruit has something to do with it too. So again...blowing stuff up," he explains. He also likes blowing things up. And then he sees the Iron Giant. And it almost falling. "Uhhhh..." and suddenly, the big metal thing is flying. Freedom Ring tumbles in the air, wings vanishing as he loses concentration on them. He ends up crashing into the ground...and accidentally pulling the trigger on his gun and firing an energy blast at Strife. Oops. He did not mean to do that.

"That's /offensive/," Xavin protests when Curtis decides to blame the glowing fruit, "to /someone/." Beat. "Or so I have /heard/. What makes y--"

The ground rumbles, and then a great shadow begins to fall over--well, /everything/; the fields all break at once, freeing the captive bystanders as the alien looks up to see the falling robot.

"And /why/ is there a--" he begins to sputter before the thing takes flight. Scowling, he briefly crouches, then takes off after it, a whirl of fire wrapping around his lower body to propel him through the air.

All things considered, it is probably lucky that the energy blast hits Strife. Were it to hit any of the other bystanders around, things would have gone from an unfortunate but thankfully casualty-less scenario, to one of significant bloodshed. Instead, the blast of power hits the pale young woman, and there is a blinding flash.

When that passes, Strife is left in a small crater. And after just a second, she gets up. Lightly smoking, she narrows her eyes at Freedom Ring, and tuts, shaking her head slowly. "Do try and be careful with how you use that godlike power." She drawls, "That /stung/." The rising pitch of the arguments of the crowd have begun to die down even further as Strife walks forwards, "And now, I've had enough of this. If you don't mind, I'll take back what is mine."

She'd hardly been full of merriment and good cheer before, but now her patience is at an end. Aside from hurting, that blast had vaporized her snack.

Sitting up, Freedom Ring lets the gun vanish. "What's offensive?" he asks Xavin, jumping when that flash of light occurrs. "Oh man...ohmanohmanohmanohman!" he yelps, thinking he did cause a bloody explosion. Scrambling closer to the crater, he's pretty shocked by the fact that Strife in still in one place. Shocked enough to trip and fall comically. The street gets a few more cracks though, the hero putting himself in a protective metal form before he falls. Pushing back to his feet, the now metal-coated Freedom Ring blinks. "Uh...sorry...what...okay, I am completely lost," he declares. And then there's a robot landing. The vibrations knock Curtin on his rear, putting a new pothole in the street thanks to that metal form he's taken on. "Whoa!"

"It doesn't matter!" Xavin exclaims as he sends a ball of fire hurtling past the Iron Giant; rather than land and set fire to something below, it seems to just burn out as it zooms further and further past its target. "This robot is--"

--well, actually, Xavin isn't entirely sure /what/ it's doing other than, but it's /definitely/ large, and it definitely nearly crushed a bunch of civilians; more than enough reason to suspect the construct in these chaotic times.

Before he can line up another shot, though, a terrible explosion blooms beneath him; wide-eyed, the Skrull twists in the air to survey the damage... and finds his strange informant standing unharmed at the heart of it.

"I--" He squints at the woman for a while before just shaking his head, wheeling around and jetting towards the robot chest. The fire raging around his legs whirls up his body to surround his hands mid-flight; he has no intentions at all of stopping before impact--assuming that there's an impact at all.

It is a divinely beautiful apple, forged from pure discordant energy, designed to attract the vain with magic so powerful that even the Gods themselves had been vulnerable to it. It is the Apple of Discord; and it is meant for The Prettiest One. A being with no sense of self simply cannot grasp it. Its weight is dependent on the self-image of the individual. The Iron Giant /isn't/ an individual, and so, for it, it does not exist. That is just how the magic works. Unfortunate, but, there it is.

Strife, however, has decided that enough is enough. The Skrull and the Giant are fighting, and if necessary, she will simply lift the giant off her apple. Unless there's another significant force in play to stop her, she will reach out, and /take/ the apple. Because enough is enough.

And in that instant, the spell is broken. The brilliant glow fades to nothing. The crowds stop even shouting at each other, and a vague sense of embarrassment and confusion reigns supreme, whilst Strife dangles the tiny fruit from between two fingers. "This was a lot more fun the first time around." She muses, "Perhaps the quality of audience has decreased. Oh well. You live and learn, I suppose."

The giant tried to pick up the apple, but it passed right through the big metal hands. Then there's Xavin charging towards the chest of the thing. The chest where the camera's viewpoint comes from. "Holy flaming *bleeep!*" exclaims Emmy as she twitches controls, the robot's arms coming up in a block maneuver. The impact of Xavin will send the robot reeling back a step or two, and dent the crap out of its arms... but Emmy then calls out, "stop beating up on my giant you fiery f'tard!" while still lying on her back. She was about to give in to the anger when the effect ends and she just kinda lies there.... The giant wasn't actually -covering- the apple, it was just standing above it.

Freedom Ring just ends up standing there and looking confused. The flaming dude fighting the robot gets a look but it's Strife that draws his attention. The reality altering hero frowns, walking towards her. "So ya did all this? That's a pretty villainy move, lady. I should haul ya down to the police, y'know."

Xavin was expecting to force his way /through/ the robot with high speeds and even higher temperatures; hitting it and stopping throws the alien youth for a rather literal loop, forcing him to land on the first roof he can reach to catch his bearings and try to shake his fresh new headache off.

"Your robot," he yells as he leans over the edge of that roof, "should not have been in my way, making a dangerous, suspicious /nuisance/ of itself!" He can't quite make out Strife plucking up the apple, but the wave of calm that follows is hard to miss when everyone goes from nearly clashing to just standing there.

After exhaling, he calls out, "Regardless: things seem to haev calmed down. I suppose I can forgive you."

"Forgive me... bah! You're the one who gave it. There was a magical wave spreading anger and hate outward. Coming from that apple like I said!" offers Emmy as she stands up. She pauses and then uses the controls to have the robot put -its- hands on its hips as if -glaring- at Xavin. "Hm?" Strife says, looking to Freedom Ring with mild confusion. Then, she tuts, and rolls her eyes. "No, fool. Whoever /placed/ the apple here did this. I simply happened to be in the neighborhood."

She does, however, smirk, as she glances over her shoulder at the row brewing between Xavin and Emmy. "I'll be going now. Good day."

The apple simply disappears from her fingers with a faint ~pop~, and she turns her back on the assembled heroes. She feels like her work here is done. If Freedom Ring wants to try and start a fight, well, her back is turned and her defences are lowered... he's not going to get a /better/ chance, in all likelihood.

"But it's your apple, right?" Freedom Ring is a litrle confused. He doesn't attack Strife since he's pretty sure the good guys aren't supposed to attack people who's backs are turned unless they're in the middle of being evil. Sighing, he forms himself a jetpack and flies up to put himself between Xavin and the robot. "Hey!" he frowns. "I'm pretty sure it was that weird lady that caused this...not the robot. So...uh...enough fighting guys?"

"Oh, yes," Xavin sarcastically replies as he folds flaming arms over his chest. "A whole street full of people nearly killed one another over an /apple/. We're very lucky, I suppose, that there weren't any carrots around; who /knows/ what they might have done to one another."

Although, diamonds /are/ measured in 'carats', and--

Maybe if--

The alien's self-righteous smirk gives way to contemplation--until, that is, Freedom Ring speaks up.

"'Weird lady'?" Squinting, he scans the street for strange women--oh. He stops on Strife, pursing hips lips. Right. /That/ weird lady. "That remains to be seen, I think; she was /very/ helpful in pointing out--"

His eyes shift between Strife and Emmy a few times, and then he just frowns gravely.

"Ah," he mutters. "Yes. Well. Maybe." Beat.

"That was /hardly/ a fight," he sullenly remarks.

Oh, Emmy is so tempted to -give- Xavin a fight, by way of a giant robot fits bonking him on the head. But... she just shakes her head. She points at her sunglasses, "I HUD told me that the apple was veritably glowing with power. It was the -source- of the nerdrage going through the area. You know what..." She twists a control and the robot bends over, laying a hand on the ground. Emmy steps onto the hand, makes the thing stand up and ends up sitting in... yes, a restrable, deployable lawn chair that pops out of a storage spot on the giant's shoulder. "I think I'm just going to go repair the damage you did." and that said, the robot turns and starts stomping towards the scrapyard. "Anytime you want an education on how to find the bad guy... come by my scrapyard. Until then, stop burning innocent giant robots!"