| Not Dangerous but Reckless | |||||
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| What: Alpha uses a plot to draw Hammer into motion. Heroes showing up force alterations. | |||||
Midtown NYC. it wasn't time's square at least, right? Either way, there were dents in cars, bent light post, generally anything that wasn't organic was being hammered by the 7' robot that was making it's way up and down a street in the middle of town. Most of the civilians in the area are huddling inside buildings and all of them are trying to take pictures of the robot.. which seems to just not work. Alpha had the subroutine beefed up as much as it could to handle that part of this task as it'd make it's way towards a construction area. The best way to rampage without hurting anyone? Wreck something that isn't all the way built yet! This was in the afternoon for the day and while no pictures or video of what was going on worked, people could still call. And people did. Now, who was going to respond? That's the real question.
One of the people nearby is a teenage girl, clutching to her blind cane as swarm of bees and wasps surrounds her. She's not fleeing, and has actually shoved people who tried to pull her into a building off of her. She's slowly following the rampaging robot. Either her hearing is really good, or she's relying on some other sense. Still, the empty, empty eyes suggest the cane is not for show.
Well, Alpha can probably expect at least one person at some point, that is, the one who put him up to this in the first place. That being Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Has he told the rest of the Four about his 'brilliant' plan? Maybe, maybe not. But what could it hurt? No one would be harmed, right? Just some property damage done. Stuff that could be replaced with money!
At any rate, Johnny is sitting on top of the Baxter Building, digging into some fast food and pretending that he doesn't know what's going on just yet. He'll wait until the big bot really starts smashing things; he doesn't want this to look like he's just waiting for the opportunity to snatch the thing up.
"Roger," says the man on the bike. "I'll check it out." Apparently, there's a robot going on a rampage in Midtown...and guess who's "closest." Captain America spins the bike around the corner, sparks flying from the tight turn, powering his wheels towards the construction site the robot appears to be heading for. So far, the rampage hasn't resulted in any casualties...but that might change at any moment.
Inside information was what Jane Roe deals with all the time. Knowing that a robot will go rampage half an hour ago and that it will allow intrusion into Hammer Industries was intel, that was worth for her to go to midtown, camera spot #1 of the area. Even if Alpha would have called other backup, there was one backup well hidden in a Starbucks - the girl that was seemingly sleeping with the laptop on her lap. But in fact, she was just perceiving on a different level, hovering in the Cyberspace, waiting for the 'sign' that was given in the email that had told her about the gap in security. She had prepared an intrusion program - just like an injection needle: In and start to leek any info inside to some leak-platform. Unfiltered, raw... and possibly they will just deny it ever happened.
Getting to the edge of the construction site, the robot picked up a handy empty car nearby to launch it into the construction site. The resulting impact causing a spark to ignite the gas tank, giving a respectable explosion. "Primary task: Completed. Secondary task: Allow media leak. Tertiary task: classified." The robot pivoted on it's treads to look at the teen that seemed to have been following it. The voice from the robot as it'd speak of tasks was low key, but still easily hearable by anyone seeking to actually listen to it. Taking down the fence between it and the construction site, the whole thing was scanned... and the robot immediate pivoted to avoid collision with Captain America coming in on his bike. "New entry added to calculations. Unit: Captain America. Role: Hero. Assessment: Intelligent, Charismatic, calculating, strong. Conclusion: Maintain distance and negate angles of impact for shield." With a whir of power to the treads, the robot would flee into the construction site, going through one of the concrete walls as the laser unit on it's shoulder would come up while it traced over the area. Key locations would quickly be shot, ruining potential fire.
On the Cybernetic plane, the subroutine was allowing select pictures to get to the outside, those going towards Hammer Ind. One of them was tagged for a backup person by the subroutine to ride in on. If it went to where the unit had calculated it to go.. they would have that inside hole.
Blind or not, Regina definitely heard the task stuff. And then the mention of captain America. She approaches slowly, careful to avoid drawing undue attention to herself. The bugs in the area coming out, every insect within a hundred meters of her, including the countless insects she brought along, are getting exited, swarming around the area in response to an unintended communication, an uncontrolled response to Regina's wish to see everything that's going on there.
Having heard the explosion, Johnny finally finishes his meal and jumps off of the roof of the Baxter, heading for the site of the mayhem. He arrives above the construction site, apparently pausing momentarily to take in the situation below: The explosion from the gas tank begins to set some of the area on fire. Construction workers are shouting and running, while people on the streets quickly start attempting to rush into the nearest building in a frenzied panic.
The Torch takes immediate note of Captain America, though he does not recognize the others. Though shakes his head slightly at Alpha's words. He opens a private comm frequency that he had set up with the bot and speaks quietly into it. << Dude, 'tertiary task classified'? Come on man, you can't say that out -loud-. You're a robot that has gone berserk, you should be raving about destroying all flesh creatures or something! We're trying to sell the 'dangerous and unstable' thing, remember? >>
Skidding the bike to a halt with one hand as he unships the shield with the other, "Firefighters needed. They're attacking a construction site." And then the shield goes flying towards the robot. He really doesn't expect to hit the first time, simply because the robot's probably paying too much attention.
Jane - or rather the ashen colored Avatar or her - did wait for the pictures to pass, embedding parts of her intrusion code into the pictures. Yes... They will download the pictures, open them, thus execute the code hidden in them and trigger an obvious virus... But the Patch for their system they have to download to fix it, that is where her real code kicks in, as the patch for that program contained a hidden gap, her needle. It just... It was just a quite fragile code setup and if they react to an obvious virus with something other... her plan is screwed. But she also has the cameras to look through, grinning internally as the bike chases in. "let's give our friend a little backup..." she mutters to herself, and sends a code snipped to the traffic lights - turning them all green on both ends of the street for half a second before all red for the next minutes. Most shouldn't even notice the green, but hopefully some would make a little crash on both...
In the Meatplane, the girl just seems to sleep, the fingers clutched around the laptop.
There was only a moment's pause from the robot, the shield coming in would be met with a fist to knock it off course from that impact with it's main system. "Damage sustained: 3 percent. Servos compensating. Primary objective updated: 'Destroy all flesh creatures'. Secondary objective: Complete. Tetriary objective: Classified." A quick look around had it seek to put more beams between it and captain America. one of the now abandon cement trucks that the workers ran away from was targeted and the laser would cook that gas tank. It took all of 3 seconds before it too would blow up on that side. Alpha rolled away from that, getting close to the center of the site. There, the laser would snake out, to either side of where Captain America was, but it wasn't aiming at him, instead the beams holding up walls were shot out, to let them drop as they would. Only *after* Cap got his shield back, would that laser beam follow it, purposely hitting the shield instead of him? or just bad timing on the part of the robot? It was only a 4 second burst and aimed to hit the upper arch of the shield so it'd cut up into the building, turning off shortly after in an attempt to negate the hero from using it against him. And if the beam happen to hit Torch up above? Well, it was heat, so no biggie there, right?
As for the cyberspace, the bits were getting to the right locations, that data and the obvious virus causing some IT guys irritation while the bosses who knew what the pictures meant were upset. That was THEIR robot fighting! They needed to scramble a recovery team asap! Although the closest group was 5 minutes away. Alpha would tag those units that were reached for by Hammer Ind for his backup. They had to be kept out as long as possible.. A fight on two fronts now. Would it be possible to keep this going?
A big scary robot has gone on what looks like a rampage towards a construction site, where more property damage was done, so far very attacks on people have been made. However, after spotting Captain America, it started attacking ineffectively, potentially purposefully not doing any damage.
Regina's bugs are swarming the air around the fight. The girl herself is holding a cane and standing off to the side. She takes a few careful steps back to hide behind a wall when the robot announces it wants to destroy all flesh creatures, seeing how she qualifies.
Okay...that was odd. The shield is back just in time to take the laser blast. Narrowing his eyes, Cap drops into a crouch. He doesn't attack again. No, he's watching, assessing...using all of his tactical experience. The robot's not acting like a rampaging killer robot. He's encountered rampaging killer robots. This isn't one.
Rolling his eyes, Johnny chuckles to himself. Okay, that was better. << Better, but you could really use some acting lessons. We gotta make sure Hammer doesn't get here before this is over. Let me know if you need me to uh, distract them.>>
Finally deciding to 'take action', the Torch descends toward the destruction as support beams crack and fall, sending the half-finished structure tumbling to the ground. He lands near Cap and shoots a mild plasma blast at Alpha--it might be bright but it actually isn't that hot. "Cap," he greets with a nod. "Let's see if we can deactive this thing without blowing it up completely, yeah? It's gotta be some pretty expensive equipment, there."
Ashes digital intrusion seems not to draw in her little leak yet, but then again, it would work for itself once placed. On the other hand, the traffic stunt blocked the northern crossing completely and had a small accident at the western lane of the southern crossing. That left some spots uncovered yet, but it covered some angles. a start. Then the camera signals of unrelated traffic were relayed over the ones she was already looking into and she grown... Hammer Cars? Moments pass, then Jane finds the sequence to trigger a series of pillars in the road, just in front of one of the SUVs with the Hammer-logo. The crash catapulted the car over, made it slide about twenty yards on the roof and create a massive trail of sparks before it came to a halt... "Bullzeye!"
Cir-el is a bit upset with herself, though she the unhelpful officer clearly did not help, and she DID clean up the riot the Joker caused. Still, she is pretty sure a more experienced hero would not have let the Joker get away during the riot, and would have made sure the prison was in better shape before dropping him there in the first place.
She was headed back home from Blackgate Prison when she heard combat below. She let out a short blast to change her angle of descent and landed close to Cap, as he seems to be a leader. She asks him, "What's up."
They have worked together before, he can be counted upon to make coherent suggestions.
It was a good thing that the unit was in motion. With the Human Torch 'showing up' and that shot towards the robot, it'd duck around a wall, letting the lower heat impact cause it to take the blow meant for the machine. "New entries into calculation. Unit: Human Torch. Role: Hero. Assessment: Show-off, fast, lady's man. Unit: Superlass. Role: Hero. Assessment: Fast. Strong. Young. Further calculations required. Continue Primary Objective: 'Destroy all flesh creatures.' Secondary Objective: Avoid termination of unit. Tertiary objective: Classified." With the small gap in action as Cir-El and Torch showed up near Captain, the laser on it's shoulder would come into play again. A sweeping high shot, over and behind where the three were at was aimed at collapsing that section of the building, denying any further access into the interior from the ground at least. Most all of the building was coming down now, rubble where the partial sky-scraper was. That private com was engaged as the robot would use the resulting dust to hide from immediate view. <<Please assist other heroes with understanding to avoid detrimental damage to unit.>>
Jane's strike with the post was good, stopping the first recovery team cold as the first van flipped and the second slammed into the poles. Two for one! The media blockage was getting harder to cover as more people tried to get something out about the chaos happening with the heroes and the robot. A second set of teams, two of them this time, was sent from Hammer Ind. One coming from the south and the other from the west, they were further out, at least 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the virus was fully ingrained into the system, the IT guy, seeing the patch to 'fix' the issue decided to just use that as it was simpler than trying to actually figure it out, leading to that patch being applied as well.
While Regina isn't exactly used to rampaging robots, she's smart enough to realize something weird is going on, especially with the fully three dimensional image she has of the fight. So, being a typical teenager convinced she's always right and questionably aware of her own mortality, she picks up a rock and gets out in the open. "Hey crazy robot, destroy this flesh creature." And then, of course, she aims the rock for the robot's head. Her distance assessment impeccable, though her aim might not be as good as her insect-fueled vision.
Without a real communication to the AI, the Hacker starts to proceed as planned - 15 minutes were a lot of time, and she was trying to make the most of it. Leaving the systems she had altered in the state they were for now, she started to copy files from the Hammer industries files. Even with the new backdoor in the firewalls, she just has like a couple minutes to get as many files as she can, and since she can't skim through all of them, she starts to download randomly what is listed first. Priorities, right? Her time frame in the net was much smaller than in the meatspace.
Johnny continues shooting low-heat flames at Alpha, while doing his best to dodge falling debris. << I'm on it, don't worry. >> He responds to the robot. "And now Reed just told me he wants to take a look at it, preferably intact. So cripple and not destroy, right?"
...yes. The robot is definitely trying to avoid causing casualties. While yelling about destroying the flesh things. Steve isn't entirely sure *why* it's on a fake rampage, but he has a feeling he won't be too angry when he finds out. Shifting position, he sets off at a run, throwing the shield again towards the robot's midsection. He's pulling the force very slightly, though.
For Cir-El, it seems easy enough. She runs forward and grasps the robot forcing it's arms down by its legs.then holding all four limbs so that any weapons in them are pointed in a harmless direction. OK, so she can not hold the head too...hopefully it will aim any eye or mouth weapons at her.
The robot had to keep dodging to avoid the damage that was potentially coming in. The rock shot out of the air with that laser as it'd look at the teen... then dismiss her. Shifting, the robot was able to avoid that shield, using one of the shots from the Human Torch to knock it off line enough to dodge it. There wasn't a way it'd be able to keep up with Cir-El though. Her grabbing it and dropping it's arms down to it's sides, she'd find that there was almost no resistance to her actions, the robot's laser unit turning off with a click to slide back down behind it's shoulder. "Primary objective update: Avoid termination of unit. Secondary objective: classified." The robot looked at Cir-El with a tilt of it's head. "Advise: You can put this unit down now. I surrender and will concede to going where directed. Calculations show potential of escape at less than 2 percent. I can not win against superior forces."
The work on cyberspace went well, it took another 10 minutes before the intruder was spotted and eventually forced out. While Jane got a lot of good information, unfortunately none of it was related to Alpha Unit it seemed. The recovery teams were still 5 minutes away from the destruction as the chaos that had been created around it caused plenty of slow down for everything else. All told, there were some injuries caused from the crashes, but nothing along the robot's path seemed hurt.
Regina Bush smiles when the robot immediately ignores her after shooting down the rock. She's satisfied with that outcome, "Looks like you're more interested in destroying rocks than little me, huh?" She starts to walk away, saluting the heroes but not really looking like she plans to talk to them. She's slow though, easily stopped or caught up to.
Once Cir-El has finally gotten the AI pinned down, Johnny stops his fire barrage and lands next to them. "Thanks," he says, nodding to the woman. He glances around at the destruction. "Uh....Reed's gonna want to take a look at that thing, so you wanna let go of it so I can get it to him?"
Captain America catches the shield. "Is it subdued?" he inquires, walking over towards Johnny. Cir-El seems to have the robot pinned. He wonders what, exactly, is going on here.
Jane's work took time. Not the files the AI wanted, but tons... Financial info, memos and tons of other stuff... Most of it is likely not worth its bits and bytes, but maybe some of that info could harm Hammer as a whole. Or just a division or a project. Pulling herself back as she realized they were on her trail, she narrowly escaped the shutdown of the internet-connection of Hammer. Her backdoor would likely be gone next time, but it was quite a mass she pulled there... Time to wake up and take a run...
And in Meatspace the sleepy woman - just on the other side of the street a robotocalypse just happened, and she napped through it - blinked once or twice, sliding the laptop into her backpack. Just leave a message for Alpha where the stash of data was... and then she started to move into the crowd, blending in with it.
Cir-El says to Johnny, "I can carry it much easier than you can, and it seems to respect the force I can bring to bear." She picks up the robot and then says, "How about I follow you to where Reed wants it contained?"
Johnny nods to Cir-El. "Sure thing. I'll lead the way." He flies off toward Baxter, though he is sure to keep lower to the ground so that Cir can follow easily.
Cir-El is not sure how she feels about aiding and abetting the robot in a robbery, but follows Johnny anyway. Sometimes, situations can be so confusing.
Captain America watches them go. He's fairly sure that the Fantastic Four are up to *something*, but he's not sure what...and he's fairly sure they can be trusted with it.