World Tree MUSH

    Last time, you spoke to the Roshtonari and, in addition to finding out their intentions to a more or less degree, you also found out another storm is going to be coming around pretty soon. Guess those guys have some pretty good ways of predicting the weather.

    At Lotus' request, albeit with some cajoling, Astra has agreed to take you to the bleeding edge of the problem- the ruins of another town just south of Bonne Bon, which is currently abandoned and in the process of being swallowed up.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmd2nbHP5kQ
    Farewell Traveller - Flashygoodness
    Tower of Heaven - 2009

    You find yourself in the ruins of a town much like Bonne Bon, with tumbledown buildings and abandoned storefronts, a fountain which is currently leaking, and of course, lots and lots of dust.

    https://i.imgur.com/nc2t6BZ.jpg

    There's piles of dust everywhere.

    The sky is thick with black, rumbling clouds as the stormfront bears down on you.

    Iron Lotus sneezes as she makes her way into the ruined town, which may be to be expected considering all the piles of dust covering everything. She looks around at her associates- yeah, hopefully between them they can come up with a way to blunt the edge of this storm- and in the meantime she just takes in all of the devastation around here. Has this been what's happened to everywhere aside from Bonne Bon?

Emily floats out of a staticky portal in the form of a lavender-skinned demoness with four arms, hair so black it looks like a rip in space or a graphical glitch, and sunglasses that seem to have a purple glow behind them; she's wearing a bright pink crop top that says "I'll Stop Wearing Pink When They Invent A Darker Color", blue booty shorts bearing an evil AI's rant about how much it hates humanity on the backside, and white sneakers.

On her back is what appears to be a sort of high-tech leaf-blower or vacuum cleaner setup, except that it doesn't seem to have any vents or anything. It looks kind of beat up with a few spots of rust here and there. "I got a nano-reclamation unit from the halcyon remnant!" she announces, in a voice familiar to anyone who's met her in any other form. "Should let us at least poke holes in the nanoprobes, assuming it doesn't just explode and blast my own ass off." She points the nozzle towards the storm, and a holographic screen appears over it.

Astra leads the way to the ruined down frowning as she does so. She knows they don't have much time until they have much time until the lightning strikes again. She turns at Emily, "I hope it's powerful enough to handle the nanoprobes without being destroyed or anyone exploding! I don't think I have the equipment to repair you." Along with the nanotech, Emily is likely the most technologically advanced being on the planet right now. Astra does her best not to take in too much dust herself. Of course there's also the problem that they may be swallowed by the storm as well.

    "Red," Lotus comments idly as she looks at Emily's shirt. She's kind of confused by it honestly although fortunately not by the unit she's brought with her, which looks impressively heavy duty enough for personal defence in the face of what they're going to be confronting. She's got a passing familiarity with nanomachines but only really in the sense of them being micro essence constructs that exist inside a Chosen's body, certainly not external and certainly not in these many numbers.

    It's at this point that she realizes she doesn't really have next to any marketable skills that will help them out here in this short of being able to punch things, and really, what's going to be punchable about nanomachines?

    Well, you had to ask.

    https://i.imgur.com/WKzpwuO.png

    Seeming to fade in from the distance as the wind picks up, three distinct objects begin to become visible approaching the group rapidly. Each of them resembles a rough sphere with a long, jagged ring of spikes surrounding it, and they make a distinct buzzing sound as they approach.

    "Okay," Lotus says, thinking quickly. "Lightning rods. We need to make some lightning rods. Astra, help me try and look for metal we can assemble together into something."

    "Little Owl, scout out ahead won't you? Metal rods or anything else of interest." Athena's interest in other worlds had gotten her pulled into this, and now she was here trying to get a good idea of what's happened. "It's like divine wrath, but without even the most petty of reasons." To the devestation.

    A beep, and her drone detaches, zipping off ahead to scan the are for metal or anomalies. The sensors are simple, but the AI is good enough to recognize weird readings.

    Nort and Scar had weathered an apocalypse before(not that this was common knowledge), but the wastes here weren't what they'd seen. "No radiation..." Nort mutters, sliding off the giant wolvering he rode here upon. The power-armored man taps his helmet, just trying various settings to scan the wastes.

    "This is far worse than the radiation storms we have, but... so much with just a storm? That's odd. I'm not a meteorologist, but I've never seen anything like this."

Emily shoots Astra a cheeky grin. "I'm self-repairing," she says cheerfully. "But seriously, if I need to get removed from the area in a hurry, you'll know." She blinks. "Heh, Lotus, that's the joke."

She watches the approaching machines. "Well, that's interesting!" she says. "Releasing capacitor seals three and two." Three distinct auras appear around her: one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent. The first two shatter, and the third fades, and she projects a pair of ghostly white angel-wings. "Although, I'm not gonna be able to do much in the way of fighting while I'm ganking nanoprobes, unless someone wants to take this off my hands."

She thumbs the holo-screen, and starts firing the device into the storm. It's almost a deceptively simple system, really: it goes after whatever nanomachines or nanoprobes it can find, and if they aren't attached to someone else, it shuts them down en masse.

Astra begins to gather metal as Lotus orders in order to construct some lighting rods to attract the storm. "It's more than just a storm, the nanites come and devour everything they can as you see here. If I only had the knowledge to stop them!" She places a hand to her head as she tries to remember something. "Thank you everyone for coming, we're going to need all the help we can get...Wow!" She's rather impressed as Emily projects angel-wings.

    The bones of many buildings are made of iron bars which could be used as some sort of lightning attracting device if assembled together hastily enough. Lotus gets the distinct feeling she's going to be struck by lightning more than once before the night is out; oh well, rather her than the humans, right? She hasn't met Athena before but she's welcome to have another helper on this trial, or two if you count Little Owl who is busy finding out where to locate DA METAL.

    Thankfully the nano entities (as they shall henceforth be called) do not immediately attack despite their somewhat dangerous appearances, but simply begin to advance somewhat menacingly on the human-shaped clumps of atoms in front of them. They're not entirely sure how to react to this as it defies conventional data about these things as far as they know it and they're going to have to get a little more up close and personal before they know how to handle them.

    "Keep away from those balls!" Lotus shouts to Nort and Scar, running into a building and beginning to pull iron bars out of the walls. Emily meanwhile breezes past said balls on her way to take shots at the storm, upon which she will get the attention of the nano entities as she begins to start firing with anti-nanomachine weapons. One of the balls begins to spin and take up speed, and tries to take a run at her!

    Even though Nort and Scar are nearly inseperable... they CAN act independently. When the warning is shouted, Nort dashes for the nearest cover, while Scar trundles to a larger bit of cover to analyze what's approaching. The spheres didn't seem very aggressive until agitated by Emily.

    Nort grumbles, "I should have known better than to get involved with so many robots." He frowns, "A nanomachine swarm that breaks down material... like a grey goo scenario, but something's off."

    Well, he doesn't like robots(and by extension, is wary of Emily and Iron Lotus), but the ones ATTACKING are probably the biggest threat. "Let's see what they can take." That is, test what is effective against them. The spheres get Nort peeking around his cover and gesturing, releasing a gamma burst toward the nearest.

    Scar keeps an eye on Astra, the big furry lug rumbling, but he does have a force field if she needs cover.

Astra gathers curtain and clothing rods along with several bbq skewers, she can't exactly rip out the bars of the walls like Lotus can. Hopefully all the metal she's carrying doesn't attract lightning. Being close to Lotus she notices one of the balls spinning towards her and throws one of the skewers at the ball. It's not with much force since her hands are full and she's pretty much an ordinary human but she makes the effort at least.

    "Of course it can't be simple," she whispers. Hopefully Little Owl can avoid trouble while they draw the attention of the... robots? They're obviously not the same kind of tech as her world, but she doesn't blindly shoot at them. Athena ducks behind cover as well, but she doesn't start shooting her energy rifle yet. Instead, she concentrates on her technology sense, breathing in and trying to feel out anything she can. Alien or advanced technology or not, she's hoping something is available and familiar enough to point out a weakness.

    Mostly she looks for things that make them easier to blow up though.

Emily giggles, launching herself straight into the air out of the path of the machine. "Hello!" she exclaims. "Here's the deal with things made out of nanomachines," she calls out to the group conversationally. "They are a real pain to deal with because they can just replace the parts you damaged by rearranging themselves! You either need to figure out if there's some central system controlling 'em ..."

She turns the nano-reclamation unit on full blast at the machine she just dodged. "... or overwhelm them!"

    "Yeah that's basically what we're dealing with here," Lotus says to Nort, as the storm rumbles overhead. She realizes that what they're doing here is probably not going to have anywhere near as much effect on the storm as they would like it to have, but anything is worth trying once and hey, if they're lucky maybe they'll show these nanomachines that now the people of this world have someone to defend them and that'll give them something new to think about. As for Nort's robophobia? Doesn't get a second thought, honestly. More important things to worry about.

    Lotus checks to see if Astra has a welding tool, as she begins starting to throw stuff at one of the three balls Lotus winces a little. The third is blasted by Nort as well.

    Athena will get the strong impression that 'technology' as far as she understands it is all around- there are nanomachines lying all around them in the dust as well as in those three huge balls they're attacking, and right now only force sufficient to completely break them down is going to destroy them.

    "Astra, don't, concentrate on building stuff with me, alright?" Lotus shouts to her, trying to coordinate the efforts a little. She looks to Nort and to Scar, "You," to Nort, "Help Emily fight those nano entities, Emily keep it up! You," to Scar, "Can you keep an eye out for anything that wants to attack Astra?"

    She takes a swiss army knife-style tool from within her pockets which quickly lights up with an essence-fuelled welding torch and hands it to Astra. "OK, we're going to have to start building. Make something tall and metal and then make some more."

    Being in a solid form along with what seems to be a shell of reclaimed materials means the nano entities aren't going to be immediately overwhelmed by a single attack from Emily or Nort, but taking a hit does disrupt their flight pattern and cause them to become quite wobbly. The mnanomachine reclamation unit seems to be the best weapon against them so maybe they need to form a strategy around Emily, which could also be why all three balls go on the attack towards her with their blades spinning!

"I'm sorry, I didn't want you to get eaten by the nanites too!" Astra's watched helplessly as Van Patissierie's been devoured. She doesn't want to be alone again. She takes the torch and starts wielding the metal carefully behind Scar's force field. She can't have afford to have to have the balls go after her. "Please let everyone get out of this safely..." That's all she's going to ask for.

    "Ahhh, ehhh... okay, I can't really blame you for that," Lotus says to Astra.
    "Come on, let's get busy."

    Astra and Lotus are buildin' a thing! It's held together with molten metal and string! What a lovely thing to sing about, we're building a thing! First priority is to use as many of the little scraps as possible to build our first lightning rod and then maybe attach it to a rooftop or something. Then we can start making stuff out of the bigger pieces. 

    "Thank you for coming out here to help us," Lotus says to Astra. "You could have just sent us out to do things by ourself but you came. That means a lot to me. When this is all over, would you like to be friends?"

    Overhead the lightning begins to gather and the first bolt is almost ready to strike!

    Helpfully, assistance comes in the form of a big doughy Pokemon riding in like the cavalry, with Luke Gray bringing up the rear! We don't need to worry anywhere near as much about being hit by lightning while we work with Luke and his Pokemon here!

    Athena sighs. Brute force it is. Well, she can do that, but she's more interested in something else, how Little Owl zips in with some metal rods. The drone is small, so can't carry much, but Athena can give it time by dashing out and snapping a few shots at the globes, trying to keep them from 'eating' the drone.

    "So it looks like we have the weather AND the nanites to worry about? I thought my world's problems were bad enough with the underworld!" She sighs as she snaps off a few shots, then makes a mad dash for cover again. Tactically, she REALLY just has to keep them busy, right?

    Scar grunts, "I don't take orders from you." Or Nort, technically. His eyes gleam, "But I am a good tank." He wanders over toward Astra, standing in front of her and activating some kind of shimmering field on his fur, his head turning to track any nearby movement. He growls loudly, but his speech earlier was remarkably clear and enunciated.

    Nort nods at the idea though, less gruff and grumpy than Scar. "Easy enough." He moves quickly, armor-assisted running dashing him toward where Emily fights and tracking some of the globes. This time he doesn't use his gamma hands, instead firing a small salvo of micromissiles toward one.

Emily raises her eyebrows, and dodges backwards at the charge. "Welp!" she exclaims, twirling around in midair to try to dodge all three of them at once. "... man, if I could WAUGH!" She takes a hit directly from the front, and goes spinning out of the air, with silvery scars all over her front!

She hurriedly rights herself as she comes to a stop next to Nort. "... I, on the other hand, am mostly made of magic, so stuff actually hurts. Ugh." She checks the holographic screen. "Okay, good, the unit itself is intact." Beat. "Or, uh, 'intact.'" She grins at Nort, and goes back to firing at the machines. "So, any suggestions? Do we smash them one at a time, or try to wear them down all at once?"

"I don't have any special powers like the rest of you, but I just can't do nothing while the world gets destroyed! Yes, I would like that very much!" Astra carefully crafts the lightning rod. It was one thing she could do at least. "What's your world like Lotus?" She's never been to any others before.

    Not just brute force. This is going to require /overwhelming/ brute force, more brutal than even your bog standard brute force, the kind of brute force that leaves things a wrecked greasy puddle on the floor. You gotta bring your a-game, Athena!

    Or, as mentioned before, someone else's A-Game. Athena takes a shot at another nano entity- it's up to Emily to start coordinating her attacks with the others in order to get the best effect of all this. As it stands Athena knocks one of them off course and gets its attention, which is going to cause it to start spinning buzzsaw-like towards her.

    Now, micromissiles, that's a display of force that should definitely be sufficient to put some dents in these things. And in fact that's exactly what they do- sizeable, crater-like dents, about the size of a small fruit, leaving the topmost layer of nanoprobes melted wrecks as the minimissile fuses them together. You've gotta coordinate between the three of you!

    "It's fine, I'm not in the habit of giving orders," Lotus replies, calling on another (admittedly hollow) memory from her past. 

    As she begins to climb onto a rooftop to begin rigging up the first lightning rod, Lotus looks down at Astra. "My homeworld is called the realm of brass and shadows by some," she says back. "There's no sky and machines as far as you can see... skies full of lightning, oceans full of oil..."

    Micromissiles? That's a surprise! Emily she knew was strong, but Athena didn't know Nort had that kind of firepower. It's something that gives her an idea though. She has this thing buzzsawing for her, and that means... its attention is on her.

    Pulling out her pistol, Athena swaps to the less effective, but more attention-getting slugthrower. Snapping off a few shots, she takes another run for it, panting now despire her godly stamina. "It's up to you two!"

    To what? Well, she's leading it between Emily and Nort, to catch it in a crossfire she hopes.

Astra looks rather uncomfortable about the thought of Lotus's world, the machines sound interesting but not so much the reset. She begins making a second lightning rod as Lotus places the first one. "I just hope everyone goes back to normal after the Roshtonari are gone." It would be unfortunate for everyone to still hate her after all of this.

Emily glances over at Astra. For a split second she's tempted to offer her the reclamation unit ... but no, Emily's better at dodging. She can kind of sympathize, though.

As soon as Athena calls out, Emily nods and slips through a staticky portal, positioning herself to get a better angle for a team-up attack with Nort. Of course, she can still only do one thing with the reclamation unit, soooo: more zapping it at full blast!

    Lotus successfully rigs up the first lightning rod! With Luke watching her back she can stand in the rain without any worries. Also, it is raining now, just so you know. It's that awful kind of really fine rain that doesn't even feel like rain but which really seeps into you and gets you unpleasantly wet. Fine textured and irritating: just like the dust, really.

    She lands down next to Astra. "No, it's okay. Now that I think about it I don't really think I like it very much either. But I guess I have a duty towards it that I should fulfil, because even if it's ugly I don't think I could live with myself if it died."

    Time to string up a second and a third lightning rod!

    Trading out her weapon for a more focused slugthrower chips and cracks the outer shell of one of the nano entities as Athena opens up with some firepower of her own, and she successfully leads it out into Emily's sights. A solid hit with the reclamation unit causes it to seize up completely and spin around in place as if it's dizzy- another good hit should cause it to crack and become inanimate provided Nort can nail it. That'll only leave two!

    Scar snorts softly, "I hope you aren't doing this to be loved." He eyes the attackers the others are handling. "I'd help, but I don't know much about building this sort of thing." And he doesn't have hands, but that's probably less of a problem.

    Nort, meanwhile, catches on to what Athena is doing. "Right." The nano-reclamation unit is working well enough, and his micromissiles worked well enough. He has a limited number of those, but he does have a good alternative.

    Bright flashes of light fill the air as he unloads with both arms. Not the gamma bursts, but with a deadly pair of crackling, loud particle beams lancing toward it.

"That's why, I can't give up on Van Patissierie either! Home is still home no matter how bad things get!" Astra nods in agreement as she looks up at Lotus. Hopefully Scar's comment wasn't directed at her. The girl has enough guilt right now as it is.

Iron Lotus gives Scar a bit of a funny look, unsure for a moment if he's talking to her or to Astra. "I'm not," she says disarmingly, taking up the burden of answering Scar herself, but she hopes it didn't hurt Astra's feelings. That just wouldn't do! "Now's not the time to debate it though," she says as she starts rigging up the second- far more substantial- lightning rid.

    Proving he has more weapons than the lot of them would probably know what to do with, Nort takes advantage of the newly made crossfire to engage the nano entity with particle beams. The two beams bathe the entity in energy for a moment that causes it to vibrate and stumble in mid-air, before cracking and crashing to the ground. Silvery 'sand' begins to pour out of it and it remains thoroughly inanimate. That's one down and two to go!

    That worked. That's good, because it means Athena has a plan. "Looks like the classic divide and conquer works fine for these. Just keep the second one off those two, and we should be fine." That's the idea, anyway. The slugthrower worked for grabbing attention, but Athena is getting a little tired now, and a little slower. She hopes they can take this one down faster.

    She also hopes they don't recognize this plan. Snapping a few shots off, she tries the same tactic, but this time leads it toward some of those ruins, where she can grasp a metal rod for a melee weapon, and limit its maneuvering.

    Lightning ROD, that is, not lightning rid. I don't know what a lightning rid is. Although we are trying to get RID of the LIGHTNING, so I guess it works.

    The second of the three nano entities begins to once again emit that ear-jarring buzzing sound and chases Athena into the ruins, its sawblade-like covering spinning as it does so. Demonstrating just how dangerous it is, you will notice it carve chips out of the stone walls that it passes by or knocks its way into, proving that even someone like a goddess would be in for carnage if they were hit by it dead on! This nano entity is definitely going to make sure that this particular clump of atoms stops moving and stops disrupting it so much before disassembling it!

Emily raises both of her left arms in fists. "YEEHAW!" she crows. "Sit on it, metal ball!" She then points up into the air, and projects holographic text which looks almost exactly the same kind of ghostliness as her wings:

                Round 2                 
                 FIGHT!                 

She pauses. Hmm, looks like the second one's going after Athena. Certainly straightforward to deal with! She slips through a staticky portal, leading her right beside it -- directly opposite from Nort, in point of fact. "Think fast!" she shouts, before zapping it with the reclamation unit at point blank range!

    Nort has a lot of weapons, but the selection isn't as broad as it seems. Too many of them have limitations, and that's why the standy is his natural use of the gamma bursts. The blasters seem more effective than anything but the missiles, so he arms them and... leaps. REALLY leaps. It might even be called limited flight, but not as maneuverable as Emily. It's just a jet-assisted jump carrying him up so he can blast downward at the opening Emily provides him. "Not so fast."

    Scar shakes his head. "Nothing." He's a grumpy Wolverine! But he is keeping an eye out, and makes things harder for the probes by walking away from the others and invoking his aura of flame, the wolvering standing and just DARING the final one to come after him instead of the others.

Astra does her best to ignore the comment, there were more important things to worry about at the moment. The secound lightning rod is coming together nicely and one of balls was down, that was something to be happy about.

Now they're really on a hot streak!

    Now that Emily, Athena and Nort know what they're doing this second offense goes off much more smoothly than the first. Athena runs, Nort leaps and Emily teleports- the second two following up after the first one, and completely taking the nano entity by surprise. Well, if 'taken by surprise' can be used to explain these sort of things, anyway. 

    In any case, what happens when they engage point-blank is that the nano entity ends up with its shell pounded and even crushed, knocking the silvery stuffing out of it as if it were a squeezed tin can and sending it collapsing to the ground in a one-hit knockout!

    In fact, the effect is so devastating that the third one does in fact take note of it and begins to reconsider its current course of action, it's noticed that these clumps of atoms are being so resillient to demolecularization that it's going to have to try and take up something a little less dangerous. 

    That's why it goes right for Astra after all, and Scar has to move in to make with a sudden defence to continue to let Astra set up the second rod. Now she can move onto a third, while Lotus assembles a fourth using the last of the materials- but now their three blasters are all the way over there and they're under attack, so she has to do something as well! Running over to Scar, Lotus shouts "Hey! No fair going for the softest link on the chain!" and shapeshifts her hand into a heavy metallic gauntlet in a whir of shifting parts- aiming to spike the nano entity like a volleyball back towards Emily, Nort and Athena!

    Oh good, the guard 'dog' can finally get something to do! Teeth bare in a snarl, showing cybernetic jaw as well, but he leaps over to try to intercept and whips his head around. He doesn't get in the way of Lotus... but he can 'discourage' coming near by giving a dirty look. Or a very clean look, as it turns out. Lasers lance out from the eyes, because of course a wolverine with laser beam eyes is what Harlann would make.

    Nort lands and turns about, now that the one is disabled, only to see another heading for the others. "Switch it up. Athena you hit it while I distract it." That's the idea then. His beams disperse too fast to be quite as effective at range, so he's the one priming it this time when the twin cannons lance out.

    By combining Scar's impressive LASER EYES with Lotus' volleyball spike, the third nano entity is knocked off course.

    This allows Nort to cross some of the distance back over towards it, which means Lotus can get her bearings and make sure she can raise the fourth lightning rod. The nano entity careens off course and Nort is determined to make sure it stays off course, knocking it again and again with his cannons to keep it imbalanced. This might just do it!

Astra eeps a bit as the nano entity head towards her, maybe she should learn to defend herself if she's going to keep putting herself in danger like this. Thankfully Lotus manages to keep it off her as she manages to set up the second lightning rod and starts working on the next one. Still, she's not sure who she should ask for help, she's never made any kind of weapons before after all.

    Time to swap back to... no, not her rifle. Athena sees the final sphere wobble off-balance, and takes that as her cue. The long metal piece of rebar she scrounged up could be a lightning rod... but there are other uses. "I really should carry one of these..."

    The bar whips around in her hand as she runs forward, making a javalin hurl with a quick flick of the wrist. Being far more than human, and a specialist in the spear, this sends it hurtling toward the wobbling sphere with an incredible velocity, a streak of rusting brown hurtling on a deadly course.

That change of course certainly catches Emily's attention. "What?" she says. "Is it learning from its mistakes? Are they allowed to do that!?" Her tone is half-sarcastic, though. "Heh, this is way more fun than wrestling malfunctioning construction-bots in the halcyon remnant!"

She grins, and takes advantage of Nort's distraction. She opens another staticky portal. The other end ... is directly in front of Athena, timed so that the thrown "javelin" is already past by the time it opens. And the javelin is joined by another close-range blast from the reclamation unit!

    Well Astra, perhaps that's a question for next time...

    Trading duties off with impeccable skill, the trio of Nort, Athena and Emily run down and disable the sphere with expert timing. Athena uses the piece of rebar just like a javelin empowered by her divine abilities, and as soon as the bouncing ball stops moving it's expertly pinned against a tumbledown wall. Emily opens up a portal to douse it in energy from the reclamation unit, and the so-pinned nano entity sparks and cracks open in defeat, spilling its deactivated nanomachines down onto the ground! That's something that might be useful to pick up if anyone wanted to take samples for testing or some other use!

    Now that all of the lightning rods are set up it can take some of the pressure off of the storm that will be coming to Bonne Bon soon, helping the town live through another day. Now, however, the nanoprobes are definitely learning and they know that there is something opposing them, and perhaps they will learn from this and change, but who knows what will come of it for now. Needless to say, the situation in Bonne Bon is escalating...

    Perhaps it's time to go out and search for an ally.