Scene #2197: Gridlock'd!

Owner	Pose
Guest Brad	TREMORTON Peak hour. The sounds of honking horns and irate drivers fill the air as the sun slips low. People want to get home but, for some reason, they seem unable to. And it's not just because the daily commute grind is slow. It's ominously slow. Like someone - or something - has brought one of the major intersections of Tremorton to a halt. The reason is obvious as Elites, led there by Brad Carbunkle, arrive at the intersection, cars stretching in all directions. In the middle of the intersection, on a traffic island, there sits a vaguely humanoid robot, all big and boxy. Its head is a traffic light with four sets of lights, one on each side, and it's displaying a bright red STOP light in all directions. One might wonder why no one just /ignores/ the signal but, well, this is Tremorton. "I am Transitmaster!" The traffic light robot intones in a vaguely threatening monotone, "The master of transit! And no one may move without my say so!" Yeah. This is definitely Tremorton.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite just shakes her head a bit after getting an eyeful of the traffic bot and its antics. "There are just some jobs that maybe ain't so great for robots. It goes right to their processors." She pauses, remembering some of the people with them that may be robotic or closely associated to robots, and ducks her head down a little to adjust her hat. "No offense meant to present company, o'course."
Staren	Staren is in his armor, riding a... broom... yeah whatever, to follow Brad's flying armor as they're led to the scene of... whatever the heck is going on here. Tremorton, apparently. Tremorton is going on. Staren lands at a coener of the intersection and stuffs the broom away in his bag. "Uh... I, um..." Staren fumbles for words as he looks to Brad. "Brad do you want to try to reason with this thing or do we just blast it?" "How do you reason with a traffic light?" Brad answers. Staren shrugs. "Good enough for me." He holds his arms out towards the robot and fires. A half-dozen little missiles the size of magic markers launch from ports in his gauntlets, programmed to ram into the robot at high speed and explode inside -- or loop around and try again if they miss, or airburst if they don't have enough fuel left to try again.
Cory	As if misbehaving robots, traffic jams, and missiles weren't enough... A young woman, with a monkey tail, dressed in a torn-up, bright orange gi just sort of lands out of nowhere next to Staren and Bradly, boggling at the proceedings. "Any of you geniuses wanna .. fill me in? Why the fireworks? And traffic jam?"
Shigure	Shigure is here, somewhere, walking slowly along the street with her Rigging on her back, as if carrying a scaled Destroyer arsenal on her in plain view wasn't out of the ordinary. But then again, this is Tremorton, and the 'target' of this little Sortie is a traffic signal robot. She blinks a little, tilting her head as others simply go in to attack. "Why can we not talk to him..." she asks softly, her voice barely above a shy 'behind a hand' murmur. "I mean, violence is a path we can take..."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa had come here along with Corona to get a bite to eat and just chill out after most of the day was spent working on their shios. She had thought this world seemd quiet enough and seen some good reviews of the place she's suggest she looked to Corona with a bit of a face. "Cyborg and ... putting osmething that can reason on a mind numbing job without pay and not by choice? I'd be pretty mad too."
Guest Brad	Brad nods to Cory. "Oh, it's simple. The traffic light robot went crazy and thinks it's a wizard with control over time and space and Jenny said I can handle it, so, I'm going to handle it." He says this all very quickly and with a perfectly straight face. A volley of missiles streak from Staren's gauntlets, and the diabolical Transitmaster turns one of his traffic light 'faces' in the direction of them. The light flashes red and... Some of the missiles just stop, suspended in mid-air. The rest hit their target, detonating on impact, and send the traffic light robot stumbling backwards. "Who dares move against my commands?" The robot seethes, and deploys a plasma cannon from its left hand. Hang on, what? A few bright blasts of blue energy get volleyed in the direction of the Elites! A few drivers go 'ooh' and snap photos.
Shigure	Shigure hmms, then erks a little as plasma comes flying her way. She unhitches her Cannon-fa, and crosses them in front of her to brace against the blast. She frowns mildly as the smoke clears, then steps slowly forward. "Excuse me? Mister Transitmaster?" she asks, voice soft, likely entirely drowned out by the noise around. "Can I ask you something, please?"
Corona Arclite	Oh snap, the thing was firing on them. Corona reacts with the same quick reflexs that save her tail many times on the defense field. She jumps. And then jumps again, thanks to the steam-jets afixed to her boots in place of spurs, landing on a nearby rooftop in a crouch. "Some bot's gettin' a bit too big fer his britches." Hmm. Just unloading her shotgun out here might be too dangerous, what with all the cars and folks around. So instead she pulls out her rivet revolver, spinning the loaded cylinder into place with the other hand and flicking off the safety to activate the firing mechanism. But seeing Shigure going to try and negotiate first, she holds her fire for the moment. But as soon as that robo-hooligan makes the wrong move...
Cory	"IS THIS A JOKE?!" RED LIGHTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY. Cory's been raised on Earth she is PRETTY SURE red lights are not supposed to work that way. So it's no surprise that she's gaping at MIDAIR HOVERING MISSILES. Just... staring DUMBLY. At least until the plasma cannon comes out... "GAH!" Then she recoils back a step or two and wraps her tail tightly 'round her waist. With a cracka-THOOM white ki swirls around her, cracking the pavement. Somehow or another this enables her to SLAP AWAY the plasma shots aimed her way, redirecting them into the street and sidewalk. Maybe a few parking meters. Nothing terribly important or expensive. Or populated. "Well.. you DID shoot first."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa has not taken hostile just yuet either as she looked at the traffic light robot. She's got a few ideas at this poing as she moves to open up an wireless connection to see if she can contact the bot. Then comes Staren and he's already guns blazing with a flight of missiles in civilian area. Slight facial tick, however she's focusing on trying to digitally say hello to the traffic bot. <<Greetings Lord of Traffic, Might I speak to you...> "... It's going to be one of those days."
Staren	The stoplight turns on, and some of Staren's missiles stop. Staren sighs. But he's seen too much weirdness after eight years in the Multiverse to be flabbergasted at a traffic light stopping time. He starts running to the side, circling the traffic-bot, just in time to dodge the plasma blasts Reflexively he returns fire with his own particle beams, but he wonders if... this traffic bot is so weird, maybe the thing that never works will? "...What do you /want/, traffic bot? There's got to be more to life than making people wait around, right?"
Richard Stadler	The very nicest thing about being in the military in a situation like this was that, when a humvee was using the side walk or the shoulder of a road to get places past a traffic jam, no one looked the other way. Or, if they /did/, and decided to honk at you for being the bad guy in this situation, the soldier in the ring mount manning the M2 on top of the vehicle could simply stare at him for a good five seconds before they decided that honking was a bad idea. And they only had to do it, at least, three times. When the vehicle finally makes it to the traffic island, Stadler adjusts his glasses slightly, makes sure his body armor is properly velcroed, and then steps out with two other soldiers, both with M4s. Before whistling at Brad. "Are we in the shooting phase, or the talking phase?"
Guest Brad	Transitmaster turns to look at Shigure. He's quite big, as it turns out, and he lowers himself to be closer to her. "You may speak, for I am a benevolent wizard," he says, turning a red light to stop some of the parking meters sent airborne by Cory's blasts into, well, some sort of stasis. He turns to 'look' at Kotone. "You may speak. You may all speak. I will allow thirty seconds for speaking. There is nothing more to life than stopping and going. This conversation will stop when I decree." Brad idly shrugs at Stadler. "We /were/ shooting, now we're talking, and I just kind of want to skip to the ice-cream phase." Meanwhile, various Tremorton people are taking photos of the various Elites. Well, not of Brad, but of everyone else!
Shigure	Shigure mms softly, looking up at the robot. "If all there is to life is stopping and going... why do you not allow these people to experience the whole of life, instead of forcing them only to experience one half of the whole of life?" she asks softly. "If someone came and only let you do one half of life, telling you the other half exists but never letting you experience it... would you feel fulfilled, or hollow and empty inside?"
Staren	Staren thinks this machine is insane and needs to be destroyed, but maybe someone'll hgave a good idea... Shigure does. Sounds convincing enough. He'll wait and see if that works.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite is staying on her roof perch with her gun pointed at the traffic wizard (or whatever) and a finger on the trigger, just waiting for him to make a move other than talking it out with the others. Wisely she keeps her own mouth shut, because this probably isn't a good time for being sassy. She does, however, pull her goggles up over her eyes, just to be on the safe side.
Cory	"Buh--" This just gets more staring from Cory. Staring... then eventually blinking. "O...kay..." Freaky indeed. She takes yet another step back while Shigure goes up to bat, and ends up folding her arms. This looks like a very painful manuever on her part, given she's covered in wounds, but she does it regardless...
Richard Stadler	Richard Stadlerwhistles once, raising his hand to the man on the M2 mount in the vehicle he arrived in. The soldier pulls up the barrel just slightly, to clear the robot's line of fire. Rick's troopers keep their rifles lowered to the ground, themselves, but they do spread out to either side, to make sure both of them are able to cover the area... if things go hot again. "Ice cream phase? Please tell me you've been doing a little PT while you've been gone." Stadler says, before sighing, and looking over to the robot. "If life is stopping and going, I just see stopping. ANd making sure all these cars are stopped means the traffic lights before you can't tell them when to go. And even if you told these cars when to go, the cars behind them wouldn't know for however many minutes! And, speaking as a commuter who's gotten stuck in an exit lane because one of you people lose power, I might ask that you start doing what you've said you're going to do. /Please/. People are going to start taking the shoulder soon, and that means we're stuck here for hours afterward."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa bows politely, there's no harm in not being rude even if the bot is deulsional it's showing respect, right? She listens for a moment and repliues "Thank you." She's not sure why she's trying to talk first maybe it's out of sympathy for the thing, if it had become aware? She can see why it flipped it's hard drive. So she's going to try. "So why are you lashing out? Is it due to the rules of the road not being obeyed or that your unhappy with you function that you had no choice over?" She listens to Brad and sees Corona is styaing her hand for now. she's also keeping an eye some of the other rrivals as it seems some more heavy hitters arrive but tho the heck is Rick and his people?
Guest Brad	Transitmaster listens, for thirty seconds. The moment that second ticks over, he brings himself up to his full ten-or-so feet of height and fixes some of the Elites with his bright red traffic light gaze. "Stop," he says to Shigure, and then to Stadler and then to Kotone, bathing them both in red light! It's so still and quiet and, for a moment, everything just /stops/ for the Elites. It passes, however - maybe it only works on inanimate objects? They'll need to get moving quickly because Transitmaster, perhaps seeing his mystical powers fail, is opening up with his plasma cannons at each Elite! Pew-pew-pew! Brad launches forward, and right hooks Transitmaster with a powerful blow. He gets promptly 'stopped'.
Corona Arclite	And as soon as Transitmaster pulls his trickery again, Corona snaps off a shot from her 'revolver'. Which actually fires rivets. Small sharp rivets at high velocity for puncturing armor and other durable materials. That and hopefully they'll be too small and fast for Transitmaster to pull his stoplight trickery on, especially when he's got all the other Elites up close to him to deal with! Then the vixen ducks again, just barely evading the plasma shot flung up at her. But not fast enough as the shot knocks her hat off her head! But at least it didn't knock her head off! "Now that's just fightin' dirty!" she protest as she crouchs reachs over and grabs said singed hat to put it back on.
Cory	"...." And the Saiyan girl who's watching all this just ends up jawdropping. "... he really CAN stop things. HOW?" But she does deduce what's going on soon enough. Instead of taking a step, Cory rolls up both her sleeves, exposing... nope, NOT bare arms. She's wearing a half-dozen blue bands all the way up each arm. these she starts sliding off past her wrists... they hit the ground - THUMP THUMP THUMP. Each hits like a sack of bricks, eventually cracking pavement. Then she carefully reaches inside her gi, futzes with other things... and starts pulling out belts of the same blue material, unwrapping them from around her body. these she drops too. THUNK THUNK CRUNCH. Lastly she reaches into both pant legs and unclips something else. Under-leggings slam to the ground, and she steps gingerly out of them with a new, wicked grin to offer transitmaster. "That trick of yours doesn't seem to work on flesh one bit..." Down she drops into a combat stance, tail unwrapping from her waist and twitching at the air.
Shigure	Shigure blinks as her words are, essentially, ignored. When she's 'Stopped', it takes a little longer to shake off than the others, perhaps due to her nature. With a shudder, she finally shakes off the effect, unhooks her Cannon-fa, and frowns. "I wanted to end this peacefully." she says, sounding disappointed. She shifts her grip, and fires a blank to accelerate a 'punch' at the robot, while turning her other cannon to fire an actual shell, adding to the torque spin of her punch, while also trying to pierce a high explosive shell into the Robot's inner workings.
Staren	People talk. Transitmaster doesn't respond. Staren reaches into his bag, draws weapons, futzes with magazines. Transitmaster resumes hostilities, freezes Brad. Note to self, Staren thinks, don't let your gear physically touch it. Staren fires the arm-mounted particle beams and runs over to Richard and his men. "Presents for you." He holds out a big and a small rocket launcher (designed to look and be used similarly to a rifle and a pistol, respectively.) Aaand Cory undresses. Well, not really. But when he hears how much weighted clothing she was wearing, moving around like that... he's surprised! But not enough to be distracted from the battle.
Richard Stadler	As things freeze for just a moment. Richard is forced to pause. His men are forced to pause. And after that, his one humvee's driver has a very good sense to slam the car into reverse, and make a large circle around the traffic island, trying to avoid the blasts of plasma (that tend to explode vehicles easily enough, if this was anything like /other/ plasma bolts). Rick and his men dive out of the wait of the shots as well, Rick's own people bringing up their rifles and firing at the robot. Stadler reaches a hand out to grab the rocket launcher, examining it for a bit. "Somehow, I don't think this will be as effective as I want it to be." He notes, before shrugging and raising it up (from behind a stopped car with no one inside. He's not /crazy/). There's a /whoos/ of a rocket being fired, blast back directed to the asphalt behind him.
Guest Brad	Corono's rivet revolver puts a series of holes in Transitmaster, sparks flying. "How dare you! I'll see you sent to the time dungeon for this insolence! And you, naked monkey woman - how dare you come before me with no clothes on!" Shigure's shell punches right into Transitmaster's chest, detonating with an impressive flash. Bits of robot go flying across the highway, bouncing off cars. He slaps at Shigure with a giant metal hand, and the impact might send her flying. And then Stadler blasts him with a rocket, sending Transmitmaster tumbling down into a store front. The people of Tremorton cheer but, when the smoke clears, Transmitmaster is still standing. He might be missing an arm and one of his traffic light faces, but he's still ready for battle. The green light flashes. "Go." And the debris from the shattered storefront explodes outwards, towards the Elites!
Cory	"Who are you calling--" FWOOOOOOOOSH!!! In Cory goes, aiming a punch for Transitmaster's... well, main body? "Naked?!" The movement's so fast, it may not be possible to really see her go from 'sidewalk' to 'right there in Transitmaster's face.' Should the punch hit, the road's likely to crack like a spiderweb and the impact kicks up a gust of wind that's easy enough to feel!
Shigure	Shigure is indeed slapped aside, off balance as she is mid-spin, she bounces across the tarmac, into an abandoned car, smashing the windscreen in and buckling the suspension under the... rather deceptive weight of her Rigging. She shakes her head, but has the presence of mind to roll off the side of the car, and hide behind it as that debris comes rushing out. The Destroyer pops up, aiming with one of her Cannon-fa... but holds fire as Cory gets right in close. Relating over the tactical band, the Destroyer just sights and dails in the robot, aiming for a pin-point strike when the opportunity presents itself.
Staren	"The Time Dungeon?" Staren echoes. "Um, she's still wearing clothes." Transitmaster is blasted into a storefront. "Yes!" Staren pumps a fist in victory. And then... Go. Debris flies into him. A translucent amber sphere of force surrounds him, cracked and chipped where the debris hits it. "Rrrgh..." And... Cory rushes into melee despite the risk of getting frozen. Well, he /does/ have a laser sniper rifle. He takes aim, flips the fire selector to burstfire, and fires as soon as the reticle is over Transitmaster and not Cory.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa :looks to the Trainsit master she hoeps for a moment and she does end up stopping she can't move she's not dead but nothing it only lasts for a little bit but it was a very unexpected experiance.. Okay there goes the chance for talking things out. Okay if that's how it wanted to handle thins fight she's got few other ways than direct fighting it's time to do something a little more darring the conneciton is still active, she makes sure her defence barriers and firewalls are up. Even as the otehr fightS? she's now trying to hack into it nad either shut it down or put it into some sort of sleep mode. "You should learn to play nice..." Then everything goes and she's caught up in the blast from the explosion and it's not exactly pretty a chuck of wreckage has impaled Kotone through her stomach, she's still standing however and looking pretty pained... "Now you have ... made me mad."
Richard Stadler	As the debries slam around them, Stadler is right behind the car again. The humvee itself was hit when attempting to mak a turn, knocking one of it's front wheels out, making it a somewhat immobile gun turret... that's being used, as the M2 gunner takes the now-steady vehicle as a good time to hold down the butterfly trigger and punch large machine gun rounds toward the robot. Stadler throws the now empty launcher across the ground, back toward Staren. "Thanks for the one shot!" He yells, before bringing up a hand signals to the now three infantrymen on the field (the driver dragged limping over to the cover of a pick up truck with the rest. "Lights! Lights!" He yells, before popping out of cover and attempting to aim for the actual traffic lights on the robots face, followed with the rest of his men.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite was just about to jump down to the street too, when a chunk of debris smacks into her and knocks her over. "Now that's just plain unfair!" Dirty bugger can make things remove again too. That's cheating. With a huff she gets back up, shaking herself off. That wallop is going to leave some bruising, but she'll manage... and she's got an idea. "I wonder..." She hops to the edge of the roof top and jumps down as she originally intended, holtering the revolver. Instead she pulls out what looks like some kind of steampunk super soaker. "I reckon it's time fer ya to go COLOR BLIND." She fires the Terminal Viscosity with much the same intention as Stadler's men, trying to cover some of the lights in the greasy goo.
Staren	Thanks for the one shot! Staren turns and looks at Stadler, then facepalms. "It has six..." well, it did have a weird futuristic design. The magazine might not have been obvious.
Guest Brad	Bam! Cory's fist slams right into Transitmaster's head, leaving a sizable dent there. A yellow light shatters into fragments of glass - wonder what yellow does? Well, a quick burst of green light makes it feel like gravity just got redirected behind Cory, and she might just go flying backwards for a few seconds! Staren's laser rifle puts a neat series of smoking holes through Transitmaster's torso plating, sending him to his knees, one hand held over the points of damage. To make matters worse, Corona and Stadler are just popping the rest of the lights on his various faces! "Alas," Transitmaster laments, falling onto his hands and feet, sparks flying from the various broken lights on his head. "I am slain! You have undone my ultimate worrrr-r-kkkzzzzzzzzzz..." Static. Picking through the remnants of his programming, Kotone might pick up that, well, he was a traffic light automated system - strangely, the plasma cannons are standard-issue on that model. Weird. Oh, and Kotone might see that he's not out of power just let! He's playing possum!
Shigure	Shigure has fought enough Abyssals to not trust a foe to go down so easily. SHe holds her position, ready to lay down a barrage from her 12.7cm main guns, and the smaller 10cm secondaries, should it turn out to be a trick.
Richard Stadler	Rick's men stop firing for the moment, once the target goes down, the soldiers and the gunner look toward the commander, who tilts his helmet up a bit, looking at the target. Before turning his head, and walking over to the slide over launcher. "You said six? Huh." He says, looking it over, adjusting it a bit. "See, that's why most weapons have pictograms." He says, moving back to the previous position. "Easy to tell how to operate it without having to /know/ how it operates. It helps, certainly. Not as much as reading a manual, but you know sometimes it's hard to find the time." And with that, the weapon is up and the remaining five rounds are unloaded one by one into the robot's tilted over body, with his men and the M2 joining in shortly after.
Cory	"Wh-whaooogh!" With others opening up with a few distance weapons and Cory landing her one VENGEANCE PUNCH, she has no reason to stick around up close. But... instead of leaving on her own she ends up seemingly blown backwards and sent crashing through a store window, flailing precariously and probably knocking over a few shelves by the horrible CLATTER her landing makes. Noisy enough to be heard just outside...
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite twirls the spraygun around her fingers much like a gunslinger would. "Welp, now the folks can go back to just complainin' about traffic, since we actually did somethin' 'bout the lunatic." Unfortunately she's not so familiar with robots as she is other machines, so she doesn't pick up on the potential possum playing.
Staren	"...Well, that was weird." comments Staren as it goes down. He walks up to investigate... Richard comments on his gun. He turns and shrugs, "Sorry, it's meant to be used with a heads-up display, it's my personal spare not-- woah!" He dives for cover. The mini-missiles' blast radius is small, but what if the robot explodes or something? He has no idea if it will.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa pauses for a moment and there's a look of anger on her face. She's holding the jagged wreckage that' impaled her it's not fun, she's had to turn off her tactical senors entirely to function. Which means she could take worse damage and not notice or push her harder. She does see he's faking and however attempts to force a shut down anyway of the crazy robot. "It's playing dead!" She calls out as a warning and fluid which is read but smells nothing like blood is leaking out of the wound.
Guest Brad	At the same time that Stadler just pours firepower into Transitmaster's body, the robot's head /pops off like a cork/ and blasts off into the air. "Time is a constant, fools!" the robot gloats, the head vanishing off into the distance. It doesn't explode though, so, Staren might feel a bit reassured. But still! The Multiverse hasn't seen the last of Transmitmaster by the looks of things! Meanwhile, Brad is still suspended in mid-air. As the last bit of power drains from the robot's broken body, he is unceremonously sent to slam into the ground. "Oof."
Staren	"I, uh..." Staren starts, as the head blasts off. He grabs the largest part of the robot's body and drags it back towards Brad. "...You okay? What do we do with this thing? I mean... I'd like to look at it, but if Dr. Wakeman has dibs..."
Richard Stadler	Richard Stadler watches as the head flies off the body, then tosses the rocket launcher back over to Staren as he hides in cover. "Next time, I'd wait for a ceasefire." He says, pausing for a moment, before whistling loudly. "Cease fire, cease fire!" Hey, practice what you preach. The gunfire tapers off, and the soldiers move cautiously toward the robot. "I assume that it can't fight without a head?" He says, looking over to Kotone, and then to Brad when he drops down to the ground. "Also, I'm not a physist, but I thought the speed of light was a constant, and time was the varible."
Staren	Staren shrugs to Richard. "According to relativity, yeah, but in some parts of the universe, who knows? That said, I wouldn't take anything that robot said too seriously. It was clearly messed up."
Cory	Cory emerges from the store she just got hurled through, brushing off glass shards and what looks like lots of school supplies. Papers, pencils, notebooks, the works. But now she's SCOWLING. "Alright, now I'm pissed!" But even as she steps out she sees the thing rocketing off... this leaves her just folding her arms under her chest, retaining the sour expression and bundling up INDIGNATION.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite cranes her head back. "... Well that's a thing that just happened..."
Corona Arclite	While everyone else is trying to sort out just what happened Corona trots over to help Kotone with her little problem. "Y'know, this ain't what they mean by sayin' ya get shafted."
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa says "That stupid thing had a plasma canon in /standard/" She's gripping the wounda and debaing does she pull it out now or does she leave it in . She staggers a bit. she looks at Corona and says "...and it's not even the fun...way...We need to get me back to the ship. Rory's going to have a fit over there..."
Corona Arclite	"Better to leave that in 'til we do, it's stoppin' some of the... ah... bleedin'." Corona's not quite sure if that's the phrase she should still use, but 'leaking' just sounds too objectifying.
Kotone Yamakawa	Looks abit pained as she looks to Corona and nods. "I hate to say it your right. God this ... is freaky." She looks down at it as she starts to hobble off with Corona's help. "I could make a pun about this but ... I think it might hurt more..."