Scene #3308: Changing of the Guardian

Owner	Pose
Septette Arcubielle	These caverns, once full of splendor and natural savagery, are etched deeply with the marks of the Abyssal War. Fires sparked by the antediluvian clash still burn through the deep coal veins, filling the grotto with a mephitic haze; strange crystalline trees grow over open pools of magma; wild beasts corrupted by the Deep Ones' magic lurk in its dark corners. This place was the last line of defense between the vulnerable Deep City and its assailants, and many times it was the only line that held. Those days are over now, but at the heart of the Fiery Grotto there is a sentinel that will not- and cannot- end its vigil. The enormous Gatekeeper is one of the few surviving instances of Yggdrasil's unearthly magitech engineering, and certainly the most ambitious to have weathered the centuries. Septette freely distributed the few details on its construction she could dig up: if her sources are reliable, it operates on the same basic principles as a yggdroid, but massively scaled up and with a decentralized anatomy. The Gatekeeper's body contains many valuable components, including quick-discharge magical capacitors, highly efficient self-repair systems, and heavy armor plating of bizarre (though evidently effective) composition. Everyone who pitches in will get a share of the salvage, but if mishandled, the Gatekeeper's self-destruct mechanisms could make it slag itself. Fortunately, the little robot girl has a plan for that.
Septette Arcubielle	Despite the rivers of magma flowing through it, the air of the Fiery Grotto is safe to breathe and refreshingly cool: the byproduct of an ancient enchantment placed on the caverns to make them traversable. Septette waits in the antechamber for the rest of the party to arrive; the short walk to her location from the teleporter beacon has been conveniently cleared of monsters, and not coincidentally marked with a distinct trail of blood as well. She greets the other Flotilla members with a smile and a nod or handshake after carefully cleaning her hands of viscera, and speaks up once they're all assembled. "As you may have been able to tell from the blueprints, the Gatekeeper is a composite of several independently-animated segments and can split apart or recombine as the situation demands," she says, gesturing at a print copy of the automaton's basic schematics. "Like most of Yggdrasil's creations, it was also built with a self-destruct mechanism to prevent it falling into the enemy's hands. It wouldn't bring the cavern down on us should it activate, but it would destroy all of its more delicate, valuable components. Fortunately, these two properties together created a minor design flaw that we can use to bring it down safely." "The Gatekeeper relies on specific enchantments for self-diagnostics and transmitting information between its body segments. We can exploit that by waiting for it to disassemble itself, then distorting the local mana flow in specific patterns to prevent its parts from communicating effectively," Septette continues, and taps specific locations in each of its segments with a bladed fingertip. "Each portion contains its own self-destruct charge, which would normally trigger once the other segments are severely damaged. With this exploit, we can delay the self-destruct signal's propagation by several seconds after one segment is destroyed, giving you a narrow window in which to disable the other parts as well." Finally, she straightens up, folds her hands behind her back, and frowns slightly. "Due to our common origin, the Gatekeeper and I are keenly aware of one another's weaknesses and flaws. I haven't gone after it before now as a result, due to the high likelihood of a mutual-kill scenario. I will take responsibility for disabling its self-destruct mechanism, but will leave most of the actual fighting to you: your capabilities are completely unknown to it, and it's much less likely to be able to adjust its tactics to you." After taking a moment to allow all that to sink in, Arcubielle turns around and presses her hands on the enormous red stone double doors behind her. "Everyone ready?"
Alexis Maaka	Batteries charged and checked, ammo magazines loaded, Alexis Maaka slams the power back home on her coilgun. The weapon has been upgraded with technology from Zwei, as mentioned well before, able to boost power output well beyond the normal threshold. Without her cybernetics, the weapon would be useless to the average soldier as a standard issue battle rifle, but in Alexis' hands it's a mean tool in her arsenal. She affixes a smart-fire grenade launcher to the underside, linking its target software with her own, before loading an HE warhead. She slings the weapon, checking her Type 40 Kama pistol. AP Sabot rounds are loaded and chambered, and she nods to Septette just as her helmet folds into place. The volcanic heat won't be bothering her with EVO modules affixed to her suit, and she has little to add to the briefing beyond a terse, "Let's get this hunt over with." No-nonsense as always, she approaches the doors with her EM-GASH in hand, ready for the worst.
Starbound Flotilla	The STARBOUND FLOTILLA are here, in their standard Durasteel exploration equipment! Moonfin, the fishman, is in elaborate full-body durasteel armor that looks like a powered cross between a diving suit and a samurai's armor, glowing cyan at the faceplate. Biteblade, the humanoid plant, is in durasteel plating with elaborately carved wood and bone ornaments over glowing powered components that glow an intense green. Pavo the bird-girl wears a pirate-aesthetic set of mesoamerican-style armor, with yellow bands of energized fabric linking the pieces and powering them. Albert the monkey-man is wearing elaborate dystopian commando armor reconstructed with a 'rebel spy' aesthetic: A sleeker faceplate, a slimmer form, and a more chaotic design that integrates thin, resilient plates of durasteel, and lines of bright white. George (just plain human) wears a set of futuristic EVA-combat and exploration armor in a suit that glows a gentle red at the faceplate. Seft, the robotic Flotilla member, is wearing full-on medieval knight armor with a soft energized blue glow below the plates on her body, and especially around the eyes. Each has a heavy industrial-yellow two-pronged plasma-cutter-like tool strapped to their side, a Matter Manipulator. "Floran underssstand! Hunt each piece, only few sssecond between each ssstab." "Timing. Mh. I'll keep the squad synchronized." "Aye, lass, we hear ye. Keep mobile, aye?" "Mobility, that our Core Fleet might reconfigure just as it does. We can do that." "Assuring. I promise we won't let you down, Septette." "Hear ya loud and clear, Bones. You do the disrupt, we'll take the power out on each of 'em in sync. I'll plant bombs if the other dudes can crack the armor enough, think that'll work?" The whole group seems ready to go, not drawing their weapons yet but prepared to begin their combat! They've got their Nanoskins on to deal with what little heat might be there, they've got their mobility tech to avoid the lava, they've got their weapons in their Matter Manipulators, and they're already in a well-rehearsed tactical formation.
Kyra Hyral	Given that the last time Septette took an expedition to her world to hunt she returned with samples of a four-dimensional being, Kyra was very interested in further exploration. She had listened with interest when Septette described the Guardian and the potential technology that could be harvested from it. Kyra has come loaded though thanks to her new Matter Manipulator she's carrying, it actually appears she's burdened with less than usual. Strapped across her back is the CURE-ALL, an alchemized weapon capable of dropping blasts of healing energy on large areas. Dangling from in front of her is a Galiandan hunting rifle loaded with buff-carrying darts. "I have some antimagic...it might be able to disrupt the pieces for a few more seconds and buy us even more time to disable the parts before the self destruct.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa's halloween had got demoned pretty hard but here she was on an outing with Septette, Alexis, Kyra and core fleet. She was aware of the magma and she was lucky given her form she had a better tolerance for heat but that didn't seem to be needed she looked out at the place and listne to Sepette. "I get it so we need to figure out how to deal with that I'm afraid my hacking is useless against stuff like this. The last time I tried I got brain fried for a bit." She makes a face at Septette but she's clearly listening. "I got it we keep it busy while you disable it's means to self terminate, I'm ready." E She's got her SMG and pistol on her, she's also got the Rocket Launcher Albert gave her sometime ago from the Holo-Zombie incident.
Septette Arcubielle	Septette gives her teammates' equipment an approving glance, but doesn't scrutinize it too terribly closely: appearances are deceiving in the Multiverse as often as not, and she'll get a better idea of their capabilities during the battle anyway. "Thinking of it as a 'hunt' makes it seem too one-sided, Maaka," she chides out of concern. "That is a dangerous frame of mind to get into. This is a battle, and nothing less." After a fraction of a second of consideration, she nods to George: "That sounds like a solid strategy, yes. The explosives probably won't finish it off until the armor plating is heavily damaged. And don't worry, Seft- it's delightful just to have friends along. You'd have to be actively trying to let me down!" She flashes the Glitch a wide grin. "Kyra, that would likely work quite well, but you may wish to use your anti-magical effects in order to dampen its attacks instead." Septette gives Kotone a firm nod, then throws the doors to the Gatekeeper's chamber open! The great automaton stands at the far end of a room with a shattered rock floor and rough-hewn walls. Great needle-like crystals of rutile grow here, diffracting the light; there are no artificial light sources here besides the Gatekeeper's enormous red core, but the walls glow softly with enormous heat, suffusing the chamber with an eerie illumination. The Gatekeeper takes milliseconds to register the intruders' presence and snap to attention, flexing its oversized hands. Its hollow, cannon-like fingers crackle with stored energy, and it reaches up to grab its razor-sharp, disclike pauldrons. With deceptive speed, it hurls them down the room, and they embed on the walls on either side of the door. Then it sinks into a fighting stance, looking almost like an enormous wrestler. The grooves on its armor coruscate with magical energy as it speaks in a voice with the timbre of a venomous whisper. "So, traitor. You finally came."
Alexis Maaka	A snort. Back home, 'hunting' tended to be going after outstanding bounties on mercenaries and other assorted war criminals, usually those hyper-augmented as literal killing machines beyond compare. Alexis has been on both sides, and she just grunts in annoyance ."You haven't seen the hunts I've been on before." Alexis mutters, before she begins to move through the doors and into the chamber itself. Coilgun raised, she sights down the large Gatekeeper through her optic sights before she notices it's activated. "And it's awake, open fire!" Her battle rifle barks out hyper-velocity slugs downrange at the Gatekeeper, pausing only to ask Septette, "Friend of yours?" before she goes back to work on engaging the target itself. It's a miracle those discs didn't hit /them/, or this would be a short and embarassing mission all around.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa didn't think this was a hunt. "I don't see it that way this is a combat unit that surived who knows long fighting and is stil intact enough to be a threat. This if a flat out fight here." Septette's comment to Seft make her feel a lot better about her self she's ready with the launcher now as she helft it off her back as they enter into the chamber. She looks it over getting a good feel for it and pauses at the mention of Sepette being a traitor. "WAit what? Traitor?!" She's got her wepaon ready to move but she does wonder just what's going on here now what did it mena by that? Also it's attack does get her quite put off base before she gets ready to fire she's very much thankful they did not get hit by the discs. She brings the rocket launcher up and makes ready to fire she just needs to get a clear shot.
Kyra Hyral	"The antimagic works best against applied effects such as enchantments, actually." Kyra explains about her particular brand of magic. "Once a spell like Fire is cast, Dispell usually can't do anything about it. I can, however, place buffs upon you that will reduce the amount of damage a cast spell will do. Don't worry! I'll take care of boths. In fact, if the more biological members here would take a moment to take one of these-" Kyra suddenly has syringes in her hand. "This is a chemical version of the Shell. For you and Seft, I can cast it on you directly." And before they actually confront the automation, Kyra takes a moment to do so to protect Septette and Seft. After that, Kyra sets up the livestreaming camera she usually wears before following the rest in the back of the group. The red glow around the circular apature of the lense indicates that the camera is currently on and recording-though it's impossible to tell if it is actually being streamed to the internet or if Kyra is just recording this fight for her own benefits. Once they finally see the Gatekeeper activate, Kyra jumps about a foot in the air when it throws those pauldrons. After she recovers, she discretely Scans the pauldrons embedded in the wall for two major reasons: One, to see if they're going to self destruct on them like the other parts of the Gatekeeper. Two, to get a better idea of the magical power flows in the Gatekeeper so she can more accurately disrupt them later.
Starbound Flotilla	"Concerned. It speaks. It is... Not mindless." "Or it be chatbot. Either way, ye kill it for the loot." "Unlikely to be a 'chatbot'. No elegance in a false sentience." "Huh. Traitor? Maybe isss why..." "Why you get along with Septette, George." "Fuck off, monkeyman. Focus on the op, right?" "Hmph. Squad, advance." And off they go, dashing forward. Or at least, most do! While Moonfin, Biteblade, Pavo, and George advance on the Gatekeeper himself, trying to close the distance to melee range, Seft and Albert hang back. Albert, for his part, attempts to cover the advance by firing off several smoke grenades from his grenade launcher, bursting on the path betweem the attackers and the gatekeeper to cover an advance, and Seft... Looks like she's about to start scanning, but then sees Kyra has it covered. She gives a quick nod, and a friendly, grateful expression, ^_^, before she's dashing off as well, light armor clanking as she zips through the smoke, leaving trails of afterimages in energy. "Sorry, big guy, no grudge, but we work for Bones over there!" "You, biggessst, ssstrong prey! Floran not hate, but ssstab anyway!" "Ye dog, ye best know the war be over, nobody left to betray!" "I'm sure you've had enough inform you of such. We will bring rest more directly. Your vigil has stretched long enough. Allow it to end, Gatekeeper." "Disturbed. Gatekeeper, we won't betray Septette, but we want to know what you mean. 'Traitor'? What is wrong?" As ever, the Starbound Flotilla don't hold a grudge or dehumanize their enemy, despite advancing with the intent to mercilessly strike.
Septette Arcubielle	The Gatekeeper remains rooted to the spot for now- an easy target for heavy munitions. Maaka's rounds easily find their mark: some punture its shoulders or neck joints, causing it to 'bleed' a black, tar-like substance, while those that strike its chestplate largely bounce off. Rather than retaliate, it flexes its fingers to ensure that everything is still functioning, and stares at her with a mixture of disdain and curiosity in its eyes. Kyra's scans show that its segments independently produce enough energy for movement, though its glowing red core provides most of the energy for more overt applications of magical force. The pauldrons appear to be capable of self-destructing, but aren't primed for it at the moment; however, even as she scans them, another enchantment's energy abruptly spikes as it activates. That gives her just a moment of warning before a massive electrical discharge arcs between the two discs, and the bolt twists itself into a flattened barrier of plasma that blocks the doorway behind them. Septette had been uncharacteristically taking the rear-guard thus far, but before the barrier can fully block the doorway she dives through, just barely sliding under the plasma web. If her taking pains to avoid it is any indication, it must be extraordinarily hazardous. A shift in the golem's energy flow would swiftly become apparent to both Kyra and Septette: something in its torso is building up an astonishing magical charge very quickly, and channeling that energy into its hands! "Captains! Pull back!" Before Arcubielle can elaborate, the Gatekeeper spreads out its fingers; each one fires a concentrated beam of non-elemental magical energy that gouges deeply into the rock walls. Due to the smoke grenades, the sweeping beams aren't particularly well-aimed, but even the shards of stone that they blast from the room's walls and floor carry enough kinetic energy to pierce armor. The furrows that they carve into the stone are easily several feet deep, even where the beams only grazed. Fortunately, the Gatekeeper can't keep up an assault like that for long: after only a few seconds, the beams die down and steam rises from the joints on its fingers and arms. "It does not matter that the Abyssal God is dead," the Gatekeeper replies over the din of battle. "This is my post. This is my function. Why do you think any of us were made?" It scoffs as the haze begins to clear, dull red eyes glaring down through the smoke. "She became a traitor the day she raised a hand against Yggdrasil's children. It was YOU the last time, wasn't it?" As it switches to addressing Septette directly, its voice drips with disdain and venom again. She replies only with an icy stare.
Zwei	The corridor to the rear rumbles with a familiar, whining roar, staying at a strangely consistent volume as the intensity lowers in equal measure with the closing distance. Hopefully nobody is standing too close to the door, because even with the current enchantments, the backwash of heat is highly unpleasant as Asche plants his feet and skids into the room centimeters ahead of the closing plasma barrier, bracing into a wide stance as his support talons rake through the crystal and rock and the shimmering haze behind him dissipates. "At this point, I must reiterate Weiss. Your obsession with unannounced visits to deep catacombs of mysterious technological origin is becoming worrisome." The matter manipulator core thrums as a set of oddly bulky weapon pods of some sort are attached on his forearm hardpoints, much less compact than Collective technology should be. "I am aware of the strategy, however. Vital components identified. I estimate an average loss of 20% of retrievable salvage. More than enough for one girl." The core continues humming in concert with the Transcient drive, depositing a dozen slabs of black, hexagonally patterned armour plating around the room, appearing a few feet into the air where they fall and crunch into the broken earth, deploying their own supports to stay braced, and unfolding interlocking segments into larger shields. It's not fancy technology, but it can't be shut down by whatever kind of magical dickery could potentially transpire, and should provide the fellow Flotilla members a reasonable number of places to switch between without exposing themselves to heavy fire for long, which seems like a very good idea the moment the Gatekeeper opens fire. "Your war is over, but that fact is less important than the truth that your progenitor is gone and so is anything left of their order. One cannot be a traitor to a single person one shares no ties with and has scarcely met."
Kyra Hyral	"Aha!" Kyra announces, "Each segment has enough magical energy inside it to produce movements! However, it is the magic particle flow from the core that provdes the /offensive/ capabilities! Additionally, I must warn everyone that these large discs embedded in the walls can self destruct-Septette! Hurry!" She sees the power spike and recoils as the electroweb is formed over the entrance to the chamber, trapping the combatants in the room. Kyra's quick to help Septette up despite weighing significantly less than the android. Habit maybe? Turning, she can 'see' the magical flows of the main core shifting and moving to the hands. "It's going to shoot!" she warns, diving for the ground, flattening herself as beams swarm overhead. Once Asche arrives and starts dropping the shields around the room, Kyra scrambles onto her hands and feet, immediately taking cover behind one of them. She remains crouched and unloops the CURE-ALL from her back, setting it down next to her behind the barrier. Once she hears that the sounds of the non-elemental beams have ended, she peeks out around the corner, sighting the Gatekeeper. A hand extends ahead of her, pointed at the guardian, white magic gathering at her fingertips. Seconds later, a Dispell is directed at the Gatekeeper, specifically aimed at the left arm, hopefully to render that weapon system and limb useless.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa gets the warning to pull back and she's ablke to do so but the blasts are powerful she doesn't even want to think what a direct hit would do to her. She's force to keep moving she looks at the thing tracking it trying to get what data she can. She hears the thing yelling about the Abyssal God is dead and his order. She starts to get an idea about what might have happened but she wonders about the messy details. She does not see any reply from Septette she brings up her rocket launcher and opens fire she's going to have to trust in her friend at this point. "The war is long over you could do better than this for your self you ever thought about claiming a new function for your self?!"
Staren	Why didn't Asche just stop on a dime? Maybe he wants to save energy. Or maybe it's because he's carrying Staren and doesn't want to turn him to paste. The young... scientist? Combat researcher? Can one word sum him up, really? Anyway, he's in his armor, and is carrying... It looks like someone took some kind of rocket launcher designed for use as a small turret or doorgun and put handles on it. Staren may be able to lift it thanks to the armor, but his stance as he carries it shows that it's heavy enough to shift his center of gravity somewhat. There's no time for talk. Staren raises his weapon to fire, but... smoke. Ah. The tacnet's coming online. Staren watches through the Core Fleet's sensors, waiting for a clear shot, and then /they/ get a warning on their HUDs showing projected path and blast radius (it's small, though, just don't stand /right next/ to the point of impact). <<I'm gonna try to blow some armor off one of the segments!>> The missile launcher has two tubes, so with a loud FWSSSSHHHHH, two minimissiles streak through the smoke towards whichever segment the Starbounders are going for, trying to ram into the armor hard enough to penetrate and blow it apart!
Alexis Maaka	Suddenly, lasers. Alexis hits the ground, trying to avoid getting cooked by the energy beams when they spread around. She alertly begins to look around for cover, before a THUD announces Asche's arrival. "Big guy!" She makes a beeline for one of the shields, hiding behind it or cover as she sets her grenade launcher to activate, before popping out behind her barrier in a crouching position, bracing her weapon's stock against her left shoulder while she takes a breath. Pulling the trigger, she feels the weapon kick against her arm as the grenade launcher lets off a THUMP, the warhead activating mid-flight before it hurdles towards the Gatekeeper's chest area. It'll stick in place through electromagnetism, provided the Gatekeeper conducts that sort of thing, before detonating.
Starbound Flotilla	"Arcubielle reports incoming!" "Floran underssstand! Evading!" The advancing Starbounders deal with the issue in their own way. Biteblade is the most skilled among them; while the shards slam into her armor, she roles with it, taking the wounding with deft movements that let her escape mostly unscathed. Moonfin manages to get between Pavo and one of the lasers that's just about to hit her, cleaving the beam in half -- that shouldn't physically be possible, but he did! -- and suffering a tremendous hit of exhaustion from the exertion. Seft only barely escapes; a stray beam shears part of her arm armor off before she's able to roll away, and she suffers much damage from the shards, when she pulls George out of the way of one of the incoming beams! They keep going, though, not halting their charge. "Flank. Do not give it one direction to focus on." "Hand partsss dangerousss!! Shooty beam! Sssomeone break!" "Hit the chest, I got the hands!" "Blind the foe to let us advance, Pavo." Seft skids to a stop long enough to kneel, cupping her hands, and give George a tremendous boost, launching him up with armor-enhanced strength. He's got HULL REPAIR GRENADES in his hands... Which he'll try to drop right at the Gatekeeper's right hand, hopefully encasing it in METAL FOAM to gum up accurate finger-pointing lasers while he makes his way to the back! Moonfin attempts to dart under the legs while Pavo launches off using her rocket-boots, leaping the full 40 feet up to go after sensors in the eyes with her power cutlass! Biteblade catches a ride with her on her grappling hook, swinging off midway to try to land on the chest with a pair of tremendous power daggers, trying to run them along the exposed midsection above the legs, and let their intense heavy cutting power jam through to more vulnerable depths. Seft darts along with Moonfin, before breaking of to the side, trying to get on the left flank now! These damn Starbounders are swarming EVERYWHERE!
Septette Arcubielle	"Her betrayal runs deeper than you ken, child of the forge," the Gatekeeper rasps in response to Asche. Meanwhile, Septette grabs one of the discs with both her claws and tears it out of the wall, her whole body sparking as the current short-circuits through her metal limbs. "Even when Yggdrasil was awake, she defied it. Because of her, the monster queen Gutrune still lives. Because of-" "SILENCE," the yggdroid shrieks as she hurls the still-crackling disc at it, which embeds in the golem's throat. It seems unfazed by the damage until it tries to speak- and only a staticky growl comes out. They won't hear the end of that story just yet. Kyra's spell suppresses the enchantments on the Gatekeeper's arm, causing it to fall limp by its side! A moment later, Kotone's rockets strike its left shoulder and torso, shattering the chestplate. Alexis's grenade doesn't manage to adhere to its armor, but detonates close enough nonetheless, driving some of the shards of its chestplate into the components inside! George's metal foam grenades seem to gum up the joints in its right hand, though until it builds up another charge for those beams, it'll be hard to tell for certain if it worked. Biteblade scores a few easy hits on its torso as well, benefitting from the damaged armor. But when Pavo tries to gouge it in the eyes, she gets a nasty surprise: the cutlass sinks into the Gatekeeper's eye socket without meeting any resistance, passing right through the immaterial glowing component. It takes advantage of the opening, magically superheating the air inside its empty sockets before firing it at the bird in a fiery beam. Realizing that it's surrounded, the Gatekeeper takes a step back and appears to concentrate for a moment. Its joints glow brightly for a moment before they detach: the left arm simply falls to the ground, but its right arm and head hover about twenty feet off of the floor, while its torso- legs still attached- floats closer to the ground. Its right arm disassembles further: its armor plates strip away, forming into wicked shards that fire in a spread at anyone not taking cover!
Kyra Hyral	Still peering from behind the cover, Kyra grins at the results of the Dispell. She seems especially pleased that the left arm has been disabled (though possibly just temporary) because for the moment it has effectively halved the deployable weapons from the Gatekeeper. Seeing what happens to Pavo's attempted eye strike gives Kyra a good idea of where to focus next, despite the fact that the right arm is clearly still very well equipped. If anything, maybe targeting the head would make the Gatekeeper stop talking and thus stop harassing Septette over past events. She rolls back with her back to the shield while the right arm fires a spread of the non-elemental beams from before. The cover protects her entirely and Kyra moves again once she hears the laser noises ceasing. A hand lifts once more, the second Dispell targeting the head of the Gatekeeper.
Starbound Flotilla	"Fishface." "Hmm?" "Hate ye so much right now." Pavo is blasted out of the eyesocket, smoking and battered and generally wounded. "Bitey!" "Floran got!" George swings down from the arm as it begins to disassemble, on a grappling line he's launched to Biteblade! He swings opposite Biteblade as he hands off a small bomb, and Biteblade goes wrapping around the massive arm as they both rocket-boost opposite each other. George snags Pavo out of mid-air, taking one of the shards fired at her himself. They land in cover, while Biteblade is yanked up on her line until she lands on the arm, whose armor is disassembling! "Alert. Armor disassembly detected at right arm." "Biteblade has it. Moonfin, the other." "Second Sea Hylotl Style: Shell Cracking Strike." Several shards strike Moonfin through his deflections, but he manages, despite the bleeding, to make it to the left arm! Where he leaps high into the air, and tries to slam his heavy power katana into the dropped left arm with a massive downward stab, a technique designed to split apart the armor, hopefully such that another bomb can be planted deep inside! "Alert. Armor exposed at left torso segment. I will try to keep it open." Seft darts in from the left, diving between spots of hexagonal cover! She takes minimal damage, thank goodness. This time, it's George that gives HER a boost when she gets near him, leaping and blasting her rocket boots so she can reach the upper torso where that blast opened the chestplate, and she tries to crack open the relevant defenses even more with a massive battleaxe slam!
Zwei	Zwei just about loses all interest when Septette elaborates over the radio that this Gatekeeper is pretty much a sophisticated parrot, capable of passing a casual Turing test but not of actual, independent thought. That interest is quickly and fiercely rekindled however, at seeing the yggdroids' reaction to this so called 'dumb' machine's continued speech, to the point of deliberately cutting it off at the expense of personal injury. Many, many questions for later. At the time however, there is both the figurative promise and the literal one of dismantling this thing for parts. With so many allies danger-close in a closed cavern, use of positron or Hawking thrusters is a bad idea, and so Asche moves entirely by mechanical means. Those present are probably familiar by now with the absurdly inappropriate speed at which the massive war machine moves, totally unfair for his size and mass. The material the ground is made up of really isn't up to the task of withstanding his eye-straining zigzag motions, causing some level of slide and more than enough debris as he weaves through the line of fire in an otherwise straight charge, somehow managing to evade the majority of the shards despite his target profile, though more than a few manage to connect with showers of carbonized sparks, some glancing off his practically sloped plating, but others finding purchase, supernaturally sharp, dense and hard materials cutting into the weaker sections and penetrating secondary systems, flecking trace quantities of some strangely refractive fluid. Eventually, the Armiger crashes headlong into the central torso, pinning it to the far wall for the maximum effect of Seft's axe. As soon as she leaps away, he slams his hand into the open breach made by the Glitch and Alexis. The weapon pod on his forearm whines, and then a half-dozen hefty osmium spikes are electromagnetically accelerated into the wound by dimagnetic sabots; a kind of disposable, mass pilebunker designed to breach at hypervelocity and shatter inside.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa seems to be on the money about Septette's feelings about her creator and given what she has seen she's starting to see why. She does notice that George has hull prepair grenades wait why is george using them? Now she sees the method to his madness it's like super glue on human skin more or less. She litens about the monster Queen Gutrune? She does wonder about this there are still questions to be asked but it looks like she wont' get the rest of the story for now. She does fire off another rocket as she keeps running abut and blurring a little bit as she goes. She keeps tabs on Kyra who seems to be in cover for the moment. The core fleet is working eogher as normal and she watches Seft as she goes in, that's when kotone's got an idea. She shoulders the launcher and pulls a small green sphere off her gear. She also activates her optic cameo for the added edge it might add making her obscured even when she's moving. She'll race in for the Guardian leap using her dash systems and attempt to place the alien grenade on it which will go off in a burst of high explosives and possibly plasma, once she vaults away.
Alexis Maaka	"Guess he isn't interested in banter," ALexis quips dryly, before she takes cover behind her shield once more. Spotting Pavo get taken out of the fight, she frowns. "SOmeone get Pavo clear and patch her up!" She calls out, pointing to the avian before she reloads her grenade launcher. Glancing at her weapon, she'll need something a lot bigger than that to take this thing down. That's why she brought the coilgun itself. A few quick adjustments to output and compensation drives, she configures the rifle into a sniper configuration able to punch holes through solid armor plating even used back home. And she takes aim, using the rifle's scope to search when Seft brings up a weak spot. "Targeting." The rifle jolts in her grip against her arm when she fires it, the coilgun's payload fired straight to the Gatekeeper's torso. Considering its size and durability, she could use all the firepower she has.
Staren	Staren wonders what the Gatekeeper is talking about, but Septette silences it. Fortunately, the issue is quickly adressed by radio. And they've already knocked off a segment! When the Gatekeeper starts doing... something, Staren starts running for cover behind one of Zwei's shield plates. A shower of shards rains upon him just before he reaches it, smashing parts of his suddenly-visible forcefield. Staren hides behind the shield plate, setting down the rocket launcher and unshouldering the RAISER rifle. He leans out from behind the shieldplate, sighting on one of the eyes (thanks to the tacnet and Pavo, he now knows they contain some weaponry rather than being an armored area), Setting the rifle to what he hopes is 'destroy a significant section of the head' power rather than 'blow the whole thing apart' power, he fires. Hopefully this will disable the last part!
Septette Arcubielle	The Gatekeeper's torso is crushed into an almost unrecognizable mess by the combined assault from Seft, Asche, and Alexis. The charging attack drives shards of its armor straight through its chest and into the wall behind it; Seft's swing tears deeply into its revealed components, and the rifle-shot shears a central column of wires that seemed to control its legs. Its head tries to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a similar fate, but loses most of its thrust when Kyra suppresses its enchantments as well: it slows markedly, allowing Staren to shoot cleanly through the eye socket, blowing shrapnel out the back of its 'skull'. Moonfin's gambit pays off as well, and when the shrapnel in its right arm reassembles, George's bomb is locked away under the armor plating. The torso damage would ordinarily force a self-destruct sequence anyway, but at this point, the Gatekeeper manually triggers it... only to realize that it's being prevented from doing so. It takes a fraction of a second for all of the remaining parts to snap back together into a cohesive whole, though the golem scarcely looks like it should be able to stand at this point. With so many wires cut, it can't re-establish a physical connection to transmit the self-destruct signal either- it resorts to trying to find a way to compensate for Kyra's and Septette's interference, but that'll take precious seconds. It's hard to tell, at this point, if the Gatekeeper continuing to fight out of bloody-minded spite, or merely because that's the only function it believes it has. Regardless, it tries to grapple Asche, relying on its enchantments to move rather than any machinery that might still be intact. Regardless of whether it succeeds, it starts charging the same attack that it led with- one that would be significantly worse now that there's no covering smoke, and with so many targets at point-blank range!
Starbound Flotilla	"Catch, Maaka!" George is in cover between Maaka and the Gatekeeper. When she runs by, he's gonna sling the heavy valve-linked tanks over to her. It's kind of an armful, but it'll work! She can probably toss it into that broken eyehole! George is mostly trying to keep Pavo alive here, so he's a bit out of the fight otherwise!
Alexis Maaka	Alexis overhears George's question, and she immediately pipes up, "I got it!" Catching the explosives tossed to her, she slings her rifle before she grabs her grapple. "Keep me covered, and try not to make it jostle too much." Her grapple is thrown as hard as Alexis can manage, and she aims for around the neck area. Stuffing the explosives in her webbing, she begins her climb, wishing she had a piton-gun for this sort of thing. The climb is assumedly very rough with all the action going on, and Alexis fights to keep her grip while she ascends, using handholds on the Gatekeeper itself as she continues to claw at any cracks she can grab, or use to prop her feet onto. It doesn't take long for her to reach the top, and she begins to toss the tanks into the eyehole once she has an opening, then she begins her fall. She can handle the impact, assuredly, as she rips her grapple free with a firm yank on the climbing wire.
Zwei	Aside from things going smoothly and efficiently according to Septette's pre-established battleplan, the Gatekeeper seems to be uncommongly stubborn about surrendering its mechanical corpse for repurposing. Zwei can hardly blame it. Perhaps even admire it a little. But the fact is that it's inconvenient. Any further use of Asche's weaponry, improved as the bunkers had been or otherwise, could potentially render the machine totally unsalvageable, and it's already been more thoroughly wrecked than projected, thus the Armiger goes along with exactly what the Yggdrasil manufactured weapon seems to want; a grapple. With most of its motive ability destroyed, severely hampering its performance, Zwei immediately assumes that Asche has the upper hand in a contest of raw, mechanical strength, though with the floor what it is, Asche has to deploy as much thruster burn as can be considered safe for that extra push to not simply go sliding back. The Armiger rams one pauldrun under the Gatekeeper's head, tilting its chin up to expose the neck join and make its eyes a free target, and braces the shit of his body against the ruined chest. The corresponding arm reverses its joint at the elbow, ignoring the normal range of motion of humanoid design to grab hold of one gun-arm at the same time as Asche's free hand grabs the other, pushing his weight off against the floor to try and haul its aim upwards into the ceiling. A potential collapse from the roof is less likely than the ground giving out underneath, and falling rocks aren't quite as bad as energy beams, after all.
Staren	Honestly, Staren was hoping for a much bigger boom. He guesses he misestimated the power setting. He multiplies the one he used by several times. Now, however... it's charging up for another beam attack. That would be... bad. They have to disable it. They'll coordinate. Staren takes aim at the other eye, and waits. Keeping the shot lined up. Through the tacnet, his shot will be timed to go off so it hits at the same time as the bombs go off. He just has to make sure it fires true.
Kyra Hyral	"I think it's working." Kyra sounds excited. She seems to be taking great glee in running interference on the Gatekeeper while the rest of the Flotilla physically tears it apart. No front line fighter, there was still something satisfying about being an enabler of this kind of destruction. She doesn't let up, though she will pause for a moment to start on her third casting of Dispell. The same muttered words pass her lips and she pops out from behind her cover again for a few seconds to direct a hand at the golem. This time, she targets the torso to ensure that its current state of paralysis remains there long enough for the Flotilla to physically disassemble the guardian.
Starbound Flotilla	Zwei is noted. Moonfin is riding one of those arms he just grabbed like... Well... A giant ancient magitech limb. He disengages his sword, and falls, dramatically. Mostly because he's so exhausted and wounded by now that he can't move very quickly himself. "Fifth Sea Hylotl Style: Wind Rousing Waves." He's planning to fall towards the neck... And strike a clean sweep through the neck, and down the torso, intending to behead in one motion and strike the torso in the next, now that Zwei's set up that attack! He hopes, at least, to land the blow RIGHT on time with the explosions that follow...
Starbound Flotilla	"Thanksss, heal friend!" Biteblade calls out to Kyra, swinging on her own grappling hook around the Dispell! She zips around, intending to strike, now, at both the torso and the legs, intending to descend down the creature with multiple dramatic slashes with her power daggers, shoving their damage deep with high-piercing settings, going from chest to waist!
Starbound Flotilla	"Alert. The left arm will be self-destructed at this stage." Seft calls out urgently! Her expression goes to a panicked >_< before Moonfin descends to her part of the torso. He grabs onto her, turning all his downward momentum into rotational momentum, and then launches her up with an elaborate swingy motion that's executed by planting his blade in the lower torso armor. Wounded though she may be, she can be launched, up, by momentum, to give a heavy uppercut -- that is to say, a literal upwards cut -- to the left arm!
Starbound Flotilla	"Septette. Time with me." Albert says, loading a fresh batch of grenades into his launcher. He's advanced a great deal. "Detonation in five. Four. Three..." Moonfin reaches the neck! "Two... One..." Seft tries to up-slice the arm! "Open fire." And Albert launches a set of airburst fragmenting grenades meant to pierce deep through armor and almost explosively disable the lower section. Meanwhile, a bomb in the right arm and hopefully the head goes off.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa is caught in the chaos of a battle like this? How does she end up like this? Why doesn't she walk away she's got enough money if she cashed out she could likely live fairly well back home. Yet here she is what holds her here? She has no idea, and it's funny with her agumented brain she can think about stuff like this and not effect her own preformace in a fight then again she knows she's the bottom of the barrel as far as things go in the Flotilla in terms of combat. She lands crouches she comes up agian and fires off her rocket launcher once more trying to keep the pressure up on this thing, yet the guardians words make her wonder just what happened in Septette's past there may be questions to ask later. <<I think we're doing it we need to keep this up though this thing is seriously heavy duty it would eat multi ped tanks from back home for breakfast...>>
Septette Arcubielle	The tide of battle is now decisively in the Flotilla's favor- the only question remaining seems to be whether there will be anything left of the Gatekeeper by the point that it stops moving. Kotone's plasma grenade slags what little frontal armor it has left, Zwei's shoulder forces its neck back at an unnatural angle, and the pin combined with Kyra's interference prevents it from avoiding or even mitigating the Starbounders' attacks! Septette grabs the remaining disc-pauldron and darts forwards, coordinating with Albert's frag grenades and taking advantage of its immobility to damage the self-destruct charges in its legs with a pair of precise slashes from her arm-blades. Even at this stage, the Gatekeeper looks defiant, enraged rather than cowed by the extent of its injuries. Its arms twist in Asche's grasp before bending at equally-uncanny angles with an audible snap: its forearms fold upwards at a ninety-degree angle between the elbows and wrists, essentially 'sawing off' the barrels for the beam attack in order to keep its aim on the Armiger. An instant later, however, the explosive charges scattered throughout its body trigger, Kotone's rocket strikes it in the left shoulder and detonates, and all the volition seems to leave its body at once. Like a puppet with its strings cut, the barely-recognizable Gatekeeper falls to the floor in a pool of molten metal. Some kind of magical effect wells up in its crystalline, spherical core- Kyra would likely recognize it as healing magic optimized for repairing machinery. Septette forcefully slashes the core with its own razor-sharp pauldron, cracking the previously-flawless gem and anticlimactically nipping its regeneration effect in the bud. "I think," she says with fatigue evident in her voice, "that we're done here."
Kyra Hyral	After the noises of battle die down, Kyra peeks out from around her cover again to confirm that the Gatekeeper has fallen. When she does, Kyra scoops up her CURE-ALL and goes right to the wreckage-that is after giving everyone here a brief look-over for super serious injuries. Poking around through the torso, Kyra carefully collects the shards of the core.
Kotone Yamakawa	Kotone Yamakawa is looking up and making ready for another attakc but now the whole thing seems to be other she's breathing deeply if only out of force of habit and she rises up and she looks to get some shards and such for her to work on but it's words leave her a question, what's Septette not sharing at the moment. That can wait for later. "Let's loot what we can and get ready to head out..."
Alexis Maaka	Just as the Gatekeeper explodes, Alexis makes her way out of the blast radius, diving for safety before she stands back up. She doesn't seem phased at all by her fall, the cyborg dusting herself off contently. "That went well," She murmurs, before she begins to set up some shards and scrap with teleport beacons after setting all her selections in a nice, neat pile.
Staren	Staren ducks behind the shield plate and waits for the pieces to all fall. Then he shoulders the raiser rifle and starts picking out pieces. Small bits go in his bag -- large bits are sorted into a little pile for him to carry.