Scene #7946: Forte's Secundus Food Tour

Owner	Pose
Forte	Forte's presence is felt before he is seen. He's found a computer terminal at somewhere important, and is absorbing data from it. That is to say, he is absorbing data from it. The data on the other end is just simply gone, a steadily widening black hole in whatever local intranet the place has. He is entirely casual and nonhurried, and doesn't pay much attention to anyone who's staring at him, asks him to leave, or asks him to stop eating entire websites at a time.
Staren	Staren zips through the tunnels of the Reaches, frantically trying to track down Forte, her drones spreading down tunnel branches ahead of her. She's in her robot body again, although this time she hasn't completely ditched the flesh disguise, just toggling it off of specific limbs as needed so she can use thrusters in her hands and feet. The tunnels are completely dark, and pay no mind to safety violations. They are, after all, built by no man; this is what passes for "wilderness" inside the Machine God. Eventually she rises up out of the depths. Forte has found an important conduit junction near the closest city, large pipes running up from below then bending to run along one side of the cavern towards the city, carrying useful things like fresh water, high-pressure steam, electricity, and refined essence for powering magitech infrastructure. A few locals, wearing long protective leathery coats and sealed hoods with goggles, have called out to him, but are concerned about approaching someone who is clearly not from this world. "What the hell are you doing?!" This time it's Staren. "We all worked together to make diplomatic inroads with the Autocthonians, I won't have you-- is that a computer?" Against all rhyme and reason, there is a computer terminal connected to the essence pipe with some kind of internet connection. "How? Why??? What????!" Staren asks, in increasing confusion. ~~A Few Days Ago~~ Ren zips through the tunnels. There's at least one timeline where Staren, George, and Seft give chase, and she wants to be SURE to get away from them. The fox-woman in ill-fitting clothing stops for a moment by the conduit junction. She burned a lot of energy keeping full combat mode up for minutes, and needs to recharge. She drops the golden aura, her hair and fur returning to normal brown and red. Her hands reshape into thick-skinned claws and she grabs the hot steam pipe, sucking the energy out of it with a satisfied sigh. But, the Reaches are empty. She can't survive like this, people need to know she exists and that she's doing things. With a gesture, she conjures up an office chair to sit in and makes a computer rise out of the essence pipe. It Just Works, somehow, as she sits down to do some trolling. She literally needs attention to survive, after all. ~~Now~~ Staren stares, puzzled, at the computer. Then shakes her head and looks back at Forte as she lands nearby. "No, first, why are you here?"
Ozhira	While Staren confronts Forte directly, someone steps out of a shadow-concealed crevasse behind the digital being. It is... a girl. Staren would recognize Ozhira's usual appearance. Rather ordinary, somewhat short, black-haired and red-eyed, in a simple black outfit with a plaid red skirt. She looks rather tired by the dark marks under her eyes, but paradoxically is also alert. "If you are here to cause harm, we request that you leave. If you do not leave, you will be our prey," is all she says. There isn't much threat beyond her choice of words. It is, after all, a rather ordinary unarmed girl. Though someone in this space knows more about them than the other. "If you wish to help, that is different."
Forte	Forte looks at Staren, in silence, as she goes off on him. Then he looks over at Ozhira. In both cases, 'looks' is a bit of an overstatement - he moves his eyes, but barely move his head more than the fraction it takes to get each of them in view. Only when they all stop talking does he speak up. "You are bothering me." It's not said as a threat, or with any sort of emphasis - it's spoken with the same inflection as one stating a fact, such as that trains run on diesel fuel. He brings up the hand that isn't on the terminal, and holds it out towards Staren, as Forte's colors flicker. "Begone." It's spoken with the same flat inflection, but with a smidge more emphasis - as if he expects both Ozhira and Staren to no longer bother him in a moment. And then a massive blast of data erupts from his palm, a literal wave that blasts everything back - followed immediately by Forte swinging his arm around, crossing over his other, to blast Ozhira back as well. Aside from his arm, he hasn't moved an inch.
Staren	Staren was expecting to get DELETED. Instead she's blasted with a wave of data, barely covering her face with her arms as she's washed right back off the cliff she's standing on! The locals shout something about essence cannons and turn and run back towards their city. Some painful CRUNCHes and CLANKs echo from below before Staren regains control with her thrusters and flies back up, now obviously a robot wearing only a scorched and worn cloak and tatters. Her face and hair are the only parts of her flesh disguise left. She's... annoyed, obviously. She coordinates with Ozhira over cybercomms, and-- Charges! She's just thruster-dashing straight into melee, her arms glowing and arcing with electricity as she draws a sword from behind her back, high-frequency energy in the blade projecting a shield of shredding force around it! It's uh, it's very straightfrowardly telegraphed as she just tries to stab Forte in the chest, swinging if needed to try and turn a missed stab into a slash. It's immediately evident that the sword isn't the bulk of the attack, but rather, that energy field acts as a conductor for the energy stored in her arms, discharging on contact with a loud CRACK!
Ozhira	Ozhira does not move when aimed at. The data-bolt rips right through the girl's body, blasting the bulk of her torso completely out, which splatters against the walls behind her in an ichorous red smear. The arms sag to either side, the legs wobbling. After a moment, reality catches up to the carcass and the girl collapses in a red-stained heap. That red liquid spills across the metallic ground, oozing through cracks and spreading across smooth plates. Someone who's seen a person bleed out before might find the fluid's behavior strangely purposeful as it sluices beneath Forte's feet. A heartbeat later, something launches out of that crimson pool. A barb-tipped harpoon of chitin-covered bone, straight at the bottom of his foot. Should it spear him, the tip erupts from the top of Forte's foot, then warps into a wide, blunt cross shape and recedes-- yanking him down and anchoring him in place. From the pool of scarlet, Ozhira rises, fully formed. Though her original corpse is still on the floor over there, bleeding profusely.
Forte	Staren comes forth with an energy field blast, and Ozhira with a harpoon strike. This, does, finally not so much force Forte to move as knock him away from the terminal (by way of pinning him to the floor). "... Hmph. Areasteal, execute." He flickers away - to somewhere? Nowhere? Or - oh, just up the corridor a bit, where he has time to line up his sights and get Staren and Ozhira into an angle where he can blast them both. Aside from the teleport, he still technically hasn't moved much.
Ozhira	The upright Ozhira's posture snaps from something normal for a human to something more savage when Forte disappears. More hunched, bent at the knees and elbows, hands held away from the body. A readied position. The girl's head snaps in his direction the second he appears, her body swinging to the side. Caught in the flare of his energy blast, a goodly portion of the girl's body sheds off as blood-like liquid and she collapses into the shadows left behind when the databolt has passed through. Only a lumpy outline sloshes out of sight, as if falling down a hole. Through ceiling gaps above Forte's head, something red swells out into an unpleasant boil. A crack forms, opening into a wide gullet which descends on his head from above-- unpurturbed by the huge fins of his helmet, the jaws open wide and then snap shut where his head should be with enormous teeth and an intensely acidic saliva. Ozhira herself appears several paces behind Forte, as if stepping around a corner. Mysteriously, both prior 'corpses' have now disappeared from further down the corridor, as the Beast recovers biomass it had presumably intended to use in a different way if the fight had continued around the terminal.
Staren	Staren looks a little relieved that that hit. Going for the big telegraphed attack is a risk, and she's had it blow up in her face before. Areasteal? The heck is that? She adopts a defensive posture, expecting some kind of area attack to emanate from him, but... he disappears? A teleport? She looks up, then forms a spherical amber energy field around herself as she starts to turn to look behind her but shots come in from another angle, cracking and shattering pieces off the field and making her stumble backwards and trip over a bit of scaffolding. She holds out her arm much like an arm cannon, barrels on her coat's vambraces firing a spray of comet-shaped plasma projectiles wildly, most of which probably won't hit but it hopefully discourages him from charging to follow up. Which would make more sense as a tactic if he couldn't teleport... With one arm and robotic strength she shoves herself upright, then aims THAT arm forward, that arm firing a couple of pencil-sized micromissiles. The homing projectiles will hopefully be more likely to hit...
Forte	The jaws snap shut at Forte's neck. They can't quite close all the way. There's a grunt of pain from the navi, and then he reaches up to slap a glowing hand on Ozhira's side. Staren's missiles lance into him. With his other hand, he reaches out, and aims another shotgun-like essence purge at her. "So you aren't just all talk," he says, somewhat muffled, at least to Staren.
Ozhira	Forte's hand slaps against the sticky, unpleasant flesh of something that probably shouldn't exist. The shock causes whatever has clamped down over his head to lurch to one side but not release him. Rather, there's a rather nasty gurgling sound deep in the gullet as the flood of acidic saliva ceases. A heartbeat later, a single massive harpoon of bone fires itself from the beast's throat, straight down, directly at the top of his helmet. Only then does the maw release, leaning away and melting into a bloody liquid that splatters near the intact body of the Devourer itself. It doesn't take long for the fluid to disappear while she stands in it, though where it goes is anybody's guess. They haven't said anything since that initial threat. After all, predators do not talk to prey.
Staren	After Ozhira comes in, Staren begins circling around Forte, ready to dive either way from wild attacks. She twists to take the shotgun-like blast to her side, some of it missing and the rest hitting less-damaged parts of her coat. "Why would I be all talk?!" "...Wait, you still haven't answered why you're here!" Her OTHER arm glowing this time, she reaches out and dives towards him -- if it looks like she's too off-target, her vambrace shoots out a wire which she swings to try and make contact, again conducting a massive jolt of electricity from her arm -- although there's a loud pop and smoke from the vambrace, and the charred, burned wire breaks apart afterwards.
Forte	Forte moves at the last moment - the spear pierces through his shoulder, not his head. Staren's attack, launching more electricity, lands solidly and shocks him, causing him to convulse for a moment. He teleports away again - trying to get clear, and line up another strike. He's not looking too good, but... ... well, who is now. "Why should I tell you," he says, to Staren, as a massive wave of essence purge data across the entire area.
Staren	Staren's Finishing Move works really well on Forte, who knew! Unfortunately, Forte's attacks ALSO work well on HER. She's poised to dodge, but with such a massive essence wave there's nowhere TO dodge. Her tattered coat falls apart on that sideand the blast eats away at metal, most of the left side of her body stripped of armor and complicated looking internal bits exposed and scorched. Her one good eye gives Forte a baleful glance as she limps over to the conduit and stabs it with her sword -- having already identified this pipe as a rare source of refined essence -- and energy spills out over her, a different forcefield surrounding her like ghostly plate armor and magic flight kicking in to assist sputtering thrusters as she turns and makes her escape, flying back to the hole and diving down the vertical tunnel section, out of sight.
Ozhira	Washed over by databolts again, Ozhira's body leans back from the energy wave and allows it to push her away, slamming into a wall and promptly cast in shadow as soon as the light cast by the attack fades away. Something slithers wetly in the darkness. Chitinous limbs scuttle across metal briefly in another direction. After a moment, the noises start coming from multiple directions, as if whatever is causing them has multiplied. A single dart loaded with acidic venom hisses at Forte from some oblique angle. A heartbeat later, another from another side. Without Staren to coordinate with, the Devourer has changed tactics.
Forte	The dart embeds itself in Forte's side. He drops, for a second, down to one knee in pain - but then gets back up again, blocking it from his mind. He spends a few precious moments glancing about, trying to determine where Ozhira is, or is coming from next. ... No. That is the wrong strategy. He raises one hand to the ceiling, and one to the floor, and puts forth everything he has in one needlessly excessive blast to simply eradicate both the floor and ceiling from existence simultaneously, whichever Ozhira happens to be hiding on. There. That is the right strategy.
Ozhira	The Devourer is in the floor; Forte sees an indistinct shape vaporize under the assault. The Devourer is in the ceiling; Forte also sees an indistinct shape vaporize before his energies. But the Devourer is everywhere else, too. The walls. The floor. The ceiling. Behind him. In front of him. Scuttling shapes shifting from shadow to shadow, from crack to crack, from tunnel to tunnel. For each shape Forte destroys, two more replace it and scatter in yet more directions. Exactly what IS this thing? Something suddenly leaps onto Forte's back, burrowing through his stylish ragged cloak and digging into the digital metal of his navi body. Rather than attempt to tear into him, though, it emits a hissing sound and then explodes violently into a mess of sticky, highly corrosive slime.
Forte	What is that thing indeed? That'll stick in his head for a long while... Forte's form starts to de-rez as it burrows in. He quickly goes to teleport away, again - ... Being driven back, but perhaps the damage here has already been done.
Ozhira	While the digital invader is driven back, the Devourer is. Well. Kind of everywhere. Things skitter to and fro somewhat aimlessly, while red slop drools from various cracks in the wall. Whatever Ozhira is, 'intact' isn't accurate right now. But the Beast is still around, in more ways than one.