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Spider-Man     ACT 1: ENRICHMENT
    CHAPTER 5: EINSTEINIUM

    You have been asked to arrest or otherwise neutralize the threat from the unknown roboticist and programmer referred to as "SLAYER". Tracing their location will prove difficult, and how close their association is with the group responsible for the black-market exo-energy weapons trade is unknown. This may not even come to violence and arrest, depending on the nature of their connection. Be careful, as "SLAYER" has demonstrated willingness to use high-powered weapons and drone technologies against pursuers.

    "I'm gonna be honest, I don't know how well we'll be able to handle this one. I'm not even sure if this guy is going to be here, we're going in really, really blind. Staren managed to dig out some old coordinates for some testing that got done once, a couple /months/ ago. Forgot to turn airplane mode on I guess. Hopefully he hasn't moved... And of course it's a big slaughterhouse and meat-packing place and warehouse kinda out of town on the waterfront, ugh. Abandoned, ever since the 70s. Must have been the veganism. Wonder what they were doing out there with these robots?"


    The place is empty. Looks derelict, kinda like New York City's Meatpacking District before it started getting gentrified. Most of the place is bricked up, from the windows to the doors, so there's no sneaky or even remotely convenient entrance on that angle. The only real angle of approach is a waterfront entry that was once used for offloading a grim sort of cargo. It progresses in a fenced-in way towards an interior queue, where long snaking lines of soon-to-be-meat were presumably kept. Hopping the fences is no issue, and the multi-level facility starts here, where staggered rows and floors of meat-packing equipment have been mostly cleared away.

    Spider-Man is swinging in, and the rest have their own flight methods. But for the most part, this place seems abandoned. No sudden rushes of thugs, no mysterious old robots. There's plenty of signs that deliveries were made here, modern crates cracked open and packing material still scattered around, but this is only the outer area of the facility anyway. Looks like there's parts that head underground too, into some kind of basement or sub-basement or sub-sub-basement... Plenty to investigate and plenty to also move into.
Axel Some ways away from the warehouse, a dark portal opens up in a secluded spot, depositing the black-hooded Axel, who immediately moves to a rooftop, and starts leaping between them on the Waterfront until he gets to the target warehouse. Leaping down to the ground, casually climbing the fence, and then moving inside, the fixer gets to work looking around.

Crates. Deliveries were here. Axel checks to see if there's any time-stamps on them, to get an idea of how recent they were, before starting for the stairs. No way but down, after all.
Reyes     Reyes hasn't been seen since the BLIZZARD ESCAPADES, but unexpectedly he flagged interest in this operation on Paladin-side. What kept him busy for so long, exactly...?

    Well, that's probably not so important. What's important is that he's repaired his Explorer environmental battle armor, with the wings - a skeletal framework of rune-engraved metal bones covered in glowing blue energies that have an almost angelic aesthetic - deployed. Swooping down in on the meat processing plant with the others. He isn't particularly stealthy in that getup, and so he doesn't really try to hide his landing near an entrance. He hits the ground with a WHUNK.

    The rune-circuits on his armor pulse with flowing blue lights as his defensive shields energize and the hard-light 'Armor of Ithan' materializes as an extra layer of protection. At the same time...

    At the same time, he reaches out with his mind, searching for any complex machinery such as traps or sensors or other surprises at the entrance. If it's clear, he'll just head on in.
Staren     May as well keep being a robot, Staren never knows what he's going to find...

    The red-armored figure lands in back and sends out drones to check for entrances, but there aren't any. Hmm. He sees Axel going to investigate the packages, and tosses him a smartphone-like thing. "If they have any barcodes or RF tags, give 'em a scan!" before heading inside to see where that basement goes, always checking the next turn with a drone.

    It's at least possible that there's some kind of underground base under this unassuming building, after all!
Spider-Man     No time-stamps, or where there are, they're usually forged, when Axel's looks them over. The forgeries are recent, though, they have that modern look about them that matches the last couple of years or so. Staren's scan-over of things does reveal RFID trackers, based on a totally offline system of IDs. Looks like /very/ recent shipments. Many headed downstairs, on closer examination.
Doctor Strange      Doctor Strange steps out from around the corner, following the telltale hissing of one of his portals. He offers curt nods to everyone present, frowning as usual. "Figured I'd come along for this one," explains the Sorcerer Supreme. "Staren, this is for you." A folded sheet of printer paper just appears in Strange's scarred, leathery hand, as if reality decided 'yeah, let's add that in post.' He offers it to the scientist. "My very first autopsy report."

     Reading it, Staren can tell that the perspective is more that of a surgeon's than a coroner's. There's a few things Strange doesn't want to remark on, being outside of his wheelhouse, but the gist is that this was something in the works for a long time, there's a mutation present (extra lobes, so, a pretty significant one) and the implant is non-manufactured--hand-built.

     Strange takes a moment to observe his surroundings. Deliveries have been made here. The sorcerer strokes his goatee as his emerald eyes slowly fixate on one of the crates. He walks towards it, hands crossed over his chest, index fingers pressed to his thumbs. Drawing them together, his fingers mimic the opening of an eye, and the amulet on his chest clicks open. The Eye of Agamotto bathes Strange in green light, and he disappears.

     Perhaps he can find out what was in those chests.
Spider-Man     Reaching out with the mind finds the technology here is "hidden" in a way. There's so many old electromechanical 70s-era machines that it's hard to grasp what is specifically where. But there's something downstairs, a mass of more modern-feeling technology that moves off in the distance, southish. What's above is left-behind detritus, but what's below feels newer, though more haphazard.

    There's a malicious feeling in the techno-aura of the place. Like something in the technological contents is actively hostile, the kind of passive hostility that might snap at Reyes if he reaches too close mentally. It's the technopathic equivalent to a hunter hearing the rumbling of a bear sleeping.
Spider-Man     Staren attends as a robot. Convenient. Sensible. He moves onward and inward, and using the drone turns out to be a good idea. Several rigged shotguns are embedded in walls, meant to kill passerby who aren't attentive, so attentive drone-scanning or drone-sacrificing helps resolve that. There's also /weird/ symbols all over the walls. They look esoteric, almost mystical, and they've definitely been here since the thirties or earlier.

    It's when he reaches a main chamber with a larger cargo-looking door inward that he finds the first sign of something unusual. Several large, old flatscreens mounted into the wall. Nothing harmful then, not until he arrives, leading the group. That's when a transmission appears on the television, all four mounted screens flickering to life and projecting parts of the same feed. One is partially damaged by old, expended buckshot, which seems to have taken out a nearly week-old corpse of a thug near the door. "INCOMING MESSAGE FROM SLAYER", it says. A lean, slender man with graying hair, machinist's clothes, and a welder's mask that gleams ominously at the visor, standing in an aggressive posture.

    "You. You here to take me again? What is it, regretting you didn't wish for three more wishes? I am through with my employment. Come and taken them, subhuman."
    Spider-Man is averse to the corpse, but watches the screen with wide-goggled fascination. "Hey, aren't there rules about not wishing for extra wishes? Are you Robin Williams too? Hashtag R I P." The figure on the screen doesn't reply in any way, and the transmission instantly shuts down. The door opens, but not to let them through. It's mostly to let a reconstructed Hammerdrone charge out, shoulder-first, to smash Spider-Man into one of the walls and then try to tackle Staren and crush his neck. No guns on this one, just weird wrong-looking armor!
Spider-Man     Strange finds something truly, properly fascinating when he reverses time to REPAIR the chests. First, they reassemble, including their contents. Chitauri armor, and robotic parts from Hammertech drones, but there's robotic parts here that don't... make sense. They don't look human, or even like most contemporary robotics. Strange's own surgical knowledge would identify them as SYNTHETIC MUSCLE. Their origin is better revealed when Doctor Strange finds he can reverse time further. The forged logo -- it says "STANK INDUSTRIES" on it, legally distinct -- is un-marked from the side of the thing, and a removed logo is restored: "OCTAVIUS INDUSTRIES".
Staren     Staren points at the screen. "Hey! I grant wishes, I don't make them!" And then, hammerbot! He fires his beam cannons, then turns on his forcefield before being pressed up against the wall. He drops the field, getting grabbed as he tries to squirm away. The neck is the biggest weak point in this armor (he really needs to fix that...) but he's still a robot underneath. "C'mon, let go! Dammit, he's not even monitoring this, is he?" He tries shocking the robot. "Little help here??" He calls to Spider-Man.
Spider-Man     As Doctor Strange progresses in, weird OLD MARKINGS on the walls here indicate that this area has some mystical history? It appears to be... yes, indeed, it's from the era immediately before World War 2, when magic-users had to briefly, for a week or two, stop sling-ringing constantly while larger governments formed groups that investigated occult things through the sixties or so. It didn't last long, but there was a time, however brief, when wizards did have to repurpose bootlegger tunnels, and this was one of them.
Reyes     Trooooooubling. Reyes is quick to clamp down on the freaky sensation of the walls having teeth gnawing at his brain and try to put up a mind block. He does NOT WANT whatever else is going on down there to mess with his mind. Sadly this means he'll have to limit how much he reaches out to check things for now....

    But, even so, he's on his way down, the moment he can find some stairs, an elevator shaft, whatever. He's creative. He'll manage.
Spider-Man     The shock makes the armor on the robot recoil and roil, moving around in strange ways as if to "intercept" it. Spider-Man manages to get back up. "Holy crap, what /was/ what?!" He mutters, before shouting, "Got it!" He leaps, lashes the arm with webbing, and lands on the thing's lower back, trying to pull it back from Staren and kind of ride atop it. It starts stumbling around, staggering in surprisingly human ways; Spider-Man is having to crawl all around it to avoid not just slamming into walls, but also the armor forming strange spikes on the surface, spikes that start cutting through the threads he tries to weave over it. "Woah! Woah!!" He shouts. "Little help here!"

    That's what Reyes runs into, this weird grappling situation. Spider-Man's silent mechanical ride is stumbling further into the tunnel ahead, which angles weirdly away. Gotta take that thing down and get further in!
Axel After grabbing the phone-like device and scanning the RFID, Axel heads downstairs. When he does so, it's a weird situation. A robot drone that forms spikes, beating up Staren and Spider-Man! Looking to Reyes, Axel grimaces under his hood, and with a flex of darkness, summons his silver-and-red chakrams to hand.

The spiked wheels spin in his hand, as he dashes towards the robot and moves to carve into any joints and weak points, chakrams spinning like saws in his hands, sharp as all hell. "Starting the party without us, really? Couldn't you be more considerate?"
Staren     Spider-man comes to help but... the robot is covered in nanomachines or something? This awkward grappling goes on for several seconds before Staren quips, "Alright, enough of this!" The armor pops off his arms, which glow brightly with high-frequency cutting energy, with which he tries to cut off the robot's arms with a pair of quick swipes! As well as dump more electricity into it, since the armor tried to intercept that before!

    Unfortunately the use of that weapon leaves Staren staggered for a few seconds as vaporized coolant sprays out of him.
Reyes     "Oh for-" All the noise causes Reyes to HURRY down the stairs he found into the open area. Seeing the KILLBOT roaming around doing what killbots do has him hiss with anger. Thankfully only he's gonna hear that, thanks to how his helmet works. "Alright, who's building Skelebot knockoffs?!" Reyes is NONE too fond of AUTOMATED KILLING MACHINES, it seems.

    And he shows this by swooping down into the field of battle and...

    And extending a hand. He drops the Mind Block, taking a nasty risk as he reaches out with his mind towards the Hammer Drone and attempts to simply order it to Enter Standby Mode.
Doctor Strange      Strange returns in a flash of green light, with several new photos on his phone. He opens his mouth to share the knowledge he's found, but stops in his tracks when he spots the markings further in. Whoever uses this place must have several different hideouts, possibly interconnected. He doesn't have long to ponder this before the sounds of combat echo through the abandoned warehouse, rising up from downstairs.

     Strange presses a gnarled hand to his face, closing his eyes and rubbing the side of his face in quiet exasperation. He should've known a glorified doomsday prepper would be paranoid enough to have some sort of defenses here. From the sounds of things, there's more than enough people downstairs to handle it.

     Strange returns his attention to the markings, attempting to make some sense of them. Are there any nearby bootlegger tunnels? Is this place connected to any other buildings that Slayer might be using?
Spider-Man     The main machine's body is slammed against one of the walls by Axel! Spider-Man takes this opportunity to flip off of it, helping kick it against the wall and letting him grind it to death with his blades. "Well, you know!" He calls out, trying to help by webbing it against the wall. "I'm just a go-getter when it comes to blunt-force trauma! Can't help myself if someone's leaving a buffet of it around." The robot, meanwhile, busies itself with trying to clobber Axel's head.

    With it pinned and damaged, Staren can slice one of the arms off easily, though he'll have trouble with getting the second one. That's because the chitauri armor suddenly flows down the lost arm, crafting a long blade of its own to slice the webbing and intercept the second strike! Spider-Man tries to web onto that thing as well to blunt it and yank it a little off-course when it tries to run Staren through with it.

    As for Reyes' approach... He finds it starts easily. He locks onto the machine's control system and forces it into a standby, which would normally be impossible if not for Axel and Staren already killing several of its many redundant main motor and power systems. It shuts down.

    The malice feeling doesn't shut down. It intensifies suddenly. The armor on the limp, battered robot suddenly undulates, lashing out a thin, piano-wire strand to try to loop around Reyes' neck and crush with surprising force. That's its plan to keep the group occupied while its main body retreats further ahead, leaving only a small wire of the molten armor to keep up the control on the loop.
Spider-Man     Strange is able to get a general lay of the land. Why do magic-users write really mundane things in esoteric script? Even a SORCERER SUPREME has probably yet to figure out why they would write "SUB-TUNNEL 8 TO 'UNEARTHLY CHILD' MAIN AREA" in that old a mystic language. Looks like they've got a much geometrically larger area to work with down here than they normally would; it's likely that nobody has entirely yet realized that the tunnels have more wide space than is possible and are shorter than they'd need to be to get towards main MANHATTAN, where signage indicates it probably intersects with what is now a subway tunnel according to Strange's own experience living in New York City. Great for smuggling old magic reagents and critical artifacts though, probably!
Reyes     Reyes taps into the machine and in that brief moment... goes giddy with excitement. The geek in him knows what he's looking at, instantly understands a lot of the designs. He can't memorize the designs so he does the next best thing, transferring a bunch of mental images to a data file in his portable computer gear... that'll make for interesting study material!

    And then the machine shuts down. Whew. He's just relaxing and letting out all the tension when--- ...?!

    Reyes tenses right back up, looking around for the enemy when.... YOINK! The garrote gets a solid lock on the neck joint of Reyes's armor.

    The good news is that this is ENVIRONMENTAL BATTLE ARMOR. Trying to crush into his neck is going to take some time and effort. What the creature has done is end up with a Reyes on a leas, who's struggling to breathe and quickly begins to flail and grab at his armor and make choked noises over his suit's speaker.

    After realizing that trying to grab the wire's not going to do anything, the armored young man flails for his weapons. A panel on his thigh plate flips open but the weapon inside - a metal cylinder that VERY MUCH looks like the grip of a beam saber - tumbles out and across the ground. It's yoinked herky-jerkily by telekinetics, but Reyes seemingly can't gather the focus to retrieve the weapon what with ALL THE CHOKING.

    He might need some help.
Staren     Staren's eyes go wide as the denji end is blocked by weird nanotech. That's what he gets for using a finishing move out of place. However, the robot is stopped, and he gives a thankful nod to Reyes... who the nanites(?) are now trying to strangle. Staren draws forth an energy sword and swings kind of sluggishly at the strand, his robot body still recovering from using that move.
Spider-Man     The wire is dodging. The wire is /dodging/? It tries to maneuver around, stretching to arbitrary lengths. But thankfully, it can't move infinitely fast, and that means that Staren taking this on with Reyes at the same time is able to slice the cord. The moment it's severed, the choking stops, freeing up Reyes from the assault. "Holy crap, this guy's got, what is this? Nanotech? We gotta get rid of this stuff if he's making this kind of weapon with it!" Is Spider-Man's first reply, trying to get Reyes back into readiness, and as soon as he can, pursuing further into the tunnels to find SLAYER.
Doctor Strange      The Sorcerer Supreme's guess work proves correct. That'll be useful in a few moments here, when he goes and puts an end to whatever's causing all that racket. A portal appears downstairs. Strange's head pokes through it just in time to see Spidey running off into the tunnels, and Reyes being released from his chokehold by Staren's swipe. He rolls his eyes. All that choking stuff, and they had it handled the whole time.

     "Alright, c'mon," says Strange, beckoning to them both. "You're gonna need my help to navigate those tunnels." The portal leads to the nearest tunnel entrance, and is helpfully left open until anyone who wants to use it has done so. The sorcerer ends up flying alongside Spider-Man, weaving nimbly through the air around potential obstacles.

     "These crates are from Octavius Industries," says Strange to the others. "What exactly did the guy from last time say about Octavius?"
Staren     Staren looks kind of like he should be breathing heavily, except he's not actually breathing. Then he puts his sword away and starts putting the ejected armor plates back on his arms. "This isn't normal nanotech. It shouldn't be that /strong/. Psionic power? Alien materials?" He nods to Strange, "Sounds good." And follows through. "Octavius was the one with the remote control, who killed your unfortunate patient."

    Once in the tunnels, he sends a drone ahead again. "Dammit SLAYER... if you're not watching this, what are you doing...?"
Axel The others get to the wire before Axel can, after the robot smashes into Axel's head and staggers him long enough to not be of much use. As the wire dodges, Axel tsks, but soon, Strange and Spider-Man are continuing to approach, and Axel moves to join up with them and reply to Strange.

"Octavius is the guy who put the implant in our dead man's head, pretty sure. He said his name before he died." Axel considers what Staren has to say, too. "Could be Enhanced powers, too." With the others, he's going to stay behind the drone and see if explodes. If there's traps found by it, he'll use his chakrams to take them down.
Spider-Man     "Something like, uh, 'Octavius can heeeeEEEAAAAAAAAAAARGH'. I might be getting it wrong, his spooky ghost accent was really thick." Spider-Man replies to Strange, as they start getting into more open space. Strange, himself, is actually probably the one to know what's best to do when a pillar rushes out of the ceiling to try to crush him. Looks like they're playing this by the books; the place has some really brutal mechanical traps, meant to pulverize someone wearing power armor, but it's /like/ one of those mirror-dimension hazards.

    It's gonna be like this for a bit. As Strange, Staren, and now Axel get into more open space, more of those metal crushers menace the group at key points. Normally, you'd consider that a bit overkill, where a rigged gun would suffice. But this guy seems to be under the assumption that he's going to be raided by fucking Iron Man or something. Or, at the very least, someone with heavy armor.
Reyes     As soon as Reyes is free, he VIOLENTLY KICKS AWAY from the downed Hammer Drone and the weird nanotech monstrosity that just assaulted him. As soon as he's got ten seconds to himself though... "... THAT THING ALMOST CHOKED ME. WHAT WAS IT?! Nanotech?!" Clearly he was not able to analyze it while under such a panic. "Memo to self. I need some kind of... electric shock touch feature on this. Zap whatever grabs me..." Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. No doubt that he will add this feature though.

    Reaching out with a hand, he retrieves his weapon - it flies straight into his grasp. And once there, he keeps hold of it.

    "Might've been 'hear.' Maybe spy gear. You know, give someone cybernetic implants? Install some monitoring gear. Maybe a remote bomb, because you're a controlling jerk?"
Spider-Man     Staren seems to get his reply. "Seems" because SLAYER doesn't reply to anything he said. More of the screens have been rigged to the tunnel walls. "INCOMING MESSAGE FROM SLAYER", it says again, and the machinist is on-screen once again. This time, though, he's got some kind of hefty sniper rifle in his hands. "I see you've made it past the bouncer. Fine. That makes you 'Shocker', and being Shocker makes you dead shortly." The transmission statics out, then cuts to a video-feed of the man firing his sniper-rifle, blasting several times. Each time, Staren will have to deal with a heavy caliber shot launched from the far, far, far end of the straight tunnel. Thankfully, it's widening out into a complex space where old cargo deliveries, heavy crushing traps, and machining equipment are all making it less of a barrel for fish to be shot in.
Spider-Man     Axel is probably one of the ones who will be best handling another threat that joins them on the gauntlet. This isn't just where SLAYER helped assemble some of the machines they've had to deal with, it's also where they were tested. Several damaged, or even just plain un-damaged machines are rumbling to life. Some are too damaged to be anything but stationary turrets, wielding machine-guns on both arms. One's a suicidal rocket-tackler with no arms. A handful are custom jobs, mixes of Hammertech and homemade robotics. Many are filled in with... unnervingly human muscle. Really, really unnervingly human. They're the ones that pick up heavy rebar and other melee weapons to strike at him. None of them have that same armor though.
Spider-Man     Reyes would be the best for these un-reactive-armored folks, but he's otherwise busy. The reactive armor they pursue manages to leap onto another host machine, reforming the same Chitauri design and forcing a hard reboot. This one has more of those almost human-like muscles in its design. Human? Maybe more... aquatic. The menacing feeling surges. The whole thing thrums with an unnerving energy, and moves in distressingly organic ways, leaping between a few of the larger pieces of left-behind machinery to spray Reyes with machine-gun fire in motions that are somehow /acrobatic/!
Doctor Strange      "No," says Strange, in a mildly annoyed, mildy concerned voice similar to someone trying to stop a pet from doing their business on the floor. He holds out his arms to either side, stopping too late--the pillar strikes him in the center of mass as he rushes past, forcing him into a rapid backflip. The cloak picks up the slack, pushing him to the side of the pillar and running on autopilot for the short time it takes for him to catch his breath.

     The next few such obstacles are met with more preparation. Strange conjures on-the-fly portals to send any would-be Indiana Jones traps slamming into themselves, harmlessly going off behind the party, or propelling everyone past them.

     Spider-Man's response gets a slightly annoyed nod. 'Yeah, okay,' it seems to say.
Staren     Staren looks briefly hopeful that SLAYER is paying attention, but... no. It feels off. Is this a recording or is SLAYER transmitting without watching. "For crying out loud, I'm not--"

                                    /CRACK/                                    

    Staren's visor cracks around the bullet now lodged in it, and his head snaps back. The forcefield comes on, and the next shot slams into that, having the same effect on the field that the last one did on his visor. Staren starts dodging now, trying to find cover, shots deflecting off as they hit the field at an angle, cracking it more.
Axel As they progress, there's another announcement, but Axel's keeping for traps. Instead of traps, they get machines. Machine guns fire on his form, so his chakrams move to start deflecting some of the bullets as Axel sprints around them, spinning chakrams then proceeding to get set on fire and fly at the machines to melt them to slag and rip them apart at the same time. A rocket-tackler comes at Axel. This guy nearly knocks him off his feet, but Axel flips around to kick it in the face with superhuman strength and stagger it backwards, and then use the boomeranging chakrams to take it out with rapid strikes. The machines start to overwhelm, though, so...

"Stand back. Firaga!" With a gesture of a hand, Axel creates a sphere of fire inside the open area, set to swallow the robots and melt them down so the group can proceed without being swarmed. Though they might be able to still move while melted.

That'd be terrifying.
Reyes     Reyes is pretty aware things are happening out there. But he's not exactly a great fighter, so he hangs back... and approaches the Hammer Drone. Once again he reaches a hand out to it, now fully on the prowl for any NASTIES that might be looking to gank him. If there's any OTHER surprises besides just the drone, they're gonna get TELEMECHANICALLY ASSAULTED and hopefully disabled. But assuming the coast is clear...

    He makes an attempt to hack the Hammer Drone to gain ownership of it and slave it to his own signals. From there, if successful, he'll cut it loose on the OTHER HAZARDS down that tunnel, marking all of his allies as such so it doesn't attack THEM by accident.
Spider-Man     Crushing columns are mostly neutralized now. It slows the roll a little bit, but Doctor Strange can keep the group clear of getting crushed to death. Which is good! Staren just took cover near one that threatened to try to smash him, and they nearly interrupted Axel's fireworks. It's also a huge help to Spider-Man, who can now use the freed-up space to swing and give webbing-support from the air! He'll be helping Axel here with that. "Hey, thanks for clear skies here, Doc!"
Spider-Man     Staren has to take cover. Smart plan, because it seems like the man on the video feed just keeps blasting and blasting while he's in cover, shots trying to keep him forced down. He manages to get in behind a larger cargo container, and after Spider-Man finishes up some business with Axel, he says, "Wow, this guy is really angry at you specifically. What's with that? Maybe he's a dog person, or something. Here, hang on." Staren has some superhuman strength in a robot body, but nothing like what Spider-Man suddenly brings to bear, pushing the cargo container forward with raw super-strength to help give him cover so that he can make it the rest of the way down the hallway, and only sometimes stopping to help clear things out for Axel.
Staren     "He thinks I'm someone else, this 'Shocker'! ...Hmm." Staren has Dawn search for references to Shocker on whatever circles he's found evidence of the Vultures frequenting.
Spider-Man     Spider-Man does his best to assist Axel, between efforts to push their cover through the wide space. He keeps on the ceiling when Firaga goes on, but before then, he makes sure to give Axel some clear space by webbing up the machines as they approach, and yanking them off-course when their menacing assualt gets too hot to handle. Axel, for his part, doesn't need much help. Firaga starts up, and by synchronizing it with the cover-pushing they're doing, it starts to get a lot easier to move forward! Nice! Only a few disgusting, horrifying twisted metal bodies twitching at them after passing through the fire!

    "I didn't know it was possible to make robots have gore, but I guess that's robot gore. /Wow/. Are we doing war crimes? I really hope we aren't doing war crimes." Spider-Man quips as they push forward.
Spider-Man     The HAMMERDRONE is hijacked by Reyes, and completely synchronized to his command signals. Armor included! It presses on, trying to tear up crushers and other hazards like that. Until one inopportune moment, where the SLAYERDRONE armor suddenly injects commands into the process; the SLAYERDRONE tries to catch Reyes off-guard with its hijacked body and beat him brutally with the Hammerdrone's no-friendly-fire locked weapons that it can't shoot at its "admin", and run him through with living-metal spikes!
Spider-Man     Spider-Man has been constructing a digital database of information about this, which means Staren's Muse can search the WEB OF CRIME for more information. Leads on someone going by 'SHOCKER' were turned up by Nova Terra! JACKSON 'SHOCKER' BRICE is a direct superior of MASKED MARAUDER, and a major figure in the 'Vultures'. There's some clues about his location, enough that they can possibly run some raids soon.
Axel As the Firaga works, Axel phews, thumbs up to Spider-Man. "Hey, it's not like it's my first time."

As they progress, Spider-Man might double-think that and realize that Axel said that in a way that it's really hard to tell if he's joking. (He's joking.)
Staren     Oh, huh, that was quick. Hooray for the WEB OF CRIME! "I'm not Jackson Brice!" Staren shouts. "I just want to know what your deal is, although I admit that your clintele certainly reflects badly upon you! Frankly, I don't know why I keep hoping any of you will be anything but crooks! Screw it! We're coming to get you! I gotta give you props for this underground gauntlet though, you are WAY better prepared than any of the other Vultures!"
Reyes     Oh come on where did THAT THING come from?! Reyes senses the change in the Hammer Drone's activity's and.. diverts magical energy to his shields. The Armor of Ithan catches the spike, the physical blow simply ramming into an ephemeral wall that sparks and crackles and begins to crack...

    The shield SHATTERS, but with a force that propels Reyes backwards and tumbling end over end with only a mild gash carved into his armor, instead of being run through. "...Okay, this guy's technology is REALLY PISSING ME OFF." How did he MISS that thing in his previous attempts to scour the machine clean?

    Halfway rising to his feet, Reyes grits his teeth and reaches out with his mind again, this time lashing out for the SLAYERDRONE's control systems, hoping to subvert it!
Spider-Man     They push forward. "INCOMING MESSAGE FROM SLAYER" is displayed on screens all over again, and the man, still firing his sniper rifle in the video, laughs. "You believe you can overcome this, Brice? No. I've tested it quite well. Human survival rate is zero percent. I've only seen one in five Enhanced survive. But my Slayer? One hundred percent survival rate." A test course? It looks like they're passing though, at this rate. All despite the man's claims. And Staren's voice is just... lost on him.

    At the far end of the tunnels, things subside. Staren finds that he finally gets a good look at the sniper assaulting him. The small, pillbox-shaped turret and its main gun have spent all its time harassing him specifically, for reasons not known, but this means Spider-Man can deftly swing behind it and jam up the mechanism -- at least, jam it up long enough for Staren to hopefully sink a HEAT missile, or a beam saber, or something into it.

    There's also a big fancy transmitter. That's the one that Axel will probably want to go for. Something that large, which pulses the moment the robots pulse, is definitely what they're after, and if he can land a clean shot on it with those chakrams, he'll no longer have to deal with the remains of SLAYER's assortment of machinery.

    As for Doctor Strange? Well, they're past the many crushing pillars; no matter how geometrically magical this wizard-bootlegger collaboration tunnel may be, it can't reintroduce threats circularly. Without, you know, another wizard there to do it.

    And for Reyes... well, trying to hijack the SLAYERDRONE results in raw exposure to that malice. It feels... real. It feels /too/ real. It feels human, like a human's hatred is wired into it. It's like...

    Another technopath?

    He takes one chunk of it, and the rest immediately tries to stab out the mass it can't control. He gets another, and it does the same. It's in a fight with itself. Soon enough, the hatred and malice -- specifically /unthinking/ hatred -- drives it to self-mutilate until it loses coherence.

    There's another screen. Another "INCOMING MESSAGE FROM SLAYER" on it. "Did Shocker bring you back again? Pull the plug this time, you bastard. Do it. Just do it. I'm sick of this. You're fucking subhuman." The message says. "SLAYER" seems to be standing in exactly the same space that the group is currently standing in, in this video. Huh?

    There's a door further on. Spider-Man moves for it.
Staren     "I'm NOT BRICE!" Stare shouts, with increasing annoyance. Now that he has eyes on the 'sniper', he sends a few missiles its way, just to make sure it can't shoot them out of the air before they reach it.

    This all does seem odd. Is 'SLAYER'... or at least, the person making the messages, an uploaded human living in the machinery here? The demand to 'pull the plug' makes him wonder if SLAYER was forced into such a situation under duress. "Look, you freaking idiot! I told you, I grant wishes, I don't ask for them! Hey, Reyes, this guy clearly isn't listening, can you like... telemechanics him a message? We're not Shocker, we just want to know what his deal is and how and why he's helping the Vultures. And, admittedly, we're probably here to arrest him if he's been helping them willingly."
Spider-Man     It takes a moment to lift the big-ass cargo door thing manually, since Spider-Man doesn't have a code for the little keypad next to it. What's past the door is uncanny. Spider-Man is almost immediately stumbling back, looking like he might vomit into his mask. Past the big door, in the darkness, small lights illuminate a man in a stained hospital bed. Wiring emerges from his skull. Chunks of his head are missing, and infection prevented through esoteric and disgustingly uncomfortable medical apparatuses. And, most notably, chunks of human brain -- of the man's own gray matter -- are suspended in nearby tanks, wired to the same wiring that runs out of his skull, and linked through thick cables to a bank of computers near him.

    His graying hair and slim, sort of toned body make it clear that this is "SLAYER". He doesn't have the welding mask on. Facial recognition systems like Staren's, Spider-Man's, and others will recognize this as a MISSING PERSONS case: Spencer Smythe, a missing expert roboticist who once worked for Stark Industries on high-impact reactive armor systems. He's on life support.

    Reyes can probably immediately tell, but it doesn't take Staren or Spider-Man long to figure out that he's providing cloud services to his own robotics designs now. He seems to be entirelyunconscious, aside from some chunks of his brain that are kept in a state of frequent manual stimulation. Specifically, the subcortex areas adjacent to the "hate circuit" of the brain.

    A nearby screen lights up. "REPLAY?" It asks, questioningly. When pressed, it starts a pre-recorded message sequence. "You. You here to take me again? What is it, regretting you didn't wish for three more wishes? I am through with my employment. Come and taken them, subhuman..." And so on again.

    "Holy shit. What is... this is /awful/." Spider-Man says, unsteady in his tones, unable to muster a quip under the circumstances.
Axel "You're probably yelling at recordings." Axel says to Staren as they get through, and there's a big fancy transmitter. As the others deal with their problems, Axel focuses on his, taking the chakrams, spinning them once, and then sending them flying at the transmitter in opposite directions, trying to take out the two weakest points, bounce off them, and back to him.

If there's opposition in the way, well, Axel will try his best to avoid it, maybe punch it in the face unarmed.
Reyes     Ripping that thing's control up until it self-destructs is NOT an easy feat, but as Reyes finds it the most efficient way to shut down the Slayerdrone... it's what he does. It leaves him staggering and woozy though. It may be only a matter of willpower and inner strength, but those reserves are NOT INFINITE.

    Thankfully, though, NOW there's no longer anything preventing the Hammer Drone from walking along with him faithfully. He can trust it now, right...?

    With the mayhem seemingly dealt with, Reyes catches up with the rest, Hammer Drone following along stoically as only a rtobot can.

    It doesn't take Reyes long, upon entering the room of CONSIDERABLE groesquerie, to exclaim - without even trying to interface with anything, "Okay... that's the grossest thing I've ever seen." Helpful, Reyes, very helpful. He sounds a bit nauseous.

    "This... USED to be a person. It's some kind of robot command circuitry now. Telemechanics and networking... pretty sure. I uh. I... I could try to... poke it." His voice quiets severely as he really doesn't look forward to that. "... Maybe."
Staren     Well.

    Staren takes in the sight before him coldly, mechanically. Trying to work out what it's all doing. If indeed there is still a person in there. He frowns, though. "Used to be? You're saying someone turned him into a bio-CPU?"

    "What's the point of leaving him here? As nothing but a trap... clearly, he was useful. Wouldn't whoever was using him want to go ON using him? ...Or perhaps he outlived his usefulness, and was turned into a trap for people like us instead. Hmm." He turns to Reyes and Doctor Strange. "Look. This is... beyond me. I'm not a specialist. For me to try and piece him together... to even recognize IF he's still in there... will be clumsy work, mostly depending on AIs trained to do something as much art as science. If anyone can determine if he's still in there..." He looks to Reyes. "I mean... can you psychically sense him, or anything? The only psychics I KNOW don't... talk about how it all works much."
Spider-Man     "I don't think it was a trap." Spider-Man says, looking over the equipment. "We... I mean, we /barely/ figured out where he was with that cached data. This is... I think this is the most secure they can get." He starts tapping things on his phone, and flicks a few small holograms out, like Stark often does. "See, uh, a lot of their holdings are really low-resource. So I think this is kind of like a bunker for them. And they wanted to keep using him. I mean-- jeez, it looks like they still are." He regards the racks of servers. "But... they're high-skill, low-resource. They did this crazy surgery but they don't have an underground hospital, just some backroom in an old bootlegger tunnel. Guh."

    He starts using that phone to actually make a call. "I need to get someone down here for... medical things. I don't even know what jailing him or recruiting him or any of that would mean. This is... messed up."
Doctor Strange      "Twenty bucks says this guy has like a thousand MREs in a cupboard when we find him," says Strange as he barrel-rolls to avoid a flying piece of shrapnel from Axel's destruction of the bots. As he comes to, he uses some of the time that's been bought by his allies to check the glyphs--maybe they're getting close?

     They're actually closer than they know. They step through the door. Strange immediately regrets his insult. This isn't some paranoid idiot. This is a victim of cold, calculating design, made into someone's attack dog, or... landmine, perhaps... and left to die. His disaffected shell crumbles, and he touches to the ground. He's still frowning--but his eyes nearly tear up at the sight, and his mouth hangs slightly open in silent shock.

     Staren's question causes him to take a look around the room at the bits of this poor man's brain, floating in suspension. The doctor holds up a scarred, trembling hand before Staren, displaying the results of sustained nerve damage from the crash he once suffered. "At my best," he says, looking over his shoulder, "...I wouldn't try. And, Staren... I was good. Damned good. That's... how bad this is."

     "If Reyes picks anything up in here," says Strange, tapping a finger to his temple, "Then the Paladins can look at arranging transport, getting him some care. Even then it'd be an uphill battle." He pushes a breath through his lips, running a hand through his hair. The sorcerer looks over at Spider-Man.

     "SHIELD?"
Reyes     "That's my guess. ... but guesses aren't good enough." States Reyes. He's very grateful for this armor, as it keeps his nauseated face from being easily visible to everyone here. But he turns about the room to look at some of the weird gear... and walks over to one of the nearest chunks of electronics that appears to have anything connected to the bio-compy-looking mess at all. And puts a hand on the panel. Buttons aren't required for this, just contact with the machine makes it easiest...

    This time, instead of trying to SUBVERT the mess, he simply tries to open up communications. Query the network. Various things. Anything at all that might get some kind of CONSCIOUS RESPONSE.

    And if nothing responds sensibly, he'll then cautiously attempt to scan the machine to try and figure out what state this 'person' is currently in. He's no neuroscientist, but maybe he can explain things to Dr. Strange?
Axel When Axel's done with the machine, he heads into the room. He tries to look disaffected. Emotionally, he is. But...

That's still an extreme image. So the physical reaction of 'I'm sick to my stomach' still manifests, and Axel covers his mouth. It's probably easy to assume he's just torn up about it, because he doesn't say anything. He just gets to checking the rest of the machines for the weird Slayer ooze. He doesn't expect to see any, because SLAYER talked as if it was singular, not plural, but better safe than sorry.
Staren     The Doctor gives his opinion. Staren holds a curled finger to his chin. "Hrmm." The opinion is taken as information, weighted. Staren looks at SLAYER, and then at Reyes. No sense planning until they get back the psychic test results...

    Staren mutters. "It's not creepy. The brain bits, the machines... it should be, but all I can think about is what was being done to the person inside the brain. /That's/ creepy. My mind refuses to finish imagining it."
Spider-Man     "Yeah." Spider-Man nods to Strange. "I figure with them, and with Paladins, we can get him out without... Killing him? I don't know if he's alive, but I really don't want to kill anyway."

    Under Reyes' brief foray into the realm of machine-enhanced brain-to-brain telepathy, it looks like Dr. Spencer Smythe is primarily unconscious. His jarred motor functions are being used for cloud-computed motion calculations, his mental "hatred circuit" is being accessed for target motion prediction, and other suchlike. The man himself is mostly unconscious, but there's small bursts of signal noise that seem like they're accessing local systems, "haunting" them with his pre-recorded messages. He's saved and backed up well-treasured footage of breaching the robotics systems around him and violently attacking some of the thugs that were working here after he... had this done to him.

    A message is left behind digitally, free to access, and it'll be something odd. It finishes the sentence that Dr. Jackson Arvad started speaking before. Would you like to access it?
Reyes     Reyes is EVER more grateful for that face-hiding helmet. But he shivers and shudders where he stands as she figures out the situation he's in. And it's exactly what he guessed! Which isn't heartening.

    After relaying his findings to the others... he makes a disgusted sigh, and decides to activate the message and play it for everyone here.
Staren                               OCTAVIUS CAN HEAL US                              

    "Well. I don't know if I trust whatever caused that sentiment... but clearly, Octavius is a figure we need to look into." Staren comments. "Well. I suppose I'll leave custody of him to the Paladins, if Spider-Man thinks someone can help him. If you don't want him..."

    Staren sighs. "I'll give it a shot, but the prospects look slim."