Surveying the Merchandise (CALLING ALL TITANS)

Two days ago...or two weeks ago. Or two years ago(Oh the fun to be had with inter-dimensional time differences!)

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Peter looked up in dismay at the sky. The deep dark blacks and blues of night-time were just about bleeding into Amber yellow warmth, but it wasn't the orderly progression of time that the human mind was used to. The moon and sun were not rising or setting, one was not following the other. No, this was chaos, a surefire sign that the earth was in dire shape. All of a suddenly he wasn't sure if webshooters and plucky underdog spirit would be enough to fix this.

What would Ben think of this? Peter cursed the thought, but couldn't ignore the thought. His thoughts started to spiral around memories and regrets, and he was aost grateful to be distracted by the sounds of coughing and heavy footfalls.

Almost. Until Peter saw who it was.

"Oh my God...Punisher?!"

Now, present day:

The sudden flash of memory rushed through Peter's head, but he had to push it away for now, while this intense situation was brewing. The lenses of his Spider-Mask were taking in the sudden change in the situation, and suddenly, some disturbing equations popped up. He knew that if left to their own devices, these panicked people could hurt themselves or each other in the resulting stampede. Eyelets narrowing, a decision was instantly made.

"Whoah, wait a minute, people! Women and children first. Anyone who is able, carry any injured or sick, and take them with you!"

The Amazing Spider-Man (tm) leapt amongst the fray of people, carrying anyone who fell and rushed them into the arms of other civilians. He'd also play gentle(but firm) bouncer to anyone especially rowdy. Whoever the knight was, they seemed to be helping more than hurting. And Spidey was going to assist if that stopped being the case. But the safety of Innocents came first. They always would.

That was why CAP didn't reply. He saw Rico emerge and so held his fire as she got a hold of Alice. "Two intruders, the other is in the lobby..." CAP's voice would crackle at a higher pitch through the shield droid behind Rico. Through the large security droid he'd move forward, preparing to help apprehend Alice until she... left again. It was very hard to tell through the emotionless feeling droids but he was becoming ever more agitated. CAP would start backtracking with the heavy security droid, the shield droid curling up and rolling into a ball and heading the other way to try and cut Alice off. "I am granting you authority over these droids. I am returning to the Lobby to help with the other nuisance..." CAP stated to Rico. He left the two these orders which The Heavy intoned, "Acknowledged."

CAP would then move back down to the Lobby, indicated by the remaining heavy droids' eyes lighting up and stopping their mechanical aim and shoot. The one that was just knocked downed then got back up, though it's head seemed to be barely hanging on. Was there a third intruder? No. He was saving the trash. Question for later. The droids fanned  out to one side The Black knight, where there were no civilians. One was down, it's head smashed to pieces. Blunt force. Who was this guy? Energy reserves for these droids indicated that they all fired, and the outside of the intruder's armor had inconsistent temperatures. So the weapons were useless. Great. One of the droids would move with unusual coordination and agility, as the floor under The BK would suddenly move and shift as the turret below tried to pop up. CAP was trying to send them off balance, and the droid pulled it's arm back for a backhanded swipe to actually send them into the wall. He would actually be done if they were so heavy, not even a heavy security droid couldn't knock them off their feet! CAP would then prepare to fire the eye lasers all at once, hoping to blast them further into that wall, or to hit them in the wall if the first attack failed to miss.


Back up top, Adriana was wondering what all the noise was and saw Alice. She blinked and stared at her as the shield droid's metal rolling was coming up from further down the opposite direction. So she went right back into "her room." This didn't concern her...

Rico was doing her best to listen to CAP while she held Alice. She should be going unconscious any minute now- Rico suddenly fell back. Her gravity had been centered with Alice, who had suddenly blinked to the hallway after making an unsavory comment. CAP had just explained that there were two intruders and that the other was in the lobby. Rico rose from the floor, looking at Alice in irritation as she let off another wisecrack. "You're the creep for suggesting it in the first place!" She quickly morphed the spear but watched Alice disappear again as her eyes glowed gold.

CAP informed her that the droids would be under her control from then onwards. She assumed that he was busy with the lobby. Rico almost made the mistake of immediately dashing to deal with the other intruder in the lobby, but quickly observed that nobody else had been trailing behind Alice. That meant nobody else had been dealing with her at this point. That also meant that, with the addition of CAP, they were probably already hands full down there. She straightened, collapsing the spear into a billy club and clicked her fingers, appearing at the end of the hall. She looked around for Alice, and then checked the other side of the floor as she clicked her fingers, finding her.

"Am I doing it right?" She split her billy club into escrima, lobbing one of the sticks at Alice's chest...or her back, depending. She clicked her fingers and went two feet behind Alice next, swiping her escrima at her midsection again. If Alice had gotten out of the way of the throw she would be able to catch it with little problem.

Alice blinked in surprise as the girl appeared in front of her. "Oh, cutie didn't mention that the Titans had a novice of the mystic arts. Gotta say I'm impressed, kid." Alice began to blink rapidly across the room, dodging the first billy club, and leaning on the wall as the two reappeared opposite each other. The two slowly started to circle each other, never turning their gaze. "You don't have a spellbook though, not that I can see. Are you perhaps the Sorceress Supreme of this universe?" She held up her spell book and raised an eyebrow. She clicked her tongue. This was quite fascinating. Even she needed to study from her book to memorize her spells, but this little one didn't even seem to have one. No, she was no mage. And definitely no Sorceress Supreme. "Not even a focus for your arcane power. Even I can't do that..." She couldn't mask how impressed she was by that one. No matter how hard she tried. She chuckled at the thought of what she could do with those abilities. "I'll have to study how you manage that later."

She straightened her back and cracked her knuckles. "But very well little mimic. Let us see how well you contend with a bit of trickery." She waved a hand forward and faded out of sight, chuckling to herself. Rico would find herself surrounded by very realistic duplicates of Alice, all walking forward with the same green energy radiating from their hands as had melted down the droids. All the while, Alice was making her way silently up the stairs, a dark smile painted over her lips.

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The knight put another fist through the next droid, and glanced back at Suzuki. "We're trying to fix the communications for the tower and anchor this damn place to somewhere before we miss our window. He stumbled as the turret slowly began to rise from beneath him, knocking him off balance just long enough for the next droid to move unnaturally fast. Faster than he was used to at least. Faster than he was ready for. It nailed him square in the jaw, and sent him flying into the nearest wall.

He groaned in pain and felt another hand shoving his head deeper into the wall, and fire began to lick at his sides. He inhaled and grit his teeth before grabbing the wrist of the droid. Despite it's mechanical strength, the knight was now stronger, and was effortlessly pushing it back, away from his skull. The shiny black helm was now illuminated by two glowing red eyes, and the wrist of the droid slowly began to melt away. Nearby droids on CAP's payroll would also begin to melt, albeit not as rapidly. Their vital joints were smaller, and much quicker to melt than the rest. It was like they'd been lit ablaze rather than the knight, and it was getting harder to control them by the second. "Now call them off before you really piss me off kid. That's a god damn order."

"So you decided to barge instead of knocking and telling anyone your idea?"

By this time, Spidey had just rushed a baby-carrying mother on to safety, and had started to approach the hectic scene when he felt the heat of the floor, felt the shimmering danger the closer he got to the center of conflict. Idly and without even thinking he leapt up toward a wall or ceiling, and the way he flipped through the air to land in a perfect crouch, it caused the average mind to do a double take, to make sure what they were seeing was real.

For his part, the wallcrawler was intently watching the black Knight's actions, and listening to his words, with great interest. Then robots started melting, and the big man started giving of 'doomsday device & million-dollar ransom' sort of vibes, and Peter decided he'd heard enough to make up his mind. Well, there was a lot he still didn't understand
But he recognized a bad guy when he saw one.

"Whoah, red eyes and ominous threats? Never good, fella. If the rest of Medieval Times were here, they would be so ashamed!"

As he spoke, almost lazily his right hand extended out, index, Pinky and thumb stuck out while middle and ring pressed inward.

THWIP!

A line of gray, ultra sticky, and most importantly non-flammable web shot out, aiming to splat across the front faceplate of Sir Galahad over here. If it connected, seeing would become a pipe dream. And if he touched the stuff...it would be a bad idea.

At the dangerous level of heat increasing, CAP forced the sprinklers to activate in an attempt at cooling off the remaining droids at his disposal. Their eyes seemed to be brighter than before, probably due to CAP quickly pulling out of the droids before they were getting destroyed. That'd make it easier to control the ones remaining. "Communications? For who? We are all that remain here," CAP's voice intoned through one of the remaining Heavies. CAP would then try something he should have done earlier. But he didn't expect a practically invincible intruder to come in, and he was tilted for a short while. Sir. Punchout would quickly find that someone was trying to overpower their armor in an attempt to take control over it.


Meanwhile, back up above, Alice would have a dimly glowing wire attached to the back of her shoe. One end seemed to go under one of the other common room doors, and the other would keep getting longer and longer the more Alice moved away from it.

Rico watched her warily as they began to circle each other. Alice mentioned that someone didn't mention that the Titans had someone versed in magic. Probably because they didn't. Alice even admitted being impressed by Rico's skills. Rico smiled gently. No need for her to know the truth. She made a remark about her lack of a spellbook, asking if she were the Sorceress Supreme of the universe. She even noted that she didn't have a focus.

"I can be whatever you want me to be," she remarked lightly, meeting Alice's gaze evenly. "Maybe you need a spellbook. I read books for a living. ...not that I get paid for it." Naturally the parameters adjusted. But from Rico's understanding, she now needed a "focus" for the spell. Her spear should do nicely, she thought, and so she subconsciously added those details in. She wondered what Alice's focus might be.

Soon she was brought back to reality however, as she watched Alice fade from sight after making a remark about how well Rico could deal with some trickery. Her lips formed a line, and her eyes shifted gold for a moment, adding to her library. She was very sure Alice had only turned invisible. But then duplications formed and surrounded her with that green plasma, and Rico's eyes flashed their golden hues again. Immediately, a dozen duplicates of herself appeared as well, and all formed the spear. "How's this then?"

Perhaps Alice expected her to cave. Rico ran forward, all versions of herself did, and attacked each instance of Alice with their spears, aiming for nonlethal battering more than any kind of stabbing or brutal killing.

As CAP began to probe the armor of the knight, he would find himself in a very interesting space. Virtually, it looked to him like a database. A server, a hub for a few hundred thousand files. All stored, relocated, all being organized at once. Then he heard a voice. A woman's voice. "Excuse me, did I leave the door open? I truly must be terrible at that. Kindly leave." And suddenly CAP was ejected from the system, the hard way. A way he likely wasn't very used to.

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The knight forced his way out of the crater in the wall, stretching his arm. "For us, who else? Right now this tower is floating in the middle of nowhere space waiting for its inhabitants to starve to death so that it can fade away along with them. If you insist on fighting that, I'm going to have to try a bit harder." He then averted his gaze to Suzuki, and he groaned. "If only you knew the irony of that statement, Bright-Eyes. Look I really don't want to hurt you, so I'm going to give you one more chance to-" And suddenly he saw nothing. There was only web. "...Really? I just...really?" He shook his head and put his index finger and ring finger to the side of his helmet. "What the **** is on my visor? Analyze this. And I want a HUD immediately. Visibility is ****." That was when the Susano'o hit him.

The fist drove him further into the wall. Then again. And again. And again. The knight was silent as the construct finally removed his fist fully, likely to check if he was dead. The knight gave a long sigh. "Deploy contingency - Bright-Eyes." He said again, before springing out of the wall like a bat out of hell. As he did, his arms collided with the wall, setting off something that sounded like an explosion, filling the room with thick black smoke that was almost impossible to see through.

The figure kept to one side, completely avoiding the mechs. If anything, they would have thermal vision. That was the last thing he wanted to run into. But in mere moments he had circled around to the back of Suzuki, and prepared his strike. "I warned you, kid." If the Susano'o appeared to protect her, it would be a 20 ton one-inch-punch right to the cage's spine. If it didn't, it was going to be a hell of a knock out chop to her shoulder.

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Upstairs, things were going absolutely swimmingly for Alice. The runt had taken the bait, and now she was diving into battle with the ghosts. They dove in valiantly, ready to battle with hearts full of zeal, and then they fell straight through Alice's duplicates. They all turned, and chuckled, trying to keep Rico's attention as Alice climbed higher and higher in the tower, twirling the USB drive in her fingers. She found a room that matched the description she'd been given. "Yeah, this looks important." She muttered to herself, sliding the door open and slipping into the server room of the tower.

From his vantage point, Spidey was able to watch the action, watching the angry girl pummel the armored guy into the wall. He was keeping a close eye on things, but before long he started getting distracted by his surroundings...what was this room he was in? Who were these people? Nobody here was talking about Kang, was he defeated? Did he beat the Avengers? Was Frank dead?

There were a million questions surging through his mind as the batle between Suzuki and Armor raged on. The Webhead looked back just in time to see the wall crumble into dust...and cough and wave his hands pathetically as a black cloud of smoke quickly filled the area. Instantly Petr thought of an octopus...and also the old hippies he sometimes walked(and swung) past on his way to school. Instantly he dropped low, descending from the wall so that he could crouch face-down on the ground. Smoke tended to rise, after all, and while seeing anything was a pipe dream, at least he could breathe a bit easier...and had time to bring his left hand up to his lense, tapping the side three times in rapid succession. Boom, instant thermal vision, instant heat signatures. Using this was always cool.

And using this revealed that that girl might be in trouble. Instantly Spidey was leaping up through the cloud and running along the ceiling as if he were a college sprinter, straight toward the knight. At the last moment he tucked into a ball, flipping toward the villain before extending. He was trying to crouch on the knight's shoulders, both feet on one of the angry man's shoulder pads, or perhaps the back of his neck, or his back, whichever was available.

If this succeeded, he instantly brought his hands down in three open-palmed slaps right to the helmet, all in rapid succession. Almost like...a drum beat.

"Whoah, talk about anger issues, pal! I know, a bit of bongo sessions outta be just the therapy you need!"

What followed were rapid percussive slaps to the tops, sides and back of that helmet, each slap getting harder and faster and faster and harder. Would this do tons of damage? Probably not. But if there was a human being with eardrums inside this suit of metal, Peter was doing as much as he could to cause them as much pain and damage in as short a time as he could. Plus, in terms of drumming...

Well, let's not lie, his drumming was pretty awful and uncoordinated. Which meant the black knight had to listen to that the entire time. It might have been better if he'd just thrown a punch!

And Alice would not be alone, someone who had not been there a literal second ago was now there in her path. "Hey good lookin'," a short looking girl in a cat-eared, striped hoodie smiled at her. It was Chessa, one of the mysterious people that routinely appeared and disappeared at their leisure. "Got a quick question for ya," she said popping her neck from side to side, while still grinning and keeping her body language totally relaxed. "Why shouldn't I kick that fine ass of yours out of this tower?" Chessa asked uncharacteristically serious, both eyes never blinking and watching Alice intently. She knew Alice could get around fast, she had seen it on the cameras. Chessa was also very aware that she was a spellcaster. But what good would that be if she happened to have something in her pocket dimension just for such a situation?


Back downstairs, CAP was very surprised when he was pushed out of what should have been him slipping into a new body. Another A.I? Interesting. Once Sir. Punchout started moving again, CAP with his remaining robots would prepare to support Suzuki when there was suddenly smoke. The bots did have thermal vision, as did the cameras. But the intruder kept away from the bots and was moving to attack Suzuki from the back, to which CAP primed the eye lazers before quickly aborting as the... red and blue human landed on the knight and proceeded to be as big a nuisance as possible. Well, if he had a better sense of humor, he'd probably find that funny. But for now, CAP would try a slightly different approach to the knight's armor. Moving in alittle closer, he'd transmit what was more or less his own will into the suit. Not as effective as simply possessing it but it may enough with the guy smacking the knight silly.

Rico's doubles all stormed for the opposing team...but then fell through them. Rico blinked, her eyes flashing gold again. They were all just illusions. That figured. She frowned lightly and willed them all to disappear as she searched the rest of the floor. She had attacked each and every instance of Alice because she had made as many duplicates as she had seen, minus one to include her. That meant that Alice wasn't in that space. True, she could be hiding as an invisible person, but that type of thinking would get Rico nowhere so she continued on the search. A few minutes of searching resulted in showing her that she wasn't on the floor. So the illusions were self-aware? No...probably feeding information to Alice and controlled remotely. Her eyes flashed gold once more. She made a dozen illusions again and had half of them stay behind to carefully observe the room. She sent three downstairs and took two with her upstairs. She had to try and figure out what Alice was after.

The knight growled as the red-clad hero landed on his shoulders. "I'm sorry, who the hell are you?" He leaned forward ever so slightly before shooting his head backward, faster than most. And giving him a nice hard headbutt straight to the...er...web cartridges. From there he'd reach to grab the left leg and yank him down, stepping forward into an elbow to his chest to spike him toward the ground. "Now get the **** outta my house." He growled, spiking downward.

He started to move forward again, now eyeing the lightning that Suzuki was preparing. "We perfected that insulator, right?" He asked seemingly nobody then he started to lock up. "...Uh, is that on your end?" His eyes flashed. "Oh...good. We really need to get this virus out of the tower. Disable everything but our HUD until further notice, Darla." The armor visibly deflated for a moment, before the knight stood back up, stretching out the left arm to ensure system stability. This time when they spoke, it was a much lighter tone. Feminine. "Much better." She got into a lower stance and prepared herself for the incoming electrical attack. "You'd better hope this one puts me down, Suzuki."

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Alice sighed and dropped her invisibility spell as she entered the server room, palming the usb drive before running into Chessa, almost physically she jumped for a moment and chuckled. "Oh, didn't see ya there, kitty." She chuckled at being surprised, and began to prepare the Sanctuary of Sargonnas, just in case. "Reasons not to kick me out...lets see..." She clicked her tongue and tapped her chin. "Well, I worked quite hard to get here for one thing. And to save you all from an untimely death. And the response hasn't exactly been grateful if I'm being frank. Literally jumped a few universes to get here and find some schmucks on a request and a whim. Would be a shame to ruin all that because people don't seem to like my methods." She nodded to herself and started to make her way toward the server tower. "Good enough reason?"