trans_9 | Vatican [Open]

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Vatican [Open]

Once Atom had read the initial comm post, he headed over to the closest place where he thought people would be -- the Vatican, once converted into a fortress against outside attack. It had since been mostly restored to its original state, but some fortifications still remained -- hopefully, some food and supplies, too. He'd heard people had used it as a safe area before, so maybe some of them would head there now. As he touched down within its limits, his rocket boosters kicked off. His footsteps seemed to echo through the tall construction as he walked along the paved stone... but for now, he seemed to be alone, in the midst of dead silence.

Or was he?

"Hello?" he called. "Is anyone there? Does anyone need help?"

[Robutts will be forthcoming 83. I'll bring some Terminators, but if anyone else could NPC some other robots, that'd be great!

P.S. I will be waiting for more people to tag in before I add robots.]

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Billy swears rather loudly. "A few more seconds," he grunts, jamming the wires into place. It's not a perfect job and likely won't hold up long-term, but it's the most he can do on short notice. He just hopes the addition of a thin layer of his blood won't damage the machinery too much. He takes shortcuts he wouldn't ordinarily take with the wiring, pulling off something that might be just about the right shape.

"Load. I'll be ready to help prop it up."

Maxine shakes her head, but bites her lip nervously. "No," she says, quietly. "My powers are still partly working-- I can use them to help defend the both of you, if we get attacked. I'm not leaving."

Maxine's eyes are skimming frantically over Billy's handiwork. She's no expert on this stuff, but from what she can tell it's as good as their going to get on the time limit they have. Billy's good. She carefully squeezes Punchy's shoulder encouragingly, now that he has to load the virus up.

"Shawty..." Punchy sounds like he's both worried and a little ticked off at Maxine's response. On one hand, he doesn't want her hurt, genuinely. On the other stop trying to steal his glory, Maxine. It's bad enough Billy's here to one-up him on mechanics!

He loads the USB cord in. "Buy me five minutes. Boss man, you can use my gloves next time if you need to."

Something Billy could have known about five minutes ago, but still.

Billy nods. He's only slightly upset that he wasn't told about this before. "It's happened to me already. I think my hands can withstand another beating. We'll cover you, don't worry."

He moves next to Maxine, readying his pistol. "I'll take the left side. We can do this," he says in the hopes of offering encouragement, though he doesn't entirely feel it.

Maxine looks down and away for a second at Punchy's response, before she gives him her best determined face. He'll have to live with her being the superhero she is.

Moving quickly to her feet, she moves to the right side, eager to defend Punchy-- if a little scared of the fight. She takes a shaky breath, and stands ready. Her powers are weakened, but she can still use them to fight for long enough to buy Punchy time.

Punchy's fingers fly over the keyboard ~~like a G6~~ of his laptop while he works at stripping away the programming defenses built into the robot's code. All he needs is a way in, to let his little virus take root. It's not the best thing he's written, not by a long shot, but it will hopefully do in a pinch. And if not, well. They'll probably be dead and they won't really care much.

"Almost there!" He finds a weakness in the programming and starts glitching out the robot, wiping its current programs.

Billy curses. The other robots are too close. He starts shooting at vital joints, hoping to at least remove their guns and heads. The core power is unfortunately in the back, and he can't blast through, but he's trying.

One's coming up on the right that he can't quite get, seconds away from firing a round into all of them. Billy moves to duck, trying to aim in the meantime.

Maxine stands strong until the robots get close enough that she thinks she can get some hits in-- but she also moves a bit forward to expedite it. She wants to keep them as far off of Punchy as she can.

As soon as they're close enough, though, a blast of wind originates from her, though not as forceful as she could have managed in a normal time. The 'bots stall from the sudden pressure, and she manages to slam a few of them together. But she can feel that this is a lot tougher than it normally would have been, too.

"Billy!" she shouts, noticing the robot he's trying to take down. She drops the winds she's already using, and tries to focus a blast to knock the robot's aim off kilter. Anything to buy Billy enough time to get the shot in.

Billy's shots hit the robot in the face. It staggers back, its sensors blinded, but another rises to take its place, readying its weapon to fire its lasers at Billy.

Some of the Terminators, too heavy to be knocked over by Maxine's winds, move to grab her arms while she's distracted helping Billy.

"Damn!"

Billy can't avoid the blowback entirely. He finds himself rolling to the other side, rising to stand in front of Punchy. The top goal is protecting him while this work is done, even if Billy has to get hurt.

He spares a second to glance at Maxine. She's in trouble, and he tries to spare a few shots in the arm joints in that direction. Hopefully she can do the rest.

Maxine shouts in something like fear as she's grabbed at, though Billy did a considerable amount to slow them down and weaken them. She can't give up though, she's determined not to. Ignoring the pain, she tries to pull herself free and away from the ones that managed to grab at her. She jerks hard while focusing to put out the biggest blast of wind she can manage, to cut into them. She spares enough of her concentration to keep as much of it away from Punchy as she can, but otherwise goes all out. She can already feel her head spinning. At the same time as both of those things, she kicks out hard, against them, to get herself from leverage.

As soon as she's free she ducks away and tries to get away from the others that are still left unaffected, before the ones she'd just fought against have a chance to recover their balance and attack again.

"Punchy, Billy, are you okay?"

"I'm breezy!" Punchy yells, no pun intended. We're good to go in T-5! You two, bounce!" He's already started backing away from the droid, which is starting to blink to life.

Please let this work.

"Great!" Billy shoots at a few that are getting uncomfortably close, rolling and hiding when he gets the signal. He's watching carefully and reloading, ready to step in again if their plan fails.

He looks nervously at his companions, crossing his fingers.

Maxine backs up, too, quick steps away to give the robot space. Hoping a lot that it'll work. She focuses her wind to try and slow down their opponents, to buy them a little bit more time. Her head is pounding but if this works then they're almost there.

The droid revs to life and opens fire on its fellow droids. Unfortunately for the droids, they're working off of heat sensors to acquire their targets, and are completely unequipped against one of their own. It doesn't matter that Punchy didn't have time t rewrite most of the motor controls; all that matters is that it's firing at everything in the droids' general direction.

When the firing ends, Billy, Maxine and Punchy are still standing in the midst of the carnage of the droids. Their reprogrammed droid stumbles a bit and continues to try and crawl forward towards the sounds of more combat.

Punchy pumps his fist in the air. "That. Was. Bomb."

He grabs Maxine, spins her around, dips her and plants a big kiss on her. And, on second thought, decides he probably doesn't need to celebrate the same way on Billy.

Billy appreciates the consideration, really. He politely averts his eyes and advances on the carnage, studying and salvaging what he can. Good thing there are spare gloves lying around in just the right spot.

"Thanks," he says, turning around when he suspects it's safe to. "You two worked perfectly."

Fortunately, Maxine is a lot more receptive to this form of celebration. She barely has time to even let out a happy noise that it worked before she's in Punchy's arms and kissing him back. And the spinning and dipping her thing certainly worked its charms.

Maxine laughs happily once the kiss is broken and Billy is speaking to them. Though she doesn't let go of Punchy, even if she does blush. "Well, I mostly just tried to buy time. Really it was you and Punchy who worked so well. That was amazing, both of you. If we could do it here, too, maybe it can replicated, and we can help more people with that..."

It's fine that Maxine keeps holding on, because Punchy's totally sniffing her hair.

"Yeah, that was pretty aces." He's preening just a little, especially with a compliment from the boss man. "Now let's end up downtime and get on the field again, whoop more robot ass, a'ight?"

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Vatican [Open]

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Going to give y'all a tag to fight robots, I can NPC some for you if y'all want!

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/wrap