2013-04-07 - Robos and a Plasma Cannon

The world has been quiet lately, with only little explosions here and there of activity. This time, that bit of activity is here in Central City. Piling out of trucks are a number of good-sized robots, slightly larger than a normal human, perhaps seven feet tall. They have pulled out a plasma canon, and shot it at a wall of the S.T.A.R. Labs research building before entering into it in search of 'something'. Aren't they always in search of something?

That is actually why Hope Summers body slides in, digitally forming across the street in an alleyway. She has a plasma rifle over one shoulder, and energy handguns - one strapped to each thigh. She peeks out of the alleyway and curses to herself when she realizes she is a little late, and glances about for someplace to go to set up to 'camp', but ground level makes snipering more difficult.

Robots in Central City? Not an unusual occurrence to say the least. The loyal citizens of the Twin Cities has gone through a lot in the years since the emergence of the first Flash. STAR Labs is a popular target and a popular source of oddities in Central City, so the Flash knows it and the people there well. The Flash, however, is no where to be found as the good-sized robots start on the wall of the Labs. Why is that? Wally's half a world away in South East Asia. A minor earthquake had created a tsunami that threatened a small island province in Indonesia. Wally's shuttling people out of harms way when the call comes in from J'onn in the Watchtower.

Those in S.T.A.R. Labs already started lock-down and was going for cover, while their security force was responding to the threat.

Hope has moved behind a car, realizing one shot from one of those plasma cannons and she would be toast, so she doesn't keep her heart set on that cover. But she removes her own plasma rifle and rests it on the car hood as she takes aim toward the opening. Two of the robots are working together to carry out a large box while three others are covering their retreat.

Hope takes aim at one and fires, her jaw dropping over when it only makes a dent in the robot, and not actually going through it! She grabs her rifle before leaping and rolling behind another car as the one she was behind suddenly gets blasted away. She curses beneath his breath, "Why can't this ever be easy?!"

Other members of the Justice League are all tied up it seems. Wally stands on the beach of the island he's helping to evacuate. He stands there briefly and raises a hand to his cowl, "No one else, J'onn? Can't get a hold of Jay? Or Bart? What about those Avengers, can't get Kyle on the line?" J'onnz responds, "No, Wallace. People are tied up or incommunicado for one reason or another. If you desire, I will go down and handle the situation. I have, however, no one to relieve me in the Monitor Womb-" Wally waves his hand around as he talks, "No, No, J'onn. I got this. It'll just be another half a minute. Flash out."

With that said, Wally is a blur of scarlet and gold motion. The colorful streak zigzags along the island, visiting settlements and 'escorting' people to cargo planes that are being used for evac purposes.

After thirty-two seconds, Wally skids to a halt right at the shoreline. He takes a split second to figure out what direct he is facing before tapping into the Speedforce. Wally runs across the ocean towards North America. Seconds later he is on land, he gears it down so as not to damage anything in his wake. A couple of minutes after the arrival of the robots, Wally is back in Central City.

And Flash gets to witness another call get exploded before the rifle is shouldered on a young woman and she has two energy handguns in both hands as she shoots at the robots. She is constantly moving, dropping into a roll before coming up shooting. "That does it, should have brought explosives!" But she redirects the last few shots instead to the box they are carrying, blasting it from their hands and causing it to open and out tumbles a number of padded plastic cases that hold tubes of...stuff. Chemicals perhaps? Drugs?

The Scarlet Speedster skidded to a stop along a wide avenue near STAR Labs. The wake he kicked up behind him eventually catching up to him several seconds after his arrival. The former Kid Flash surveys the scene of what's going on, "J'onn; Anything important in STAR Lab's Central City location I should be aware of? I mean... is there something stranger than normal being worked on here?" Before the Manhunter from Mars can answer, Wally is on the move. A red and yellow streak zigzags towards the robots and the falling objects from the box. He either sweeps them out of the air as he runs by, or picks them up from the ground. With the items, he'll run a couple of hundred yards away and look down at what's in his arms.

J'onn responds back, "I believe they are working on some genetic research right now, having outsourced some of the program from San Francisco to Central City."

They are multi-colored vials and they are labeled with different things such as 'Base', 'Meta', and 'Mutant'.

Hope suddenly sees the stuff done, and so do the robots, both parties pausing as they search for the materials. That is when find Wally some ways off with the goods. Hope remembers to close her mouth, and then she's moving toward the robots to try and shoot in a joint area with her handgun as the robots are starting to run toward the Scarlet Speedster with heavy plodding metal boots.

"Yeah, J'onn. Now that you mention that, it looks like that is what these robots are targeting." wally admits over the comm. He looks up from the vials and towards the plodding robots. He purses his lips briefly in thought, glances down tot he vials and then disappears. Wally quickly zipped several blocks away and stowed the vials somewhere no one will find them; In an old Card Cataloger file of the Central City Library's History of Disco section. He's back in a flash and runs towards the robots. The Fastest Man Alive runs circles around a couple of the robots, which draws a yellow and red blur around them. He's not just circling them fun. He's gauging how fast their sensory systems are. If this disorients them, that'll dictate his next move.

As soon as the red blur appears, Hope stops firing her energy guns, and skids to a halt as she watches the red speedster work his own 'magick', her eyes a little wide.

The robots are having some difficulty catching up to Flash, so they start to fire at the red blur surrounding them to try and nail Flash by sheer luck as he moves so fast, he might just run into it!

Shooting at the Flash? Even bullets to the Flash are too slow. Beams of energy? It's like playing dodge-ball with the nerdy kid in class. The Scarlet Speedster runs around the blasts, limbos under some blasts and hops over others. So, Flash Fact: What's the best tactic a Speedster can take when multiple enemies are firing at him? Get in-between them so that they shoot themselves. The Flash runs in a pattern between a few of the Robots in an effort to make them inadvertently hit each other with plasma blasts.

The robots do cross-fire, having no system for self-preservation or preservation of their 'teammates'. They start denting themselves, and doing further damage to one-another.

Hope actually starts laughing, and removes the plasma rifle from her shoulder and rests on one knee as she takes it to her shoulder and takes aim. She grunts when the shot goes off, a total of three in rapid succession as she uses the Flash's distraction techniques to put rapid fire shots into one robot's head, causing it to blow up.

The red and yellow streak of the Flash spins around another robot. The streak lifts up off the ground as Wally leaps off the ground. He attempts to hop up onto the back of this particular robot and hold on by the shoulders. The Fastest Man Alive spares a second to ask, "So who do you guys belong to? Luthor? Toy Man? The Wizard? Let's find out if they signed their work inside you!" Tapping into the Speedforce, Wally starts punching at the upper back of the robot. His punches come in blurry succession as in the blink of an eye, Wally slams his fist into the metal skin of the machine a thousand times.

At first, the metal does not seem to give much, but over each hundred hits, it starts to crunch inward and cave in, until finally the robot falls forward and twitches before it stops moving. Two down, three more to go. Hope has not waited idly by, though Flash is acting much faster. She has taken aim at another robot actually aiming for Flash as he is beating the other robot, and she shoots twice in rapid succession actually managing to crush its weapon arm so it cannot fire. Instead, it moves to try and punch Flash as its comrade falls forward. Though Flash may notice, that another two robots are aiming at Hope now, and she is still resting on one knee.

The Flash leaps off the falling robot and lands in a three-point stance. He looks up towards the Robot making its way into physical striking range. To the Fastest Man Alive, these robots are moving like Evolution; Slowly. He spares a second, relative to him, to look from that robot over towards his helpful sniper. He notes the two robots taking aim at her. He moves like a flash and zips over towards Hope's position. He simply attempts to grab her and drag her out of the path of the robot's firing arc.

Hope would have lost her grip on the rifle if it was for not the strap about her shoulder, but there is a squeak from her as Flash grabs her, red hair flying about her face! The damaged robot hits at nothingness, while the other two fire into nothingness, and the world seems to blur for Hope. "Wow...amazing," something heard clearly since she is moving same speed as Flash for that time-frame.

The robots will start to try and branch out to search for the vials they wished to retrieve if they are not stopped, but if given those precious few seconds, Hope will say, "They can't get that research. They will hurt a lot of people with it."

Wally flashes a grin at Hope after he stops and places her back on the ground, "I kind of figured they'd go the 'we're going to hurt people route'. You usually don't shoot down the wall of STAR Labs for benign purposes." He raises a finger and taps at the forehead of his cowl, "Excuse me-" He zips off towards the robots but stops. The red blur returns to where he was a second earlier, "-Oh, and thanks for helping my city." The Flash zips away in a blur again, heading for the robots that are fanning out. He starts running in a circle at superspeed around one of the robots.

Alright, Hope can help it, she grins. He said thank you! He actually said thank you! Alright, fangirl moment later. Right now, she has a job to do! And she is moving to leap on top of a nearby car hood, the metal crunching a bit underfoot to indent inward. She raises her rifle again, and takes aim. She purposely fires a shot at a robot to draw it's attention inward, "I know where the goods are you pieces of scrap metal!" Alright, that got their attention so they are now all heading toward Hope again. That centers them more so one is not hunting through the city for them and they are involving less civilians.

The cop sirens can be heard as their cars stop somewhat nearby, and they set up a perimeter.

There's the tell tale cracking sound of a sonic boom as the Flash breaks the sound barrier as he runs in a circle around one of the robots. The Fastest Man Alive is performing another old stand-by for Speedsters. The speed at which he is moving starts to create a funnel cloud around the robot. Debris ranging from small pebbles and pieces of glass all the way up to USPS drop boxes lift up off the ground and join this funnel cloud. All the debris in the spinning air is meant to buffett against the robot. Hopefully this maneuver is also enough to lift the robot up off the ground to stop its forward locomotion.

The robot does stop moving, and Hope is taking careful aim at another, doing major damage about the neck area, but not quite severing it before she has to leap and roll off of the now exploding car that is flying up into the air. She keeps running as soon as she comes out of the roll, pulling out an energy handgun while on the move to continue firing at the robot. The third one is still taking aim at Flash, trying to catch it with an area cannon blast...great, the one with the bloody plasma cannon!

The Flash, after about a minute's time relative to the robot and normal people, skids to a stop. His wake continues to swirl around the robot but without the momentum gained from Wally's movement, the wind funnel eventually subsides and the debris that Wally gathered in his wake eventually just drops harmlessly to the ground. The robot should look like he just suffered from a really bad hail storm. Wally raises a glove to the forehead of his cowl and mock-swipes his brow of some non-existent sweat. Wally quips, "You guys are trying to give me a workout today, aren't you?" Then out of the corner of the Speedster's eye he notes the blast from the other robot. Wally's eyes widen as he taps into the Speedforce to gain a little edge. He jumps and tumbles backwards, landing behind a convenient Keystone Motors Pick-Up Truck, an '87, he believes. He'd note that he can tell by looking at it that it needs some suspension work and maybe an alignment. But that doesn't matter. Wally has no intention on driving it. He hides behind it as the blast hits it. The truck and Wally are thrown backwards against the storefront of a nearby commercial buildings.

Hope gasps, "You metal jerk face!" That is when she starts to run then, right toward the robot. It is already swinging its canon blaster toward her, but Hope keeps running. To Flash is is likely slow motion, but she's still faster than the robot.

Hope covers the distance like a professional and then slides on the blacktop without fear of hurting herself and shoots her handgun upward to actually nail the plasma cannon itself as she slides right between the robot's legs to use it as cover from the blast. Even then, she is sent rolling from the explosions, and coughs as she tries to gasp for air. Sucks to have that knocked out of ya, but she managed to keep ahold of her gun, the rifle having knocked some bruises into her with the rolling about.

Two more down from the beaten one that twitches on the ground and can't seem to get back up, to the one exploded by the plasma cannon backfiring. One left. That one is seeming to search to make sure that Flash is down for the count.

The Flash groans for a moment as he tries to work through being stunned from being sandwiched between the truck and the store front. Using his legs, he pushes on the truck, trying to push it away from him. He pushes with supreme effort and budges the truck enough to allow him to free him from the vice-like grip he's in. He crawls out from between the vehicle and the building. He pats the bumper of the vehicle while he taps into the speedforce to accelerate his healing, "Thank you for not being Korean." He remains kneeling there, hopefully out of the view of the approaching robot, while he recovers.

Hope finally pushes herself up shakily, still not real steady on her feet. She tries to take aim with her hand gun on the robot approaching the truck, she hasn't seen you yet, but her hand sways and she curses at herself under her breath as only a teenager can. She limps a few steps toward the robot and lifts the gun again, taking a deep, steadying breath. When she fires, it does little more than dent the robot and force it to pause and look toward her.

"Alright, not my brightest move," Hope grumbles to herself. Who knew there could be someone that talks more during battle than Flash?!

The Flash hears that Hope is still trying her best against the robot. Satisfied with the work the Speedforce did in calming his bruises and setting his fractures, Wally stands up. He stands a moment after the robot has turned its attention towards Hope. Wally grimaces a raises a hand to rub at the back of his head. He humphs and starts looking around his immediate vacinity, "Tough nut to crack, these things." He pauses, "What I need is nut cracker." He looks back down to the Keystone Motors Pick-up, specifically in its bed. He reaches in and lifts up a part of the bed that leads to the underside of the truck; Where the spare tire is stored. A tire iron is neatly latched there in case of emergencies. A broad smile, "Keystone Motors; Never cut corners." He grabs the tire iron and looks up towards the robot, "Bust through them." The Flash speeds over to the robot and starts wailing on the thing with the tire iron at superspeed.

As Hope is thinking of just falling down to dodge the on-coming blast, there is suddenly a flash of red and the robot is being knocked about at superspeed! Only the force of the speed force prevents damage to the tire iron as Flash uses it to wail on the metal montrousity!

Hope's eyes get really wide. Alright darn it, she's impressed, leave her alone! But she then shakes her head, and just as the robot is teetering over to fall down defunct, Hope starts hobbling and half stumbling toward the area where Flash was, giving her head another shake as if to clear it. Explosions, not fun, even if she didn't catch the main blast.

The Flash ends his wailing on the robot as he notes it's slow tumble to the ground... slow for his perspective at least. The Fastest Man Alive stands a few feet away from where it falls, foot propped up on the curb of the road and the tire iron resting casually on his shoulder. He looks from the robot to Hope as she hobbles over his way. He says, "That was something else, wasn't it? I'm the Flash, by the way. Don't think we've met." He lifts the tire iron off of his shoulder and gestures around the area with a wave of the tool, "Did you see where these guys came from?" Mouth's moving a mile a minute, a little faster than he runs no doubt.

Hope pauses and actually stifles a giggle, even though she's obviously sore and mildly wounded. But then more seriously, she shakes her head, "No. I...heard rumors about them, they work for someone really bad, someone that means a lot of harm to people." She is silent for a moment or two before she says, "I'm sorry I don't have much information to share," but she does at least say, "I'm...," a pause, "Traveler." That was what Cable was calling her over and over again, so she thinks that's a hell of a sight better codename than Mutant Messiah or Traveler. "Flash, fastest man on Earth, right? I've heard of you." Obviously, one would think.

The police are starting to slowly move in, working in conjunction with the S.T.A.R. Labs security staff which is picking up their wounded as well, to secure the robots. Hope then asks, "The material, is it safe?"

The Flash nods, "Yeah, most folks have heard of me. Everyone knows me here." He waves the tire iron around to indicate Central City. He says to Hope, "Pleasure to meet you. Again, thanks for helping here. I appreciate the help. The League couldn't spare anyone." he glances upwards to the sky, presumably where he thinks the watchtower is orbiting. He looks down, "Material?" He asks before answering a split second later, "Oh!" He disappears in a flash before returning with vials held in his hand, "Looks alright to me." The Leaguer looks towards the STAR Labs staff, anticipating their approach.

The S.T.A.R. Labs staff are quick to approach. Hope just looks thankful, and removes to lift up the hood of her half cloak when they approach to cover her red hair and shadow her face.

A S.T.A.R. labs staffer moves to take the items carefully, "Thank goodness they are alright and unbroken. We better get these back into a cooling station. If these were broken...," he shakes his head. "Student of diseases and the effects they have on varying genetics. I wouldn't want to see what this could do out in the world," the lab technician confesses. "So thank you both." He bows his head respectfully and moves to hurry back - though carefully - to the lab to put the items back in storage.

"They could try again," Traveler says. "They research they do...they are just curious, but it could harm a lot of people," she states.

The Fastest Man Alive hands over the vials to the STAR Labs people. He gives a mock salute, "Pleasure to be of assistance, people. Glad things worked out." A brief pause, "Need any help fixing that wall? I know a couple of guys back in Keystone that are handle with some poured concrete..." Wally turns and looks at Hope, "STAR Labs is always a target of this kind of thing. Always has been. It's why they've got such a crack team of security personnel."

The Scarlet Speedster stands before you and there is no doubt that this is the genuine article. The Flash wears a full body one-piece costume that goes from covering his face all the way to his toes. The costume is primarily red with yellow lightning bolt accents around the waist and forearms. He has a pair of calf-high yellow boots designed to grip the ground that the Flash is running on. The Diagonal lightning emblem of the Flash is emblazoned on his chest. A pair of lightning bolt accessories cover the Scarlet Speedster's ears and aid in aerodynamics.

A nod at that, "Sometimes it isn't enough though. If you could keep an extra eye on it, I would appreciate it," Traveler says. "It never hurts to be an extra hand helping, right?" A slight shrug of one shoulder as she watches the S.T.A.R. labs guy politely decline Flash before departing. "Anyway, it's better to be safe than sorry." She tilts her head slightly to look toward Flash. She then offers a gauntlet hand toward him, "And thank you," returning the polite thanks that was provided to her earlier.

Flash reaches to grasp her offered gauntlet. He'll shake it politely and offers a nod, "Yeah, no sweat. We've always got Central City on the radar at the Watchtower. So it is not problem for us to keep a little extra attention on the Labs here." He gestures towards the damaged Lab building with a nod of his head. He pauses briefly and raises his free hand to the ear of his cowl, "Yeah, J'onn. I'm done here. What's nex-" He pauses as J'onn speaks, "Yeah, you got it." He lowers a hand and focuses on Hope, "Gotta run. Hope to work with you again sometime."

A twitch of her lips at the word Hope, "I'm sure it will happen Flash. I'm not dubbed Traveler for nothing, I get around." And then there is a tap on the metal wrist band on her left wrist, and she starts to digitally come part as she bodyslides out of there.