The Great Race of Doom II

Lex learned firsthand that the voltage and amperage required to stop a heart in electrocution actually did little permanent damage to the brain. In fact the effect of multiple doses of that special cocktail of pure electrons was not unlike drinking a Telani margarita, whose main ingredients were Bajor testicles and an ingredient actually called gut rot, and which if administered to those of human persuasion would need to be mixed in in moderation, the end result being that the wrong drink would cause the whole of the esophagus to combust and the brain to explode.

Lex had frequently described imbibing the drink as like being curbed by a street thug, assuming the thug’s foot was a lemon wrapped in a gold brick, and that kerosene and a lit match then found their way down your throat. The drink could be described as warm in your belly in the same way that a hornet’s nest may be said to open your pores.

This was probably the very best way to describe the way the Lex felt when he awoke first to a great shudder and then to two blips on the radar, who’s certain makeup and trajectory identified them as homing missiles fast approaching, and the appropriate warning signal in his mecha suit was therefore blaring incessantly, and Lex was positively certain that this alarm was accompanied by a knife being plunged into his skull repeatedly, though he knew it to be only an acute headache.

Lex slammed his eyes open the way one might open a garage door with no counterweight, only to be quite offended by the dim light of his cabin. The mecha suit was on autopilot, which included the flight patterns needed to dodge missiles, and flares went out appropriately and one of the missiles detonated ten feet from a canyon wall on a sharp turn, which was markedly more effective for causing an avalanche than if the scrap of metal had hit the face of the rock itself.

The other missile wouldn’t be deterred, however, and Lex made a pointed point of ignoring it, first slapping himself in the face, and then wiping dried saliva across, more than from, his face with one hand, and then banking quickly to the right and then catching the projectile with one prehensile metallic hand.
The macha suit told Lex that he had about three seconds to alleviate himself of the missile before the missle’s computer told it that it had found the target it was heat seeking, and Lex used this moment to pan the camera back behind him.

To find that an assortment of 20ish more projectiles were flying his way.

Amid the mix of fireballs that couldn’t stand the test of a structure fire, and would waft over Lex’s suit like so much dry wind, and small rockets who’s trajectory indicated that there was no way they were fired from any of the racers currently on the track, much less a moving vehicle, there was one whitish-blue fireball that was so hot that an electromagnetic current flitted around it like a brazen serpentile lightning bolt. Many missiles found a new ‘heat signature’ just then and added themselves to the mix, strengthening the magically propelled pyro-technical feat.

Lex’s advanced technology that he little understood indicated the a lightning bolt was about to be fired at him, and his throwing arm aimed for this direction. The lightning bolt was stopped by still another explosion, as well as a particularly insidious rocket.

A mushroom cloud came right out of midair, as well as a white-hot explosion that rocked empty space as the canyon finally let out into a narrow valley, and first the dragon’s fireball bashed through the wall of fire, and then vehicles of all kinds, first flew right through and were incinerated and then thereafter funneled around the great explosion, though some particularly dumb or slow riders continued to pummel the blast, until the fires within became cool enough that those that did were not immediately incinerated but came out like a fireball of their own, and of those only those with some amount of flame retardant skin came out to continue the race.

It was then that Lex noticed the way this race worked. The jockey for the very first place was of the most dangerous positions in this race, as those who made it to the front were immediately the first target that everyone shot at. Lex was still about 20 seconds ahead of the pack, and that made it so that whoever found themselves just in front was almost immediately pummeled by as a big a variety of projectiles as could possibly be imagined. Very usually a fried stump or crater was all that remained of those who made it to first place, and in this way the racers were being depleted at a steady rate, although the train of crazies seemed endless.

Those who saw Lex far ahead among the carnage and smoke and continuous explosions still aimed at him, and whatever projectiles he had managed to take out or dodge were quickly replaced by means even more dangerous. Lex’s mecha suit hit what would have been mach iii if he had been on a normal flight pattern high in the sky, as it was he was only a few hundred miles-an-hour faster than the sound barrier, and many of the missiles just weren’t fast enough, or weren’t specked for the sound barrier and detonated as soon as the elliptical aerials buffeted their thin frames.

Lex’s mecha suit was equipped with a special atmosphere battling air foil for just such an occasion, and this he employed at this time, and a fin protruded from his chest that was designed to catch the aerial loops of sound waves and skip off of them. This skipping was a lot like skipping off the waves on a watercraft, and it made Lex’s teeth chatter, but he hit three times the sound barrier in this straight valley chute.

Those few who were capable of these speeds gained quite a bit of ground against their adversaries in this straight away, but speed seemed not to be the providence of him who would win this race, as the valley again gave way to canyon walls and sharp turns and Lex was forced to slow quite a bit below the sound barrier to make the first of the turns.

Lex turned to see a helicopter that was apparently fast enough to keep up with him, and two dragons, one who seemed super intelligent and appeared to be the cause of the fireball now employed against Lex, and the smaller one seemed to be little more than a dumb beast as it had reigns and spikes along its belly used to control it, though it seemed small enough and intelligent enough to ride out the canyon turns with impunity, and upon this dragon fought two engaged with blades. A roil of dust guarded the rest of the pack from view, but Lex assumed the next players were not so far distant.

And that fireball literally kept on Lex’s tail, bashing right into the sides of canyon wall and leaving score marks feet deep as it turned with a seeming intelligence of its own in pursuit.

That was when Zyler rode up beside Lex, seeming out of nowhere, his dragon seeming only slightly smaller but of the same ilk as the one who’s fireball was now ripping holes in the track.

“I tell you what it’s a great day for a race,” Zyler said without straining his voice, but which Lex could hear clearly due to an apparent amplifying dwemmor on his voice. Lex replied over the loud speaker and Zyler strained his ears, and even cupped a hand over his ear in a puerile fashion as if it would help him hear. “What?!!”

Zyler was just barely able to make out the stream of expletives. Lex made to swerve right into the side of the dragon, and pulled up just short as a warning for Zyler to leave. “Awe come on! I was gonna help you out!” Zyler snapped his fingers, “After this, we’re gonna be good friends, I can tell, and then I’ll help you get out of this.” Lex couldn’t help but feel that Zyler had given similar promises to other racers, but suddenly couldn’t help but feel that he was going to be good on his word to everyone he’d made the promises to.

Zyler jumped right off the back of his mount, and floated in midair as electricity roiled from him extremities. He looked positively doomed, but even as the great fireball approached him, first a hole in the fireball appeared, and the great conflagration split four ways as the two objects met in midair. Zyler flew right through the middle of the fireball, and by the time the four fragments leveled with Lex, they had cooled to red flames and dances harmlessly across Lex’s metal alloy and into the sides of cliffs, with no apparent percussive power left. The great dragon trailing them apparently got mad at this and bit into the neck of the smaller feral dragon, and Zyler floated back to his silver mount on some sort of floating board and leveled out again with Lex.

Now the helicopter made it’s move, jockeying for a position against Lex. Lex powered up his suit’s plasma blade, eight feet of pure pain, which he was loathe to do because it took a lot of energy out of the mech’s 50 year supply.

A Gatling gun on the bottom of the helicopter turned Lex’s way and opened fire, and to this Lex employed his great shield to great effect, only a few of the darts could penetrated the metal or spray wide enough to hit the mechanical leg. Great wing like blades came out of the sides of the helicopter and the vehicle swerved to lance Lex clear through. Lex’s mecha suit, nearly as limber as a fifteen foot acrobat jetted on top of this blade and turned.
And with his blade severed the front of the cockpit from the rest of the vehicle.

The view of the pilots turning behind them to see a void and their shell coasting along as if still propelled was almost comical. And then the cockpit propelled itself into the sheer side of a cliff.

OoC: Holy long posts batman.

IC:

Now while some may call Derrick a machine, with his finely tuned body, pin point accuracy, and almost godly reaction time. When it same down to it he was not, the “man” he was fighting however was. And a well built one at that. Had he have been a human, or even some sort of supernatural creature it would stand to reason that he would already be dead. Unfortunately for derrick he found out the metallic beings true identity well after the knowledge of which really would have been useful.

The White coated man managed to dodge the first slash of the man’s Pata like weapons, and even the second he ducked as it came for his head. His third however hit his gut at full force knocking him back and searing his shirt. Of course this is derrick we are talking about, and like always he picked himself up off the tail of the might beast and dusted himself off, his stomach only bleeding a trickle; had it not been for his super hard skin he would have been impaled for sure.

The mechanical man did not stop however, charging forward without even the pretence of emotion visible. Jumping he flipped and kicked off the robots back as he came forward, turning in mid air, effectively changing their positions of just seconds ago. Still the Robotic thinking beast did not give chance, immediately coming forward with both his weapons again, only to find them masterfully locked by Derrick’s one.

The Metal one was strong however, pushing the perfect human to one knee as the beast rode ever onwards. With the large mechanical nightmare looming over him, his two swords getting closer one might have thought Derrick looked defeated.

BANG

Until of course he pulled a nambu pistol from his boot and started filling the mechanical man full of lead. The computer was not amused, half-heartedly slashing the gun from Derrick’s hand and into the rushing road below. The resourceful clone rolled backwards onto his feat and pulled out his second nambu pistol from his boot and opened fire.

Again th machine move forward with heavy slashes, but Derrik had a plan. Throwing his gun in to the air Derrick moved forward quickly. Slashing down at the tops of the robots blades. The Robot as per his programming pushed upwards to disarm the weapon, however what ended up happening was that Derrick used the strength of the man to propel him into the air, conveniently where the area where his gun was falling, grabbing and turning he shot at the back of the man’s head.

Sliding to the ground Derrick barely had time to get to one knee when he felt himself being knocked sideways by the forearm of the metal man, spinning him off the side of the beast. Wither by luck or skill derrick caught with one hand the foot of the mighty beast. Looking up at the looming force above him he didn’t seem scared or angry, in fact all emotion was gone from Derrick’s face. Looking down at the rushing ground below him, Derrick looked up once and let go. Falling into the abyss below.

…

What wasn’t seen however was that when Derrick was in the air shooting with one hand, he was arming grenades with the other, and as he landed he placed them underneath his coat, which confidently came off when he was thrown off the dragon. Seven grenades in total went off as Derrick watched as he fell. Even if his opponent survived he wouldn’t be in perfect capacity. Excellent.

Derrick’s fate from this encounter was that he managed to land on the back seat of a moving convertible, which just happened to be filled with soft clothes and blanket. The Assassin took no time killing the car’s owners and commandeering the ride for himself, eager to continue the race.

OoC: Derrick Gun Count = 4

As ISAAC threw the superhuman assassin off the side of the volatile reptilian beast, the man's white jacket fell off and hooked itself over one of the dragon's spines, keeping it from sailing off into the air as the creature flew quickly through the skies. ISAAC at first didn't take much notice of the coat, paying more attention to the assassin he'd thrown off the dragon, but as he turned his head away, his thermal vision suddenly picked up an interesting heat signature coming from inside the white jacket. ISAAC took a threat assessment of the situation, and the processes in his mind analyzed the situation as fast as the electrical impulses could move through the wires in his supercomputer head, about as fast as light. The result of the assessment was a suggestion to immediately take evasive maneuvers against the jacket. While ISAAC wasn't yet completely sure what the threat was (having only seen the threat about one second ago) he felt that a "better-safe-than-sorry" mentality was the best option in this scenario.

ISAAC's plasma propulsors were still primed and ready for action, and he immediately powered up the jetpack on his back. At about the same time, the jacket exploded in a huge fireball, seven hand grenades having been hidden inside of it (at this point, about three seconds from seeing the white jacket, ISAAC had plenty of time to analyze the heat signature and compare it to all the thousands of heat signatures he had on file.) Unfortunately, the assassin's gunfire had temporarily disabled ISAAC's electrostatic protective shield, and as the intense heat from the explosion washed over him, he could practically feel the damage taken to his android body. Worse even was the following shockwave (as the heat is technically a form of light, and the shockwave a form of sound, the heat always comes before the shockwave) which hit ISAAC hard, violently spinning him through the air at dangerously high speeds.

The plasma propulsor would only be more of a danger to ISAAC while he was spinning through the air, making him even less stable, so he deactivated it. The problem with doing such was that nothing else would keep ISAAC airborne, and he quickly began to descend. ISAAC made a note to himself: next time he updated the Protos Eschatos android structure, make sure it was more flight capable. Stabilizing fins and jets, or at least a parachute, would be quite desirable right about now. While he was violently gyrating through the sky, his optical senses were somewhat less than useful, but his radar senses told him that he was approaching the ground, and far too quickly. Another quick analysis of the situation informed him that the best option would be to roll into a tight ball before hitting the ground. It would result in the least possible damage compared to any other position he could be in when he hit the ground, according to his probability scan.

ISAAC rolled into the fetal position and hit the racetrack hard, throwing sand into the air. He bounced only a couple of times, the sand absorbing his energy. He was lucky not to be hit by any racers, but a couple of them swerved to get around him. One unlucky cycler crashed into a cliffside trying to avoid him. When ISAAC eventually stopped moving, he unrolled himself and lay flat on his back, limbs outstretched. The android shut down and went into safe mode, so that ISAAC could analyze the damage it had taken. He began to run a diagnostic analysis.

The analysis took about five seconds, and the damage report was ready in one more. Most of the damage was taken to the android's exoskeletal structures. The android's chassis was riddled with bulletholes, and the armor on the android's legs (which were closest to the explosion) was slightly melted. The chassis was also cracked in some areas due to the collision with the ground. Due to these breaches in his armor, he was no longer waterproof. The electromagnetic field generator on the android's lower right leg was damaged, and the protective shield would be weaker in this area. Further stress to the android's chassis or EMF generators was likely to cause even greater damage, and the EMF generator might fail to function. There wasn't much damage to ISAAC's internal workings, but his limbs had been whipped around quite violently by the explosion. The control mechanisms in the android's legs were slightly damaged, and while the damage was negligible at the moment, further stress could cause the legs to fail altogether.

Finally, there was one last problem. Sand. It was everywhere. Hitting the ground had thrown it all up into the air, and much sand made its way through the holes and cracks in ISAAC's armor. Of course, this scenario had been thoroughly examined during the testing of the Protos Eschatos android series testing. Test results informed ISAAC that the sand would most likely not cause a problem. Only a few out of the hundreds of test subjects had failed to function properly due to sand in the internal structures of the android. Of course, the amount of sand was certainly a factor, and ISAAC should avoid getting any more inside. His protective electrical shield should help with that.

With the diagnostic complete, ISAAC rebooted the android. His innate ability to keep track of time, something that nearly any and every computer can do, from the simplest watch to the most complex supercomputer, told him that this entire experience, from explosion to reboot, had only taken up about one minute. ISAAC got up off the ground, his shield back up to protect him. By this time, the assassin was well ahead of him on the track, and his Tachista motorbike was even further ahead. He could catch up though. He ran a couple yards on the racetrack, and then powered up his jetpack, taking to the skies. The plasma trail behind him rocketed him through the skies.

As Derrick was driving away on his newly commandeered vehicle he finally had time to do a damage assessment. His face was bleeding slightly, and it felt like the machine had managed to break a cheekbone from the sideswipe that had knocked him over. He counted at least three broken ribs from the battle, though they where little more then a nuisance. His left ankle was sprained from the fall, after all from that height even a soft landing wouldn't sheild him completely from the impact, however Derrick dcided that despite the pain he would still be able to fight on even with the injury.

The most damning of all was the fact that most of his ammo was in his car, which had met an untimely end, or in his coat jacket -which also suffered from a damning death- leaving him with only the ammo in his guns, and the little bit he kept on the back of his belt just in case. Hardly enough to win a race with, expecially if that robot had managed to survive the fall.

Of course even with the ammo he would be in a tight spot, his rocket launcher died with his car, one of his machine guns was a melted pile of metal on the cliff, the other junk on the road. One of his shot guns had been sliced in two, and yet another of his guns-the Nambu- had fallen in the battle. With only four guns left, and a handful of ammo for them the race was starting off at a bad pace. The only compromise for the damming events is that(in his mind only) he had beaten the toughest enemy he had faced so far, and that was enough to make the losses count for something.

Derrick watched as he turned the corner and the cliff suddenly resides and in front of him was a vast forest. Watching as the trail winded into the deep thicket derrick noticed that the forest path that steadily getting closer seemed to follow alongside a large and fast moving river. The small road, and obstacles on either side of it would make the fast moving race a hazard zone, the terrain however would be perfect for fliers who could bypass the tough terrain fairly easily. As his new car entered the deep forest, derrick wished he would have kept that damn dragon alive.

What Derrick didn't know as he entered the forest, was that despite the losses of ammo and rides it took to rid himself of the robotic nuisance, the threat was still their and deadly as ever; and he was quickly closing the gap between them.

OoC: The Puck decided he wanted new terrain.

It was a while before RAIVE found that he had trouble keeping up with the leaders. He was now in the thick of the woods, breezing past vines and trunks as his analyzers read everything around him, allowing him to react in a split second to any calculated situation.

But as soon as he emerged from the forests, the forecast seemed dim from his surroundings. With the participants surrounding him, he would not be able to finish this race. The men on their machines looked like they were from a single group... and although they drove things RAIVE had never seen before, their technology did not mask their maliciousness.

Before long, RAIVE’s hull was scraped and dented; the heat emanating from each ‘wound’ prevented the nanomachines from working on it. The scrapes were caused by the men on the hovering vehicles, whose weapons were something short of lightsabers, cutting and searing at the same time.

It was only a matter of time before one of the front wheels were gone, and RAIVE spun out of control. A few of the slashes in his metal had cut through most of the network and he was unable to put the nanobots to work quickly. The spinning and mixing of the sky and the land had ended when he slammed into the edge of a thin rock. The thing almost tore him in two... but that was it, he was out of the race... and probably, out of luck.

OoC: Yeah, I took RAIVE out~ x3 I’m not sure if I’m going to get rid of him as a character altogether or not.

The Tachista high-speed two-wheeled robotic vehicle blasted down the sandy racetrack, propelled by a bright white burst of burning hydrogen and controlled remotely from thousands of miles away by an artificially intelligent supercomputer named ISAAC. The unmanned motorcycle quickly approached another racer on the track, riding some futuristic pod-racer type vehicle. The control systems seemed to be mostly mechanical, rather than computer-controlled, making it difficult for ISAAC to attempt to hack into it and disable the vehicle remotely.

Not a problem, however. It just meant that he would have to resort to more physical means of disabling the opponent. The racer looked back at the motorbike, and ISAAC could see the confused look through the racer's helmet at seeing the vehicle driving itself. ISAAC targeted what appeared to be the pod-racer's engines and fired a couple violet bursts of laserfire into them. The lasers pierced right through the metal coating of the vehicle's engines and ignited the fuel inside, causing the vehicle to explode. The racer was thrown off onto the track, where he rolled in the dust, likely breaking most of his bones on contact.

ISAAC noticed ahead that the environment of the racetrack suddenly changed. There was a large valley ahead, and the cliffs eventually evened away to flat ground, and the sand somewhat abruptly ended in suddenly dense forest. ISAAC slowed down the Tachista by necessity; whoever had built the track had apparently found it easier (or more exciting) to leave some of the trees in the middle of the road, rather than removing them, and turning at supersonic speeds was nearly impossible to do safely. Apparently a few racers hadn't realized that, or couldn't slow down in time, considering the high amount of wreckage piled up in front of the first few trees (whose trunks were toasted black from fire) on the track. ISAAC entered the forest track, swerving around trees and driving over bumpy roots, somewhat irritated that the track had severely reduced his speed potential. It almost seemed unfair, considering that flying racers would be just as well off as before. Or so it seemed, but on performing a scan of the skies overhead, ISAAC noticed some interesting weather patterns. Dangerously high wind speeds and high electrical conductivity suggested a storm was brewing, and it would make racing in the skies difficult. Even just then a bolt of cloud-to-cloud lightning stuck overhead, and the charred remains of an airborne chimera fell into the rapidly running river next to the forest track. The river, ISAAC noticed, was running the opposite direction from the track, so that no one could ride their way down it to avoid the trees.

The Tachista blasted a few thick vines out of the way, and continued down the track. Meanwhile, the Protos Eschatos android flew through the skies, quickly approaching the electrical storm. ISAAC flew as low as possible, right above the trees, to avoid running through the charged clouds, but quite a few other fliers had the same idea, and ISAAC had to avoid a few missiles from a jet plane, and shoot down the rotors of a helicopter. A burst of flame from a dragon took out the jet plane just as the out-of-control helicopter hit the side of the dragon, exploding and taking them both out of the sky. This turn of events left ISAAC temporarily alone in this part of the sky, and he took a look down at the racetrack.

ISAAC noticed down on the track below the assassin from earlier, in a freshly stolen convertible. The point of the race was just to finish first, not kill each other off, and ISAAC didn't hold grudges or anything, but the assassin was certainly a threat to ISAAC's ability to win the race. ISAAC also wanted to get out of the sky soon and back on his motorbike, to waste as little plasma as possible. He didn't think he would be safe on the ground if the assassin was still there and still had weapons, although ISAAC was pretty sure that if the assassin actually had any weapons left, he was certainly running low on ammunition.

ISAAC didn't waste any time. He charged up couple of shots from both his plasma weapons, and started firing on the vehicle below.

The battle had grown increasingly more intense as it dragged onward. All manner of debris, bodies, and other forms of damage spent time eroding her intent to continue. Emile looked around as she rested for a moment and watched the people pass. The fights had been intense.... maybe a bit too intense for her to handle at the moment. Her armor had to recharge and cool down before it overheated and she was forced to leave the race for good.

Emile had been met with a serious problem: she had to hide or else risk being killed. Still, that was easy enough. Moving just far enough from the course made that possible. Still, Emile acknowledged she had probably fallen drastically behind while her armor recovered. The purple haired woman stood up, holding her helmet, and looking at the catastrophe that filled the road forwards.

The woman looked at the gauge on her arm. Systems were normal. Now then, it was time to rejoin this insanity. The lancer picked up her spear and put her helmet back on. A smile covered her lips as she began to skate forwards, back into the race. Now then, who was close she could knock out?

o=)------------ ------------(=o

Zorlo and Gerald trudged along, slowly covering small bits of the race at a time. Something about the destruction and chaos struck the green haired man as quite odd. Still, it was about time for him to get back into this race. "Ready?" he asked the camel. The camel simply spit, and Zorlo smiled wider. "Okay then! Let's go!"

A powerful eruption of energy covered Gerald as Zorlo looked forwards. The green haired man smiled as the creature erupted forwards, shattering the earth beneath its hooves with each massive stomp. Slowly, the once dots of people took their forms. In another moment, Zorlo found himself now ahead of most of the people, and the disaster left in his wake leaving countless people fighting to regain their lost footing in the race. The green haired man looked back with a slightly concerned look, but smiled after a moment. "Sorry!" he called back as he and Gerald continued along.