Scion – Mad Machine (Rada Campaign Crossover) – Part 2
This account was originally found on Livejournal, I am not the original author—I am just a fan of the journal and have found reading it on livejournal clunky to navigate and rife with errors/instability (such as having to refresh multiple times due to the page in questions becoming unavailable often requiring multiple refreshes. The original post can be found here, published by DJ-Yomi, and was published on Oct 15th 2008
After finishing off the robots, shitidama, and shinobi, it didn’t take us long to reach the top of Tokyo’s Daitokuji HQ. The top hosted a large, spacious set of offices, and we were greeted at the entrance to the office suite by another group of robots…but this group included a couple of new types that we hadn’t seen before: combat clones that incorporate the grace, agility, and ferocity of great cats with the mental prowess of humans. They weren’t as tough as the robots, but they were much, much faster and were capable of dishing out devastating attacks. One of them took a swipe at Ray and managed to tear through his defenses and badly wound him…or so it seemed at first. I was terrified…but fortunately, thanks to the bolstered health I gave him, Ray was okay. He was still injured, but it was nowhere near as bad as it would have been otherwise. The blow probably would have killed him. O_O
Needless to say, the combat clones became priority targets in later fights. >_<
We also got a taste of Daitokuji’s new hunter-killer robots (HKRs), which were dangerous because they could attack with swarm missiles that were almost impossible to dodge. Fortunately, those of us who were hit by them were tough enough to take it without blinking. ^_^ I’m fortunate that I didn’t get attacked by the missiles.
Carina disappeared after we finished off the guards at the entrance to the office. Jacob and the rest of Storm’s group seemed dismayed and more than a little worried…apparently, this wasn’t the first time Carina had gone ahead without them.
We found her in Daitokuji’s office. She was standing with her claws to the back of Daitokuji’s head, ready to kill him in an instant if necessary. I guess she’d shadow-stepped in to take him by surprise. Daitokuji didn’t seem worried, though. He was accompanied by a number of bodyguards, including a few BGR’s, a couple of hidden combat clones, and a woman who turned out to be a gyuki in diguise (a horrible titanspawned beast that can inflict terrible injuries by attacking a person’s shadow). We’d been warned about gyuki, but it was a lot tougher than I imagined it would be. It didn’t seem at all fazed when I tried to enchant it with my compelling beauty, and it hurt Elisa badly when it attacked her shadow. I’m glad my ability to produce sunlight eliminates my shadow.
But all of that came after Daitokuji made a speech. He taunted us, plain and simple. First, he raised an unseen shield, sending Carina flying back (we’ve seen Ray do the same sort of thing plenty of times, so it wasn’t really surprising). He motioned to the computer on his desk, mocked us with a smile, and told us that if we were even worthy to face him, then we were capable of defusing the bomb that would destroy the computer (and probably the entire room, or maybe the whole top floor of the building!) within the next thirty seconds. And in case we felt like just leaving, he warned that the computer held vital information that we would need if we were to shut down the Hiroshima facilities and end the corrupting effect in place there.
Even as he was speaking, Helena tried to interface with the computer psychically (I asked Adam if he could do that, but he said, “Not yet.” Daitokuji was prepared for that, though. Some form of ward on the computer backlashed against Helena. She screamed and dropped to her knees. Again, the bolstered health I gave her absorbed what would otherwise have been a nasty shock to her system, but it was obvious that we couldn’t interface with the computer remotely. We’d have to keep it from blowing up.
Daitokuji then disappeared, telling us only that he’d see us in Hiroshima if we managed to overcome his computer bomb. Then all hell broke look. Helena dashed to the computer and began hacking into the system to disarm the bomb while everyone else held off Daitokuji’s guards. Actually, held off probably isn’t the right term. They destroyed the guards…though as I said, the gyuki gave us some trouble. >_<
Helena didn’t have much trouble with the bomb, and once it was safely disarmed, she and Adam infiltrated the system and learned that the two Hiroshima facilities and presumably the mystical effects resonating between them were controlled by a pair of matched computers, one in each facility. In order to shut down the facilities and the corrupting effect that has enshrouded Hiroshima, we would need to fight our way into both facilities and shut down the computers almost simultaneously. Youch. That meant splitting our forces.
We didn’t lose much time heading to Hiroshima. We briefly discussed driving, but I convinced everyone that the bullet train was much faster. The only problem would be smuggling our weapons aboard…but Sam took care of that for us using his super man-in-black powers. ^_^ On the way, we divided up into two teams. Ray, Adam, Cesar, Carina, Sam, and I would attack one facility, while Storm, Jacob, Elisa, Pierre, T-Bone, and Helena assaulted the other.
By the middle of the next day, we were in Hiroshima and headed toward the facilities. Anna met us at the station; she’d come to Japan ahead of us and had covertly taken out some of Daitokuji’s support facilities, making our job here a bit easier. That was apparently Adam’s plan. ^_^. Anna joined the group I was in…but we eventually sent her to help the other group, who reported that they were having a bit more trouble with the Daitokuji defenses than we were (but that’s only to be expected with Ray and Cesar in our group). She also headed out to give some support to Ray’s posse, Cesar’s boys, and my girls, who were having a tough time fighting off hordes of hungry dead outside. >_<
Having said that, though, T-Bone’s inherent chaos apparently allows him to play havoc with machines. According to the others, he was able to destroy Daitokuji’s robots just by touching them! ^_^
Before heading into the facility my group was responsible for taking out, I handed out Amaterasu’s chocolates and again bolstered my companions. I was still shaken from Ray’s close call earlier, so I put everything that I could into bolstering his health. I feel confident that he can take a lot of punishment before…well, before we’re through.
The trek into the Hiroshima facility was essentially a running battle. We had to deal with a number of automated defenses and security systems, but Sam, Adam, and Cesar noticed and destroyed most of them before they were really an issue (I am so glad we have such perceptive people on our side, and Sam’s ability to perceive and analyze technological systems is a godsend). We fought an assortment of robots, clones, and even a few shitidama. There were also mutated cybernetic guards. That’s apparently what happens to mortals who spend too much time in Daitokuji’s so-called “wicked city”; they become mutated, cybernetic titanspawn. Knowing that just gave us that much more motivation to end Daitokuji’s reign of darkness.
I did what I could in the fights, but found that my allies could handle pretty much everything Daitokuji threw at them with only a minimum of trouble, so I ended up doing more cheering than anything else. Especially once I learned that praising member of the Pesedjet (like Sam and Carina) actually helps empower them! ^_^. They got lots of cheers. Like I said in my previous entry, I need some black and pink pompoms.
But as we closed on the computer system at the center of the facility, things got tougher…