Angel talks her "old friend" into joining her forces with relative ease. It goes fine without any hitches for Garner to worry about. Angel finds a seat and plops. "Well they say good help is so hard to find. But I say if you are smart enough and know where to look, it can be easier..." she smirks, seeming to cheer herself up.

Metal Mettle's brilliant strategy is met with a demoness showing up to some spot near a bunch of Circle of Thorns. She stays just out of harm's distance and seems more interested in watching this "Metal Mettle" kick their butts.

(OOC: The demon was GOING to be a demon character Dretastic made. But lately, his ability to access the internet has diminished greatly. So in place of him, I'm using Burning Animus. Sorry for all the girls running rampant villain side.)
This message was last edited by the player at 23:44, Mon 06 Oct 2008.

Among the searching of Garner, a raccoon girl shows up. Not hard to find a girl who wreaks havoc wherever she goes. Throwing fire and tearing people apart with her bare hands, Katy seems obsessed with destroying anything in her way... how Garner approaches this could mean the difference between her loyalty and her ire.

Garner fires a shot at someone who would have attacked Katy from behind then immediately lowers his rifle.

"That one was sneaking up on you," he says in his typical unenthusiastic way.

He waits for Katy's reaction while he continues to listen in on Angel.

  Metal Mettle had always liked plans that result in a form of success regardless of the result.  No demons show up, he shoots Circle of Thorns people with lasers.  Demon shows up, he shoots Circle of Thorns people with lasers.

  Admittedly, several other robots were also widely spread across the area shooting them with lasers.  But how this could be considered a problem was something Metal Mettle likely couldn't grasp if he tried.

  "Why do they always seem so surprised when I personally kill them?  It's as if everyone expected me to have forgone any form of Lasers in favor of random esoteric shenanigans."

  If there was one downside he saw to the times he worked directly with his boss, it would be the fact he and the rest of his little horde held back on the laser.  They wouldn’t learn anything if he removed everything in their path before they got started.  But he doubted this would be the case for long.

  Angel showed so much promise.  And all without any lasers no less.

  "As pleasant keeping what passes for my wallet more filled would be a good thing, feel free to jump in any time if you feel like it.  Though despite their reputation for demon worship and all that, they never seemed very inclined to not shoot at most demony types.  So avoiding that wouldn't exactly be a bad move either."

Angel sends her latest recruit to serve as a monitor of conversations between members of the Tharian Empire. She then pulls her gun from it's holster. "It used to be just you and I..." she says quietly before she turns to head out of the base herself.

Katy crouches for a moment, staring daggers as Garner, but is interrupted by the other enemies before she tears them all a new one, unleashing fire powers alongside incredible strength. When the last one falls, Katy eventually speaks, "Who are you and why are you helping me?"

Burning Animus watches Mettle until he speaks up. When he does, she demonstrates her demonic power as she waves her hand and causes a mass fire that entraps every last one of them in circles of flame that continue to burn them. They shriek as their clothes catch fire and the demoness approaches Mettle. "Still believe you can kill more Circle than I can in ten minutes? Or should I show you that the number of them really doesn't matter and that I can entrap as many as I like?"

(OOC: Controller, or in this case, Dominator, is soooo much fun.)

  Metal Mettle's initial reply was interrupted by one of the KillBots enthusiastic use of fully automatic lasers upon the previously burning yet alive annoyances, turning them previously alive yet still burning "*BEEP* HUGS!" Two guesses which KillBot that one was.  It wouldn't be fair to give three guesses when there were three KillBots.

  "Well, technically I could say that I'd still kill them faster.  And Photon Grenades aside being all I'd need to steal kills en masse, technically you could say I had help."

  He shrugged, and tasered a passing Archer to death.  "But honestly, I don't really care about that part, so much as the fact the Circle of Thorns reminds me that I am capable of feeling emotion, specifically seething annoyance.  So how about I forget to keep count and you can tell me if you deserve the payoff when it's all over?"

  In his short run of existence, he had learned both that crime does indeed pay, and that money can buy happiness provided you know what to shop for.  While other forms of happiness meanwhile were sill free.

  "OBLITERATE"  Yup, he was so proud of his children?/clones?/whateverthehells?  Even if that one didn't use lasers at all.  Plasma, flamethrowers, and missiles would just have to do.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:48, Fri 17 Oct 2008.

"To recruit you," Garner answers plainly, "I work for someone who plans to overthrow organizations like the one that held you prisoner.  In return for your allegiance, you will be rewarded with whatever matters to you most..."

He surveys Katy's fallen foes.

"...which I'm guessing would be 5 minutes alone with your former captors."

Burning Animus folds her arms, moves her mouth to the side and raises an eyebrow while tilting her head. "This isn't about some silly bet... is it. Tell me what you're really after."

Katy growls, "Five minutes? I plan to have much longer than that..." she then stands up straight. "Fine. If there is no intent of slavery, experimentation, or whatever, I'm in. Anything to get back at the ones responsible for making my life Hell."

Angel uses her own tracker to find where Garner and Mettle are. She notices Mettle is closer and heads his way via super jumping. Figuring he could be in a conversation and she is headed his direction anyhow, Angel decides to simply text Mettle with "I'm on my way your direction."

  “Well, for my part I really just don’t like the Circle of Thorns.  I think it started off with a good reason, but now it’s more that they just don’t listen when I try to calmly explain that I don’t have a freaking soul to steal/devour/misc.”

  The rather well put together pile of nanomachines considered the text message, and said “But personal amusements aside, my main reason can probably be put better by the one headed our way.”  Sure, it was a simple concept.  Hey, wanna join us while we do Evil things?  But as was probably obvious by now, Metal Mettle sometimes lacked a grasp on putting simple concepts to simple words.

"Nope," Garner answers plainly, "No plans to enslave you or experiment on you.  Let's go."

Garner takes the liberty of making Katy's entrance into the Empire official and takes her to the base to show her the ropes.  He then texts Angel with his progress.

"First thing's first I suppose," he says to Katy, "Let's get you a raptor pack.  You ready?"

Katy looks at Garner like he's from Mars. "What's a raptor pack?"

But she follows him, nonetheless.

The bunny rabbit of doom arrives soon enough and lands near the two. "Good job, Mettle. Is this the one we've been waiting for?"

  "That was the idea.  Angel, Demon I don't know the name of.  Demon I don't know the name of, Angel."  Does it count as a better than usual introduction if usually you don't bother with introductions at all?

  "I'll let you two talk while I... oh.  I thought there was less screaming than Laser death tended to cause."  Funny thing about attacking a group of those much weaker than you.  It tends to not last very long for the obvious reason.

"It's a jet pack," Ganer answers on the way to the contact, "Saves a lot of time in this maze of a place."

(Garner sidekicks her and teaches other basic lessons on how to survive.  "Avoid things with purple names," for example.)

Angel nods to the demon and then to Mettle. "Well let's pack it up and get to the base. I'm sure Garner will be there waiting by the time we get there."

And with that, she leaps off in the direction of the base!

Burning huhs and nods, beginning to follow. "Umm..." she looks at Mettle. "You can call me Annie if you want. And I don't have a travel power yet." that said, she sprints after Angel. "Care to show me the way?"

After being shown the ropes, Katy follows Garner to the SG base, looking more curious than angry, having calmed a bit from earlier.

  The small army of Killbots were all capable of super leaping.
  Technically, there are no vehicles for personal in zone use.
  But then technically, Metal Mettle phased through his robots (at least in his case, there was some 'all made of the same nanite pile' fake science reasoning)
  And technically, everyone else did not phase through the robots.

  Add this last detail on top of the fact Annie was more than capable of steering herself better than a literal tank, and you've got possibilities.

  "I'll get you a map later.  For now if you want you can get a piggyback ride on a killer robot.  Just don’t grab onto the front of the missile racks and you should be fine." Of course, there was on such thing as friendly fire either.  A very important fact when entire rooms have more lasers than a German disco light show.  "Incidentally, you can call me either part of my name, not that it would make a huge difference which you opted to say."

Garner gives Katy a brief tour of the tiny base.

"As you can see the Empire focuses more on it's members than making individual planetary outposts look impressive."

He googles "Death Star" on his laptop and shows Katy the image.  "Although, seeing as how Base 3 looks a lot like this, looking impressive is kind of unavoidable in that regard."

Garner keeps his poker face, but Angel would easily have noticed the glint of pride in his eyes.

"Now.  Without further ado.  Tell me all you know about those you seek vengeance on."

He prepares his fingers to take notes on the computer.

Katy looks around. "I've never been in a supergroup base, so I wouldn't know that this is considered unimpressive." she then hears him mention vengeance and begins listing what she knows about Arachnos' secret division of scientific exploration in the field of genetic engineering.