Lady E turned toward the blue haired woman and nodded as she relayed her experience.  When she mentioned this happening to her before, she glanced over at Prince ROM, something to ask him about later.  He indicated they didn't  have much time to save the aircraft carrier.  "Thanks for sharing," she nodded at the blue haired woman.  She turned to the others, "We stay together no matter what, like she mentioned," nodding her head at the blue haired woman, "we will only have ourselves for support." 

She looked at the others, "We don't have much time to train with each other or discuss tactics." The busty petite, purple haired woman looked at Ripple, "How long to get into amy kind of support role that you can quickly?  I am tank, these two are our damage dealers I think," she pointed at Dura and Susan. "We go in and stay together and see what is up."  She wasn't happy about getting thrown together with no time to get to know each other.  PUGs can be unmitigated disasters, "Remember the damage that Leroys cause.  Hopefully this Emperor is not expecting us, but lets plan on him knowing we are coming."

She turned toward the blue haired woman, "What do you want to use as your battle name?" She asked, everyone else had shared a battle name so far.

"Never really got into computer games, did I? Real scrapping's more my thing, not pretending," Susan muttered to herself as much to answer the question. "Got dragged to this Cosplay do by a mate. Reckoned I should just rock up as Susan since that's the name of the character in the game. Bit of a laugh, innit?" She grimaced, "Yeah, 'fun'. Wish it was a less icky game, though. Some bits are alright, but other parts? Well I guess you'll find out Looks like I'm in for another round of that joy."

"Only popped in to see... to see if I could track down the other two. Bit of a daft idea, that." she seemed to realised she hadn't really answered the question

"Call me Susan. Good enough for the game. Good enough for me. Or you can call me 'Blue' if you want. I get called a lot of things. Including 'oh my god it's her' when the people are nasty" a rude word "and piss me off" Perhaps there was a hint of humour in that last, but it was hard to tell.

"Any how. We have a level to do right? Who does what. Me" she gestured to herself "I get right up close and personal and rips their faces off or just squish them. Think Venom .. you watch movies right? ... but nastier. You lot?"

"Well basically I'm a peon but faster and more fragile, unless I'm ninjaing a machine. Rolly-Polly here is balanced ranged/close quick reaction with combos meant to hydrolic drain lock opposing mecha, but lunge burst the big creeps and trample the trash creeps. But this is like short round built up main not the strongest mech not what I'd want to use on tough bio foes. I think I could retool. Easier if I had some quality scrap." The goblin had flinched, barely at the rough tone Susan came in with, talking about mechs and mech design seemed to be a place of confidence. There was nervousness behind that, but she was sitting in the pilot seat of a giant war machine she designed, not alone in a dark alley.

Lady Electrica nodded, "Sounds good, lets go with Blue.  Avoid Real Life references while we are fighting this Emperor.  We know he is trying to affect the real world, best if he has zero clues on who is countering him."

She looked over at Ripple, "That will be good enough for today I think.  It sounds like we don't have time to make changes, Prince ROM is urging us to go now."  She meet the eyes of the others before she nodded at the green portal, "Shall we go see what we have to face?" She suggested as she walked toward the portal.

Sarah nodded, the motion still feeling strange and heavy, as if her skull was made of lead. "I'm ready whenever you all are." She wondered what was going to be on the other side of that portal; an army? A monster? An army of monsters? All three at once?

She had to suppress a spike of anxiety- she'd never actually fought anyone. All she'd done is do some competitive speed-math to make her character beat up the other person's character better than they made their character beat up hers. How would any of that actually convert over to (what felt like) real life?

The champion Prince motioned for them to go. Listening intently to their conversation. "Well, it didn't seem I got the best of every champion. But it'll be good to have a fighter with real world experience. The emperor will not be expecting you, or at least, I don't think he will be. He doesn't know how to transfer real flesh and blood into data, and it is imperative that he never finds out. Dont'cha know that?"

Adding in quick after he heard them ask how they do it. He frogged-jumped out of their way and responded with this;

"You'll all have your roles in combat, 1x1 fighters have less of a chance if ganged up on, rpg gamers will need to fight in turns, and you ms...Susan was it? You'll be good at fighting everything except for one on one matches, and maybe platforming. Not sure what the aircraft carrier looks like from the inside, but it is controlled from a server, so it shouldn't be too serious unless he has somehow managed to hack into computers on the ship itself. Good luck team, you may need it. I will be back, when my power recharges so I may be able to fight with you... He dissapearred, or rather he vanished like an editing jump cut inside a camera. Completely gone, with only the dungeon on the aircraft carrier awaiting them. He indicated these four didn't have much time.

 It was either go into the dungeon now, or try to figure out a way out of here by themselves...

"Call me 'Blue', mate. And ..." but it was too late. Prince Rom had gone "And...I'm not even sure what the hell 'platforming' is" Susan's voice continued talking to the thin air. She was obviously a little puzzled at the rapid fire information. She'd never had any problems herself in 'one on one fights'. They were an awful lot easier than one against three for example... Numbers really mattered in the real world. Still this wasn't the real world. And maybe that was really just slang for 'be careful in the Boss fight'.

"Let's do this" with that she headed through the portal to see what was on the far side

Lady Electrica quickly stepped through the portal, right behind Blue, "Remember to stick close together so we can support each other."  She was buring her disbelief and shock by pretending she was just playing Heroine Online and ignoring that somehow she was in the game.   She just had to treat this as part of the game and maybe she would get through this.

As soon as she was on the otherside, she started looking over the situation and trying to figure out what the goals of the mission was, besides stop the encounter boss.

Jadedspool flopped back in the cockpit. Inspected the gages unsure why going forward was scary. Sure there was death, but there was certain death in inaction. No this was like pain she'd felt her entire life was just lifted and if she won it might come back. She stared deep into that shadow, grabbed the clutch and as her claw gripped the golf club handle she sublimated her fear, pain, and trauma and with an unhinged toothy grin shifted the war machine into gear pivoting to face the gate and leaping into a slow head down sprint spiked spine trailing behind the cock pit drill spear and claw cannon pointed forward and the clawed feet carried the hulking machine through the portal.

"I need one" Susan said admiring the Mech. With no obvious effort she leaped on top of it "This counts as 'sticking together', right? I guess you're the main girl for the boss Lady Electrica. I'll be dealing with the dross. As for 'platforming'... whatever that is ... well we'll see"

Sarah got her new body into stance and followed her teammates through the portal. She had no idea what she'd find on the other side, but she was increasingly confident that she'd be able to face them. Dura-Noka, both lore- and gameplay-wise was a wall, an immovable object to the world's many unstoppable forces. She just had to channel that energy and she'd be fine, right?

Through the portal the four heroes had landed inside what looked like a bunch of crystalline objects. The four were all giant in this environment and in danger of crushing the "buildings" around them. Why did this aircraft carrier look like the set of some kinda futuristic giant-monster movie? The Digital Domain was a very odd place. There was two doors to the right or left of them and a giant tower in the middle, what could these four gigantic heroes do?

Lady Electrica landed with the grace of a cat as she delicately moved her feet to avoid the crystaline structures, she straightened up, ready for combat as she looked around, taking in the environment. It definitely wasn't what she expected.  "Well, I have heard of aircraft carriers as floating cities," she commented as she looked at all the structures around them.

Looking at the other three, "Looks like we have 3 obvious choices, one of the doors or the tower," she pointed to each of the doors and then the tower. "I am tempted by the tower, does anyone else have any idea?" She looked up at the others, Dura-Noka was much taller than her and Jade and Blue were on Jade's mech. "We might need to be protecting the towar as well, it might represent the computer core of the aircraft carrier," she mused speculatively.

"What the hell?" Susan was clearly not at all sure what was going on now. It felt like she was an adult at Kiddy Land. Except maybe kiddyland with bad guys with guns. Still there were some basics.

"Sure the tower might be the computer core." Susan clearly wasn't being sarcastic here she was really trying to think about what they could see "But see ... so might the center of the aircraft carrier which is probably behind one of these doors. There's a lot of mights. If you 'know it is' 'cos you've got some leet power then sure. Otherwise I'd do the basics. Let's look through the doors and see what's there. That way we know more before we get blown to bits in the middle of the wide open space"

The team of four moved towards the tower, all going at once in that direction. From there they saw a control room with what seemed like a thousand different controls for each system, and a green electrical aura around the whole room. Inside it another video game character saw the four heroes ascend into the room. What was he to do? What were they to do?

"Well there you are" Susan said looking confused. Her advice hadn't been taken, but she seemed Ok with that "Is this good? Is it bad? Is that dangerous?" the comment was aimed at the electric aura. Picking up one of the riddiculously small items on the deck she tossed it near the tower so that it would 'enter' the electrical aura to see what would happen

Evan whirls to face the new entrants to the room, stumbling a bit, his tail(!) not helping a bit to adjust to his new stature and center of gravity. What he sees doesn't help his mental state, and he resolves (not for the first time in his life) to swear off the Hot Pockets. Last he remembered he'd been at his computer playing Demon's Run, (even 10 years later, the modding community had really enhanced the replayability of the game), and now here he was, apparently inhabiting the body of his in-game avatar, surrounded by the sort of tech he'd expect to find in the control room from the TV series Wormhole X-treme, and now faced with a giant mech, two women in contemporary clothing, and Holy shit, is that bloody *Dura-Noka* from Hyperfight!?
Please tell me I'm dreaming, here
Even his voice had taken on the gentle Welsh burr of the female PC's voice actress, a fact which caused his (her? He looks down, confirming once again that yes, he does in fact have the soft curves of his most recent character) eyes to widen even further in surprise as he reaches up briefly to touch his throat, his expression going from shocked to what his childhood best friend used to call "contemplative #4," before passing through "concentration #3 to "giddy amusement #7" in the time it took to manifest his character's mindblade (a translucent pale green weapon shaped like a katana) in his left hand and a ghostly ball of fire in his right...
This message was last edited by the player at 22:21, Thu 21 Mar.

Lady Electrica had suggested they go to the tower, but had been ready to go to the doors as well since her choosing the tower had been all guess work.  She had nodded in agreement with Sarah about going through the doors, but Dura-Noka and jadedspool had agreed with her suggestion on going to the tower.  So moving carefully through the landscape, they had approached the tower.  Once they got to the tower, the pink haired heroine had found a door on a landing outside the top floor and she had reached for it, shrinking down to fit through the door.  A short hallway lead to the control room, but it was surrounded by a green electrical aura with a demon looking woman inside.

"I am not sure, Blue," the pink haired short heroine replied as she stopped just outside of the electrical aura and took in the confused look on the woman's face inside the room.  "Hello, are you making this green electrical aura," she asked of the woman conversationally.  At the moment, the woman was being peaceful, if confused, so she was giving her the benefit of the doubt.  "I am Lady Electrica, do you know who called you into the game?" She enquired curiously, Prince Rom hadn't indicated there would be someone for them to meet inside.  If this person was summoned by Emperor Zai, getting them to talk a bit might be good for information gathering.

His expression turns more serious as he takes a moment to really observe and consider his surroundings. Eldritch electrical energy? Heh, Missy would have loved the alliteration a corner of his mouth quirks upwards briefly at the thought. The other side joins it with the further thought of Hell, she probably would have been impressed that I even knew the word, let alone what it meant
He allows the mindblade to dissipate, before lobbing his fireball in a shallow underhand arc towards the energy field at the far end of the room.

Nah, sweetheart, fire's more my thing. Name's Rillith. Rillith D'Hoffryn. Devilish only by blood, I assure you he says with a wink and a cocky smile, before the rest of what the Lady Electrica had said penetrates, his head jerking around to stare uncomprehendingly Game? What game? This *is* a dream, isn't it? I'm going to close my eyes and pinch myself, and it's going to stop me drooling in my keyboard... right?
the steadily rising pitch and tone in the voice that isn't his own suggests an imminent freak-out as he matches word to deed, grabbing a piece of inner forearm between thumb and index finger, twisting for good measure...

Well that was a surprise. Another one of them. But how come he'd met them in here instead of with Prince ROM? Was this 'Rillith' a bad guy recruited by the 'other side'? Susan doubted it on reflection.

"It's not a dream, mate" she said. The mate indicating he wasn't on her 'needing a headbutt' list at the moment "We're here for real. Whatever the F 'real' means. Keeping it simple there's 'them' and 'us'. 'They' are about to steal this aircraft carrier and use it to kill people. Aircraft carriers are Fing good at killing people so we'll call that 'A Bad Thing'"

"We're here, like, to stop that. You up for helping us? We need to put the boot in the bad guys. Preferably where the sun doesn't shine. Problem is we don't know our way 'round here. Or why the hell we're so big"

Lady Electrica shook her head as the devilish woman spoke at them in a very guy way, "Unfortunately not a dream.  We got Troned," the pink haired heroine informed the red skinned woman.  As the woman denied causing the green electrical glow, she looked over her shoulder at her teammates, "I am going to try to reach through the field, lets see what happens, be ready to dodge my flying body if I got tossed back," she joked as she looked at Rillith, "Be ready to duck for cover," she suggested as she reached out to push her arm through the green electrical field, ready to yank her arm back at the soonest sign of danger.

She wasn't sure what the green electrial aura would do, but they had to find out someway and she was probably the toughest person here, being a tank build from her game.  She often tanked several groups of mobs and archvillainesses at the same time.  She also healed pretty fast as well.

He takes a few deep, calming breaths, trying to get his emotions back in check. Remind me to freak out later, then. he says about the current circumstance, fully intending to curl up in the fetal position when the present quest is finished.  For now, he moves to stand behind the Mecha, which he *thinks* he recognizes from Goblin Gizmos (God, when was the last time he played *that*) and *Dura-freaking-Noka*, figuring they might make the best cover if Electrica goes flying...

Kinda curious how the energy field reacted to the psionic fireball from earlier, myself.

Tossing the small item into the green electrical aura only seemed to have caused it to go hurling across a room, hitting what seemed to be nobody and nothing, same as the fireball, which seemed to just dissipate around the wall. With Lady Electrica going to reach through it, she found that the electrical energy seemed to be completely harmless to her! If this "aura" was not a direct field of electricity in this big control room, than what was it? The five barely had time to ponder this odd question in this virtual world before they could hear,

"Sir! We've lost control of the missile system! No response!"

 A gruff sounding male voice vibrated the whole room with that notice, and after touching the mysterious aura, Lady Electrica could suddenly hear at least 20 other voices faintly in her head, mixing together...with little other notice a giant red robot came in...



 The giant Crimson robot's hands looked as if it could impale them with little effort and it's height and weight meant just stepping on them was a real fear for even the biggest of the team! A giant neon sign appeared above it's head that read:

"BOSS BATTLE: CRIMSON GLADIATOR 51X9!"

So, how does it work if one of us dies? Is it a "The maidens question your virility, try again from the last checkpoint" type deal, or is it more of a "Game Over, they'll find your bloated corpse at your computer when someone finally misses you enough to come looking?" (s)he asks conversationally as Electrica does her thing.

And then the *GIANT FREAKING ROBOT* shows up!


Oh, fuuuuu..... (s)he half whispers as it becomes very apparent that they're all going to find out first hand, and *soon*

Lady Electrica jerked her hand out of the green aura as her eyes went wide in surprise, "Ack!  I was hearing all their communications," she shook her head.  She was hearing all the text and radio communications, there was so much going on that she couldn't separate anything out and it felt like her head wa about to explode with information overload.

She was just recovering when everyone heard the message about the carrier crew losing control of the missions and a giant robot appeared, dwarfing all of them. Shaking her head as she responds to Rillith, "We have been told that our bodies are safe as well as our brains," she looked up at the giant robot.  "Well, this is going to be fun, NOT, lets go people."

Takign a deep breath, electricity surrounded Lady Electrica's body and suddenly she converted to lighting and shot across the space to appear on the robots shoulder with an explosion of electricity surging over the robot's body!