[Plot] Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through

[Conduit]

Pants!Will and the three Sams arrive at the area in front of the arch, the area having emptied out fast due not not having been grazed by the beam and thus remaining fairly mutant and obstacle free.

Shane is already there, vines snaking up the facade of the large marble structure to try and grab Thresher's legs. Unfortunately for him he seems to have little problem pulling his legs free, occasionally adding a blast from the jet-propulsion system built into his legs to burn away the pesky vegetation. No longer on his shoulder but standing near the edge and peering down at them is Conduit, eyes awash in yellow glow with the cannon and it's ominously spinning brackets behind her.

"Hi guys!" she waves. "Did'ya happen to take field notes down there?" she laughs.

[Shane Marsh]

"Pretty sure this is really bad science you little psycho," Shane said, rudely directing his vines to go after the softer target before she started monologuing.

[Conduit]

Conduit lets out an "Eep!" and scrambles back up Thresher's back before waving what appears to be an iPad in the air. "Is too! I'm collecting data you buffoon! This is important fundamental science!"

[Samantha McManus]

"Then you'll be happy if we offer to teach you more," the trio says in unison.

[Conduit]

"That sounds like a threat! Why's it sound like a threat? Because I think you do know a bunch I would love to hear! Your counter-part knows a lot but she's a little..." she twirls her finger next to her temple.

[Will Stanton]

Will came up and took a position behind Sam (but not Sam or Sam), fists up in a fighting pose.

[Shane Marsh]

"Because she's a war goddess. Pretty sure they can only teach with the proverbial stick."

Shane twisted his vines together and shifted them into a giant monstrous flytrap mouth not unlike Audrey II. It arched like a snake, baring sickle "teeth" dripping with digestive juices.

"And I might just be a forest god or something. And nature can be as cruel a teacher as any war."

[Conduit]

"That's a lotta big words for someone in pesticiding range. Thresher, go deal with the buttheads, I have science to do!"

[Thresher]

Thresher places down the large mutant-gun and roars, baring his rows of metal teeth at the plant monster growing on the edge of the arch. Then he leaps, moving faster than something his size has any right to, propelled by the jets in his lower legs. He grabs the plant by it's 'neck' as he goes sailing over the edge and yanks it free from it's perch. He lands on both legs, cracking the stone plates of the plaza where he lands and, a moment later, slams the plant-monster into the ground in front of him in an over-head arc. Here and there spots of digestive enzyme-fluid has speckled his arm but he doesn't seem to pay the spots it's eating into his thick skin much mind.

[Shane Marsh]

"Yeah, guys, I think we might need bigger guns," Shane remarked as he grew a thorny club and took up a defensive stance.

[Will Stanton]

Seeing an opportunity, Pants!Will launched himself off of Sam's shoulders, slamming into and trying to.grab the discarded power gun.

[Shane Marsh]

Shane launched vines to tangle up Thresher to try and prevent the cyborg from stopping Will.

[Conduit]

Thresher pulls and tears at the vines with brute strength, tearing them apart but no in time to snatch Will out of the air. The former-trousers gets his hands on the barrel protruding out from the rotating brackets... (are those modified power inhibition collars?) and he can feel a tingle where he's touching it, like a low-level electromagnetic power.

A the sudden appearance of Will holding on to her shiny gun Conduit looks up from her datapad and frowns. "Hey! No." she points at him. It's only when the gun starts humming and the brackets rotate faster that Will realizes she's probably pointing at the gun instead. And then it discharges a diffuse and short-range blast of brilliant white energy, throwing Will off the Arch and towards the ground. The by-standers might notice the shimmering dimensional distortion he leaves behind like a brief, ephemeral trail.

Not that he notices much of that, his head is filled with kaleidoscopic images of an infinitely long tunnel with countless windows to other places. But more importantly the tunnel is filled with swirling fractal energy that suffuses him. ♪I feel like I'm falling, so fast from the sky... Everywhere I go, it's the same old story... Keep the customer satisfied...♫

The green-haired boy plummeting to the ground is swiftly shedding his coloration, green fading to brown, toned and perhaps a bit too-flexible body shape filling out just a little bit, settling into normal human proportions and he hits the ground. Except the ground gives, turning into a flexible trampoline that bounces him back up and towards a tree that transform's it's leafs and branches into a huge catcher's mitt that safely catches Will.

[Will Stanton]

Pants!Will bounced off the catchers mitt and landed on the ground, the wind somewhat knocked out of him.

This was confusing. He shouldn't really have wind to be knocked out of, after all.

He turned around, and tried to stretch out an arm to reach after Conduit, but his arm remained disappointingly at normal proportions. Instead, the scattered remains of a picnic next to him smashed together, forming a long pillar to that shot up towards Conduit.

And running up that pillar and leaping off, bass guitar held over his head like a club, was Bass!Will, launching himself towards Conduit in a moment that really needed some hard rock backing.

[Drake Martin]

The big flaming Cerberus that housed what had become of Drake came in fast, leaping at Thresher. Inside it, the leaping Drake cocked back his stony fist for a punch.

[Shane Marsh]

"That'll do," Shane said, looking to Conduit and following Will's example by lifting himself up to the arch on the tree trunk that sprouted under him.

[Narrator]

"Damnit, Tresher! They're getting up the Arch!" Conduit shouts.

Meanwhile downstairs Thresher takes the flaming punch and staggers back for a moment, only to spin around much faster than his huge frame should allow, cybernetics shirring as he grabs Drake by the arm and keeps turning into a hammerthrow that lobs the former-dragon straight at the Will charging up the ramp, singing his hand in the process of reaching into the protective flame shell.

That leaves Shane up at eye-level with Conduit who pulls out some kind of taser thing from her pocket and aims it at him. The spark it fires isn't pleasant but Shane's leafy nature means it doesn't really electrocute him either. Realizing her mistake the little technopath begins fiddling with the setting on her gun.

[Shane Marsh]

"Heh, that tickled," Shane quipped, leaping to the arch. He punched the air between them, sending grabbing vines ahead to pull the taser thing away.

[Will Stanton]

Meanwhile downstairs Thresher takes the flaming punch and staggers back for a moment, only to spin around much faster than his huge frame should allow, cybernetics shirring as he grabs Drake by the arm and keeps turning into a hammerthrow that lobs the former-dragon straight at the Will charging up the ramp, singing his hand in the process of reaching into the protective flame shell.

By shifting his mass in midair, Bass!Will can subtly alter his trajectory without actively launching off things. As such, he can make it so he ends up travelling higher than Thresher was anticipating, simply skimming through Drake's corona as he continues his arc towards Conduit.

So, instead of a man leaping through the air with a bass guitar, there was a man leaping through the air with a bass guitar while on fire, which is appropriate for any number of heavy metal album covers.

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo swerved around the crashing Drake and rose to a bipedal position mid-run, charging straight at Thresher. At the last second, he sidestepped, ducked low, and clawed the cyborg's knee with all his strength.

[Narrator]

Leo's blow leaves deep gauges in Thresher's skin, catching on something metallic and tearing at it hard enough to make the giant shark's leg buckle. He roars as he goes down on one knee and tries to snap his massive jaw at Leo's arm in the process.

Up top Conduit let's out a panicked "Noooooo!" at Will's flaming bass coming down on the Mutation-Cannon, distracted enough that she does not pull the trigger on her taser thingie and Shane's vines rip it out of her hands. He does not have much time to celebrate his victory as the cannon is smashed, destroying the casing and dislodging the barrel. With a normal gun that would be it, but as the inhibition-collar brackets lose their magnetic lock and fall to the ground around the barrel, the main bulk of the gun begins to whine with excess energy and sparks are flying everywhere, winding up to what can only be a huge explosion.

[Leo Eskandari]

Leo got his arm out of the way enough to only get a relatively small chunk of flesh taken off. He pulled back, roaring in pain and bleeding badly. He glanced back and grinned before getting out of the way of what was coming.

[Drake Martin]

Drake skidded to a halt ten feet away, a giant flaming serpent closing the gap between him and the cyborg in a massive lunge. It took all of his will to force it into that shape and he knew could only manage it once, so he hoped it was enough.

[Shane Marsh]

Like a big damn hero, Shane grabbed both Will and Conduit with vines and pulled them with him as he leaped down from the arch. He landed in a three-point crouch, bringing the two down before him with vine tentacles. He only released Will.

"I suggest we run."

[Will Stanton]

Will had been leaping to absorb the explosion, but Shane had pulled him back before he could get there...

[Narrator]

As Shane jumps Conduit flails her arms and legs in protest, although some of that flailing was apparently to pull a small welding torch from her pockets to burn through the vine holding her. Freed from the grip she slaps one palm against her chest (more performative than anything really, considering her abilities) and two small anti-grav pods unfold on her back. She hangs in the air, cackling, for about half a second before her fancy gun explodes.

Everyone in the immediate vicinity of the Arch, including Thresher, is knocked flat on their backs and every mutant around has their senses swim. For one brief moment they catch a glimpse of the plaza in a different light as a shockwave of iridescent energy expands across the scene. Where it passes everyone can see a gouge in the fabric of space-time where the gun's beam passed and the almost blinding light of the energy boiling behind it. The gap is already in the process of closing again, but what isn't are the points of light shining from every mutant and from that light, fractal shapes and patterns reaching out and re-arranging the world. One pattern is split into hundreds of little strands where the mutant Will talked down is still clinging to a lamp-post, the fractals overlaid on her tendrils. Another is like a fountain of almost billowing patterns that occasionally condense and flare as the ash-cloud they're suffusing catches fire or coalesces into walls. All around them energy is condensing in strange shapes but with very obvious purpose. Shaping, adjusting, manipulating the underlying forces of Physics to make the impossible happen. Wings that would never physically work. Clay that retains sensation and turns into materials no living thing could mimic. Three women thinking as one, flesh reshaping at will. Plant matter replacing, supporting and strengthening flesh and skin. Electronic signals and electromagnetic forces being interpreted into song and voice in a little girl's head. Reality being rewritten in real time according to rules none understand.

And then it's over, the brief vision fades leaving behind a throng of confused mutants, a scorched and cracked Marble Arch and a Technopath hurtling through the air and into the night-sky.

[Will Stanton]

This was all great, and cosmic, and provided questions as to how the world around them worked.

For Bass!Will, however, all it led to was grumbling about how Conduit was getting away yet again, as he angrily tore himself free from Shane's vines.

[Shane Marsh]

Shane released Will the rest of the way and retracted his vines. He had completely expected to become a sentient fungus, so he was relieved. And also too baffled to think too hard about Conduit getting away.

"What in the bleedin' 9th circle of Hell was that acid trip?"

[Leo Eskandari]

"Less ponderin', more pummelin'," Leo groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. His wound wasn't healed, but it was already done bleeding.

[Samantha McManus]

The three Sams seem to have huddled together as the blast washed over them.

Or at least that's what it looks like at first, but soon it's hard to tell where one of them ends and the next begins.

This clump of Sam starts to collapse in on itself, eventually resolving into one being with wild hair, and clad solely in what one would hope is warpaint, though it's rather red.

"Soon," she says, barely a whisper but somehow everyone hears it.

Especially Conduit.

[Drake Martin]

Drake laid on a patch of charred cement, his flames all but extinguished. Forcing his unfamiliar new powers to do what he wanted, coupled with the mind-boggling revelation they had witnessed, had left him too mentally exhausted to up much of a fight.

"Did it work?" he huffed, "Is he roasted?"

[Will Stanton]

Meanwhile, Sam's Will was still staring at his hands, trying to figure out what had happened to him.

He experimentally touched more of the ground, transforming it from grass to marble, as he looked on in shock.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza starts heading in the direction of the arch, quite visible as she's still a large glittering werewolf.

[Narrator]

Not far from where everyone is gathering up, Haley is sitting on the ground, for the first time in years finding herself without the feeling of her thoughts constantly slipping into the heads of those around her. Like she mentally stepped off the ice and can just... think without worry. Granted, in front of her are gouges in the plaza from where destructive energy fired from her hands out to a good 5 or 6 feet in front of her, shredding any matter caught in the cone into nothing with a sound that's the molecular equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, as unpleasant as it is destructive. The faint music that had accompanied the laser shot still dancing at the edge of her perception. ♪ leave me defenseless, break in, break in... ♫ I've seen diamonds cut through harder men... ♬

[Haley Crusek]

"What. The. Fuck!?" Haley cried out as she stared at the destruction around her. Both in general, and more concerning the swath of destruction in her immediate vicinity. She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, hoping that would at least keep the destruction pointed down if it happened again. Something she was fairly sure might happen considering her hands were still giving off a blue glow.

[Leo Eskandari]

"Yeah... looks like you got him," Leo told Drake.

Examining his shark bite, he winced and said, "Thank God for accelerated healing."

[Samantha McManus]

"Haley," she says calmly, again not raising her voice, but Haley can hear her nonetheless.

"There."

She points casually at the retreating Conduit.

[Haley Crusek]

Haley looked back at Sam when she heard her name called, and followed her gaze to the retreating villain.

"Alright...let's hope my aim doesn't suck..." she mumbled to herself, pushing herself to standing. She stared down at her hands, opening and closing them into fists, and taking several steadying breaths.

She let out a grunt of effort as she threw her arms forward in her best Ryu impersonation, but nothing happened.

"Oh, for fuck's sa--" she threw down her hands in frustration, but was immediately cut off by the screeching, reality-bending sound of the ground around her getting disintegrated and she fell back on her ass. She grit her teeth and shut off the blast just long enough to train her hands again on the fleeing Conduit and let out a blast of energy that had the benefit of being extremely large, so maybe it would catch the girl even if her aim wasn't great.

Of course, the large death ray might almost hit several of her allies or bystanders too.

[Narrator]

Unfortunately for Haley, the blast grows wider the further it gets from her! Fortunately for Haley, it only reaches about seven, maybe eight feet in front of her and thus avoids taking anybody's head off and just destroys a bunch of air. But what Sam notices is that the blast doesn't just destroy matter, it also interrupts and scrambles any telepathic connections in the area for a brief moment.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza pauses away from the blasts, wincing as her ears flatten at the noise.