Xaviers!

Nika gut reaction is angry defiance. Doom and his robots do, to some extent, respond to shows of force. Usually not by backing down, mind, but he might drop her charge and attack her instead. But her mission is to protect her charge and that means not putting him at risk. So instead she slowly approaches, taking her time.

"I will, but as a show of good faith and to prove your benevolent superiority I ask you to release your prisoner." she says, still with her arms raised.

"THE SUPERIORITY OF DOOM IS SELF-EVIDENT, AND DOES NOT NEED TO BE PROVEN."

"Naturally... Fuck." Out of distance to slowly walk across Nika glances up at her charge, then spins around to get a better angle and fires out a bolt to punch through the arm of the Doombot that is holding the man.

The Doombot's superiority apparently did not extend to precognition -- Nika's bolt flew through the air just fine, puncturing and damaging the doombot's arm to the point where it dropped Nika's charge.

"KNEEL BEFORE DOOM!" the Doombot shouted, engaging rockets from its feet and flying through the air towards Nika.

"God I hate these things..." she mutters, cutting to the side to grab one of the metal poles holding up the velvet rope to bring around like a baseball bat towards the Doombot.

Nika smashes the pole against the Doombot's head, which does enough to alter it's trajectory to keep it from smashing directly into her. So that's a plus.

But then the Doombot unleashed a concussive blast that would send Nika spiraling through the air. That was a minus.

Nika's charge got to his feet, and ran the fuck away. That was....I mean, probably a plus.

Nika hits the ground hard, trying to roll to lessen the impact, but it's mostly just the momentum that sends her rolling sideways as she skids to a stop.

"Fucking robots..." she groans as she pushes herself up, looking around for her improvised weapon or at least an alternative.

While the streets around the opera house were relatively clean, there was plenty of street furniture she could use as a weapon. She had some urban combat training, after all.

The Doombot rose to its feet and started marching towards her.

"PREPARE TO BE DESTROYED."

Finding a nearby bench she stomps down hard on the side of one of the slats, snapping off a two or three inch bit of hollow plastic. Unlike her bolts it probably wasn't going to be reusable, but she doesn't need it to be if she makes the shot count. And so she waits until the Doombot is only a couple feet away from her before firing the chunk of plastic at it's chest.

Nika's training pays off! Both in terms of urban survivability AND in Doombot Studies 101, as her shot manages to find a weak point in the Doombot's construction, sending it crashing to the ground.

"ERROR...ERROR...ERROR..."

Code: Select all

Beginning Stage Four

"ERROR...INITIATING SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE"

At least that wasn't a huge surprise. It's what the damned machines do after all.

With not a lot of options Nika lunges forward the last couple steps and tries to find something on the Doombot that's small enough for her power to snap into, yet still solidly enough attached to the robot. She finally settles on it's belt-buckle and the moment she can feel it click into space she sends it straight up, hopefully taking the belt and thus the doombot with it...

For a moment, it works! The doombot goes up into the air, rocketing along with the belt buckle!

...But, sadly, Latverian belt technology does not seem to be as superior as the rest of the country. The belt breaks, the buckle keeps soaring, and the Doombot comes plummeting back downwards...

"Well shit."

A massive explosion, blowing out the walls of the opera house and leveling the surrounding area...


...would be what happened next, if the safeties hadn't kicked in and stopped the program.


"Very solid performance, Ms. Novak," Lippencott's voice came over the comms.

"Thank you, sir. I will make sure to be better prepared next time."

"I'm sure you will. We'll have a detailed report for you to look over soon; I imagine that's the sort of thing that's your leisure reading, yes?" he joked.

Nika chuckles politely. "No, but I will read it as intently as if it was."

"Considering your unique situation, I will also forward you Katarina's results, so you can be best prepared for her."

"You're testing her as well? Why?"

"Power control is part of everyone's curriculum. It's vital that people understand what their powers can do, and where their limitations are. It's not just combat-related."

"She's received coaching..." Nika points out hesitantly. "I will at least have to watch."

"I'm afraid that, for personal privacy reasons, we can't let non-prefects into the observation chamber as they are going on.

We will give you the report, and my assurances that everything will be alright."

Nika frowns but doesn't say anything, she simply goes to gather her darts from where they ended up scattered about the now empty room.