Travels with a Kitsune (always open) [Chapter 3: The gate of water]

[DigitalMan]

DM gives a grunt of protest, certain that he had the technical expertise to make sure the device blew off someone else's head rather than his own. He shifts his focus to the matter at hand, eager to show off.

"Not to worry. I mess with dimensions all the time. I'll just adjust my Z-Buffer's address to overlap the layer Moonsoul is in. We'll go in, give the unpronounceable a swift kick in the pants, grab Moonsoul, and we'll be celebrating at Starbucks before sundown!"

DM begins hastily pressing buttons on his handheld computer, occasionally touching and moving things across its holographic screen. He suddenly pauses, and gives a look that can only be described as a technician who forgot his modem's IP address.

"I don't suppose any of you know the exact address or frequency of the layer we need to get to... would you?"

[Kitsune Ascendant]

ooc: (I'm going to have go gently nudge things away from that, dm. Sorry, but the stories I have planned require the scenic route instead of going directly to kick ass. I might get a more comprehensive bit on how dimensional travel works for this rp in the ooc topic sometime)

[Nim, upon hearing dm's question, decides to step in before they all end up in a lava dimension]

<'fraid it wouldn't work. Like mina said, she's on a layer that's isolated. The only connection is the gate of beginnings, and to get there we need the keys for it and the other seven gates.>
mina: <If everyone is prepared, I'll open the portal to our first destination.>
[mina starts to glow an icy bluish white, and rises up a few feet into the air. a previously unnoticed gem in her left front paw begins glowing, and a beam of light shoots out a few feet, opening the portal.>
nim:<everyone through!> *leaps in*

[Catffeinated]

"Well, I don't really like magic, but it seems like I have no choice in the matter." Umal said, throwing the cube up again.
"You have plenty of choice in the matter, you just don't want to pass up the opportunity, and besides, what about me?" A disembodied female voice chimed
Umal jumped, "Omega, your on-line!"
"Of course I'm on-line, I've always been on-line, just not active."
"Well, guys," Umal said turning to everyone, "This is Omega, she's an AI."
"Hi!" Omega said cheerfully, suddenly she changed back to serious, "If your leaving, take me with you, I've been everywhere on the Net, and besides, I'm bored."
"I swear, she acts more and more real everyday." Umal mumbled as his eye did a 180 into the back of his head, revealing a small slot. "OK, O, upload to the chip and let's get going."
"Done and done!" Omega chimed. Umal went over to one of the many computers in the rear of the room, placed the cube down, and pulled out a small memory card, and stuck it in the slot in his eye.
"Ugghh..." Umal said quivering, it was obvious he was having some sort of odd sensation, one that didn't exactly bode well. "Never will get used to that." His eye did a 180 again. "OK now we're ready!"
"You're forgetting something..."
"I am? What?"
"Oh, it's square, black and red, symbols..."
"Uhh... drawing a blank here..."
"THE QUANTUM CUBE, YOU NINNY!"
"I knew that!"

[e_voyager]

at the name omega E is jarred out oh his observed of that going on around him. "Omega? wiliy's creation omega?"  little bother omega also called the final form of zero?'  he thinks before he remembers two things . who he is not truly forte even through he has a body that was originally copied and upgraded form one of forte's base bodies. Secondly he met both omega and zero in the tin 22xx and omega was defeated by his original in a copied body. it was some fight but it had to be done

" i'm sorry i was  defragments my member the trip seems to have hist a digital barrier of sorts and that scrambled my mind for a bit. i am E as in the 11 letter of the alphabet. i believe the language is called Greek it seems common on all worlds"  starts to scan the area with more then his general optic sensors and he is looking for the Qcube and he would like to compare it to some of his external memory devices. he still wonders and the growing and agings design of his body but then his builder had stolen the original design just like for Zero

[DigitalMan]

DM grumbles and puts his computer away. "It's always gotta be something. Coins, stars, shine sprites... alright, lets go find these nexus keys. But if they look and function like blades as well, I'm going to hit someone."

He jumps in surprise when he hears Omega's voice. It's not often he hears a disembodied female voice, as his robot is male. DM leans his head to one side, and speaks quietly to a CameraBot that uncloaks over his shoulder. "You should challenge it to chess."

The CameraBot tilts sideways a bit, and K2's voice responds. "But I don't really like chess. You challenge it, you're the tactician."

"Well that would be pointless, I'm not a machine."

"Well neither am I, so I don't see how that matters."

"Yeah, but he doesn't know that. You could flatten Omega, and be declared the superior AI. And I, the creator of the superior AI."

"As much as I'd like to be used as a tool to boost your ego, I don't think I could win against it anyways. You'd need Kageri for that."

"Fine, fine. Let's just go before the portal closes. Or gets hacked, or redirected... remind me to put some security measures on these things when I have the time."

DM jumps through the portal with crossed fingers, the CameraBot cloaking and following behind.

[Catffeinated]

At the mention of willy, Umal's cybernetic eye went bezerk.
"Phht, he couldn't explain how a toster works, nonetheless make omega!"
"However, he did infiltrate the databanks once." Omega protested
"Meh, probaly got software to do that; anyways I made O long before he did."
"In fact, 125 years before."
"And, before you ask, no, I'm not that old, I was testing my dimention gate at the time, it didn't quite work. Now I'm stuck here, or I was 'till you all showed up."
"He was getting lonely and senile at the time..."
"Shut up."
"...so I had to keep him sane..."
"Shut up."
"...for the last year in a half."
"And her brothers and sisters were previous letters of the Greek alphabet, including Epsilon, who I also called E." Umal's eye calmed down, and he reached into the Q-cube, and pulled out a power core (about 1 in a half times larger than the cube itself), and another memory chip, and handed it to E, "If your based on my designs, you'll need these soon, the memory chip is a complete backup of your original files, I implanted a fail-safe into your files, eating away at your past, so you could start you life annew." He sighed and got into a position like a track runner on his mark. He started running, and at about three feet away, mumbled something like "I hate magic" and jumped into the portal.

[Kitsune Ascendant]

(ooc: Ah, good. Looks like we may get some semblance of a decent rp flow. If people can keep checking in every day or so, That would be awesome.)

Mina (telepathy to Umal): <don't think of it as magic then. It's really just a different form of energy with a bit more access to the root properties of the local universe than most.
nim: < We just call it magic so that the uninitiated can say "oh, that stuff.">
mina: <nim, be nice.>

[Snuggles]

Snuggles goes through and lands on the ground... hard. The fur on him has changed again. The pink fur from before has came back. Crystal looks up and peers around. In the older voice again. "Where are we this time?" addressed to no one in particular.

[e_voyager]

E accepts the chip and scans it. it is compatible with his hardware at least in it's current form " here is the important thing to remember about ossan Wily" he said at last. it was hard not to think of wily as a father despite the fact that had existed for a time  before stealing this a copy of wily's best robot's body of the time.
"Wily is a hack but he was an ingenues one. he would still form the best and may it his ow. my form was based on the form of the robot know as Rock man but it uses an energy he calms to have made by accident and named bassium."

E stores the memory chip in a dimensional pocket and after a moment her  points his arm cannon at a blame wall but instead of plasma fire robot spec appear on the was for a robot prototype type named X. "these are plans that were stolen by one like me and delivered to wily he biased his omega on these but omega would not read his final form for 300 years. " he smiled

"there is a key difference between you omega and Wily's omega. asides form the fact that Wily's omega was first called Zero there the difference is that Wily's omega was hardware  that he had a virus running as its of until it developed it's own AI via an unknown process. when that AI was stripped form the omega it revert to the killing machine that Wily had intended it to be. it's hard were was modified over the course of a century and when it returned the omega AI fought the heavily modified Omega hardware. the AI was in a copy of the original bother but manager to with skill and a little lover defeat it's overpowered original."

E shakes his head as the realise how he has gone on about a family that was barely his to claim. "I apologize for boring you" he said the robot plans were still cycling on the wall with memory flashes form his visits the the event that he mention "but i have a question for you. are you related to a thomas wright also know as Dr. Light in some places?"

[Catffeinated]

A small spider-like (and sized) robot jumped onto E as he talked.
"You do realise I'm not here, right?" it said in Umal's voice, "this is a spider, s-p-y-d-e-r. It monitors areas for me, and to answer your question, I don't know." The Spyder jumped off, "About 50% of my memory was lost during the surgery for my implants, due to a short circut. I do remember hearing from him frequently, but not why, and all I know about our relation is that he was one of my supporters."
"Umm. Umal, come back here for a moment." Omega's voice added.
"Ok, O. Have to go, don't take the Spyder, there are more."
--- In other dimension
"Ok, O, what is it." Umal said, coming out of a trance-like state.
"Look down." Omega said plainly. He did. All he saw was brown dirt, with a speck of pink.
"What's that pink thing?"
"Scans indicate it's one of the adventurers you ran into."
"... How high are we?" Umal sighed, his face like this: -_-
(ooc: sorry, couldn't think of any other way to explain it)
"Umm, say 1000 feet in the air?" Omega guesstimated, "You don't have altimeter!"
"At least I know these upgrades work, can I survive it?"
"Can a bug survive being hit by a car?"
"A really big bug can!"
"NO YOU CAN'T SURVIVE IT!"
"Ok, I have an idea." Umal said pulling out a small block of wood with carvings in it.
"That's your plan?"
"Yup!" Umal said happily
"Your sad..." O said as Umal threw the block down with as much force as he could, it landed next to Snuggles a few seconds later as it's carvings started to move and form the sentence: "Does anyone know how to fly?"

[Kitsune Ascendant]

Mina: <well... I'll be staying up wondering how that happened. Hold on a sec, umal. >
Nim: <actually, I think I know why the portal did that. *goes into long-winded technobabble*>
Mina: <so what you're saying is that one of the energy fields made the portal's stability matrix throw a hissy fit?>
nim: <yeah, but my way sounds a lot cooler. anyways, I've adjusted for it, so we won't have to worry about that next time.>
mina: <that's all well and nice, but it still leaves umal 800 feet in the air and rapidly falling. *sigh* I'd portal a chute up to him, but I don't know if it would have enough time to open.>
Nim: <ooh, I know! we can turn down the planet's gravity!...what? it's possible...>
Mina: <but not feasable. no, I think the simplest way is a bubble field>
[within a fraction of a second, a bluish gold bubble surounds umal, slowing him down as he falls, until he hits the ground at a modest 5 feet per second]

[e_voyager]

E had not realized  that the spyder was just an extension. in his journies he has encounter many beings more often humans then not who had placed there minds and life force inside of computers ore machine of some sort. among the top of the list were those of Dr. light and Dr. Wiliy but also there ws on Ivo kintobor also know but the inhabitants of his world as robo robotnik. and reed Richards who created and entire virtual universe when he and his friends were dying due to cosmic radiation. there genetics had lack the stabilizing agent that many of there extra dimensional counterparts had that would allow them to survive their mutations. it was a sad world there.

Still enough thinking about the past. his time as a human in the other world had really affected him deeply.  he did a quick head count and wondered where people were vanishing to. "snuggles? has anyone one seen snuggles?" E knew that if snuggle was missing it was likely that he'd shifted again and he know he could use some help but while he know Gospel could help him search he was hesitant to call on the other he knew would be of assistance.

[Snuggles]

Crystal moves the walking stick and trying to pull himself up but with his bad leg he can't do it. "I am here E... just on the ground. Who's the new guy?" Pointing Umal out with the walking stick.

[e_voyager]

without looking E knows who is meant as he traveled over to help crystal to his feet. whether Crystal is pointing to the actual scientist or mealy an satellite of the scientist the answer is the same. "he goes by the name of Umal" E says helping him to his feet.

[Catffeinated]

The block in front of Snuggles starts to change as it's carvings move about the surface.
"Decending at this speed, I might take a while to get there." The carving stated, "It wasn't the portal, it was me, my cybernetic upgrades are a bit too fine-tuned, I'll have to go back and change them again. I'll leave a robotic Spyder to act as a communicator, don't worry it's transmited between dimentions before. I guess I'll catch up on lost sleep while I'm floating, thanks for the help."

[Snuggles]

"Umal... good name i like it. Anyway where are we?" Crystal said looking around a little bit and trying to steady himself on his walking stick this time having better luck because E is there helping him.

[Kitsune Ascendant]

mina : <crystal, is it? To fill you in on the situation, we think moonsoul's been captured. To get to the dimension where she's probably being held, we need access to the seven nexus gates, so we're searching for the six keys I don't have. We're currently at the gate of water. Or, to be more precise, the universe where the gate of water lies>
Nim: <speaking of which, we should probably get going. There's a spaceport northeast of here where we can get a ship with the necessary modifications. >

[Snuggles]

Crystal opens his eyes wide then starts to look for something in his clothes. "Where is it?" He wispers to himself. Giving up a little. "Well lets get going then..." He starts to move then realizing that he doesn't know where he is. "Where would the northeast be?"

[Catffeinated]

The block shifted once again: "Hello?" It read.
-- Up in the air
"Told you they wouldn't see it." Omega chimed
"Shut up..."

[e_voyager]

e frowned. all this Psyche communication was stared to interfering  with his ability to map his surroundings well. " person is you could provide an energy signature then i could fin it with greater easy" he said at last broadcasting his thoughts on the same frequency that he felt mina and nim speaking one. then he addressed Crystals question."well we seem to be in a place who's Geological position seems to be less then stable i suggest that eh move before something  either lands on our hears of falls out from beneath out feet."

[Kitsune Ascendant]

[nim, finally noticing the small cube, picks it up and using a combination of telekinesis and gentle nudging with his paws, gets it tied to his back]

mina: <An energy signiture? I never thought to figure out what the energy signiture of that spot was. Not to worry. Just follow me an nim>

[Catffeinated]

Laying down in the sheild, Umal ponders his options.
"Omega, can I use the GDW?"
"Only if you want your atoms to be pushed in opposite directions."
"Er, Gravaton grenade to cancel out the fall?"
"Too high up."
"Uh, mind jump?"
"Crazy idea, and besides the bot's in it's planning phase."
"Out of ideas... any from you?"
"Well, we could test the flight matrix."
"Over two thousand nanobots modifiying a gravaton's direction!?"
"We ran tests on them, they should work..."
"... emphisis on should."
"We just need more processing power."
"Well then, shut down the mystic complex, that should triple it." Umal suddenly felt as if he lost part of his memory.
"Done."
"K, changing the block, ahh shoot, it needed magic didn't it?"
"Ya. Umm, I could nullify the sheild."
"No, if I'm right those fox-squiel creatures can hear me through thought.... I think/"

[Kitsune Ascendant]

nim: <yeah, we can hear you. so, do you just need the shield gone or do you need a little extra boost?>

[Catffeinated]

"Just gone, if this works, I shouldn't need it, the flight matrix modifies gravitons, utilising them to my favor... hopefully. However, you probaly don't care, the bots are ready, so I'm ready too."

[DigitalMan]

Figuring he'd better make sure Umal didn't get himself killed, DM springs into action - or, more accurately, sighs and takes his time. He backs K2, now returned to full truck form, directly beneath Umal. "There, now he can land on the canopy if his device fails."

K2 alerted him, "What about the metal bars?"

"There's only a 70% chance of hitting them. Less, if he aims well." He turns and shouts up to Umal. "Don't land on the metal bars!"

Waiting for Umal to fa- er, descend, DM inquires to the squirrel-foxes. "What kind of modifications do we need? This thing can fly, sits at least 8 people comfortably. Just can't do much fighting while flying."

[Kitsune Ascendant]

*nim removes the field around Umal*
mina: <well, first of all it needs to be spaceworthy. Also needs to be compatible with a graviton pulse-wave generator. Only energy source that provides the right type of energy. But really, what we need is a competent local pilot. Someone who knows the particular area we need to get to. Space is... a bit tricky, there, and at the speeds we'll be traveling, knowledge of the area could mean the difference between life and death.>

[e_voyager]

E sighed as he watched the goings ones. he had to restrain himself form teleporting into the are where he traced the transmission form Umal. it probably would work in any case. aster all most mast class robes were protected by an ares disruption field the prevented stable teleportation near them. still this talk of energy souse if he could sample energy he could copy and produce it as well.

"maybe i can help with your energy crisis." E says over the telepathic frequency " both I and rock man are built to transmute energy to an extent at least"

[Catffeinated]

<Thanks, you two. Omega, activate the flight matrix.>
"Got it. Master nanobot online." Omega responded aloud.
<Current speed equals G minus Ar. Acceleration factor equals five per second, Direction: up.> Umal thought, directing the nanobots at the same time. Umal slowed down by exactly five kilometers per second, it wasn't enough. <Increase Acceleration factor by ten.> 15 kilometers per second still didn't seem good enough. <O, have them reduce my speed so that my body is near uneffected by inertia yet I don't slam into the ground.>
"Man, your a picky one arn't you?" Omega joked as she silently commanded the nanobots.
Eventualy, Umal came to a mid-air stop. "It... It worked! It worked! I can defy physics!" he cheered. Unfortunantly, this caused him to loose his focus, and fall the remaining 10 feet. "Oww... I'm alright, hurt, but all right."
"I beg to differ, the pocessor's been over-worked and can't run the nano-repair matrix because of it."
"We'll have to add that to our shopping list then, 'New processor'"
"The portal is much like a D-gate, I could re-stablize it for a while."
"Wouldn't do any good."
"Why not?"
"I can't get up." Umal said, rolling his pants leg up, revealing robotic parts penetrating his skin.

[Kitsune Ascendant]

nim <hoo boy. I can do a bit of healing, but I've been a while working with cybernetics. DM, you have all kinds of crazy stuff. Could you see if you've got a spare processor for our friend here? Or some compatable nanobots. whatever works.>

[DigitalMan]

DM looks down at Umal. "Might've been safer to just hit the metal bars."

He sorts through his inventory using the holographic screen of his computer. "Personally, I don't use nanobots. No one is quite sure why, though that there is as good a reason as any. However, I make it a habit to rip the processor from every enemy I defeat. Granted, that means most of these are Pentium-based, but I have several that are a bit more exotic." He touches the image of one processor, and a small green portal opens up, dropping the real thing into his hand. "This used to control nanobots, specifically by thought. It ought to work. Nevermind the blood stain..."