savetheearth | town meeting, alien breaking hoa rules

"You seriously have--" but he cuts himself off with clenched teeth and a clenched fist. He exhales, then starts anew, less aggravated, but not entirely patient. "What about the explosion in the Dead District back in- in October? Your snakes were gone after it happened. Was that-- Do you know if that was them?"

"Mm." Stone face holds as Proud gives the group another once-over. "It was them."

"Why didn't you create them with a method of deactivation?!" Xander cuts in with a angry demand. "Do you even care about the people who have been harmed by your creations?!"

"You blame No One for that," Proud says at once, even sharper, much more so and thrown hard with an angled-down leer at Xander. "A method of deactivation wasn't built in. I used what it did to keep myself safe from it."

If human sounds could cut then the consonants - the hard and the sibilant - would.

He returns the leer with expression of contempt and before he even realizes it, he's speaking again, but in a slightly calmer tone. "To keep yourself safe from what? From becoming a puppet and a suicidal bomber?"

"Stop being dicks to Mr. Proud! He is helping. And the bad guys did super terrible shit to him and he didn't mean to hurt anybody. So knock it the fuck off!"

Octavia has maintained a sulky silence since her plans were (in her eyes, at least) dismissed simply because they were her plans. But as far as she's concerned, The Snake Guy is cool. He's a misunderstood artisty type forced into hiding, just like her boyfriend! What's not to like?

"Is there like. A quarry we could round the snakes up in? Or we could use the mines, I guess. Maybe. Then we could either plant a bomb or somebody like Marisa can do an airstrike thing on them. Boom! Problem solved, everybody stops bitching and we can go kick the alien in the face that it presumably has."

Felt like going in circles sometimes... Bakura did his best not to sigh before speaking up again. "So, what exactly were they programmed to do? Specifics. We can probably manipulate them with that. And how will they know if No One's dead? What sort of detection abilities do they have?"

"Yeah, come on guys, he's trying to help, stop treating this like an interrogation." Mac finally spoke up, in part because the sharpness towards Proud wasn't a good thing for them, and partially because he didn't feel like he fully deserved the heat he was getting.

Mac nodded towards Octavia, in support of her idea. "Not a bad plan to get them somewhere that doesn't do much damage. I'd disagree on putting them in the mines, though - I wouldn't trust any explosions down there not to collapse the whole thing, considering how unstable those tunnels can be..." He sighed. "If there's a nearby quarry or open area that we could drop them in, that'd certainly be the best option we have available right now - barring other ideas. I'll definitely throw my weight behind it."

Edited 2014-01-25 20:22 (UTC)

Good lass, Miss Serket, and good of you as well, Mac. Dignifies the former with an arguably more neutral look and a slow nod over at the latter.

Bit of a leer snaps back in as he regards Xander again, and then Bakura, smooth slide back and forth. "They're not robots," he says, with the edge back in - 'programmed', indeed. "And they'll know No One's dead through magic, for all I care."

Blah blah blah argue argue argue. Sophie huffs, her arms crossed as she leans on the wall out of the way, her bare foot still tapping out a rhythm on the stone floor of the basement. It looks idle, but it's not actually - while she can feel anything that moves, it's just useful to keep mapping the things and people that aren't quite, and it's a tic she's picked up that Toph never quite had.

She goes still as stone all in an instant, stopping the incessant foot-tapping and straightening up, arms uncrossing. "Hey..." That's said quietly, not enough to really get the attention of anyone who didn't note her sudden reaction.

A frown, as she shifts stances, head tilted just slightly as she works out what she's "seeing". She's felt these before, and when she'd offered to count up the statues earlier, it hadn't been an idle offer. "Hey! Guys! Incoming!" And that's louder, with a certain hard edge to her voice.

Sophie turns towards the wall, backing up more towards the group. "Better figure out what you want to do about statues now, we've got - five, we've got five coming here right now."

Lily looks around them, quite a bit startled at this revelation. She instinctively grips the medallion hanging around her neck, and gulps.

Okay, maybe this wasn't such a safe idea after all.

"I'm sorry, what?! How do they even know...?"

"Dunno, why don't you ask them about it when they get here?" Helpful, Sophie. But hey, she did give an advance warning, so...she's actually being somewhat helpful here, and she's still fallen back into the stance she associates with earthbending, though she's never tried to use it against any of the statue things.

Mostly she's tried to never get near them when she's felt them coming her way. It's worked out for her so far. "But I'm not joking around: incoming."

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"I-I think she means statues!" Danny's leaning forward on the edge of his seat, glancing around the room anxiously to try and figure out where it is, exactly, that the threat is coming from.

"Statues, yeah, what else? They're underground, coming towards us." And hey, apparently the damn things blow up or something??? At least it's an advance warning so they can move past the let us panic mightily part before the statues get here.

Maybe.

Probably?

Proud had looked at Sophie puzzled. Barely troubled, but puzzled, and as she's a step ahead of the group getting into position he's on the defensive among them scanning over the group faster and more scrambling for now, wilder-eyed and more intent, he didn't do a thing, what on earth did the rest of them do - ?

"Holy fuckballs. Uh. I brought guns..." Tavia promptly empties her purse out onto the floor, revealing four guns. She does have the good grace to look embarrassed about it. "To donate to the. War effort. Thing. Go nuts if you don't have a weapon or whatever. I'm calling Alan."

She plucks her cellphone from the pile of guns and skitters off towards the edge of the room to do just that. Gotta call Shouty-Good-At-Killing-Things Boyfran.

Miranda, having been silent up until now, finally says something.

"Well, the floor's probably a lost cause. I think I might have to get out of here, since if you have to save me that's just going to be one more thing you have to worry about."

Since he's not much good with strategy anyway, Alan's been hanging out in a nearby cafe with Walter. Which is a good thing, since it means he can get here from there very quickly after getting Octavia's call.

If he could, he would actually burst in through the wall Koolaid Man style, but sadly he can't and has to use the door like normal people.

And Walter is here as well, despite the distinct feeling that this is a horrible idea and that he should not be. But that's how these things always start, isn't it. And he couldn't let Alan run off on his own or leave Octavia and the others to fend for themselves.

At least there are guns. He scrambles for one of them, nearly dropping it right after he picks it up.

This is going to be rough.

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