Welcome to Gaia! ::

The "toad" leaped out of the halls and into the sandy pits after completing its survey. But, something was quite strange about this "toad." Instead of looking like a normal toad, it appeared as a radiant orange tortoise with the grand bubbly albino toad as a head tucked away within the shell. The relationship is symbiotic, and the tortoise is not decapitated, but its head is hidden with its shell; along with other stores of things, such as animals that live within its body acting as an ecosystem. The toad's bubbly stomach possesses one of these ecosystems as well, and timespace is slightly bent (but not to a disruptive degree) to accommodate more beings within their gullets.

The shell was in a normal shield shape, not the saddle back. It is very durable and tough; able to survive the hardest of impacts, whether they be physical or metaphysical. The shell seems to have seals and runes painted onto it, acting as a sort of defense against attacks, as well other things. It appears to have some spikes/spines jutting out of it, as well as some smaller hooks imprinted into the shell at a microscopic scale.

The rough orange limbs and arms stretched out rather wide, but remained strong and muscular. Long claws of some sort of metallic composition jutted out of the rough paws of the tortoise body, hinting at some notes about the internal composition of the body. The limps appeared to be capable of multiple joint locks and were extremely flexible. The tortoise walked on its toes, and was capable of bipedal movement, but it preferred this mode for now. The arms let out rays of luminous light of blue, revealing the massive amounts of chi within the beast.

The tail was long and slender, like that of a lizard and was completely covered with spines. The skin was very rough and covered with many cultures of poisonous algae and fungi as well as hoards of adapted bacteria. In fact, the entire body was covered with this mixture of magically-engineered bacteria and completely immune to it. These bacteria could feed off of inferior viruses and bacteria, as well other illegal objects within the body or on the body.

The white toad face looked towards the combatant with its large purple eyes and with its mouth ajar. There did not appear to be any teeth in its mouth, however a strange irradiating orange tongue floated about within its mouth with some sort of bird, possibly a fiery orange parrot scouting the area with its own supernatural senses fixed to the toad's own will, system, and energy.

The tortoise also had another defining feature, large bronze feathery wings jutting out of its shell and also appeared to have some sort of covering made of marble and affixed with a rune, covering his a**s simply.

Some sort of random bits of machinery covered the beast in random places for the most part, except that it was mainly concentrated on the limbs. A sort of scabbard for some large blade was affixed to the shell, as well as a bit of some sort of added "steel" armor.

The fiery parrot remained still for a moment as it read the mechanical monolith through similar organic scanning mechanisms. Most animals have the ability to read and follow the magnetic field quite well, and this scout had particularly compounded upon that ability. It could read the signals as a simple image of colors, while wasting almost no processing power while it converted it to that pattern of colors. The specific signals emanating from the the gun had given hints to that it utilized magnetic accelerator technology, and would give the toad ample preparation for a defense.

Alchemical processes ran rapidly throughout the beast, particularly working in synchronized order with the other mechanisms attached to the beast, working to produce energy in an indirect way as well as amplify whatever it was preparing for by producing specific materials which induce that said effect. It bypassed the antimagic field slightly, as an antimagic field will not usually negate an alchemical conversion nor an already set in spell (such as a golem creation) just by coming in contact with an object that exhibits such magical properties.

Fed by the energy and the machines built onto the beast, a sort of fluctuating electromagnetic field was quickly melded into a rather unique shape. Two strips of highly polarity had been formed about twenty feet ahead of the beast and ended about three feet behind the beast's head, however, they did not ever touch the beast. Instead, both strips were angled away from the beast, in a rather gradual line that quickly differentiated away from the straight line. Such lines would attract the rounds towards them by matching their polarity and would be strengthened by the Earth's own magnetic field. Quite simply, the lines would pull the rounds off course, at least to a degree which might only cause them to graze the beast.


A small alchemical maneuver had also taken place about twenty feet in front of the beast, creating a strange state of concentrated fluidity within the air, causing a slight wall of pressure to return force into the accelerating rounds and stop them or at least cause them to rapidly decelerate. Compare to a mimic of the levels of the upper atmosphere.

Regardless if the beast had been hit or escaped completely, a serious of small chi blasts (compare to weak spirit guns) had been directed towards the machine, coming out of the tortoise's arms.

The orange tongue shot forward through all of this chaos, flinging the fiery parrot into the air, while rapidly extending towards the machine as a little bit of juice was flicked off the tongue as it continued to elongate in a rapid whip. (This action may appear slow due to perhaps my bad word choice, but is meant as a very quick and sudden attack.) (It went directly through the area where the line of fire used to be, in an attempt for a surprise attack.)

(Query on this "Magnetic Resonance System;" it is quite ambiguous.)

And why was that so? The gun would simply have rounds with some magnetic capability, thus weakly activating the ferromagnet and constant magnets because of their present electromagnetic field. Even if the gun isn't firing, the technology and field is still in place; even if, again, weakly. Besides, even if the toad was not able to see such a mechanism, like you said it wouldn't be able to, it would still have a natural sense of reasoning. What sort of weapon would a mecha be using to even hope to damage a beast that large? There were not many options to which could harm the beast in such a small package. The most probable would be either plasma or a magnetic-accelerator cannon, or even some sort of high caliber weaponry. And such rounds would be suspectible to such a magnetic defense to as which the beast had used to defend itself. Plasma is highly affected by magnetic fields, as are most metal rounds to some degree. Besides, even past that, the atmospheric-esque blocker was also a reasonable response, just in case the weapon did not meet those characteristics. Lasers would slightly by stopped and as photons are bosons of the electromagnetic force, the fields would also slightly mess with their passage.

(I calculated a slightly different range, I mean, 250 is what, 25 floor-to-ceiling distances? I don't think it was that far separated. 100, at the most.)

The bird laughed within its mind even to face the punishment, as it had done quite a service to its master by directing the foolish titan away from the real threat and that since it was headed towards the sky, not directly towards the man in a sort of "ball" position, the rounds would have either a low accuracy, but in particular, a low precision.

Lawl. The chi was meant as a test and not as a projectile object, but as an object to infiltrate the internal mechanisms and the mana wells by creating various seals to disrupt the absorbing process, and general internal wiring chaos.

Now, now, the tongue was the real threat. Swinging out with a strange elasticity contained with this rather strange polymer-melded device, it would soon feel its own swoosh of alchemy as certain parts of the tongue's tip were altered as to give it molecularly-sharpened blade, and to simply increase the amounts of the "juice" present on the tongue. As the blade tongue would strike the beast, wonderful amounts of ACID would splash onto the pistol and be etched into the body and metal lattice itself as the swift, utterly sharp blade would directly deliver the acid into the metal. Oh, how much of the metal would corrode and .. burn off? How much gas would clog the internal mechanisms and disrupt the relative vacuum needed for proper functioning? Yes, acids do produce quite a bit of gas when they contact with metal. smile This was no weak acid; in fact, it was particularly strong, so particularly strong that it was isolated within the toad to prevent it from actually touching the carbon. It was stored within a slightly plastic container surrounded with a constant mana seal that served as but a final resort to protect it from causing internal damage. However, most of it was produced on the spot.

The tongue would continue its quick whip by quickly sliding over the the left arm, and then quickly slashing through the chest and right arm on the return recoiling motion back.

Hahaha, yes, it took whoop-pee, sixteen seconds to code at less than full power? Hm? The author stated that the Slave AI's were working on different tasks, furthermore, computers can be quite "quick" problem solvers, but for robots, it's quite a different story. Robot minds are not specialized on one task; however, a computer usually is specialized on one certain task. This robot mind has to focus on motor movement, regulation of its own wires, regulation of its weaponry, utilizing the information from the slave AIs, synchronizing with the slave AI, maintaining the slave AI, making sure any sort of seal, magebane, and mana wells, cognitive function, creativity, oh, how much more? Even with those claims, its function could not be that much higher than the beasts. Why? It would roughly become rather close to a human's intelligence, except perhaps even lower with EVEN more internal manteinence deal with. What fun! Fun fun fun! Hell, you could say since the beast is larger, has more "slave minds" and therefore has a higher brain-mass ratio as it didn't have much of a need for reproduction, it could perhaps meet a supercomputer if it turned down its processes for a second to focus on one. The supercomputing! excuse holds really no grounds, this is a supernatural fighting land. Har, that robot seems to be focusing on holding up that barrier, too. Oooo! That barrier that somehow disallows physical strikes.

Oh, and the blasts DID touch the armor. Where did they vanish, too? I would like a little bit of a more decent explanation instead of just randomly doing things like that.

Anyways, such a barrier against such physical assaults would come from the monolith's strange internal willpower, something that could easily be matched by the frog. Cool. Was not the robot already dealing with coding that, dealing with the chi, firing at the bird, oh and what not else? Keeping its reflexes at some uber level? Ooo. Its power was muy spread-out. Cooooooool!

Oh look, 250 feet of tongue separating the beast from the machine. There was one law enforced within this frog, and that is the balance and control of energy. Unstable mana would have the power to damage other mana; however, it also is really a matter of a bit of conversion, too. However, please make note that this is within a instrument of the beast's body, and if the magebane rounds were launched after the grabbery. There were various seals located on the beast, specifically noted on the shell; the array adding to the forced balance within the instrument of the beast. The mana was forced to be balanced because if it was not, it could be altered by the inhabitants making a residence within it. There was already a steady stream within the tongue; and there was ample resistance to the damaging code's effects to the stable mana. The field would be stuck at the tip of the tongue and would not be allowed to pervade any further.

One final note : 18 seconds; how many of which have passed? I mean, for the code to have even a slight chance, Vini would have to penetrate into the unreleased mana (which would alert the beast) and actually study the encrypted code and array used by the toad itself.

The bird in the sky was stripped through the tail, however, it did see those rounds, oh those big boys. It would draw energy from the toad and quickly cause a anti-anti-magic seal to be placed on the anti-magic seal which would ironically have to use some sort of magic or magic affiliation itself. Quite simply, the rounds would be engulfed in a storm of conflicting positive and neutral energy.

There was no indication of any sort of mana-burn in the previous post, only ambiguous unstable mana; but no matter. If the tounge would be burn to all hell, so would a good chunk of the monolith, as from what you are saying, the entire length of tongue shall burn, but the monolith would not be able to avoid punishment just like that. It is true in some circumstances that 1 + -1 would equal zero, and because of that, all that would happen would cause a rather strange distortion of both the resonance field and part of the beast's field and cause them to occupy the same space for a while. All that would happen would be a rather funny little stalemate at the tip of the tongue and the palm of the closed hand. This, of course, is ignoring part of the impossibility of the mana-burn itself, which could easily be forced to collapse as it was regarded as unstable. A rather simple form of kinesics would force the unstable mana to implode itself, something that could in-fact pour the beast's own energies into the beast, partially distorting and ruining the resonance field, and allowing a rather fine disruption to the "mana-curve calculations," which would ultimately leave Vini open to quite a few magical attacks as his body was distorted into the beast's area of influence.

Regardless of that, the seals would indeed have some sort of effect, as magical affiliation can loosely be related to some sort of supernatural, non-technical form; but however, some of the technology is just as supernatural as the magic itself, and will seem to work by the same tenets.

The beast would laugh inside its mind as the tongue slowly glued itself and forced its way into the metallic lattice on the hand by feeding it enough energy to pierce via biochemical reactions and conversions. The tongue would quickly pull the monolith backwards by the same conversions and by the simple effect of kinetic energy on elastic materials (such as polymers, which the tongue was stated to be made of.)

The beast would coo the magnetic fields another position by using slight streams of plasma to stimulate them, combined with a forceful kinetic and general willpower manipulation on the magnetic fields as to cause them to simply layer over each other to create a sort of painful series of walls for Vini to crash into as it accelerated. They would cause an obvious distortion in light, using a similar mechanism to what the Z-Machine uses, but to a lesser scale and in a less controlled form.

Also, uhm, moving disproportionately to the timeline can mean two things : you are either moving at lightspeed or faster; backwards, or simply out of the simple timeline created by a single photon. Not good. If you did reach lightspeed, you would either exhaust all your energy somehow as you became but a bolt of some uberplasma, or a relativity harmless mass of photons. Either way, it could even count as a ring-out.

The bird continued to cross-reference on the objects, creating a sort of barrier over each the rounds that would reflect all signals from objects that were not inside of them; it however, would match the previously signals which kept the rounds from exploding. If that was not the case, well, still, the detonation signal would be blocked.

1. Ignored. We could get in an argument about ad hominid or not hominid. In the previous fight, the effect was described ambiguously and not very clear.

The thing was, the resonance field would be disrupted by the very own disruption of the resonating of the conflicting energies. Wavelengths of all sorts would be forged, neutral energy and sometimes a simple loss of data could occur by such a resonance. And such a field, an aura would not be beneficial to Vini at all, and his attempt at controlling all sorts of supernatural energies.

Now as the haste effect had just started up and as the tongue had continued its merciless assault, the toad's area of influence would pierce directly into Vini's, only helped by the rapid motion of the pulling tongue. As Vini would rapidly speed up, he would expand slightly, but the tongue more so as the area influence was so pumped into Vini. Such a spike of influence going against the resonance field and its attempt at generating static, distortion, and negation would only be stopped by the alternating field of neutral energy fluxes, and by the nature of the controlling mana itself. Now, now, such a time length of even that generated by the first wave generated by the conflicting energies would allow the beast to begin processing its defense mechanisms, which allowed it to manufacture its wavelength's more securely and disable such static from entering the various states it could possess in the wave by means of simple repulsion. Just as the coded monster changed, the same process could be predicted to a slight amount by the beast itself, allowing the static to be repulsed and utterly ignored or eaten by the energy itself. The beast had looked into the energy and partially into the planar matrix of the area, but had not altered it, in order to gain a natural sense of the codex in effect. It even could be disabled by the flow of wavelengths themselves as the beast allowed the naturally present mana in the atmosphere and area to act as a buffer and potentially revealed it.

Now, as the area of influence had penetrated the monolith, it would rapidly start to simply ******** with the hasting mechanisms within the beast and force them to go haywire by rapidly disrupting the disaster prone electrical signals as well as causing a rather simple separation by magical means of the hasted and now slowed part by a simple wave of pure mana and mana particles to cause the monolith to fall into disarray. Such a process could hope to damage and destroy the machine named Vini. Such enchantments would fall into uselessness as well as the very uber-metal falling into corrosion as the flow of the machine's own energies were soon being cut off.

One extra field was formed in front Vini as it accelerated, and the monolith surely could be pulled as, the toad is over maybe, 50 tons? Also, biochemical energy was being converted into kinetic energy to allow the quick acceleration of Vini. Ooo, double haste. :O The magnetic fields sandwiched even closer together as their own polarities fought, but utterly forming an even denser wall of energy and force.

With all the effects and the simple speed, and in fact the motion necessary to shift from throwing, aiming all over the place, and the growing distortion web, the hand would not be able to slash the tongue as all the s**t would seem to overpower it.

The grenades already had the presence of the bird within them, so what would be faster, a detonation signal, or a quick second sealing on the grenades. Also, the seal should've worked due to Tacitus' own mechanics.

The other three web grenades were stated to have been fired at, or extremely near the toad. They were not detonated in the past, giving the toad an easy change to do the same. The antimagic grenades could not be far from the web grenades, so the follow-up effect could attack them from that close range, as well as the natural aura could process the same effect onto the nearby web grenades.

If that field alternated further from the already constant alterations within it, uhm, it just made the attempt even easier. Oh, the magnetic fields have but a simple hole within them to allow the tongue to pass through, and tongue is a polymer as well.

Wee go calculations in the growing chaos, go go go storm marcher of dooom wee wee weeeeeeeeee!